Architectural Strategies against Consumerism
Consumerism, the artificially accelerated cycle of production and consumption, leads to a generation of waste that is both economically and ecologically unacceptable; moreover, consumerism erodes personal freedom and social responsibility by conditioning choices and suspending value judgements. The seminar investigates how architecture and the city have become part of this destructive phenomenon and identifies strategies that oppose it: not producing mere representations or commentaries, but real, practical, positive projects which specifically resist consumerism.
After a discussion of consumerism and its criticism, in society as a whole and specifically in architecture, each student will choose and research an example of how consumerism is successfully resisted by a – preferably constructed, but possibly also still in only drawn form – architectural project. The student may also design one himself or herself – on a conceptual level, but with a definite form. The case studies will be organised following a structure of topics addressing the ecological, social, and cultural dimension of this resistance. They will be located anywhere in the world, since consumerism is an exquisitely global phenomenon. Each case will present itself differently, depending on its different political, economical, and cultural context. They will be shown, analysed and critically discussed during class.
From this analysis and critical discussion general architectural strategies will be extrapolated that are capable of resisting consumerism – and thus globalisation, exploitation, the destruction of the earth’s resources, the erosion of social cohesion and the erasure of identity.
The seminar will constitute a collaborative space of common research and depend on the initiative, knowledge, and creativity of the students as well as on those of the teacher. Like every true research, it is an intellectual adventure with an open end. Evaluation will be based on the individual research and presentations as well as on the student’s contribution to the class discussions.
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.
The first class meeting will be on Wednesday, September 8th. The rest of the semester, classes will meet during the official scheduled time.
The Sociological Imagination: Conceptual Foundations for the Urban Planning and Design Professions
What does it mean to plan and design for people? In what ways are built environments and social relationships shaped by one another? And how is the production of space related to notions of community and identity, questions of power, and mechanisms of social and spatial control from either “above” or “below?” In attempting to answer these questions (and more), this course will introduce graduate students to a set of core writings in the field of urban sociology. Topics include the changing nature of cities, how such transformations relate to larger societal dynamics, and the role that racism, inequality, political power, economic growth, and socio-spatial change play in connecting the built environment to the human experience. We will examine key theoretical paradigms that have constituted the field since its founding, assess how and why they have changed over time, and discuss the implications of these paradigmatic shifts for urban scholarship as well as urban design and planning practice. The aim is to educate students about the changing character of the city and the urban experience— including the larger social, political, and economic dynamics of urban change as well as the more grounded physicality of urban infrastructure—so as to provide a more nuanced understanding of the contemporary and historical context in which planning practices and design objectives have been developed and could be applied.
The course is open to students in all programs of the school. However, it will involve intensive discussions of assigned readings. Students will be encouraged to discuss how the theoretical and practical concerns that have preoccupied urban sociologists can be applied to their individual research interests (at both the MA and PhD level). Final grades will be based on both in-class participation and written assignments.
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.
The first class meeting will be on Wednesday, September 8th. The rest of the semester, classes will meet during the official scheduled time.
Slavery, the slave trade and the built environment
This seminar course is offered as a companion to the conference Landscapes of Slavery, Landscapes of Freedom: The African Diaspora and the American Built Environment, scheduled to take place, virtually, in November 2021. The goal of the seminar is to expand on the topic of racial slavery and its effect on the landscape of the Caribbean and North America by examining the historical roots of slavery in the Atlantic world, from the times of the Roman empire to the early modern period and beyond.
Because the study of slavery is addressed by multiple disciplines, this course will unfold through guest speakers’ lectures, in addition to instructor’s talks, that will address landscapes of slavery through a variety of lenses, among them the historical, archaeological/anthropological, the literary, and the environmental. Among the topics of discussion is the transfer of knowledge, in addition to labor, between West Africa, Europe and North America, the economy of the slave trade, agricultural and food production practices supported by slavery, plantation and urban slavery. Through each talk, students will be exposed to a variety of research methods and theoretical approaches that contribute to expand the field of landscape history.
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.
The Project and the Territory: Japan Story
What is the future of urbanization?
What role can design play in shaping that future?
What will happen to the conflicting tensions between urban and rural?
How might technology transform our experience of the physical and social worlds?
This seminar will use the concept of the project, as idea and implementation, to consider contemporary urbanization both reflectively and prospectively. Using an analysis of the development of Japanese cities and regions, and their encounters with disruption and continuity, WWII, Olympics, bubble economy, Kobe earthquake, etc. we aim to question and reimagine the future relations between the physical and social worlds.
The hybrid and multi-representational method of the seminar will include discussions of architecture, urban design, technology, theory and practice, infrastructure and nature, institutions and memory, as well as the ecologies of literary and visual culture. Though the focus of the seminar will be on Japan, ideas and examples will be considered in the light of parallel developments in other parts of the world.
