Making Next to Forest

Seventy-one percent of Japan’s northern-most island, Hokkaido, is covered in forest, comprising almost one-quarter of the entire nation’s forested landmass. It is also the center of wooden furniture design and production in Japan. Compared to other countries with similar forest-to-land ratios, such as Finland, Japan’s ratios are quite low with regard to both rates of locally-sourced vs. imported wood, and rates of wood use vs. waste (25 percent use vs. 140 percent, with reuse, in Finland). This studio examines the balanced ecology and economy of living and making next to a vast natural resource.

The first phase of this studio proposes alternative forest economies with the goal of promoting efficiency and increased local wood use. New material possibilities are investigated through an exploration of different tree parts and the recycling and reuse of wood for material production. In short, a new bioeconomy will be envisioned for Hokkaido, including proposals for enhanced sustainability and efficiency in forestry product development, alongside a reforestation program.

The second phase of the studio proposes a master plan for a site vacated by the Tokai University campus in Asahikawa, Japan. Asahikawa is the second largest city in Hokkaido after Sapporo, located toward the center of the island and snowbound throughout winter. A new campus will be proposed for bioeconomy research, production, and education facilities. As a part of this masterplan, an archive and study center for the history and craft of wood furniture in this region will be included.

In the third phase of this studio, a design will be developed for a chair museum in the Higashikawa township, the sponsor for this studio. The town suffered a severe population decline, but made a remarkable comeback in last fifteen years through the implementation of attractive incentives to bring back young families. The private chair collection of the Oda family—one of the largest and most prestigious collections of the 20th century—was recently donated to the township. The Chair Museum will be built with local wood and materials generated from its region, connecting the design to earlier research on forest ecology and bioeconomy centers.

Béton Brut and Beyond

At a time when it is more essential than ever to conserve resources and prevent carbon pollution—which critically includes limiting the demolition of existing buildings and new construction—we find that concrete architecture from the 1960s and 1970s is nevertheless frequently discarded. A host of justifications is given for its destruction: it cannot be easily adapted for today’s needs, its land value exceeds its architectural value, its cost of reuse is too high. Challenging these and other assumptions, this studio examines the design potential of working with existing concrete buildings—often referred to as Brutalist—that are defined by heroic forms, expressive structures, and raw use of material.

Our project is set in the Courbevoie suburb of Paris, located within La Défense, the main financial hub of France. The mixed-use social housing complex Les Damiers (1976), designed by Jacques Binoux and Michel Folliasson, was slated to be torn down in 2013, but with its replacement indefinitely on hold, the structure now sits vacant. This studio reconsiders the fate of Les Damiers, exploring how it might be adapted to improve its functionality and environmental performance as well as reconsidering its form and image.

Bringing contemporary technologies, materials, forms, and programs to bear on this challenge, students will work to recast this specific architecture toward a viable, extended future. The brief will call for a significant increase in program area in response to the contemporary cultural and economic demands of France’s most important financial district. Studio projects will address both the building and its larger urban and ecological context, including its relationship to the River Seine, as well as the artificial ground, or pedestrian deck (la dalle), characteristic of La Défense.

The studio will travel to Paris and visit the site. Through research, analysis, and critique of the existing architecture and surrounding site, students will identify physical and aesthetic opportunities for intervention. Projects will be developed collaboratively in small groups with the opportunity to individually design specific parts of the project.

This studio has an irregular schedule. Please consult with the instructors. 

Block Blob Mat Slab Slat: Art Spaces

“For this requirement there are no typologies”
—Rem Koolhaas (teased over the apparent lack of historical perspective in OMA’s proposal for the addition of a massive 20,000-seat auditorium for the Dutch Parliament, 1978)

Forty years on, the 19th-century belief that spaces ought to be planned according to some blueprint, or typology, is, give or take the odd revival, almost universally extinct. Our free-for-all approach to discourse, together with the extreme scale, variety, and programmatic inventiveness found in architectural briefs worldwide, have turned the idea of a common repository of design ideas (merging, maybe, into practice) on its head.

Or have they? Seemingly unrelated developments have recently imbued that improbable concept with a new lease of life. For one, we have the pressures of urbanization in places like China, where the prospect of housing 4,000 tenants in a single dwelling block has reliably reawakened the historicist appeal to architectural type, which held sway over Europeans at the height of their own postwar boom (in both instances, quantity seems to be the trigger).

