Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems – “where cities first begin to mitigate their impacts and then become a source of regeneration as in natural ecosystems.” Newman and Jennings, 2008 Sustainability for Post Industrial Cities – “the unique challenges and opportunities [decommissioning, optimization, harnessing vacancy, etc.] for designing and managing infrastructure systems in a context of population decline.” Schwartz and Hoornbeek, 2009 Systemic Design – “the reintegration of disvalued landscapes into our urbanized territories and regional ecologies. Systemic Design is about scale rather than problem.” Alan Berger, 2009

Research Based Design Practice – “design as a research vehicle to pose and respond to complex, urgent questions in the built environment,” engaging in the “wider context and climate of a project– social, ecological, or political.” White+Sheppard, Lateral Office, 2012 Transdisciplinary Design Practice – “an immersive, collaborative and integrative design centered entrepreneurial practice approach, leveraging expertise from and collaboration with, diverse allied and technical disciplines to achieve urban sustainability through design interventions from the scale of the site to an [urbanized] ecosystem.” Bodurow, studio[Ci] 2012 Low Impact Design [LID] Practice – “also known as conservation design, is a process of sustainable development and redevelopment that conserves and protects natural resources. The LID process holistically considers the landscape during design and construction to protect the environment through practices that enhance water and air quality while preserving open green space.” Carpenter, GLSMI, 2009

The scale of studio participants' design interventions will include architecture, but will extend 'beyond the building', generating recommendations for newly conceived infrastructure networks and specific structures for the site and study area. Participants will be encouraged to focus on form that re-purposes existing or is generative of net new infrastructure, based on research and therefore, ideally, criteria driven. Students will be encouraged to design infrastructure that acts as a new melded, hybridized ecosystem of both natural and built form, including but not limited to:
- Networks and Structures that envision future infrastructure as the armature for multifarious urban and regional capacities;
- Networks and Structures that embody an intersection of both the traditional and non-traditional (informal) roles of infrastructure;
- Networks and Structures that address virtual (programming, data, media, etc.) as well as the physical and environmental functions.

Assistant Professor Constance C. Bodurow [Coordinator of the m.U.D. program in Sustainable Urbanism, and Director of studio[Ci]@Lawrence Technological University http://studio-ci.net/]. Prof. Bodurow directs funded design research in Detroit, with a focus on the role of density (social, cultural,
infrastructural), net zero energy, and ‘blue, green, gray + white’ infrastructure in sustainable urbanism. She has recently expanded her research agenda to address design opportunities related to generative uses for vacancy. She has been widely published and funded by the AIA, LISC, MSHDA and the Ford Motor Company Fund. This transdisciplinary studio format builds on the Faculty’s design expertise and research agenda on the role of infrastructure in the Great Lakes Basin/region’s growth and sustainability.

Transdisciplinary Urbanism [TU]: networked infrastructures, research and practice
Profiles: Technology, Urbanism, Ecology
The primary focus for the TU studio is to gather M.Arch, m.U.D. and MS.CE/M.CE students to investigate and experience the nature of 21st century research and practice, to understand the systemic role of infrastructure networks and current sustainable techniques, and employ knowledge and awareness gained through research and study to conceive of design interventions at the scale of the building, the site, the city and its associated bioregion. Increasingly, design disciplines are acknowledging and embracing the necessity of transdisciplinary research and practice to effectively address the complexity of forces and dynamics affecting the built and natural environment, and the pressing need for sustainable interventions at all scales. Our studio will address this phenomenon through design investigation of infrastructure networks with a
diverse instructor team [Prof. Bodurow will be joined by Associate Professor Dr. Donald Carpenter, CoE, Director of the Great Lakes Stormwater Management Institute at Lawrence Technological University, and widely published LID expert]. Our studio design project and program will address building, site and infrastructure design and implementation for A.B. Ford Park in the Detroit River watershed and the Great Lakes bioregion.