Design Studio 

Undergraduate 

At CEPT University I taught the urban design studio, “Every/Any/All/Some” for undergraduate students.This studio asked the question, how does exclusion happen? This was a counter intuitive question. Our studio investigated exclusion in its various forms. We understood the act of exclusion as the product of the apparatuses and mechanisms that have shaped our public and private realms: gates, boundary walls, infrastructure, zoning laws, land use laws, environmental laws, special-purpose and special zoning districts, housing finance, residential and office design, information aesthetics, among others. The act of exclusion and inclusion cannot be distilled down to mere design moves. Design is but one part of this script. Regulations, laws, policies, political and economic histories, social norms are the other aspects, which are part of planning, design, and policy. How do the rules of exclusion and inclusion get built into design, planning and policy? How do discourses of democracy and participation manage to operate alongside techniques of censorship and surveillance? The studio examined exclusion through research, design, and drawing. The intent of the studio was to unpack exclusion as part of the structures of power and judgement that frame our decisions as designers and planners. Research and research methodologies ran parallel to design throughout the semester.