Digital Media: Artifacts

This course is an introduction to fundamental concepts, techniques, and methods related to digital media in architecture and design, with a focus on reciprocal processes of translation between digital media and material artifacts. It examines how digital technologies mediate our interaction with the physical environment, critically engages the capacities and limitations of select computational processes, and investigates the latent design opportunities embedded in each one. 

This semester, we will study the process of photogrammetry, along with related technologies for image processing and geometry manipulation, as a means of addressing broader questions related to digital media in architecture and design.  Broadly defined as the process for extracting three dimensional information from photographic images, photogrammetry is an accessible means of generating digital data from physical artifacts using little to no specialized equipment. As a method for documenting and interacting with our physical environment in a digital format, the process is of particular relevance in our current global context and this semester's virtual learning environment.  

While often framed as a technical process striving for an accurate digital presentation of our physical world, we will depart from the notion of the scan as merely a digital copy or representational device, instead considering each component of the process as a site for design intervention, with its own unique materiality, structure and organization. The act of scanning separates an artifact from its physical context and materiality, and invites multiple interpretations and modes of engagement. 

The scanned artifact is simultaneously a non-hierarchical collection of discrete metrical data, and a geometric entity that can be manipulated using traditional formal operations. Accordingly, we will examine two distinct approaches for design intervention.  We will first explore technologies related to two-dimensional image manipulation.  A second approach will examine the intellectual and technical means of describing three-dimensional geometry and form, with a focus on the possibilities to translate it into raw material for developing novel artifacts.  Liberated from physical context, how might the scanned artifact perform or operate in new ways? 

Course Format – The course will address the content described above through a combination of lectures, discussions, technical workshops and design exercises. Typically, the course will meet synchronously on Wednesday, while content for the Friday session will be available for asynchronous viewing. Technical workshops will introduce techniques in photogrammetry, image processing, mesh editing and manipulation, texture mapping, rendering, collaborative digital modeling, and design materialization. Software utilized in class will include Photoshop and Rhino/Grasshopper (along with its associated plugins for analysis, simulation and animation). The presented concepts and techniques will be explored through a semester-long project organized into a sequential set of assignments. For the final project, participants will work (virtually) in small groups to utilize the workflows presented in class in a collaborative design exercise. 

Prerequisites: None.

Digital Media: Telepresence

Telepresence refers to a set of technologies that provide stimuli to a user’s senses, so that the person feels as if they are present or having an effect in another place other than their true location. This is a dynamic and rapidly expanding area of technology, assisted by recent advances in the fields of telecommunications, AR, VR, robotics, cybernetics, holograms, and more. 

Telepresence is not a substitute for being physically present in the analog space (nor perhaps should it be), but this topic presents a unique opportunity for architects and designers to understand the key elements that contribute to our sensory perception and experience of an architectural space. If one has to distill our experience of an architectural space into a few key elements in order to convince a remote person that they are at that space – what are these key elements and which elements are more important than others? How can techniques in telepresence translate the physical presence of people and spaces to create new forms of empathic connections with remote locations and occupants? At what point does one forget the technological interface and get completely immersed in the remote spatial experience? What causes specific environments to evoke different ambiances? Are there consistent elements that define these ambiances, and is it possible to capture these qualities and characteristics?

Class discussions will look at current and historical examples, and theories of psychological qualities and the sensory experience of architecture, the senses and body-centricity, proxemics, interaction design, installation design, and human-machine interface. The students will create site-specific installations and technologically-mediated experiences at their respective geographic locations, where students in groups of two will remotely work together to influence each others’ spaces, or virtually visit each other’s spaces. 

Class workshops will cover the following digital and physical fabrication tools based on project needs: basic electronics, Arduino programming, 3D scanning, AR/VR, 3D printing, and projections. 

Course format: This is a 3-hr course, which will take place as a 2-hr synchronous session on Wednesdays for lectures and projects development, and 1-hr asynchronous learning time for technical tutorials. 

Note: This course has been adapted specifically for the times we find ourselves today. Telepresence tools have become urgently relevant in the current pandemic context, and this course intends to allow students to critically investigate them, manipulate existing tools, and speculatively design their own.  

Confronting Climate Change: A Foundation in Science, Technology and Policy (at FAS)

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 offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences – GENED 1094.

Public health in an era of epidemics: from the camp to the building

We didn’t need a pandemic to know that we shouldn’t conceive any more architecture projects and urban planning interventions that disregard their impact on public health. However, the current situation has exacerbated the need and brought the focus to this discipline. 

