Conference Agenda

Sea-level rise and recurrent flooding threaten millions in urban coastal communities, yet residents remain excluded from environmental monitoring and decision-making that shapes adaptation strategies. While participatory sensing networks (PSNs) promise to democratize environmental knowledge, most implementations struggle to achieve institutional integration or sustained community engagement. This paper examines PSNs as distributed systems for community-based environmental data collection and investigates what design considerations enable them to function as integrated civic infrastructure rather than isolated interventions. Drawing on architecture's capacity to mediate between technical systems and public experience, we used Design-Based Research to develop three PSN prototypes across scales and institutional contexts. Water Wand is a mobile hydrometry system that captures water depth and quality through structured workflows with geotagged documentation during flood events. SMARTblox integrates coastal protection with ecological monitoring through modular seawall tiles combining bio-enhancing geometries, solar-powered IoT sensors, and open data platforms for continuous shoreline observation. In Deep Water is a mixed reality installation overlaying NOAA sea-level rise projections, real-time sensor data, and community narratives onto familiar geographies, evaluated with 200 participants across two coastal cities. Cross-case synthesis reveals that PSNs succeed not as standalone deployments, but as configured assemblages of devices, data infrastructures, and civic interfaces positioned within existing governance ecologies. We present the Civic Ecology Mediation Framework (CEMF), identifying four dimensions for PSN viability: 1) credibility pathways bridging citizen and institutional data practices; 2) participation models sustaining ongoing engagement; 3) public legibility making sensor systems interpretable to non-experts; and 4) governance integration without institutional capture. Our findings demonstrate that PSNs achieve greatest impact when designed to complement rather than replace institutional monitoring, filling gaps in coverage, resolution, or community engagement. We conclude with design principles for embedding participatory sensing within coastal adaptation infrastructures, including how collected data can inform stormwater design, seawall specifications, and neighborhood-scale floodplain management.

This paper presents a multi-studio investigation into how architectural pedagogy can respond to inequity, exclusion, and spatial precarity through community-engaged, site-based design research. Across four advanced design studios, students explored “safe space” as a design framework and civic responsibility. Three studios were grounded in Atlanta-based partnerships and sites, while one studio extended the model to cities nationwide. Together, the studios addressed LGBTQ+ youth and affirming educational environments, intergenerational and multi-family housing, and public maker spaces through mixed-use programs, adaptive reuse, and speculative prototypes. Each studio framed architecture as advocacy by asking what should be built—not only what is feasible within conventional typologies. In collaboration with partners including The Pride School Atlanta and Mudfire Studio & Gallery, students tested alternative spatial organizations and public–private thresholds, using making and material experimentation as a central method of inquiry. Through interviews, fieldwork, and iterative prototyping, students learned from lived experience and local cultural and ecological contexts while developing design proposals that prioritize belonging, visibility, connection, and dignity. By positioning these studio outcomes as local responses to global challenges, the paper argues for architectural education as a critical site for cultivating civic design intelligence and expanding inclusive spatial practice.

This research investigates the first phase of a two-year experimental collaboration supported by the Mellon Foundation, centered on the 2024 DMU Summer Institute Freedom Ride. Designed as a mobile, place-based workshop across Georgia, Florida and Alabama, the initiative convened 25 students and 25 educators in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design from institutions across the U.S. and Canada. Drawing inspiration from the Civil Rights-era Freedom Rides, the journey served as both a logistical and pedagogical framework, transforming travel itself into a critical site of reflection and knowledge exchange. Participants engaged with historically marginalized sites exploring histories of enslavement, segregation, racial violence, and Indigenous resistance. Framed as a process of unlearning and relearning, the program emphasized design justice and invited participants to reconsider the architect’s role in addressing systemic inequities. Through activities outside the traditional classroom setting, such as site-responsive workshops, narrative reflection, peer-to-peer learning and peer interviews, the experience fostered themes of resilience, identity, and solidarity. The second phase—outside the scope of this essay—entails a stationary residency in a single historically significant location. Together, the two phases aim to compare mobile versus place-embedded models of experiential learning. The outcomes will culminate in a public exhibition and publication in Fall 2027, contributing to discourse on immersive, justice-oriented pedagogy in architectural education. The Summer Institute asserts that architectural knowledge is not merely taught—it develops through dialogue, critique and shared experience. This paper explores the thesis that peer-to-peer experiences have a more lasting and meaningful impact than traditional learning methods, drawing on qualitative reflections and insights gathered through peer interviews and field-based observations. Together, these reflections underscore the importance of collaborative and experiential models for cultivating deeper, more lasting forms of knowledge.