Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies IV

The fourth and final course in the Ecologies, Techniques and Technologies core sequence, GSD 6242 continues to develop an understanding of, and promote skill in, the discipline and practice of landscape architecture. Through the topic of soft engineering as it relates to landscape design, site construction and technological imagination class members will be required to learn both traditional core techniques and the creative and skillful reordering of these techniques.  Soft Engineering is broadly defined here as the application of landscape construction and management techniques as the actions of both design and implementation. It should be noted that the term soft engineering is unique to the medium of landscape, a medium that is constantly weathering and morphologically changing yet still needs to be shaped by a practical and rigorous logic. In this, landscape technology differs from architectural technology and other design arts at the GSD as it deals with the indeterminacy of the landscape medium relative to a particular context and site yet within desired performative and aesthetic configurations.

The ambition of the course is to advance in each class member an understanding of soft engineering through both core and emerging current practices of detail design and implementation in landscape architecture, address the interdependence between site, design, ecology, craft, imagination and innovation in the making of landscape architecture and how this can inform function, form and design expression and identity in landscape architecture at a range of scales from that of the region to the individual detail. Classroom presentations and in-class workshop and research demonstrations will be augmented in the second half of the semester by guest lectures by landscape researchers in technology and field visits in the South Boston area.

Class members will carry out a series of technology assignments throughout the semester related to the concurrent STU 1212 Landscape Core Studio IV.

 

 

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.

Structural Design 1

This course introduces students to the analysis and design of structural systems. The fundamental principles of statics, structural loads, and rigid body equilibrium are considered first. The course continues with the analysis and design of cables, columns, beams, and trusses. The structural design of steel follows, culminating in the consideration of building systems design. The quantitative understanding of interior forces, bending moments, stresses, and deformations are an integral part of the learning process throughout the course. Students are expected to have completed all prerequisites in math and physics.

Objectives:

– Provide an understanding of the behavior of structural systems
– Introduce basic structural engineering concepts and simple calculations applicable in the early stages of the design process in order to select and size the most appropriate structural systems
– Teach the engineering language in an effort to improve communication with design colleagues

Topics:

– Statics (equilibrium of loads and force reactions)
– Load Modeling (load types, flow of force, and load calculations)
– Interior Forces (axial, shear, and bending moment diagrams)
– Mechanics of Materials (stress, strain, elasticity, thermal considerations)
– Analysis and Design of Columns (slender v. compact column design)
– Analysis and Design of Hanging Cables
– Analysis and Design of Arches (funicularity)
– Analysis and Design of 2D Trusses (method of joints, method of sections)
– Analysis and Design of Beams (flexural stress, cross-sectional properties)
– Steel Design (allowable stress design, ultimate limit state design, yield stress)
– Building System Design

We will be placing a copy of “Structures” (7th Edition): Daniel Schodek, Martin Bechthold on reserve in the Loeb Library. This text is NOT a course requirement but will be on reserve as a reference for those seeking additional background information on course topics.

Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies II

Topography is one of the primary and most powerful elements of landscape architecture, forming a foundation for plant growth, habitat, the flow of water and energy, and human experience.  This course is dedicated to developing students’ facility in reading the land and manipulating topography and water flow through a variety of representational tools with a focus on plan drawings of contours, slopes and spot elevations, models, and section drawings.  The first part of the course is dedicated to the act of grading and contour manipulation, and will introduce students to the conventions of grading representation, terminology and communication in the construction industry, as well as accessibility codes.  The second part of the course introduces techniques used to calculate the amount of water flowing over a site and the various ways that the topography can be manipulated in order to convey, filter, collect or disperse water in order to help improve its quality and control water flow emanating from a range of storm events.  The case studies and precedents presented throughout the course help to illustrate a broad range of approaches to problem solving and the act of sculpting the land.

