Designing for Resilience

Climate change and its associated crises are fundamentally altering how we design, use, and maintain our built environment and the natural habitats it encompasses. In the context of a planetary polycrisis, where ecological, social, and infrastructural risks are intricately intertwined, traditional, discipline-specific approaches and design practices must be reconsidered and further developed.

Using the South Campus of the University at Buffalo as a test site, Designing for Resilience presents the work of seven international planning teams. Together, they design and visualize future scenarios for the time horizons of 2050 and 2080, based on various hypotheses about potential developments in our world. With the South Campus as a future-oriented academic environment, the project develops transferable strategies for design disciplines and invites further reflection, development, and application of these approaches in diverse contexts.

Designing for Resilience presents seven different approaches to strengthening the resilience of university campuses. Each approach articulates a specific philosophy of resilience and presents it using diagrams, images, timelines, perspectives, and analyses of a changing environment. Supplemented by a short video from each team, these unique studies illustrate how the campus environment evolves under different conditions and through various measures.

Opening: March 27, 2026, 6:30 p.m.

Speakers: Hans-Jürgen Commerell, Julia Czerniak, Dan Dorocic, Jason Sowell