The studio course series investigates how climate change and its many connected crises will demand radically different futures, and how these will require an equally radical restructuring of our societies and not least our professions. Climate change is the greatest threat humanity is facing. Yet, other crises like wars, repression, political instability, and growing economic disparities are often given priority. But these crises are not separate. At their core they all connect to how we distribute and consume resources and how our societies are currently locked into extractive growth models, overshadowing environmental and social concerns. The course explores transitional strategies such as degrowth as solutions, challenging the narrative that such approaches would lead to societal collapse.

Each year, this studio course series engages students in using interdisciplinary approaches to provide strategies and designing concrete interventions for post-growth development. The studio works across diverse contexts, from the Nordic to the global, each with its unique set of challenges.

This semester, we will be envisioning a climate altered post-growth future in Ukraine, in collaboration with the Kharkiv School of Architecture, focusing on Lviv and the Levandivka, Pryvokzalna, and Klepariv districts. With the ongoing war, Ukraine is faced most acutely with humanitarian suffering and destruction of built and natural environments. Through the lens of post-growth, you will investigate whether the devastation of the war can be used as a starting point to foster a transition society, critically reassessing the way we build communities, how we live in them, use environments, and interact with landscapes. Levandivka, Pryvokzalna, and Klepariv are characterised by housing, as well as disbanded railway infrastructure and production plants. In an uncertain future, localised production and distribution can help foster resilience. But this needs to happen in ways that build on climactic, ecological, and social stability.

Climate change requires that we take our skills beyond business-as-usual models, reclaiming the future through new ways of living on a damaged planet. What can we bring with us into the future in terms of spatial practices, cultural heritage, social norms, and structures, what will be left behind, what will have to be different, and how will it all need to be reassembled? Through your education at AHO you are trained to envision things that are not yet. You are trained to be expert storytellers, dreaming up bold new possibilities, providing hope within an increasingly limited future. We will explore spatial strategies to foster a transitional society and visualise what these may look like. Can radical realities be envisioned that are acceptable to people who are concerned with immediate needs? What options do we have when we must respond to inevitable climate change? Despite slow action, there is agreement in government, municipal, and private sectors that climate change and its complexity demand increased climate preparedness and more interdisciplinary solutions. This means that we need to work together across fields and geographies through strategic processes to suggest real life interventions that matter. This course will provide you with concrete tools, ways of thinking, and deliverables to take on such tasks.