MArch II Proseminar

This course provides a forum for critical discussion of contemporary design practices that is exploratory and speculative in nature. The course emphasizes collaborative thinking and debate and prepares students to develop research interests and to formulate positions in architecture. 

Through inquiries based upon readings, analysis of architectural projects, and presentations given by the instructor, faculty of the Department of Architecture, and visitors, the course seeks to expand the student’s understanding of the cultural context that informs the production of architecture and the development of critical interpretations of site, program, service, and research. 

Prerequisites: Enrollment in the MArch II program. 

Independent Design Engineering Project I

The Independent Design Engineering Project (IDEP) is a two-semester project during which students in the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program work on understanding a concise, real-world problem and develop a prototypical solution. Methodologically a continuation of the MDE first-year studio, each student frames a complex problem and engages with stakeholders in order to understand its multi-scalar, multidisciplinary aspects. Work on a solution involves a combination of analytical and visualization skills, technical skills, and design methods, culminating in the development, prototyping, and evaluation of a solution. The two-semester long IDEP is the required second-year component of the MDE program. Each student receives guidance from an advisor from SEAS and an advisor from the GSD. Initial domain outlines for the IDEP are due at the end of the second semester. Course group meetings serve as platforms for workshops, updates, and the sharing of progress, and allow for feedback on methods from the project coaches. Presentations and reviews will be scheduled during the fall and the spring semester to facilitate feedback by advisors, stakeholders, Harvard faculty, and guests. The final presentation at the end of IDEP includes an oral presentation, visuals, and a demonstration of the solution.

The first day of GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, is held as a MONDAY schedule. As this course meets only on Tuesdays, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 12th. It will meet regularly thereafter. 

Preparation of MUP Design Thesis

What does it take to complete an Urban Planning Thesis? The seminar introduces different types of theses that might be produced by students, whether textual, design-focused, or based in some other medium, such as film. It addresses topic and question identification, research methods, case selection, the craft of thesis production, managing the student-advisor relationship, and techniques for verbally defending a thesis.

Over the semester, students identify and refine their thesis topic, solidify their relationship with a thesis advisor, and produce a thesis proposal. By the end of the semester, students will have produced a solid thesis proposal and have the necessary intellectual foundation to complete their thesis by the end of the academic year.

Course meetings combine input from faculty, group discussions, progress reports by students, and reflections on next steps. The course will include a midterm and final review of students' proposals, to be attended by faculty and critics.

Real Estate and City Making in China

Real estate has increasingly become a compelling force in the process of city making, one uniquely capable of leading and guiding multiple steps in the construct of vital urbanism: from conceiving an idea to constructing complex structures; from sourcing funding to creating master-planned communities; and from negotiating design forms to implementing urban public realms.  

A country like China is at once experiencing rapid urbanization while undergoing an unprecedented transformation in the mechanism of city making: the forces of real estate and the shifting roles played by public and private sectors are constantly challenging conventional city-building models, while defining and redefining their positions in the production of the built environment.

This course, conducted as a research seminar, focuses on the interdependence between real estate and city making. It addresses both theoretical and empirical investigations on the concepts and paradigms that have shaped and are still shaping real estate practices and their impact on contemporary Chinese cities. The course critically examines emergent real estate and urban development strategies, their respective financing structures, underlying domain expertise, urban organizational hierarchy, and the impacts of the success and failure of China’s real estate dynamics on the city-making process.

Thus, the pedagogical approaches of the course are as follows:
1. to familiarize students with many aspects of real estate issues, especially those intersected with physical design and planning methods in the process of city making
2. to introduce students to frameworks in approaching an unfamiliar real estate market
3. to expose students to the linkage between real estate and city-making parameters, using China as a case study

Students will work independently and in teams on selected themes to identify critical forces in real estate development and investment: how key real estate players, domestic or international, have formed their central business strategies, interacted with capital markets, and participated in the city-making process to facilitate and drive the formation of the built environment; and how emergent private sector leaders are integrating human capital, financial capital, and design intelligence, to reshape the form and composition of urban centers within China and beyond. With the investigative research framework set at the beginning of the semester, students will proceed to examine the city-making process through the lens of real estate, design, planning, finance, and land ownership structure, in parallel with readings and class discussions, to anticipate the trajectory of contemporary real estate development and city making. The class meets once a week and is open to students from all programs at the GSD as well as students from other departments or schools within Harvard University. 

The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Monday, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 3rd. It will meet regularly thereafter. 

Biospheric Urbanism – Changing Climates

The Option Studio ‘Biospheric Urbanism’ explores how cities can be made more resilient in the light of the ongoing changes of climate. Conceived as a series of case studies, each Studio concentrates on one single city. New York City was the first subject of study in Spring 2023, Paris is next in Fall 2023.

 

All Studios follow a similar methodology, organized in three acts. Firstly, the Studio will jointly produce a new cartography of the chosen city, revealing its different microclimatic conditions. Secondly, the most problematic and urgent areas will be identified, for which, thirdly, pragmatic proposals will be developed. The main learning goal is to use science-based research to conceive solution-based design. Each Studio will inform the next one, resulting in a new set of solutions for the different climatic conditions encountered.

