Images of the Environment: Terror and Beauty

This project-based seminar will focus on producing “thick”  descriptions of photographs of environmental crises in the recent decades. Those of interest include Edward Burtynsky’s series “Mines and Tailings,” which captured the aftermath of metal mining and smelting; Daniel Beltra’s “Spill” series of the infamous 2010 British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill; and Wally Skalij’s documentation of the 2018 Los Angeles wildfire, “Evacuated.”

Each photograph has dual registers: as photojournalistic evidence of the terror of anthropocentric disasters and a work of fine art with hypnotic beauty. For the seminar, each student will engage with one of such photographs along these two interrelated yet distinctly parallel registers.

We will produce short essays each week that identify the author of the photograph, equipment used, editing process, venues of dissemination, and the subsequent public discourse. In parallel, we will borrow the techniques of image analysis and abstraction from contemporary fine artists. By applying such techniques to the photographs in question, we seek to demystify the unfathomable beauty of the terrible images.

The outcome of the seminar will be a dossier with a series of short essays and image analyses. Through these exercises and in-class reading-based discussions, we will work towards articulating the complexity of images and the power to recalibrate our understanding of the environment through image making.

 

Reconstructions | Abandoned Lands + Abolitionist Futures

Harvard University has recently confronted its history with the release of a report detailing the institution's complicity in enslavement, stretching back to its founding. This revelation arrives amid a broader national discourse on reconciliation and remediation of our country’s oppressive history. The Reconstructions Options Studio engages with this report and additional literature to critically analyze and respond to the spatial, programmatic, and political implications emerging from such histories, both locally and globally. We understand architecture not as an isolated remedy but as an integral part of a broader array of strategies and future visions aimed at addressing the legacies of violence entrenched in our built environment.

The course challenges students to transition from passive observers to active participants by recognizing, evaluating, and responding to the complex racialized political systems that inform both our tangible and conceptual spaces. This process involves reimagining the potential of architecture in crafting new typologies of freedom through the dismantling of oppressive systems.

Reflecting on the post-Civil War era, the Reconstruction period was a time of revolutionary potential, marked by efforts such as colonization plans for the South, the redistribution of abandoned lands, and the extension of rights and services, including voting rights, healthcare, and education, to formerly enslaved individuals. Despite these progressive initiatives, subsequent political and social maneuvers ultimately undercut the transformative potential of Reconstruction. Through political disenfranchisement, spatial restriction, and the manipulation of historical narratives, the era's reparative actions were significantly undermined.

The perpetuation of oppressive ideologies often depends on the construction of a monolithic narrative, the commemoration of those narratives within our physical infrastructures, and the consequent obliteration of alternative historical narratives. As Paula Gunn Allen succinctly put it, "The root of all oppression is the loss of memory," suggesting that the foundation of liberation is, conversely, the unyielding preservation and recognition of memory—in culture, tradition, land, and place.

In opposition to power systems that necessitate the erasure of memory from marginalized groups for the sake of assimilation, Design Justice posits that the narratives we craft about places matter. Architecture, as a language, equips us with the means to narrate complex stories—because stories are powerful. They embed themselves in our locales, from neighborhoods to blocks to buildings, transforming memory into a monument. Thus, the place becomes significant. The cultural narratives that we allow to prevail in the built environment give birth to places of culture—because culture matters profoundly.

In this studio, we endeavor to confront and ideate upon the physical manifestations of spatial reparation that are necessary as frameworks for liberation. We will investigate and propose designs that both challenge the past and offer scaffolding for a liberated future.

Magna Parens Materia

In the last century, architects have been driven by market conditions to build with the highest possible combination of CO2-heavy materials, including steel and reinforced concrete frames hung with glass, aluminum, and fired clay bricks. The studio will speculate on the potential to turn construction from a major CO2 contributor to a sequestration industry — a strategic device — that demonstrates the ingenuity of an architectural response. Our model of inquiry will focus on stone as an ancient actor on the stage shared by architecture and engineering with the goal of lowering the carbon footprint of new midrise buildings. Aided by recent technological development, this ancient material is in search of a new language. The studio will seek opportunities to explore the contemporary understanding of how to design in stone in more meaningful ways.

