Making State and Local Government Work (at HKS)

This course will focus on how making policy innovations and change can have the impact desired when implemented in a state or local government context. This course will include some non profit cases and international cases as well. Strategic thinking and strategic planning will be important themes. This course will include both cases and readings that address the analytical challenges and the tools that are necessary to produce a successful policy outcome.  The course will begin by reviewing the analytical techniques available to assess the specific challenges of a specific situation. The techniques will include 1) analyzing the organizational culture,2) preparing a correct diagnosis of the policy challenge, 3) identifying issues of race and 4) assessing the influence of the political environment. Next the course will review cases and articles that enumerate the management tools available. These tools include 1) setting goals, 2) organizational change,3) mobilizing the staff,4) improving the customer experience, 5) project management and 6) executive leadership.  Finally, the course will take the previously described analytical and management tools to address policy and service delivery challenges like diversity, new technology, increasing traffic, crisis management and global health.  The course is taught by a practitioner, Tom Glynn, who has run or overseen a major subway system, a major urban airport, a White House Task Force and the operations of a U.S. Cabinet Agency as Deputy Secretary. Glynn also has a Ph.D. from Brandeis University where he wrote his thesis on implementation. This course is offered jointly with HKS as MLD-112.

Friday, 9/3 will be held as a Monday schedule at HKS. Thomas GLynn's course HKS MLD-112/GSD SES 5410 will meet on Wednesday 9/1 AND Friday 9/3. The course will also have an information session. See schedule for details: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/educational-programs/academic-calendars-policies/shopping-and-exam-schedule.

Philosophy of Technology: From Marx and Heidegger to AI, Genome Editing, and Geoengineering (HKS)

Technology shapes how power is exercised in society, and thereby also changes how the present changes into the future. Technological innovation is all around us, and new possibilities in fields like artificial intelligence, genome-editing and geoengineering not only reallocate power, but might transform human life considerably, to the point of modifying the essence of what it is to be human. Basic attitudes towards technology vary considerably. At times it is tech optimism that dominates the debates (sometimes even a techno-boosterism that sees technology as key to heaven on earth), and at other times it is more low-spirited attitudes ranging from romantic uneasiness to doom-and-gloom Luddism and technology-bashing. A closer look at these various attitudes – and reflection on how technology and power are intertwined — will help generate a more skeptical attitude towards all of them and contribute to a more level-headed debate, which is so badly needed. While ethical considerations will enter prominently, the philosophy of technology is broader than its ethics. It aims to interpret and critically assess the role of technology for human life and guide us to a more thoughtful integration of technology in our individual lives and in public decision making.  This course aims to teach you to do just that, starting with basic stances and key figures in the field and then progressing towards challenges around technology as they will arise for the 21st century. 

This course is jointly-listed with HKS as DPI-207.

Friday, 9/3 will be held as a Monday schedule at HKS. Mathias Risesse's course HKS DPI-207/GSD DES 3479 will meet on Wednesday 9/1 AND Friday 9/3. The course will also have an information session. See schedule for details: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/educational-programs/academic-calendars-policies/shopping-and-exam-schedule.

Confronting Climate Change: A Foundation in Science, Technology and Policy

This course will consider the challenge of climate change and what to do about it. Students will be introduced to the basic science of climate change, including the radiation budget of the Earth, the carbon cycle, and the physics and chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere.  We will look at reconstructions of climate change through Earth history to provide a context for thinking about present and future changes.  We will take a critical look at climate models used to predict climate change in the future, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses, evaluating which forecasts of climate change impacts are robust, and which are more speculative. We will spend particular time discussing sea level rise and extreme weather (including hurricanes, heat waves, and floods).  We will look at the complex interactions between climate and human society, including climate impacts on agriculture and the relationship between climate change, migration and conflict. We will also discuss strategies for adapting to climate change impacts, and the implications of those strategies for sub-national and international equity.

The last half of the class will consider what to do about climate change. First, we will review the recent history of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as various national and international efforts to limit them in the future. We will discuss reducing carbon emissions using forestry, agriculture and land use, and then focus on how to transform the world’s energy system to eliminate CO2 emissions. We will conclude by examining different strategies for accelerating changes in our energy systems to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The course is intended as a foundational course on climate change for students from around the university, preparing them for more specialized courses in their individual concentrations or degree programs.  No prerequisites are required; students will be encouraged to apply their different preparations and interests to the various individual and group assignments. The course emphasizes the scientific and technological aspects of climate change (including the clean energy transition), but in the context of current issues in public policy, business, design and public health. 

This is a University course. All students should enroll in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences version of the course, GENED 1094

THICKER

For the last half century, the image of an office building has been synonymous with the curtain wall. Pioneered as early as Mies’ proposal for Friedrichstrasse, the soaring, diaphanous planes of glass stood for technological modernization and global capital unlike any other architectural element. The curtain wall defined not only the image of an architectural typology, it defined twentieth century urbanization in ways that we are only beginning to fully understand. Beyond the sociological or typological, its farthest-reaching consequences are without a doubt ecological. In the few inches of those thin panes, the curtain wall embodied the quixotic twentieth century attitude of building against nature – of building to control nature.

