2024 Archives

Negotiating Actionable Plans

Planners are increasingly called upon to respond to interests and values of stakeholders, diverse parties, concerned citizens, governing entities, and the general public. Cross cutting issues often require integrated activities across multiple disciplines, such as the need for climate change plans to balance decisions of land use, housing, transportation, environmental protection, and equity.

This world of complexity can feel as though one is diving into the seeming chaos of a Jackson Pollock painting. How can one make sense of and effectively respond to such planning challenges? Some five decades ago, experimentation among planners yielded the field of public policy mediation. Since then, planners have applied and adapted negotiation, facilitation, consensus building, and public engagement processes to build actionable plans to address complex problems.

This course will focus on developing a set of nested and increasingly advanced skills of negotiation and consensus building. It will focus on three questions: What contributes to productive negotiations? How do we analyze complex circumstances to identify critical components to work toward resolution? How do we design consensus building processes, tailored to unique situational characteristics, to build actionable plans?

By exploring these questions, this course will help students develop skills to be better negotiators. They will learn to prepare to negotiate, negotiate purposefully and thoughtfully, and critically evaluate outcomes and experiences.

After negotiation basics, the course will focus on skills of planners as problem solvers. Students will practice facilitation and mediation skills, including the ability to simultaneously consider multiple perspectives on issues amidst unbridgeable difference. They will learn to conduct assessments of complex problems on provided cases and cases of personal interest. Finally, efforts will turn to the design of processes for productive negotiations among diverse parties that integrate public input and technical information.

The course will be highly interactive and practice-based. It will use exercises and role plays, videos, self-selected policy cases, discussions, and lecturettes to highlight key ideas. The varied case examples will cover issues including land use, development, housing, environment, abortion, and indigenous sacred lands.

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.

Symptomatic Reading of Architecture

Within the longstanding traditions of architectural interpretation, symptomatic reading is distinguished by its roots in Marxism and ideology critique, psychoanalytic models, and its emphasis on the productivity of reading form deeply, historicizing it, deconstructing it. While the general trajectory of this discourse stretches from Louis Althusser’s symptomatic reading of Marx in 1965, to Fredric Jameson’s crucial work on the political unconscious and theory as symptomatology, and Rosalind Krauss and T. J. Clark’s work on modern sculpture and painting, it is Manfredo Tafuri who is the most recognized symptomatic reader of architecture.

This seminar examines the foundational texts of symptomatic reading, beginning with readings of Louis Althusser, whose understanding itself requires a close reading of selected writings of Jacques Lacan. These readings will be joined with reminders about the importance of Walter Benjamin’s work to establish our core concepts. Selected theoretical writings of Tafuri will lead us to case studies of close readings of architecture. In more speculative parts of the course, we will extend our understanding of symptomatic reading with recent works in theory and architecture. The instructor will treat the history of this discourse and add to it a developing contemporary model of a theory of inscription.

This course is recommended for students enrolled in the Narratives Domain of the MDes program, doctoral studies focusing on architecture, and MArch and MLA students sufficiently prepared in theory.

Arctic Design

This seminar introduces students to (i) disciplinary debates on Arctic design, (ii) rapidly changing Arctic environments, (iii) past and present design approaches in Arctic urban landscapes, and (iv) project precedents from across the Circumpolar North. The course is grounded in a historical understanding of Arctic settlements and landscapes across a range of spatial, temporal, and cultural registers. This diverse, relational, and extensive reading of a plural Arctic is an essential first layer for every designer interested in working with polar landscapes.

The ambition of the seminar is to prepare students to critically engage with the challenges and complexities that come with designing in the Arctic regions. It does this by providing a range of rich discussions, lectures, and guest lectures. The latter includes people sharing their way of designing with or approaching, translating, seeing, and inhabiting Arctic landscapes. Among this cohort, some are Indigenous, some are residents, and some are visitors to the Circumpolar North.

By the end of the semester, each student is expected to develop and complete an extended visual essay on an agreed topic. All students are encouraged to produce a landscape-driven speculation about the challenges and/or future of Arctic design. This effort will be preceded by three short papers.