Learning Objectives
This course focuses on the agency of landform and water flow in the creation and design of landscape.  At the end of the course, students will be able to manipulate contours toward a given intention and will understand the factors that contribute to stormwater volumes and flows and ways to embrace and incorporate those factors toward a desired design intent.   During this course, students will learn to:
1) Analyze topographic form and water flow within urban and rural contexts, across a variety of scales.
2) Recognize, create, manipulate and represent specific topographic forms and relationships.
3) Apply accessibility code requirements in the process of realizing a synthetic landscape design intent.
4) Expand upon historic precedents that demonstrate various approaches to topography design.
5) Incorporate water flow and landform as a way to heighten human experience.
6) Understand the various ways in which landscape architects collaborate with civil engineers in order to understand and design stormwater systems, and develop an awareness of the available stormwater modeling tools.
7) Calculate stormwater flow using manning’s equation and design a simple closed stormwater system of inlets, pipes, manholes and catch basins.
8) Incorporate green infrastructure typologies as a means to slow, store, clean and celebrate water.

Pedagogical Structure
The course is taught as a series of lectures; individual in-class short-term exercises that focus on core competencies; and two long-term assignments are iterative, more complex, and completed in groups.   Many of the in-class exercises are completed during the class session, though some exercises may require additional out-of-class time.  The two long-term group assignments will be developed primarily outside of class, with a number of in-class desk critiques and work sessions. Early core competency exercises are completed by hand, and grading in AutoCAD is introduced during the fourth week. 

Tools
The following tools should be brought to each class:  engineering scale, architect’s scale, calculator, trace, drawing implements, computer.  Computer programs incorporated into this course will include:  AutoCAD, Excel, Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, InDesign and other graphic programs. 

Grade Evaluations
Grades will be based on submitted exercises and participation in class as follows:

In-Class Exercises: 35%
Long-Term Exercise A: 25%
Long-Term Exercise B: 25%    
Participation: 15%

Materials

This course explores the science of stuff. How do we classify stuff? How do we build with stuff? What are the energy, health, and societal implications of stuff? And what does the future of stuff look like? The goal of this course is to enable students to understand the near- and long-term implications of architectural materials and how to leverage this knowledge in environmental building design. The course is lecture- and discussion-based with a series of hands-on exercises and design workshops.

This course is the fourth of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6126) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture and the Master of Design in Energy and Environments.

Building Simulation

This course is the third of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6125) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture and the Master of Design in Energy and Environments. 

Objective: The best intent does not always lead to the best performing design, as intuition and rules of thumb often fail to adequately inform decision making. Therefore, high-performance architecture increasingly utilizes simulation tools to eliminate some of the guesswork. Simulation is the process of making a simplified model of some complex system and using it to predict the behavior of the system.In this course, state-of-the-art computer simulation methods for ventilation (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and thermal/energy analysis will be introduced. 

Innovative techniques for using these models in the architectural design process will be explored.

The course will provide students with:
1. An understanding of building simulation methods and their underlying principles
2. Hands-on experience in using computer simulation models to support the design process
3. An increased understanding of high-performance environmental design strategies in architecture

Content: In this course, students will acquire skills in computerized building performance simulation for architecture while simultaneously using these skills to explore fundamental design issues such as building massing and envelope design. The course includes discussion of the benefits as well as the limitations of these methods. Topics include fundamentals such as modeling strategies, underlying physical principles, understanding simulation assumptions, and interpreting results with an emphasis on developing the ability to translate the analysis into design decisions. Through practice with the software tools, students develop a better understanding of physics in architecture and hone their own design intuition.

Landscape Practices

This seminar examines the nature of contemporary landscape architecture and public realm practices.  In this context, practice is considered broadly in terms of the various ways designers have applied their ideas about landscape and the public realm into professional settings that allow them to develop work.  The term is pluralized in the seminar title to acknowledge the increasingly diverse contexts in which we practice (and issues we could and should be addressing) and the multiplicity of practice types, approaches, and leaders that have emerged over the past few decades.

The seminar will shed light upon the ways in which a diverse array of practitioners and designers have both conceptualized what they do—the nature of and ideas behind their work—and operationalized it in terms of how they do it—the mechanisms, structures, and strategies that put their ideas into play.  The focus will be landscape practices, as well as practices that work generally within the public realm, at the various edges of landscape architecture and beyond.  For-profit, non-profit, and academic/research practices will all be featured.  The course will benefit from in-person presentations and case studies by over a dozen prominent designers working today.  The firms featured are from across the country and around the world, of different races and socio-economic backgrounds, led by both women and men, from established and newly emerging practices, and are both at the center and at the various edges of landscape architecture.

