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.

Confronting Climate Change: A Foundation in Science, Technology and Policy (HKS)

This course will consider the challenge of climate change and what to do about it.   Students will be introduced to the basic science of climate change, including the radiation budget of the Earth, the carbon cycle, and the physics and chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere.  We will look at reconstructions of climate change through Earth history to provide a context for thinking about present and future changes.  We will take a critical look at climate models used to predict climate change in the future, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses, evaluating which forecasts of climate change impacts are robust, and which are more speculative.   We will spend particular time discussing sea level rise and extreme weather (including hurricanes, heat waves, and floods).  We will look at the complex interactions between climate and human society, including climate impacts on agriculture and the relationship between climate change, migration and conflict.  We will also discuss strategies for adapting to climate change impacts, and the implications of those strategies for sub-national and international equity.

The last half of the class will consider what to do about climate change.  First, we will review the recent history of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as various national and international efforts to limit them in the future.  We will discuss reducing carbon emissions using forestry, agriculture and land use, and then focus on how to transform the world’s energy system to eliminate CO2 emissions.  We will conclude by examining different strategies for accelerating changes in our energy systems to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The course is intended as a foundational course on climate change for students from around the university, preparing them for more specialized courses in their individual concentrations or degree programs.  No prerequisites are required; students will be encouraged to apply their different preparations and interests to the various individual and group assignments.  The course emphasizes the scientific and technological aspects of climate change (including the clean energy transition), but in the context of current issues in public policy, business, design and public health. 

This course is jointly listed with HKS as IGA 402.

Please note, the first day of lectures will be Wednesday, September 6 (at FAS).  The first day of discussion sessions will be on Monday, September 11 (at HKS).  Please see HKS IGA 402 syllabus for details.

Because of the discussion component of the course, all graduate students are required to attend the Monday afternoon discussion sessions in person. Graduate students are encouraged to attend all of the GenEd 1094 lectures in person, but are allowed to attend up to two thirds of the classes through video feed (Panopto) to accommodate students from Longwood and Allston campuses. If students cannot watch the lectures live, they can also watch them later if they view them within 24 hours. If you cannot attend lectures on a regular basis for some other reason, please contact the instructor by email and he will try to make alternative arrangements that will allow you to participate.

Procedural Fields: Functional Design of Discrete Hyperdimensional Spaces

This course will introduce participants to computational methods for the generation of discrete multi-dimensional media, using functional definitions.

Digital modeling techniques are at the core of most modern creative workflows in visual media, such as static 2D images, video animations, 3D models and digital fabrication. For instance, most prevailing paradigms in CAD modeling are based on the explicit definition of geometrical entities in model space (location and size of 2D shapes, vertices of a mesh, control points of NURBS objects) and their manipulation through constructive modeling operators (extrude, revolve, sweep or boolean operations, to name a few). However useful, such paradigms are often very limited for advanced creation/manipulation of digital models, such as those with high degrees of formal complexity (failed boolean intersections, complex infill patterns in 3D prints) or simply incapable of representing certain kinds of realities (models with non-binary gradients between inside and outside).

In parallel, the field of computer graphics has developed a plethora of techniques designed to generate, visualize and process images displayed on a 2D screen. Many of these methods involve the implicit definition of the rules governing visualization pipelines, expressed as functional representations of the characteristic values in a field of discrete entities. Traditionally, this has translated into the problem of computing the RGB values of each pixel in a digital screen. However, modern applications of these techniques have been extended in multiple dimensions to, for example, generate procedural animated graphics, analyze and process video, perform computational fluid dynamics, voxel-based world generation for video games, or multi-material 3D printing.

In this course, you will learn techniques for the procedural generation of discrete multidimensional spaces, such as 2D images, video, voxelized fields or any extension thereof. We will cover topics such as color theory, image processing, functional modeling, shaders and raytracing techniques. The content of the class will be predominantly technical, and taught through a combination of high-level lectures and hands-on technical workshops. Students are expected to complement the class learning with online materials guided by the instructor. Demonstrated experience in computer programming, such as SCI-6338, CS50 or similar, is a pre-requisite for this class. Student work will consist of guided tutorials and course assignments, culminating with a personal final project of the student's choice.