We will begin with a speed course in material properties: structural, financial, and carbon cost, tactile and textural. This exercise will allow us to make informed choices that assemble a carbon-negative result while prompting a theoretical position that internalizes the technical as part of the intellectual apparatus for the project students will design.

Our base ingredients of stone and timber both need next to no processing and are validated by the climate crisis. Timber, a heavy carbon sequestrator, and stone enable the dramatic reduction of reinforced concrete and steel. Simultaneously limiting the mediums in this way defies normal architectural thought, largely because of practical differences between architectural elements. The roof that protects from the elements, walls that support buildings, and floors that support people must all be considered. This dichotomy will force inventions that transform and evolve our thinking.

Stone will need a comprehensive introduction. To this end, we have asked “source to product” suppliers and specialists to tour quarries, stonemasons’ workshops, and completed buildings. As we are setting the design project within an existing London masterplan, Earls Court development, these tours will occur across London and Belgium.

We will encourage learning that recalibrates practice and is immediately applicable in the real-world, that purposely engages with topics of building technology, sustainability, and codes, but more importantly, establish more reciprocity between technical and conceptual aspects such as aesthetic currency.

Students will be evaluated based on conceptual clarity, experimental representation, and design execution of individual projects. We will encourage the use of models as part of the methodology. The instructors will teach both in person and online, with details noted on the syllabus. 

Climate Justice

Recent discourse around climate change—including debates about the Anthropocene, Green New Deal legislation, the dire warnings of the IPCC, to name a few—increasingly make evident that climate change is much more than a technological problem of carbon mitigation. Taking recent geological and climatic changes as symptoms of deeper structural challenges, this class will address climate change as fundamentally a problem of social and environmental injustice. The class will argue for the necessity of studying theories of justice, inequality, and structural violence along with climate science, policy, and international diplomacy. In our search for climate justice, the class will trace various forms of climate activism within the history of environmental movements, explore non-Western forms of knowledge as key critiques and logics of action, and evaluate concrete suggestions for radical reform. We will discuss how climate justice as a framework of concern is both universal and specific, and we will critically engage ideas of justice at different scales, from the local to the global, with careful attention to context. We will ultimately ask what new kinds of practices, knowledges, and collaborations are necessary to build more just and responsible relationships between people and the nonhuman world, and with each other.

Redefining Urban Design

The field of urban design is undergoing a process of major transformation. Josep Lluís Sert’s initial definition as the space between planning and architecture, emphasizing the culture of cities as “civic culture” and proposing pedestrian interaction as the “underlying coherence” of the work developed at different scales, followed his reinterpretation of the CIAM. This began at the GSD in 1956 with the Urban Design Program and has evolved continuously for seven decades. This Seminar sets out to contribute to redefining urban design by enhancing theoretical principles and exploring innovative practices in the field.

Industrialization and progress guided development throughout the 20th century, resulting in financial globalization, and the advancement of forms of communication and digital development. The emergence of new forms of economy that impact the conception and design of the city allows us to consider more creative alternatives to those of the prevailing globalization process. This is the framework in which we wish to situate discussion in the Seminar.

Defining this new urban field calls for a more in-depth study of projects that represent the roles or issues that urban design can address. It also requires us to produce design actions and strategies within the urbanistic discipline through research and practice. The design of the present-day city must consider environmental and climate challenges, digital impact, a knowledge-based economy, multiple and changing modes of mobility, as well as the more demanding aspirations of an older and more educated population.

The Seminar method is based on facing today’s challenges by considering ongoing projects or research that allow us to understand that development is not linear and univocal; rather there are open and varied solutions centring on housing, energy, transport, etc. The process is a plural one, and the solutions in each case depend largely on the context, including aspirations, limitations, and available technologies.

The Seminar is based on research into sixteen topics that define current thinking and practice of urban design and projecting them into the future. We are selecting certain topics and case studies to advance the discussion of theoretical background, design tools, development process, and the conditions of agency and governance. Topics are structured within a theoretical framework, using relevant case studies and key projects to show the scope and conditions for the development of each chapter. Research is organized in four blocks corresponding to different scales and approaches, and an introduction.

The four main blocks are:
   – Long-term strategies operating at different scales.
   – Systematic forms of transition from the present-day city.
   – Infilling and upgrading.
   – Experimenting with new design issues.

