Ecosystem Restoration

Given the current speed of habitat and species loss caused by human development, the restoration of degraded ecosystems is one of the greatest challenges humankind is facing. For this reason, the United Nations declared the current decade (2021-2030) as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. This global effort will require experts on ecosystem science, management and design. This holistic approach will allow for a deeper understanding of how ecosystems recover from human disturbance and how we can use this knowledge to increase the currently limited performance of restoration practice. This course is particularly suited for students with interests in the natural component of landscape architecture, conservation, ecological engineering, or ecosystem management in a broad sense. This course is cross-listed with the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, which will allow students from both disciplines to exchange their knowledge in a multidirectional learning environment where we all will address real world restoration cases. We will learn how ecosystems recover from human disturbance to apply that knowledge to a real restoration project that students will develop. We will have key inputs from guest lectures coming from environmental consultants with many years of experience restoring ecosystems worldwide. They will help us to find targeted tools to support, design, and monitor ecosystems in both urban and natural environments. We will have field trips to restored sites where we would discuss with local managers or practitioners the outcomes of restoration practice. At least one previous course in ecology or a similar topic is required. This course will arm you with one of the most important tools to work with and for nature in the coming decades.

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

This course will meet for the first time in Gund 109 on Tuesday, January 24th.

Jointly Listed Course: SEAS ES256

 

 

Structures in Landscape Architecture, Joint & Detail

This seminar/workshop explores how to design and make landscapes that are rationally constructed and expressively convincing. This search is focused through the lens of structural understanding. Members of the class will explore how structural principles are translated through techniques of three-dimensional drawing into practical and expressive made landscapes.

Weekly Course Format:
Lecture on syllabus topic.
Case study.
Workshop/discussion.

Topics
1. A visual understanding of structural principles. 
2. Constructive drawing – haptic three-dimensional thinking.
3. How the structural diagrams of landscape elements are translated into a material/detail language.
4. Case studies of historical and contemporary structures. 

Course Objectives and Outcomes
Each student will:
1. Understand structural principals.
2. Understand structurally based, three-dimensional detail design.
3. Develop a personal practice of detail design that translates structural understanding into a material, made reality. 

Method of Evaluation
1. Participation in weekly discussion groups.
2. Successful completion of in class workshop assignments. 
3. Successful completion of a final project assignment. 

Prerequisites
No prerequisites. Class is open to all students in all departments.

Automation in Practice: Building the future of Architecture(s), Engineering, and Construction

Population is estimated to exceed 10 billion people by the year 2050 requiring an immediate doubling of productivity in the AEC industry which includes Architecture (in all forms), Engineering, and Construction. At the same time, global resource scarcity is projected to limit access to basic resources with over half that population in areas where water is scarce. An already dire shortage of skilled labor has been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the perceived great resignation. Automation in AEC has the potential to address similar opportunities and challenges that automated manufacturing processes have helped to resolve in other industries resulting in decreased production time, greater material efficiencies, higher labor productivity, better worker health and safety, compensation for labor shortages, reduced environmental impact, and enhanced design opportunity, Put simply, automation has the potential to enable the AEC industry to safely meet the global building and infrastructural needs of an increasing population. Many exciting technological developments and industry trends signal that the time is ripe for automation to take hold as we proceed into the future of AEC.

Within this context, the Automation in Practice will explore automation across the AEC industry and includes thematic areas relating to design automation and design for automation; Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) strategies; automated heavy machinery and equipment; off and on-site automation and robotics; and aspects of automation applied to building and landscape design, building and infrastructure production, and off and onsite construction. Beyond the geometric exuberance that often characterizes conversations about computational design and digital fabrication, Automation in Practice, will address the ways in which automation technologies are impacting the way the world builds and will support the future human needs through the built environment.  Students will gain contextual understand of why, how, and ways to engage in the automated future of AEC. Throughout the semester, special consideration will be given to the geographic, economic, cultural, and political forces that are enabling the introduction of automated tooling globally in all levels of access to resources, and to those that stand in the way.