 

Critical Moment

The climate crisis poses the urgent question of how to make our built environment more resilient to the challenging atmospheric changes such as heat islands, rising temperature, intensified rainfall, and longer droughts. Landscape architecture has a long history in using growth and transformation as its agents to better inhabit this planet. This unprecedented crisis represents an opportunity, and equal responsibility, for landscape architecture to radically rethink its field.

 

A City as a Myriad Microclimates

Cities account for over 70% of global carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, while only taking up around 3% of the land space. As such, cities present a crucial opportunity to combat the causes of climate change, while needing an urgent mitigating of its effects. A city can be understood as an imbrication of a myriad of microclimates. Buildings change wind patterns and sunlight exposure, while the streetscapes change soil permeability, runoff, and solar radiation.  

 

Urban Ecologies

For each man-made micro-climate, a comparable natural condition can be found. The study of their living organisms informs how to introduce vegetation and living agents into artificial environments with a similar climate. Using the logic of nature, cities can be transformed into complex urban ecologies, blurring the boundaries between the artificial and the natural. 

 

Biospheric Urbanism

Biospheric Urbanism is the study of the built environment as the interface between meteorology and geology. It aims at transforming the critical zone between the above and the below, to better cope with uncertain changes in climate, while better using its underground capacities. 

 

Case Study Paris

The city of Paris is one of the most densely populated in Europe. Its stone buildings with their zinc-top roofs act as a ‘heat sink’ in extreme weather. Paris is on average 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warmer than the surrounding rural areas. During heat waves or ‘canicules’ the difference can grow to 10 degrees. The heat waves in 2003 and in 2019 have clearly shown Paris’ vulnerability to extended periods of high temperature.

 

The city of Paris has been a global leader both in the study of and the adaptation to climate change. It developed the ‘Climate Plan for Paris’ as early as 2007. The plan has been updated in 2012 and as of 2018 it fixes clear objectives, always more ambitious, to reach the Paris Agreement. The objective is to build a carbon neutral city by 2050. The Studio starts from the ambition of the Paris Climate Action Plan to develop proposals that could be implemented immediately.

Percent for Art: A New Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

In the option studio, we design a new building for the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw by re-using the structure of a large-scale shopping mall.

We will look at museums that transformed and expanded existing structures as a springboard to investigate the potential of architecture to occupy and repurpose existing space. However, instead of post-industrial structures that house many of today’s leading contemporary art institutions, we inhabit obsolete retail space.

As implied in the ambiguous title, our project asks: what percentage of society is represented and acknowledged by museums? Official museum architecture within the context of urban landscapes represents the ideology of a certain percentage, not only acknowledging but also dividing communities.

Our site is situated in a charged urban context: the shopping mall—a slab 350 meters in length—faces the existing Museum of Modern Art with its white, abstract concrete facade and behind it the towering structure of the Soviet Palace of Culture and Science. This specific place embodies Warsaw’s recent history with the shift from communism to neoliberalism. During our studio trip to Warsaw, we will meet with artists, curators, and activists and explore the site’s artistic, architectural, and political environment.

You will not only work on the building’s design, but as architects you are also responsible for developing its spatial and cultural program. Learning from different strategies that challenge official narratives of urban memory, we aim to shed light on issues and communities which are consistently ignored. What architectural features ensure accessibility to a wider audience and foster the inclusive memory of Warsaw’s urban landscape, its appearance threatened by the onslaught of ongoing real-estate development? What happens when the cultural realm of the museum is confronted with commerce? What kind of activities—exhibitions, events, and collections—should the new museum envision?

The studio begins with a research phase, where you work on an “artist’s book” of your own to define and specify your cultural mission for the “museum of the future” that you are about to design. After visiting the site in Warsaw and discussing your projects with our clients, the curators at the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, you will work on your individual project brief and scheme for a future program. You will not only design and produce a complete architectural project, but also its display for the exhibition at the museum that will be dedicated to the studio’s investigation (planned for summer, 2024).

Throughout the term we will be joined by numerous guests, artists, curators and scholars, contributing input lectures.

Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design

Thesis extension in satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.

DDES stduents should search the my.harvard course catalog for their advisor's name and enrol in the appropriate section.

Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design

Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.

DDES stduents should search the my.harvard course catalog for their advisor's name and enrol in the appropriate section.

Independent Thesis for the Degree Master in Design Studies

(Previously "Open Projects”) Prerequisites: Filing of signed "Declaration of Advisor" form with MDes office, and approval signature of the program director. A student who selects this independent thesis for the degree MDes pursues independent research of relevance to the selected course of study within the MDes program, under the direction of a Design School faculty member. Only stuents in the MDES Areas, not Domains, can enroll in this course, and with the noted approvals.

Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees

Students may take a maximum of 8 units with different GSD instructors in this course series. 9201 must be taken for either 2, or 4 units.

Prerequisites: GSD student, seeking a Master's degree

Candidates may arrange individual work focusing on subjects or issues that are of interest to them but are not available through regularly offered coursework. Students must submit an independent study petition, and accompanying documentation as noted on the petition, after securing approval of the faculty member sponsoring the study.

The independent study petition can be found on the Documents tab in my.Harvard. Enrollment will not be final until the petition is submitted.