American Architecture (Model)

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen American Architecture (Model) aspires to foreground the mythical cornerstone of American constitutional democracy-freedom of expression. Evoking the tradition of a soapbox or public square, the pavilion provides a dedicated space for communal discourse and debate. At a time when the United States is experiencing a convulsive paradigm shift pushing the country toward necessary social change on so many fundamental issues—racial justice, gender equity, class privilege, climate change, and the right to health care, to name a few—the prevailing online discourse around these subjects has only incited deeper ideological divides and a cacophony of fierce opinion that is often fueled by misinformation. The instantaneous and limited format of expression on social platforms, their lack of accountability, and the minimal mechanisms for their regulation often lead to abuse of free speech. The revival of a real public space—as opposed to a virtual one—proposes to challenge how these urgent issues are addressed. American Architecture (Model) is an attempt to formalize these current social, technological, and ecological urgencies by means of an architectural project. This is the recurring theme of the ongoing series of architectural studios titled American Architecture, which have been taught by Kersten Geers and David Van Severen of OFFICE. Geers and Van Severen, who were both appointed Kenzō Tange Design Critics at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) in 2019–2020, have designed the inaugural Kenzō Tange Chair Pavilion. American Architecture (Model) is made as a simple structure, a horizon of lights that demarcates a public space. It presents a model of an accumulation of technological tropes-solar panel and a technical box-next to the iconic image of the United States flag. The pavilion will be installed in front of Gund Hall, at the GSD, for one year. OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen is a Brussels-based practice founded in 2002 by Kersten Geers and David Van Severen. OFFICE is renowned for its idiosyncratic architecture, in which material realizations and theoretical projects stand side by side. OFFICE have received numerous honors and awards, including the Belgian Prize for Architecture, the Silver Lion at the 12th Venice Biennial of Architecture, and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. American Architecture (Model) was generously supported by the endowed fund established for the Kenzō Tange Visiting Chair in Architecture and Urban Design at the GSD.

Snapshot: Recent Student Work

A series of ten projections that highlight recent student work from across the GSD.  

Parallel Histories

In fixing a physical, axial connection between the monuments to MLK Jr. and Jefferson, which also protects the Monumental Core from flooding, the proposal brings the two men and their troubled manifestations into juxtaposition and confrontation. What are we to make of this? A journey. These men who reside in this confrontation are part of a long journey through time and space. This journey has many stories, some linear, some cyclical, some elliptical. There is no single timeline. Progress is fleeting. There are tales, events, figures—living and fixed. We discover multiple histories. We move forward and backward, diverted and redirected. We embrace uncertainty as we try to make sense of the world. Author: Hanh Nguyen (MArch II/MLA I AP 2021) Option Studio: Washington Common – Martin Luther King, Jr., Upended Instructor: Gary Hilderbrand, Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture Duration: 3 min, 5 sec  

Suburban Spectacle

Suburban Spectacle transforms an existing logistics center and grocery shopping hub into a wetland park development, creating an alternate suburban scenery that integrates building clusters in different forms and landscapes in various types. The reciprocal relationship between suburban parks and developments can be referential for similar future projects. On the one hand, natural landscape mediating between development clusters establishes a green buffer zone and offers residents proximity to the natural environment. On the other hand, developments attack investment, which helps to improve and sustain the park operation. Authors: Yihan Liu (MAUD 2022) and Zhaoqi Chen (MAUD 2022) Core Studio: Elements of Urban Design Instructors: Rahul Mehrotra, Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, and Stephen Gray, Associate Professor of Urban Design Duration: 2 min, 15 sec  

