Health and Buildings
Former course title: “Building [/] Human Interaction”. This course investigates the interactions between humans and buildings with a focus on health. Students will investigate architectural design concepts that can improve indoor air quality, reduce exposure to toxic materials, improve visual and thermal comfort, help prevent the spread of infectious disease, and potentially impact other aspects of health, such as mood, sleep quality, and circadian rhythms. Students will explore how architects might encourage healthier occupant behavior, such as increased physical activity. Through first-hand experience navigating the built environment with assistive devices like wheelchairs, students will consider how designers could better accommodate many types of users. The final project can be a research or design project that dives into one or more of the topics covered. In short, we will explore elusive yet weighty design goals with the aim of improving public health.
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.
Inscriptions: Recent Experimental Architecture
This course is appropriate for students who can devote time to reading advanced theoretical material and do close formal and material studies of experimental projects. Completion of the BTC sequence is required for MArch I students. Background in formal analysis and architecture theory will be expected for all who enroll.
One has heard the characterization of the work of the recent generation of architects as neo-postmodern. The assumption behind this label is twofold: first, that postmodern architecture sought, through index or metaphor, to reference specific and multiple historical precedents; and second, that certain contemporary practices, because they can’t fathom any other way forward, reference that referencing in a modius-strip-like bending back of history—the eternal return of same.
Might it be suspected, then, that the title of “Inscriptions” signals a retreat to old certainties? Is it not difficult to deny the appearance of emphatically familiar, fundamental, and even ancient forms in much recent work—a retracing of architecture’s most solid tropes in order “to regain the innocence of archetypal symbols; the pyramid, the sphere, the circle, the ellipse, and the labyrinth” (Tafuri)? And does not the contradictory impulse reaffirm the rule by exception—boxes, stacks, arrays, sets, mazes, bodies, mark, blocks…. Not to mention the rock. At first glance it is an almost nursey-rhyme list, a survey of objects in an untidy room. But that’s just it. The logic of the list is, again, the block-by-block assumption of fundamentals.
We see the situation differently. If the ancient labyrinth was supposed to contain the path to wisdom and freedom, then the contemporary one signals the acceptance of the failure of a universal language, the failure to complete the Tower of Babel. Jacques Derrida recognized this: “Only the incompletion of the tower makes it possible for architecture as well as the multitude of languages to have a history.”
This course begins with the failure of modernism’s effort to install a universal language (an effort now recognized in all its imperialism) and the failure of postmodernism’s critique (and the consequent demise of any symbolic authority for architecture’s practice). The course will then proceed to investigate what seems to be a shared mechanism among current architects, an agreement about how architectural objects emerge from the procedures of design. This conjecture emerged in the last days of 2017 as the instructors of this course collaborated to mount a survey exhibition of contemporary architecture and noticed a pattern. It was not the unearthing of similar forms exactly but rather the flash of recognition itself that gave the discovery of each project a quality of confirmation, of underscoring premonitory knowledge. That under-scoring is part of what we mean by inscription—opening a space for new architectures by abrading, marking, and overwriting the discipline’s known tropes.
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 Fifth Plan
In this seminar we will consider the evolution of the floor plan across five iterations: proto-modern, modern, post-modern, sequel-modern, and, most importantly, the present. We will begin with a simple hypothesis about the present, namely that there is a new plan afoot. It has been making its way into architecture for several years, announcing its arrival via the paroxysms that come with a long gestation. Its terms are not those of the suck-the-air-out gangly hollowness of proto-modern experiments in iron and steel (as seen in train stations, department stores, and exhibition halls), nor the give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death plan of modernism (universal, free), nor the we-used-to-do-it-like-this-plus-je-ne-sais-quoi plan of post-modernism (neo-historical, juxtaposing), nor the plan-non-chalant of recent reinvigorations of modernist architecture (data-driven, a-formal). Given it descends from these four earlier paradigms of plan thinking, I’ve provisionally labeled this new plan the “fifth plan.”
As surely as it descends from these precedents, the fifth plan is decidedly not like its predecessors. Our understanding of plans (and of architecture) depends on our ability to distill the characteristics of plan-based organizations, characteristics that the fifth plan incessantly meddles with: open or defined, perimeter or interior, figure or system, history or future, homogeneous or varied. This new plan confounds classification because it conflates spatial temperaments. It slips into and out of categorical restraints as needed. It signals neither a return to nor a rejection of previous plan models and, most importantly, can’t be singularly aligned or contrasted with its antecedents.
A few clarifications might be useful. First, “plan” here refers to the term’s basic definition in architecture, namely the horizontal organization that modulates degrees of enclosure, program organizations, circulation systems, optical dispositions, formal geometries, and hierarchies. Second, the plan is taken to be a primary part of architecture’s makeup, which is to say the plan is deeply wound into both the momentum of architecture’s disciplinary history and the transformation of architecture as we face the future. The plan structures architecture’s formal systems, economies, social constellations, and material constructs. It is the discipline’s constitution: equal parts social contract, technical diagram, spreadsheet, and aesthetic code. What changes from plan-era to plan-era are the hierarchies among parts and the ways in parts deemed important are related to one another, invariably producing constantly changing definitions of what we think of as wholes in architecture.
