Studies of the Built North American Environment: since 1580
North America as an evolving visual environment is analyzed as a systems concatenation involving such constituent elements as farms, small towns, shopping malls, highways, suburbs, and as depicted in fiction, poetry, cartography, television, cinema, and advertising and cybernetic simulation.
Note that this course follows the FAS academic calendar. See the FAS calendar for information on the first day of classes.
Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Origins and Ends
Our aim is to address the general rupture caused by the rise of modernity—that is, by the social, economic, technological, and ideological transformations accompanying the political and industrial revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was an age of internationalization in design practices and issues, a process that was accompanied by technological transformation and utopian thinking as well as by rising tensions linked to social inequality, colonial expansionism, and political upheaval. Our work in this course will look at the three pillars of buildings, texts, and contexts in order to find the equilibrium between, on the one hand, localized historical narratives and, on the other, the sampling to which a global purview necessarily gives rise.
The transition of architecture to the modern world prompts a series of fundamental questions: How did historical conditions place pressure on the tradition-bound parameters of architecture, on its origins, theories, and pedagogies? How did new conditions of scientific possibility actively reconfigure architecture’s relation to engineering and ideologies of progress? And how, finally, did aesthetic conceptions and approaches, which trace an arc from the demise of the Vitruvian tradition to eclecticism, historicism, and rationalist avant-gardes, intersect with gender, race, society, and politics?
This course weaves these questions through topics and themes ranging from technology and utopia to ornament and imperialism. We begin with late Baroque polemics and the disintegration of the Classical system. We consider the multifaceted nature of eighteenth- century architectural expressions in such examples as: the ideal city from royal Jaipur to revolutionary Paris, the split between architects and engineers; origin myths and the status of history; and the formulation of building typologies from churches and factories to slave plantations in colonial contexts. The nineteenth century, which for us is inaugurated by a utopian imaginary, covers key episodes such as utopian socialism in the context of the Industrial Revolution, town planning and racial politics after the Civil War, the Beaux-Arts system in Europe, China, and the Americas, the intertwining of ornament and British imperialism in India, the collision of vernacular traditions and colonial modernity in Africa, and, finally, the global dream of colossal structures and the infrastructural programs of the modern metropolis.
The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Tuesday, the first meeting of this course will be on Thursday, September 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter.
The Idea of Environment
The environment is the milieu in which designers and planners operate. It is a messy world of facts, meanings, relations, and actions that calls them to intervene—that is, to make a plan, solve a problem, create a product, or strategize a process. They use various measures to assess and project their interventions from beauty and efficiency to systems and sustainability. Today, increasing volatility and uncertainty of the environment, however, alongside a growing sense and presence of crises and disasters, compels us to reconsider how we have imaged and imagined, defended and critiqued, planned and designed the environment. The class will explore how and what new approaches to representation, visualization, and measurement might lead to different relations in a changing world.
This class is a seminar focused on reading and discussion. Course participants will be required to submit weekly reading responses, to contribute to discussions online and in class, and to develop an original research and/or design project over the course of the semester.
Theories of Landscape as Urbanism
This course introduces contemporary theories of landscape as a medium of urbanism and product of urbanization. The course surveys sites and subjects, texts and topics describing landscape’s embeddedness in processes of urbanization as well as economic transformations informing the shape of the city. The course introduces students to landscape as a form of cultural production, as a mode of human subjectivity, as a medium of design, as a profession, and as an academic discipline. Through lectures, discussions, readings, and case study projects, students will be introduced to landscape through the lenses of capital, labor, material, subject, and environment. The first half of the course revisits the origins of landscape in response to the societal and environmental challenges of industrialization and the attendant transformations in industrial economy shaping the modern metropolis. The second half of the course repositions recent discourse on landscape as urbanism in relation to the economic and territorial transformations associated with ongoing urbanization at the planetary scale.
The first quarter of the course introduces the origins of landscape as a genre of painting and the invention of the ‘new art’ of landscape architecture as responses to urbanization and their attendant social, economic, and cultural transformations. This portion of the course describes the material and cultural contexts in which landscape was conceived as well as the sites and subjects it invoked. The second quarter of the course describes the emergence of city planning from within landscape architecture and the subsequent impoverishment of the field in the absence of its urban contents. This portion of the course introduces the aspirations and implications of ecologically informed regional planning in the 20thcentury, as well as the ongoing ideological effects of that agenda in the context of neoliberalism.
The third quarter of the course introduces the discourse and practices of landscape urbanism over the past two decades. This portion of the course surveys the discursive and projective potentials of an ecological urbanism, as distinct from those of ecological planning, and speculates on the recent formulation of projective ecologies, among other discursive formations shaping the field. The final quarter of the course follows the transition from region to territory, and from regional urbanization to planetary urbanization. This portion of the course describes landscape’s role as a medium of cultural production and critical revelation in relation to the increased scale and scope of anthropogenic impacts across the planet.
Course readings and supplementary multimedia materials are made available for asynchronous review via Canvas. The course consists of bi-weekly lectures and an additional discussion session. Students are invited to contribute to discussions, prepare brief response papers, and complete a design research dossier on a topic attendant to the course content at the end of the term. The course is required for candidates in the Master in Landscape Architecture Program, is recommended for candidates in the Ecologies domain of the Master in Design Studies Program, and invites elective students from all programs and departments of the School.
The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Tuesday, the first meeting of this course will be on Thursday, September 5th. 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.
