Course Background

Course Premise

Significant increases in mining, agriculture, and oil extraction and related wildfires in the Amazon Rainforest in the last decade have degraded Amazon ecosystems, spurring mass species loss, interrupting local to global climate regulation, and causing rapid migration of Indigenous peoples to jungle cities such as Iquitos, Peru. With nowhere to go once arriving in the city, the cash poor families find themselves settling in informal slum communities, yet continuing their familiar traditional practices of living on the floodplain in floating and stilted houses. Without assistance with sanitation, water, or infrastructure, the intertwined health of the people, the animals, and the environment — or One Health — suffers. Issues such as chronic diarrhea, infectious and zoonotic diseases, injuries, poor mental health, malnutrition, biodiversity loss, and severe stigma toward their Indigenous roots hinder quality of life.

This studio connects with the informal amphibious slum community of Claverito to address these interconnected health issues through the design of their built environment. This studio also builds upon the InterACTION Labs program, a transdisciplinary action research and training program with partnerships between the Community of Claverito, Penn State, the University of Washington, the Centro de Investigaciones Tecnológicas Biomédicas y Medioambientales, the Universidad Nacional de la Amazonía Peruana Traction, and the National Institutes of Health in both the United States and Peru.

Specifically, students in this studio explored:

One Health. Students learned about interconnections between the health of humans, animals, and the environment and how specific One Health issues can be addressed through the design of the built environment.

Transdisciplinary Collaboration. This course connected to the Penn State One Health Scholars program and students and faculty across the veterinary and medical sciences to stimulate evidence based designs and ideas influenced by different disciplinary perspectives. It also connected with residents in the informal community of Claverito in Iquitos, Peru, through interviews and workshops.

Design Making Across Scales. Students worked with their hands to design practical yet bold solutions at the small household scale, and built upon their skills in prior coursework to design and plan community scale solutions.

Ethics. This course emphasized empathic design, cultural mindfulness, social and ecological responsibility and accountability, and non-Western ways of thinking and making. The travel component emphasized best practices in visiting a non-Western country, sensitive ecosystem, and vulnerable population. Students nurtured individual critical stances and questioning to further their personal design ethics.

Course Objectives

Explore design activism within landscape architecture, and learn about need initiated design as opposed to client initiated design.

Develop an in-depth understanding of how the built environment is a determinant of health for both humans and animals.

Acknowledge your personal biases and backgrounds, absorb non-Western cultures and non academic epistemologies, and design from diverse perspectives other than your own.

Strengthen applied empathy skills and community engagement techniques.

Learn about evidence-based design and the use of research and assessment to increase accountability.

Nurture and expand upon digital, verbal, and written communication and cross-cultural translation skills.

Critically engage in the course topics to nurture personal design stances and ethics.