Voices of Change
The tone of our voice is more important than the words that we use. When we speak, we use a common language that we share with the individuals we are communicating with. Moreover, we use gestures and facial expressions that are personal and that we cannot fully control.
In the studio Voices of Change, we will immerse ourselves in the voices of iconic cultural protagonists such as Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois, Meret Oppenheim, and Robert Smithson. We will experience each individual voice as a synthesis of the protagonists’ specific cultural, political, and artistic existence, and we will use the energy of these voices to work on new forms of collective housing.
In the studio, we will work with the students on the transformation of a warehouse in Los Angeles into cooperative housing. We will work on today’s most pressing questions. The idea is to give architectural form to a more sustainable and more just way of life. We believe that the answers should be rational and personal simultaneously, and that they can only be found by going through the unforeseeable messiness of the creative process. We will work on plans and physical models, and we will use model photography as a method of exploration and representation.
In its own mythology, Los Angeles is the city of eternal sunshine. The blandness of its endless grid is the perfect surface for the projection of both dreams and illusions. We will use this utopian idea of Los Angeles as a powerful tool to envision new ways of living.
Revitalizing Onomichi: Architecture, Community, Territory
Onomichi is a port city in Hiroshima Prefecture in the western part of Japan with a history of ship building. It was one of the locations in Ozu's 1953 film, Tokyo Story as well as the 2016 video game Yakuza 6: The Song of Life.
The studio will travel to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Onomichi to learn about Japanese architecture and culture and to select a series of individual project sites in Onomichi. Our aim will be to use architecture as a means for the transformation of the city through a series of multi-scalar interventions.
The studio will meet twice a week and will investigate the role of architecture outside the major metropolitan areas of Japan- and between nature and the sea.
The studio is open to all students with a background in architecture interested in design speculations. The project is part of the larger Japanstory research initiative and will result in a publication of the work of the studio.
Identity and Difference: Annuated Civic Typologies
This term we will revisit a theme we first explored in the option studios Block Blob Mat Slab Slat (2015) and—to a lesser extent— Intuition and the Machine (2020). The theme is architectural typology, i.e. the nineteenth century conceit that spaces ought to be planned according to some common blueprint, or type.
Our working assumption this term will be that it is unwise to decry it as obsolete when demand for it outside the narrow premises of theoretical speculation continues unabated.
A recent case in point is the challenge set out by Reimagining Railway Stations: Connecting Communities, an international architectural competition launched in 2020 by British Network Rail for the rebuilding of 2000 ‘small to medium’ stations set across a wide range of urban and rural contexts in the United Kingdom. Reimagining Railway Stations constitutes as direct an appeal to the classic understanding of the term as it is possible to (re)imagine in 2023. This semester, we propose to revisit type from the ‘traditional’ angles set out in this competition, i.e. as a potential framework for the collection of individual buildings, as a vector of tectonic integration, and a symbol of civic life.
BRIEF AND SITES: Using the competition brief as a guide, we will focus on a collection of nine building interventions made possible by a shared framework, to be freely defined by each participant. We have curated a selection of nine sites with a footprint between 7m2 and 45m2, all of them functional rail hubs. Our selection includes a challenging variety of existing configurations, both architectural and topographic. Some sites have virtually no amenities other than an automated ticket machine, while others double up as heritage-listed rail museums, drawing thousands of British train enthusiasts every year.
Our key theoretical concern will be the problem of the Collection. We will interrogate it from a theoretical and practical point of view.
The design approach is completely open.
Grafting Adaptations onto Existing Buildings and into the City
Today’s architects have an urgent responsibility to address the climate crisis by radically reducing the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from our work. Reusing and adapting existing structures—which generally saves between 50 to 75 percent of embodied carbon emissions, compared to building new—is therefore an increasingly critical part of architectural practice.1 Yet many consider it merely a technical necessity rather than a design generator.
This studio aims to challenge that assumption by exploring the environmental and creative potential of Grafting, one particular method of adaptive reuse that is informed by natural processes of healing and repair. Performed by people since ancient times, horticultural grafting is the act of connecting two or more separate plant tissues to grow and function as one plant, while remaining genetically (and often visually) distinct. Motivated by the search for more resilient and fruitful plants, grafting is an innately experimental practice that has also been a potent cultural metaphor—regarded by some as the sensitive art of working with nature, and by others as the creation of something impure and even monstrous.
