Informal Robotics / New Paradigms for Design & Construction
This course teaches how to create original robotic devices made of light, compliant – informal – materials.
New fabrication techniques are transforming the field of robotics. Rather than rigid parts connected by mechanical connectors, robots can now be made of folded paper, carbon laminates or soft gels. They can be formed fully integrated from a 3D printer rather than assembled from individual components. Informal Robotics draws on cutting-edge research from leading labs, in particular, Harvard’s Micro Robotics Laboratory which has created unique designs for ambulatory and flying robots, end-effectors, medical instruments and other applications.
We will explore informal robotics from multiple perspectives, culminating with the design of original devices displaying animated intelligence in real-time. Going beyond traditional engineering approaches, we will also explore new opportunities for design at the product, architectural, and urban scales.
Techniques:
Hands-on: Working with the GSD’s Fab Lab we are creating a kit of parts that will be available to all enrolled students. With the kit, you can create a wide range of folding mechanisms controlled by on-board miniature electronics.
Software / Simulation: Software workshops will be offered on Fusion 360 and Grasshopper to simulate robotic performance within a virtual environment.
Topics:
– Kinematics: design techniques for pop-ups, origami, and soft mechanisms.
– Fabrication: methods: for composite materials, laminated assembly, self-folding, and integrated flexures – the kit of parts will allow for hands-on exploration.
– Controls: how to actuate movement and program desired behavior. Topics include servos, linear actuators, and use of Arduino actuator control.
– Applications: takes us beyond purely technological concerns, contextualizing Informal Robotics within larger trends where materials, manufacturing and computation are starting to merge.
Format, prerequisites, evaluation:
A portion of the lecture material will be pre-recorded, allowing students to view this on their own schedule. The class session will emphasize discussion and review of assignments & projects.
There will be assignments to produce test mechanisms and CAD models, followed by final group projects. Presentations and discussions of ongoing student work are integral to the course. There are no prerequisites and evaluation will be based on completion of assignments and the final project.
Projects may be virtual, physical or both. Resources for fabricating customized final projects are not fully known at this point, but I am committed to supporting physical-making to the degree possible.
Jointly Offered Course: SEAS ES256
Jointly Offered Course: SEAS ES256
?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.
Structures in Landscape Architecture, Joint & Detail
This seminar/workshop explores how to design and make landscapes that are rationally constructed and expressively convincing. This search is focused through the lens of structural understanding. Members of the class will explore how structural principles are translated through techniques of three-dimensional drawing into practical and expressive made landscapes.
Topics
1. A visual understanding of structural principles.
2. Constructive drawing – haptic three-dimensional thinking.
3. How the structural diagrams of landscape elements are translated into a material/detail language.
4. Case studies of historical and contemporary structures.
Course Objectives and Outcomes
Each student will:
1. Understand structural principals.
2. Understand structurally based, three-dimensional detail design.
3. Develop a personal practice of detail design that translates structural understanding into a material, made reality.
Method of Evaluation
1. Participation in weekly discussion groups.
2. Successful completion of in class workshop assignments.
3. Successful completion of a final project assignment.
Prerequisites
No prerequisites. Class is open to all students in all departments.
Weekly Course Format
1. One hour of asynchronous class time: pre-recorded lecture (30 min), case study (30 min). These talks will be available on the course canvas site at the beginning of the semester. Prior to each weekly synchronous class students will review the appropriate talks in their own time.
2. One hour of synchronous class time: breakout room lecture discussion (30 min), case study (30 min).
3. One hour of synchronous class time: workshop practice in breakout rooms.
The asynchronous lectures address the core concepts of this course. Prior familiarity with this material via asynchronous study will prepare the participants for the synchronous discussion about the topic. The case studies describe the application of these core concepts to landscape making.
As an elective seminar/workshop the class will pursue mastery of the making of landscapes.
The workshop sessions are synchronous applications of the practice of landscape design informed by an understanding of structural principles. The focus is how to make landscapes that embody ideas.
Re-Wilding Harvard
This is a year-long class on rewilding, returning a habitat to an earlier form. Students in this course will research historical and cultural definitions of wilderness and landscape, identify what precolonialist habitats were like in New England, survey how such places have been and might be restored, and then we will rewild part of Harvard. The class is open to both graduate students and undergraduates in a broad and relevant range of disciplines. The course will be co-taught by faculty from the GSD and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at FAS.