From Inception to Realization: Three Museum Case Studies
The process of design is continuous. At the inception of a project, we sketch, analyze with scale overlays, and develop preliminary massing models. Months later, we sit with expert consultants debating the appropriate technical solution for a steel node detail or a skylight. On site, in a supervisory role, we continue to design solutions for those challenges that arise over the course of construction. From the initial sketch of an idea to walking through the building alongside the public, it is a journey which involves a considerable accrued knowledge over time, and the ability to orchestrate diverse teams of collaborators.
In three lectures, each followed by a discussion, we will provide a step-by-step analysis of the design process, from inception to realization. In each case, we will explore the process from the initiation of program, site analysis, development of a concept, and its technical evolution through to construction.
The case studies will be three museums delivered by our practice, devoted to three different subjects, located in three different geographic settings, and utilizing three different construction technologies – the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; Yad Vashem in Jerusalem; and the ArtScience Museum in Singapore.
The diversity of program, setting, and construction technology will enable us to focus on common denominators of design, development, and realization, from embryonic concepts to shop drawings and construction details.
To follow the three lectures, we will invite course participants to the Safdie Architects studio in Somerville to see drawings, models, and other artifacts from the Safdie Archive, and to discuss the projects in detail with the firm’s Architects that were central to the design teams.
To receive credit, students will be required to attend all four sessions. After each lecture there will be a discussion session. At the end of the course, students will prepare a paper on their findings from the course.
This 1-unit course meets four times: February 28, March 6, March 20, March 27. Attendance is required.
This course is not open for cross-registration.
GSD students who would like to take this course should add it to their Crimson Cart but not officially enroll. These students will automatically be enrolled in this course by the Registrar’s Office on Monday, February 5th. GSD students do not need to obtain departmental permission for taking this one additional unit, however, additional fees may apply if enrollment exceeds maximum credits.
Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building II (at HKS)
This community based research course focuses on some of the major issues Native American Indian tribes and nations face in the 21st century. It provides in-depth, hands-on exposure to native development issues, including: sovereignty, economic development, constitutional reform, leadership, health and social welfare, tribal finances, land and water rights, culture and language, religious freedom, and education. In particular, the course emphasizes problem definition, client relationships, and designing and completing a research project for a tribe, tribal department, or those active in Indian Country. The course is devoted primarily to preparation and presentation of a comprehensive research paper based on work with a tribal community. In addition to faculty presentations on topics such as field research methods and problem definition, students will make presentations on their work in progress and ultimate findings.
This course is offered by the Havard Kennedy School as DEV 502, and is also jointly listed with Graduate School of Education as A-102, and the Faculty of Arts and Science as EMR-121., and the Graduate School of Design as SES 5427. For students interested in additional courses on Native America please also see HKS DEV-501M “Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building I” (Joseph Kalt and Angela Riley) and HKS SUP 625/GSD SES 5439 “Land Loss, Reclamation, and Stewardship in Contemporary Native America” (Eric Henson, Philip Deloria, Daniel D’Oca).
This course meets at HKS in room Wexner 330. Please see the HKS website for information regarding first class meetings.
History and Theory of Architectural Practice
Who is the architect?
This course considers architectural practice from social and historical perspectives, and it charts changing definitions of the architect with respect to shifting cultural contexts and political economies. In so doing, the course expands critical awareness of the forces that have shaped contemporary architectural practice, and it invites speculation about alternative forms and formats of practice that are even now emerging.
The course will first review the framework of world traditions that have contributed to the formation of “the architect” as both symbol and individual personification, a mediator within the cultural imagination between social vision and technical know-how. Competing and complementary ideas of the architect emerged, historically, from both the top-down authority of owners and the bottom-up craft abilities of builders, and then merged in the middle with the architect as intermediary agent between the other parties’ respective ends and means.
The perspective of the course will then shift to the context of North America to consider the specific formation of the U.S architectural profession. European colonial assumptions were gradually supplanted by affordances of a nascent American democracy to yield, by the middle of the 19th century, a particular vocational manifestation of a rising professional ideology. The architecture profession that unfolded between the end of the Civil War and the aftermath of World War II institutionalized new models of corporate identity as well as mechanisms of social closure and market control – through professional organization and university education; through state regulation, examination, and licensure. As a result, the definition of the architect was significantly narrowed as compared to the foregoing, laissez faire model of unregulated titular claims.
Two extended case studies focus upon the material culture of American architectural practice – its tools, documents, methods, divisions of labor – as a means of unearthing the embedded ideological assumptions of the profession. Critical consideration of The Handbook of Architectural Practice (1920) illustrates how specific tools and assumptions of U.S. architectural practice evolved and functioned as mediators between and among clients, architects, and builders. Likewise, a social history of Ramsey & Sleeper’s Architectural Graphic Standards (1932) examines the profession from the bottom-up, from the standpoint of the architectural drafter, to provide insight into ongoing dynamics roiling the ranks of architectural labor. Together, these case studies demonstrate ways in which the standardization of the architecture profession both issued from and advanced processes of standards formation in American society at-large.
Finally, in consideration of the constant revolutionizing of architectural practice that the historical record shows, we will conclude the course by speculating about emergent trajectories of architectural practice in light of changing tools and technologies and shifting matters of concern.
The course will be conducted through dialog during each weekly session. A topical focus upon commonly assigned texts will be contextualized by framing lectures and then elaborated by student-led responses and discussions.
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.