This class was designed and taught before the COVID19 crisis, and although this epidemic will have a significant presence during some of the modules, this course aims for a more ambitious target. To show that design is a critical, although often dismissed, tool for prevention, control, and response to all sorts of epidemics, and not only (to some extent, hyped) viral ones.

We can categorically say that the way we design buildings, neighborhoods, and cities has an impact on the health outcomes of the population. Urban development is at the core of new epidemics and pandemics, and the uncontrollable growth of (informal) urban settlements (including refugees) will likely increase the health gap between people of different socioeconomic status and between countries.

We will review existing studies and empirical evidence at the nexus of these fields. Through a scale approach (BUILDING-NEIGHBORHOOD-CITY-GLOBAL), we will study and evaluate different interventions, aiming to dismiss myths and reinforce those initiatives that can potentially improve population health. 

The goal of the course is to build awareness of the importance of incorporating robust public health facts and considerations in the early stages of an architectural or urban design project, but also to equip students with the skills needed to:
– Identify health issues that can potentially be tackled through design interventions
– Use robust evidence (through epidemiological studies) to propose and defend health-oriented solutions in design projects 
– Examine, assess, and design interventions taking into consideration a wide variety of aspects of public health
– Develop health-related interventions in complex public health settings (epidemics, refugees, etc.)

Course format: Interactive and dynamic dual system class. Every week you’ll have a pre-recorded offline theoretical class that includes lectures and interviews with public health experts and a 1.5 hours live class that will focus on topic discussion, debate, and Q&A with the guest speakers.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

 

Permanence in the Temporal: Artifacts for Freedom in the Rohingya Refugee Camp

Nadyeli Quiroz (MDes ULE/MLA I AP ’20)

According to Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, Western politics divided the Zoe, the biological fact of life of every living being from the Bio, the social and political life in the polis. Zoe remained secluded to the domestic and private life existing within the Oikos. Agamben argues that refugees have been stripped from the political, public, and social exercise of life, the Bio and, reduced only to the naked life, the Zoe.¹

The politics of aid delivery, by design, reduce humans to a condition of bare minimum, basic biological needs, in which they have factually lost their human rights. I argue that the artifacts designed and implemented by refugees to negotiate with the bare life offered in the camps are the exercise of Bio. They are practicing a political agency within the administration of what aims to be a space devoid of any public and political life. The artifacts of negotiation of refugees are deviations within the totalitarian design of camps. These artifacts create actual cities and defy the whole narrative of the ephemerality of camps. The artifacts are exercises of freedom within the enclosure, construction of life, and the agency of those under contain­ment.

The thesis explores how to integrate the agency, Bio, and the desires of the refugees expressed in the artifacts for freedom—looking for a planning process that will allow camps to evolve into thriving communities instead of mar­ginalized populations.

¹Giorgio Agamben, Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 11.

Da Yun He: Symbolism and Evolution Under China’s Leadership

Frank Wen Yao (MDes ULE ’20)

For centuries, China has been known for its top-down, large-scale infrastructural projects, including the Grand Canal, the Ancient Silk Road, and the contemporary Belt and Road initiative. This thesis takes the Grand Canal as a precedent. The Grand Canal (Dayunhe), which connects Beijing to Hangzhou, has been a significant part of logistical, cultural, economic, and social infrastructure in China. This historical entity evolved over time and played a significant role in China’s civilizational progress. Despite its known importance, the ambition of the canal is enormous and is reflected in China’s technical ability and political capacity for execution. Thus, the essence of the Grand Canal lies in the idea of “Central Kingdom”—seeking ideal prosperity and Sino-centralized spatial governing strategy—the canal is beyond the concept of infrastructure and it is both the idea and the entity. As the Grand Canal evolved, it became a political symbol of Chinese civilization. However, like many other state projects initiated by China, it contains both benefits and downsides throughout time, and this lacks academic study.

Therefore, concerning future professionals and Chinese authorities, the aims of the thesis are twofold: (1) conduct a historical study of the Grand Canal with focus on the political dynamics behind the project and how this political symbol was sustained and evolved, and (2) contribute original knowledge to the field of China studies, encouraging further studies on large-scale Chinese infrastructures.

