Visualization (at SEAS)

This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction principles, visualization tools, and applications, and introduces programming of web-based interactive visualizations. 

Prerequisites: Students are expected to have basic programming experience (e.g., Computer Science 50). 

See my.harvard, SEAS COMPSCI 171, for location

Materiality, Visual Culture, and Media (at AFVS)

What is the place of materiality in our visual age of rapidly changing materials and media? How is it fashioned in the arts, architecture, and media? This seminar investigates a “material turn” in philosophy, art, media, visual, and spatial culture. Topics include: actor-network theory, thing theory, the life of objects, the archive, the haptic and the affect, vibrant materialism, elemental philosophy, light and projection, and the immateriality of atmosphere.

Note: Interested students must attend the first meeting of the class during shopping week.

Jointly offered course: This course is jointly offered as AFVS 279. GSD students should enroll in the course via the GSD.

 

This course meets on Wednesdays from 2pm to 4pm in Carpenter Center 402.   Interested students must attend the first meeting of the class during shopping week. This course is jointly offered at the Graduate School of Design as HIS 4451; GSD students should enroll in the course via the GSD.

Urban Ethnographies

Planners’ understanding of social process and cultural values is often woefully inadequate, and their thinking is dominated by a “one-size-fits-all” approach and by excessive attention to the values of an international middle class rather than to local experience. In this course, we will read some urban ethnography inspecting the interactions among local people, planners, anthropologists, architects, and builders in order to think against the grain, especially in cases where disputes over whose heritage is at stake dominate the discourse. We will also examine the role of conflict in shaping urban space and ask whether attempts to smooth it over are necessarily to the benefit of local populations, especially where internal factionalism and political dissent are at stake. Finally, we will also examine the role of urban space in shaping people’s subjectivities and ask what that role tells us about governmental structures and the way they affect ordinary people’s lives.

Proseminar in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology

This required seminar introduces candidates in the MDes Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology (ULE) concentration to the range of individual and group research on urbanism, landscape, and ecology presently pursued by GSD faculty. Through weekly readings, presentations, research tutorials, and discussions, incoming MDes ULE students are introduced to the research agendas of several core faculty members working in this area. Each faculty member will present a distinct set of questions and methods with respect to contemporary urbanism, landscape, ecology, geography, cartography, or territory. 

Seminar participants will gain insight into the discourse surrounding a diverse array of disciplinary questions, and into the methodological implications of those questions. They will be invited to identify a particular research problem or question to inform their own research within the context of the various topics, themes, and agendas articulated and discussed in the seminar. Participants will present this question in the form of an abstract, a seminar presentation, and research paper. Upon completion of the seminar, MDes ULE candidates will have articulated a specific research question to pursue in the coming semesters with a faculty advisor. 

Action Research for Open Public Realms

"The best way to understand something is to try and change it."
—Kurt Lewin

Action researchers work with partner communities to define problems, generate knowledge, and apply learning in ways that are at once contextual, participatory, and change-oriented. They challenge prevailing divides between theory and action, researcher and subject, science and policy, and process and outcome. Methodologically agnostic, action research can encompass quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods as well as multilateral conversations that search for and try out new ways of thinking and intervention—so long as they are deemed appropriate to the situation problematized by participants. Ranging from reformist to radical in their goals, action research approaches share a commitment to democratizing knowledge, learning, and control over change processes.

In this project-based course, students will critically examine the meanings and possibilities of open public realms with Boston-area, place-based organizations affiliated with the Place Leadership Network (PLN), a joint initiative between the Boston Foundation and the Community Design and Learning Initiative at the Harvard GSD. Including main streets, parks conservancies, business improvement districts, and CDCs, the partner organizations share decades of experience managing and stewarding public spaces in the Boston region while operating at diverse scales, located in different geographies, and representing different constituents. Through joint data gathering and analysis, deliberative dialogue with partner organizations, and reflective praxis of action research, students will explore strategies for promoting inclusive, democratic, and vibrant public spaces in an urban and regional context of racialized, classed, and gendered im/mobility and access.

Manfredo Tafuri and The Historiography And Criticism of Architecture 1960-1990

The seminar focuses on the markedly complex intellectual biography of Manfredo Tafuri, whose work touched upon many fields of knowledge including theories of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, historiography, sociology, and psychology. We will follow the evolution of his ideas within the contexts of both the political and cultural changes in Italy during the five decades of his life, and the architectural and historiographic debates of that period, of which he was a main protagonist. A selection of readings will illuminate the transformation of these ideas and serve as the primary means of investigation.

Rather than consolidating Manfredo Tafuri’s thinking as one main trunk or body of work, the seminar will attempt to understand the dynamic and often contradictory trajectory of this immense intellectual figure—“Dividuus and not in-dividuus,” as he would say. The result should be twofold: to address the necessity of a complex approach to understanding architecture, and to evaluate and perhaps adopt a fruitful set of concepts to approaching contemporary ideas and history.

Course format:

The seminar will begin with lectures on the life and works of Tafuri and on the Italian political, economic, and cultural context. Required readings will be analyzed by all the participants and designated students will present on readings at each meeting. The course will close with a final meeting with guest experts on Tafuri’s ideas.

Evaluation:

Students will be evaluated on their level of active engagement and participation, their required presentation, and a paper on a topic of their choice related to the framework of the seminar.

Prerequisites: None. Some knowledge of Italian is welcome.

