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.

This course has an irregular schedule. Please see the course syllabus for details.

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 Tange Kenzō (1913–2005) on the one hand and Shinohara Kazuo (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 Itō Toyoo, 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.

Displaced Becomings –The Many Faces of Modern Architecture in Sinophone Asia

The idea was that in [a] society, one that's incompletely modernized… the temporal dynamics of that society, and of the modernism that it produces, will be much more striking… [I]t is through the experience of time that modern is apprehended.
–Fredric Jameson interview with Michael Speaks
Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism

Modern architecture was much more than “the International Style” as proclaimed by the vanguard in 1932. Modern architecture sprung up all over the world, in all political systems, in all geographical regions, in all kinds of conditions specific to each case. In many cases, through the drift and shift of transformation, adaptation, and intervention, modern architecture gained its momentum going forward and expanded its groundings both professionally, theoretically, and socially. After all, modernity also indicates battling the preexistent colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, as well as institutionalized chauvinism of all kinds. As such is the case of modern architecture in Sinophone Asia, which include Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong/Macau, Singapore and some part of Nusantara, the Southeast Asian archipelago. The cases, topics, and areas which the course covers.¨

The course provides an exploratory study of the histories, theories, ideologies in which the discipline practiced as well as currently practices over time and across cultures and geographies under the umbrella of modern architecture. The idea is to call for a [re]discovery of multiplicity and diverseness of modern architecture. The emphasis is on plural reading and understanding of modern architecture through multiple cultural and critical lenses. The lecture discusses significant projects, prominent figures, noteworthy historical moments, and momentous social and political events. The lecture also examines the architectural movements and the other-isms as well as offers a glimpse of the recent Grands Projects and the work of the emergent generation.

The course is structured around faculty presentations, guest lectures, and collective discussions. The students will be tasked with completing two assignments. The first being a case study assignment, the second a short end-of-the-semester paper on a topic related to the course. There are no prerequisites.

Redefining Urban Design

The field of urban design is undergoing a process of major transformation. Josep Lluís Sert’s initial definition as the space between planning and architecture, emphasizing the culture of cities as “civic culture” and proposing pedestrian interaction as the “underlying coherence” of the work developed at different scales, followed his reinterpretation of the CIAM. This began at the GSD in 1956 with the Urban Design Program and has evolved continuously for seven decades. This Seminar sets out to contribute to redefining urban design by enhancing theoretical principles and exploring innovative practices in the field.

Industrialization and progress guided development throughout the 20th century, resulting in financial globalization, and the advancement of forms of communication and digital development. The emergence of new forms of economy that impact the conception and design of the city allows us to consider more creative alternatives to those of the prevailing globalization process. This is the framework in which we wish to situate discussion in the Seminar.

Defining this new urban field calls for a more in-depth study of projects that represent the roles or issues that urban design can address. It also requires us to produce design actions and strategies within the urbanistic discipline through research and practice. The design of the present-day city must consider environmental and climate challenges, digital impact, a knowledge-based economy, multiple and changing modes of mobility, as well as the more demanding aspirations of an older and more educated population.

The Seminar method is based on facing today’s challenges by considering ongoing projects or research that allow us to understand that development is not linear and univocal; rather there are open and varied solutions centring on housing, energy, transport, etc. The process is a plural one, and the solutions in each case depend largely on the context, including aspirations, limitations, and available technologies.

The Seminar is based on research into sixteen topics that define current thinking and practice of urban design and projecting them into the future. We are selecting certain topics and case studies to advance the discussion of theoretical background, design tools, development process, and the conditions of agency and governance. Topics are structured within a theoretical framework, using relevant case studies and key projects to show the scope and conditions for the development of each chapter. Research is organized in four blocks corresponding to different scales and approaches, and an introduction.

The four main blocks are:
   – Long-term strategies operating at different scales.
   – Systematic forms of transition from the present-day city.
   – Infilling and upgrading.
   – Experimenting with new design issues.

Above all, we will be interested in the way this discipline develops plans, projects, and strategies, within the extraordinary complexity of today’s urban design field. Because, to quote Lesley Lokko at the 2023 Venice Biennale, “it is impossible to build a better world if we cannot first imagine it”.

Landscape Representation II

The Landscape Representation II course will examine the relationship between terrain and the dynamic landscape it supports and engenders.

The course explores and challenges the representational conventions of land-forming and supports a landscape architecture design process that posits the landscape as a relational assemblage of dynamic physical and temporal forces. It investigates the making of landforms through its inherent material performance in relation to ecological processes that describe its connectivity to the ordering and making of the landscape which is a reciprocation of forces between itself and its context at specific scales.

Measures of time will be utilized to describe and design the landscape through a comparison of sequence and event, and their intervals, rates, and duration in relation to spatial forces and flows. Time infuses the material reality of the landscape through states of formation: from those that signify stability, through sequences that are predictable and observable processes of change, to those that are uncertain and instantaneous.

Representation is approached as an activity of thinking and making in which knowledge is generated through the work. This facilitates an iterative process of reflection in action, enabling testing in which new knowledge informs subsequent design decisions. The course will introduce methods of associative and generative modelling, and quantitative and qualitative analysis visualized through multiple forms of media. These are decision-making models conceived to imbue interaction between evidence-based variables and design input.

Lectures and lab exercises will provide the foundation for exploration and discussion and exposure to a set of digital techniques for analysing and generating landform processes to advance technical and conceptual ability, as well as to provide a point of departure for an in-depth awareness of landscape precedents and representational techniques.

