Copyright 2008 Alan Berger, P-REX, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; All Rights Reserved
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About
Systemic Design Can Change the World©
Systemic Design implies that there are larger scale forces in the built and natural environment that, if properly understood, will lead to more intelligent project scenarios as opposed to superficial cosmetics. Systemic Design merges the existing stresses on a landscape with multi-layered, time-based strategies that work to reclaim value and increase sustainability in the built environment. Systemic Design seeks to interact with the environmental, economical, and programmatic stresses across regional territories. Understanding how natural and artificial systems dynamically function in regions and cities, and ultimately feedback from new design and planning interventions, forms the basis for smarter urban landscape projects in the future. Rapidly expanding technological and design mining tools enable new readings of landscape systems, and the invisible flows and forces that shape the tactile world. Professionals who are prepared to understand, use, and act on those readings will produce the next generation of strategic solutions to address the most pressing environmental and social challenges of our time, including: climate change, landscape toxicity, renewable energy, water process, deindustrialization, environmental justice, and adaptive reuse. We believe that innovation and discovery must be fostered through transdisciplinary inquiry and performance. Acting individually, professional fields are having marginal to no effect on urban sustainability. Conversely, Systemic design reorganizes disciplinary thought and process around one critical idea: innovation. The goal: to plan and design more environmentally sustainable urbanism at all scales.
P-REX is a project undertaken at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. P-REX is under the guidance of Alan Berger, Associate Professor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, and founding director of P-REX in 2002. P-REX partners with like-minded groups to implement its transdisciplinary research and consultation. Partner institutions include, municipalities, state and federal agencies, universities, foundations, and corporations involved in the planning and design of the natural and built environment.
