Leveraging Boston’s Building Boom to Advance Equity

A transit-oriented development on Dorchester Bay is a case study in creating ties to institutions and diverse neighborhoods on the south side of the city.  For the past ten years, Boston/Cambridge area has seen explosive growth due to its global attraction as a center for technology innovation.  Development for “meds and eds” (major hospitals and research institutions) is fueling enterprise districts such as Kendall Square, Seaport, and the planned Allston Enterprise campus.  The challenges each district faces are to keep them attractive and welcoming for all, provide access for jobs and housing to surrounding communities, and maintain the quality of urban design for which Boston is justifiably admired.

Our site for developing a mix of R+D lab space, housing, retail, and community services is a 20+ acre parcel immediately adjacent to the JFK red line station, where metro, commuter rail, bus, and bikeways all make it extraordinarily accessible.  Facing Dorchester Bay and the Harborwalk, the site is part of the Columbia Point penninsula- the home of UMass Boston, and the JFK Library. Responding to issues of resilience and flooding will be key to imagining the potential of this landfill site.

The goal of the studio will be to unlock the potential of this extraordinary site to provide economic opportunity through employment, access to services, new community facilities, and connecting the neighborhoods to the water.

Wild Ways: A Fifth Ecology for Metropolitan Los Angeles

Playing off Reyner Banham’s classic Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, the studio will explore themes of connectivity, resilience and landscape infrastructure under the twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene. The work will interrogate and explore what a system of landscape infrastructure for connectivity across Southern California’s biodiversity hotspots might look like—in the face of growing urbanization and climate change. Proposals will embrace regional networks of wildlife crossings that are generated from the primary lenses of different endangered species; that layer in humans as both users and audience (on/in the crossings versus driving underneath or over them); and that account for intensifying threats of wildfire.  The goal is to invent the basis for a new metropolitan ecology—a mix of culture, geography, environment, and lifestyle (in Banham’s terms)—adapted to a rapidly evolving and warming climate.

The studio will be jointly sponsored by Arc Solutions, “an interdisciplinary partnership working to facilitate new thinking, new methods, new materials and new solutions for wildlife crossing structures” (their words), and the National Wildlife Federation.  The work will be used in part to demonstrate to public agencies and organizations across the North American continent the ways in which multifunctional landscape infrastructures can be imagined to re-knit ecosystems and communities in compelling ways.

OTTAWA COUNTY REMADE: Toxic Transformations in the Tri-State Lead and Zinc District, Oklahoma

OTTAWA COUNTY REMADE is the second in a series of design studios based in North-East Oklahoma that explores toxic land regeneration, indigenous ecologies and their combined agency in creating environmental and social equity using critical practices of landscape design and making. The study site is Ottawa County, OK. at the edge of the Ozark Highlands and eastern boundary of the Tallgrass Prairie. This site is the largest and most dangerous polluted landscape of former mining works in the United States, it is part of the Neosho/ Spring River riparian corridor, and is home to tribal and non-tribal communities based around former mining centers including the abandoned ‘ghost towns’ of Picher and Cardin. The land and riparian ecology of the region has been devastated by acid mine drainage, land settlement and waste ‘mountains’ of mining spoil and the riverway systems in the larger County area are compromised by pollution, flooding and continued damming of the Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees to the south.
The intellectual question of the studio is– how does a tribal and non-tribal culture express itself through design in environmental form in a time of devastation, repair, recovery and transformation? The studio will imagine alternative design futures working with the local Quapaw Nation as well as non-tribal communities. A field trip (subject to approval by GSD Administration) will take place where the class will be hosted by tribal leaders and the non-profit LEAD Agency Inc. of Miami, OK.

Working in groups or individually, and importantly with tribal organizations and local experts and researchers, class members will give spatial organization and advance detail design proposals for the transformation of, for example – the mining waste mountains and the intense pollution of local riverways, while reimagining at the same time, the future form of the larger County area with regard to local infrastructure, agriculture, cultural programs and identity. Class members will first investigate a range of superfund sites located on tribal lands and then learn and test out core and advanced techniques of abandoned land reclamation and the indigenous understanding of ecology set within this intense cultural and ecological setting.  The studio is open to students in all GSD degree programs.

Below, Above, and Beyond: Abandoned Underground Subway Infrastructures as Urban Form and Experience

This studio aims to propose a near-future scenario for the abandoned underground infrastructures of the subway system of Boston and its vicinity, with a focus on Brattle Tunnel underneath Harvard Square. During the first six weeks, students will look at all of the defunct underground infrastructures owned by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) MBTA to “design” a system in which those decommissioned spaces could operate again, not as a part of the subway network, but with particular themes that would suggest a new type of public space in the era of climate change. Then, in the second half, students will focus on Brattle Tunnel, within their own designed networks.

