Global Urbanism Studio

The summer 2021 studio focused on markets and how they might be used as strategic sites for adaptive response to climate change and other urban challenges. Students began with an in-depth analysis of the architectural/urban typology of markets. Photographers/videographers in Kampala (Uganda) and Zurich (Switzerland) documented the project sites. Students engaged in immersive activities in St. Louis, including visits to the Municipal Port on the Mississippi and to the farm and studio of two Hyde Park market vendors, as well as running a market stand at the Hyde Park market. Students who were participating remotely were able to join these activities and other course meetings via Zoom. Guest lecturers included Fatimah Muhammad, Guy Trangos, and Alex Wall.

The studio was led by senior lecturer Jonathan Stitelman, in collaboration with guest faculty Doreen Adengo, Achilles Ahimbisibwe, and Patrick Gmür, as well as students from Uganda Martyrs University.

Associate professor Derek Hoeferlin, chair of landscape architecture & urban design, re-conceptualized the 2020 Global Urbanism Studio to be run completely remotely. Led by visiting assistant professor Jonathan Stitelman, this summer’s studio worked with an international network of designers across the globe, representing all of the continents plus the oceans, to understand how COVID-19, climate change, and other crises affect their regions. The studio took a multi-scalar view to balance the global interconnectedness of cities with the particularity of each urban context. Working with these guests and Sam Fox School faculty, students designed proactive, site-specific adaptations to the public realm, infrastructure, and building typologies.

“The current pandemic has exposed the interconnectedness of delicate, global networks,” Stitelman said. “In an instant, this has changed how we relate to and negotiate space and the performance criteria of the built environment. This time of uncertainty provides an opportunity to assert a vision for the ‘new-normal’ after the crisis, and to take a critical position about the value of cities and urban design to support urban resilience.”

Our invited international partners joined in instruction, lectures, invited essays, and reviews. This collaboration unveiled the significance of this moment in regions around the globe with expansiveness and particularity. Invited guests for the summer included:

Summer 2019: Johannesburg & Kampala

The summer studio began in St. Louis, where students became familiar with the spatial patterns of Johannesburg and Gauteng and the multi-scalar issues affecting the region. They developed a comprehensive drawing set that they later verified on site and used as the base drawing for their design proposals.

They then traveled to Johannesburg to work with Ferdinand le Grange in our studio space at the Fox Street Studios in the Maboneng arts district, just east of downtown. The studio tested dual (dueling) sites at the city center (Marshalltown) and perimeter (Madderfontein) to assert new conditions of housing density, employment, ecologies, sustainability, economies, and the public realm. After engaging both sites through an intensive drawing charrette and site analysis, students began a three-week design process with a final review by critics local to Johannesburg.

Following the final review, the studio traveled to Kampala, Uganda, on the northern coast of Lake Victoria, to work on a comparative analysis of the public realm of a quickly growing and vibrant Africa city. Doreen Adengo led a drawing-intensive workshop in collaboration with students from Uganda Martyrs University Nkozi. The workshop explored Nakasero Market in downtown Kampala, and documented the innovative ways in which the use and quality of this space changes over time.

This summer studio responded to human, cultural, economic, and environmental challenges and provided students the opportunity to experience and make design proposals in significant African global cities—cities that are imbued with the complexity of urban life. Students focused on the complex urban forms, social juxtapositions, and spatial apartheid that exists within Johannesburg though the examination of the M1 Rand to Reef corridor encompassing the Fordsburg, Ferreiras Dorp, and Newtown neighborhoods. They also had the opportunity to study in Kigali, Rwanda.