Final projects will ask students to imagine their own forms of practice and to create an operational strategy for realizing them.

The seminar is intended especially for advanced Landscape Architecture, MLAUD, and MDes ULE students, but is open to all.  Candidates should have already taken a basic/required course in Professional Practice, whether at the GSD or elsewhere.  

Non-Professional Practice

"I've never worked for a living. I consider working for a living slightly imbecilic from an economic point of view. I hope some day we'll be able to live without being obliged to work." Marcel Duchamp 

The course aims to study unconventional modes of creative practices and their underlying implications.  In a rapidly changing world that is facing unprecedented challenges, the hyperspecialization of the professional can backfire in its rigidity and the implied limitation, while also becoming a powerful tool of discrimination.  We will investigate collectively why it is important to look outside of the current framework of architectural practice, identify new possibilities and establish the role of design itself in this conversation. 

Topics that are brought up to debate with guest lecturers from various fields include the chance of changing times, the importance of production of culture, the permeability of disciplinary boundaries, the role of language and communication, the banality of kickstarting something, the urgency of (mis)use and interpretation, the Hacker and the Expert, the undercommons, the irrelevance of authorship, the beauty of failure and the social being as a practice.  

The class is based on a workshop format, centered on research, analysis and guest lecturers and requires above all your presence and participation in the dialogue.  

Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society II

Developing and implementing good solutions to real problems facing human society requires a broad understanding of the relationships between technology innovation, science, manufacturing, design thinking, environment, sustainability, culture, aesthetics, business, public policy, and government. Various frameworks for understanding these complex relationships within the context of real-world problems will be explored and discussed.  Coursework will be based on assigned readings, case studies, research assignments, exercises, and class discussions.

GSD PRO 7231 and 7232 are part of a two-course sequence.

This course is for students enrolled in the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) graduate program. A small number of other students may be allowed to enroll by permission of instructor.

Power & Place: Culture and Conflict in the Built Environment

This lecture/workshop course studies and analyzes processes and expressions of power in urban form and design in the North American built environment. Focusing on topics of identity and differentiation that are expressed in spatial interventions across history, this course surveys historic and contemporary cultural conflicts that emerged from private developments and regulatory processes, many of which result, intentionally or unintentionally in patterns of social exclusion.

The course will develop ways of thinking, research methodologies (familiarity with original historical sources and databases) and analytical means leading to modes of interpretation associated with places where power and politics have a critical but often undisclosed influence in shaping the built environment. The goal of the course is to foster an understanding of urban ethics and political awareness that can be applied to any place, leading to a broader understanding of the dimensions of the cultural ecology of a place over time. 

2019’s site will explore Crenshaw Boulevard and its adjacent neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Twenty-three miles long from Wiltshire Boulevard to Palos Verde Crenshaw “begins and ends in wealth.” While the street’s history reveals dynamic demographic changes that accompany broader national forces—a white suburb becomes a black/Japanese community then becomes an inner-city black neighborhood and now contains a rising Latino population—the cultural landmarks of these eras endure. Narratives could be constructed around the architecture: Clarence Stein’s “Black Beverly Hills” Baldwin Village, Olmstead Brothers’ landmarked Leimert Park, Armet and Davis’s Googie architecture of the Japanese-owned Holiday Bowl or around the street’s prominence as a center of African American culture: Maverick Flats—the ”Apollo of the West,” low-rider culture and hip-hop, Destination Crenshaw, Marathon Clothing and Nipsey Russell.  In the once predominantly white Hawthorne, home of the Beach Boys, the early roots of the aerospace industry at Northrup Field is now home to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla. An example of the dynamic city-as-never-finished-process, this single street provides an opportunity to understand the intersection of race, ethnicity, culture and media at a local scale within the broad forces that shape LA.

Course work involves mapping, short videos. Familiarity with Adobe Creative Suite required.