The Boston and Cambridge subway system is the oldest in the US, and its history is fundamentally related to urban growth and the shaping of the citizens' everyday lives. Since the subway’s first test run between Park St. Station and Harvard Sq. in 1910, “commutability” between Cambridge and its neighboring towns increased, affecting the settlement patterns and housing regulations of the towns. However, the evolution of the city also made some of infrastructures decommissioned, and now there are a number of such spaces underneath very prime urban locations, which invite us to imagine our future leveraged by them. Can we reveal them to operate once again, but this time as a new urban form and experience to help us live better lives in the era of climate change?

In Part 1, each pair of students will work to propose a network with its own theme, such as hydrology, subsoil, new consumption culture, cultural venue, emergency handling, wild life, and climate control. Although the focus will be on these underground spaces, you must clearly aim to find the relation between “the below” and “the above,” and what lies "beyond." The purpose of the Part 1 is to understand the individual abandoned spaces in a holistic view, and to configure a potential system that can provide a new role and value to those spaces. Lectures and workshops with guests will help students create speculative proposals that are also realistic.   After the mid-review, students will work individually (or choose to continue to work in pairs) and focus on Brattle Tunnel to revitalize the 430 ft long tunnel in the networks proposed in Part 1. It is crucial to look at the tunnel as part of a holistic physical context that consists of the web of open spaces, rivers, drainage systems, roads, groundwater, soil, subsoil, and air. The genuine charm of the empty tunnel and its spatial implications in relation to the Charles River and other surrounding landscapes will provide students with an opportunity to reimagine the way in which the public occupies and experiences the tight-knit fabric of Harvard Square.

This is an intense design studio. Your accumulated composite body of knowledge, not only from the studios but also from other classes and outside experience, will need to be brought into the design process. The studio must collectively pursue a high level of specificity in its plans and sections. The studio is open to students in all GSD degree programs, although landscape architectural approaches will be asked throughout the semester (i.e., capability of working with various scales, material exploration, vision for public space in the context of Boston/Cambridge, and climate change adaptation).  

CANARY IN THE MINE II: Wildfires and Rural Communities in Guinea-Bissau

Indigenous burning practices in mitigating wildfires in Africa are still an overlooked topic in landscape stewardship, food security, and community wellbeing. This gap is particularly true for the rural communities of Guinea-Bissau— known to host large tracks of the African Forest Belt and to expand the West-Africa’s Agricultural Frontier with the evolving cashew nut agri-business. Guinea-Bissau’s dependence on agro-pastoral activities makes it one of the countries in West Africa with the highest vulnerability risk in the context of climatic uncertainty. While increasing the economic stability of many families, the expansion of cash crops and the regulatory frameworks imposed to protect the African Forest Belt outlaws the practice of cultural burning central to the shifting-cultivation traditional methods. These factors have debilitated local food security and have triggered fuel accumulation in the forests and savannahs—leading to the increase of wildfire occurrences in the last decades. The challenges posed by climatic degradation and international protocols on bio-diversity protection and greenhouse gas emission reduction have forced the national government to intensify the exclusion of queimadas (cultural burns) in traditional shifting cultivation and pastoral practices—perceived as environmentally damaging and non-compliant with fire-management policies. Thus, the opposing goals of the rural communities, the government, and conservation institutions result in conflicts with impacts on community stability, cultural sovereignty, and environmental health. Participatory fire co-management seems an emerging strategy adopted by some nations facing similar challenges, however it is still a far objective in Guinea-Bissau’s political ambitions. The CANARY IN THE MINE (II) investigates landscape choreographies and techniques in cooperation with local communities to build adaptive capacity scenarios aiming for sturdier landscape stewardship, food security, and community wellbeing.

This course will meet weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Silvia Benedito will be in residence on the following days: February 15, 17; March 8,10; April 5,7, 28; and for final reviews.
All other class sessions will be held via Zoom on all other Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Utopia: Forms of Community

We need new forms of housing for a more sustainable and more just way of life.

Architecture is a language of form. Only by radically reconsidering architectural form can we find new forms of living and new forms of community.

In our studio Forms of Community will look beyond function and typology to find a new sensibility for a new way of life.