Stones of a Mountain: Recontextualizing the Work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Stones of a Mountain draws inspiration from the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. which are inscribed on his existing memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” The monuments on the National Mall are intended to recognize great events and people in American history. Great, predominantly being emphasized through the size and singularity of these monuments. But through deeper understanding of these figures which the monuments represent, a new story is told which requires a new place all together. This project pulls apart these existing monuments to create a series of lookouts and gathering spaces made from the raw materials of the monuments, representing the stone which built them. These spaces are strung together by a boardwalk, introducing a new center point for the Mall at the location of the Tidal Basin and recontextualizing the existing MLK Memorial. The lookout points hope to allow for people to stop, reflect, and gather along the loop while bringing into question the forgotten perspectives of these historical figures and significant events marked on the Mall. Author: Kara Gadecki (MLA I 2021) Option Studio: Washington Common – Martin Luther King, Jr., Upended Instructor: Gary Hilderbrand, Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture  

The Littoral between Definite and Indefinite

The project focus lies in the littoral zone—the zone of exchange between the figure and the plane—and proposes to reinterpret an original diagrammatic entanglement as a calibrated choreography, whereby spaces are constructed through the tension between the explicit and implicit. The resultant exchange is carried throughout the building, suggesting a synthesis that occurs on and through floors. A rectangular bar volume folds in at two corners through which the interior is accessed. Within, a tripartite ordering of set, figure, and set runs through every floor. While office spaces—the sets—flank the figures on either side, in the center, a series of public programs are arranged in a vertical gradient. The boundaries established by the tripartite division are obfuscated by the choreographed interplay. Granular spaces develop, yet orient themselves in relationship to the readability and glimpses of the boundary offices. Figures spill towards the periphery, suggesting specificity within an otherwise uninflected plane. Author: Andrea Sandell (MArch I 2023) Core Studio: Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE Instructor: Ron Witte, Professor in Residence of Architecture Duration: 3 min, 25 sec  

The Dimensions of Touch: Building Joy through Altered Sensitivities

How are the materials that we encounter sensed or felt internally, especially when ones physical ability to touch, or be touched, is altered? The feeling of a rock, of moss, of shells, brick, or water all have extra-sensory dimensions to them that transcend time, degrade at different rates, or move differently in the wind. Layer that with the varied abilities and sensitivities that someone may have and it opens up new ways of designing for or spatializing dimensions of touch. In short, this project seeks to build joy and respite by doing just that. Healing is not a linear process – it weaves in and around the complexities of a person’s financial means, geolocation, culture, identity, and histories. Working in partnership with the Galveston Bay Foundation and Shriner’s Hospitals for Children in Galveston, Texas, this project proposes four designs at Shriner’s pediatric burn unit that build in more varied opportunities for patients at all stages in the reconstruction process. Through multiple conversations and ‘visioning sessions’ with the two partner organizations during the semester, a proposal was developed that designs for patients and families who need a place to forget, a place to build joy and sink deep into rest, and a place to connect to the greater Galveston Bay. Author: Brittany Giunchigliani (she/her/hers) (MLA I 2021) Option Studio: Seeking Abundance: Designing Engagement and Experience for All Instructor: Sierra Bainbridge, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture Community Partners: Charlotte Cisneros, Galveston Bay Foundation, Galveston, Tx; Ruth Martinez, Shriner’s Hospitals for Children, Pediatric Burn Unit, Galveston, Tx Duration: 2 min, 45 sec  

Southie Park: A Waterfront Proposal for the Neighborhood of South Boston

Southie Park transforms the waterfront of the South Boston neighborhood into a lively destination with a diverse array of recreational experiences and new proposed ferry stops linking the residents to the water. The proposal consists of residential functions that are anchored by public uses such as an arts & performance center and market hall, as well as a variety of open spaces that are placed strategically based on their economic, leisure, and ecological opportunities. When viewing the proposal holistically, we see how compacting buildings to the most suitable areas of land do not only tie back to the existing fabric, but also provide ample area for much needed recreational activity for the residents of Boston as a whole. This array of active and passive recreation along the water consists of piers and docks for ferry and water taxi transport, pedestrian dune paths for walking, biking, and jogging, a multi-purpose barge that can be used for outdoor concert venues, and winter ice skating and playful landscapes that serve a dual purpose of mediating the waters environment. Stitching together these different conditions into one catalog of waterfront experiences and building assortments, this project aims to create diversity at many scales. Authors: Rogelio Cadena (MAUD 2022) and Erin Soygenis (MAUD 2022) Core Studio: Elements of Urban Design Instructors: Peter Rowe, Raymond Garbe Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and Yun Fu, Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design Duration: 4 min, 44 sec  