It aims to provide students with an understanding of landscape as a set of complex systems in which duration and matter are encoded within, and driven by, a changing landscape. The course engages in the advanced exploration of digital media, with an emphasis on responsive and performative modelling as well as the fluid transition between documentation and speculation, 2d and 3d, static and dynamic, and digital and analogue media.

Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture

What do you need to know in order to understand this landscape? How do design culture and design thinking transform over time? How are cultural values embedded in the design of landscapes? This course is framed in terms of the relationship of landscape architecture to the evolving theorizations of nature and culture. In each class, we will map various critical assumptions, ideologies, and aspirations that inform how landscape is designed and interpreted. By learning to read landscapes and related projects of landscape architecture, we will study the constructedness of landscape. Conversely, we will also examine the capacities of landscape architecture to shape identity and ecology, reproduce or contest power relations and inequality, and commemorate diverse cultural meaning.

The course elaborates a working definition of theory as it relates to landscape practice. It contextualizes the discipline’s transition from a modernist paradigm in the West, to the gradual eradication of conceptual binaries and the pluralization of narratives in the late twentieth century. It considers landscape’s ‘social’ engagements to include non-human actors, and concludes with recent materialist approaches to landscape that emphasize its performance and flows in the era of global warming.

The course weaves together three kinds of investigations: one that focuses on built forms, another on the ideas and conceptual frameworks that guide the production of those forms, and a third that examines the retrospective interpretation of those forms. We will attend to diverse projects and topics, that may include border regions, urban landscapes, agricultural landscapes, colonial plantations, scientific gardens, territories of extraction, zones of environmental risk, successional forests, migrating ecosystems, national parks, native lands, domestic spheres, and postcolonial gardens. Through these sites, we will critically explore the spatial forms of exclusion, inclusion, conflict, and cooperation between and among people and their surroundings.

At the end of this class, students will understand the value and make use of theory in design, will be able to articulate the diverse intellectual, social, and political dimensions of landscapes, and to refer to a history of landscape architecture projects oriented to related issues. Students will also be able to articulate their priorities within the discipline. Assignments will include a combination of case study presentations, written responses to assigned readings and hands-on exercises designed to train students in the analysis of landscapes.

This course is open to all Harvard GSD students and also accepts cross-registered students.

Introduction to Real Estate Finance, Development, and Management

This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate finance, management, and development. Lectures and supplemental videos introduce students to the full range of financial analysis skills and analytical processes for evaluating private and public development and investment in real estate. Discussions link real world investment decisions to broader questions of policy and stakeholder interests. Case studies require students to use the skills to make decisions in realistic situations. Major property types and land uses are covered, as well as all stages of the development process, including site selection, market analysis, financial feasibility, design and legal considerations, construction, lease-up, operations, and sale of the final product. This Spring course assumes no background familiarity with real estate but covers the full range of topics offered in the Fall version.  

Equitable Development and Housing Policy in Urban Settings (at HKS)

An introduction to policymaking in American cities, focusing on economic, demographic, institutional, and political settings. It examines inclusive and equitable economic development and job growth in the context of metropolitan regions and the emerging "new economy.”  Topics include: federal, state, and local government strategies for expanding community economic development and affordable housing opportunities, equitable transit-oriented development and resiliency. Of special concern is the continuing spatial and racial isolation of low-income populations, especially minority populations, in central-city neighborhoods and how suburbanization of employment, reduction in low-skilled jobs, and racial discrimination combine to limit housing and employment opportunities. Current federal policy such as Opportunity Zones and tax credit initiatives will be examined relative to policy goals of addressing communities that have historically been discriminated both by the public and private sectors.  During the semester, students will complete a brief policy memorandum, and participate in a term-long group project exploring policy options to address an urban problem or issue for a specific city.

Jointly offered course: Also offered as SUP-600.

See HKS website for shopping period information.

Architecture and Poststructuralism

We set the stage by means of a persistent dilemma shaping aesthetic practices as it was inaugurated by concepts from Kant and Hegel: Is architecture an autonomous form or is it determined by its historical, social, and technological contexts? The version of the dilemma we will treat here began in the West in the 1960s, when architects and scholars explicitly reframed the above question and continued their pondering at least until the 1990s. The concept of postmodernism, often a corollary of structuralist and poststructuralist thought, finds its definitive articulation in architecture. Postmodern architecture was born in the academy and was developed in journals that interacted with poststructuralism. In the course, we will follow that development with close readings of architectural projects and theoretical texts. Meanwhile, the larger currents of postmodern thought flowed through poststructuralist theories of subject formation, which we will also study.

The embrace of poststructuralist theory eventually precipitated the end of historicist postmodernism, though it is arguable that extensions of postmodern thought continue to frame recent architectural production. In the second half of the seminar, we will investigate the lineage of poststructuralism in architectural practice since 1990. This part of the course will be more speculative and will require intense involvement on the part of participants.

Prerequisites: BTC or equivalent study in architecture theory and history.

Design Teaching Lab (DTL)

This course teaches design teaching for those interested in pursuing parallel paths in design and education.   Starting from an understanding of design as a culture of critique and iteration, this course will serve as a laboratory for the critical examination of how we learn about and through design.   Through a series of interactive workshops, we will collaboratively redline design education, closely reading its typical terms, media, and practices while simultaneously analyzing and annotating the pedagogical spaces and formats within and around which design learning usually takes place.  The aim is to develop projective possibilities for design education that can be directly applied to GSD Early Design Education (EDE) teaching positions as “field work” extending the research of the course, as well as to design teaching engagements beyond the GSD. 

Students who took 7451 in spring 2023 cannot take this course for credit.