Then there is the black swan of parametric digital design. Regardless of who’s doing it, or what the outcome looks like, parametric design, by its very nature, will foster variation, variegation, and versioning. It will, in other words, create its own types. The similarities end there, though. Unlike the conspicuous types of the past, the new types are abstract and invisible; they do not recombine building parts or figures to yield new arrangements, as the olden types did, but calibrate relationships and provoke mutations, expressed, for the sake of convenience, in abstract terms.

This studio has two aspirations: first, to offer an open framework for the exploration of some exciting intersections between “old” and “new” understandings of architectural typology; and second, to serve as a forum of “reflexion” on the spaces of contemporary art. Eventually, both aspirations shall converge on a carefully calibrated architectural proposal for a new urban art complex located in the heart of Old Montreal.

The studio is supported in part by the Quebec-based Phi Foundation, a nonprofit art foundation seeking to foster and mobilize “diverse forms of imagination and critical speculation around this specific site in Montreal, intersecting its own intentions and objectives” as an institution. A trip to Quebec is tentatively planned to visit the site and interact with sponsors, curators, artists, and archivists.

This studio has an irregular schedule. The studio will be meeting on January 23, 24, 28, 29; February 11, 12, 25, 26; March 10, 11, 24, 25; April 7, 8, 21, 22, and May 4, 5 for Final Reviews. This instructor will be available to meet with students outside of officially scheduled studio meetings at mutually agreeable times in the weeks that he is in residence. This studio will travel to Montreal, Canada. 

KING TUT’S SKULL

This dusty skull was Ol’King Tut’s.
I found it in this pyramid.
This tiny skull was King Tut’s too
(From when he was a little kid).

An Architecture of innocent origins
Suspends time and identity
In service to the liberation of logic
And the empowerment of the mythic.

In this studio, each student will select their own site and be assigned their own program to explore the possibilities of this type of, at once, deeply personal and profoundly inclusive architecture.

Collaborative Design Engineering Studio II

The spring studio builds upon theoretical and technical concepts already introduced in the MDE program with the emphasis on creative and critical thinking, observational and experimentation-based evaluation, and context-aware communication strategies essential for complex problem-solving activities.

The human mind excels in rapidly identifying patterns and establishing associations that simplify the complexity of the world and habituating thinking processes to minimize its own energy use. The term “creative and critical thinking” points to the need to consciously overcome our innate limitations to design solutions that are impactful and responsible.

In this studio, students are challenged to identify, propose, prototype, test, evaluate, and refine problems and solutions around the studio theme of waste.  The semester is organized around two projects that invite students to consider two achievement-oriented scenarios: a call for developing a research funding application and a call for a design award entry. We introduce this framework to heighten student awareness in connecting their own ideas to the “real-world” objectives, by facilitating the notion of objectivity, empathic analysis, multifaceted evaluation and professional communication. While the first project will be highly structured, the second will be self-guided full-blown design project in preparation for the IDEP.

This Studio is limited to first-year students enrolled in the Master in Design Engineering Program, a collaborative degree associated with Harvard GSD and SEAS.

This course is scheduled on Mondays and Wednesdays at Maxwell Dworkin G123 and G135. Mondays will primarily be dedicated to pinups and desk critiques, and Wednesdays reserved for lectures and workshops.

Fourth Semester Architecture Core: RELATE

The fourth and final semester of the core sequence, this architecture studio tackles the complexity of the urban condition through the design of housing. From individual to collective, from spatial to infrastructural,  from units to systems, housing not only confronts the multiple scales of design but also exposes the values and ideals of its society. The semester will be an opportunity to imagine the possible futures of the city, recognizing the role of architecture at the intersection of the many interdependent as well as contradictory forces at play, and the negotiations that must necessarily take place. 

The semester will be organized in two overlapping phases. The first weeks will be an intense research and analysis phase through which the students will develop not only an understanding of historical precedents but also begin to formulate their narrative on urban living – a hypothesis that they will use to launch their design for the rest of the semester. While this hypothesis will be constantly revisited and revised, it will serve as a first speculative act.

The second phase of the semester will be devoted to the elaboration of an urban project with a focus on housing and will have as its objective the understanding of design as a series of relativities: between building and the city, between collective and individual, between civic and domestic. The architectural project is fundamentally optimistic. It goes beyond problem solving to imagining a better future. In no other typology is this more true than with collective housing which defines the core of how we live and function together as a society.

Pedagogically, working in groups and pairs will be a component of the semester, demanding dialogue, understanding, and negotiation of different points of view.

