Introduction

The student research papers presented in this first issue of Visionary Architecture Studies are the result of a seminar taught at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) in the spring of 2025. Entitled 49 Cities, and expanding on the publication by the same name, the seminar explored visionary architectural and urban projects as seen through an ecological lens. Bringing urban form together with urban performance, the seminar was intended to open up new possibilities for architecture and the built environment today, as well as critically and imaginatively expand the discipline’s ‘utopian canon’ to include new models from which to inspire the future.