MLK, Inverted.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, completed in 2011, is one of the most recent additions to the monuments on the National Mall. The form of the sculpture was inspired by MLK’s own words and is made up of two parts: the “mountain of despair,” a gateway through which visitors enter the memorial plaza, and the “stone of hope,” a rough-hewn figure of MLK, emerging out of the mountain and symbolically overcoming despair. From its inception, however, the monument has been criticized for perpetuating the myth of a post-racial America. Most significantly, the form of the monument itself suggests that “the mountain” of racial equality is behind us: that this work was fulfilled by MLK, rather than being a matter of urgency. Meanwhile, the monument itself abuts the Tidal Basin, and is already subject to flooding which is only expected to increase as sea level rises. In this project, I propose a new and more complex approach to the figure of MLK. My proposal maintains the figure of King in its current place, but inverts its relationship to the existing form of the “mountain of despair.” A simple gesture, the project addresses flooding while lending to the MLK memorial a drastically different interpretation. Author: Annie Hayner (MLA I 2021) Option Studio: Washington Common – Martin Luther King, Jr., Upended Instructor: Gary Hilderbrand, Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture Credits: 3D model of existing MLK memorial obtained from 3D warehouse Duration: 2 min, 24 sec  

Living with Nature

Living in the second decade of the 21st century, we always find ourselves living a life of constant changes. Facing the challenges in the future, we believe homes will not necessarily be a house. Our relationship with nature will be more harmonious. In this project, we explored possible options for the uncertain future. We propose homes that can spontaneously grow and respond to the changing lifestyle. The design identifies the intrinsic suitability of the South Boston waterfront and addresses the climate challenge of sea-level rise by embracing the natural tendency of water erosion. The project features movable living units mitigating between the ecological seashore and permanent inland developments. Authors: Zheng Lei (MAUD 2022) and Zhaoqi Chen (MAUD 2022) Core Studio: Elements of Urban Design Instructors: Rahul Mehrotra, Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, and Stephen Gray, Associate Professor of Urban Design Duration: 1 min, 29 sec  

The Ellipse

The National Mall will be affected by the sea-level rise and high tide in the future. By 2100, the predicted flood level will be 18 feet above the low tide level today. Without any intervention, most of the area will be inundated by water, not to mention the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. To act upon the sea level rise in the next 50 years, the Ellipse will address climate change by raising the landform around the MLK memorial up to 30 ft to avoid inundation. The gradually spiraling up elliptical landform delivers to the visitors a highly varied encounter that moves from monumental to more eye-level contact. Further, the Ellipse opens the relationship of Dr. King’s edifice to a commanding presence on the Tidal Basin, enlarging its impact and therefore its narrative potential. Author: Xinyi Chen (MLA II 2021) Option Studio: Washington Common – Martin Luther King, Jr., Upended Instructor: Gary Hilderbrand, Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture Duration: 3 min, 50 sec  

Biophilic Living

We humans have always been intimately dependent on or connected with landscape and animal habitats. With industrialization and technological developments, human and nature have become more separated than ever. However, we understand nature and landscape are essential assets for suburban life. Therefore, our main objective is to stitch the disconnected relationships between human-made artifacts and natural forces in the Westwood area. In understanding the overarching relationships with nature-as reserve, as resource and as recreation, this project aims to blur the boundaries between nature and humans by incorporating a diverse and dynamic set of activities into an extensive ecological system to introduce a new suburban lifestyle: ‘biophilic living’. This is achieved firstly by extending the green corridors into our site and connecting the patches of green and water into a larger ecological system enhancing the continuity of biodiversity. Secondly, through clustering around the existing structures, we create density along the main road with a diverse set of mixed-use programs that are productive ecologically and economically. In each of the clusters, nature seeps into people’s daily life from forests to wild meadow fields on mounds and from productive farmlands to peaceful grazing fields. These clusters are linked through a scenic path and are also anchored by various public programs. Authors: Pinyang Chen (MLAUD 2022) and Erin Soygenis (MAUD 2022) Core Studio: Elements of Urban Design Instructors: Peter Rowe, Raymond Garbe Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and Yun Fu, Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design Duration: 5 min, 29 sec     During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade.

