The Library Information Systems department of the Frances Loeb Library
is responsible for all library-specific computing resources for GSD
users and library staff, and serves as a liaison with the University
Library and various IT groups within the GSD and the University.
Department staff also provide training and consultation on the use
of the GSD's course website platform, Course
iSites.
To schedule a consultation session please email Kevin Lau at itg@gsd.harvard.edu
or call 617-496-9310.
Projects Funded through Harvard University's Library Digital Initiative (LDI):
Web-based Course Material Archiving Project - Study Phase. (Round
Four Award)
Network-based teaching materials now represent a significant investment of the University's resources and form an integral part of its educational fabric. Yet early experience shows that web-based materials are also some of the University's most evanescent assets. This project aimed to create procedures and infrastructures for the documentation and archiving of digital course materials in various formats. Such preservation should support the availability of these assets for ongoing use in teaching and should document the material aspects of Harvard's teaching mission for the historical record and long-term research use.
Final Report
Managed by Kevin Lau,
Head of Instructional Technology & Library Information Systems.
Projects and Courses Funded through the Presidential Instructional Technology Fellows Program (PITF):
Food Forms: Agriculture and Urban Systems
This course examines the broad topic of urban agriculture through the lens of ecological urbanism. Its objectives are to investigate the potential of urban agriculture as a systemic element of the sustainable city; research new materials and technologies; document the spatial and operational requirements necessary for the viability of urban agriculture; and generate scenarios for its implementation.
GSD 9206LA02: Food Forms
Scheri Fultineer, Dorothee Imbert
Department of Landscape Architecture
Fall 2009
History of Landscape Architecture I
This course presents a history of landscape architecture between 1850 and 1950, with a particular emphasis on the Western world. By studying the projects and writings that defined the modern landscape architecture discipline, and exploring connections to urbanism and architecture, students will be able to situate their own design investigations in a historical context. A series of lectures and discussions will highlight themes that are of continued relevance, including professional identity, regionalism and nationalism, gender and design, and social and ecological responsibility. PITF funding was used to build the course iSite.
The Architect in History: The Evolution of Practice from the Renaissance to the Present
This course examines the history of architectural practice, focusing on the changing role and definition of the architect, with the goal of providing new perspectives on how we design and build today. The course begins with16th century Italy, moves through 17th- through 19th-century France and England, and finally traces the evolution of practice in the United States from 1800 to the present. PITF funding was used to make readings and images accessible on the course iSite.
Model and Prototyping Facilities
Increasingly, information related to the modelling facilities at the GSD - including tutorials, sign-up sheets, webcams, and user settings - is located online. PITF funding was used to build a new Shop iSite which consolidated online resources for all model and prototyping facilities. These include the workshop, machine shop, cnc tools, robotics, laser cutters, 3D rapid prototyping, and digital input devices.
Innovative Construction in Japan
Modern Japanese architecture has been much admired in the West for its attention to materials, its refined construction details, and its ability to integrate traditional design principles into works that simultaneously push the forefront of technology. This lecture course looks in depth at significant works by contemporary Japanese architects, analyzing both their detailed construction and the larger cultural and theoretical contexts in which they are produced. Individual buildings will thus serve as vehicles for exploring the relationship between design theories and construction technique.
Olympic Infrastructure
This research seminar investigates the urban aspirations and spatial expressions of sports facilities, athletes' villages, and other infrastructure built to accommodate the modern Olympic Games. Beginning with Pierre de Coubertin's manifesto for the modern games, the seminar pairs readings in infrastructure and urban development theory with discussions exploring a range of themes. PITF funding was used to build a new course iSite.
GSD 9206: Olympic Infrastructure
Judith Grant Long
Department of Urban Planning and Design, Spring 2009
Versailles to the Visionaries
A course on architectural theory and achievement in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. While we will proceed chronologically from the reign of Louis XIV to the French Revolution of 1789, ours will be a selective as opposed to comprehensive approach to designs, edifices and treatises. The course will begin by addressing architecture as an emblematization of power. This ideological context will set the stage for the gradual expansion of architectural theory and its resulting discursive field, which moved beyond debate over the orders to include phenomenology (architecture's relation to the senses), historicism (or the origins of architectural form), and the environment (the cult of nature).
Rome and St. Peter's
The course is organized around four historic spectacles - the Emperor Augustus' funeral (14 A.D.), Constantine the Great's triumphal procession (312), a liturgical procession for the Feast of the Assumption (1300), and the Canonization of Carlo Borromeo (1610) - imagined as four walks through Rome highlighting the city's evolving cultural and urban character. The first half of the course covers Antiquity to the Renaissance while the second looks in greater detail at specific projects from the Renaissance and after. The PITF program supported the collection of over 800 images on the course iSites.
