Innovation in Science and Engineering: Conference Course (at SEAS)

The course explores factors and conditions contributing to innovation in science and engineering; how important problems are found, defined, and solved; roles of teamwork and creativity; and applications of these methods to other endeavors. Students will receive practical and professional training in techniques to define and solve problems, and in brainstorming and other individual and team approaches. 

Course format: Taught through a combination of lectures, discussions, and exercises led by innovators in science, engineering, arts, and business. 

Jointly offered: SEAS ENG-SCI 139

Drawing for Designers 2: Human Presence and Appearance in Natural and Built Environment

The aim of the class is to learn how to depict and express the presence and appearance of people in natural and built environments.

This class objective will be achieved through three projects:

Each of the assigned projects will be realized in a different, specifically selected technique:

Power & Place: Culture and Conflict in the Built Environment

This course studies and analyzes processes and expressions of power in urban form and design in the North American built environment. Focusing on topics of identity and differentiation that are expressed in spatial interventions across history, this course surveys historic and contemporary cultural conflicts that emerged from private developments and regulatory processes, many of which result, intentionally or unintentionally in patterns of social exclusion.

The course will develop ways of thinking, research methodologies (familiarity with original historical sources and databases) and analytical means leading to modes of interpretation associated with places where power and politics have a critical but often undisclosed influence in shaping the built environment. The goal of the course is to foster an understanding of urban ethics and political awareness that can be applied to any place, leading to a broader understanding of the dimensions of the cultural ecology of a place over time. 

2021 will explore Central Avenue and its adjacent neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Central’s rich presence in music from LA’s jazz scene from the 1920s-50s at the northern end to 1980s gangsta rap in Compton embodies a cultural narrative that tells the story of racial-social-cultural relations in Los Angeles. Beginning in Little Tokyo it passes through the once vibrant commercial heart of African American LA to the intimate now largely-vanished community life described by Walter Mosely’s fictional Easy Rawlins to the scars of racial violence in Watts. Today the predominantly Latino populations reflect LA’s shifting demographics: “This lively tree-banked street next to Central Avenue, … persists despite its new ghost-town feel. Beauty parlors specializing in a “Texas press and curl” and soul food cafes now coexist with discotecas and mariscos and taco stands. And behind it all, lending a somewhat surreal backdrop, the downtown skyline hovers like Oz.” An example of the dynamic city-as-never-finished-process, this amazing street provides an opportunity to understand the intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, and media at a local scale within the broad forces that shape LA.

Format: 3 hours synchronous. Power & Place is not a lecture course. The nature of cultural inquiry this course presents depends upon interruptions and questions answered in real time. It is a research and methodology course whose success depends upon the interactive discussion of readings, other media, and visual prompts but most importantly the discussion is about the research work students present, what it means, how to expand it, what to pursue as it develops. 

Evaluation: attendance, participation, assignments 

Prerequisites: Adobe Creative Cloud

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez.

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. It requires the ability to conceive and execute work that is both a specific project (delimited in scope, a specific set of deliverables) as well as the indication of a wider “Project”(possessing disciplinary value, contributing to the larger discourse). This class will address both valances of both “Thesis” and “Project.” In a series of seminars, students will study the theory and practice of the architectural thesis by examining its institutional history and disciplinary development to understand the conventions and possibilities of the format. In workshop sessions, as preparation for their own theses, students will produce definitive statements (“what is the topic?”), relevant research (“what is the position?”), and studies of implementation (“what is the method?”). With these efforts, students will be equipped to undertake a thesis project in every sense.

Sections schedule: 

Please note that in addition to the required class time (Wednesdays from 10:00 to 11:30 AM), sections for this course will happen on Wednesdays from 4:00 to 5:30 PM EST OR Wednesdays from 8:30 to 10:00 AM EST. Students will be assigned to the appropriate sections at the beginning of the semester. For questions, please contact the architecture department. 

 

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Interface Design: Integrating Material Perceptions

The course explores the interface between architecture and engineering by examining our perceptions towards materials.

Interdisciplinary research has gained interest in recent years due to its creative potential to solve complex problems through the integration of diverse perspectives. Epistemological convergence across fields, though, is hindered due to different languages, value sets, and frames of reference used in individual domains. On the other hand, computation / computational thinking is becoming a common language across fields today that can facilitate new forms of communication and collaboration.

In this context, the class will focus on linking intrinsic material properties, often examined by engineering fields, to extrinsic material properties and geometry more central to the architectural domain. The course provides insight into the structural and mechanical engineering perspectives of material along with their quantitative analysis, optimization, and evaluation methods. In parallel, students will be exposed to computational workflows used to access and process material information. The discussions and design investigations will be organized as a dialog between numerical and visual, analytical and synthetical, as well as digital and physical with the goal of recognizing the differences and similarities between the fields.

Students will be asked to work in teams to (i) design and develop a simple software tool that assists in the understanding of engineering material knowledge in ways that are intuitive and relevant to architecture design processes, (ii) propose an integrative design application manifested in physical prototypes, and (iii) document the process in an academic paper format.    

Minimal programming skills per team would be desirable but not required.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

Mini MOOCs

INTRO. Distance learning tools are here to stay. The course will introduce students to make their own mini MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), considering many of them will be involved in academia after finishing their studies. 

TEAM-WORK. Throughout the semester, students will group in three small production teams. Roles within these teams may include research, creative direction, script-writing, modeling, animation, programming, voice acting, sound engineering, and/or musicalization. 