We will study the examples of leading protagonists in art and architecture such as Lina Bo Bardi, Louise Bourgeois, Denise Scott Brown, Agnes Martin and Richard Artschwager.

Five prototypical modern housing plans will provide the physical base, the foundations for the projects in the studio. We will design projects that rise from the morphological structure of these utopian visions, albeit on sites with new programmes and confronting present and future needs.
In the studio, the students will design a cooperative apartment building in Boston.

The studio’s methodology will include drawings, physical models, photography, lectures as well as discussions with practitioners, building cooperatives and developers from Switzerland and the United States.

The studio trip will lead us to utopian sites in the South West including Marfa, Taliesen West, Arcosanti and the Double Negative.

This course will meet weekly on Thursdays and Fridays.
Oliver Lütjens will be in residence on the following days: January 27, 28; February 3, 4; March 10, 11, 31; April 1 and for final reviews.
Thomas Padmanabhan will be in residence on the following days: January 27, 28; February 17, 18; March 31; April 1, 14, 15 and for final reviews.
Class will be held via Zoom on all other Thursdays and Fridays.

Tokyo: Artifice and the Social World

The architectural and urban projects of this studio are focused on the potentials of the declining, yet evocative area of Tokyo known as Bakuroch? Yokoyamach?. This shrinking neighborhood is made up of a diverse range of business. Historically, the neighborhood has been known as the blue collar garment district of the city. Yet the character of the neighborhood is changing. Recently, the area has become the subject of increasing interest by a younger generation of people who are seeking new ways to live and work there, a prospect welcomed by the older generation of residents.

Unlike the zoning regulations of many western cities, Tokyo’s policies are more open to the mixing and adjacency of functions. This situation creates many exciting opportunities for architecture and design. These include the use of both infill and open sites, interiors, modification of the existing building stock, roofscapes, gardens and landscapes.

Polemically, the work of the studio is situated between the prevalent large-scale projects of major developers and the very small-scale interventions of traditional neighborhoods. How can architecture, urban design, and landscape play a significant role in the transformation of the district without resorting to the hegemony of a mega-project? Can we construct a coherent and systematic urban design strategy for the district, based on the proximity of multi-scalar design proposals?

Each member of the studio, either individually or with another student, will be asked to develop a unique programmatic set of themes of their choice. These programs can be linked to a diversity of project types and precedents, each with its own distinct site/s. From workshops to a kindergarten, from residential projects to a small garment museum and garden, from a vertical/sectional public building to a transportation hub and community rooms, the intention is for the combination of individual projects (artifacts) from the studio to form the basis for the physical and social revitalization of this part of Tokyo.

The outcome of the studio will be presented in the form of detailed designs with drawings at different scales, models, and renderings. The student projects will be included on the Japan Story website and in a planned publication.

Travel is planned to New York City’s garment district and to Miami to study parallel developments and neighborhoods- including new projects. All course travel is subject to change or cancellation. All travelers must follow University and local travel guidance pertaining to COVID-19, and should read through the GSD Travel and Safety Guidelines webpage prior to enrolling in a course with a travel component.

Some students may also be able to travel to Japan for further research of their project, perhaps as part of an independent study during the summer of 2022.

We will meet on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and also be joined by a number of advisors/consultants, from Japan as well as the United States.

 

 

Kit House

The studio will explore the potential convergence of the American twentieth century tradition of the Kit House (exemplified by the Sears Modern Homes of 1908-1940) with the ultra contemporary Off-Site Manufacturing (OSM) phenomenon, which is revolutionizing our perception of building. As such, this new studio extends (and re-focusses) the thorough exploration of OSM carried out in 2018 and 2019 in the two option studios themed 'Model As Building – Building As Model'. This studio will focus on the Kit House. The tone will be both pragmatic and speculative. We will explore the instrumental and disciplinary implications of the house as product design, pre-made fabrication, self-assembly, design documentation, packaging, and delivery, as against the background of the new OSM paradigm.

While affordable housing had been the vocation of OSM pretty much throughout the twentieth century, need no longer the dominant factor. Desire in all its contemporary forms is now equally important (think consumer politics, digital technology, social media culture, and money).

 

This course will meet weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
George Legendre will be in residence on the following days: January 25, 27; February 1, 3, 8, 10; March 1, 3, 22, 24; April 12, 14 and for final reviews.
Class will be held via Zoom on all other Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Tall, Lean, In-between

The studio will consider three recent challenges facing the design of tall residential buildings in London: the stringent requirements for their careful placement and contextual efficacy in the city, the shift towards low carbon construction, and the provision of amenities and open spaces for dwelling units severed from the ground.

