Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies I
This course recognizes plants as one of the most expressive materials of the artform — a living medium that distinguishes the discipline from the other applied sciences and fine arts. The goal of the course is to introduce the global potential of plants as a means of design for shaping the character of a place for individual and collective human experience. Investigations that straddle hand-drawn, digital and analog mediums will explore the universally accessible and adaptive power of plants in making healthy, resilient ecologies and socially dynamic spaces.
The course emphasizes the use of empirical observations and investigation to explore multiple-scaled thinking about plants and their habitats, including cultural and vernacular attributes and larger ecological systems. It is not a comprehensive overview of the horticultural or botanical history of plants, however students will employ an important methodology for how to learn plants that can be translated to any locale, including the rote memorization of botanical and common plant names combined with recognition of a plant's visual features.
Through virtual case studies, physical field visits, lectures, and readings students will learn to identify approximately 50+ plants, define notational systems, and translate plant characteristics into design languages that they can apply in future design work. The course exposes students to the understanding of plants from non-managed plant communities to managed living systems.
Products of the course will include mixed media drawings that explore typologies of designed and non- designed plant communities. Videos, photographs, black and white field notes, sketches, diagrams, and a series of curated drawings in axon, plan, and section will be the vocabulary of the course.
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15. After that, the class will continue to meet on Zoom except for three “plant walks,” which will provide great opportunities to observe plants in situ and learn how to use plants to shape the experience of place. Please review the syllabus for more details. Please note that this is subject to change.
Construction Systems
This course introduces students to methods of construction: conceptually, historically, and practically. We will consider how construction techniques emerge in relation to architectural desires and technical criteria in order to emphasize the architect’s agency in shaping construction systems within the collaborative environment of contemporary building design. Construction has material, structural, spatial, economic, environmental, and cultural consequences. As such, this foundational course will have the dual charge of understanding not just how, but also why we build in a particular manner.
An overview of construction systems will be provided including a review of wall, roof, envelope, and foundation systems. Students will learn about construction systems through lectures, readings, and a series of research assignments that ask students to apply methods of dissection (by drawing and modeling selected systems in detail) and to speculate on the larger societal and cultural relevance of architectural technologies. Students will be evaluated on the basis of their research assignments and participation in course discussions. Select course materials will be made available online for students to review outside of class hours for asynchronous engagement and discussion.
This course is part of the core curriculum in architecture for MArch I and MArch I AP students.
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.
The first class meeting will be on Friday, September 3th.
Environmental Systems 2
Purpose: This course is the second of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture.
Objective: To continue the study of environmental considerations in architectural design.
Content: The course will cover building systems and their technologies including the conventional and emerging HVAC systems, renewable energy systems, and other active building systems. It will also introduce daylight and electric lighting in buildings along with manual and computer-based methods for analyzing daylight design. The course also covers fundamental concepts of acoustics and their application in architecture.
In this course, students will:
– Learn the fundamentals of HVAC systems in architecture and practice the schematic design of such systems;
– Learn the basic principles and applications of daylighting and acoustic considerations in architecture; and
– Continue to develop analytical and creative thinking regarding sustainability and energy issues in building design.
Class format:
Includes lectures and workshops. Where noted, attendance at evening workshops may be mandatory. In all classes, the goal is an interactive format, so questions, comments, and other forms of active participation are encouraged.
Note: the instructor will offer online live course presentations on 08/26, and/or 08/27. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.
Environmental Systems 1
This course is the first of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture.
Objectives:
– To study selected aspects of the physical environment which directly affect people and their buildings, such as climate, weather, solar radiation and heat gain and loss.
– To study the means by which environmental factors may be wisely utilized, controlled, and modified as an integral part of the architectural design.
Content:
“Environmental Systems 1” will undertake the study of human needs, comfort, performance, and sense of well-being in relation to the physical environments, both natural and man-made, that occur in and around buildings. Recent environmental problems have been traced to the energy and waste products used or created by buildings. These environmental problems make it imperative that architects be familiar with the systems that affect building energy use.
Students in this course will become familiar with those elements of a building that contribute to the heat and cooling loads in the building and will be introduced to methods that reduce the energy consumption. Different methods of analysis, evaluation, and simulation will be introduced and used.
Method:
The course will be presented in lecture format on M and W. The course material consists of a required book and assigned provided readings. Grades will be based on homework problems, projects and examinations.
Text book:
– Required Book: Vaughn Bradshaw, Building Control Systems, 3nd Edition, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 2006.
– Recommended Reference: Stein, Reynolds, Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, 12th Edition, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 2015.
Grading:
– 50% homework
– 50% Final exam
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.
