Material Practice and its Agency

This seminar introduces an understanding of material discourse in design and architecture that affects cultural, social ,economic and political issues.  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 and beyond to its atmospheric effect both as perceptual experience and thermodynamic performances.  We will look at the material use  through the lens of various global crises and its impact such as environmental , or pandemic when latent issues are exposed and impact is accelerated. Material practice carries affects such as ambience and atmosphere. It impacts acoustics, lighting, tactility, aesthetics and environmental performance. This seminar aims to bring forth more comprehensive, complex and holistic understandings of material culture which varies in impact at different event scales—from personal to communal and local to global. Topics include specific focus on contemporary material practice such as wood, glass, metal and in addition ethics and econology of material culture and study of waste in material culture. Evolving nature of lighting practice is included as performative and atmospheric component of material practice.

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

Each student will be expected to choose one material practice as a focus for research, exploring its application and the possibilities for its role, meaning, effects and message in contemporary practice. 

Course structure: Classes will consist of one hour asynchronous lecture by the instructor each week to introduce topics of synchronous one hour presentation in the class, often accompanied by guest lecturers. There will be a flexible synchronous hour following the presentation for group 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 Estefan

Experiments in Public Freedom

As places that accept and encourage multiple representations, cities need spaces to enable unregulated, temporary, and spontaneous events. Due to their role and meaning in the construction and definition of the public realm, public spaces are expected to embody a well-defined character and gravitas. Due to the multiplicity of publics, however, these spaces must engage with temporary, overlapping, and often-contradictory sensibilities and occupations. The design question that emerges is, what type of character and gravitas can be achieved with temporality and spontaneity?

This design theory seminar presents an amalgamation of views from different perspectives (architecture, art, landscape architecture, urban design) that coalesce around six spatial conditions that are useful for conceptualizing and designing spaces capable of promoting cultural diversity, social acceptance, and individual spontaneity. Through this amalgamation, this course explores containment, neutrality, blankness, normalcy, anarchy, and amnesia as conditions that can open up public space.

Despite their potential, these spatial properties are usually underestimated as they seem to lack aspects of what is generally considered essential for designing successful public spaces: site specificity, sensibility to local aesthetics, sociocultural appropriateness, permanent and fixed identity, etc. It is precisely due to these so-called deficiencies, however, that these spatial properties can be instrumental to imagine spaces that enable constant recirculation of multiple publics rather than permanent forms of regulation, identity, or appropriateness.

The course is composed of six sections, one per spatial condition. Each section comprises a lecture by the instructor around a constellation of references (projects and texts) to be discussed in class. For each section, students are asked to analyze an environment of their choice (building, landscape, open space, etc.) that demonstrates the spatial condition being discussed. At the end of the semester, students are asked to assemble these six analyses into a design primer for the enabling of public freedoms.

 

Course structure: The course is composed of six sections, one per spatial condition. Each section includes a lecture by the instructor to be followed by a discussion. For each section, students are asked to present an analysis of an environment of their choice (building, landscape, open space, etc.) that demonstrates the value of the spatial condition being discussed. Each section will take 2 weeks and will require 4 hours of synchronous participation in total. Lectures will be asynchronous and will be made available to the students 48 hours prior to the discussions. Discussions regarding the lectures will be synchronous (1 session of 1 hour). Student presentations will be synchronous (2 sessions of 1.5 hour each).

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. 

 

Discourse and Research Methods

Research conducted in the Doctor of Design Program (DDes) at the GSD spans a broad range of topics and areas of investigation that not only represent the disciplines of the three departments at the GSD, but expand into domains such as art, culture, science, engineering or sociology, to just name a few.

GSD 9691 ‘Discourses and Methods’ is a required course for first year DDes students. It involves a close collaboration with the primary advisors, and for that reason the course is only open to DDes students. There are two primary learning goals:

All students will work on their own research design and, as the outcome of the course, produce a draft prospectus in written and in presentation format by the end of the semester. The overall goal is to provide all students a broad foundation in terms of discourses and methods, and contribute to preparing them for leadership roles in the academy or in other areas of society.

Please note that the start time of the class might alternate to accommodate different time zones.

Methods of Research in Art and Design: A Workshop-tutorial

Methods of Research is a workshop for the development of individual projects in art and design. There is no preset syllabus. Our readings, guests, and discussions will emerge from works-in-progress, and each student will maintain an archive of material relevant to their research. Students will be divided into several thematic laboratories. For example, those working with ideas of memory and monuments will comprise one group, those concerned with surveillance will comprise another, and those thinking about information technologies yet another. Each week will be lead by one laboratory, during which its members will share their work, analyze the other projects presented, and lead a conversation on material (or an invited guest) it has selected for the class. 

