As climate breakdown advances, the intersection between architecture and environmental action must be redefined. For too long, much of environmental discourse focused on the built environment has taken for granted how built form affects and intersects with environmental degradation. Prioritizing technical aspects of building and construction has made it seem that at the ecological brink, architecture’s most pressing concern is energy efficiency while the city’s priority should be infrastructural modernization. This stance compartmentalizes architectural thought and dislocates the origins of the climate crisis from the dominant political, economic, and spatial organizations that are its cause. This course is designed for students who seek new terrain for architectural thought within the context of our evolving environmental catastrophe. The course is run as a colloquium and workshop in which students develop a research and/or design project operating at the intersection of the built and natural environments. The projects themselves, however, are not carried out within the time frame of this course. The final output of the course is a proposal, to be carried out in studios, independent studies, grant projects, capstone projects, or future professional and/or academic work. The trajectory of the term is dedicated to building the foundation for the proposed project via annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, and critical discussion with classmates and invited guests. Research methods are foregrounded, yet the seminar is more than a methods course. In the short term, students build research skills and cultivate critical thinking, while in the long term, students build the foundations for their future professional and/or academic trajectory while strengthening environmental discourse within urban studies and architecture.