Real Estate Private Equity [M2]
Real Estate Private Equity explores, in depth, the analysis, decision-making and challenges private equity investors face when:
1. making and structuring highly leveraged investments,
2. managing investments through turbulence if market difficulties emerge,
3. developing superior, differentiated portfolio strategies and successfully aligning these with institutional capital,
4. procuring and managing sources of equity and debt capital,
5. negotiating institutional investor capital agreements, local partner operating agreements and transaction execution agreements,
6. managing all the stakeholders involved in complicated real estate transactions when circumstances require change,
7. successfully building and managing their organizations for long-term sustainability in the midst of having to compete in an environment fraught with constant risk, uncertainty and geo-political and economic fluctuation.
The course will be structured in a format using actual business cases, where each case will tackle a situation and specific set of challenges faced by private equity investment groups. Cases will typically be 20 to 30 pages in length including a number of subsidiary agreements and schedules. Students will need to lay out the problems being addressed, probe the situation, develop the right questions to focus on, analyze the relevant data, and evaluate the best courses of action along with their anticipated outcomes. Case situations will be viewed from multiple perspectives: the private equity investor, their institutional capital sources, local operating partners, lending institutions, tenants, and many times public authorities and their representatives.
There are two modules that comprise the course. Each module will last ½ of the semester. Students have the option of taking just module 1 for two credits, or both modules 1 and 2 for 4 credits.
In module 1 we will be covering 5 business cases. The subjects of investigation and discussion will include
1. analyzing an international development/redevelopment joint venture opportunity,
2. examining the process of investing in debt securities in a complex transaction,
3. assessing a hostile tender offer of a public company and examining the responsibilities to all of the stakeholders in making the right decisions,
4. from an investment committee member’s perspective examining, evaluating and choosing between two disparate competing investment opportunities, a joint venture acquisition of a student housing project against a mezzanine debt investment in an international real estate operating service company,
5. Deriving what the optimum path forward should be in the launch and capitalization a new startup real estate development company.
In module 2, students will be tackling an independent study research paper which delves deeper into a topic of choosing in real estate private equity. Some potential areas to pursue include:
1. Developing a business plan to start a new real estate PE firm,
2. Evaluating the strategy and long term competitive viability of an existing real estate PE firm,
3. Analyzing a live, complicated real estate PE transaction,
4. Investigating and conducting a comprehensive research report to evaluate a given market opportunity,
It is expected that papers delivered for module 2 will be approximately 20-25 pages in length, single spaced, plus exhibits, quantitative analyses, and appendices.
Course prerequisites: 5275 and 5276 or other course equivalents, and 7449 (module 1).
Elements of the Urban Stack
The Urban Stack is a pedagogical framework for understanding the infrastructures of power that operate in relationship to practice. These constructs shape the design and production of the built environment in our time of increasing uncertainty, project complexity, and risk. The course is designed to explore, translate and generate alternative readings of our built context; to imagine how design and planning practice can shape the environmental, social, cultural, and experiential qualities of urban form within our emerging 21st century context. A primary objective of the course is to identify gaps and opportunities in the layered socio-technical systems that guide the production of the built environment; to enable culturally and socially transformative development with the goal of practical application in the real world.
This course addresses the practice of design as it inevitably confronts and interacts with infrastructures of policy, technology, and finance. Theoretical frameworks will help us seek space for design impact and agency through established and emerging modes of practice and projects that operate upon, within, or against these systemic constructs. Our task is to collectively answer the following questions: As urban projects grow in complexity, swelling and speeding up to attain maximum impact, is our work inevitably defined and shaped by the pressures of finance, automation, and regulation? Where does our agency as designers of the built environment lie in current practice?
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.
The first class meeting will be on Friday, September 3rd. The rest of the semester, classes will meet during the official scheduled time.
Frameworks of Practice
How should we practice today?
The discipline, the profession, and the practice of architecture are invented and designed things. And the roles, relationships, protocols, and expertise that define architecture’s overarching frameworks are neither ancient nor fixed, even if buildings and the people who design them have existed for millennia. That said, for much of the twentieth century, the pace of change in the discipline, profession, and practice of architecture—and how one navigates these in the course of building a career—has been but gradual.
Crisis, however, is a powerful accelerant. Since the turn of the century, a series of interrelated economic, social, climate, and health crises have not just challenged architectural practices and practitioners, but are necessitating a wholesale reconsideration of the underlying frameworks of practice inherited from the twentieth century. While many architects will struggle to adapt, some are discovering and inventing new frameworks with which to confront not only specific crises, but to take a more proactive role in addressing the needs of society.
In Frameworks of Practice this fall, we will critically examine the challenges and opportunities created by crisis, and seek to understand how architects have designed new ways of practicing in direct response to crises ranging from economic collapse to structural racism to natural disaster to global pandemic. Acknowledging that the discipline, the profession, and the practice of architecture are invented, designed concepts, our ultimate aim is to uncover and imagine new ways of practicing in an increasingly upended world.
Course Format: Lectures by course instructor and guests; full-class and small group workshops and tutorials; discussions and team exercises; collaborative and individual projects.