Methods of Research is open to all GSD programs and MDes concentrations. Students preparing for exhibition, publication, papers, and thesis are especially encouraged to join. Those interested should attend an introductory meeting and submit a brief statement of purpose.

?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. 

Discourse and Methods I

This course is open only to Ph.D. students in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design (Ph.D. students from other departments may participate with instructor’s permission). This year’s course focuses on major theoretical and historiographical issues and themes that still structure scholarly discourse today. Students will confront these issues and themes by relating them to key methodological concerns and horizons in their own emerging research agendas.
 

Course structure: The course will consist of one weekly live (synchronous) session on Fridays from 12 to 2 pm EST (120 min), requiring student attendance. 

 

Marvelous Architecture – The Hallucination Of Reason

The seminar "Marvelous Architecture – The Hallucination Of Reason" is about architecture theory crossbred with representation. It will explore the specificity of architectural rationality, i.e. the rationality of a discipline that is stretched between a technical, “objective” part, and an artistic, poetic one. Designing a project aims, on the one hand, at defining the form of an architectonic artifact and, on the other hand, at writing the conceptual, theoretical story that will allow the author to define the rules for designing/shaping this architectonic artifact, and for giving it a specific meaning. We shall consider the assumption that the very specific goal of rationality in architecture is to help write this story, encompassing all the necessities of the project in a way that will allow to justify rationally displays that would otherwise be considered irrational in a different conceptual context.

This assumption defines a cross section in history allowing to bring a fresh and renewed look at buildings all along the course of history, and also to highlight the operational tools to achieve contemporary designs. It renews radically the definition of rationality. It will take us to explore a variety of intellectual territories, ranging from French philosophers René Descartes to Gaston Bachelard, from Gothic architecture to 20th century functionalist hardliners, from Rome Pantheon to Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Muse-um, from the Great Wall of China to Walter Benjamin’s 19th century Paris passageways, from European Classicist architecture to Lina Bo Bardi’s masterpieces, from the origins to present day architecture, from architecture to surrealism.

During the first half of the semester the weekly course will be based on 90-minute lectures by the instructor, while the other 90 minutes will be dedicated to reviewing the students’s works and to open discussions. Two of these lectures will be delivered by guests. During the second part of the semester, after a mid-term critic session, the course will be fully dedicated to reviews of students’s works. These works will consists in studying a theoretical question linked to the Marvelous Architecture concept proposed by the instructor. Works will have to be specifically related to the research tools used by architects, i.e. drawing, among other tools, will play a key role. The marvelous side of architecture is not easy to decipher, so we will crossbreed this study with the representation system and work of Chicago-based American illustrator Chris Ware that is able to describe a broad panel of phenomenons. From this confrontation should emerge new ways of representing architecture and its marvelous character.

The final delivery will be an illustrated paper combining text, new original drawings produced by students, and historical documents. The work will be evaluated upon its inner conceptual coherence and its graphic quality. Due to this strong graphic component, the seminar is only opened to architecture students.

Public health in an era of epidemics: from the camp to the building

We didn’t need a pandemic to know that we shouldn’t conceive any more architecture projects and urban planning interventions that disregard their impact on public health. However, the current situation has exacerbated the need and brought the focus to this discipline. 

This class was designed and taught before the COVID19 crisis, and although this epidemic will have a significant presence during some of the modules, this course aims for a more ambitious target. To show that design is a critical, although often dismissed, tool for prevention, control, and response to all sorts of epidemics, and not only (to some extent, hyped) viral ones.

We can categorically say that the way we design buildings, neighborhoods, and cities has an impact on the health outcomes of the population. Urban development is at the core of new epidemics and pandemics, and the uncontrollable growth of (informal) urban settlements (including refugees) will likely increase the health gap between people of different socioeconomic status and between countries.

We will review existing studies and empirical evidence at the nexus of these fields. Through a scale approach (BUILDING-NEIGHBORHOOD-CITY-GLOBAL), we will study and evaluate different interventions, aiming to dismiss myths and reinforce those initiatives that can potentially improve population health. 

