Practices of Landscape Architecture

This course presents the application of landscape ideas as a process of engagement and building amidst financial, legal, cultural, political, and professional contexts.  The course aims to introduce conventions and circumstances that may be encountered throughout one’s career while stimulating new and creative, alternative dimensions of practice in a global context of universal agency.
 
Course content includes lectures, workshops and discussions led by the instructor and guests from around the globe, and incorporates student research, readings and discussion.   Though concepts appear iteratively throughout the term, early topics focus on design leadership and community agency, professional identity, firm marketing and business development.   Visiting lectures by established professionals from around the globe speak about their practices and a variety of topics including their career trajectories, firm development and working contexts, as well as their current endeavors. Topics then move to conventions and circumstances influencing legal, ethical, financial and operational aspects of practice, particularly those that can contribute to and detract from the success of firms and their projects.    During the third part of the course, academic trajectory, future impacts on practice and historic documentation practices are featured, in addition to the sharing of ongoing research by students.  During the course, lecturers and work by Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and LBGTQI people will be present.  Issues of diversity within the profession and in our work endeavors will be considered in depth during an evening event featuring guest panelists from non-profit entities.
 
Recognizing that architecture, planning and landscape architecture share many aspects of practice, this course incorporates nuances and scope that are typically the focus of current landscape architectural practice itself, such as soils as a living medium; grading and planting; landscape architectural documentation and construction; landscape advocacy and stewardship; community contexts and agencies; and liabilities specifically associated with the practice of landscape architecture.   
 
Class Sessions  The course meets twice a week for 1.25 hours (2.5 hours total).   Guest lecturers will participate in Gund and remotely (zoom).  Two sessions will be held at alternate class times; excused absences or other arrangements can be arranged with the instructor in the event of a personal schedule conflict.

Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society I

In the spirit of Herbert Simon, Frameworks engages diverse but complementary perspectives and techniques to identify, diagnose and constructively address consequential social challenges, sometimes referred to as "wicked problems". The disciplines – or 'frameworks' – explored include (in no order and to varying degrees) systems analysis, industrial design, scientific methods, behavioral and organizational dynamics, law, economics, risk management, manufacturing, culture, aesthetics, health sciences, history, branding, anthropology, statistics, public policy, ecology and the like. While individual frameworks are presented, the teaching goal over the two semesters is to help students: a) identify problems that are both consequential and tractable;  b) select and apply the suite of frameworks best suited to addressing the problem at hand.

Course Format: Assigned readings, case studies, research assignments, exercises, outside specialists and class discussions. 

Prerequisites: This course is for students enrolled in the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) graduate program. MDE students should enroll in GSD PRO 7231.

Foundations of Practice

For students in the fifth semester of the MArch I degree program, this course examines models and issues that define contemporary professional practice. Requiring students to examine a broad range of legal, financial, organizational, and ethical topics, the course prepares students to engage and lead in the production of the built environment. The course takes advantage of the multidisciplinary programs of the GSD, bringing a wide breath of experienced professionals to share insights and develop the tools necessary for productive collaborations within the complex space of specific professional, practical, and disciplinary obligations. 

Each week the course explores professional practice through a critical reading of primary texts that frame key concepts and models, as well as relevant case studies and applications for stress testing the boundaries of these models. 

Course format: Combination of lectures, guest lectures, and workshops. Each subject area contains supplemental material that provides standard references and supplemental case studies that highlight the boundaries and thresholds of practice. This is intended to provide students with an exposure to critical aspects of practice—from accounting to contracting and from project delivery to professional ethics. In addition, students will explore the wide-ranging roles of respective professional associations in shaping contractual relationships, public policy, and the parameters of practice itself. In more immediate terms, students will explore: 

– Client communications and engagement; 

– The drafting and execution of standard AIA contract series; 

– The interpretation and due process considerations of local government regulations; 

– The strategic advancement of public design reviews or public procurement opportunities; and 

– The financial economics of operating a practice. 

Connecting each of these dimensions of practice are the codes of professional ethics and various elements of statutory and case law that collectively define the professional standard of care. The intent is for students to develop a reflexive understanding of their duty to clients, third-party consultants, and the general public consistent with their obligations as design professionals and community leaders. This course serves as a foundation from which students may develop further interests and skills in the GSD’s professional practice distributional elective course offerings. 

 

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.

This course will not meet on Wednesday, August 31st. It will meet for the first time on Friday, September 2nd.

Inscriptions: Recent Experimental Architecture

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.

Architecture and Construction: From the Vitruvian Tradition to the Digital

The course aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between architecture and construction through the study of key historical episodes such as the rise of modern tectonic ideals in the 18th century, the development of iron and concrete buildings, the 20th-century quest for light structures, or more recent developments in materials, structure and building technologies. The course will also raise theoretical questions such as what the terms material and structure truly mean, or how does architecture differ from mere construction. Beyond its historical and theoretical scope, the ambition of the course is also to foster students' reflection on the contemporary evolution of the relationship between architecture and construction. Indeed, the rise of digital technologies and more recently the development of strong environmental concerns challenge our received understanding of tectonics, materials, and ultimately design.

