In October 2010, Columbia's Urban Landscape Lab—led by Janette Kim and Erik Carver, with support from the Van Alen Institute—held the Underdome Sessions symposia and launched an online guide, theunderdome.net. The project mapped contending energy agendas to start a new conversation on architecture's agency within political ecology. The Underdome Handbook builds on and extends this work. It reveals debates between policy makers, economists, historians, and engineers; commissions editorials from symposia moderators Reinhold Martin, Jonathan Massey, Michael Osman, and Georgeen Theodore; and constructs a taxonomy of strategies around power, territory, lifestyle, and risk. The agendas that have emerged are tested in contemporary design practice through twenty case-study articles. The guide becomes a critical nexus: not only a document of unique conversations about priorities in the face of energy imperatives, but also a playbook influencing practice and future public programs.

Janette Kim is director of the Urban Landscape Lab, an interdisciplinary applied research group at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Her work focuses on design and ecology in relation to public representation, interest, and debate. Her research lab has worked with the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York, the City of Newark, and other non-profit advocacy groups. Kim's Underdome project has been awarded by the Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship. Kim's work has been featured on NPR's "Brian Lehrer Show," as well as in Artforum, Architect, and Volume. Kim's work has been exhibited on the New York subway system, and in galleries including Artists Space, Eyebeam, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. She holds an March from Princeton University and a BArch from Columbia University.

Erik Carver is an architectural educator and practitioner. He runs a design office in New York, previously having worked for Lyn Rice and Diller+Scofido Architects. His writing has been published in Architect, Volume, and JAE. Cofounder of the groups Advanced Architecture, Common Room, and Seru, he has exhibited in venues including Exit Art, Philadelphia ICA ,and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. He and Janette Kim were awarded the Van Alen Institute's Spring 2010 New York Prize for their project Underdome. Erik has taught at Ohio State University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he created and directed a program in India. He received a BA in Visual Arts from UC San Diego and MArch from Princeton.

The Urban Landscape Lab is an interdisciplinary applied research group at Columbia University. We focus on the role of design in the analysis and transformation of the joint built-natural environment, and study ecological processes and urban systems as hybrid phenomenon through targeted pilot projects, practical strategies, and experiments. This landscape/ecology-based approach to urbanism brings together a wide range of disciplines such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, preservation, conservation biology, climate, and public health, to focus on specific environment & development issues as they relate to built form.

Columbia University is one of the world's most important centers of research and at the same time a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. The University recognizes the importance of its location in New York and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the university to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.