Today, we understand more clearly the impacts of that arrogance. In New York, the single greatest challenge to architects over the next decades will be the retrofitting of the glazed energivores. The city’s Green New Deal announced in 2019 includes the ban of all-glass structures. While this ban surprised many, it presents a wake-up call and an opportunity to question what has been a lazy default of office design both on a typological but also on a representational standpoint.

This research seminar will look at the alternative history of the envelope before and in parallel to the curtain wall. We will unpack the sociological, symbolic, performative and of course aesthetic demands placed on these outermost inches of a building.  The seminar will be design-oriented and constructively based but will involve collective readings and discussions, as well as independent research, drawings, and short presentations. Please be aware that this course will be conducted in hybrid mode with online as well as in-class meetings.

Note: the instructor will offer online live course presentations on 08/26, and/or 08/27. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

Please note this course will meet online through 9/15. After that, the class will continue to meet on Zoom with the exception of four in-person sessions:  09/22, 10/27, 11/17, and 12/15. The course will be a combination of lectures, research presentations, and discussions. Please review the syllabus for more details. Please note that this is subject to change.

The first class meeting will be on Wednesday, September 8th. The rest of the semester, classes will meet during the official scheduled time. 

Innovation in Science and Engineering: Conference Course (at SEAS)

The course explores factors and conditions contributing to innovation in science and engineering; how important problems are found, defined, and solved; roles of teamwork and creativity; and applications of these methods to other endeavors. Students will receive practical and professional training in techniques to define and solve problems, and in brainstorming and other individual and team approaches. 

Course format: Taught through a combination of lectures, discussions, and exercises led by innovators in science, engineering, arts, and business. 

Jointly offered: SEAS ENG-SCI 139

Urban Form: Transition as Condition

The fixed categories by which we have traditionally understood the urban no longer hold. They have been undermined by the multiplicity of disparate urban formations that are transforming landscapes across the globe. These transformations radically challenge not only normative planning methods, but also traditional concepts of the urban, and even our ability to understand the dynamics of change. How can we understand the conditions of change, extreme differentiation, and hybridity that challenge current conceptual models and practices? How might the insights of history and theory inform one another as well as design practices more effectively?

The purpose of the seminar is to engage these questions and to explore a range of critical frameworks and research methodologies for understanding emerging conditions of the contemporary urban – historically, theoretically, and spatially across scales.

Urban Form: Transition as Condition takes as its starting point two working propositions that are implicit in the course title. The first puts forward a conception of urban form as dynamic and active – that is, as a process of urban formation in which transition is a continuous condition. The second working proposition is that in order to understand the generative dynamics of transitional urban conditions we need to develop new methodologies for understanding change and difference, methodologies that make it possible to chart continuities and discontinuities, to map relationships between the local and the translocal, and to examine complex and unstable phenomena over time and through multiple critical lenses. In short, our research needs to be both site-specific and comparative across cultures and geographies.

These propositions will be engaged in the seminar through readings and class discussions, and individual research projects. In the first half of the semester readings and discussions will focus on a series of theoretical frameworks that conceptualize emerging urban formations in categorically transitional terms – that is, in terms of post-industrial, post-fordist, post-socialist, post-communist, and post-modern formations. These transitional categories are framed in relation to historically-based urban paradigms that posit a relationship between social, political, and economic processes and systems (industrial, Fordist, socialist, communist, modern) and urban spatial forms. We will interrogate these concepts as epistemological categories, examine the paradigms on which they are based, and work to develop critical methods and visual techniques for site-based research of contemporary conditions. 

In the second half of the semester students will apply these methodologies to the analysis of a particular urban site or intervention in a city or other urban environment and geography of their choice. The topics for these individual research projects will be determined in consultation with the instructor within the first 6 weeks of the semester. The final project will have a written and visual/graphic component (due in early May) and will be presented in class towards the end of the semester.

Requirements/Assignments: Aside from completing the assigned reading and active participation in class discussions, students will be required to submit reading responses [posted to the course canvas site] in preparation for class discussions of assigned texts and the issues they raise. In addition, a final research project with a written and visual component is required of each student.

Note: the instructor will offer online live course presentations on 08/26, and/or 08/27. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.

Offsite/Onsite: Curating Contemporary Art

Today, everybody is a curator—we supposedly curate our meals, our social media feeds, and our outfits. But what does it mean to curate exhibitions of contemporary art today? This course examines the working processes of organizing exhibitions within the field of contemporary visual arts and the context of both art institutions, such as museums, and outside of museums.  This course examines the theoretical and practical considerations of curating “offsite” and “onsite.” We will examine the frameworks around both of those sites and formats, such as responding to a site’s history or working with artists on site-specific commissions. The aim is to familiarize students with various aspects of exhibition-making ranging from conceptual development to the physical realization of exhibitions. This course introduces and engages students in a broad spectrum of exhibition presentations and institutional contexts, with a focus on different exhibition typologies of “offsite” and “onsite,” ideas of audience engagement, curatorial responsibility, working with artists, questions of history and the contemporary moment, and risk-taking. 

