Design Studio 4 Urban Architecture emphasizes the challenges and opportunities of creating a “New Forest Commons” through multi-scalar, social-ecological territorial research and design. A geological accident over one billion years ago produced the Hudson Highlands, a large area of preserved lake-filled forested mountain wilderness that transforms the Hudson into a fjord between Beacon and Peekskill and is traversed by the Appalachian Trail. The range east of the fjord is caught between the suburban congestion of Westchester County to the south, and exurban sprawl of Dutchess County and Poughkeepsie to the north. Located between the Appalachian Trail and Taconic State Parkway is the highland town of Putnam Valley, 15 minutes north of Peekskill Metro North train station. The Hudson Highlands once was a productive commons, an agricultural and forest settlement and then a woodlands leisure landscape. The residents of Putnam Valley struggle to maintain various dreams of small town life in the middle of the super Northeast megalopolis. The town is confronting a shortage of affordable housing, poor public transit and climate change risks, A new scale of costly state and county bridge and road infrastructure, in response to recent streamside floods, ignores community input and reinforces car dominance and dependency. The studio seeks a post-pandemic return to a forest commons as an alternative to suburbanization and its religion of private property. We will engage sustaining the forest ecosystem, regenerating local production and dormant commercial areas, as well as affordable cohousing models. Multiple non-profit and community organizations focus on local history and culture, wildlife preservation, especially forest and lake habitat, camping, trailways, and biking. The studio is meant to compliment the previous fall's Design Studio 3 - high density Manhattan - by offering a breath of fresh air.

The Design Workshop is a unique studio in the Master of Architecture curriculum that helps students develop an aptitude for addressing today’s complex environmental challenges. It takes students through a deliberate process of working collaboratively to propose and test solutions that respond to the particular needs and input of that year’s partners, while also advancing innovation in sustaining the environment especially as it affects disenfranchised communities. The Design Workshop uses a small community-driven project to expose students to the full spectrum of competencies required by an architectural project, from problem seeking, research, and community engagement through the stages of design, budgeting, full-scale fabrication, and public relations. Hands-on spatial exploration, material research, experimentation, and advocacy are central to the mission of the Design Workshop as is helping students gain a first-hand understanding of the environmental, social, health, and labor consequences of their design choices. Begun in 1998, the Design Workshop continues to advance and disseminate the use of regenerative, healthy, and biogenic materials and construction practices through the collective research, demonstrations, and built work of the studio.