Harvard Graduate School of Design

This 2-day workshop (January 10 and January 13) will expose participants from all schools, departments and disciplines at Harvard to an emergent data-driven geodesign framework for designing at the largest size imaginable – global – to identify feasible strategies to substantially reduce GHG emissions, the single most important global action available for countering cataclysmic global warming.

Participants will be assigned to represent national ‘climate-regions’ covering the entire globe (not necessarily their own, though local knowledge will help), focusing on a menu of possible climate mitigation project types, and their local and global spatial and temporal interconnections.) Based on initial proposed project-timelines of actions (Gantt charts) across the globe produced in Day 1, off-site computer simulations will be run over the weekend to predict likely climate modification outcomes. In Day 2, negotiation techniques will be used to find incremental improvements, resulting in an initial global strategic plan for carbon reduction.

No special prior experience is required. Geographic, cultural and disciplinary diversity is desired, and basic computer skills should suffice. A willingness to think big, and to engage in holistic systems thinking will help. We especially seek participants from or with experience in as many countries and climate regions as possible.

The cultural place-maker Ximena Caminos presents “marine acupuncture,” an innovative practice combining high art and deep science to target critical pressure points within our oceans and fostering environmental awareness through art and action-driven conservation. The ReefLine will be a 7-mile underwater public sculpture park, snorkel trail, and hybrid reef off Miami Beach’s shoreline. Conceived by Ximena Caminos and developed by the BlueLab Preservation Society, the ReefLine nonprofit team collaborates with the architecture firm OMA, as well as marine biologists, researchers, architects, and coastal engineers to design the master plan. Caminos’ lecture, followed by a conversation with Pedro Alonzo and Charles Waldheim, highlights how this pioneering approach uses human ingenuity to ignite ecological processes that regenerate the reef.