Island of Enchantment: Atmospheric Grounds

What we believed to be the reliable and predictable nature of the atmosphere made tangible through the phenomena of weather no longer holds true … perhaps it never really did. The extreme global weather events of our recent past and the havoc they have wrought attest to this.

Air, the Earth’s atmosphere, is the invisible and indivisible matter upon which life depends. It holds the world together, yet simultaneously remains indifferent to our human notions of earthbound borders, to create a range of encounters across a host of scales that continuously signal and reframe the world in which we live.

The studio will explore design responses to climate change in Puerto Rico through the reciprocal relationships of ground and air. The aspiration is to frame the design problem as one that is intensely local and simultaneously territorial and shift away from traditional singular goal-based outcomes to rethink the nature of a design project and its effect on the world.

This is a speculative design enquiry exploring new material practices through the conceptual framework of Territories of Air in Puerto Rico. How might we analyse and visualise the multi-scalar, dynamic, and elusory matter of air and utilise it as a measure in and of the constructed landscape environment? How might we explore and speculate on our capacity to inform its continual becoming and its reciprocal effect as a part of an ecology upon which humans and more-than-humans survive? How might this approach create different forms of valuing, assessing, and designing the urban landscape?

The aspiration is to reimagine the ecological/urban corridor of the Rio Piedras River in the capital city of San Juan in the face of climate change. Comprised of a range of communities, institutions, and facilities that are traditionally relegated to the ‘poorer’ quality real estate of this area, the river is both ‘polluted and biodiverse, near and inaccessible, beautiful and dangerous’. The US Army Corps of Engineers proposes to channelise the river transforming it into a concrete, high-velocity channel. The studio will explore alternative futures for the river and its urban floodplain that seek to resonate beyond the singular problem-solving goal of flood mitigation so that it might support and activate the larger ecological systems, the local community that it supports, and the City.

 

TThe first day of GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Tuesday, the first meeting of this course will be on Thursday, September 7th. It will meet regularly thereafter. 

AQUA INCOGNITA: Designing for extreme climate resilience in Monterrey, MX

Aqua Incognita continues to engage students in grappling with water-resilient urbanization processes, through the design of nature-based [1] reparative actions in the water-scarce region of Monterrey, Mexico—where we will travel at the end of September. Mexico’s industrial cradle, and a region undergoing a nearshoring industrial boom, this metropolis of 5,4 million people has seen decades of unsustainable urbanization trends and is threatened by critically unbalanced water regimes. While facing its own version of a day-zero crisis in the summer of 2022, they city has also withstood recurrent flooding catastrophes over the years. These extreme climatic events are likely to intensify amidst the warming of our planet.
 
With the objective of catalyzing actions that could trigger a more resilient water future in Monterrey, the studio will focus on one of Monterrey’s most strategic Critical Zones [2]: the Santa Catarina River. The restoration and conservation of this river basin and riparian corridor is key to the future of water security, the reduction of flood risk, and the equitable distribution of safe and healthy biodiverse areas across the city towards climate justice. Achieving these three objectives is part of a contested vision today. The studio has established a collaboration with experts, citizen groups, academia, the government, and the regional conservation institution Terra Habitus (studio sponsor) to push the transformation of this river watershed into a climate-resilient and ecologically stable region in the near-future.
 
To do so, we will conduct five acts of design over the course of the semester by: 1) studying important case studies and precedents; 2) producing critical cartographies to determine barriers and opportunities for design; 3) engaging in a workshop at the Tecnológico de Monterrey by the end of September with important actors and experts; 4) developing design proposals for strategic sites within the basin (both as part of upstream regional catchment areas and along the urban riparian corridor); 5) articulating narratives to convince decision makers to change status quo postures that exacerbate these unbalanced water regimes.
 
Your assembled work will be exhibited in Monterrey during the Spring of 2024 and published to be shared with our local collaborators. Studio travel will occur from Sept.28th to Oct.5th

1 https://www.naturepositive.org/
2 https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2020/05/critical-zones

TThe first day of GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Tuesday, the first meeting of this course will be on Thursday, September 7th. It will meet regularly thereafter. 

Monumental Affairs [M2]

As architecture and urbanism continues to grapple with exposure from atypical authors the need for constructive examination becomes more pressing. Global terror and dissent typically identified as political and militaristic have slowly revealed their spatial influences. Design Justice continues to peak through creases often closed shut by popular architectural theory and discourse. This shift towards a more egalitarian, and non-western intellectual approach is the impetus for Monumental Affairs. Students will be challenged to identify, interpret, and posit the necessity of monuments.
 
Monumental Affairs asks: How does the process of canonization come to fruition? Who determines which architecture become part of the canon? What overt or subtle forms of oppression are inherent in this process? How does one utilize the public sphere to dismantle these canonized monuments?

