The Project and the Territory: Japan Story
What is the future of urbanization?
What role can design play in shaping that future?
What will happen to the conflicting tensions between urban and rural?
How might technology transform our experience of the physical and social worlds?
This seminar will use the concept of the project, as idea and implementation, to consider contemporary urbanization both reflectively and prospectively. Using an analysis of the development of Japanese cities and regions, and their encounters with disruption and continuity, WWII, Olympics, bubble economy, Kobe earthquake, etc. we aim to question and reimagine the future relations between the physical and social worlds.
The hybrid and multi-representational method of the seminar will include discussions of architecture, urban design, technology, theory and practice, infrastructure and nature, institutions and memory, as well as the ecologies of literary and visual culture. Though the focus of the seminar will be on Japan, ideas and examples will be considered in the light of parallel developments in other parts of the world.
The course will include lectures, guest speakers from near and far, and class discussions based on readings, films, photography, and other visual materials. Access to these materials will be provided online for students to consult at their own pace. Over the course of the semester, students will be tasked with investigating an issue of their choice, culminating in a speculative project.
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 course has scheduled a first irregular meeting on Tuesday, September 8, 7:30-9 pm EDT. Please make sure to check the Canvas site of the course for the meeting Zoom links.
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.
Race, Power, and Resistance in the City
The police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans, as well as the racial health disparities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, have made 2020 into a year that has renewed the urgency and broadened the awareness around racism and racial inequality—in the United States and across the world. The purpose of this seminar is to investigate race, power, and resistance at the intersection of architecture and urbanism and to understand the implications that these issues have for our own work as designers, historians, or critics. The course follows weekly themes, each of which will be explored through historical and contemporary case studies, readings, assignments and exercises, class discussions, and student research projects.
If we think of #BlackLivesMatter as a protest movement, what does that tell us about our assumptions about the status quo of public discourse? Why do we generally accept the fact that some neighborhoods are, for example, white, Black, Jewish, or Chinese? The word ‘ghetto’ emerged as a descriptor for a neighborhood of a minority seen as outsiders; has its meaning changed? How do global events help shed new light and change perspectives on domestic inequities? The use of lethal force has come to be seen as an unsurprising component of police work; what does that tell us about our understanding of law enforcement, safety, and public space? Can design be inherently fair? What is expressed/erased when memorials are erected, and what is expressed/erased when they are taken down? And, most acutely, what is different in 2020 that has allowed for the public response to police brutality and racial injustice to take the form it has taken?
The geographic focus of this seminar rests on the United States. However, the hierarchization of human identity based on race or other socially constructed categories, including, but not limited to, gender, ethnicity, national origin, political ideology, and religious beliefs is a global phenomenon. Therefore, students are encouraged to expand this focus.
Learning Goals
Students will
• Develop historical and theoretical tools for assuming thoughtful positions on contemporary urban challenges and their roots
• Identify, analyze, and discuss constructions of race and expressions of power in urban environments
• Challenge conventional wisdom and established historical narratives by increasing awareness of omissions, exclusions, oppressions, and forms of resistance in dominant discourses about architecture and urbanism
• Expand disciplinary frameworks by cultivating an interdisciplinary approach to academic inquiry
• Exercise creativity in analyzing contemporary narratives that are subject to rapid change
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.
New Spaces of Justice
This class will take the shape of a multidisciplinary workshop in collaboration with Virgil Abloh, Nóra Al Haider and the Legal Design Lab at Stanford University.
"When I grow up, I want to be a Supreme Court judge.”
George Floyd
On 31st of May 2020, less than a week after George Floyd’s killing, Clemens A. Landau, the presiding judge of Utah’s Salt Lake City Justice Court, wrote in an unusual public statement: “We are painfully aware that municipal courts like ours have historically been situated on, or at least very near, the tip of systemic racism’s spear.”
