Elements of the Urban Stack
In a time when architecture is deeply regulated by external forces and its underlying DNA is fused to systems of finance, policy, and technology, where and how does design practice have the agency to act and make change in the world? How can design practice actively shape and act upon such systems while being shaped by them?
This body of ongoing research explores and constructs methods to re-read the built environment through the lens of the regulating constructs of finance, policy, and technology. The work is concerned analyzing the historically shifting disposition of architectural form and practice through the lens of these constructs; with highlighting methods of values-driven practice that enable design agency by operating within them; with speculating on modes of future design practice that can actively operate upon these constructs to make positive change and confront the social, cultural, technological, and environmental imperatives of our time.
The lecture course Elements of the Urban Stack: Activating Design Agency in a Complex World provides an opportunity to relate the material to case studies and conversations with contemporary practitioners in the built environment, tracking the ways that design practices and projects are already expanding, transforming, or ossifying in response to systemic complexity and control.
The research provides an operating framework for the construction of research questions and methods throughout ViBE Lab work. Methods, theory, and approaches from fields such as Human Computer Interaction and Economics are explored and applied to practical applications at the architectural and urban scale alongside the methods and techniques of our native design and planning disciplines.
“Informal Analysis” of the 5/1 Housing Typology by 2024 students Caroline Fong, Connor Gravelle, and Alexa Resendiz
Instructor
- Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti
Output
Christoforetti, E. Chapter 3 in Digital Urbanism. ed. Sarah Williams. Actar D. June 2025.
Christoforetti, Elizabeth Bowie. “Scalable Systems of Design.” International Council on Open Building Conference Beyond Single Use: Open Building, Architecture, and Urban Design, Spring 2023. Boston, MA.
Christoforetti, Elizabeth Bowie. “Engaged Practice as a Platform for Sustainable Design.” Boston Society of Architects Sustainability Education Lecture Series, Fall 2022. Boston, MA.
Nakazawa, P. and Christoforetti, E. “Urban Stack” in Champs Elysees: History & Perspectives, a companion publication to the exhibition by the same name at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris, Winter 2020.
A diagram exploring the expanding landscape of architectural practice in the 21st century, E. Christoforetti.
