Culture, Conservation and Design

This proseminar addresses issues of critical conservation, an evolving discipline that illuminates the bridge between cultural meaning, identity, and context as part of the design process. Critical conservation explores the multiple forces that underlie contemporary life and the creation of places. The field addresses issues of social justice as applied to the design of places: whose history is being told; whose future is being created; who benefits; who is included and excluded by the process of creating new designs in an existing context? The goal of the course is to broaden the student’s understanding of the cultural dimensions of a place and to understand how we use/misuse the past and how we value the present.

The course is organized around three topics:

1. The Dynamic Present addresses the inherent dynamism of modernity and tradition in creating personal and group identities. It investigates questions about the past, history, permanence, temporality, obsolescence, and authenticity and applies them to understanding the identity of places.

2. Place & Cultural Identity addresses the social construction of meaning associated with group identities, places, artifacts, and history. Issues include history, heritage, nostalgia, authenticity, and their intersection with regulatory agencies and preservation standards that are used to attempt to control context by design and identity narratives.

3. Conservation Uses & Abuses addresses how conservation is used to create, control, and transform places. The roles of ancestor worship, government use of racial zoning, urban renewal, creation of tourist destinations, the stigmatization of the other, and private use of exclusionary amenities will be examined to understand how groups use underlying agendas to manifest power, shape and enforce group identity, and exclude the other.

The seminar is open to all GSD students and required for MDes Critical Conservation students. There are no prerequisites. Course work includes a one-page synthesis of weekly reading assignments, three case study presentations with short papers, and a paper/presentation of a final research project framed in the topics explored in the seminar.

Preparation of MLA Design Thesis

A thesis is a thematic proposition offered for discussion and debate. A thesis is typically developed through a piece of original research specific to an academic discipline, often at the culmination of a program of study. Design theses are pursued through the methods and media specific to the design disciplines, through design research. Candidates in the Master in Landscape Architecture program elect to pursue independent design theses at the culmination of their graduate work. 

This research seminar is intended for Master in Landscape Architecture candidates electing to pursue a design thesis in their final year of study. The course defines the parameters of a design thesis and assists candidates in the development of their own individual design thesis proposals. The course addresses a series of broad themes essential to developing a cogent thesis proposal including design research, projective practices, discursive agendas, site contexts, programmatic drivers, and representational strategies. The seminar examines the role of precedent projects and design methods in thesis, as well as the status of design and design research as forms of knowledge production in the research university. 

The seminar meets weekly for three hours, beginning with a presentation and seminar discussion followed by tutorial workshops with smaller groups. In addition to the regularly scheduled class sessions, tutorial workshops, and formal reviews, individual meetings with faculty advisors are an important aspect of the course. Students will be invited to identify and secure a GSD faculty thesis advisor during the first half of the term. By the end of the term, candidates will have prepared a proposal for their individual design thesis through word and image. 

Real Estate and City Making in China

Real estate has increasingly become a compelling force in the process of city making, one uniquely capable of leading and guiding multiple steps in the construct of vital urbanism: from conceiving an idea to constructing complex structures; from sourcing funding to creating master-planned communities; and from negotiating design forms to implementing urban public realms. A country like China is at once experiencing rapid urbanization while undergoing unprecedented transformation in the mechanism of city making: the forces of real estate and the shifting roles played by public and private sectors are constantly challenging conventional city building models, while defining and redefining their positions in the production of the built environment. 

This course, conducted as a research seminar, focuses on the interdependence between real estate and city making. It addresses both theoretical and empirical investigations on the concepts and paradigms that have shaped and are still shaping real estate practices and their impact on contemporary Chinese cities. It analyzes emergent real estate and urban development strategies, their respective financing structures, underlying domain expertise and organizational hierarchy. Students will work independently and in teams on selected themes to identify critical forces in real estate development and investment: how key real estate players, domestic or international, have formed their central business strategies, interacted with capital markets, and participated in the city-form process to facilitate or drive the formation of the built environment; and how emergent private sector leaders are integrating human capital, financial capital, and design capital to reshape the design, form, and composition of China’s urban centers. With the investigative research framework set at the beginning of the semester, students will proceed to examine the city making process through the lens of real estate, in parallel with readings and class discussions, to anticipate the trajectory for contemporary real estate development, investment, and city making in China. 

Survey of Energy Technology (at SEAS)

Principles governing energy generation and interconversion. Current and projected world energy use. Selected important current and anticipated future technologies for energy generation, interconversion, storage, and end usage.
Course Notes:
This course must be taken Sat/Unsat. Cannot be used for SEAS concentration credit. Students may not take both Engineering Sciences 229 and Engineering Sciences 231 for credit.
Recommended Prep:
Calculus of a single variable, one semester of college-level physics, and familiarity with chemistry at the high school advanced placement level.