GSD 4321: Rome and St. Peter's
Christine Smith
Department of Architecture, Spring 2009
Tracing Mobilities - Designing Ubiquities
The modern dweller lives in a state of experiential extension by digital prostheses. While not entirely cyborgian, we live with and through such augmentations. Cellphones can connect us to people as much as to locations. Urban experience is already augmented by digital tools. What would happen if we were able to shape our own understanding by meta-design of mobile applications? How can the digital world be coordinated with the physical to provide a unique perceptual and corporeal experience. The PITF project used an external wiki as an online platform in order to post and share findings about technology in the urban context.
Theories and Practices of Contemporary Landscape Architecture, 1950-2008
Practice, according to Garrett Eckbo, is 'knowing how to do something; theory is knowing why.' This course will explore the 'know why' of landscape architecture since the Second World War, juxtaposing both the built works and the writings of landscape architects with texts that address methodology or the discipline's larger theoretical and cultural contexts.
The PITF program supported the organization and restructuring of digital content using course iSites tools.
Building Performance Simulation - Energy
This seminar will introduce students to technical and non-technical aspects of using whole building energy simulation during building design, retrofitting and maintenance. The primary simulation tool used will be the Department of Energy's EnergyPlus simulation engine combined with the DesignBuilder interface.
Day-Lighting Buildings
The primary focus of this course will be the study of lighting in an architectural context. The course will stress the integration of electric and natural light sources during the design process and place an emphasis upon the role light can play in shaping architecture.
We will review historical approaches and current trends in lighting buildings and students will acquire a range of daylighting design techniques ranging from rules of thumb to state-of-the-art, physically-based computer simulations.
GSD 6332: Day-Lighting Buildings
Christoph Reinhart
Department of Architecture, Fall 2008
The Ruin Aesthetic: Episodes in the History of an Architectural Idea
One of the most arresting images in Michel Serres's Rome: The Book of Foundations is the idea that history is "a knot of different times" -- a knot most visibly reified by the tangible traces of past civilizations.
Serres's knot speaks as readily to the stratigraphic realities of Roman urban space as to the composite aesthetics of eighteenth-century ruin pictures or Auguste Rodin's Symbolist recasting of Medieval church portals. Artifacts, fragments, vestiges, rubble, debris, detritus,wreckage: all this has prompted a venerable body of writings and objects that work the metaphor of ruin into anything from template for the Sublime to mechanism for iconoclastic violence. PITF funding was used to make readings accessible on the course iSite.
GSD 4420: The Ruin Aesthetic
Erika Naginski
Department of Architecture, Fall 2008
The Visual Landscape: Analysis and Management
The visual landscape: why think about it? Can it be managed? Should it be managed? By whom?
Which "landscape": real, visible, seen, perceived, remembered, or simulated?
Descriptive theories and methods: which aspects of landscapes are important?
Evaluative theories and methods: whose values? "the expert's," "the designer's," the client's? or the public's?
Control theories and methods: design, management, policy, and/or law?
I am convinced that these issues are central to design in general. The PITF program funded digital videotapes of six seminar lectures. The videos were edited with additional images, made available through the course iSite for student use, and later archived.
GSD 2301: The Visual Landscape
Carl Steinitz
Department of Landscape Architecture
Fall 2008
E*vue: Emergent Vegetation of the Urban Ecosystem
The critical question faced by the professionals who design, build, and maintain our urban landscapes is not what plants grew there in the past, but which ones will grow there in the future.
The spontaneous vegetation of the urban environment, which flourishes without cultivation, is often marginalized as exotic or invasive. Yet many such species have also come to perform vital ecological functions like water filtration, soil stabilization, and carbon storage. This online resource helps to document the emergent vegeation of the urban Northeast and illustrate the environmental role which these species can play in creating sustainable urban landscapes.
E*vue Database
Peter Del Tredici
Department of Landscape Architecture
Histories and Theories of Urban Planning and Design
This course provides an understanding of the dynamics that created contemporary urban and regional spatial patterns, of social theories pertinent to urbanized societies, and of the nature of public interventions that can remedy functional and social deficiencies. It also provides a common theoretical context for the complementary activities of urban designers and planners. The PITF program funded the digitization of course materials in order to support a flexible self-study and review environment.
Materials Collection
Revolutionary new materials and methods of fabrication are having a profound impact on the continuing evolution of design thinking. The impact is felt in many areas, including design methods, the conception of form, and modes of production. Examples of materials from commercial vendors and materials resulting from faculty/student research are gathered in the Materials Collection, housed in L33 Gund Hall. Supported by the PITF program, the collection database can be searched to discover material examples and vendor contacts.
Image Digitization and Cataloging Project. (Round Seven Award)
The ongoing digitization and cataloging of visual resources is intended to support the core curriculum at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. This collaborative project was initiated by the Departments of Visual Resources and Library Information Systems at the Frances Loeb Library. Working together, the two departments established a workflow for the archiving of visual material, which is available through the Visual Information Access (VIA) catalog.
Visual Resources Access (VIA) Catalog
Co-managed by Alix Reiskind,
Head of Visual Resources
and Kevin Lau,
Head of Instructional Technology & Library Information Systems
