Course Syllabus

                                See attached 10 page PDF for full Sp26 AdvVI Studio Syllabus                            

Chrysalides: Civic-Sacred Catalysts of the Symbiocene

This studio understands death as fundamental to mortal existence and part of ongoing ecological and ethical exchange, inseparable from questions of design, democracy, and how societies value and celebrate life amidst crises. This orientation aligns with what Glenn Albrecht describes as the Symbiocene: an era defined not by human dominance but by reciprocal, more-than-human relations that make mutual flourishing possible (i). Framed by climate instability, inequity, and political turmoil, the studio asserts that the architect’s engagement with mortality is a political and social choice.

Spring 2026 advances a research project developed in dialogue with GSAPP DeathLAB and sustained across multiple semesters, sites, and scales, by deliberately situating the studio in a chrysalis state—a condition of transformation in which inherited forms and assumptions are unsettled and reconceived. The studio-series operates both discretely and cumulatively, recalibrating instruments in response to shifting cultural, ecological, and civic provocations, and individual students’ priorities. 

Architecture and research are interlaced as a rigorous practice, capable of navigating the sacred and secular, nature and city, permanence and impermanence, visibility and erasure. Through these liminal territories, students develop positions and spatial practices grounded in durational awareness, iterative material exploration, ecological interdependence, and spatial precision. Death is explored as a multi-species condition, implicating human, animal, vegetal, and microbial life within shared ecological cycles.

Field research will include travel to Gujarat, India, offering spatial, historical, and socio-cultural immersion, and formative encounters with liminality and the sublime–where thresholds blur and civic-sacred landscapes thrive. Insights drawn from material and travel research will be critically translated to inform intimate- and civic-scaled architectural interventions situated within the specificities of New York City.

Theory and research function as operative lenses, iteratively revealing agency through drawing, modeling, and making. This studio celebrates architectural consequence: work that is precise, accountable, and capable of operating within uncertainty. In this context, design is in dialogue with mortality, participating in its conditions, negotiating limits, responsibilities, and consequences across temporal and ecological scales. Architecture is understood as a material, civic, and ecological barometer. It has the capacity to be a catalyst of change within a world currently undergoing profound transformation.

                             See attached 10 page PDF for full Sp26 AdvVI Studio Syllabus