Moral Leadership: Ethics in Public Life (at HKS)

This course, offered at HKS as DPI-202, examines moral leadership in the context of professional public service. It focuses on cultivating proficiency in a range of skills that together help to ground moral action. These skills include: 1) accurately perceiving the moral dimensions of situations that arise in public service, 2) adequately weighing moral tradeoffs that have to be made as part of strategic action, and 3) effectively putting into reflective equilibrium, the verdicts of the heart and those of the head. Additionally, the course promotes 4) the capacity to entertain different moral perspectives, that is, the ability to temporarily live in another person’s moral universe and see the world through their eyes. The ability to do this well is an essential component to successfully practicing the skills needed for virtuous action. The class will be largely case-based, but also introduce moral and political theory and material from adjacent fields as needed to work through the cases. We will also prominently integrate quite a number of movies, both for the sake of making the cases come alive and to conceptualize how media representation of human experience can influence how people think about challenges.

This course is offered by HKS as DPI 202.

The course will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays in Rubenstein 306. The review session takes place on Fridays in Littauer 130. See HKS website for pre-semester shopping information.

Note that this course follows the HKS academic calendar, which has an irregular start of term with Monday, Friday, September 6th held as a Monday. The first class meeting will be on Friday, September 6th. It will meet regularly thereafter.

HKS Shopping Days are September 3-4. See Shopping Day schedule for more information.

Indigenous Philosophies for the Technological Age (at HKS)

The future of humanity depends on how we will manage to live with the technological revolutions that happen all around us. This is a good time to bring voices into the discussion that have long been excluded from impactful discussions about the future of humanity: voices of indigenous people, whose received wisdom reflects millennia of sustainable living in their respective contexts. Some of this wisdom has been worked out in distinctive indigenous philosophies, and the focus of this class is to explore some of these philosophies and assess what lessons they teach for the technological age. A focus is on indigenous authors from the U.S., but we encounter authors and perspectives from all continents. Topics we explore through the lens of indigenous philosophies include attitudes towards nature; views on technology generally; the Anthropocene; traditional ecological knowledge; artificial intelligence; genome-editing; geo-engineering; human rights; and the meaning of life. Engaging with indigenous perspectives on these matters is likely to have a transformative effect on how one approaches the big questions of the 21st century.

This course is offered by HKS as DPI 210. The course will meet in Wexner 436. See HKS website for pre-semester shopping information.

HKS Shopping Days are September 3-4. See Shopping Day schedule for more information.

Proximities / or Readings and Methods within Reflexive Formalism

“Making comparisons is the only good method in a world in which things take on consistency in relation to others. A comparison may be implicit or explicit, but without it, the mind could not function; [one] who knows one thing only, doesn’t even know that thing.” –Guido Piovene, Zodiac 8, “The Multiple Future of American Architecture”

If proximate means almost or close, it conveys the sense both of aesthetic difference and of spatial nearness. Its etymology, from the verb “proximare,” suggests the consideration “to approach.” As things approach each other…. some amount of affecting between the two will arise. The tone, the texture, the posture of marks. How things come together.

For film or literature, this reflexive method may be something like actors acting as actors. Like Pollack and Hoffman’s "Tootsie." Like Emily Eden’s coupled novels, “The Semi-Attached Couple & The Semi-Detached House.” For musicians, this may be more akin to reverb, or the empathy gained in the culture of covers.

For architecture, this seminar will explore the proximities within such reflexive formalisms. Through the serial production of architectural “readings,” each student will consider methods in reflexive form making.

Method in lieu of representation
Readings in lieu of image

The structure of the seminar will be in two parts

Part 1) a series of weekly readings and guest discussions
Part 2) the serial production of an architectural method

Preparation of MLA Design Thesis

“The natural sciences are concerned with how things are . . .
Design, on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be.”
–Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969

A thesis is a thematic proposition offered for discussion and debate. A thesis is typically developed through a piece of original research specific to an academic discipline, often at the culmination of a program of study. Theses are produced through various methods as appropriate to the disciplinary commitments of academic fields across the research university. Design theses are pursued through the methods and media specific to the design disciplines, through design research. Design research most often refers to the process and products of knowledge produced through design, as distinct from knowledge produced by research methods associated with the humanities or the sciences. Design research can be characterized by its means and methods, as well as by its sites and subjects for work, as well as the dissemination and reception of its propositions.

Design research is propositional and projective rather than simply empirical or descriptive. It is most often predicated on intervention in the world rather than simply describing the world as found. Design research is characterized by its capacity to propose alternative and better futures while simultaneously producing disciplinary knowledge in design. Candidates in the Master in Landscape Architecture Program elect to pursue independent design theses at the culmination of their graduate work. The projects presented here represent original thematic propositions put forward through design research to stimulate discussion and debate. In this sense, they are as much about design discourse and disciplinary formation as they are propositions for how things ought to be.

