Sustainable Futures is a ten week course open to graduate students in architecture, landscape architecture and planning programs, and also by arrangement to students entering their fourth or fifth year of related programs. The program offers 12-13 credits through the University at Buffalo’s fully accredited graduate programs in Planning and Architecture or through our program partners. The credits are transferable to other universities.

LIVE IN a rural Costa Rican rain forest community struggling to achieve a balance between its agricultural base, the pressures of ecotourism, and the desire to save the rain forests.

STUDY ABOUT ecological design and technologies, the ecology of the area, renewable energy, the institutional supports for sustainable development, ecological tourism, the origins of urbanism, buffer zone management strategies, Spanish language and Costa Rica culture.

STUDIO PROJECTS WILL INVOLVE planning, design, and construction for a sustainable future in the area: for social justice in an emerging market economy; assistance to institutions such as the cooperative, the Conservation League, alternative educational programs, etc.

LEARN FROM an international faculty of architects, planners, landscape architects, community development specialists, biologists, ecologists, forest managers, alternative agricultural specialists, rural economists, and, most importantly, the people who live the struggle for an ecologically and socially just environment.

Program Partners

Department of Architecture, University at Buffalo |SUNY: Martha Bohm or Chris Romano

Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland:  David Myers

Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Environmental Science &Forestry | SUNY: Scott Shannon

Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign: Stacy Harwood

Department of Architecture, Ball State University: Pamela Harwood

Click here to access a searchable collection of previous Sustainable Futures projects.