Students will utilize research methods to locate monuments in various forms from objects to buildings to landscapes to digital spaces. Students will attempt to use architecture and design as a vehicle for alternative trajectories. The speculation of design ideas will support discussions surrounding race, gender, ethnicity, immigration, displacement, and nationalism.

Necessary Architecture [M2]

Our cities are filled with buildings–why more? With our discipline about to split into activists and professionals, we need to find purpose for architecture. We propose to question if what we design is truly necessary. Moreover, as necessity implies a gap between reality and desire, we must survey and understand both before designing as architects.

This studio will focus on the homeless population near Gund Hall—a specific group of people with, no doubt, several necessities.

A Housing First approach to the problem would make us believe they urgently need a roof, a house (which may equate to a home). This response is indeed very architectural, but it is easily grabbed out of our hands by the fields of real estate, public policy, and finance.

A systemic approach would make us understand these people may not only be homeless because they lack a place to stay during cold nights. They may even have one but do not return to it because something (or someone) prevents them from doing so. This approach to the problem seems out of reach for architects, closer to the field of social workers. In addition, this systemic understanding requires us to comprehend these subjects as people living on the streets instead of homeless people.

So what can architects do to help people living on the streets–to fulfil their necessities? It is up to the students, through their projects, to respond to this question. They must also expand their positions into the state of our discipline, in how an architecture of necessity may contribute to its expansion, shrinking or demise.

Studio Structure:

Students will work in teams during this module studio.

Our first meeting will start with a brief lecture by the instructors on the topic of necessity. Students will then read a selection of materials on homelessness and, before the end of the first session, the group will share information gathered to profile the first ideas on what to do next–the project and its site. At the second studio meeting, students will provide a first version of the diagram of the social system they uncovered at a particular site near Gund.

At the next meeting, the studio will gather in Gund and walk to sites chosen by each team of students who will explain the reasons behind their decisions that are illustrated by the initial diagram of the social system identified. The studio will regroup to discuss how students will tackle their project and represent it through a model and updated digital diagram.

In subsequent meetings, students will develop and present a 1:20 scale model of their proposal to fulfill a particular necessity of people living on the streets. The proposal must be understandable by the student's oral presentation and model, accompanied only by the diagram of the social system uncovered for their project.

Exploring Collective Bonds: Creating Spaces of Solidarity [M2]

In what way can design serve as a conduit, spanning the gap between heterogeneous groups and binding them through their shared collective endeavors? How do spaces-places matter for social practices and historical change? In our 8-week module, we embark on a journey to cultivate havens that not only provide refuge and reprieve but also spark opportunities for collaboration and empowerment—a deliberate effort to speculate on spaces that stand as beacons for catalyzing social, ecological, and cultural transformation. This studio will explore community development, social movements, place, identity, memory, and history, through the programming and speculative design of a Movement Building Retreat Center in rural Georgia (USA).

We will work with the nonprofit organization Project South: The Institution for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide. Students will begin with an exploratory-research phase which includes discussions and interviews with nonprofit organizations, Indigenous community leaders, and residents of Atlanta and Griffin to develop an understanding of the conflicted history and state of the region and their shared interests and needs. The site was previously used as a Girl Scouts Camp, and several cabins remain. In 2022 the 44-acre site was purchased by Project South. Students will be given an area within the 44-acre site to design within. A program will be provided that students are to expand on.

Student performance will be evaluated through studio work and participation, pin-ups, and final review.

Revisiting Utopia: Bio-Based Megastructures in the Texas Desert [M2]

The social and political tumult of the 1960s prompted a resurgence of utopian architecture. Rising fuel prices, a growing dependence on technology and, in particular, the television, the international space race, and the Cold War unleased a variety of direct and indirect challenges to mainstream architecture with grand visions for alternative ways of living in a future with diminished resources, including Superstudio, Archigram, Haus Rucker Co., Global Tools, and others.  And, over time, a variety of maverick figures such as Yona Friedman, Paolo Soleri and Simone Swan championed their own, at times even questionable, solutions to societal ills—from mobile architecture, to extreme density, and the economic and environmental benefits of building with adobe. The social and environmental problems of the 1960s have largely been exacerbated in the intervening five decades or more. Today, the threat of climate change is no longer a fringe issue, and the affordable housing crisis is worldwide. Can or, even, should recent scientific and technological advancements bring the visions of the 1960s avant-garde to life? Are more recent supposedly utopian projects like NEOM’s The Line” in Saudi Arabia or “Telosa,” an American billionaire’s answer to creating a more equitable and sustainable city, realistic or even desirable solutions to the climate and housing crises?