Above all, we will be interested in the way this discipline develops plans, projects, and strategies, within the extraordinary complexity of today’s urban design field. Because, to quote Lesley Lokko at the 2023 Venice Biennale, “it is impossible to build a better world if we cannot first imagine it”.

Contextual Capacities

Urban analysis, understanding of ‘context,’ and specificity of a place, have long been intrinsic to architectural and urban discourse and practice. Today, this discussion is as relevant as ever, gaining renewed urgency in the face of numerous crises—be they environmental or related to equity and inclusion.

The course will explore the study and analysis of cities, context, and situations to formulate spatial interventions and urban transformations. It does so by examining existing theory and various architectural practices, highlighting the ‘context’ as an environmental, cultural, and social resource in the development and envisioning of spatial interventions.

Moreover, it provides tools for analyzing and understanding urban structures, fabrics, and situations, and for translating these into architectural potentials and spatial imaginaries. It further engages in critical discussions, on how to create meaningful spatial interventions and urban transitions, that can foster more sustainable, livable, and equitable cities.

This seminar’s aim is to establish a method to analyze and use existing urban situations and context as a driver in design development. Students will work in pairs for this assignment, which consists of two parts.

In Part One, they will analyze how the existing context and the analysis hereof can inform spatial interventions by reviewing literature and examining current and past architectural practices. All students will read and discuss the provided literature, with each group responsible for reviewing one text. Additionally, each student group will analyze a contemporary urban design project. The focus is on how existing urban situations influence spatial interventions and designs, exploring the relationship between urban situations and context, concept, and final design. The analysis also addresses the specific tools/methods used in the analysis of urban situations and contexts and in the translation into design concepts. Students also evaluate how the spatial intervention aims to improve the area and express their opinions on its success.

In Part Two, each student group individually analyzes a designated Boston site using tools from Part One. It is crucial to explore various analytical tools across scales and subjects, critically assessing analyses in relation to the case-study area and discussing them in terms of identified potentials for spatial interventions. Based on their analysis, each group will propose a spatial intervention that positively impacts the site and context, addressing aspects such as community building, resilience, connectivity, or housing. The concepts should be presented through diagrams or collages, serving as initial ideas pointing towards the development of design projects.

This course has an irregular schedule. Please see the course syllabus for details.

Landscape Representation II

The Landscape Representation II course will examine the relationship between terrain and the dynamic landscape it supports and engenders.

The course explores and challenges the representational conventions of land-forming and supports a landscape architecture design process that posits the landscape as a relational assemblage of dynamic physical and temporal forces. It investigates the making of landforms through its inherent material performance in relation to ecological processes that describe its connectivity to the ordering and making of the landscape which is a reciprocation of forces between itself and its context at specific scales.

Measures of time will be utilized to describe and design the landscape through a comparison of sequence and event, and their intervals, rates, and duration in relation to spatial forces and flows. Time infuses the material reality of the landscape through states of formation: from those that signify stability, through sequences that are predictable and observable processes of change, to those that are uncertain and instantaneous.

Representation is approached as an activity of thinking and making in which knowledge is generated through the work. This facilitates an iterative process of reflection in action, enabling testing in which new knowledge informs subsequent design decisions. The course will introduce methods of associative and generative modelling, and quantitative and qualitative analysis visualized through multiple forms of media. These are decision-making models conceived to imbue interaction between evidence-based variables and design input.

Lectures and lab exercises will provide the foundation for exploration and discussion and exposure to a set of digital techniques for analysing and generating landform processes to advance technical and conceptual ability, as well as to provide a point of departure for an in-depth awareness of landscape precedents and representational techniques.

It aims to provide students with an understanding of landscape as a set of complex systems in which duration and matter are encoded within, and driven by, a changing landscape. The course engages in the advanced exploration of digital media, with an emphasis on responsive and performative modelling as well as the fluid transition between documentation and speculation, 2d and 3d, static and dynamic, and digital and analogue media.

Informal Robotics

This course teaches how to create original robotic devices made of light, compliant – informal – materials.

