Teaching Not To

Two design studios were successively taught in two schools of architecture: one at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the other at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, based on "A Global Moratorium on New Construction," an initiative that interrogates construction protocols and advocates for a pause in building new structures. This essay is an account of the studios' methodology, some of their outputs, and what a radical questioning of architecture's baseline mandate entails, from death threats to empowerment.