This course is the second installment of a three-part course series on Computational Design preceded by SCI-6338: Introduction to Computational Design (Fall), and continued by SCI-6365: Enactive Design, Creative Applications Through Concurrent Human-Machine Interaction (Fall) taught by the same instructor.

Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society II

This graduate-level seminar course is part of the MDE program's first-year core curriculum, comprising a two-course sequence spanning one year. The course focuses on building an integrated intellectual framework to explore the complex relationships between science, engineering, manufacturing, design, innovation, environment, sustainability, culture, aesthetics, business, public policy, and government. Through the study of various frameworks and lenses, students will gain insights into real-world problem-solving.  The course fosters critical thinking and intellectual literacy, providing a holistic perspective on the interplay between scientific progress, technological innovations, manufacturing systems, and their broader implications for industry and society. Through readings, discussions, and exercises, students will develop interdisciplinary knowledge and problem-solving skills, empowering them to address multifaceted challenges effectively in their professional endeavors.

Course Learning Objectives:
The main learning objectives of this course are:
– Critical Thinking for Problem Solving
– Ability to differentiate between various types of information, such as observations, assumptions, facts, opinions (assertions), beliefs, and prejudices, to facilitate unbiased and evidence-based decision-making
– Ability to reason at the level of first principles, fostering deeper understanding and innovative problem solving
– Proficiency in identifying significant problems, delving into their root causes, and proposing insightful and well-founded solutions
– Integrative Analysis – Consilience across Disciplines
– Ability to integrate knowledge from engineering, business, design, sociology, psychology, government, and philosophy to approach real-world problems with a comprehensive mindset
– Ability to propose realistic and practical solutions that address the needs and perspectives of multiple stakeholders, bridging various disciplines
– Intellectual Literacy – Establishing a Broad Background
– Broad knowledge base that will serve as a foundation for effectively solving real-world problems with interdisciplinary insights
– Broad knowledge base that will facilitate continuous learning

Course Structure and Format:
This course will involve a significant amount of assigned readings from primary reference materials in science, engineering, business, economics, and management as well as prepared course materials and case studies based on specific companies.  In addition, attendance and active in-class participation in discussions of the readings, case studies and other group activities are expected and will be a significant factor in grading.

 

 

Modernization in the Visual United States Environment, 1890-2035

Here find an ecology of changes, a course on the ecosystem of change so rapid most thoughtful Americans know it as modernization.  Design remembered and forgotten shapes its core, but always a caveat rules:  modernization and progress prove different in the long run.  Modernization shatters peace, quiet, certainty, value, even joy, and it impacts Americans differently.  Modernization happens to most, hits hard and fast, corrodes slowly and wretchedly.  But the few shape it, anticipating and skewing trends, inventing new processes, products, and attitudes: marketing research, hunch, luck, and advertising—always advertising—advance an agenda open to disruption and mishap alike.  Advertising now flourishes as the third political party and the fourth branch of government, determines what inventions and design triumph or fail, and occludes the deeper forces which reward risk and punish ideology.  The type-writing machine changed desks and offices, sparked the crossword puzzle, shamed poor spellers, and renamed young women clerks typewriters: a generation later, calculating machines transformed office work and renamed secretaries computers.  Advertising made cigarette smoking synonymous with feminism, cereal and fruit breakfasts equivalent to one-child families, and horseless carriages indicators of status.  But as automobiles made children and dogs the organized prisoners of highway mechanization, the aristocracy which governs modernization taught children to ride horseback, kept its sailboats, cherished its never-changing summer-vacation cottages, wilderness camps, and other hideaways.  Aristocrats dance in ballrooms where men always lead.  Wealthy women account for about 90% of the highest-level luxury market.  Aristocrats always flee cities when plague hits: their refuges blend in, look traditional, pass unnoticed.  An American middle-class peasantry ogles the British royal family as closely as the Depression unemployed watched Hollywood films about millionaires. Graduate students dump solid tenth-hand furniture (brown goods to antique dealers) for assemble-it-yourself coated particle board junk movers shrink wrap.  Contemporary university students no more think about invention, marking, and advertising of the first cell phones than they do about the great corporations deciding in the summer of 1970 that women’s lib was good.  Here find a course which focuses on those who make, anticipate, accelerate, and evade modernization.