This studio takes the extreme climate of Texas and in particular the desert of Presidio County where Simone Swan developed her rammed-earth prototypes as its site. From 1980 to 2020, the state experienced 273 weather and climate-related events resulting in substantial losses of life and property. At the same time, the prospect of remote work has enabled towns in Texas to offer cash incentives, attracting residents seeking affordable housing. By the 2040s, Texas is projected to surpass California in population due to economic diversification, a lower cost of living, and ample land for expansion. The state leads not only in oil and gas but also in renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

The core question of the studio will be: How large scale can bio-based construction go? With what type of structures? With which materials? At what density? In which typologies? For what kind of program? Students will be asked to think critically about their own vision of a desert utopia and experimental megastructures (with all their inherent contradictions) and to explore the adaptability and scalability of emerging bio-based materials as the basis for their vision. Recognizing that a module studio is a focused architectural investigation rather than a full project design, the studio will operate as a kind of seminar with weekly guest lecturers on such topics as land art and material innovations. Using a range of representational and narratives strategies such as models and collages like those of the 1960s avant-garde as well as written statements and/or hypothetical guidebooks or catalogues that articulate each student’s vision of utopia, the studio also explores of how architecture and storytelling co-exist in the creative process.

Transforming the Urban Villa with Private Garden into a Contemporary Typology [M1]

The studio will deal with the strategies for the transformation of a coveted but obsolete architectural type, the urban villa in the park, keeping its attractive features but adapting it to contemporary social, economic, and ecological conditions. We will analyze the ambitions that the traditional urban villa type embodies and dismember it into the features that fulfill these ambitions. Based on a critical assessment, we will produce a new set of ambitions and cast it into a program. We will investigate the transformations that have already been experimented with in the 20th and 21st centuries, especially in Rome, Milan, Zurich, and Berlin. Finally, every student will produce his or her own design proposal, not as an accomplished project, but as deliberately unfinished work focusing on selective main issues.
 
The studio will be structured in six steps.

First step: anatomy of the urban villa in the park. Its main qualities: relation to park and nature, privacy, spaciousness, neutrality and flexibility, and representation. Average dimensions: 500 sqm, 2 floors plus roof floor. Historical examples of urban villas in their specific urban context that should evolve without being disrupted.
 
Second step: pragmatic dissection of the urban villa, with the aim of developing a functional program for a contemporary specimen. Use: residential; exceptions are possible but must be justified with good arguments. Critical assessment of the function of the urban villa. What is contemporary in this way of living? Social aspects. Climatic aspects. Ecological aspects. Grouping and scale. Confrontation of old/new requirements. What should be kept? Spacious rooms, representation, and relationship with the park. What should change? Overall dimension, use of the rooms, representation, economy, ecology.
 
Third step: conceptual dissection of the urban villa. A personal description of experiences and emotions in an ideal urban villa, structured under, among other things, entering the house, cooking, eating, and socializing, view, and physical relationship with nature. The narrative should focus on what are – subjectively, individually – considered the main emotional dimensions.

Fourth step: decision for a specific transformation of an obsolete type into a contemporary one, ranging from shrinking to the mutation into a multi-apartment complex. Other options are possible as long as the intense relationship with the park is maintained. The choice must be made on the grounds of the brief developed in the second and third steps.

Fifth step: research of references complying with aspects of the pragmatical program and the narratives, 20th and 21st century: Plans, elevations, photographs. Interpretation and justification. How do the references comply with the new brief, the experiences and emotions it requires? How do they not? How can they be used as conceptual construction material for a new project?

Sixth step: a new proposal for a contemporary urban villa as a consistent result of the first five steps, focusing on the conceptual issues and architectural features considered to be crucial. Collage representation techniques are encouraged. The projects are not expected to be complete, accomplished designs: rather, results of a methodic process of research and choices, fragmentary proposals with in-depth investigations of specific aspects.

Second Opportunities in Architecture [M1]

In its historical context, architecture has demonstrated an extensive capacity for the adaptation of typologies or forms to different sites, programs, and circumstances. In opposition to functionalist or contextualist philosophies, a good idea in architecture is independent of time, context, scale or function, and is therefore open to multiple explorations.
 
This course will aim to demonstrate the elasticity of architecture through the reworking of student projects from their own “archives”. The goal of the instruction is to demonstrate the intellectual position that the creation of built space is a succession of iterations of past architectural solutions, rather than entirely new inventions with each project. By the end of the course, students should reach both formal (visual) and methodological (written) conclusions about the manipulation of their own architectural archives.

Do-It-Anyway: Place, Tectonics, and Time [M1]

In this studio, students will design and fabricate a sleeping space at one-to-one scale in the period of seven weeks. Why?
 