Where can this new plan be found? In its nascent state, various strains of the fifth plan can be found in a range of contemporary practices including Mansilla & Tunon, Michael Maltzan, Sou Fujimoto, Barkow Leibinger, Johnston Marklee, Toyo Ito, SANAA, as well as a host of other practices. In fact, none of these firms lays claim to this new plan type, and none of them can be said to deploy it consistently. Further complicating things, individual examples can be found in unexpected authors such as SOM (the Burr Elementary School) or Gintautas Natkevicius (a Lithuanian architect whose Birstonas House is relevant). Nonetheless, collectively an increasingly forceful exhibition of new plan thinking is being produced by these practices and others. The fifth plan’s presence might be found in a single building, in a part of a building, or across a string of projects produced by a particular practice. And yet it appears evermore ubiquitously in architecture: across scales of work, types of programs, geographies, practices, and even economies and social worlds.
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.
Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture
Current tendencies in the discipline suggest a split between two opposing architectural projects: the easy project versus the difficult project[1]. Primarily related to architecture’s form, this positioning of the divide might also be used to identify recent developments in representation: Cheap and fast one-point perspectives with minimal material changes as opposed to laborious photo-realistic renderings oozing tactile interiors. Compounded by the hourly “swipe,” up/down and left/right, or how the architectural image is posted, pinned, shared, and liked moments after it is created, places a further immediacy on the making of representation and naming an agenda. Rather than question the easy over the difficult, might we readjust our focus towards the conceptualization of representation first, as a way of conceiving of architecture? This seminar engages the following thought-polemic: “Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture.”
The aim of this course is to develop techniques and methodologies around a series of representational experiments. All content will be framed by contemporary issues in representation, not a historical overview, and will include directed studies on materiality, color, digital tooling, animations, scale figures, and media. Formatted into a list of six curated references, with the majority of sources located in art practice and popular culture, each weekly lecture will attempt to construct a theory on representation.
Over the course of the semester, participants will conduct biweekly exercises, culminating in the delivery of a twenty minute lecture to the class around your own theory on representation, potentially setting up a future architectural project for oneself. Part lecture, part performance, and part production, “Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture” is a search for original representational agendas.
[1] Somol, R.E. "Green Dots 101." Hunch 11 (2007): 28-37
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15. After that, this course will meet mostly in person with the exception of 3-4 sessions that will happen online. Please review the syllabus for details, and note that this is subject to change.
The first class meeting will be on Wednesday, September 8th. The rest of the semester, classes will meet during the official scheduled time.
Mapping the Political Economy of Space
There is no such thing as neutral space. Topography and soil history, land use and tenure chronicle, housing demands and construction costs, public policies, plot subdivision and zoning, access to water and electricity networks and other public infrastructure, negotiations and financing schemes, urban codes and insurance policies, location and surrounding context, project design and materiality choices, excavation works, execution and construction settings, labor force and machinery, completion and real estate mechanisms, occupancy, use and expansion, decay and destruction: at every turn, several agents and forces act upon space. The production of architecture and urban form is grounded in power structures, and articulating a possible political economy of space uncovers how the house, the neighborhood, the city, and the territory partake in the violent and unjust spatiality of power. This seminar is set on understanding what forces shape the built environment and in what ways by uncovering the social, economic, or political forces that impact and generate the physical and technological features of our world. The aim is to enhance our capacity to reflect on spatial conditions in a critical way, and use representation tools available to designers to do so.
The class is structured around 7 guest lectures articulating “7 Questions” on the political economy of space, prepared with readings, while students chose a topic to investigate mapping the political economy of space. Explorative mappings and graphic representations, along with short texts shall be produced in order to untangle the actors and forces acting upon space, to investigate and uncover the relationship between social, economic, and political processes and spatial form. Ultimately, the aim is to articulate a definition of what a possible political economy of space could entail, and how to use it as a critical thinking tool within design and research practices.
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. After that, the class will meet in person with the exception of the following dates, when the class will meet on Zoom with guest speakers: 9/8, 9/22, 10/6, 10/20, 11/3, 11/17. Please review the syllabus for more details. Please note that this is subject to change.
NOTE: the first class meeting is scheduled on September 1 online at 6:00 PM EST – 90
Urban Ethnographies
Planners’ understanding of social process and cultural values is often woefully inadequate, and their thinking is dominated by a “one-size-fits-all” approach and by excessive attention to the values of an international middle class rather than to local experience. In this course, we will read some urban ethnography inspecting the interactions among local people, planners, anthropologists, architects, and builders in order to think against the grain, especially in cases where disputes over whose heritage is at stake dominate the discourse. We will also examine the role of conflict in shaping urban space and ask whether attempts to smooth it over are necessarily to the benefit of local populations, especially where internal factionalism and political dissent are at stake. Finally, we will also examine the role of urban space in shaping people’s subjectivities and ask what that role tells us about governmental structures and the way they affect ordinary people’s lives.
Course enrollment is limited to twelve. Six spots will be prioritized for MDes Critical Conservation students who select the course first in the lottery.