This studio will draw on these various aspects to test how the concept of grafting can inform architecture and its many scales, provoking the imagination while simultaneously lending know-how to tectonic, programmatic, formal, and regenerative adaptations. The concrete parking garage of Josep Lluis Sert’s Peabody Terrace (1964) in Cambridge, MA, will serve as the project site. Students will research the original building and the context of its construction, develop an understanding of embodied carbon and the environmental repercussions of varying degrees of intervention, and explore design solutions for its adaptation and renewed role in urban life.
Day trips and tours in Boston and New England will be offered during the week of February 20-24. The preliminary itinerary includes visiting buildings on Harvard’s campus, and daytrips to New Haven and UMASS Amherst. Class will be held on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons and will be taught in person on alternating weeks.
1.Larry Strain, “Ten Steps to Reducing Embodied Carbon,” American Institute of Architects, https://www.aia.org/articles/70446-ten-steps-to-reducing-embodied-carbon.
Ruinophilia & Pentimenti – Chinatown Milan Case Study
Arguably, the conception of ruins has long shaped western architecture historians’ origins narrative dating back to antiquity. Largely shaped by a distinct visual culture and optics of the “ruin gaze”, the ruin has largely been associated with romantic imagery possessing its own metaphysical charm. This studio takes the notion of ruinophilia as a starting point for generating design interventions in Milan’s old Sarpi district, otherwise known as Quatiere Cinese. The studio takes on Svetlana Boym’s premise that nostalgia offers a productive means to engage with issues of collective memory, displacement, and urban renewal, embracing the contradictions of modernity. Boym also highlighted the link between contemporary ruinophilia and reflective nostalgia, remarking that ruins lead one to contemplate the past that could have been as well as the future that never took place. The studio will also borrow from the critical lens of Chinese art history which offers up an alternative representation of the past, readings of site, building and visual memory. The Chinese notion of ruins is deeply internalized and is less overtly tied to visual remnants, but evoked through absence, voids, and allusions. In the context of preserving Chinatown, and the stereotypes of cultural heritage often associated with visual signifiers, the studio seeks to challenge conventional attitudes towards adaptive re-use, heritage preservation, and cultural production. Originally selected as the prime location for Chinese settlement (dating back to 1929) due to the courtyard-tenement housing typology which was well adapted for the artisans/merchants in the garment industry, today’s Sarpi area’s spatial demographic changes are posing cultural tensions due to the commercial activities outgrowing the limitations of the urban fabric’s density. Referencing the concept of pentimenti, “defined in art history as a presence of traces of previous work”, students are encouraged to exploit a “different logic of the ruin, which is not romantic… but a form of toleration of disharmony.” Students are asked to design either housing or a hotel/hostel within a defined site in the Sarpi district. The class will tentatively travel to Milan as well as Bologna. Weekly assignments will be given ahead of desk crits and pin-ups and students will be evaluated based on conceptual clarity, experimental representation, and design execution that bridges the scales of urban design, architecture, and interiors. We strongly encourage the act of making and building physical models as a design methodology.
Wild Ways 2.0: A Fifth Ecology for Metropolitan Los Angeles
Playing off Reyner Banham’s classic Los Angeles, The Architecture of Four Ecologies, the studio will explore themes of connectivity, resilience and landscape infrastructure under the twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene. The work will interrogate and explore what a system of landscape infrastructure for connectivity and habitat across Southern California’s biodiversity hotspots might look like—in the face of growing urbanization and climate change. Proposals will embrace regional networks of wildlife movement and potential re-imaginings of infrastructural spaces for habitat and public use, layering in humans as both users and kin; and that account for intensifying threats of wildfire. The goal is to invent the basis for a new metropolitan ecology—a mix of culture, geography, environment, and lifestyle (in Banham’s terms)—adapted to a rapidly evolving and warming climate. We will draw on work by Donna Haraway, Jennifer Wolch, Mimi Zeiger, Julian Aguon, Winona LaDuke, Richard Weller, Reyner Banham, and more, and we will have the opportunity to learn from ecologists, urbanists, and designers on the ground in Los Angeles during our studio trip. In Jennifer Wolch’s words: “To allow for the emergence of an ethic, practice, and politics of caring for animals and nature, we need to renaturalize cities and invite the animals back in, and in the process re-enchant the city.”