Our response will be framed by three interrelated themes at their respective operative scales. The first, Tall, recognizes that this vertical building type has always been an exception rather than the rule in London. Its troubled history, as failed mass-produced modernist tower blocks in the 1960s to its recent use as a tool for excessive densification in service of speculative capital, has cast doubts on its continued relevance. On the other hand, its modest footprint relative to its height, is still instrumental towards the provision of much needed affordable housing on brown field sites across London. The design of a tall building thus should transcend the justification by numbers approach towards the consideration of its role as a punctuator in a low-rise city. In other words, as an urban artifact that embodies and reifies the idea of collective living that simultaneously acts to cohere the fragments of a city that grew by increments and chance.

The second, Lean, deals with the potential of thinking about tall building structures pared down to their bare minimum to achieve low carbon construction. We will approach this through the design of hybrid structures – primary steel or concrete frame with secondary timber structure – to mitigate fire safety requirements for buildings taller than 18m. This lean hybrid structures offer the potential of reversible and flexible space in housing design, a reconfigurable tectonic that prolongs its life span by eluding programmatic redundancies.  

In-between, the third theme, addresses the predicament of stacking large amount of dwelling units above ground, severing them from amenities and open spaces. The provision of these in-between spaces – between private dwelling and common spaces, and between indoor and outdoor temperature zones – will enable us to rethink the design of forecourts, lobbies, corridors, vestibules, hallways, terraces, patios, balconies, and loggias as spaces to dwell in rather than to merely pass through. As such, they allow us to conceive of the in-between spaces for work, leisure and repose as distinctive and yet connected rooms.

We will be working on a live site, in Ledbury Estate, London. Located along Old Kent Road, in the borough of Southwark. The current plans by Southwark Council and voted by the estate’s residence, calls for the demolition and replacement of four 13-storey housing blocks built in 1968 that has deteriorated structurally. The design task is to design a cluster of tall residential buildings, comprising of affordable housing, workspaces, and communal amenities, following the themes of Tall, Lean, In-between.

Ian Lowrie, Associate at Serie Architects will join the studio as Teaching Associate. We will be working with Paul Karakusevic, architect and masterplanner of Ledbury Estate regeneration scheme. James Masini (Development Manager), Patricia Lewin (New Homes Project Manager), and Osama Shoush (Regeneration Project Manager) of Southwark Council, will be our guide and critic as we approach the complex and challenging task of designing a new generation of tall buildings for Ledbury Estate.

This course will meet weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Christopher Lee will be in residence on the following days: January 28; February 10, 11, 24, 25; March 11, 31; April 1, 14 and for final reviews.
Ian Lowrie will be in residence on the following days: January 25, 28; March 8, 11; April 14, 15, 29 and for final reviews.
Class will be held via Zoom on all other Tuesdays and Fridays.

Eco Folly – Design

Our design research studio takes the folly as a typological springboard for coalescing formal creativity and sustainable imperatives. Whether at the scale of the structure, garden, or machine, the folly is a playful moniker in which the useless, the mad, the extreme, the theatrical, or the daring are made to intervene in both intimate and civic spaces. With sculptural and fantastical properties in mind, we use the folly opportunistically as a vehicle to foreground issues of materiality, micro-climate, and environmental response. For us, the folly offers a means to translate theory into practice; by leveraging its discursive status, diverse scale, and programmatic flexibility, we aim to create a space of design experimentation in which participants will explore the behavior of materials, understand the life-cycle of buildings, and evaluate sustainable consequences.

Environmental implications will ground our work: How might we imagine buildings to be more self-sufficient and self-sustaining through a deeper understanding of fundamental techniques without an over-reliance on digital technology? How might we re-wire networks of production, distribution, and consumption that are more tailored to environmental resources as well as regional and local conditions? How might we reconfigure the folly to focus on innovative techniques of ventilation, touch-the-earth-lightly, and optimization of land management, siting, and landscape? How can the concepts of pleasure and beauty be daringly connected to concepts of green architecture? How can the folly act as a precursor to the act of building itself, nesting responsive design parameters into design thinking?

Invited expert consultants will play a role in the studio and seminar through presentations, workshops, and discussions. The outcomes of the studio will take three forms: written, made, and measured, which taken together, will be the basis of an exhibit at House Zero. The studio and seminar are generously funded by the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities.

NB: Taught in conjunction with the seminar HIS-4480 in which studio participants are strongly encouraged to enroll.