Gallery 40K: That Is A Wrap

A collection of video works curated by the GSD Kirkland Gallery.  

Commencement Simulator 2021

During the common academic life, memorable events happen all in one place. As a result, students, professors, staff, among many others, often learn to cherish its physical location. A building or a campus becomes one’s home, part of one’s day-to-day and coming-of-age. Yet, due to unfortunate events in the past year, these convivial places were made physically inaccessible. The works presented in Clickbait utilizes the digital form to interpret iconic facilities, spaces, and events from Harvard University and the Graduate School of Design. The collective exhibit underscores the role of placemaking in academia. It highlights that even in challenging scenarios, there is a concern in reenvisioning common spaces and communities of the university. Although the physical site remains inaccessible, its ethos has not left our imagination. The works in Clickbait render visual and sensorial experiences that were not possible in the physical setting. They offer a participatory way to look back at familiar places while at the same time creatively speculating how they could be. By doing so, the participating artists and designers incorporated personal thoughts and artistic manifestations in its content and form. With these immersive works, iconic spaces of Harvard can be traversed again, but now they can also be clicked, viewed, liked, and shared. Commencement Simulator 2021 intends to provide an online platform for an informal virtual commencement game for the class of 2021. The intent is to allow GSD students could come together in this virtual campus simulation to celebrate virtual commencement in a light-hearted and fun manner. The project also seeks to explore alternate forms of social assemblies, presentations, or even exhibitions during the pandemic lockdown. It seeks to challenge traditional notions of assembly, methods of narration,  activist curation, and history archiving through virtualized narrations and interactions. Video games are a special digital art form that engages the audience actively in the production of its spatial-visual experiences. It is one of the few modes of narration where the continuation of the medium is dependent on the input of the user. Producer: Mike Kwok (MDes HPDM 2021) Curators: Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD 2021), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD 2021), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD 2021), Shiyu Liu (MDes ADPD 2022), Shane Ah-Siong (MDes ADPD 2022) Video Duration: 3 min, 2 sec  

Dear Grandmother,

Dear Grandmother, is a 10-month digital storytelling project for Rwandan Refugee youth in Worcester, Massachusetts. The project features the voice of Saidati, a high school refugee student, and her grandmother, an African Agaseke (basket)-making master, Patricia, who had experienced three genocides in Rwanda before coming to the U.S. in 2009. The project aims to weave together several creative themes: introducing African refugee arts, accelerating intergenerational communication, and enhancing refugee-non refugee connection. Biweekly sessions are designed as a hands-on learning experience. The sessions consist of mainly two parts; narrative design and video production. With the emphasis on the importance of the learning process, the project aims to produce the video as a final outcome of the 10-month journey. This innovative community design methodology brings together traditional craft making with recorded video to share publicly through open spaces in Worcester, Saidati’s high school Department of Literature, and the websites of the collaborator organizations as well. Ayaka, a graduate student at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and GSD Community Service Fellow of Summer 2020, initiated the project with guidance from the Refugee Artisans of Worcester and collaboration with Crocodile River Music in August 2020. The City of Worcester has served as one of the top destinations for refugee resettlement and is known for creative art programs, which had been negatively impacted through COVID-19. The interview with the Worcester Cultural Coalition Director regarding the city’s response to  COVID-19 inspired Ayaka to kickstart the program to pursue digital engagement of refugees which emphasizes the voice of refugee youth and prevents social isolation of the refugee artisans in this hard time. The grandmother and granddaughter featured in the project represent a possible future series of videos highlighting the creative talent that contributes to resettled art diversity. Strong resourceful women contribute to the resiliency of not only their families but the intercultural community, as in this project. Producers: Ayaka Yamashita (MDes RR 2021), Patricia Kayobera, Nisa Saidati Nisubreko Curators: Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD 2021), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD 2021), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD 2021), Shiyu Liu (MDes ADPD 2022), Shane Ah-Siong (MDes ADPD 2022) Directed by: Ayaka Yamashita Director of Photography: Cyrille Vincent Production Assistant: Jimmy  Jackson Video edited by: Solidarty Story Editors: Ellen Ferrante, Joan Kariko Music: Thierno Camara, Zach Combs Research Consultant: Marino Fernandes, Ph.D. Website & Storyboard Design: Ayaka Yamashita Co-produced by: Crocodile River Music and Refugee Artisans of Worcester Video Duration: 6 min, 29 sec  