This course is jointly offered as SEAS ES 299/231 and GSD SCI 6277.

Developing for Social Impact

This field studies course will use a combination of readings, lectures, class discussion and a focused development exercise for a Boston site to explore how to align financial feasibility and social purpose in real estate development.

Profit-seeking and mission-oriented real estate development, once distinct endeavors, are converging in their methods and aims.  Mission-focused non-profits in social housing, cultural and economic development and place-making are increasingly results-based and entrepreneurial, as the philanthropists and public agencies that fund them expect them to be. Governments increasingly look to harvest surplus land for development that serves social policy goals, and broader recognition of the social and environmental consequences of real estate development has led them to adopt an increasingly rigorous overlay of land use planning, policy and regulation to address potential development impacts and to harness private investment to produce public goods.

Recognizing that they are viewed as de facto city-builders, developers seek ways to become responsible civic actors and to advance social policy goals that go beyond their project boundaries, such as housing affordability and climate resilience. Yet it can challenging to reconcile two sets of objectives that are often in tension, and there are no commonly accepted methods to achieve this alignment. To address this gap, the course will feature readings in social impact investing, social impact assessment, responsible property investment and related fields, along with class visits by leaders of for-profit and non-profit organizations to describe projects that seek to harmonize financial and social returns. 

Material, Atmosphere and Ambience

This seminar introduces an understanding of atmosphere and ambience within the discourse of material practice in architecture. The materials are a contextual and cultural manifestation of architecture.  In addition to their pragmatic function—as the basis for construction means and methods—materials also carry a long history of human civilization and tradition. This seminar aims to embed material practice into the history and culture of its origins, resource utilization, craftsmanship, fabrication and its role in performance within building assembly. We will look at the materials through the lens of various global crises such as environmental issues, economy, the politics of manufacturing, use of natural resources and its life cycle. Examples and precedents will be introduced to the seminar to discuss strategies and techniques for adaptation, rehabilitation, restoration, conservation, regeneration and preservation of buildings.  Material practice carries affects such as ambience and atmosphere. It impacts acoustics, lighting, tactility and aesthetics. This seminar aims to bring forth more comprehensive, complex and holistic understandings of material and materiality which varies in impact at different event scales—from personal to communal and local to global.

Additionally, we will look at a range of materials and their fabrication methods—handmade, mechanical and digital—within different economies, from vernacular building materials and techniques to new and advanced material explorations.

The seminar is meant to be a survey of diverse material practices. Thus, each student will be expected to choose one material of focus for research, exploring its application and the possibilities for its role, meaning, effects and message in contemporary practice.  The class will meet once a week on Wednesday mornings and will consist of a lecture on the topic in first half, followed by discussions and presentations with and by the students based on weekly topics and assigned readings. Evaluations will be made based on class participation and the quality of the final project—cumulative through the semester—on material research.

  

Miami Resilience: Housing & Infrastructure

This advanced research seminar in Miami, Florida (USA) is thematically focused at the intersection of community resilience, infrastructure design, housing studies, building science and zoning. With a particular geographic focus on the design and development of the Bakehouse Art Complex in Wynwood, the seminar will seek to understand the various forces shaping the adaptive capacity, livability and affordability of similarly situated districts. Within the context of rapid climatic, environmental and social change, students are tasked with developing a specialized research agenda that builds upon the various programs, methodologies and practices within the GSD. Each student will be required to independently select and develop a research agenda that demonstrates a command of the associated disciplinary literature framing the inquiry. In addition, each student will be required to develop analytical framework(s) that demonstrate the student’s competence for not only understanding the problem(s) but also utilizing such frameworks for practically engaging local stakeholders. In partnership with the Knight Foundation and the Chief Resilience Officers (CROs) of Miami and Miami-Dade County, students will travel to Miami to conduct field work to support their research. The seminar will culminate in the production of a consolidated product (e.g., memorandum, multi-media, etc..) that memorializes the analytical outcomes, as well as a normative position for advancing future policy, planning and design decisions. Students are evaluated on: (i) monthly presentations, and, (ii) the final research memorandum/media. Each student is required to lead discussions on relevant literature/data shaping their research, as well as periodic up-dates concerning their research progress. Students are encouraged to utilize the seminar to ground complementary existing research for ongoing theses and dissertations. Specialized research inquires may include engineering and architectural resilience design, hazard mitigation planning, landscapes of water and risk, and the architecture of TOD.

This course will include a trip to Miami for 10 students from February 24th to 27th. Students who travel in this course will be term billed $150. Students can only participate in one traveling course or studio. One set itinerary is made and students are responsible for contacting the travel agent and paying for any changes to this itinerary. Students are also responsible for the cost of all meals and incidentals, such as local travel.

