MUD1
GRADUATE STUDIO I
MASTER OF URBAN DESIGNMUD 712 - FALL 2024PROFESSOR
Gabriel CuéllarExist, Flourish, Evolve
For Fall 2024, this studio has focused on imagining and articulating how urban design, as a discipline, practice, and material reality, can help uphold the Rights of Nature. The Rights of Nature are an emerging paradigm pioneered by Native communities across Turtle Island. Exploring the principle that certain entities have the intrinsic right to “exist, flourish, and evolve,” the studio produced concrete manifestations of reciprocity embodied in more-than-human rights. Our multifaceted subject was the sixty major watersheds of ‘Michigan’, whose ecological communities and dynamics figured as protagonists in our studio. We sought to reinforce Native cultures and Native sovereignty, address climate and environmental change, and grapple with legal aspects, such as property and conservation law. Our work collectively aimed to define, in terms of urban design, how potential rights-bearing entities—watersheds, wetlands, rivers, lakes, shores, aquifers, and more—can play a role in reshaping socio-ecological and spatial relations today. Acknowledging that Rights of Nature are, for the moment, written aspirations, our goal was to develop the spatial dimensions, protocols, patterns, and relations that could support them. The Native-led Rights of Nature movement coincides with historian of science Deborah Coen’s work on the “Forest-Climate Problem,” which raises the question, at what point does the activity on one parcel of land become a problem for neighboring and further removed parcels of land? And where can such grievances be heard? The Rights of Nature thus compels designers, therefore, to think in a transboundary way.
STUDENTS
Nayana Durga Naik, Elyse Cote
PROFESSOR
Gabriel Cuéllar
Seeded Territories reimages the St. Clair watershed in eastern Michigan by centering three ecosystem entities – soil, seeds, waterfowl – as agents of reparations, restorations, and revival. Working across scales, we start with game areas to address perceptions of waterfowl, leverage infrastructure, and refine regulations. The agricultural riparian scale stabilizes habitat while negotiating land use frictions. The agrosilvopastoral scale disrupts separation of land use to promote environmental stewardship between livestock, crops, trees, and people. The project proposes that a mallard duck dispersing white pine seeds into regenerated soil can transform the watershed, championing spatial justice, Right of Nature, and interdependent ecological relations.