The course will include lectures, guest speakers from near and far, and class discussions based on readings, films, photography, and other visual materials. Access to these materials will be provided online for students to consult at their own pace. Over the course of the semester, students will be tasked with investigating an issue of their choice, culminating in a speculative project.
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. This course will offer two hours of in-person instruction on Tuesdays from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. Additional asynchronous materials will be made available each week. Please note that there will be some sessions in the evenings for conversations with Japanese contributors. More details will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
The first class meeting
Architecture and Construction: From the Vitruvian Tradition to the Digital
The course aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between architecture and construction through the study of key historical episodes such as the rise of modern tectonic ideals in the 18th century, the development of iron and concrete buildings, the 20th-century quest for light structures, or more recent developments in materials, structure and building technologies. The course will also raise theoretical questions such as what the terms material and structure truly mean, or how does architecture differ from mere construction. Beyond its historical and theoretical scope, the ambition of the course is also to foster students' reflection on the contemporary evolution of the relationship between architecture and construction. Indeed, the rise of digital technologies and more recently the development of strong environmental concerns challenge our received understanding of tectonics, materials, and ultimately design.
The course will consist of live lectures given online followed discussions. Lectures will be recorded and made accessible to the students of the course. Apart from regular attendance, the students will be asked to produce a short end-of-the-semester paper on a topic related to the course.
Plan of the course:
Towards an Architectural History of Construction, Introduction
Construction and Solidity in the Vitruvian Tradition
The 18th-Century Crisis of Solidity and the Rise of the Structural Approach
Early Iron Construction Development
From Iron to Steel
The Origin of Modern Concrete
The Industrial Challenge from Ruskin to the Arts and Crafts
Building Technologies in the 19th Century
Structure and Ornament in the Industrial Age
Modernist Architecture and Technology
Concrete Engineering
Concrete Architecture
Early Space, Inflatable and Tensile Structures
Buckminster Fuller, Jean Prouvé and the Search for a Revolution in Design
Postwar Technological Utopias and Dystopias from Archigram to Radical Architecture
The High-Tech Temptation
Contemporary Advances in Materials and Structures
Digital Architecture and the Rise of a New Materiality
Digital Fabrication, Between Futurism and Nostalgia
The Environmental Challenge: From Mechanics to Thermodynamics?
Architecture, AI: What is Next? Conclusion
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15. Out of the 26 course sessions, eight will happen in Gund with the instructor, 14 will be live on Zoom, and four will be pre-recorded lectures. Additionally, there will be four in-person Q&A with the course TFs. Please review the syllabus for more details.
Topology and Imagination: Between Chinese Landscapes and Architecture
This course deals with landscape architecture and architecture in contemporary China. Its purpose is twofold: to articulate new perspectives on the challenges facing designers, and to demonstrate the pertinence of issues to a broader range of international discussions.
There are three major aspects involved:
– An expanded vocabulary for understanding design challenges in both urban and rural settings. We shall discuss a range of terms, taken from local Chinese discussions and from Western contexts, that can enable a more precise grasp of issues. In particular, the understanding of Chinese gardens in terms of topology (from the work of Zhu Guangya) shows a way for going beyond the idea of static “composition.”
– Detailed case studies that draw on a broad range of images documenting both design process and construction process. Our goal is to go beyond the usual presentation of design projects in six- or eight-page magazine articles and to attend to process and contingency. The main topics will include: redundant precision versus apparent precision in construction (from the work of Francesca Hughes), hi-fi versus lo-fi architecture (from the work of Jeremy Till), perspectival and aperspectival effects, and proactive intervention in the chain of supply of building materials.
– Cultural dimensions relevant for the understanding of architectural and landscape experience. This part of our study will involve both reading texts (in English translation) and analyzing extant gardens. The main topics will include: long-term and short-term memory, the pitfalls of thinking in dualistic dichotomies, the opportunities presented by different kinds of clientele, and the limitations of various kinds of regionalism.
Course enrollment is limited to thirty. Ten spots will be prioritized for Landscape Architecture students and ten spots will be prioritized for Architecture students who are taking this course to meet their BTC requirement. All prioritized students must select the course first in the lottery.
Note on schedule: The class will meet synchronously on Tuesdays from 10:30 to 11:45 am. Every week there will be 60-90 minutes of asynchronous materials (lectures or seminar presentations). During weeks 4-12, the course will invite a range of designers and scholars from several countries as speakers or discussants. Please note that in 2-3 weeks of the semester, the class will meet with the guest speakers from 8 to 9 am ET (instead of the usual 10:30-11:45 am slot) due to time zone constraints. The online pre-recorded format allows for a much more international range of speakers and discussants, and the 60-90 min lectures on case studies will allow us to get a much more detailed understanding of projects than can be obtained from 6-8 page articles.
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.