Note: GSD students enrolling in this year-long course must complete both terms of this course (parts A and B) within the same academic year in order to receive credit and a grade in the spring term.
Enactive Design: Creative Applications through Concurrent Human-Machine Interaction
Enactive Design is an advanced research seminar on human-computer interaction. We will explore the role of real-time, bidirectional communication between human and digital agents in a design context, and leverage the potentials of this interactive relationship to establish new creative domains.
Digital interfaces provide computational frameworks for creative exploration in disciplines such as architecture, design and art. However, in many instances, such as traditional computer-aided design (CAD) software or numerically-controlled (CNC) machines, the computer is subservient to the orders of its human counterpart. While this model might be a convenient human-machine relationship for production-oriented scenarios, in the case of design environments, a higher degree of machine agency could be desired, as it may generate new models of creative exploration and design through human-computer collaboration.
Our investigation is inspired by the concept of Enactivism, a philosophy which argues that cognition arises from the interactions of an agent and its context. Rather than an abstract intangible, knowledge and learning on an agent are created from purposeful, situated and embodied interaction with its context. Translated to design environments, what would it mean to create with tools that have a certain degree of agency of their own? How would that inform and expand our creativity? What kind of opportunities may arise from designing as a conversation rather than an imposition? Can design be conceived as the human curation of the suggestions of an artificial intelligence? How can the power and precision of fabrication machines be amplified by the decision-making capacity of humans-on-the-loop? Are these new forms of collaborative art?
We will address these questions, and many others, through the design of concurrent human-machine interactive platforms, with a particular focus on the computational aspects of the system. The course will be conducted through a series of lectures, readings, discussions and hands-on workshops. Participants will learn techniques such as applied machine learning, robotic control, physical sensing, network communication, interactive fabrication and asynchronous programming. Exercises will experiment with real-time communication between human and digital agents, leading to a semester-long personal project.
The course will be taught fully online, with two weekly 1.5h sessions. One of them will focus on theory and discussion, and it is recommended to be attended synchronously, while the other will be more hands-on based and async-friendly. All meetings will be recorded and made available offline. Participants should anticipate spending around $200 in prototyping material and digital subscriptions.
Prerequisites: Demonstrated experience in computer programming via GSD6338, CS50 or similar. Students should also have reasonable proficiency with Rhinoceros/Grasshopper. If you are not sure if you satisfy these requirements, please contact the instructor directly.
?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.
Products of Practice: From code to plan to code
A research seminar that critically mines historic systems of representation, instrumentation, and the product (or media) of the architect in relationship to the evolving societal role of the discipline, practice, and profession. Our goal is to understand design practice as a dynamic and ever-changing pursuit in order to imagine practice futures; to use this research to create a bridge between discipline and practice.
Course Website and Research Framework: https://productsofpractice.fyi/
Within the cacophony of contemporary media, under the pressures of financial instruments, and with an expectation of artificial intelligence, this practice seminar looks to the past to explore the product of the architect as an artifact of circumstance, framing and projecting practice potentials now and into the future. Critically tracking the development of our practice, we will research design context, instruments of service, and representational formats as cultural and temporal constructs that limit or expand the role of the architect in practice. Our collective goal is an exploration of the relationship between – and the limits of – discipline, practice, and profession to better understand their structural potentials.
Course content will be organized thematically, exploring the origins of contemporary practice and its products at any given moment – from built form to model to drawing to code – as the architect evolved from master builder to author to project manager. The work of Vitruvius, Baldassarre Peruzzi, Leon Battista Alberti, Peter Cook, Cedric Price, Christopher Alexander, Peter Eisenman, and New Urbanism, among others, will be assessed within their cultural context. Legal and technical issues, client types, and structures of fee and control, will be considered. Students will develop critical positions on the renewed debate between empirical vs. cultural practice, on mediatic production and instruments of service for single projects vs. systems of design deployment and process design.
Synchronous class time will be focused on discussion and debate. Guest panels from practice and related sectors will be assembled to add perspective to specific topics, particularly around the issue of emerging modes of production and instrumentation. Asynchronous formats will include pre-recorded lectures and one-on-one or small group research charrettes.