Note: This course is offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as AFVS 160.

Thesis project / Project Thesis

As the culminating effort for the Master of Architecture degree, a “Thesis” entails multiple expectations. It is a demonstration not only of competency and expertise, but of originality and relevance. A thesis is an opportunity to conceive and execute work that is both a specific project (delimited in scope, with a specific set of appropriate deliverables) as well as a declaration of a wider “Project” (possessing disciplinary value, and contributing to a larger discourse). This class will address both valences of the architectural  “project,” while providing space for students to develop methodological approaches for their own thesis.  Over the course of  a series of lectures and seminars, we will study the theory and practice of the architectural thesis by examining its institutional history and disciplinary development, in order to understand the conventions and possibilities of the format. In workshop sessions, as preparation for their own theses, students will work towards the articulation of their topics. This will include: identifying relevant precedents and existing literature; defining a site and program (however broad); and working through first iterations of working methods.  With these efforts, the aim of the course is for students to be equipped to undertake a thesis project in every sense.

 

Material Systems: Digital Production

Digital design and fabrication technologies have become integral to the discourse surrounding contemporary design and architectural practice. The translation from design to realization is mediated by a range of tools and processes whose development is informed over time by material properties, skill, technology, and culture. As a whole, these systems are the vehicle by which design teams, manufacturers, installers, and ultimately users engage the materiality of architecture and design. Parallel technological developments relating to the way in which things are designed (digital modeling, simulation, generative design, AI, etc.) and the way things are made (automation, computer-controlled equipment including robotics, advanced materials, etc.) have afforded new opportunities and challenges related to the realization of new forms in architecture, part customization, user-centered design, and enhanced building performance. Structured by the typologies of manufacturing processes – including subtractive, additive, molding, assembly processes, and beyond – this course will explore the materialization of design as both a technical and a creative endeavor. Special attention will be given to the interplay between digital information and physical artifacts, and the opportunities and shortcomings of those translations. Through lectures, hands-on workshops, and a series of making-centric assignments, students will engage with a range of methods and materials that underpin digital fabrication. In addition to a deep connection with the context of digital making, the course is designed to provide hands-on experience with the digital fabrication equipment–including CNC mills, 3D printers, and industrial robotic arms–located in the GSD Fabrication Lab and is suited for novices and experts alike.

Digital Media: Not Magic

According to folklore, Michelangelo fell to his knees upon seeing the Florentine fresco Annunciation, went silent, and eventually concluded that the image of the Virgin must have been made through divine intervention since its brushwork surpassed human talents. When the computer graphics company Blue Sky released its commercial for Chock Full o’Nuts in 1994, The New York Times called the rendering of a walking and talking coffee bean “computer magic.” It was the best way to explain the video’s special effects. What else would one call using lines of code to give an inanimate object life? Or the transfiguration of mere paint into saintly likeness?

Esoteric processes have long imbued artforms with power, rendering audiences speechless, awestruck, and affected. In the nineties, anthropologist Alfred Gell proposed that mundane things can be construed as “enchanted forms” when differences exist between an audience’s technological expectations and an object’s facture. This contradiction gives rise to a belief that artifacts and artisans can possess otherworldly faculties. In reality, everyday forms become enchanted not through magic, but through precise construction methodologies.

This course seeks to articulate what aesthetic categories are at play when technology is perceived to be magical. A working theory for the class is that more nuanced descriptions for the transformations found in computational and craft traditions are good frameworks for understanding architectural effects. We will explore these ideas in synchronous lectures and case studies, and asynchronous workshops. Readings include texts by Alfred Gell, Walter Benjamin, Beatriz Colomina, and Felicity Scott. Case studies include projects by Anne Holtrop, Ensamble, Junya Ishigami, and examples from imperial architecture.