About



CoDesign Field Lab: Black Belt Study for the Green New Deal



A sister collaboration between the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Destination Design School of Agricultural Estates



Sis·tered, sis·ter·ing, sis·ters (v). Architecture. To affix a beam or other structural member to (another) as a supplementary support.


CoDesign Field Lab, led by Dr. Lily Song, is a graduate-level design action research seminar series in which planners and designers utilize their creative powers to accomplice place-based activists and frontline organizers, who are already leading the charge to heal and nourish our communities, commons, and planet.

The Spring 2021 CoDesign Field Lab responded to an invitation from the notable design activist, artist, community developer, and Harvard Loeb Fellow (2016), Euneika Rogers-Sipp, whose Destination Design School of Agricultural Estates (DDSAE) activates community voices and agency in enhancing inter-generational access to traditional lands and resources in the Black Belt Region of the Southern United States.

Through complementary participation in the Green New Deal Superstudio, coordinated by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, CoDesign Field Lab and DDSAE together interrogated legacies of the global plantation complex rooted in the Black Belt South and explored the meanings and possibilities of their dismantling through planning and design.

The CoDesign Field Lab specifically reimagined and futured the Black Belt Region as fount and staging ground for a reparation-based Green New Deal. Working in five teams— mobility + access, food + fiber, housing + buildings, energy + waste, and water + climate—students created storymaps and stakeholder-power diagrams that reckoned with 21st century dilemmas, movements, and possibilities for just transitions in the Georgia Black Belt.

For the culminating exercise—the Black Belt future histories—each of the five teams was joined by youth and community elders from the Destination Design School over a month-long period. These blended teams heard from course speakers and mentors as well as jointly participated in an AfroFuturing workshop led by Dr. Lonny Avi Brooks and the Fathomers. Combining their curiosity, imagination, and diverse talents, the teams co-created future histories of mobility + access, food + fiber, housing + buildings, energy + waste, and water + climate for the Black Belt South.

This website archives the storymaps, stakeholder-power diagrams, and the future histories that resulted from this sistered initiative. Harder to upload and as important is the care taken by participants from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Destination Design School to listen, ask questions, and work together in team settings. All were inspired by Euneika’s vision and living legacy of the Black Freedom Movement grounded in the South.

Special thanks to Naisha Bradley, Harvard GSD’s Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. Her support through the Racial Equity and Anti-Racism Fund allowed us to offer our course speakers/mentors and DDSAE youth elders honoraria and gain additional TA support.


Website designed by Cynthia Deng cdeng@gsd.harvard.edu

Mark