Fall 2013: ALI turns 5!

 

Since its founding at Woodbury University in November 2008, ALI has served 350 students and 3,000 members of the public. Collaborations with the California Architectural Foundation, the A+D Museum, UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and every design program in California have brought water to the forefront of advanced design thinking. Teams from 28 states and 15 countries have engaged ALI's design challenges.  US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development,  the EPA,  the Metropolitan Water District, and the World Water Forum have underwritten ALI research.  ALI enjoys partnerships with communities in urban California and rural New Mexico, conducting watershed based planning for climate adaptation. Our partnership with the people of the Lower Embudo Valley has grown and deepened since it began ten years ago.  Exciting opportunities for international exchange are in development.

 

ALI celebrates its fifth birthday in good fiscal health, and with exciting new initiatives and partnerships in formation.  We are proud to launch this new website,  developed in collaboration with Urban Insight web developers and Anne Swett of Swett Shop graphic design, and made possible through the generous support of artist Lauren Bon and the Metabolic Studio.  The site is designed to serve as an ever-growing resource for an ever-growing field:  the design of resilience.   

 

Our free, online video library is an astonishingly rich resource in the history, culture, and technologies of drylands throughout history.  We hope you will enjoy perusing some—or all!—of the talks (92 at last count).  In the coming weeks, watch for curated playlists and, in time, the ability to watch designated playlists for continuing ed credits in a variety of disciplines.

 

The Drylands Design Gallery is also a storehouse of dense, diverse learning opportunites.  Generated by university and professional teams in response to the Drylands Design Competition of 2011, the proposals reach well beyond a catalog of known best practices.  Rather, these case studies challenge us to rethink architectural and urban formmaking more fundamentally, and extend the boundaries of watershed-thinking.

 

Our research portal will serve as a repository of findings and outputs from ALI projects, and, in time, as a platform for exchange and gateway for a host of resources.

 

We hope you will find many reasons to explore the site, from opportunities to study with us; to attend our lectures, workshops, and symposia; and to share research and dialog.  Above all, use it to stay in touch.  There's much to do, and we welcome your input.