Working individually or in pairs, students will research a specific type of architectural production in relationship to its evolution within the discipline and practice. Students will synthesize their topical research within a shared research framework to yield a collective research publication. Final course output will aggregate and draw from this collective knowledge to speculate on the future product of the architect.
There are no prerequisites for this course, which is intended as an interdisciplinary discussion. While this course is focused on the evolution of the product of the architect, the emergence and co-evolution of the related disciplines of landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design are essential to the conversation.
?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.
Case Studies in Conservation and Adaptive Reuse
Traditional conservation practice is increasingly proving inadequate to address the cultural, economic, social and environmental challenges facing the diverse array of buildings and sites currently in need of renewal. A new focus on creative thinking is emerging to accommodate both the volume and often erratic quality of the resources under consideration, but more profoundly to acknowledge that science and scholarship address only part of the full range of values that must be taken into account to ensure the relevance, quality and ultimate success of any intervention. While this approach does not circumvent the normal processes of assessment and evaluation it does recognize the essential need for a critical overlay in order to achieve a design synthesis that balances conservation and repair with appropriate future use, perception and socio-economic value.
Case Studies in Conservation and Adaptive Re-Use will build upon the philosophical and practical underpinnings of the fall semester Building Conservation and Renewal course, and though that course is not a prerequisite, some familiarity with the intellectual and regulatory framework associated with working with historic sites is useful and recommended. The course will feature a series of case studies on a variety of traditional and modern resources given by the instructor and guest lecturers, who will explore contemporary theoretical, political, socio-economic and practical issues that attend working with existing properties.
The primary course deliverable will be student authored case studies on a significant property to be chosen by the student with sufficient availability of project information through physical access, publications and/or access to source material through the owner or architect. A curated project list will be provided to assist students who might otherwise have difficulty identifying an appropriate project that raises critical questions about conservation, interpretation, and the design of interventions. Students are encouraged where practical to work in teams. The goal will be to develop a critical analysis that identifies the material and cultural values that define each property, suggest how best to manage their conservation and guide future development, and ultimately to understand how change – whether as a singular event or in multiple campaigns – has reinforced, challenged or rejected attributes of the host structure. Short essays and regular discussion of course readings will also be required.
The course is a weekly seminar. Classes will be given in two segments: The first will be hour long weekly pre-recorded lectures available in advance of scheduled class time for asynchronous viewing. The second segment will be a 2-hour required synchronous discussion of the recorded lectures and key readings with the presenter, and student presentations on assigned readings.
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.
Adventure and Fantasy Simulation
Fantasy opens portals to new life forms. It prepares us for supranatural humans, genetic adjustment, non-electronic novelty. It forms the core of natural-world reverence, maybe worship, the religion of the green future. It cherishes solitary, low-tech adventure in natural and neo-natural environments, typically northern forests and fashion-magazine imagery. It is a genre, a haphazard collection, a force as amorphous as blowing leaves, a western-European device born about 1900 and now global, but always quasi-imperialist, always of the north. It scares public-school teachers who loathe Hogwarts, the Old Religion, the never-ending ancient tradition so deeply rooted in the European cultural past that it shapes contemporary propriety. Holly and other evergreens bedeck churches at Christmas, but not mistletoe, the evergreen that killed the Norse sun god, Balder, the sky-tree Druids brought west from the Danube and grafted onto oaks, the Yule sovereign that permits kisses forbidden at all other seasons, part of the merry (not happy) in Christmas. Quality fantasy teaches that every tree species once had individual character (willows walk, sometimes assault: the Whomping Willow behaves naturally) and that the most powerful (mistletoe included) once named the letters of the alphabet, that the year had thirteen lunar months marking the earth-mother menstrual cycle, that the seasons proved weird to those in the know, witches especially. Out of the great northern arc from Finland to Ireland (stabbed by the westward-moving Celts and the Albion wraiths) originates quality contemporary fantasy, much of it written by British writers schooled in Latin from childhood. It comprises a grimoire of irresistible power. As climate change melts Arctic ice and opens new sea lanes, as Canada hurriedly builds a large navy, the north becomes more important politically, economically, and militarily—but its emerging conceptual importance orders this course this term. Cold, discomfort, swimming in the winter ocean, trusting to quality attire, knives, and open boats, seeing sideways in the winter dark, finding what one must find in the arboreal forests, all fuses into the meaning of north. Already fantasy slides past materialist and leftist ideology. It prepares children for authentic change.
