This digital exhibition highlights the work of the 2025 SOCIOARC Studio in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Rutgers University.This studio thinks through the possibilities of “transition design” to address significant intertwined contemporary problems that include climate change; growing wealth inequality; social and political polarization; and access to work, housing, healthcare and education.
Through extended community engagement opportunities with three organizations that focus on social, cultural, and economic issues faced by local communities, this studio considered complex stakeholder relationships and reflected those in their artwork, diagrams, and design proposals. We considered how recent proposals for “Transition Design,” “Design After Capitalism,” and “Design for Social Innovation,” can be incorporated into landscape architecture practice(s) for the world(s) on the near horizon. Our Social Innovation Community Partners include CoLab Arts, Interfaith Rise (Refugee and Immigrant Services), and the New Brunswick Free Public Library.
STUDIO PROCESS
The semester began with an orientation to community engagement practices, including the importance of considering positionality, identity, and power relations in community work. Students then began extended Civic Engagement Education placements with local organizations. Each week students wrote a weekly reflection, and created “Weekly Visuals” that alternate each week between the practical register of “Pragmatic Reality” and the futurist register of “Radical Imagination.” They then further documented and interrogated their own experiences and community experiences in the field through relevant SOCIOARC exercises including: Express Ethnographic Sample, Semi-Structured Site Visit, Integrated Social Cartographies, Socio-Spatial Interview, and Social Camera.
Collective work in our design studio focused on readings and discussions of important recent texts that present new approaches for community-engaged design and that take a critical stance on contemporary design practices and their entanglement with systems that reproduce power inequalities and practices of resource and labor extraction. Studio exercises included mixed-media collages and diagrams for imagining new futures and alternative forms of land tenure and housing, as well as mapping flows of people, materials, and labor. SOCIOARC exercises in this phase included: Collaboration Questions, Community Program Plan, Emplacing and Socializing Architectural Designs, and Translating Concept into Form.
At the end of the semester the studio curated an exhibition of the weekly visuals and SOCIOARC ethnographic and spatial documentation of student and community experiences. This work then informed and defined the design program brief and concepts for designed spaces or events that respond to the work with our Social Innovation Community Partners.
CoLAB Arts’ vision is to create more livable, sustainable, and exciting environments through art. coLAB Arts engages artists, social advocates, and communities to create transformative new work. coLAB Arts facilitates creative conversation through innovative programs and artist infrastructure, connects artists with community partners and mentors, and executes productions that challenge perceptions and inspire action. coLAB Arts generates community-powered projects and seeks to create an art scene using new and established spaces. Its work takes place in community rooms, houses of worship, parking lots, schools, bars, and backyards. A “let’s get it done” work ethic and flair for mischief colors coLAB Arts’ aesthetic and an emphasis on community engagement and professional development defines its commitment to the arts. coLAB Arts believes that artistic expression is civic engagement and that collaboration is an active and creative process. coLAB Arts draws energy and inspiration from working with emerging artists and finding new platforms and audiences for established creative voices. coLAB Arts engages communities to ask questions, develop relationships, and come together to create new work across socio-economic, ethnic, and generational lines.
INTERFAITH RISE (Refugee and Immigrant Services & Empowerment) is a multi-faith, multi-congregational, multi-racial organization committed to welcoming our refugee neighbors in central and southern New Jersey. Interfaith-RISE facilitates and supports the self-sufficiency and community integration of refugees and asylees from across the world through affordable housing, English language proficiency, and cultural orientation, and by providing access to social, mental health, and healthcare services in New Jersey. Interfaith-RISE draws strength and vision from its multi-cultural and multi-faith coalition that welcomes and promotes respect for refugees from diverse traditions and backgrounds. Interfaith-RISE is an official affiliate site of the US Committee for Refugees & Immigrants (USCRI).
THE NEW BRUNSWICK FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY traces its roots back to the 1796 Union Library Company. The present library, incorporated in 1890, has been serving the community for over a century from its Carnegie building (completed in 1903) on Livingston Avenue. The mission of the New Brunswick Free Public Library is providing educational, informational, cultural and recreational resources and services to all the diverse people in New Brunswick. The library provides access to the universe of information, and especially that which is of immediate relevance and interest to the community. This access is provided through print, video, audio, and electronic materials selected, organized, and maintained so as to be accessible and relevant to the present and future needs of the community it serves. In this effort, the New Brunswick Free Public Library cooperates with other libraries, and with other educational, and governmental institutions. Special emphasis is placed on service to youth.