Please note this course will meet online through 9/15. After that, the class will meet in person with the possible exception of one or two sessions to be held on Zoom. More details will be provided at the start of the semester or well in advance of any change.
The first class meeting will be on Wednesday, September 1st. The rest of the semester, classes will meet during the official scheduled time.
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
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
Interpreting an Archive
A seminar/workshop addressing current issues on the practices of architectural archiving and the curation of architectural exhibitions.
A series of lectures from the instructors and from several distinguished visitors (museum curators, archivists and architects whose work has been the subject of exhibits and content of archives), followed by class discussions, and organized visits to local museum and collections if conditions permit. Besides classes that follow the seminar format there will be workshops in which actual archival material (flat work and models) will be inspected, handled and discussed. We will meet twice a week in the afternoon (schedule tbd), one two hour session for presentations and one hour session for discussions. Students will be required for their final assignment to curate and design a small architectural exhibit in Gund Hall of selected materials from one of the GSD Frances Loeb Library Special Collections Archive.
Enrollment in this course is limited to twelve architecture students. Six spaces are reserved for MArch II students and six for MArchI students who select the course first in the limited enrollment course lottery.
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.
Course 3487 Interpreting an Archive, will be taught on Tuesdays 12:00pm to 2:00pm and Fridays 12:00pm to 1:00pm. Tuesday sessions will be taught in person while Friday sessions will be on zoom with some exceptions when the course will visit local exhibits, collections, archives, etc. A complete list of Fridays visits will be confirmed on first day of classes.
Culture, Conservation and Design
This proseminar addresses issues of critical conservation, an evolving discipline that illuminates the bridge between cultural meaning, identity, and context as part of the design process. Critical conservation explores the multiple forces that underlie contemporary life and the creation of places. The field addresses issues of social justice as applied to the design of places: whose history is being told; whose future is being created; who benefits; who is included and excluded by the process of creating new designs in an existing context? The goal of the course is to broaden the student’s understanding of the cultural dimensions of a place and to understand how we use/misuse the past and how we value the present.
The course is organized around three topics:
1. The Dynamic Present addresses the inherent dynamism of modernity and tradition in creating personal and group identities. It investigates questions about the past, history, permanence, temporality, obsolescence, and authenticity and applies them to understanding the identity of places.
2. Place & Cultural Identity addresses the social construction of meaning associated with group identities, places, artifacts, and history. Issues include history, heritage, nostalgia, authenticity, and their intersection with regulatory agencies and preservation standards that are used to attempt to control context by design and identity narratives.
3. Conservation Uses & Abuses addresses how conservation is used to create, control, and transform places. The roles of ancestor worship, government use of racial zoning, urban renewal, creation of tourist destinations, the stigmatization of the other, and private use of exclusionary amenities will be examined to understand how groups use underlying agendas to manifest power, shape and enforce group identity, and exclude the other.
The seminar is open to all GSD students and is a distributional elective for MDes Publics students. There are no prerequisites. Course work includes a one-page synthesis of weekly reading assignments, three case study presentations with short papers, and a paper/presentation of a final research project framed in the topics explored in the seminar.
DES 3333 is a Discussion-Based Seminar limited by lottery. The readings and discussions provide a theoretical framework to support advanced research. It is a required course for the MDes Critical Conservation area, and a distributional elective for the MDes Publics Domain. Lottery preference given MDes students who select the course first in the lottery, with highest priority given to MDes Publics Domain students.
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 official scheduled time.
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.
Proseminar in ECOLOGIES: Interrelated, In-between, Dynamic
Our aim in the proseminar is to explore the inherent inventedness of ecology as a field of inquiry, its distinctly relational nature, and the potential breadth of it social, cultural, political, environmental, economic, and urbanistic implications. The work will draw on the social sciences, design research, material culture, urban theory, climate and energy studies, and public policy. Through reading, presentation, and discussion, we will explore various situated understandings of and attitudes toward nature and environment, across cultures and including inter-species and non-human lenses. We will touch on issues of planetary and atmospheric change and dynamics; resource cultivation and extraction technologies; production, distribution, and consumption networks, and their regulatory frameworks; forms of collective living at the scale of the city, region, and territory; and questions of to whom and for whom these networks, policies, and regulations are established (and who they exclude). Case studies will embody contemporary discourses and research methods, including reading and writing, visualization, simulation, projection, and communication.
ECOLOGIES + Cultures
– Land, Landscape, Environment, Nature
– Non-Human Lenses
ECOLOGIES + Atmospheres
– Climate
– Energy
ECOLOGIES + Resources
– Cultivation Techniques and Technologies
– Extraction, Production and Distribution Networks
– Material Culture
ECOLOGIES + Collective Society
– Territory, Infrastructure, Urbanism
– Regulatory and Policy Frameworks
ECOLOGIES + Social Life
– Public Health, Equity, Justice
– Human Behavior
Prerequisites: Enrollment in the MDes ECOLOGIES program.
The first class meeting will be on Wednesday, September 1st. The rest of the semester, classes will meet during the official scheduled time.