Given the breadth of subject matter and opportunities in all aspects of design-to-construction processes for buildings, landscapes, infrastructure, etc. students from all disciplines are invited to participate and course assignments can be tailored to related to all disciplines and research interests within the programs at the GSD.

This course will hold its first meeting online on Wednesday, January 25th. Please see the Canvas site for the Zoom link.

Plants and Placemaking – New Ecologies for a Rapidly Changing World

In the face of crises spanning pandemics, political turmoil, and the rapid degradation of the planet’s natural systems—all within a backdrop of myriad inequalities—the power of plants in shaping human experience has been proven. Erosive pressures associated with changes to climate have placed global ecologies and plant communities under assault, yet abundant and resilient life still adapts and flourishes in most places. This course will encourage students to observe these patterns and to learn from context so that we can place the healing and restorative qualities of plants, essential to sustaining life on this planet, in the foreground of our work as landscape architects.

To reimagine the revegetation of a place after catastrophe or amidst the pressures of development and the complexities of human movement, we must first understand context by digging into the past to examine what ecologies were there before the present state occurred. With these informed perspectives, we can begin to repair fragmented natural systems, preserve (and create) habitat, sequester carbon, and buffer communities from destructive weather and climate—all while embracing the realities of how people gather, work, and live. Plants define the character of place; they shape who we are and who we become. We must get this right or the same patterns in more chaotic contexts will simply reemerge.

This course is open to those who crave a creative and interpretive, yet pragmatic, approach toward utilizing plants to create landscapes that actively rebuild systems stretching far beyond site boundaries. Expressive and iterative weekly exercises will encourage rapid design that inspires students to explore natural and designed plant communities. Conventional and non-conventional planting typologies will be examined.

Together we will seek new and innovative ideas for how to restore biological function to the land. This course will not be a comprehensive botanical overview of the history of plants; however, it will reinforce important methodologies for how to learn and research plants that can be translated to any locale, by studying individual vegetative features and characteristics. We will translate these investigations into design languages that can be applied in future design work.

This course will meet online for the first class on Monday, January 23rd. Please see Canvas site for Zoom link.

Graduating MLA students who have yet to meet the Ecology and Technology distributional elective requirement will be prioritized for enrollment in this course, up to the set enrollment cap, if they select the course first in the limited enrollment course lottery.

Advanced Applications in Sustainable Architecture

This elective seminar will provide a deeper dive into issues of evidence-based, high-performance, ecological building design.

The course is intended for MArch students, MDes students, and anyone with an interest in the environmental performance of buildings.  Diverse problem-solvers, with any one of a variety of backgrounds, such as design, engineering, materials, landscape architecture, and financial analysis are encouraged to enroll.

This is a project-based course in which students will work alone or in groups on a semester-long project.  The topic is flexible, so students may choose one of the following options for their project.

  1. 1. Students may join a team to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon design competition. (Since the competition offers multiple divisions, the class may form more than one team.)  
  2. 2. Students may develop a strategy within the built environment to help Harvard University meet its Climate Action Plan (Fossil Fuel Free by 2050).
  3. 3. Students may propose an alternate research or design project (perhaps in preparation for a thesis or dissertation).  

The class format consists of lectures, in-class exercises, group discussions, student presentations, and project-based strategy sessions (i.e. desk crits). The course will include multiple guest lectures from practitioners working on high-performance sustainable buildings.

The course will delve into topics of energy, including the importance of the timing of energy use and building design’s role in this increasingly important consideration.  It will also explore ecological issues beyond energy, such as durability/resilience, health, and water management.

Students will have the opportunity to learn hands-on skills through tutorials but may choose the area(s) in which to focus their attention.  Examples include learning or honing skills in whole-building energy simulation and/or daylight simulation.  (Students may either learn these skills for the first time, or dive deeper than in past courses, using the same or different software tools.)  Other skills could include hygrothermal (thermal and moisture) simulations, as well as mold-growth simulation, storm-water analysis, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of materials and construction methods, life-cycle cost analysis (construction costs and utility savings), or assessing societal cost of carbon emissions and related health savings.