Erasing the Line While Drawing

. . . la «chora» platonicienne est à la fois matrice et empreinte, notre milieu est à notre égard dans un état de mouvance passive et active: il est le domaine dans lequel nous agissons, et qui porte les marques de cette action, mais il est aussi le domaine qui nous affecte, et auquel nous appartenons de quelque manière . . . —Augustin Berque Ecoumene 

This seminar will explore the capacities of rule-based design in landscape architecture. The goal of the seminar is to challenge the design processes of contemporary practice with the goal to find new methods to approach the inclusion of the logic of the biophysical world in our proposals. Through a series of short weekly exercises, we will introduce a series of living elements, such as water, soil, plants, and animals, and we will visualize different scenarios based in their interactions according to their performance and physiology. We will discover the active and passive qualities of those materials, their physicality, and their capacity to change in relation with other elements. We will introduce limiting factors as a tool of design according to their origin. We will also define the limits of their interchange capacities as potential for design. 

The main goal of the seminar is to establish a clear methodology to apply parametric thinking in landscape architecture and a clear distinction of the different steps of design and workflow between levels of abstraction. We will focus on the difference between the geometrical precision of the parametric and relational language, and the organic nature of the physical result due to the behavior of its elements. 

This collaborative endeavor between our abstract way of thinking and the complex dynamics of natural systems will define a new partnership between humans and nonhumans and will prove that the only possible and fruitful collaboration will happen by erasing the line. 

Curatorial Practice: Curating Contemporary Art

Today, everybody is a curator—we supposedly curate our meals, our social media feeds, and our outfits. But what does it mean to curate exhibitions of contemporary art today? This course examines the working processes of organizing exhibitions within the field of contemporary visual arts and the context of art institutions. The aim is to familiarize students with various aspects of exhibition-making ranging from conceptual development to the physical realization of exhibition. This course introduces to and engages students in a broad spectrum of exhibition presentations and institutional contexts, with a focus on different exhibition typologies, ideas of audience engagement, curatorial responsibility, working with artists, questions of history and the contemporary moment, and risk-taking. 

This course offers an opportunity for students to learn the basic theoretical and practical parameters of curating exhibitions. The course will be organized around case studies of major exhibitions organized by both Eva Respini and Dan Byers at a broad range of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, ICA/Boston, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, as well as those curated by select guest lecturers. Together, we will explore?various curatorial methodologies and strategies for a variety of exhibitions typologies including monographic, thematic, collection presentation, biennial, performance, media-based and interactive projects, artist residencies and new commissions, performance, and nontraditional sites for exhibitions including the public realm and publications. We will also look at social practice and alternative or artist-run spaces. Through readings and discussion, viewing assignments and journals, field trips, and guest lectures, we will critically analyze the role of curators and art institutions, and examine the ways contemporary art and its reception in exhibition engages with broader social, cultural, and political issues.

Throughout the semester, students will develop ideas and parameters for an exhibition proposal culminating in a final group presentation that will include a proposal, preliminary list of artists, an exhibition design, and work plan. Instructors will alternate teaching classes, with a few key sessions taught together. Additionally, some sessions will take place at Boston-area museums and arts organizations.

 

Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases and Comparisons

This seminar course will deal with “modern housing” covering a period primarily from 1990 to the present. It will engage with “urban districts” in so far as housing projects under discussion contribute to the making of these districts or are shaped by the districts in which they are placed. Examples will also be drawn from different cultural contexts with emphases on Europe, North America, and East Asia, although also including examples from Latin America, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Course format:

The course will begin with discussion of several broad topics germane to design issues in contemporary housing, including ideas of community and what constitutes a dwelling community from various cultural perspectives; territories and types dealing with underlying urban conditions that play host to contemporary housing; interior and other landscapes that chart the diversity of contemporary living; and expressive and representational issues particularly concerning place-specific and inherently situated aspects of dwelling alongside dynamic, perennially future-oriented dimensions of living.

This broad topical discussion will be followed by case studies, roughly combining underlying urban conditions and characteristics with architectural projects. Within each case study, two particular contemporary examples will provide the primary focus, although others will be introduced to flesh out necessary historical circumstances and lineages of housing development.

Along with some selected textual readings, these topics will include:

1. Urban block shapers;

2. Housing and landscapes;

3. Superblock configurations;

4. Tall towers;

5. Big buildings and submultiples;

6. Infrastructural engagements;

7. Indigenous reinterpretations;

8. Infill interventions;

9. Housing of special populations; and

10. Mat buildings.

Concluding discussion will examine various dimensions across projects and urban conditions, in part to identify strengths and weaknesses, but also to set contemporary housing aside from that of modern housing in prior eras. Student participation will be by way of attendance, discussion, and especially case study presentation and documentation.

Optimizing Facade Performance: A Deep Dive on Design Decisions

Building envelopes are at the intersection of design, performance, and occupant experience in architectural design. Facades influence many aspects of building performance, from energy usage to comfort, daylight, natural ventilation, and connections to the exterior. How does one balance these sometimes competing priorities while trying to realize a design vision for a project? This course is a deep dive focused on the performance of building envelopes based on in-depth discussions of the drivers for performance and recent research in building envelopes. Examples of research topics covered in the course range from thermal bridging and its impact on building energy usage to glazing design and selection and its effect on occupant thermal comfort. The course will utilize case studies of facade designs to explore the interplay between these performance goals and how they may get translated and applied in a building design. It will also explore the application of tools and simulations such as climate analysis or heat flow simulations of details that can be utilized to inform envelope design decisions. 

Class format: A balance of lectures, case studies, workshops, and design discussion as the vehicles to explore these issues. The coursework will primarily entail case study explorations and a design project where students will develop a building envelope design for a project selected through a discussion with the professor, such as a studio project or research interest. 

Students from all GSD disciplines are encouraged to participate. 

Prerequisites: None, however prior experience in energy modeling and daylight simulation or current enrollment in 6125, “Building Simulation,” is strongly encouraged.