Making Participation Relevant to Design

By trying to understand how participation can make design more relevant to society, we can create more socially just cities. This course starts from the premise that it would not be ethical to design cities without creating meaningful conversations with different stakeholders. Our main challenge is to improve the quality and ethics of design work by staying in close contact with the city and its residents.

Participation is a way of confronting our preconceptions, revealing our blind spots, and/or supporting our intuitions in a context where architecture, urbanism, and other design-related fields are becoming more and more complex and multilayered. Participation is not an end, it is a means: a powerful tool that establishes new connections and boosts both creativity and the production of new ideas. Likewise, participation allows the construction of a collective dialogue that will engage people in different ways, formats, and temporalities. Participation is a method to enable the creation of more democratic, inclusive and open ended environments, redefining the very concept of citizenship. 

How can designers reimagine participatory decision making processes?
How should design participation unfold in an ever changing reality?
What improves communication and enhances creative dialogue?
Can participatory design lead to open ended processes or outcomes? 

Among other strategies deployed to answer these questions, the class will focus on the potential contribution of digital technologies as a means for linking participation to design. Technology opens new opportunities for revealing multiple layers of meaning. It also allows the exchange of information and creation of new possibilities that together can transform the way we behave. Technology, in short, enables us to better relate and interact with each other and our surroundings, thus lowering the barriers for citizen engagement.

Throughout the semester we will look for alternative means and untapped opportunities to identify and develop socially and technologically innovative approaches, methodologies, and tools. Students will be asked to combine technical skills and knowledge production with a social sensibility so as to access the direct experience of reality while also producing forms of empowerment that come from involving the relevant actors in transformative processes. 

The course has no prerequisites and is open to graduate students across the different departments.

NOTE: This seminar runs in parallel with Option Studio Designing atmospheres and technologies for Social Interaction, sharing information and having common sessions on Fridays.

Tokyo Study Abroad Seminar

Enrollment in this course was pre-selected.

Palladio and Raphael: An Innovative Learning Experience

Two leading scholars of the architecture of Andrea Palladio, Guido Beltramini and Howard Burns of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza, will offer workshops exploring Raphael (1483-1520) and Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), two of the most influential architects of the Renaissance, and the relation between them. Though they had different backgrounds – Palladio trained as a stone carver, whereas Raphael was the son of the court painter in Urbino – they are similar in their view of history, their concern with architectural drawing and representation and commitment to the study and imitation of ancient Roman architecture. Raphael must have been a major source of inspiration for Palladio, who in Rome made a survey plan of his masterpiece, the villa Madama. He also adopted elements of Raphael’s architectural language. He would have noted Raphael’s skill in creating personalized palaces for high functionaries in Pope Leo X’s inner circle.

 The fall session Faking Palladio will introduce students to Palladio’s world, requiring them to produce a fake Palladio drawing. This requires in-depth knowledge of both the material character of the work to be imitated and also the cultural background of the architect imitated. Students will not be invited to produce an exact copy of an existing drawing but to invent a drawing that has never existed. This sort of exercise is made possible because Palladio developed an architecture that he conceived as a language, based on standard elements (such as rooms, stairs, doors, and columns) with proportions governing the relations between the various components. Palladio's treatise, The Four Books on Architecture (Venice, 1570), is essentially a manual with instructions referring to his architecture. Among Palladio’s drawings we find drawings for unbuilt buildings: many of them are plans without the corresponding elevations. To make a fake Palladio drawing, a good starting point is a Palladio original plan from which to imagine a possible development. The students will be asked first to design the elevation, or part of it, then to make a fake, focusing on the materiality of the drawing as an object (the paper, ink, stylus drawn lines, etc.) and on Palladio’s drawing conventions, which are close to those used today.

This spring session Anticipating Palladio will be dedicated to Raphael, always considered as one of the greatest painters. However, he was also a brilliant and innovative (and still little-known) architect, whose approach anticipates Palladio’s. The spring session will consist of lectures, workshops, and seminars on the buildings to be visited during the trip. Topics to be covered include Raphael’s architectural formation (in Urbino, Perugia, Florence and Rome), his writings and ideas, drawings, painted architecture, buildings and design methods, as well as his social world of friends, collaborators, patrons, and rivals, including Michelangelo. Students will explore the complex relation in Raphael between study of ancient Roman architecture and the design of modern buildings, and his revival of Roman constructional techniques and modes of interior decoration. Unbuilt, unfinished or destroyed works by him will be reconstructed in drawings and models. Raphael will also be approached as a “proto- film director”, creator of marvelous single-shot still “movies.” The seminar will offer an exceptional educational and architectural experience and will have a specific goal and outcome: generating ideas and prototypes for virtual and physical models for the exhibition IN THE MIND OF RAPHAEL, Raphael as Architect and inventor of architecture, to be held at the Palladio Centre in Vicenza (Oct. 2020 – Jan. 2021).

Enrollment in this course was pre-selected.