This course will be organized around case studies of major exhibitions organized by both Eva Respini and Dan Byers at a broad range of institutions including the ICA/Boston, Venice Biennale, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, as well as those curated by select guest lecturers. Many class sessions will involve visits to nearby museums and galleries and other “offsite” venues.  Through readings and discussion, viewing assignments, and guest lectures, we will critically analyze the role of curators and art institutions, and examine the ways contemporary art and its reception in exhibition engages with broader social, cultural, and political issues.

Throughout the semester, students will develop ideas and parameters for an exhibition, culminating in a final presentation that will include a proposal, preliminary list of artists, an exhibition design, and work plan. Instructors will alternate teaching classes, with a few key sessions taught together. 

Course enrollment is limited to fifteen. Eight spaces will be prioritized for MDes Art, Design, and Public Area and MDes Narratives Domain students who select the course first in the lottery.

Note: the instructor will offer online live course presentations on 08/26, and/or 08/27. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

Please note this course will meet on Zoom for the following dates: 9/3, 9/10, and 11/12. The class will meet in the classroom on the following dates: 10/1, 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/19, and 12/3.  The class will meet offsite on the following dates: 9/17, 9/24, 10/8, and 10/15,  Class meeting locations are subject to change, please review the syllabus for more details.

Water, Land-Water Linkages, and Aquatic Ecology

This course will provide students with an understanding of water that will inform their professional approaches to landscape architecture, architecture, and planning, and contribute to protecting, improving, restoring, and sustaining water resources. Emphasis will be placed on both the science and the application of this science in designs for projects involving a wide range of interactions with water including coastlines, inland rivers and lakes, and urban stormwater. With ongoing global changes in climate, urbanization, and the use of water for energy and food production, the relationship between humans and water will continue to grow and evolve. Students will come away from this course with a better understanding of this evolution and how designs can account for hydrologic change and adaptation. While many varied case studies from around the United States and internationally will be discussed throughout the semester, much of the course content and assignments will involve hydrology, stormwater, and sea level rise in the Charles River and Boston Harbor, river and wetland restoration in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and stormwater and low-impact design in Washington, DC. 

Discussion of these focus areas will include design challenges, social issues, permitting, and the implementation process. Students will come away with a better understanding of how projects go from conceptual design to a constructed site. Students will be encouraged to bring water and ecology-related challenges from other courses, studios, or projects to the class for an open discussion. Hands-on exercises include watershed delineation, hydrologic calculations to estimate runoff and groundwater infiltration and flow, design exercises developing recommendations for stormwater management best practices and low-impact design (LID) for a neighborhood in Washington, DC, and research and design exercises for river restoration projects. 

Attendance at two field trips with hands-on field sampling will be mandatory: a two-day weekend field trip to Plymouth and an in-class fieldtrip to the Alewife stormwater facility. Assignments focused on the restoration sites in Plymouth will culminate in a conceptual design of a river and wetland restoration project. 

Evaluation: Based on class attendance and participation (including field trips), short written assignments, quizzes, focused design exercises, and a semester-long project. 

Note: the instructor will offer online live course presentations on 08/26, and/or 08/27. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.

Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Origins and Ends

In the first semester of the Buildings, Texts, and Contexts sequence, our goal is to address architecture in the context of the general rupture caused by the rise of modernity—that is, by the social, economic, technological, and ideological transformations accompanying the political and industrial revolutions after the eighteenth century—and the rise of the general cultural, aesthetic response to this rupture, which is modernism. Modernism in architecture has fundamentally to do with the emergence of new kinds of objects and events and, at the same time, new conceptualizations of their appearance, of changing event structures and temporalities, and of the relationships between objects, their producers and maintainers, and their audiences and consumers. Specific features of the object/subject dialectic—global capital markets and the rise of nationalism; colonial expansionism and lingering regimes of social inequality and structural racism; aspirations to universality and the entrenchment of local interests; in general, the contradictory conditions of the modern world—marked a fundamental change in the way architecture’s history could be conceived. Our work in this course will look at the three pillars of buildings, texts, and contexts in order to construct the historical origins of the architectural objects themselves as well as that less tangible but equally material historicity of the concepts and categories by which we use and interact with those objects. This dialectic of object and subject, and of origins and ends, leads to another important dimension of the course: the question of how architecture can have an effect on thinking as well as perception. Not how can architecture be the object of thought, but how can architecture be thought-like.

Please note this course will meet online through 9/15. 

Six of the lectures will be in-person with the remainder on Zoom. All Sections will be in-person including one in Loeb Library Special Collections.  One of the paper assignments is based on materials in Special Collections, another requires conducting preliminary research in the Library. In-person lectures are scheduled as follows: 9/21, 10/7, 10/21, 11/11, 11/30, 12/2.