At the end of the course, students should have gained an enhanced understanding of the relationship between architecture and construction, and more generally between architecture and technology, an understanding which is especially necessary for a designer today. Beyond this immediate goal, the course also wants to promote a better appreciation of how architecture, both as a technological and cultural production, answers the challenges of its time. Building technologies and construction are not only tools for design; they contribute to the overall relevance of architecture.

THE COURSE WILL BE GIVEN HALF IN-PERSON, HALF ON ZOOM
Students are expected to attend at the GSD the in-person lectures, or in real time on their computer when given on Zoom. Readings related to the course content or expanding its perspectives are provided for each meeting and will be available on Canvas in pdf format. Because of the addition of four asynchronous lectures to the course, required readings have been substantially reduced. In addition to these required readings, suggested readings are also proposed. In addition to the previous requirement, students will be asked to submit written questions for at least two of the classes. Finally, students will produce a short end-of-the-semester paper of approximately 2,500-3,000 words, including footnotes/endnotes, on a topic of their choice related to the course.

Structuring Urban Experience: From the Athenian Acropolis to the Boston Common

This lecture course examines selected cities between the fifth century B.C. and the seventeenth century A.D., beginning with ancient Athens and ending with the rebuilding of London after the great fire in 1666 and the founding of Boston. It is not, however, a survey. Rather, the lectures take up one city at one “golden moment” of its development and propose a theme or themes for discussion. The course, therefore, is both chronologically and thematically structured.

The first half of the semester treats the ancient and late antique city, beginning with Athens and continuing with Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople and Antioch. This section concludes with a consideration of the effects of Christianization on urban form, the widespread decline of urban habitation in the early Middle Ages, and the rising importance of ideal or symbolic “cities of the mind.” The second half of the semester looks at selected instances of Renaissance and Baroque urban interventions, beginning with Florence, returning again to Rome, and then moving to Venice, Madrid, Paris, London and Boston.

Authority and Invention: Medieval Art and Architecture

Masterworks of art and architecture in Western Europe from the decline of Rome to the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. Explores the creative tension between the impulse to originality and the authority of classical models in the search for new art forms. Emphasis on representative works considered in their totality (architecture, painting, sculpture, and minor arts) as experiential wholes; and on the plurality of geographical and cultural contexts (Italy, Germany, France, England, and Spain). Exploration of the forms, types, styles, intellectual, theoretical, and cultural contexts of paradigmatic monuments from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages (approximately 300-1300 A.D.).

This is a lecture course with no prerequisites. It is intended for both graduate and undergraduate students. Requirements include quizzes on images, lecture materials and readings; short papers and prepared discussion topics; and a final research paper. Design students may substitute a design problem of their own devising for the research paper.

 

The course is jointly offered with FAS as MEDVLSTD 107.

Building, Texts, and Contexts: Architecture?s Multiple Modernisms

Modernism is aligned with the emergence of new kinds of objects and events, new conceptualizations of their appearance, and changing event structures and temporalities. At the same time, these changing relationships between objects, their producers and maintainers, and their audiences and consumers were brought forth by the development of extractive projects that transformed human relations with the land and its constituents. A history of modern architecture, then, must involve a robust theory of the producing, using, viewing subject as well as of the object itself—which includes buildings and projects, texts and discourses, and the contexts of their production and reception. It also involves questioning the ways in which architecture spatializes technologies of extraction, means of production, and systems of power and domination. 

Specific features of the object—colonialism and the violence it enacts on lands and peoples; global capital markets and the rise of nationalism; lingering regimes of inequality; aspirations to universality and the entrenchment of local interests; in general, the contradictory conditions of the modern world—marked a fundamental change in the way its history could be conceived. By the turn of the twentieth century, the ideal of the universal subject of the European Enlightenment had been irrevocably fractured and contested as a fiction of empire. Similarly, former parameters outlining “proper” forms of art and architecture have been revealed as Eurocentric constructions that conceal the multiplicity of architectural production. Rather than constructing a singular historical narrative able to contain and make sense of these contradictions, this course traces multiple modernisms that arise to respond, enforce, or contest these regimes.  

This course will use theoretical texts and historical examples to generate ways of thinking about modern architecture not as a bygone era but as the inaugural frame for our own situation. Our question is not “How does modern architecture reflect the given conditions of modernity?” but rather, “How can architecture (as subject, as object, as technique) produce, impose, or resist those very conditions?’ 

Histories of Landscape Architecture I: Textuality and the Practice of Landscape Architecture

This course introduces students to a number of significant topoi or loci in the histories of landscape architecture. In general terms, it takes the form of a conspectus, a survey of the field, but one in which the underlying nature (made and found), boundaries, contours, and texture of this field—in fact several disparate fields—is made the object of close scrutiny. We will define landscape architecture as we survey it. In pursuing an intermittent chronological narrative, the lectures will place site-specific emphasis on a number of cognate disciplines (hydrology, forestry, geology, agronomy, geography, hunting, inter alia), in the context of endemic and transplanted visual and textual traditions. While inspecting the grounds of villas, cloisters gardens, parks, and cities, we will be attentive to surrounding formations of discourse (the pastoral, the picturesque, the emblematic, the Adamic and Edenic) that have and continue to imbue them with meaning.