The 2026 National Design Studio Grant supports 10 faculty-led design studios exploring community-driven approaches to climate adaptation, from urban heat resilience to water sovereignty and community-led relocation.
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CONTACT: Nina Berg
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BOSTON— Envision Resilience announced today the recipients of its 2026 National Design Studio Grants: ten faculty-led university design studios investigating emerging approaches to climate adaptation.
From reimagining land-grant university holdings in Ohio as climate and social infrastructure to connecting heat mitigation with public health in New York City, from designing flood-resilient buildings in Hawaii to advancing watershed restoration in New Mexico, these grantees are combining design education, interdisciplinary research and community partnership to work on the pressing climate challenges shaping their regions.
Envision Resilience’s National Design Studio Grants support graduate and undergraduate design studios exploring adaptive solutions to climate change in their rural, urban or mid-sized communities. This marks the second year Envision Resilience has awarded National Design Studio Grants. The 2026 recipients are working with community partners on challenges in food systems, water sovereignty, urban heat, ecological restoration and community-led relocation. See below for full studio descriptions.
Beyond the questions they investigate, these studios point to the potential of the university design studio as a site for change—where faculty, students and community partners can bridge different forms of expertise, challenge conventional approaches and advance actionable steps for climate adaptation.
“The grants represent both an immediate investment in climate-focused design studios and a longer-term commitment to the ideas, policies and practices that will shape more resilient futures,” said Claire Martin, executive director of Envision Resilience. “As communities everywhere confront increasingly complex and compounding climate challenges, supporting a broad range of ideas, disciplines and innovative approaches is critical. The National Design Studio Grants are designed to say yes: to emerging research, to a diverse set of knowledge systems, to new studio formats, and to the work that’s ready to move the needle toward resilient climate futures.”
For Adrian Fehrmann and Yufan Gao of Boston Architectural College the grant expands opportunities for place-based learning through the schools’ online Master of Landscape Architecture program.
“As the only online Master of Landscape Architecture program in the country, our school serves students who are geographically dispersed and would otherwise have limited opportunities for immersive, place-based engagement,” said Adrian Fehrmann, core faculty in landscape architecture at the Boston Architectural College. “Envision Resilience’s support will significantly expand the studio’s capacity to connect research, design and climate adaptation in meaningful and tangible ways.”
The grants also support studios translating interdisciplinary approaches into tangible design interventions. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, Hyon Woo Scott Chung and Mark Gardner’s Climate and Care studio at Parsons School of Design brings together climate adaptation and public health through a collaboration with Youth Design Center.
“We often think about extreme heat and public health as separate challenges, but they are deeply connected in how people experience their neighborhoods,” said Hyon Woo Scott Chung, co-leader of the Parsons Climate and Care design studio. “Through our collaboration with Youth Design Center, we’re exploring how small architectural interventions, such as shade, planting, and material choices, can transform overlooked urban spaces into healthier places for the community. These ideas will also influence our students’ designs for an Urban Health Research Lab and Community Clinic in Brownsville.”
The studios will undertake their work across fall 2026 and spring 2027 semesters. Final reports and research will be shared on the Envision Resilience website.
The following are the recipients of the 2026 Envision Resilience National Design Studio Grants:
Boston Architectural College
Faculty leads: Adrian Fehrmann, PLA ASLA CELA, and Yufan Gao, PLA ASLA CELA
Rooms of the Geologic: From Extraction to Adaptation is an interdisciplinary design studio that engages communities in envisioning climate-resilient futures by transforming the the former granite quarries of Cape Ann along the North Shore of Massachusetts into interconnected rooms of ecological adaptation, cultural memory and public stewardship.
Carnegie Mellon University
Faculty lead: Matthew Huber
The studio focuses on transitioning material and assembly systems in architectural design away from extraction towards practices of land and relational repair, learning from and co-designing with the Sustainable Development Institute at the College of Menominee Nation and Medicine Fish, an organization focused on reconnecting Indigenous youth with traditional practices.
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Department of Urban Planning and Design
Faculty lead: Hannah Teicher, Ph.D.
Teicher is exploring how community relocation after a climate crisis can be both manageable during the transition and sustainable for long-term community well-being. The studio will work with A Community Voice, a community organization in New Orleans, and provide planning and design support to bring their vision for relocating to Natchez, the oldest settlement on the Mississippi River, closer to reality.
University of Hawai’i at Mānoa School of Architecture
Faculty lead: Felipe Igualt, D.Arch.
Envision Resilience Hawaiʻi: Adaptive Recovery and Flood-Resilient Housing Futures for Waialua studio explores flood-resilient building, infrastructure and community-scale adaptation strategies for Waialua, Hawaii, in response to increasing climate and flooding risks.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Faculty lead: Zhihan Tao, Ph.D., MLA, CELA, ASLA
Sombra y Raíces (Shade and Roots) is a graduate landscape architecture studio in which students engage with Chicago’s Little Village (La Villita) community to design climate-adaptive landscapes that cool a heat-burdened neighborhood, manage flooding and address the legacies of industrial land use, growing shade and community roots together.
University of New Mexico, School of Architecture and Planning, Landscape Architecture Department
Faculty lead: Anthony Fettes, PLA, ASLA, PDC
Building upon Fettes’ 2024 landscape studio with the Native women-led Hózhó Voices of Healing Center, the 2026 studio will work alongside Diné community partners and regional experts to build water harvesting and watershed restoration demonstration projects that advance the Center’s vision for food sovereignty and land stewardship.
Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture
Faculty lead: Forbes Lipschitz
Land Grant Futures asks how the land-grant university can transform its institutional land holdings into climate and social infrastructure for a rapidly changing region.
Parsons School of Design
Faculty leads: Mark Gardner and Hyon Woo Scott Chung
Climate and Care is a fourth-year Parsons studio in which students will work with the Youth Design Center to design cooling and health infrastructure for Brownsville, Brooklyn, one of New York City’s most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods.
University of Texas at Arlington School of Architecture
Faculty leads: Amy Trick, RA, AIA, and Julia Lindgren
A co-led studio through UTA’s Community Design Build Lab, this research and design-build studio will propose small-scale infrastructures for thermal comfort and heat resiliency in Oak Cliff, Dallas.
University of Virginia School of Architecture
Faculty lead: CL Bohannon, Ph.D., FASLA
Centered in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia, this graduate design studio explores how food production, distribution, access and waste cycles both shape and are shaped by the built and ecological landscape.
Learn more about the 2026 grantees and the National Design Studio Grants at envisionresilience.org/national-design-studio-grants.
About Envision Resilience
Envision Resilience works to advance innovative planning and design in the face of climate change through student and community partnerships. By connecting current and future professionals working across disciplines, the organization creates opportunities for communities to reimagine climate challenges and inspire resilient solutions. Envision Resilience is part of the philanthropic organizations and initiatives created and funded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt to work toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. To learn more, visit envisionresilience.org.
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