New fabrication techniques are transforming the field of robotics. Rather than rigid parts connected by mechanical connectors, robots can now be made of folded paper, carbon laminates or soft gels. They can be formed fully integrated from a 3D printer rather than assembled from individual components. Informal Robotics draws on cutting-edge research from leading labs, in particular, Harvard’s Micro Robotics Laboratory which has created unique designs for ambulatory and flying robots, end-effectors, medical instruments and other applications.

We will explore informal robotics from multiple perspectives, culminating with the design of original devices displaying animated intelligence in real-time. Going beyond traditional engineering approaches, we will also explore new opportunities for design at the product, architectural, and urban scales.

Techniques:
Hands-on:  Working with the GSD’s Fab Lab we are creating a kit of parts that will be available to all enrolled students. With the kit, you can create a wide range of folding mechanisms controlled by on-board miniature electronics.
Software / Simulation: Software workshops will be offered on Fusion 360 and Grasshopper to simulate robotic performance within a virtual environment.

Topics:
– Kinematics: design techniques for pop-ups, origami, and soft mechanisms.
– Fabrication: methods: for composite materials, laminated assembly, self-folding, and integrated flexures – the kit of parts will allow for hands-on exploration.
– Controls: how to actuate movement and program desired behavior. Topics include servos, linear actuators, and use of Arduino actuator control.
– Applications: takes us beyond purely technological concerns, contextualizing Informal Robotics within larger trends where materials, manufacturing and computation are starting to merge

Natural Histories for Troubled Times, or, Revisiting the ‘Entangled Bank’

This seminar looks at our (troubled) times, its toxic landscapes and eco-unfriendly townscapes, through the lens of natural history. By “lens” we can think immediately about optical instruments that bring the world into view, from the first microscopes that revealed legions of minute beasties and beauties, to scanning electron microscopes, which create their own phantasms of visual mastery. What makes this materiality of vision so inviting is that intrinsic to the craft, practice, and indeed the science of natural history are the techniques of observing, representing, writing, drawing, modeling, collecting, sorting, naming, and knowing that are consistent with our own work as architects and landscape architects. The natural history tradition—which at one point in its own history shifted from a descriptive to a historical art—long promoted the notion of the kingdoms of nature: mineral, vegetable, animal. Living amidst their ruins, we will attend to the ways in which the social, political, and especially economic (i.e. ecological) ideas and ideals that supported these kingdoms fell apart, producing far more curious and complicated affiliations and entanglements. For the sake of focus (see the discussion of lenses above), the narrators and objects of this seminar will be drawn mainly from two large phyla: Arthropoda  (insects, arachnids, crustaceans) and Annelida (segmented worms). That said, some other sorts of creatures will inevitably crawl, wing, or wiggle their way into our discourse. These relatively small beings, all of them “spineless,” play a tremendous role in our lived and inhabited world, which we will examine through the art, language, craft, and literature of natural history. In these troubled times we need natural history more than ever to explain to ourselves, while looking out for, peering back from, or projecting onto our environment, what nature has become and/or where it has gone.

 

Material Practice and its Agency

This seminar introduces an understanding of material discourse in design and architecture that affects cultural, social, economic, and political issues. In addition to their pragmatic function—as the basis for construction means and methods—materials also carry a long history of human civilization and tradition. This seminar aims to embed material practice into the history and culture of its origins, resource utilization, craftsmanship, fabrication and its role in performance within building assembly and beyond to its atmospheric effect both as perceptual experience and thermodynamic performances.We will look at the material use  through the lens of various global crises and its impact such as environmental, or pandemic when latent issues are exposed and impact is accelerated. Material practice carries affects such as ambience and atmosphere.It impacts acoustics, lighting, tactility, aesthetics and environmental performance. This seminar aims to bring forth more comprehensive, complex and holistic understandings of material culture which varies in impact at different event scales—from personal to communal and local to global. Topics include specific focus on contemporary material practice such as wood, glass, metal and in addition ethics and econology of material culture and study of waste in material culture. Evolving nature of lighting practice is included as performative and atmospheric component of material practice.

We will look at a range of fabrication methods—handmade, mechanical and digital—within different economies, from vernacular building materials and techniques to new and advanced material explorations. 

Each student will be expected to choose one material practice as a focus for research, exploring its application and the possibilities for its role, meaning, effects and message in contemporary practice.