Note: This course is offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as AFVS 167.
Jointly Offered Course: FAS VES 167
??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 Architecture and Urbanism in China
Contrary to many interpretations, by the early Qing Dynasty some modern traits, in the accepted Western sense of modernity, had entered China and been developed indigenously. Then more forcefully other modernizing influences were exercised, largely from the hands of modern powers, in the aftermath of the Opium War and the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. Since then China endured a stormy and tumultuous course of events before finding itself with burgeoning industrialization and urbanization in the contemporary era, as well as a certain ambivalence about the shape of its future identity. Against this historical backdrop, modern architecture and urbanism developed spasmodically, before emerging strongly during the past several decades. Rather than attempting to provide a continuous and cohesive narrative of this trajectory, this seminar will concentrate on significant episodes during the last 150 years or so, preceded by commentary about earlier modernization and traditional manners of spatial appreciation. This will cover matters of both architecture and physical planning including issues of new production and conservation. Of particular interest will be the work of several generations of Chinese architects, planners, and public officials, as well as that of foreign architects and planners working in China at various periods. The aim of the course will be to introduce students to this modern work and underlying attitudes, together with cultural influences which lay behind them. Students will be expected to be prepared for seminar discussion, by undertaking prescribed readings, and to produce a well-grounded and researched documentation and critical assessment of an assigned architectural or constructed project in class.
Course structure
First Synchronous Meeting, Wednesday January 27, 10am to 12 noon EST, 70 minutes via zoom online with the entire class.
Subsequent Synchronous Meetings, Wednesdays 10am to 12 noon EST, 70 minute max via zoom, including breaks with the entire class meeting online. From week 3 (February 10) pairs of students will make two presentations: one about assigned readings (2) and the other about an assigned project. Both will be in power-point form and will be recorded.
Asynchronous Lectures are prerecorded in power-point form and will be available for all sessions and will be released at least one week before the time of the particular class session. The time of each will be up to 60 minutes in duration and can be viewed at each student’s discretion. A glossary of names and terms will accompany each class period in bilingual translation where appropriate.
Tutorials will be conducted via zoom with each student pair covering the material to be presented during a particular week. These will be arranged by appointment with both Rowe and Guo at student’s discretion.
Class Requirements will include 1. Participation in each session, 2. Presentation in a particular session of assigned readings, nominally one per student, and 3. Presentation of an assigned project for a particular session by a student pair. Grading will be made on the basis of class presentations.
Preparation Time may vary, but will be about 6 hours per week.
Syllabus for the course is available on Canvas. It includes details about class presentations, reading lists for each class and other descriptive detail.
Contacts with class instructors can be made via email. This includes appointments for tutorials and other meetings as required.
Prerequisites: There are no prerequisites for this course and it is available to all students in the GSD, as a first priority and to others by permission of instructors.
Urban Grids: Open form for City Design-2
The historic evolution of the city can be tied to “regular systems” that have allowed for rational forms of development, which can be understand as “urban grids”. Diverse cultures have provided varied interpretations of urban grid systems that serve as an active underlay for multiple urban domains: street networks, private parcels, public spaces, and a diversity of grain, responding to many different development strategies.
In the last few decades, urban interventions have reached an unprecedented level of complexity and ambition, increasing the level of design operations. In this time, the value and metrics of the grid and network have likewise become more operative than ever, and in more inventive ways than in the past. The new spatial demands of contemporary society require more flexible and open-ended systems. These new forms of urbanism favor “loose” or “neutral” yet efficient organizational systems that can accommodate diversity and change throughout extensive processes of city densification, expansion, and amelioration.
Within the scope of “exploring scores for city design”, this class will focus on the investigation of both historic and recent urbanistic projects which use the grid and its multiple variations as their main structural device for the construction of the city. The course targets understanding both the theories and “project” features that make grids—their design and/or their construction of the city—relevant and of interest to the current issues of contemporary cities. The ultimate objective of the course is to develop new understandings of the ways we are approaching the design of the city by means of “grids and networks” and confronting the new urban challenges of the 21st century.