It is recommended that students have had (or are concurrently enrolled in) some introduction to sustainable design/building science, such as 6121/6122 Environmental Systems; 5370 Environment, Economics, and Enterprise; or a similar course at another institution.

Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation

Maps both represent reality and create it. It is in the context of this contention that this course presents the fundamentals of mapping, spatial analysis, and visualization. In a design process, the act of mapping selectively narrates site conditions. By choosing what features, forces, and flows to highlight—and which to exclude-the designer creates the reality in which their intervention will be situated. This is only becoming more true, as urban space and populations are ever-more pervasively measured, monitored, and categorized by innumerable institutions. Such representations are often a designer's primary means of responding to a site. Designers are in the difficult position of approaching spatial datasets critically and as sites of contestation while also employing them in their work: propositionally, descriptively, and narratively.

Over the course of a semester, students will work extensively with techniques of spatial analysis. Using desktop GIS software, we will explore data sources, data models, overlays, map algebra, spatial statistics, terrain analysis, and suitability modeling, among other techniques of spatial representation. Students will learn to embed these techniques within larger design workflows.

Survey of Energy Technology (at SEAS)

Principles governing energy generation and interconversion. Current and projected world energy use. Selected important current and anticipated future technologies for energy generation, interconversion, storage, and end usage.

Recommended Prep: Calculus of a single variable, one semester of college-level physics, and familiarity with chemistry at the high school advanced placement level.

Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies IV

GSD 6242 is the fourth and final course in the Ecologies, Techniques and Technologies landscape core sequence. It is a required course for all MLA 1 and MLA 1 AP students. So far, this sequence of classes has introduced the practices of planting and design; grading, drainage and design; and ecology and design. The Poetics of Landscape Making addresses the relationship between materials, making, ideas, and design.

The material medium of landscape is constantly weathering and morphologically changing yet still needs to be shaped by a practical and rigorous constructional logic. Class members will learn traditional, current, and emerging practices of landscape making and their application to contemporary site conditions.

The ambition of the course is:
• To inculcate in each class member an understanding of practices of design development, detail design and documentation in landscape architecture.
• Address the making of landscape architecture and how this can shape use, formal expression and cultural identity in landscape architecture at a range of scales from that of a site to the individual detail.
• As with the other classes in the ETT sequence this course is directly related to the thinking and practice of the MLA 1 and MLA 1AP core studio sequence. In this class this relationship is summarized in the phrase: the meaning of a landscape is latent in the manner of it’s making.

This course addresses the interrelationships of a triad of concepts that shape a made landscape that embodies ideas. These concepts are defined and their role in the design development and detailing of a landscape are explained. The class will also teach the detail design practices that are used to shape and document a made landscape. The principle issue that the course address is that landscape design is not a linear trajectory from design abstraction to making but is rather an iterative dialogue between the triad of concepts.

 

Cases in Contemporary Construction

As the final component in the required sequence of technology courses, this professionally-oriented course develops an integral understanding of the design and construction of buildings and their related technologies: structural, constructional, and environmental. Building on fundamentals covered in GSD 6123: Construction Systems, the course looks in detail at examples of innovative construction techniques in wood, steel, and concrete structures. Building design and construction will be evaluated within the context in which technological innovation takes place by exploring the relationship of the principal project participants, such as designers, contractors, building product manufacturers, and the owner(s). On this, the course will introduce the fundamentals of managing design and construction projects as well as the principal project delivery methods and scheduling techniques. Aspects such as risk management and environmental and social impacts on projects will be introduced, as well as topics related to facilitating innovation and developing talent.

Class meetings concentrate on case studies of recent buildings, which students are expected to study prior to class meetings. Each main course theme will be introduced by a lecture, and certain cases may have participants from the project team as guest speakers. Detail drawings as well as issues of project and construction management are introduced for discussion. Computer applications on structures, construction, environmental control systems, and techniques and decision-making frameworks on managing projects and teams are an integral part of the course.

Prerequisites: GSD 6123, 6125, and 6229, or equivalent.