Commonstudio’s collaborative work featured in a group exhibition APPROXIMATING THESE ARID LANDS, which opened on March 28, 2022, and ran through May 2, 2022.

Working in a recent visiting artist position at Graceland University, Commonstudio co-founder Kim Karlsrud completed a three month landscape installation, entitled “Large and Round When Popped” for the Constance Gallery in the Helene Center for the Visual Arts (October 2019-Febuary 2020).

Commonstudio’s Kim Karlsrud celebrates the opening of a group exhibition in Ann Arbor, MI.

We are thrilled to announce the recent completion of “Mow Town” an interactive storymap which explores the emergence and management of spontaneous urban vegetation in the city of Detroit.

Update on our recently built “Model Nallah” at Sowl lake! The current configuration compares the performance of terracotta rubble to granite gravel aggregate in the treatment of real urban wastewater from the surrounding city. Recently our team introduced dozens of Canna Lilies (Canna indica) into the system to assess planted vs. non-planted performance characteristics. It will also anticipate the possibility for multi-functional benefits of STRAINS interventions, capable of providing a range of visual interest and ecosystem services when introduced into open drains throughout the city.

Commonstudio Founders Kim and Daniel in collaboration with Firat Erdim, will be facilitating a three day workshop with 80 undergraduate architecture students at Iowa State University’s College of Design. Drawing upon insights from an ongoing experimental intervention currently in development in the periphery of Rome, the workshop is entitled Depaving Des Moines: Catalysts for Landscape Change in the Urban Watershed. Over the course of three days, students will be introduced to various landscape methodologies and have a unique opportunity to get their hands dirty in the field with a live de-paving demonstration project within the Fourmile Creek watershed of Des Moines.

Fast Track grant will enable cross-city research project to be added to UofM’s massive herbaria collection.

Probing the urban wilds of Bangalore with a local team of citizen scientists in search of the hidden behaviors and virtues of spontaneous vegetation. 

Taking a closer look at the feral urban ecologies that thrive in India's "Garden City." 

Let it Grow is a platform that facilitates entrepreneurs, urban idealists, and artists in bringing their green innovations to life, with a specific focus on plant and seed-based projects.  We were honored to be featured in their latest interview series, where we discuss our process, the limits of tactical urbanism, and our current work in India. 

Later this year, Daniel and Kim will head to San Francisco to immerse ourselves in a month of residency at Headlands Center for the Arts.  

Cities have always been subject to the forces of ruination.  Buildings, monuments, and infrastructures built with the pretense of permanence, inevitably succumb to the shifting fates of disinvestment, abandonment and transition.  How should we look at these spaces as citizens, as designers, planners, and ecologists? What’s going on within them and why does it matter?

A group exhibition that explores how art and design can stimulate public awareness of urgent ecological issues through soil regeneration, re-conceptualizing land use, and activating under-utilized green spaces in Los Angeles.