The course is organized into four blocks, moving from theories to projects and from general introductory realities to specific approaches in architecture and urbanism, to help the students to better understand the logic and the methods of designing cities by actively engaging the spatial field of the urban grid. Both historic and projective, the urban grid is understood as a fundamental device which produces a multitude of urban processes and forms.
The class contains 11 lectures and 3 seminal research assignments -presentations. From architectural and urbanistic perspectives, the lectures intend to help the audience to build an academic understanding of the evolution of the ways in which cities have been designed, developed, and discussed across history, in order to discover potentials and represent the design components of each type of “city project” or “urban project” in any given city: overall layout, relationship with geography, block dimensions and scales, the parcelization and its subdivision or reaggregation, patterns of built form versus open space, building types, the continuity or fragmentation of the facades, etc. The study of these components builds an understanding of how urban grids can be designed as “open forms” that allow cities to incorporate changes and to be resilient to society’s demands.
By reinterpreting and redesigning the key aspects of the original project or the transformation process of selected cases through the construction of analytical and operative drawings, we can raise discoveries about what we can learn from grid cities and their design logics. The conclusions can contribute to enhance the current “grid culture” which is embedded in urban design and make its specific capacities stronger and more visible.
Course structure:
– Tuesday classes will be in the synchronous meeting pattern: (8:00AM – 10:00AM)
– Wednesday might be used for flexible desk crits for assignments, which will be in the asynchronous pattern: 8:00– 10:00AM with more flexible schedule if necessary
??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 Ib&aac
Artificial Intelligence in Contemporary Design Practice
Unprecedented issues, such as climate change, challenge the standard hyper-specialized approach to problem-solving. Within this context, there is a need for professions able to creatively bring together skills from various disciplines and imagine solutions to tackle such crises.
According to the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco, architects are "the last humanists" because they are trained in comprehensive, interdisciplinary, problem-solving methodologies. This applies broadly to other design disciplines, such as landscape architects, who occupy a unique place in society, enabling them to undertake leadership positions in the future, both within and outside of traditional design practice boundaries. In order for this to happen, design tools must support and enhance the design workflow. This seminar will look at one such tool, Artificial Intelligence (AI), from the point of view of the practitioner, or in software development jargon, the user.
As a research field, Artificial Intelligence originated after World War II to convert machine learning for ballistic and aircraft trajectory prediction into civil use technologies. Traditionally pursued as an academic theoretical effort, AI is now gaining widespread attention due to the enhanced computational capability of commercial computers, and the emergence of pervasive sensing supported by Internet of Things devices and high-speed Internet connections. AI, in its various forms, is becoming increasingly more embedded in the design practice through digital design tools.
This innovative technology is fascinating and stimulating. However, the application of AI to the "humanistic" design process poses epistemological questions that are at the core of this seminar. Understanding, even if at a non-specialist level, the functioning of such tools is key to enabling creative and innovative applications.
During the first module "Foundations" students will become familiar with the concepts of complex systems, ecology, mediality, network analysis, and AI, through a series of curated readings and interdisciplinary guest lectures in the fields of mathematics and philosophy. During the second module "Applications and Interfaces" the students will explore innovative applications of AI and their interfaces through a series of interdisciplinary guest lectures in the fields of computational creativity and generative design.
During the semester, each student will develop a personal research project agreed upon with the instructor. The research will be presented in the context of these two modules and formatted as an academic article for final submission.
Instructor's lectures will be recorded in Zoom and made available for a-synchronous learning via CANVAS, followed by multiple Q&A sessions to accommodate various time zones. Guests' lectures will happen mostly in synchronous mode (recorded at the guest's discretion) followed by a Q&A session. There will be a Teams channel for group discussions, materials sharing, and chats with the instructor and the classmates.
There are no prerequisites and the seminar is open to all GSD and MIT students.
Course structure: The seminar will be held in two weekly sessions: one hour on Tuesday and two hours on Wednesday. Tuesdays will be for flexible, asynchronous learning time (no mandatory attendance). On Wednesdays, the seminar will host guest lectures and Q&As: most sessions will be recorded; occasionally, attendance could be requested if a guest prefers not to record the presentation.
?Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. Please visit the Live Course Presentations Website for details. If you need assistance, contact <a href="http://mailto:eiba