 

Second Semester Architecture Core: SITUATE

The overarching pedagogical agenda for second semester is to expand upon the design methodologies developed in the first semester such that students acquire an understanding of the interwoven relationship between form, space, structure, and materiality. This semester extends the subject matter to include the fundamental parameters of site and program, considered foundational to the discipline of architecture. Through the design problems, students will also engage in multiple modes of analytical processes that inform and inspire the study of mass, proportion, and tactility.

Prerequisites: GSD 1101

Environment, Economics, and Enterprise

How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings? Where are the opportunities for real estate initiatives that are highly functional, healthy, aesthetically pleasing and financially rewarding? The challenge to designers, developers, environmental consultants, policy-makers and other professionals lies in finding and communicating these synergies. This cross-disciplinary course will give students an approach to problem solving to help them contribute to thoughtful, high-impact decisions about design and construction that are both environmentally/socially impactful and economically effective.

At the end of the course students will be able to…
– identify sustainability opportunities for their projects. Identify sustainable/economic win-win solutions
– translate enhanced design into a project 's financial pro forma, and communicate the financial impact clearly to market makers
– complete accurate cost benefit economic analysis, with realistic assumptions on ability to finance and ability (if any) to obtain premium value on exit
– analyze market demand for projects with and without enhanced sustainability design
– think about how to finance their projects and where to go for capital
– explain their ideas in the language of decision-makers, from community groups to financial investors

Students from all GSD disciplines are encouraged to participate.
No prerequisites.

Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation

Through the lens of climate change, this foundation course surveys the intellectual development of resilience and adaptation in the social, natural, and applied sciences. Through a critical reading and analysis of central bodies of literature, students are provided a conceptual and empirical basis for exploring applied practices and policies advanced in the name of climate change adaptation. The practice component of the course focuses on community resilience in urban planning and policy, technical resilience in civil and systems engineering, multi-hazard risk assessment in disaster risk management, and adaptation mainstreaming in the public and private sectors. This range of applications reflects the opportunities for a diversity of actors to engage in new forms of practice that synthetically negotiate and mediate various socioeconomic and biophysical forces. Positioned within an emerging field of study, this course identifies many of the key unanswered questions that are critical for future conceptual and empirical development. With a focus on environmental change and the built environment, students will develop a critical understanding of relevant public policies and institutions, design and engineering techniques, economic strategies and planning models. The course pedagogy balances lectures, seminar readings and case study reviews to link theory with practice. Students may select their final course evaluation to be based on either be a final exam or a paper. The intent is to utilize the course as a means of research support for students across the university who may be incorporating aspects of resilience and adaptation scholarship into their existing theses, dissertations, and peer-review manuscripts. This course is open to masters and doctoral students at the KSG, HBS, HLS, HSPH, FAS, MIT and Tufts Fletcher School.

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Informal Robotics / New Paradigms for Design & Construction

Today new materials and fabrication techniques are transforming the field of robotics. Rather than rigid metal parts connected by mechanical components, robots may now be made of folded paper, carbon laminates or soft gels. They may be formed fully integrated from a 2D or 3D printer rather than assembled from individual components. Light, compliant, highly customized – we are seeing the emergence of a new design paradigm.

Informal Robotics is a direct collaboration between the Wyss Institute’s Bioinspired Robotics platform (http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/204/bioinspired-robotics) and the GSD.  Within the class, you will interact with Wyss researchers who will share their unique designs for ambulatory and flying robots, end-effectors, medical instruments and other applications.

The class will explore informal robotics from multiple perspectives, culminating with the design and fabrication 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.

The class will be organized along four primary topics:
– Kinematics includes an overview of mechanism principles, design techniques for pop-ups, flat-folding origami structures, and soft mechanisms.

– Fabrication methods will be explored through workshops on use of composite materials, laminated assembly techniques, self-folding, and integrated flexures.

– Controls considers how to actuate movement and program desired behavior. Topics include servos, linear actuators, shape memory alloys (SMAs) and use of Arduino for sensing and 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:
This course includes weekly lectures, workshops, and guest lectures. 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. Although, there are no firm prerequisites, some knowledge of scripting and/or fabrication using CNC machines is helpful. Evaluation will be based on completion of assignments and the final project.

Seminar/ Workshop in collaboration with the Wyss Institute’s Bioinspired Robotics Platform

Jointly Offered Course: SEAS ES256