Emerging technologies and processes have so thoroughly infused the fabric of our cities that to even think about ‘urban design’ now requires a fresh understanding of how these new processes work, and in what ways they might be challenging our shared cultural, economic and political fabric. At Strelka Institute, we reflect on this new paradigm and catch up to ‘The New Normal’, the new context set in motion by the age of global computation, data analytics and algorithmic governance, by updating our contemporary urban toolkit.

The Programme employs tools and approaches from a wide variety of disciplines and is aimed at young international and Russian specialists from a variety of professional backgrounds (architecture, urbanism, film & cinema, interaction design, software design, humanities & social sciences, game design, economics, and more) with a strong interest in working on urban-related projects who would bring their own unique perspective, vision and expertise to the initiative.

During the intensive program, students work in small teams to research and develop original speculative interventions and platforms. Urban design projects include spatial plans, but the Strelka program also emphasizes strategy, cinema and software.

About Strelka Institute

The New Normal is an experimental postgraduate programme of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design - an educational institution in Moscow, Russia, founded in 2009. The Institute promotes positive changes and creates new ideas and values through its educational activities. Strelka provides new learning opportunities, while the City remains at the centre of the Institute`s research.

Benjamin H. Bratton joined Strelka Institute as the Programme Director for “The New Normal” programme in 2016. As one of the most important global design theorists, he brings an extraordinarily interdisciplinary scope to our research.

The New Normal takes the concept of contemporary urbanism and explores it relative to the impact of emerging technologies on new types of interdisciplinary design practices. Cities are built up of many different types of systems, and need to be considered from the point of view of different positions and disciplines. As such, the programme aims to establish a new urban design voice and profile.

Programme statement

Something has shifted, it seems. We are making new worlds faster than we can keep track of them, and the pace is unlikely to slow. Have our technologies advanced beyond our ability to conceptualize their implications? If so, such gaps can be perilous.

In response, one impulse is to pull the emergency brake and to try put all the genies back in the bottle. This is ill-advised (and hopeless). Better instead to invest in emergence, in contingency: to map The New Normal for what it is, and to shape it toward what it should be.

The New Normal curriculum is composed of various successive modules, workshops and field trips teaching interpretive, analytic and/or technical skills, eventually culminating into the final projects development phase and their public presentation / broadcasting. Modules are designed in a cumulative process and have specific functions at key times during the programme; snowballing from start to finish, each sets the stage for the module that follows while building on the overall research focus and conceptual agenda of the programme.

Structure

The programme is broadly divided in 2 parts, and chronologically structured in 4 phases:

Field Trips

Field-trips and study visits are an integral part of The New Normal curriculum. Each year, researchers take part in a local field-trip within Russia and in an international field-trip, both selected according to their relevance to the specific research themes explored in the programme.

Themes and modules

The programme is curated around a series of conceptually interrelated themes and modules. Rather than structuring the programme chronologically, these overlap and formally and informally guide the overall research of the group throughout the 5 months. For the most part, modules are led by a member of our core faculty or by selected key experts.

Over the course of the initiative The New Normal programme had the honour to welcome contributions from multiple faculty and experts from around the world at different years of the programme, including:

Education Team

The New Normal final projects will take on several forms and outcomes, oscillating between traditional urban design outputs to the production of software, cinema, strategy, and everything in between. All the final content and research is also developed for external public presentation and broadcasting in various formats for various audiences: online and offline, physical and virtual, fact and fiction. For more information, please visit Projects and Research.

In addition, a parallel programme outcome is the design of new kinds of urban design practices itself, which are reflected by the diversity of perspectives, interests and expertises gained by our graduates during the 5 months of the programme. The New Normal alumni will become a new kind of urban professional who is no longer limited by a particular occupation; rather they will expand their professional training and acquire skills and methods that will enable them to create and apply multifunctional and multidisciplinary solutions to current urban challenges.