It’s 2017. The millennium is in its teenage years—and it shows.
The world is acting out—making rash, impulsive decisions whose repercussions may be irreparable. The body politic is moody, volatile, and uncompromising. We were born into Y2K and 9/11; our youth is part of a string of crises and rapid evolutions. Can the physical landscape weather our collective turmoil? Adolescence may be “just a phase,” but architecture, infrastructure, and policy are hard to undo.
What does it mean to be 17 in 2017? This issue of Harvard Design Magazine checks in with teens of all sorts—humans, buildings, objects, ideas—and their impact on the spatial imagination. Like a bildungsroman for the built environment, “Seventeen” dives into the treacherous, exhilarating limbo of the teen years to understand and reclaim this global adolescence.
Though stereotyped as indignant or apathetic, teenagers are also wildly optimistic, passionate, creative, and resourceful. But teenagehood is not just a physical and emotional transition; it is also a spatial one. Bursting out of their childhood homes, teens crave autonomy—so they roam  the streets, escape to virtual worlds, or hide out in bedrooms; they claim vacant lots, parks, and garages as turf; and they cruise, chill, or hang—euphemisms for the “whatever” that may or may not occur in these marginal spaces. For a discipline that defines space according to program and purpose, the nebulous teen hangout  is easily overlooked; but openness, placelessness, and aimlessness offer a realm for fantasy, common ground, and action—especially in times of challenged freedoms.
Like all teenagers, we are asking: who are we, where do we fit in, and how can we, too, make our marks—as impactful designers and as an evolving discipline? In a divided, temperamental 2017, there is much to learn from the teenager.

Seventeen

‘Athens: Arrested Development’

Publications

Globalization promised an interconnected world, yet our cities are increasingly divided. In the past decade, for example, thousands of miles of new border walls have been constructed, many in urban contexts. People embrace the idea of walls out of fear, and leaders make promises that only reinforce divisions. Boundaries, of course, are not a new phenomenon. They have historically defined communities for cultural, political, and economic purposes. As urbanization increases and economic inequality reaches record levels, however, urban divides are becoming more pervasive. This volume of Perspecta—the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in America—investigates divides as a mechanism of urbanism, both spatially and socially complex.

Urban Divides

‘Separation Anxiety: Inequality and Exclusion in Athens and Cape Town’

In the 1990s, the military began to use the acronym V.U.C.A. (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) to describe the dynamic and incredibly complex nature of modern warfare. Since then, the only constant has been an ever-increasing degree of complexity. Complex Buildings, the new series of a+t magazine, identifies different conditions of complexity within architecture. Through classic and contemporary projects grouped into four blocks—Generators, Linkers, Mixers and Storytellers—a+t positions complexity as a positive concept in the design process. The buildings selected are not evidently complex but essentially complex. For Urban-Think Tank’s contribution, we explored the idea of designing for complexity through a focus on our two ‘Fábrica de Cultura’ projects in Barranquilla, Colombia, and São Paulo, Brazil.

Complex Buildings: Generators, Linkers, Mixers & Storytellers (a+t 48)

‘A Building is Not a Butterfly: Culture and Complexity’

The inaugural issue of SLUM Lab explores the urban cultural context of Latin America as a means to reimagine the nature of cities in the Global South and the potential of design as a tool to support sustainable development outcomes in informal settlements. Produced as a free newspaper to coincide with and document the Spring 2008 Columbia University GSAPP design studio that took place in São Paulo, Brazil, the publication includes contributions from Christian Werthmann, Elito Arquitectos, Robert Neuwirth, Reinhold Martin, and the São Paulo State Housing Secretariat (SEHAB), as well as a selection of student work.

Release	May 2008
Editors	Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner
Sponsors	Columbia University GSAPP, SEHAB
Pages	32

SLUM Lab 1: Paraisópolis