Fluid Expressions

Fluid Expressions incorporates science, art, and design into an exploration of art-making and place-making in outer space. The exhibition takes the form of a work of online speculative fiction centered around the design and craft of an object called a memory capsule. The exhibition describes the journey of a painter as they prepare to travel to low Earth orbit as Earth’s first space-artist-in-residence. Their goal is to capture the experience of microgravity as they free-fall toward and around Earth at nearly 5 miles a second. They are allowed a limited set of tools to carry with them to space, including a memory capsule that will act as canvas, easel, and containment for the occasion. They have crafted this object themselves from materials intended for use in space, but that also reminds them of their ties to Earth and to home. The narrative catalogs the journey they have taken, with asides on the unintuitive nature of movement and perception in microgravity and the design process of the memory capsule woven throughout. This exhibition aims to explore the relationship between place and the art we create, how we see our homes from afar, and what inspires us about journeying into new regions that challenge and evolve our perceptions. However, the speculative nature of this work is grounded in real obstacles and opportunities afforded by travel off-planet, offering a hypothetical near-term future in which artists are among those who travel to and record our experiences of outer space. This work was made possible by the MIT Space Exploration Initiative. Through their support, this project is scheduled to fly on a parabolic flight in May 2021, in order to perform with the memory capsule during periods of weightlessness. This zero-g performance provides an invaluable opportunity to bridge the gap between speculative design and its intended environment, allowing for future iteration and development of this work. Producer: Sana Sharma (MDes Tech 2021) Curators: Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD 2021), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD 2021), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD 2021), Shiyu Liu (MDes ADPD 2022), Shane Ah-Siong (MDes ADPD 2022) Video Duration: 4 min, 40 sec  

GSD Hallucinations

GSD Hallucinations questions what is the Gund Hall and what is physical. After more than a year since Gund hall closed, this exhibition explores this distant memory for some and imaginary figure for many. The concrete walls, stepped trays and deep blue glazed facades have become mental constructs carved by old images, Instagram posts, and Sarah Whiting’s nostalgic Zoom backgrounds. As many students have left Cambridge, Gund Hall remains in their minds as individual fragments. The way in which each of us uses memory to abstract Gund Hall is a similar process to Generative Adversarial Networks. This project begins with the collection of over 1000 memories scattered in latent space as 512-dimensional vectors. Two trained GAN models, including the style transfer into the cubist eyes of Pablo Picasso help visualize this latent space, representing our distorted collective memory of this past year. Producers: George Guida (MArch II 2022), Dongyun Kim (MDes Tech 2022) Curators: Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD 2021), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD 2021), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD 2021), Shiyu Liu (MDes ADPD 2022), Shane Ah-Siong (MDes ADPD 2022) Video Duration: 1 min, 52 sec  