Working with Urban Informality: A Postcolonial Critique of Planning Theory based on Lessons from the Caño Martín Peña Special Planning District

Samantha Saona (MDes ULE ’20)

This thesis adds to the postcolonial perspective of informality by using an empirically grounded analysis of the Caño Martín Peña Special Planning District to offer theoretical interventions. The case has been celebrated for combining a robust participatory practice and inventive planning strategies that “work with” the community. However, most previous scholarship understates the contextual specificity and the complexity of the process. Thus, I propose a critical methodology to engage with and highlight a systemic understanding of the case by using a theoretical framework that converges around risk, situated knowledge, and design politics.

This research reflects on three topics. First, the “vulnerabilization” of residents in informal areas by the political skewing of participatory processes that render the impacted populations legible and the production of government-approved technical documents that are incomprehensible to most. Second, the appropriateness of the scale chosen to work with urban informality by contrasting the scale of implementable infrastructure and design projects with alternative scales of administering policies that work with the continuous urbanization processes that lead to informality. Finally, the unpacking of economic and political “developmentalism” projects that initially caused migration into cities and their continued impact on how these spaces are perceived. In sum, this thesis proposes a de-centered and re-politicized framework to reflect on how “urban informality” is created, maintained, and perpetuated.

Land Grabs and Land Grants: Social Forestry as New Governmentality in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Ziwei Zhang (MLA ’17/MDes ULE ’20)

This thesis focuses on social forestry as a model of community development and democratic invention in Indonesia by interrogating its formation, formulation, and implementation. First, I reposition social forestry in the history of the democracy movement in Indonesia to explore in depth by whom, how, and why spaces for participation and decentralization are being opened and filled. Second, I argue that in the current political and legal space, social forestry, while notionally ’empowering’ local communities, has also enabled depoliticization of the previous radical, anti-capitalist, and anti-palm oil civil movements. Third, I aim to call attention to the land politics in the proximity of extractive and conservative land use, as well as in the planning institution that institutionalizes insurgent civil movements.

Responsive Environments

The course introduces students to the tools and design methods for creating responsive environments and technologically driven experiences in the built environment. By putting the human experience at the center and forefront, from the immediate body scale to the larger environment, encompassing buildings and the urban spaces, the course examines new and emerging models and technologies for the design of innovative architectural human interfaces and technologically augmented physical environments.     

The class also addresses fundamental questions including: What are the benefits of creating technologically augmented environments? What are the psychological, social and environmental implications of creating such hybrids? And what are the criteria to measure successful responsive environments?  

These questions of analyzing, understanding and designing responsive environments will be tackled through the lens of different thematic topics. These themes include:     
– embedded intelligence (integration of technologies at all scales), 
– augmented spatiality (fostering hybrid realms),   
– adaptive change (dynamic response to contextual constraints),   
– hacked perception (shifting our understanding of space through technology),   
– tailored dynamics (empowering people through technology and design).     

Within each theme, the class will discuss relevant case studies and the methods to conduct critical analysis to understand the opportunities and limitations of the enabling technologies. In addition, each thematic topic will be complemented with conversations and talks by guest practitioners and researchers from both industry and academia.     

The final project will be a site specific design solution of varied scales using the tools and methods discussed in class. The course will take advantage of the resources and the ongoing research at the Responsive Environments and Artifacts Lab, and the outcomes will be a contribution to an exhibition and a publication. Any prototyping expense will be funded by the lab's resources. 

No specific prerequisites are needed. Students from any background and concentration are encouraged to apply to the lottery.

 

Due to no classes being offered on Labor Day and course selections being due on Wednesday, September 9, this class has scheduled a first irregular meeting on Thursday, September 3, 7:00-8.30 pm EDT. Please make sure to check the Canvas site of the course for the meeting Zoom links.

Re-Wilding Harvard

This is a year-long class on rewilding, returning a habitat to an earlier form. Students in this course will research historical and cultural definitions of wilderness and landscape, identify what precolonialist habitats were like in New England, survey how such places have been and might be restored, and then we will rewild part of Harvard. The class is open to both graduate students and undergraduates in a broad and relevant range of disciplines. The course will be co-taught by faculty from the History Department.

Note: GSD students enrolling in this year-long course must complete both terms of this course (parts A and B) within the same academic year in order to receive credit (4 units) and a grade in the spring term. No credit or grade will appear for the fall portion.

In order to accommodate students, the meeting day and time for the course will be determined after the course registration deadline on Wednesday, September 9th.

This course will be jointly offered with the Faculty of Arts & Sciences as HIST 1973.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.