Advanced Urban Design

Strelka Institute is excited to present its first expanded publication in English — "The New Normal". Co-published by Strelka Press and Park Books, the book is a result of a three-year collaborative program and think-tank at Strelka investigating the impact of planetary-scale computation on the future of cities in Russia, and globally.

To find out more and buy the book online visit https://thenewnormal.strelka.com

The Terraforming is an interdisciplinary postgraduate design research program that explores the geotechnical, geourban, and geopolitical conditions by which a viable planetarity can be conceived, modeled, and articulated.

The second year of the program will emphasize remaking ourselves (and remaking the planet thereby) and focus on the themes of Populations, Zoning Earth, Anthropoforming, and Planetarity. In 2021 the think-tank will host contributions from many new visiting faculty, including Nandita Sharma, Thomas Moynihan, Anya Bernstein, Nicholas DeMonchaux, Chen Qiufan, Reza Negarestani, Blaise Agüera y Arcas, and many others.

Find out more and apply by November 10:

Apply to The Terraforming by November 10

“The urbanists of today should not only think like architects, but also like landscape ecologists, focusing on individual situations while also understanding the behavior of systems over time; they should be like poets, able to put individual events into the context of larger narratives, and they should be like activists with the ability to define their own causes in the context of a larger agenda.”

Read an excerpt from “Switzerland. Deep Urbanism for an Age of Disruption” by Markus Schaefer: https://stre.lk/SPuJ

Excerpt: ‘Switzerland. Deep Urbanism for an Age of Disruption’ by Markus Schaefer A model for a particular type of holistic urbanism.

Strelka Institute is thrilled to announce The Terraforming, our new research programme. Directed by design theorist Benjamin Bratton, it will focus on urbanism on a planetary scale and look at how the technologically-mediated shift away from anthropocentric perspectives is crucially necessary in both theory and practice.

Find out more and apply by October 31: https://theterraforming.strelka.com

The Terraforming The Terraforming is a tuition-free 5-month programme by Strelka Institute, a “speculative urbanism think-tank”. It will consider the past and future role of cities as a planetary network by which humans occupy the Earth’s surface.

On July 25 Advanced Urban Design graduates and project team held the Opening of the experimental exhibition at Tretyakov museum. “Tretyakov: An Other Edition” is now open for visitors till August 26.

The experimental exhibition “Tretyakov: An Other Edition” has transformed one of Russia’s most prominent galleries. A joint project of the Tretyakov Gallery and the Advanced Urban Design master’s program (Strelka Institute / Higher School of Economics Graduate School of Urbanism), it provides a new “edition” of the iconic museum.

The program’s graduates treat the museum as a city within a city, and have accordingly produced their own interpretations of its buildings and collections.

The project team, comprised of specialists from the Tretyakov Gallery and young urban designers from Russia, Latvia, Sweden, and the United States, have set up a new colonnade by the entrance to the museum. Facing the Moskva River, each of the six added columns functions as an art installation dedicated to an aspect of contemporary urban design.

The team have also proposed a new ‘pathway’ for visitors inside the New Tretyakov Gallery called “An Other Route.” The path makes its way through the existing exhibitions, uniting the works from various genres and periods into a general history of urban paradoxes from the 20th century. The exhibition’s curators asked Russian writers, poets, artists, architects, art historians, economists, and urbanists to comment on selected works from different genres and discuss how to look at the city through the lens of Soviet fine art — from 1920s avant-garde to Moscow conceptualism.

The Advanced Urban Design graduates have received their diplomas during a ceremony at the Higher School of Economics. Congratulations to the first alumni of the intensive two-year joint Master’s Program by Strelka Institute and the HSE Graduate School of Urbanism!

Marina Salimgareeva’s final project tackles a divisive topic – the large-scale redevelopment program by Moscow authorities targeting prefabricated mass housing blocks built in the 1950-60s. She proposes an alternative mode of housing renovation, challenging the current binary choice between preservation and demolition. Taking Moscow’s Izmaylovo District as a case study, she developed a Form Based Code (FBC) categorizing types of streets (S1- active, S2- boulevard, and S3- secondary) and types of housing (H1- dilapidated, H2- suspended, and H3: historical). Marina’s design proposal aims to illustrate how the FBC can be converted into different types of renovation of the existing built environment while taking into account residents’ desires and the local identity of the area.

After two years of intensive interdisciplinary research and field trips, the joint master’s program by Strelka Institute and the HSE Graduate School of Urbanism sees its first graduates. Congratulations to the first Advanced Urban Design alumni!