Gund.IO

During the common academic life, memorable events happen all in one place. As a result, students, professors, staff, among many others, often learn to cherish its physical location. A building or a campus becomes one’s home, part of one’s day-to-day and coming-of-age. Yet, due to unfortunate events in the past year, these convivial places were made physically inaccessible. The works presented in Clickbait utilizes the digital form to interpret iconic facilities, spaces, and events from Harvard University and the Graduate School of Design. The collective exhibit underscores the role of placemaking in academia. It highlights that even in challenging scenarios, there is a concern in reenvisioning common spaces and communities of the university. Although the physical site remains inaccessible, its ethos has not left our imagination. The works in Clickbait render visual and sensorial experiences that were not possible in the physical setting. They offer a participatory way to look back at familiar places while at the same time creatively speculating how they could be. By doing so, the participating artists and designers incorporated personal thoughts and artistic manifestations in its content and form. With these immersive works, iconic spaces of Harvard can be traversed again, but now they can also be clicked, viewed, liked, and shared. Gund.io is an ongoing prototype of an immersive 3D environment for students and professors to virtually learn, collaborate, and socialize under one centralized platform. Through the digitization of our familiar, yet for many unfamiliar Gund Hall, we augmented this space through a gamification strategy and WebXR technologies. Users can navigate within this dynamic and multi-sensorial space with avatars and view the other exhibitions. Producers: George Guida (MArch II 2022), Runjia Tian (MDes Tech 2021) , Yuebin Dong (MAUD, MDes 2021), Gabriella Perry (MDes Tech 2022) Curators: Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD 2021), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD 2021), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD 2021), Shiyu Liu (MDes ADPD 2022), Shane Ah-Siong (MDes ADPD 2022) Video Duration: 2 min, 29 sec  

One X-Smart Kitchen: A Smart Home Narrative

In its 2013 report, the McKinsey Global Institute identifies the Internet of things (IoT) as one of 12 technologies that have massive potential to drive economic impact and disruption by 2025. (Manyika et al., 2013). Home today comprised of all sorts of digitally-enabled networked objects. As more and more inanimate objects join the troop there is a network established among them that integrates each individual into a larger society of their own. This project explores the near-future scenarios of smart home objects, asking:

1. In the same way that a group of human beings is connected together with shared values, goals, and interests is usually called a community, are things able to form communities by connecting to each other for specific purposes?
2. What would the scenarios be when things can possibly go wrong with such prevalence of intelligent objects flooding our homes and the intensity of data collection?
3. How might the form and experience of our domestic space change as we become used to live with these intelligent beings that take up our physical, virtual, and even emotional space?

Using the kitchen as a sample of the domestic space, this project imagines a playful future when casual technology and tangible forms of media equip all of our homes and the status of networked objects has evolved from the Internet of Things (IoT) to the Society of Things (SoT). Narrated from a first-person perspective, in a scenario where the human owner is using the online portal of their smart kitchen provider, the project shows how the human owner sees, through a webcam, that these animated, augmented, empathetic or smart objects use their intelligence to connect with one another and lead double lives with and without human presence. Producer: Tiange Wang (MArch I 2022) Curators: Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD 2021), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD 2021), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD 2021), Shiyu Liu (MDes ADPD 2022), Shane Ah-Siong (MDes ADPD 2022) Video Duration: 1 min, 20 sec  

