Inclusive Ecologies

Inclusive Ecologies, my collaborative research group at Pratt Institute, is a space for research, teaching, and practice that explores intersections between design and climate crisis.

Inclusive refers to both the scope of the research, which seeks to integrate perspectives that have been historically marginalized from climate change discourse (indigenous peoples, women of color, industrialized animals, among others) and to the aim of the research group, which is to integrate multiple design disciplines within areas of making, posthumanism, and environmental justice. Ecologies is interpreted in the broad sense from earth and its systems to more focused and individualized social relations. We support participatory design practices that include a diverse range of multi-species landscapes, and we are engaged in a variety of ongoing projects, some of which are highlighted below. More details can be found at our website: www.inclusiveecologies.org

Pedagogical Practice

TEACHING + MAKING We are developing a pedagogical prototype that answers the question of how to foster real time and full scale testing of such a curriculum through direct application, beyond the confines of the classroom. Drawing on Meyer and Land’s benchmark learning theories (2003), we propose a ‘portal’ that leads to a previously inaccessible ways of thinking about the environment: an outdoor testbed formatted as a grid of quads (1m x 1m x varying depths) that produces analogous habitat, edible planting and datasets on pollinators, aligning with NYC’s Climate Mobilization Act’s sustainable roofs legislation to increase rooftop food production opportunities. This includes the development of new strategies directly addressing urban agriculture, and its concomitant support systems, such as beneficial insects and soil microorganisms. Our interdisciplinary team brings existing research on soil, remediative landscapes, pollinators, and urban agriculture and technologies such as AI, animal-computer interfaces and environmental sensors into the design and fabrication expertise of architects and landscape architects.