A 2017 report called “Justice Gap Report: Measuring the Civil Legal Needs of Low-income Americans" by the Legal Services Corporation revealed that 86% of the civil legal problems reported by low-income Americans in the past year received inadequate or no legal help. 71% of low-income households experience at least one civil legal problem, including domestic violence, disability access, housing conditions, and health care, with three out of five people representing themselves in civil courts. Judge Richard A. Posner resigned in 2017 telling the New York Times that he "gradually began to realize that this wasn’t right, what we were doing.”
The immediate and improvised nature of the COVID shutdown in the spring of 2020 did not only bring to light such systemic problems but created new ones too. One such is the accelerated digitization of the judicial system. The goal of the seminar is to address real-time challenges faced by the courts and its users and rethink analog and virtual court infrastructures, buildings, symbols and artifacts through a human-centered lens. In this clip, Last Week Tonight reported in detail how, while there is a federal moratorium on evictions, the eviction process continued during the COVID shut down, often via Zoom proceedings. This case exemplifies the challenges of the improvised digital court system and will be further studied in class.
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.
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).
Jointly offered course: SEAS COMPSCI 171
GSD students interested in enrolling in this course, please refer to the SEAS offering, COMPSCI 171, to express interest.
Constructing Heterogeneity
Contemporary buildings are inherently heterogeneous; more often than not they are assemblages of different materials, programs, and subjects. Although homogenous finish layers construct an image of purity, anyone that has looked closely at a contemporary wall section can attest to its many parallel technical layers. Similarly, the easy partitioning of space, or the siloing of functions, obscures – and often confounds – the potential intermingling of the building’s heterogeneous uses and subjects. The twin tendencies within contemporary architecture towards both a functional and aesthetic purism subverts the potency of difference as the basis of architectural production.
While elaborations of both formal and programmatic heterogeneity – by Venturi and Koolhaas, respectively – are now well established, material heterogeneity is less theorized. Building codes, specification systems, the division of labor, materials science, and structural theories and pedagogies, are bodies of knowledge that privilege and reinforce the classification of material systems into discrete categories. We think of wood, concrete, steel, or masonry buildings, for example. While there are advantages to understanding each material system in isolation, there is an alternative methodology that considers materials in strategic combination. Reinforced concrete is but one example of a powerful composite system that has become commonplace; yet there are many other underexplored combinations that bring together apparently oppositional materials and elements. Going further, a framework based in heterogeneity may be seen as a means to address the multiple pressures on contemporary buildings, and the need for new forms of structural, social, or environmental performance.
This seminar will look closely at theories and methods of heterogeneity through four lenses – representational, material, formal, and social – to expose and expand upon their architectural potential. Combining discussions on episodes of heterogeneity within architectural history with experimental design work, the aim of the seminar will be to develop new frameworks for constructing difference in a contemporary architectural context.
Method of Evaluation: Course work includes weekly readings, participation in seminar discussions and presentations, and a creative project.
Prerequisites: None
Course structure: This seminar will meet via Zoom two hours per week for synchronous presentations, workshops, and discussions. One hour per week will be reserved for flexible meetings and asynchronous content.
?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.
Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture
Current tendencies in the discipline suggest a split between two opposing architectural projects: the easy project versus the difficult project[1]. Primarily related to architecture’s form, this positioning of the divide might also be used to identify recent developments in representation: Cheap and fast one-point perspectives with minimal material changes as opposed to laborious photo-realistic renderings oozing tactile interiors. Compounded by the hourly “swipe,” up/down and left/right, or how the architectural image is posted, pinned, shared, and liked moments after it is created, places a further immediacy on the making of representation and naming an agenda. Rather than question the easy over the difficult, might we readjust our focus towards the conceptualization of representation first, as a way of conceiving of architecture? This seminar engages the following thought-polemic: “Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture.”
The aim of this course is to develop techniques and methodologies around a series of representational experiments. All content will be framed by contemporary issues in representation, not a historical overview, and will include directed studies on materiality, color, digital tooling, animations, scale figures, and media. Formatted into a list of six curated references, with the majority of sources located in art practice and popular culture, each weekly lecture will attempt to construct a theory on representation.
Over the course of the semester, participants will conduct biweekly exercises, culminating in the delivery of a twenty minute lecture to the class around your own theory on representation, potentially setting up a future architectural project for oneself. Part lecture, part performance, and part production, “Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture” is a search for original representational agendas.
[1] Somol, R.E. "Green Dots 101." Hunch 11 (2007): 28-37
Rome
A seminar on the art, architecture, and urbanism of Rome where the layering of material artifacts from successive historical periods provides an uninterrupted record of more than two thousand years. Development of the urban site establishes a continuous framework and contextualizes the cultural, artistic, and political aspirations and values of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque city.
The course includes lectures and discussions on selected topics and student reports on their research. Some lectures are organized around historic spectacles – the Emperor Augustus’ funeral (14 A.D.), Constantine the Great’s triumphal procession (312), and the consecration of New St. Peter’s (1626) – imagined as walks through Rome highlighting the city’s evolving cultural and urban character. Other topics may consider a single building architect or idea in depth. The first half of the course covers Antiquity to the Renaissance while the second looks in greater detail at specific Renaissance and Baroque projects. Topics in the first part include the growth and decline of the ancient Roman city, the creation of new architectural forms and urban meanings in response to the Christianization of Empire, and the practice of pilgrimage as urban experience. The second part focuses on the style and meaning of those works of art, architecture, and urbanism which distinguish Rome today such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling, Bramante’s design for New St. Peter’s, and Bernini’s sculpture for the rebuilt basilica. In general, the approach of the first half emphasizes the historical and cultural foundations which constitute the idea of Rome while the second takes up more theoretical issues of representation and reception.
This is a seminar, so students’ independent study and research is important. About one hour per week will be synchronous group discussion. About two hours of powerpoint lectures will be available on the course site for asynchronous study. Assigned and recommended readings are on the course site except for two books which students should acquire. Students’ are responsible for studying the lectures and readings and preparing for the group discussions. The last weeks of the course will be devoted to students’ presentation of their independent research projects. A more fully developed version of the report will be submitted as a final paper.
Course Structure: The structure is that of a “flipped” course where students are responsible for preparing the materials provided and class meetings are devoted to discussion. Two lectures of one hour each will be posted on the course site each week for students to watch at their convenience. In weeks 2 through 9 on the syllabus the whole class will meet via Zoom or an equivalent platform on Thursdays from 10:00-11:00 to discuss the lectures and assigned readings for that week. In week 1, there will be a Zoom meeting on Tuesday, the first day of class, and no meeting on Thursday. In weeks 10-13 there will be meetings both Tuesdays and Thursday 10-11:30 to hear student reports. We will use the Tuesday time slot for Office Hours. I would like to see everyone at least once about their seminar report topic before Spring Break.
The anatomy of (wild)fire, a design quest?
The research seminar examines the anatomy of (wild)fires in the context of climatic disintegration and the dismantling of agro-cultural practices of collectively “laboring” the land. In particular, the seminar addresses the ecology of fire—associated benefits, hazards, social agents, and corresponding intuitional frameworks—relative to design. While examining the fires' components as a phenomenon with increased incidence in today’s extended drought periods and abandonment of rural territories, the seminar explores design questions and possibilities: How does fire happen and what catalyzes its occurrences? Where does it occur mostly? Which measures are in place for post-tragedy territories and community recovery? How can design anticipate and prevent? The seminar entails the examination of the cultural and anthropological domains of using fire as well as case studies on fire management and mitigation in communities under perennial threats. These include regions where wildfire is an enduring and ever-growing occurrence, such as in the Mediterranean-type climate regions (MCRs) including Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece), Australia, California, Canada, South Africa, and Chile. The year of 2017 witnessed unforeseen fire events worldwide with extreme magnitudes. The effects of such scales produced incalculable losses in human lives, environmental depletion, public health damages, and public expenditures. In the present times, where the increase of air temperatures and drier periods are expected to grow even more, the study of this phenomenon and its implications seems of strategic relevance for the design disciplines in their aim to build resilient communities in urban and rural territories.
Course structure: The class will meet on Fridays for 2 hours. There will be 1 hour of asynchronous time. This time will be used by the students, at a time of their choice, with a small exercise: each week, students will use this asynchronous time to prepare a 1 paragraph response and two questions to the suggested essays/ videos (2 max) released in the previous class. These reflections will be discussed in the following class. As part of the class preparation, the students will have links to extra video material included in the bibliography/ videography.
The Fifth Plan
In this seminar we will consider the evolution of the floor plan across five iterations: proto-modern, modern, post-modern, sequel-modern, and, most importantly, the present. We will begin with a simple hypothesis about the present, namely that there is a new plan afoot. It has been making its way into architecture for several years, announcing its arrival via the paroxysms that come with a long gestation. Its terms are not those of the suck-the-air-out gangly hollowness of proto-modern experiments in iron and steel (as seen in train stations, department stores, and exhibition halls), nor the give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death plan of modernism (universal, free), nor the we-used-to-do-it-like-this-plus-je-ne-sais-quoi plan of post-modernism (neo-historical, juxtaposing), nor the plan-non-chalant of recent reinvigorations of modernist architecture (data-driven, a-formal). Given it descends from these four earlier paradigms of plan thinking, I’ve provisionally labeled this new plan the “fifth plan.”
As surely as it descends from these precedents, the fifth plan is decidedly not like its predecessors. Our understanding of plans (and of architecture) depends on our ability to distill the characteristics of plan-based organizations, characteristics that the fifth plan incessantly meddles with: open or defined, perimeter or interior, figure or system, history or future, homogeneous or varied. This new plan confounds classification because it conflates spatial temperaments. It slips into and out of categorical restraints as needed. It signals neither a return to nor a rejection of previous plan models and, most importantly, can’t be singularly aligned or contrasted with its antecedents.
A few clarifications might be useful. First, “plan” here refers to the term’s basic definition in architecture, namely the horizontal organization that modulates degrees of enclosure, program organizations, circulation systems, optical dispositions, formal geometries, and hierarchies. Second, the plan is taken to be a primary part of architecture’s makeup, which is to say the plan is deeply wound into both the momentum of architecture’s disciplinary history and the transformation of architecture as we face the future. The plan structures architecture’s formal systems, economies, social constellations, and material constructs. It is the discipline’s constitution: equal parts social contract, technical diagram, spreadsheet, and aesthetic code. What changes from plan-era to plan-era are the hierarchies among parts and the ways in parts deemed important are related to one another, invariably producing constantly changing definitions of what we think of as wholes in architecture.
Where can this new plan be found? In its nascent state, various strains of the fifth plan can be found in a range of contemporary practices including Mansilla & Tunon, Michael Maltzan, Sou Fujimoto, Barkow Leibinger, Johnston Marklee, Toyo Ito, SANAA, as well as a host of other practices. In fact, none of these firms lays claim to this new plan type, and none of them can be said to deploy it consistently. Further complicating things, individual examples can be found in unexpected authors such as SOM (the Burr Elementary School) or Gintautas Natkevicius (a Lithuanian architect whose Birstonas House is relevant). Nonetheless, collectively an increasingly forceful exhibition of new plan thinking is being produced by these practices and others. The fifth plan’s presence might be found in a single building, in a part of a building, or across a string of projects produced by a particular practice. And yet it appears evermore ubiquitously in architecture: across scales of work, types of programs, geographies, practices, and even economies and social worlds.
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.