Requirements: Consistent class attendance and engagement; satisfactory participation in and completion of collaborative and individual projects.
Prerequisites: The course is open to all degree programs at the GSD and certain cross-registration students from MIT. M.Arch I candidates must have completed the core professional practice course (PRO-07212) in order to enroll in PRO-07408. Prior work experience is beneficial but not required.
Note: the instructor will offer online live course presentations on 08/26, and/or 08/27. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.
Practices of Landscape Architecture
This course presents the application of landscape ideas as a process of engagement and building amidst financial, legal, cultural, political, and professional contexts. The course aims to introduce conventions and circumstances that may be encountered throughout one’s career while stimulating new and creative, alternative dimensions of practice in a global, inclusive and universal context.
Course content includes lectures, workshops and discussions led by the instructors and guests from around the globe, and incorporates student research, exercises and readings. Though concepts appear iteratively throughout the term, early topics include design leadership and community agency, professional identity, firm marketing and business development, and states of diversity in practice. Topics then move to conventions and circumstances influencing legal, ethical, financial and operational aspects of practice, particularly those that can contribute to and detract from the success of firms and their projects.
Recognizing that architecture, planning and landscape architecture share many aspects of practice, this course incorporates nuances and scope that are typically the focus of current landscape architectural practice itself, such as soils as a living medium, grading and planting, landscape architectural documentation and construction, landscape advocacy and stewardship, and liabilities specifically associated with the practice of landscape architecture.
The course meets twice a week for 1.5 hours (3 hours total). Key lectures will be recorded. Evaluation is based upon participation in guest lectures and class discussions, graded exercises, and a long-term group paper.
Outcomes
During this course students will develop the ability to:
1) Demonstrate a familiarity with the vocabulary, concepts and processes associated with the financial management of a project and an office.
2) Describe the key elements contained in a contract for landscape architectural design services and typical points of negotiation, risk and opportunity.
3) Review and respond to a Request for Proposal as part of a public solicitation process.
4) Analyze and describe the various ways in which offices acquire work and build their identity.
5) Consider the role and requirements of professional licensure and professional associations.
6) Describe the trade-offs involved with different types of practice and potential career trajectories, and begin to consciously build a professional network.
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15. After that, the course will be taught in person with the exception of two sessions that will be online. Please see the syllabus for more details. This is subject to change.
Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society I
In the spirit of Herbert Simon, Frameworks engages diverse but complementary perspectives and techniques to identify, diagnose and constructively address consequential social challenges, sometimes referred to as "wicked problems". The disciplines – or 'frameworks' – explored include (in no order and to varying degrees) systems analysis, industrial design, scientific methods, behavioral and organizational dynamics, law, economics, risk management, manufacturing, culture, aesthetics, health sciences, history, branding, anthropology, statistics, public policy, ecology and the like. While individual frameworks are presented, the teaching goal over the two semesters is to help students: a) identify problems that are both consequential and tractable; b) select and apply the suite of frameworks best suited to addressing the problem at hand.
Course Format: Assigned readings, case studies, research assignments, exercises, outside specialists and class discussions.
Prerequisites: This course is for students enrolled in the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) graduate program. MDE students should enroll in GSD PRO 7231.
Foundations of Practice
For students in the fifth semester of the MArch I degree program, this course examines models and issues that define contemporary professional practice. Requiring students to examine a broad range of legal, financial, organizational, and ethical topics, the course prepares students to engage and lead in the production of the built environment. The course takes advantage of the multidisciplinary programs of the GSD, bringing a wide breath of experienced professionals to share insights and develop the tools necessary for productive collaborations within the complex space of specific professional, practical, and disciplinary obligations.
Each week the course explores professional practice through a critical reading of primary texts that frame key concepts and models, as well as relevant case studies and applications for stress testing the boundaries of these models.
Course format: Combination of lectures, guest lectures, and workshops. Each subject area contains supplemental material that provides standard references and supplemental case studies that highlight the boundaries and thresholds of practice. This is intended to provide students with an exposure to critical aspects of practice—from accounting to contracting and from project delivery to professional ethics. In addition, students will explore the wide-ranging roles of respective professional associations in shaping contractual relationships, public policy, and the parameters of practice itself. In more immediate terms, students will explore:
– Client communications and engagement;
– The drafting and execution of standard AIA contract series;
– The interpretation and due process considerations of local government regulations;
– The strategic advancement of public design reviews or public procurement opportunities; and
– The financial economics of operating a practice.
Connecting each of these dimensions of practice are the codes of professional ethics and various elements of statutory and case law that collectively define the professional standard of care. The intent is for students to develop a reflexive understanding of their duty to clients, third-party consultants, and the general public consistent with their obligations as design professionals and community leaders. This course serves as a foundation from which students may develop further interests and skills in the GSD’s professional practice distributional elective course offerings.
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.
The first class meeting will be on Wednesday, September 1st. the rest of the semester, classes will meet during the scheduled time.