MODULE. Instead of a full MOOC with many parts, each group will develop only one module. The subject of each module will be a particular building during the entire academic term, with the main objective of making this project interesting for both us architects and to a broader public outside of our field. 

CASE STUDY. This semester, we will focus on the single-family houses built during the 1970s by Japanese architect Kazunari Sakamoto (1943—). Apparently banal yet full of references and contradictions, these hermetic structures in opposition to the city may teach us how to live and design for today’s confinement. 

EXPERIMENTS. An important thesis of the course in making MOOCs more accessible is to test new ways to display content and evaluations, beyond the video+quiz format which is standard in platforms such as edX or Coursera. We will look outside our field for examples in animation (in both Asia and the West), videogame design and music which could be appropriated and tested in architecture MOOCs.

COURSE FORMAT. Each week, sessions will be divided into two parts. The first part will be a live interview with protagonists in the field of MOOC production, animation, videogames, film, and music, with a new guest every time. After a 20-minute break, we will review the weekly development of each Mini-MOOC. Two midterm sessions are also considered.

EVALUATION. Mini-MOOC development will be graded every week, starting in the first session. Each weekly evaluation has the same percent value, including two midterms and final review, and will be accumulated in a final grade. Attendance to live-interviews or weekly reviews is not compulsory nor evaluated.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

Due to no classes being offered on Labor Day and course selections being due on Wednesday, September 9, this class has scheduled a first irregular meeting on Monday, August 31, 4.35-7.30 pm EDT. Please make sure to check the Canvas site of the course for the meeting Zoom links.

Art, Design and the Public Domain Proseminar

“What do I want history to do to me?,” asks Zadie Smith. “I might want history to reduce my historical antagonist—and increase me. I might ask it to urgently remind me why I’m moving forward, away from history. Or speak to me always of our intimate relation, of the ties that bind—and indelibly link—my history and me.” As monuments across the world are fell in response to the legacies (and ongoing practices) of colonialism, racism, imperialism, and oppressions nameless, what should rise in their stead? What should we remember? Who should we remember? How should we remember? What do we want history to do to us? 

Art, Design, and the Public Domain Proseminar will investigate, generally, our role as artists and designers in the struggle for liberation and, specifically, the status of the monument today. Together we will consider the work of scholars, historians, sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, critics, and intellectuals who themselves have engaged with these questions. We will encounter ideas on freedom, trauma, justice, oppression, community, democracy, otherness, and memory from aesthetic, critical, critical race, poststructuralist, political, psychoanalytic, and queer and feminist theory. We will examine how artists and designers have given these ideas form. And by semester’s end, we will test these ideas in projects of our own. 
 

Landscape Representation I

The rich and varied discipline of landscape architecture is inextricably intertwined with the concept of representation. The first in a three-semester sequence, this course introduces students to the unique relationship between landscape architecture and representation through an overview of its history, techniques, and conventions. Emphasizing experimentation and fabrication, this course embraces representation as a highly generative process in the act of designing.

Weekly tutorials, presentations, and discussions reinforce a collaborative space to investigate new skills, strategies, and workflows. Through a series of exercises, students will develop their own iterative representational approach that incorporates both analog and digital methodologies. Coursework will include digital software such as AutoCAD, Rhino, and Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign), as well as physical modeling and hand drawing techniques.

Prerequisites: None.

Drawing for Designers 2: Human Presence and Appearance in Natural and Built Environment

The aim of the class is to learn how to depict and express the presence and appearance of people in natural and built environments.

This class objective will be achieved through three projects:

Each of the assigned projects will be realized in a different, specifically selected technique:

Power & Place: Culture and Conflict in the Built Environment

This lecture/workshop course studies and analyzes processes and expressions of power in urban form and design in the North American built environment. Focusing on topics of identity and differentiation that are expressed in spatial interventions across history, this course surveys historic and contemporary cultural conflicts that emerged from private developments and regulatory processes, many of which result, intentionally or unintentionally in patterns of social exclusion.

The course will develop ways of thinking, research methodologies (familiarity with original historical sources and databases) and analytical means leading to modes of interpretation associated with places where power and politics have a critical but often undisclosed influence in shaping the built environment. The goal of the course is to foster an understanding of urban ethics and political awareness that can be applied to any place, leading to a broader understanding of the dimensions of the cultural ecology of a place over time. 

2019’s site will explore Crenshaw Boulevard and its adjacent neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Twenty-three miles long from Wiltshire Boulevard to Palos Verde Crenshaw “begins and ends in wealth.” While the street’s history reveals dynamic demographic changes that accompany broader national forces—a white suburb becomes a black/Japanese community then becomes an inner-city black neighborhood and now contains a rising Latino population—the cultural landmarks of these eras endure. Narratives could be constructed around the architecture: Clarence Stein’s “Black Beverly Hills” Baldwin Village, Olmstead Brothers’ landmarked Leimert Park, Armet and Davis’s Googie architecture of the Japanese-owned Holiday Bowl or around the street’s prominence as a center of African American culture: Maverick Flats—the ”Apollo of the West,” low-rider culture and hip-hop, Destination Crenshaw, Marathon Clothing and Nipsey Russell.  In the once predominantly white Hawthorne, home of the Beach Boys, the early roots of the aerospace industry at Northrup Field is now home to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla. An example of the dynamic city-as-never-finished-process, this single street provides an opportunity to understand the intersection of race, ethnicity, culture and media at a local scale within the broad forces that shape LA.

Course work involves mapping, short videos. Familiarity with Adobe Creative Suite required.