Visible and invisible infrastructures: alternative futures in resiliency, failure and design pedagogy

Abstract

This paper explores the pedagogic and community initiative sponsored by a multi-year interdisciplinary (M.Arch and MLA) design studio project entitled "Design Duluth.” Motivated in part by catastrophic flooding in the city of Duluth, Minnesota in June of 2012, this research investigates - through the structure and pedagogic programming of the semester - how complex infrastructures are networked (or not), constructed (or fragmented), dynamic (orstatic) within the a complex city landscape. The project is rooted in developing, critical and creative topical to issues of resiliency and failure in and across architectural, ecological and urban systems. The studio explores how we can seed and implement innovative methods of interdisciplinary studio teaching and research and perhaps most importantly, how we can help students have agency in a blurry world of shifting pedagogy and practice.

**AWARDED BEST PAPER 2014 BY THE BOARD OF THE ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH CENTERS CONSORTIUM**