Version Control

Version Control aims to build a collective and participatory experience amid Covid-19 as a response to the issues presented by the transition to the virtual classroom. In design, virtual studios lacked casual collaboration and off-hand comments that being in the same creative space tends to initiate. In a studio environment, when you get stuck on a design problem, you ask a friend for their opinion, or sometimes, a stranger offers an unsolicited view as they pass your desk. These kinds of interactions can change the trajectory of one’s design process. What if there was a place you could upload your unfinished work or abandoned concepts to receive feedback or criticism from both friends and strangers? What if people could build from each other’s ideas, and the different branches of thought were tracked and archived by the platform? What if designers embraced open-source culture as a way to develop ideas and embrace collaborative thinking more quickly? Version Control was conceived as a speculative solution to virtually emulating the complexities of thought circulation in a physical studio environment. Version Control unveils the behind-scene process of creativity and de-glorifies the “design genius” under the star effect. When Covid-19 exacerbates the design workflow, those unpolished visual and ideological products speak for our internal struggles and become humanistic within the design discipline by different mediums that are not exclusively traditional to architecture. The exhibition features an exclusive video that communicates and represents Version Control‘s recent outcomes. In a unique visual format, the commissioned video narrates the archive of the work collected in 2020 as a response to the project’s proposal. In addition to the archive of works, the creators of Version Control identified trends among the works and ties it back into architectural history and design pedagogy, particularly looking at the history of “unfinishedness” in architecture and the history of open-source culture in other fields. Producers: Emily Majors (MArch I 2023), Davide Zhang (MArch I 2023) Curators: Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD 2021), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD 2021), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD 2021) Contributors: Alejandra Valdovinos, Austin Madrigale, Gabe Colombo, Clara He, Rebecca Romero, Hans Steffes, Elsa Hoover, Jeannelle Fernandez, Ben Schoenekase, Ben Creech, Aaron Sheffield, Nolan Summerhill, Pietro Mendonca, Paul McCoy, Alexandra Sanyal, Seb Fathi, Collin Stone, Eric Anderson, Veronica Rosado Perez, Thomas Huang, John Sarkis, Ayman Mortada, Phoebe Rhinehart, Yiou Wang, Signe Ferguson, Jonah Bobo, & Jack Wathieu Special Thanks: Alejandra Valdovinos & Signe Ferguson Video Duration: 26 min, 40 sec   During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade.

One Typology for a Big Word: Waiting Room of Democracy

Peter Sloterdijk argued, “Democracy depends on the ability to lend a spatial dimension to things said one after the other; it therefore implies constant training in patience.” To become a citizen, one must exercise the necessary patience to listen while others speak. If previous spatial types of democratic assembly have always envisioned crowds getting together, this waiting room is a space where two individuals are randomly paired up to speak and listen to each other. In other instances when people are asked to wait, this room places two strangers while they patiently (hopefully) discuss what it takes for citizens to live with each other. As with other waiting rooms, this room is not an end in itself. Nevertheless, it is necessary to reestablish an essential quality for citizenship to continue to exist in times of instant gratification and simulation. The Waiting Room of Democracy is part of Typologies for Big Words, a series of speculative projects imagining new types of spaces as holes opening in society’s big words.  By Sergio Lopez-Pineiro/Holes of Matter Design Collaborator: Tammy Teng Video Editor: Angela Sniezynski Duration: 8 min, 14 sec With the support of Harvard GSD Thanks to Dan Borelli, Naisha Bradley, Esther Chong Weathers, and David Zimmerman-Stuart More information at holesofmatter.com   During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. View some images and short clips from this film’s screening below:

Selections from Option Studios “As of Right: First Nations Reclaim the City” and “This Land Is Your Land”

Four short films highlight a selection of projects from the Department of Urban Planning and Design.  

Kapemni Cosmology Center

In writings about Dakota’s beliefs about the cosmos, there consistently appears to be a mirrored, parallel relationship between the land and the stars. Particularly among the Lakota people to the west, there is a direct connection between ceremony performed, transition of season, animal migration, significance of place, and constellation position. This is often interpreted by the twisting diagram signified by the word Kapemni, which is a cone or teepee that represents each version of reality, the earth and heavens mirrored in twisting contact having a discussion with one another. This project offers two cosmic objects influenced by the traditional community construction processes of the Dakota, Lakota, and Anishnaabe for their use in offering star shows large and small. Both objects reflect the principles of star theology centered in the experiences and lived traditions of these groups. Whereas one object is a permanent museum and cosmology center to be built in a park setting using local materials, sloping elevations and twisting circulation between the earth and the sky, the other object is a pop-up to be sent out to various schools and events as a way to introduce a traveling educational show centered around Native American star theology. Author: Chris D’Amico, MAUD 2021 Instructor: Daniel D’Oca, Associate Professor in Practice of Urban Planning Option Studio: This Land Is Your Land Collaborators and Community Partners: The Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI) Duration: 2 min, 3 sec  