The goal of the course is to build awareness of the importance of incorporating robust public health facts and considerations in the early stages of an architectural or urban design project, but also to equip students with the skills needed to:
– Identify health issues that can potentially be tackled through design interventions
– Use robust evidence (through epidemiological studies) to propose and defend health-oriented solutions in design projects 
– Examine, assess, and design interventions taking into consideration a wide variety of aspects of public health
– Develop health-related interventions in complex public health settings (epidemics, refugees, etc.)

Course format: Interactive and dynamic dual system class. Every week you’ll have a pre-recorded offline theoretical class that includes lectures and interviews with public health experts and a 1.5 hours live class that will focus on topic discussion, debate, and Q&A with the guest speakers.

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.

 

Responsive Environments

The course introduces students to the tools and design methods for creating responsive environments and technologically driven experiences in the built environment. By putting the human experience at the center and forefront, from the immediate body scale to the larger environment, encompassing buildings and the urban spaces, the course examines new and emerging models and technologies for the design of innovative architectural human interfaces and technologically augmented physical environments.     

The class also addresses fundamental questions including: What are the benefits of creating technologically augmented environments? What are the psychological, social and environmental implications of creating such hybrids? And what are the criteria to measure successful responsive environments?  

These questions of analyzing, understanding and designing responsive environments will be tackled through the lens of different thematic topics. These themes include:     
– embedded intelligence (integration of technologies at all scales), 
– augmented spatiality (fostering hybrid realms),   
– adaptive change (dynamic response to contextual constraints),   
– hacked perception (shifting our understanding of space through technology),   
– tailored dynamics (empowering people through technology and design).     

Within each theme, the class will discuss relevant case studies and the methods to conduct critical analysis to understand the opportunities and limitations of the enabling technologies. In addition, each thematic topic will be complemented with conversations and talks by guest practitioners and researchers from both industry and academia.     

The final project will be a site specific design solution of varied scales using the tools and methods discussed in class. The course will take advantage of the resources and the ongoing research at the Responsive Environments and Artifacts Lab, and the outcomes will be a contribution to an exhibition and a publication. Any prototyping expense will be funded by the lab's resources. 

No specific prerequisites are needed. Students from any background and concentration are encouraged to apply to the lottery.

 

Due to no classes being offered on Labor Day and course selections being due on Wednesday, September 9, this class has scheduled a first irregular meeting on Thursday, September 3, 7:00-8.30 pm EDT. Please make sure to check the Canvas site of the course for the meeting Zoom links.

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 History Department.

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 (4 units) and a grade in the spring term. No credit or grade will appear for the fall portion.

In order to accommodate students, the meeting day and time for the course will be determined after the course registration deadline on Wednesday, September 9th.

This course will be jointly offered with the Faculty of Arts & Sciences as HIST 1973.

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.

 

Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf Life in the Supermarket Landscape

We tend to assume that supermarkets are static, neutral spaces where little of significance ever happens. The supermarket shelf is actually a highly volatile, hyper-competitive dynamic market landscape. On this shelf, products struggle to maximize every possible advantage, all in a ruthless effort to lure consumers away from competitors. However, what may have once been merely an issue of attention-grabbing graphics applied to packaging has quickly become much more complex. The contemporary consumer in today’s strained economy demands tangible value from the products that he/she consumes. To survive, brands must wrestle with new issues that include the ergonomics of the hand, the complex geometries of the refrigerator, and even sustainable material innovations that determine a product’s afterlife and its impact on the environment. These are multi-scalar, spatial life problems that designers are uniquely suited to address.

This seminar will ask students to operate as brand strategists. However, rather than invent new products, students will instead innovate upon existing brands. Outdated supermarket products will be reconsidered from the top down (brand identity, consumer target, logo, tagline, packaging, etc.). Students will also be required to study their product’s shelf competitors and will learn by presenting their observations through visual arguments rather than those that are explicitly verbal.

Each seminar will open with multimedia presentations on topics such as conducting demographic research, global color psychology, brand architecture, case studies in product launch failures, creating brand touchpoints, crafting a visual argument, and making an effective pitch. These conversations will be supplemented by readings from the business and financial sections of several newspapers, magazine articles, and blog interviews with brand experts.

The deliverables for the seminar will be presented in final review format in front of a cross-disciplinary jury of business luminaries. The output will include a full-scale 3-D print of the product redesign supplemented by graphical data, renderings, and digital animations. Ultimately, the seminar’s ambition is to make real a scenario that finds designers sitting at multiple tables, tackling issues of economics, technology, politics, and media at macro and micro scales.

 

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.