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Second Nature
2025 — Spring

Design-Based Research Statement

Why, What, and How?

You’ve observed a park (or two) intuitively and analytically.  You’ve engaged a few texts which begin to open conceptual and practical questions about the status of park spaces in relation to the city.  Collectively, we’re beginning to develop questions about the way parks have been conceived in relation to the development of the land,to constructs of nature, to social and political practices — ad infinitum.

Now you are asked to develop an agenda for a new model park.  In a design studio we are not so much designing a park directly as much as designing a presentation about the design of a park.  If you think of this of as an outline for a dream or fantasy of a final presentation then a new ‘model’ park refers to both (a) a new paradigm for the park system and (b) a composition that represents that idea, i.e. a way of making drawings or assemblages as graphical or material platforms for inquiry, development, and engaging an audience.

To support this, you are asked to write short statement.  Unlike other statements you may have written, this is a design-based research proposal.  It describes an interest that will unfold via speculative writings, diagrams, notational drawings, architectural plans and sections, and perhaps some physical models or related constructions.  It would be helpful to consider:

  1. Citations

    Include one or two citations from the Reading Packets, or other texts, that invite us to think deeply about an open ended question of interest or concern.

  2. Why might we want a new model park?

    Include a short and pithy statement that speculates on why it might be significant or relevant to address that problematic or interest.  (The Readers were curated to expose some motivations, but you are certainly encouraged to draw on your own expertise.)

  3. What might be its “active ingredients?”

    If fluoride and peppermint are the active ingredients in a familiar product like toothpaste, what might be the active ingredients of this new model park? 

    In a brief statement identify two or three physical systems that can support a series of compositional experiments to address that agenda.  e.g. spatial sequences, thresholds, ground surfaces, illumination, graphic markings, climatic chambers, infrastructures, timing devices, illumination systems, programs of activity,  etc.  (The investigations were designed to expose some of these layers of the city and aprks, but you are certainly invited to invent your own approach.)

  4. How might these ingredients be composed to acheive a range of effects?

    In a brief statement, describe at least two different ways that these systems might be composed  — individually and in relation to each other — to generate a range of experiential or sociopolitical outcomes or effects.  Rather than design every detail or moment, its sometimes helpful to think about the relationship between systems or field-like distributions of elements.  Systems may interact to produce a range of desired effects, experiences or other outcomes.

  5.  Curated Bibliography

    The texts you select should be inspiring to you.  They should be sources you’d like to read or revisit to develop the nuance of your agenda.  You may certainly draw from the curated Readers.  You are also invited to draw from relevant texts from other coursework, since that’s the pleasure of a design studio within the University of Chicago.
2025 Spring — Second Nature