Legacy Lands | Protopian Futures Reconciliation, Reclamation, and Reconstruction in Indianapolis
Practices of extraction, exclusion, discrimination, and devaluation are common to most historically Black American neighborhoods in the United States. While all suffered from periods of deep and intentional disinvestment, some managed to maintain their Black identity through the preservation and retention of Black places, spaces, businesses, and a community of prideful Black residents. However, far too many are only known through the artifacts of photographs, slum clearance maps, a small collection of preserved buildings, deep land vacancy or anecdotal “I remember when” stories fondly told by former residents of the neighborhood that once was. If we are to advance a more inclusive and just urban redevelopment agenda – one that does extend the practice of displacement – we must acknowledge that these Black neighborhoods and the legacy of their land histories, hold a heritage that must inform the possibilities for its future cultural restoration, development, and liberation (ownership).
Legacy Lands | Protopian Futures is a multi-disciplinary design studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design that will imagine the future possibilities for the historic Indiana Avenue neighborhoods if racial segregation, eminent domain, and slum clearance policies had not disrupted the thriving Black communities of Ransom Place, Fayette Street and Pat’s Bottom (and potentially the consideration of preceding native American land settlements). How might we imagine the 21st century Black American neighborhood if its cultural heritage of productive innovation and entrepreneurship had not been erased, but instead was allowed to thrive and influence new forms of architecture, public space, and public policy? The studio will develop design concepts by experimenting with a protopian approach (a non-linear pathway to a wider range of possibilities using alternate timelines weaved into a multiplicity of beautiful futures) rather than a utopian approach (a linear path using a single timeline to produce a single ideal future) in order to unlock the unrealized potential of centering Black cultural production, innovation, and entrepreneurship as the influence for the design of the build environment.
The studio will examine the existing conditions of the broader Indiana Avenue area legacy lands, historic cultural narratives, and timelines of development, in order to propose new futures based on alternative trajectories of just and racially equitable development policy and inclusive spatial practice including culturally informed architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. Student will have the opportunity to rewrite public policy, propose new architectures and public spaces in ways that celebrate and amplify the cultural practices and contributions of Black Americans (and potentially Native Americans).
The studio will travel to Indianapolis to conduct field research and engage with members of the community to both share research, gain knowledge from local community experts, and collaborate on ideas. We invite our studio sponsors and select members of the community to travel to the GSD to attend mid-semester and final reviews of the student’s work. The studio will be documented in a final publication that might serve as a tool to guide the future work of the Indiana Avenue community and its partners.
LATIN AMERICA IN TRANSITION: Ecological Design for Settlements & Climate Migration in Argentina
We face a vulnerable future due to the accelerated intensity of natural and humanitarian disasters. The resultant scale of unprecedented migration has been coupled with a lack of infrastructures to accommodate the climatic displacement giving rise to new and more complex forms of vulnerability. While current estimates account for 250 million of international migrants, predictions indicate that by 2050 this number will increase to 350 million of which 60% will have been displaced due to environmental factors. These climate crises accentuate inequalities as the most vulnerable groups resort to informal settlements in areas with the greatest exposure to effects of environmental hazards. In short, in the near future, the landscape of informality will be a direct reflection of the effects of climate change and its intensified migration. Latin America exemplifies this twofold transition as approximately one third of its urban dwellers live in informal settlements.
The studio will focus on Argentina where throughout the past five years, the number of informal settlements has seen a 25% increase from about 4,000 to 5,000. We will work throughout a series of precarious neighborhoods in the city of Buenos Aires along the Riachuelo river as we plan, design, and speculate on the ecological infrastructure needed to integrate vulnerable settlements into the formal city. Students will reflect on how to adequately articulate the climate transition impacting the areas where the most vulnerable live by designing proposals to mitigate/anticipate, adapt/connect, and restore/upgrade these settlements. The studio is open to students across all departments and programs. As a collective project, we will collaborate with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies gathering experts on the topic across Harvard University and Latin America and in an exhibition titled Latin America in Transition.
