Assoc. Prof. Ozayr Saloojee is co-recipient of Graham Foundation grant for book project
June 8, 2022
Associate Professor Ozayr Saloojee, of the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, and Assistant Professor Jamie Vanucchi, of Cornell University, have been awarded a Graham Foundation grant for a book on climate change and design research.
“Climate change and issues associated with the diversity of races, cultures, and settlements worldwide present significant challenges to science,” say Saloojee and Vanucchi.
“Design research complements science and extends the capacity of research to connect with people, address wicked problems, project desirable futures, and build new worlds.”
The book, Design Research for Uncertain Futures, is scheduled to be published in 2023 by ORO Editions.
This book will provide a guide for students, faculty, practitioners, and their collaborators and outline how design research is different and especially suited to address climate catastrophe.
It will also present a set of design research tools to connect with people, demonstrate drawing and model as tools of inquiry, understand landscape change, and collaborate across disciplines.
Bihter Almaç, “B4, The Anchors and Triggers III.” Digital Collage of photos and drawings , 32 xm x 26 cm, 2017 Courtesy Bihter Almac
Finally, through the work of 24 contributors, from landscape architects, architects, educators, students, geographers, and anthropologists, among others, Design Research for Uncertain Futures explores the real and often untapped power of design research—intentional future making and world-building.
Throughout the book are provocations for action, as design research results in proposals for change.
The editors are Dr. Ozayr Saloojee, Jamie Vanucchi, and Dr. Sarah Dooling, Executive Director at Massachusetts Climate Action Network.
The contributors are Katherine Ackerman, Menna Agha, Bihter Almac, Eve Anderson, Kristi Cheramie, Leena Cho, Dream the Combine (Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers), Billy Fleming, Maria Goula, Curry Hackett, Rob Holmes, Katherine Jenkins, Karen Lutsky, Marc Miller, Lisa Moffitt, Jess Myers, Maria Hellström Reimer, Blair Satterfield, Parker Sutton, Marc Swackhamer, and Zoe Todd.
Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The Graham realizes this vision through making project-based grants to individuals and organizations and producing exhibitions, events, and publications.
Last month it announced 56 grants to individuals for a total amount of US$507,500.
About Ozayr Saloojee
Co-editor Ozayr Saloojee is a South African-Canadian designer and associate professor at Carleton University’s School of Architecture & Urbanism and co-director of the Carleton Urban Research Lab. He serves as affiliate faculty in the Institute for African Studies and chair of the MArch Program.
Saloojee recently began tenure as associate editor of design for the Journal of Architectural Education.
He studied at Carleton University for his undergraduate and graduate work in architecture theory and culture and earned a doctorate at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
His teaching and scholarship investigate questions of power, equity, and spatial politics. A design studio on the extractive landscapes of Johannesburg was awarded a 2020 Studio Prize from Architect magazine.
He has presented and published work in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Japan, and South Africa and was part of a team shortlisted to represent Canada at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.
About Jamie Vanucchi
Co-editor Jamie Vanucchi is an assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University and a partner with the Great Lakes Design Labs.
She is interested in “strong sites,” where existing site processes and forces push back at the designer and disrupt notions of landscape as inert medium. She has a bachelor’s in landscape architecture from Virginia Tech and a master’s in landscape architecture from Cornell University.
Vanucchi has nearly two decades of experience teaching at Cornell University and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She is co-chair of the Resilience and Climate Action track for the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.
Recent publications include a chapter titled “Adapting Inland Floodplain Housing to a Changing Climate: Disturbance, Risk, and Uncertainty as Drivers for Design” in the forthcoming Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales: From Buildings to Cities, edited by Nicholas Rajkovich and Seth H. Holmes (Routledge, 2021).