Disturbance and Exposure: The New Urban Ecology?

This debate puts together cutting edge work of two young architects with new scientific paradigms in the field of urban ecology. While many avant garde designers do not consider they work "urban ecology", the goal of this debate is to radicalize notions of urban design and urban ecology and create the space for transdisciplinary practices between science and architecture.

Disturbance ecology conceives equilibrium not as a "natural" state, but a moment in constant flux. Ecologist Steward Pickett, author of The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics will introduce this new paradigm shift in ecology and as Director of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study will explain how researchers are now applying new ecosystem theories to understand urban dynamics.

Dr. Pickett’s introduction will be followed by architect Roland Wahlroos-Ritter presenting the work of WROAD. is interested in confronting the question of building materials with current issues of the advanced practice engaged in the exploration and implementation of digital technologies in design and building processes. ‘In/ discrete Materials' that explores the reciprocity between new building materials and the advanced architectural practice.

Exposure is used to connect the two toxic legacies of the 20th century city: social segregation (class race gender age) and industrial and consumer degradation. This reality is not on the "sustainable" programs of landscape urbanism and green building. Morgan Grove, will talk about research and paradigms in the new discipline of urban social-ecology and current urban ecology projects sponsored by the US Forest Service.

Dr. Grove’s presentation will be followed by Yolande Daniels from the Columbia architecture faculty, a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and
co-partner of the firm SUMO. Daniels will present two projects: “black city” and “invisible walls”. Both are about peripheries: the former gives form to immaterial racial peripheries and the latter dematerializes an actual physical boundary.

These four fifteen minute presentations will be followed by responses and discussion led by Brian McGrath Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture at Columbia and founding partner of Urban-Interface, and Mary Northridge an Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University.