This research seminar is intended for Master in Landscape Architecture candidates electing to pursue a design thesis in their final year of study. The course defines the parameters of a design thesis and assists candidates in the development of their own individual design thesis proposals. The course addresses a series of broad themes essential to developing a cogent thesis proposal including design research, projective practices, discursive agendas, site contexts, programmatic drivers, and representational strategies. The course examines the role of precedent projects and design methods as well as the status of design and design research as forms of knowledge in the research university.

Course readings, video lectures, and videos of advice from faculty and recent graduates are made available via Canvas. The course meets weekly for workshop presentations and discussion of thesis projects in development. In addition to the regularly scheduled class sessions, tutorial workshops, and formal reviews, individual meetings with faculty advisors are an important aspect of the course. By the end of the term candidates will prepare an independent thesis proposal of their own formulation as a critical contribution to contemporary discourse and debate in landscape architecture. The course welcomes individual design thesis projects exploring topics of contemporary relevance to the future of landscape architecture including questions of racism and resistance, class and climate, among others.

Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree MArch

The Thesis Program encourages students to take advantage of the wide range of resources and research initiatives of the Graduate School of Design and its faculty to make a thoughtful contribution to the discipline. Thesis is a required component of the March I program, and an optional track for the March II program.

Each student works on a final thesis project based upon the interests and research done in the semesters leading up to the final term and under the guidance of a designated faculty advisor, with whom s/he will meet regularly throughout the course of the term.

The final thesis project, having attained a sufficient standard of completion, will be presented and defended at a final, open review consisting of a panel chaired by the thesis advisor and composed of members of the faculty and invited critics.

Bådehus

Yeonho Lee (MArch II ’24)

This project draws inspiration from Denmark’s maritime heritage and proposes a new residential typology in Nordhavnen Marina Bay, Copenhagen, with two main challenges: integrating the coastal urban environment with residential designs and incorporating the Danish concept of ‘Hygge’ into living spaces. Denmark, particularly Copenhagen, has a high proportion of single-person households, with about 70 percent. This demographic faces a housing shortage, creating a pressing need for innovative housing solutions.

Copenhagen is highly vulnerable to global warming, especially flooding. The Nordhavnen area faces the risk of significant inundation with a projected 2-meter sea level rise over the next 50 years. To address this, the “House for Yachts” incorporates designs that hover above ground and adapt to tidal variations. Site selection criteria include proximity to yacht facilities, suitable geographical form for harbor creation, and minimal disruption to existing structures to reduce costs.

This project includes two types of buildings: 30-unit tower-type buildings (Anchored Type) and 2-story skip-floor boathouses (Floating Type). The cantilevered design, inspired by the structural elements of the yacht mast and boom, adds a sense of vibrancy and speed to the yacht design. In addition, through co-ownership, residents who own shared yachts can access them directly via the communal ground floor spaces. Ultimately, these residential units aim to alleviate the housing shortage for single individuals while authentically reflecting Copenhagen’s coastal allure and the cultural essence embodied by ‘Hygge’ in Denmark.

Learning from Quartzsite, AZ: Emerging Nomadic Spatial Practices in America

Mojtaba Nabavi (MAUD ’24)

Quartzsite, in Arizona, is a popular winter home base for vehicle dwellers who identify as nomads. While vehicle dwelling in America has diverse motivations, this thesis focuses on about four million Americans who live in their cars full-time as their sole home and rely on them as a means of seasonal migrations.

Building on the author’s participation in the nomads’ biggest annual gathering in Quartzsite called Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (RTR), the thesis investigates their spatial practices in urban and non-urban settings. It seeks to shed light on invisible mobile communities emerging from the ongoing decentralization process in the US, driven primarily by economic crises and climate change.

This thesis claims that houselessness is not homelessness. Since the 1930s, vehicle-dwellers have gradually developed a communal alternative lifestyle, utilizing the country’s capacities in physical infrastructures like highways and, in recent years, non-physical infrastructures like digital networks, which they call “Nomadism.” This lifestyle, using mobility as a survival strategy to adapt to adverse living conditions, leads to the creation of intentional communities outside urban boundaries. These communities, in smaller units called caravans, constantly move towards temporary job opportunities, creating instant urbanism around a migration route.

This thesis uncovers this cyclical migration route, attraction points, and spatial practices of the US nomadic community. It ultimately seeks the role of design in proposing this mode of houseless living as an alternative lifestyle by enhancing nomads’ visibility and vehicle dwelling reliability through systemic thinking, proposing complementary modular living spaces to address deficiencies along their migration route.