Is there a link between the radiating boulevards of Paris and the machinery of surveillance and control? What can the stepwells of Rajasthan teach a world running short of water? Questions like these drive "Possible Modernities: Design Systems, Architecture, and Environmental Futures," a ten-day course Ijlal Muzaffar of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) designed for CRI's 2026 Seoul Research Program, traveling to Seoul to teach it in person.
The course starts from a simple premise: design is about more than beauty. Buildings and cities carry political, economic, and environmental choices. Who holds power over urban space, how inequality gets built into it, and how it can respond to a changing climate are no longer questions for specialists alone. They are part of what every future designer needs to understand.
An architectural historian who reads design as a system
Muzaffar is a professor of modern architectural history at RISD, where he also heads the Department of Theory and History of Art and Design. Educated at MIT, he approaches architecture and design as systems and examines how people, power, and the environment interact within them. His work traces the institutions and currents of power that shape urban space, and the ways those forces take physical form in buildings and city plans.
His research centers on colonial architecture, sustainability, social justice, and cultural identity as expressed through design. This is history with present-day stakes. His analysis carries into contemporary urban design and environmental policy, and his lectures and writing are cited in urban policy and environmental studies as well as in design journals.
Inside the ten-day course
Muzaffar uses the idea of the "design system" to analyze architecture and urban form from the ancient world to the present. The course is organized around five threads:
