Off: On a Tangent

“An art professor once told me that in composition, elements should either overlap or there should be some space between them; that it produces discomfort when things were tangential. He called this phenomenon kissing….”- John Baldessari
“The chair went one way, she went another and the keyboard headed off at a completely different tangent.”
“First, the writer needs to get his facts straight before he goes off on a tangent like that.”

The tangential inherently implicates the expression of how two things touch. In a moment where touching has become complicated, a formal exploration of this expression is similarly charged.

Mathematically, a tangent is expressed as a straight line that touches a curve at a point. In some of the earliest writing about infinitesimal calculus, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz defined a tangent as “the line through a pair of infinitely close points on the curve”. This course uses the tangential as a formal, rhetorical, and mathematical framework to interrogate the relationship between the part and the whole, between the thick and thin, the complex and contradictory. Working with forms like cones and cylinders (amongst others), we will investigate formal tangential relationships and their implications on bringing programmatic spaces closer together or farther apart.

Conceptually, a tangent implies the permutation of an existing idea into a completely different line of thinking. A tangent articulates a moment where one thing diverges into two or, inversely, where two things merge into one: the moment they kiss. In Kissing Architecture, Sylvia Lavin teases out this tension between the discipline of architecture and new types of art practices. We will focus our exploration within the discipline at a more intimate scale: two mediums, two masses, two surfaces, or two curves. This tension — a version of are ‘they’ or aren’t ‘they’—is further activated by moving between the precise and the imperfect. This seminar will explore the role that image creation plays in articulating these tensions. We will engage in a rigorous investigation of rendering and drawing techniques to study the material, tectonic and spatial implications of tangential forms. At what scale does the tangential relationship build excitement?

Coursework will include weekly readings, digressions on technique and form, presentation asides, rendering, and precedent

Prerequisites: Working knowledge of Rhino/some knowledge of Vray.

Evaluation will be based on class engagement, design exercises, and the final.

Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices

The Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices Seminar investigates art and design work in the interdisciplinary modalities of contemporary culture and the city. As artists and designers respond to global magnitude and local impact challenges, engage with cross-cultural and often conflicting conditions, and operate in disparate economic and societal realms, the need for increased engagement and collaboration is paramount. The complexity present in the context of action—economic, social, political, cultural, and ecological— frequently requires interdisciplinary approaches accompanied by cross-pollinating knowledge and skillsets.

Socially engaged art, relational aesthetics, and activist and emancipatory design practices challenge disciplinary boundaries not only in the art and the design worlds but as they crossover and interact with communities, policymakers, and various experts. They lead to expanding professional vocabularies, tools, and imaginaries and cultivates new forms of interdisciplinary knowledge. 

As art and design practices move from art in public space to art in public interest (Miwon Kwon), their participatory and relational makeup can generate platforms and agencies that question dominant culture, construct new practices, establish new subjectivities, and subvert existing configurations of power (Chantal Mouffe). Historical examples of such approaches include Dada, the Situationists, and other avant-garde movements, as well as contemporary art and design practices such as the Silent University, Philadelphia Assembled, Superflex, Critical Art Ensemble, Pink Bloque, Yes Men, the Institute for Applied Autonomy, or the Arctic Cycle. Such disseminated practices challenge the boundaries of art and design and their environments.

The seminar will navigate the evolving interdisciplinarity of art and design practices by engaging with the city, its communities, and the art world and addressing contemporary urgencies and societal concerns. Practice-oriented, the seminar includes lectures, workshops, and assignments dedicated to exploring artistic tools and methods as well as the context in which they perform.

Fundamental goals of the seminar are:
– to expose students to methods, techniques, and positions of interdisciplinary art and design practices;
– to explore how art and design practices can engage with the public domain;
– to creatively explore the potential of mediums in the realization of ideas; and
– to raise relevant questions and to test them through the development of projects;
– Student evaluation is based on assignments, participation in class, and the final presentation.
 
This semester, the seminar will focus on the theme of survival and survivalism in times of socio-economic, environmental, and institutional crises. The seminar will incorporate lectures and conversations with various practitioners and experts, including artists, curators, activists, and policymakers—priority enrollment to ADPD MDes students.

Course structure: The class will meet synchronously for 2 hours on Thursdays from 12 to 2 pm EST. Asynchronous presentations or open workshops will complement the synchronous teaching throughout the semester. 

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. 

Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases and Comparisons

This seminar course deals with ‘modern housing’ covering a period primarily from the 1900s to the present. It engages with ‘urban districts’ in so far as housing projects under discussion contribute to the making of these districts, and are in turn shaped by the districts in which they are placed. Cases will be drawn from different contexts, with emphasis on Europe, North America, and East Asia, although also including examples from the Americas, South and Southeast Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania.

The course begins with discussion of several broad topics germane to the issue and design of contemporary housing, including ideas of community and what constitutes a dwelling community across the span of historical time and cultural perspectives; territories and types dealing with underlying urban conditions that play host to the housing; and interiors and other landscapes that chart the diversity contemporary living, including expressive and representation issues concerning place-specific and inherently situated aspects of dwelling, alongside the dynamic, perennially future-oriented dimensions of living.

These broad topical discussions will be followed by case studies, roughly categorized by underlying urban conditions and characteristics of architectural projects. Within each category, two contemporary examples will provide the primary focus, while precedents and other contemporaneous projects will be introduced to flesh out historial lineages and paths of development. These categories will include: 1) urban block shapers, 2) housing and landscapes, 3) superblock configurations, 4) tall towers, 5) big buildings, 6) infrastructural engagements, 7) infill and puntal interventions, 8) housing special populations, 9) temporary and incremental housing, and 10) mat buildings. 

The concluding discussion will examine various dimensions across projects and urban conditions, in part to identify opportunities and limitations for housing design, but also to set contemporary housing aside from that of modern and pre-modern housing in prior eras. Student participation will be by way of attendance, discussion, and especially the detailed analysis and presentation of case study projects.

In Spring 2021, the course will each week consist of three parts: 1) a pre-recorded lecture to be viewed asynchronously (60 min), 2) a live presentation of two case study projects by a pair of students (60 min), followed by 3) a live class discussion focused on the weekly theme (60 min). Beyond weekly participation and contribution to in-class discussions, the main deliverable of the course is the documentation, analysis, and presentation of two case study projects. Students will be paired and assigned the cases at the beginning of the semester. The pair of students will meet with the instructor and TA for office-hour one and two weeks before the presentation date. Short readings and/or videos may also be assigned to facilitate weekly discussions. 

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.

CoDesign Field Lab Black Belt Study for the Green New Deal

Biden’s historic win in Georgia, along with the disproportionate impacts of COVID and heightening vulnerability to climate change, bring into clear relief the critical and catalytic location of the US Black Belt region. As anti-racist planners and designers, how might we work within our own communities to align our creative purposes and practices with these powerful movements and changes based in the region? How to begin shifting our cultures, methods, and pedagogies away from white supremacy and intersecting oppressions of race, ethnicity, citizenship, class, gender, sexuality, and ableism to those based on reparation and care—social and ecological?  How to use our identity, skills, and power as planners and designers; accomplice local change leaders; and confront exploitative and extractive regimes of spatial development?
 
Sis·tered, sis·ter·ing, sis·ters (v). Architecture. To affix a beam or other structural member to (another) as a supplementary support. 
 
The Spring 2021 CoDesign Field Lab will “sister” with the Destination Design School of Agricultural Estates (DDSAE), led by the notable design activist, artist, and community developer Euneika Rogers-Sipp (Loeb ’16). "DDSAE is a full-service art, and community design school planned for the Black Belt region of Georgia at 10 partner site locations. DDSAE will celebrate and reimagine the profound culture and history of food, farming and hospitality through the creation of a Black Belt Reparations Design Residency and education center that can serve as a replicable model with a national ripple effect.” 
 
The CoDesign Field Lab research seminar will gather, analyze, synthesize, visualize, and narrate data—to make a case for the Black Belt region to continue its historical and continued trajectory of transformative formation as fount and staging grounds for the Green New Deal. Course objective include (1) mapping opportunities and assets in the Black Belt region that make it a critical and catalytic location for the Green New Deal—particularly related to food + fiber production, waste + energy systems, water + climate resilience, and mobility + access (including access to basic amenities, recreational spaces, and broadband); (2) consider regional stakeholders, decision makers, and resource holders along with power dynamics in affecting Green New Deal planning and implementation; and  (3) explore multi-scalar, multi-sector mechanisms for reparative planning and design, which seek to compensate for and heal past harms as well as radically repair forward in ways that serve the combined interests of climate activists, blue-collar workers, and frontline communities.

Course structure: the course will meet synchronously on Wednesday from 10 to 11:30 am EST. Additionally there will be 1.5 hours per week of asynchronous content.

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 to access the direct experience of reality while also producing forms of empowerment that come from involving the relevant actors in transformative processes. 

Prerequisites: None.

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. 

Experimental Infrastructures

Infrastructure is an encompassing term that can refer to anything from railroad ties to social media to ecosystems, and one which has been enjoying a renaissance in planning and public discourse. We are inundated by rhetoric about green infrastructure, social infrastructure, global infrastructure, and so on. Yet, as is evident in recent promises about fixing the nation’s infrastructure, infrastructural work can often, in practice, seem to be as much about reinforcing the status quo as about building new connections or enabling new ways of living.

This seminar will explore infrastructures as cultural objects and culminate in the design of “experimental infrastructures” that can interject new narratives into society through the built environment. The class will start with a survey of critical infrastructure studies, an interdisciplinary approach that questions how infrastructure has been designed, built, and maintained in ways that reinforce (often problematic) social structures. “Infrastructure” is a term with a specific history, though it has come to encompass a wide range of networks, systems, and tools, and we will use this critical infrastructure approach to map out the political life of the term and its subsequent expansion.

After building a theoretical framework around the argument that “infrastructure is social structure” as our foundational premise, we will then attempt to reimagine infrastructure as a tool for radical social change. What, for example, might an explicitly feminist infrastructure look like? A queer infrastructure? A decolonizing infrastructure? An infrastructure of degrowth? To engage in this rethinking, it will be necessary to confront the complicity of infrastructure within historical projects of global economic growth, nationalism, urbanization, natural resource extraction, and other world-ordering projects positioned as necessary public goods, but which have, in practice, led to gross injustices and inequalities around the world. Class assignments will ask students to consider infrastructural work and infrastructural subjectivity at different scales, from the individual to the global, and will culminate in a final project focused on designing and/or researching a critical antihegemonic infrastructure and imagining its implementation.

Community Development: History, Theory, and Imaginative Practice

Community development is a heterogeneous and contested field of planning thought and practice. The profession has generally prioritized people and places that are disproportionately burdened by capitalist urbanization and development. In the US, the dominant focus has been on personal or group development and widening access to opportunities, with a growing reliance on market incentives to deliver housing options and spur economic development. Yet for many communities at the margins, development has rather connoted practices of freedom— freedom from oppression and deprivation; freedom to enjoy one’s time, make choices, and experience life as abundance and possibility. Thus conceived, community development is less a question of remedial policy than acts of resistance, claiming rights and power, and transforming economic, political, social, and spatial structures and processes to become more inclusive, vibrant, and sustainable. 
 
This course offers an interdisciplinary, critical, reflective, and experimental approach to community development that proceeds in three key parts. The first, “revisiting,” examines the history of community development in the US, including evolving patterns, drivers, and explanations of urban inequality and poverty and corresponding urban policy and planning responses. We also revisit alternative histories of community development, drawing on the intellectual and movement traditions of Black liberation and radical feminist struggles that have sought to change race relations in America in connection with global assaults on capitalism, empire, and patriarchy. We additionally study indigenous community development theory and practice. The second part, “unraveling,” applies these anti-racist, liberatory, and reparative frameworks to critically analyze community development concepts and strategies, interrogating dominant approaches that uphold race, class, and gender-based supremacies. Here we pay close attention to the dilemma of race that has continued to define capitalism, politics, and spatial production in America as well as divided working class and progressive movements, including those defining the field of community development. 
 
The final part, “praxis,” comprises a speaker series and discussion sessions focused on applied practices and cases— intended to help students develop their own community development agendas and skills within a peer-learning community. Notwithstanding significant advancements in affordable housing development, social service delivery, and placemaking— the traditional mainstay of community development— the course focuses on community development approaches that transcend such neighborhood-scale programming to instead leverage public infrastructure investments and procurement capacities of anchor institutions and apply economic democracy principles to strengthen collective ownership and governance capacity over productive infrastructures and resources. Guest speakers will also include creative community developers incorporating art, culture, and restorative justice practices.
 
Course evaluations will be based on two assignments (CD atlas entry and final project) and class participation. It has no prerequisites and is open to graduate students across different disciplines.

 

Environment, Economics, and Enterprise

This course blends two shades of green: sustainability and money.  It focuses on the intersection between environmental and social opportunities in the built environment and the economic impact they have on the commercial enterprise ecosystem. It is taught through interdisciplinary exercises and discussion involving architectural design, environmental technology, simple energy modelling, urban economics and commercial real estate practices. How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings, infrastructure or other forms of real estate? Where are the opportunities for real estate initiatives that are highly functional, healthy, aesthetically pleasing and financially rewarding?  The challenge to designers, developers, entrepreneurs, environmental consultants, policy-makers and other professionals lies in finding and communicating these synergies. This cross-disciplinary course will give students an approach to problem solving to help them contribute to thoughtful, high-impact decisions about design, construction, and enterprise formation that are environmentally, socially, and economically impactful to the broader urban environment. The course will cover various elements including:

1. Architectural design for sustainability and introduction to simple energy modeling,
2. Other aspects of environmental sustainability including health and welfare of tenants, social equities, neighborhood cultural optimization, regional economic vibrancy incorporating clean, healthy, and affordable living,
3. Financial and social quantification of economic impact and risks, 
4. Capitalization of sustainable projects including public and private equity, public and private debt, and social sponsors,
5. Financial evaluation and commercial pro forma analysis necessary to attract private capital,
6. Financial and pro forma analysis for public and nonprofit stakeholders and sponsors,
7. Development of an integrated business plan around sustainable projects. 

At the end of the course students will be able to:

a. identify sustainability opportunities for projects or potentially new businesses.  Identify sustainable/economic win-win solutions
b. develop, with rigor, the advanced sustainable design programs to enhance performance of a particular project or enterprise. 
c. model the environmental and economic impact of each proposed initiative independently as well as the cumulative initiatives taken together on a “systems basis”
d. translate enhanced design and idea conception into a project's or business’s  financial pro forma,  and communicate the financial impact clearly to market makers
e. complete accurate cost benefit economic analysis, with realistic assumptions on ability to finance and ability (if any) to obtain premium value on exit
f. analyze market demand for projects or appropriate businesses with and without enhanced sustainable design
g. explain their ideas in the language of decision-makers, from community groups to financial investors

 

Class Structure: Please visit my.Harvard to see the full note on the class format. 

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To acc

Urbanization and Development

This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development, paying close attention to the ways that public and private sector priorities, legal frameworks, land use protocols, and infrastructure policies determine the growth and structure of cities in the late industrializing world. In addition to highlighting the inter-relationships between globalization and national economic priorities on one hand and urbanization processes on the other, as well as the connections between cities and their hinterlands, we pay special attention to the social and economic exigencies of urban residents in the face of these relationships and processes. We are interested in the ways that residents accommodate, modify, or reject the priorities, projects, and policies imposed by planners, designers, builders, real estate developers, and multilateral development agencies, among other key actors with targeted urban development agendas. Because ownership and regulation of land is key to these processes, we pay special attention to collective versus individual property rights, informality, and the ways that struggles to own versus occupy urban territory will impact urbanization processes. Among other key issues we examine are struggles over housing and displacement as well as the role of transportation, water, and other critical infrastructure in producing urban built form. 

The course begins by critically interrogating the concepts of “development” and “urbanization,” whether they speak to normative aspirations and not merely economic prosperity, and how they align with assumptions of “modernity.” We then examine the theoretical and empirical relationships between urbanization and development, analyzed through a focus on the collision between citizens, markets, and states and their territorial orbits. We then turn to key determinants of inter- and intra- urbanization patterns, ranging from migration to industrialization to land speculation,  moving beyond universal claims about the relationship between urbanization and development by engaging historically and contextually specific examples. Readings draw primarily from Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, although on occasion we use historical evidence from Europe and the United States  as a contrast. 

Course Audience and Format:
The course is geared towards graduate students from across the planning, design, social science disciplines who are interested in urbanization and development. It has no prerequisites. Participation in discussion is expected among all students, as is regular class attendance. Each student will select two class sessions over the course of the semester in which s/he will serve as raconteur, responsible for making critical commentary and guiding discussion on that session’s readings. Early in the semester all students are expected to pick one city — anywhere in the world — that will serve as their principal subject of study and analysis throughout the semester.  Assignments include short reading responses throughout the semester, a midterm essay, and a final paper. 

The weekly two hours meetings scheduled for this course require attendance. In addition to the synchronous meeting times, there will be a range of other asynchronous events of different styles (lectures, films, assignments to be done in groups) for each class.

Grading and Assignments:
Class participation and leading discussion 15%
Reading responses 25%
Mid-term paper 20%
Final paper 40%

 

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. 

A limited number of seats are held for PhD students. Interested PhD students should contact the instructor as well as submit a petition to cross-register.

Ecosystem restoration

Given the current speed of habitat and species loss caused by human development, the restoration of degraded ecosystem is one of the greatest challenges humankind is facing. For this reason, the United Nations declared the current decade (2021-2030) as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. This global effort will need from experts on ecosystem science, management and design to have a deep understanding of how ecosystems recover from human disturbance and how we can use this knowledge to increase the currently limited performance of restoration practice. This course is particularly suited for students with interests in nature conservation, the natural component of landscape architecture, or ecosystem management in a broad sense. This course is cross-listed with the Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology, which will allow students from both disciplines to exchange their knowledge in a multidirectional learning environment where we all will address real world restoration cases. In this year’s edition, we will focus on the restoration of New England’s ecosystems. We will work in parallel to an ongoing research project to understand the recovery of New England’s ecosystem over the last 300 years since the abandonment of most of the farms created by the original settlers. Through research, we will learn how forests and other ecosystems have changed during this time to apply that knowledge to a real restoration project that students will develop. We will have key inputs from guest lectures coming from restoration companies with many years of experience restoring ecosystems worldwide. They will help us find targeted tools to support and design ecosystems both in urban and natural environments in the New England context. We will increase our understanding of what nature is for humans and the Earth system and will increase our connection to it through self-guided field trips. At least, one previous course in ecology or a similar topic is required. This course will arm you with one of the most important tools to work with and for nature in the coming decades.

Course structure: We will meet once a week on Friday at 8 am for two hours. The main structure of the course is divided into two main parts. The first part will be a discussion about the readings that will be assigned, which will focus on gaining a scientific and practical understanding of restoration. The second part will focus on case study analysis and a restoration project developed by students’ teams. Additionally, we will have guest lecturers from restoration companies and the academia and self-guided field trips to local restoration efforts in students’ residence areas.

?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.