Competing Visions of Modernity in Japan
The course will trace the parallel trajectories of two of modern Japan’s most influential schools of architectural thought, represented by Kenzo Tange (1913–2005) on the one hand and Kazuo Shinohara (1925–2006) on the other, and situate their contributions in the broader development of international modernism in the postwar period. Tange and his protégés in the Metabolist group dazzled the world with radical proposals for urban communities built either on the sea or elevated in the sky. Shinohara rejected this techno-rationalist stance through the slogan “A house is a work of art” and turned to the single-family house shunned by the Metabolists. The House of White by Shinohara achieves an almost oceanic spaciousness through abstraction and precision.
The course will be structured as a series of discursive narratives and debates, such as tradition, transparency, lightness, and technology, which defined architectural practice and criticism in Japan after 1945. Major figures, notably Toyo Ito, successfully overcame these differences and established new paradigms. We will also position young Japanese architects today, Ishigami, Fujimoto, and Hasegawa, in terms of these historical genealogies and the evolution of a critical discourse.
The course will make extensive use of the Kenzo Tange Collection housed at the Loeb Library. We will also engage recent exhibitions on modern Japanese architecture examine the framing of modern and contemporary architecture in Japan to public and professional audiences.
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.
The first class meeting will be on Wednesday, September 8th. The rest of the semester, classes will meet during the official scheduled time.
Structuring Urban Experience: From the Athenian Acropolis to the Boston Common
This lecture course examines selected cities between the 5th century BC and the 17th century AD, beginning with ancient Athens and ending with the rebuilding of London after the great fire in 1666 and the founding of Boston. It is not, however, a survey. Rather, the lectures take up one city at one “golden moment” of its development and propose a theme or themes for discussion. The course, therefore, is both chronologically and thematically structured.
The first half of the semester addresses the ancient and late antique city, beginning with Athens and continuing with Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople, and Antioch. This section concludes with a consideration of the effects of Christianization on urban form, the widespread decline of urban habitation in the early Middle Ages, and the rising importance of ideal or symbolic “cities of the mind.” The second half of the semester looks at selected instances of Renaissance and Baroque urban interventions, beginning with Florence, returning again to Rome, and then moving to Venice, Madrid, Paris, London, and Boston.
Course format:
Lectures, lecture/discussions, and discussions. Each lecture is normally devoted to one city. It covers urban layout and topography, infrastructure, patterns and types of housing, and typologies of the major monuments and treats in more depth those features relating to the themes for the week—the relation of the city to countryside, for instance, or the city as center of cultural activity, the city and ideas about space, and so on. The lecture/discussion sessions introduce additional material (sometimes a new city, sometimes a more in-depth treatment of one of the assigned readings) and then move to discussion of the lecture and readings. The discussion sessions sometimes compare two cities and sometimes deepen or amplify the themes and ideas covered in the lecture(s) and readings. Students are required to prepare for the discussions by reviewing the relevant lecture(s) (PowerPoints are on the course site), doing the readings, and thinking about how the readings relate to the weekly topic.
Throughout the semester, you will be working on what will become a final research paper of 12 pages of text plus endnotes, illustrations, and a bibliography on a city of your choice during its “golden age.”
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15. The course lectures will be pre-recorded and posted on the course site for asynchronous viewing. All discussion meetings will meet live on Zoom on the following dates: 9/2, 9/9, 9/16, 9/23, 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28, 11/4, and 11/11. The instructor will meet individually with students in person during office hours before 10/7. Additionally, the class meetings in which there are student reports will be in person: 11/16, 11/18, 11/23, 11/30, and 12/2.
North American Seacoasts and Landscapes: Discovery Period to the Present
Selected topics in the history of the North American coastal zone, including the seashore as wilderness, as industrial site, as area of recreation, and as artistic subject; the shape of coastal landscape for conflicting uses over time; and the perception of the seashore as marginal zone in literature, photography, painting, film, television, and advertising.
Note: Offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as VES 166.
Prerequisites: GSD 4105 and GSD 4303, or permission of the instructor
Jointly Offered Course: AFVS 166
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.
Histories of Landscape Architecture I: Textuality and the Practice of Landscape Architecture
This course introduces students to a number of significant topoi or loci in the histories of landscape architecture. In general terms, it takes the form of a conspectus, a survey of the field, but one in which the underlying nature (made and found), boundaries, contours, and texture of this field—in fact several disparate fields—is made the object of close scrutiny. We will define landscape architecture as we survey it. In pursuing an intermittent chronological narrative, the lectures will place site-specific emphasis on a number of cognate disciplines (hydrology, forestry, geology, agronomy, geography, hunting, inter alia), in the context of endemic and transplanted visual and textual traditions. While inspecting the grounds of villas, cloisters gardens, parks, and cities, we will be attentive to surrounding formations of discourse (the pastoral, the picturesque, the emblematic, the Adamic and Edenic) that have and continue to imbue them with meaning.
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15.