Engaging Energy Productions and Tourism Landscapes Towards a Circular Ecosystem in Iceland
Tourism in Iceland has grown at an unprecedent rate in recent decades. With numbers of visitors rising from 500 thousand in 2008 to over 2-milions in 2019. Visitors come to Iceland to take in the distinct landscapes created by volcanic eruptions, to experience the abundance of natural resources and to witness the wilderness environment. Unprepared, the country infrastructures struggled to cope with this unparalleled increase in visitors, which led to crowding, environmental damage, and costly rescue operations. In addition, use of land for tourism practices can lead to conflicts with other important local industries; as well as being attractors for visitors, some wilderness areas in Iceland are also valuable renewable energy sources. Iceland is in a unique position when it comes to green energy given that almost 100% of its electricity is produced by renewable sources, of which 70% is produced by hydropower plants and 30% by geothermal powerplants.
Whilst today, both tourism and power–productions are crucial sectors in Iceland, they increasingly come into conflict. The visual impact of powerplants on the barren Icelandic landscape is significant. Geothermal powerplants emit noise and steams. Their drill holes and large building footprints are connected by pipelines stretching over several hundred meters in the landscape. At the same time, increasing the share of renewable energy is key for climate change mitigation. Studying the impacts of renewable energy infrastructure on tourism and re-imagining their spatial relation is therefore crucial.
How can we reimagine Iceland tourism as a powerful link between natural resources and local industries? By looking at relations between the energy and tourism sectors and by imagining how to create co-location of uses and hybrid infrastructures that benefit from each other’s, this studio will explore how design can serve as a mediator to protect the Icelandic nature without creating a ‘disneylandisation’ of its resources. By embracing circular economy concepts, you will focus on how to engage energy productions and tourism activities, and in doing so imagine novel programmatic synergies between an area and its resources.
As a site, we will use the Reykjanes Peninsula, located in Southwest Iceland. Hosting the international Keflavik Airport, the peninsula serves a key role in connecting the country with the outside world. A hotbed of geothermal activity, two powerplants have been stationed to harness clean energy. We will be working at multiple scales, ranging from urban planning at the peninsula scale all the way to urban design, block- and architecture-scale on the zoom-in site of the Reykjanes Geothermal Powerplant area.
Design research and strategic urban design will complement one another in our work. The studio will be accompanied by guest lectures and discussions with local authorities, scholars, business owners and renown local and international experts. Students in the Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design and Planning programs are welcomed.
Void infrastructures and lived responses
The site for this studio is two breathtakingly beautiful golf courses in Cape Town. We will build a city over them. Why? Currently, social justice activists are campaigning for the urbanisation of this land as a way of addressing historical injustice and improving access to the city. Their pleas are met with intransigence. Our speculative work on this real issue will address the failure of imagination which lies at the heart of this response.
As much as cities can advance human endeavours, they can also be designed to antagonise them. The capacity of cities to achieve these contradictory ends, simultaneously, is a designed mechanism by which privilege is advanced and marginalization becomes systemic. The studio will explore the undoing of inequity through the notion of infrastructure. We will investigate marginalization as an immaterial infrastructure of the city and how it endures, long after its authors have gone. The forced removals of people, the destruction of neighbourhoods and livelihoods, the limitation of rights, and the desaturation of urban opportunity are an absence with an enduring presence in Cape Town today. These voids are infrastructures of unfreedom.
As these void infrastructures were created, lived realities unfolded concurrently. The studio will speculate on how the human responses to this social disaster can be used to repair the city. The sense of repair would not be one of reassembling broken pieces back to an original form, but rather to use found fragments to constitute a new city, rooted in a contemporary ethic. We will focus on the taxi industry, entrepreneurial economics, land justice activism, backyard socialization, art, music, film, and literature in particular, as human endeavours that can inform a will to live in the city.