We are living in an unpredictable and volatile era. A seemingly unending series of natural disasters and anachronistic wars affect our daily lives. The places we inhabit may be unstable or mobile—a trend that will accelerate in the future—and we are expected to quickly adapt to a changing environment.
 
In this situation, we must question the traditional status of architecture as a stable occupant of real estate. Should we instead imagine ephemeral, temporary, or transient architectural artifacts? How could forms and techniques of building be adjusted flexibly and spontaneously to adapt to new situations? How do these tectonic strategies respond to the specificities of place? And can these architectural ideas be used to address pressing contemporary problems including housing instability, economic inequality, and climate change?
 
This studio will address these questions through a hands-on project with a clear outcome: a Sleeping Space. Sleeping is an essential part of our daily lives. A safe and comfortable place to sleep is indispensable for everyone, especially people affected by disaster and instability. When we rest, we find solace from worldly troubles, and we are free to explore a less constrained imaginative realm. In this studio, we will use sleep as a starting point for tectonic experiments that result in a space or assembly that engages the body. Often, sleeping spaces are flat, quiet, covered, and separated from other functions. The outcome of this project will be based on goals created by the student. It could be a shelter, partition, or structure which can accommodate a person for a restful night.

Students will design and fabricate the space and assembly at full-scale to put into practice their own concepts. As the studio designs and builds, we will examine and experiment with materials considering the constraints of time, ease of assembly, and cost. Typical building materials will be re-examined in addition to waste materials and other atypical materials.
 
Throughout the studio, we will discuss our methods of working, and how adaptable spaces and details can and should be used. At the same time, we will also work quickly and intuitively to reach a tangible conclusion. We will start with the conviction that something must be made, hence the theme of the studio: do-it-anyway.

From Within to Without [M1]

This studio will explore the notion of interiority in the public realm by reimagining an existing mid-sized commercial building. As e-commerce, shifting consumer habits, and diminishing demand for retail space alter the social, environmental, and urban fabric of communities, these same circumstances invite innovative design opportunities. How can new life inhabit a building’s interior and surrounding environs is the question that leads our studio to the Design Research (D/R) Building, designed in the late 60s at 48 Brattle Street in Harvard Square.

Denounced by some as a decade of turbulence and disillusionment, the Sixties is also noted as a revolutionary period in which civil rights, feminism, protests against the Vietnam War, and the emergence of the gay and lesbian movement marked a radical departure from conservative norms and outmoded values to usher the beginning of a new era. Nowhere else is this sweeping transformation better illustrated than in cinema, music, dance, and design.

In 1969, set against the political and social tensions of the times, Cambridge-based architectural firm Benjamin Thompson and Associates realized the Design Research (D/R) Building. Described as a place where people could buy everything needed for contemporary living, the awe-inspiring shop artfully presented a selection of home furnishings, clothing, toys, music, food, and drink. The 22,000-square-foot building’s frameless glass façade, expansive open plan, and uniformly finished floors in the same brick as the neighborhood sidewalks render an architecture of elemental simplicity and salient presence. At its peak, D/R’s prominently visible interior from the street performed, in part, as a public theater that extended a cohesiveness and depth to Harvard Square. That no longer exists. This coveted symbol of urban architecture has faded over time, in sync with the neighborhood’s dwindling character, into a lifeless shell with an uncertain future.

Harnessing Cambridge’s innovative spirit and Harvard Square’s scattered sublimities of experience, design, cuisine, and the like, students will develop strategies for infusing the D/R Building with renewed relevance and engagement. The premise is one of mutability: as life changes, so should the building and its interior. The environment Ben Thompson sought to create, inside and out, resulted from giving equal consideration to all design elements — a teacup, a chair, an apron — as he did with the architecture. Good design is good design. Similarly, we see no separation between architecture and interior design. Moreover, we see the interior as an agent of change, offering programmatic, spatial, and architectural implications. Accordingly, this studio will engage the D/R Building from within to reimagine a new interiority. By actively operating at various scales, we believe it is possible to speculate on how the studio’s insights might set the tone for a renaissance of sorts, serving as a microcosm for what could come of Harvard Square. What possible futures await as we contemplate the notion of without from within?

In this studio, students will leverage a myriad of cultural, economic, environmental, social, and technological possibilities. We will begin the 7-week studio with an inquiry into unique, small-scale environments that examine the past to know what has been lost and how these lost elements, in terms of experience, can be reclaimed in light of current times. The collective reproduction of scaled drawings and models of the D/R Building will follow. These artifacts will serve as ideation tools for ensuing design investigations. A large-scale physical model, digital rendering, and floor plan will be the primary modes of representation at the final review.