Squamish Retreat Center

Indian Reserves (IRs) in Squamish Nation are spatially separated. This distribution pattern may be having an effect on communication and the spread of information and culture. An analysis of Squamish Nation members’ feedback on social media shows that many are concerned about the disconnection between the next generation and traditional Squamish Culture and Language. This project attempts to transform traditional First Nation legends into landscape structure, to act as a physical documentation of oral tradition and pass it to the next generation. This retreat focuses on First Nation culture, and excludes the colonial marks as much as possible. In addition, the retreat has a virtual version. A powerful virtual community could offer Squamish Nation members living around the world a way to stay connected with their Nation from afar. Author: Tiangang Lyu, MLA I 2021 Instructor: Daniel D’Oca, Associate Professor in Practice of Urban Planning Option Studio: As of Right: First Nations Reclaim the City Teaching Assistants: Heidi Brandow (MDes 2021), Elsa Hoover (MArch I 2023) Community: Squamish Nation Duration: 4 min, 9 sec  

A City Without Lines

The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the federal government to break up tribal lands by partitioning them into individual plots. Only those Indigenous Americans who accepted the individual allotments were allowed to become US citizens. This is just one of many examples in which the colonial act of a line tore apart Indigenous traditions and culture. Today, cities are still built upon lines. They are governed by invisible lines of property, parcels, and zoning, infrastructure lines of stoplights, crosswalks, and sidewalks, and architectural lines of street walls and corners. This project questions the act of the line by removing it. What are the future possibilities of a City without Lines along the American Indian Cultural Corridor? How can we as designers decolonize our own methodologies through a reinterpretation of a city’s near future? If property does not exist there can be no ownership. The land becomes a community trust, where future programming is an agreement between those that live there. Power is placed back in the people through an environmental and social stewardship model, thus creating heightened responsibility and respect for the land one occupies. Backyards become sculpture gardens, rooftops become planetariums, urban voids become farms, neighbors become families. The city becomes an expression of generational Indigenous values. And these values are realized in the representation of the corridor as a counter-cartography that conveys the community’s sense of itself rather than the organization of land. Just as the line is no longer a boundary, but a series of connections, the map is no longer the enemy, but a depiction of stories. This land is your land. This city is your city. Author: Rachel Coulomb, MArch I 2022 Instructor: Daniel D’Oca, Associate Professor in Practice of Urban Planning Option Studio: This Land Is Your Land Credits: The Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI); All My Relations Art Gallery; Ed Minnema, NACDI; ; Elizabeth Day, NACDI; Pamela Johns, NACDI; Robert Lilligren, NACDI; Sam Olbekson, NACDI; Full Circle Indigenous Planning; Alexandra Buffalohead , NACDI, All My Relations; Angela Two Stars, NACDI, All My Relations; Kjersti Monson, Friends of the Falls; Joe Hobot, American Indian OIC; Kelly Drummer, Migizi Communications; Becky Wolf, Franklin Library; Chris Cornelius, Studio Indigenous; David Fortin, David Fortin Architects; Joseph Kunkel, MASS Design Group; Philip Deloria, Harvard University; Donald Fixico, University of New Mexico; Jaida Gray Eagle, Photographer; Louise Matson, Division of Indian Work; Mariah Gladstone, Indigikitchen; Mark Turcotte, Expanding Chippewas; Andrea Carlson, The Uncompromising Hand Duration: 4 min, 38 sec  

The Canoe Times

Canoes go back to the Great Flood myth, and exist at the nexus between technology and living beings. This project aims to bring back canoes, not only as transportation but as a tool to connect separated lands spatially and culturally. With the proposed daily canoe journey, inter-generations from different Indian Reservations are no longer disconnected, and culture could thrive as the right to the land and river is reclaimed. Most of the community’s children are educated in regional schools where little traditional culture is taught. Based on this condition, this project challenges the notion of excluding Indigenous wisdom and knowledge and uses the daily canoe journey route as a way to reconnect people, land, and culture. Through the newspaper format, people from cross-generations could register to be the educators or the participants. By providing venues and convenient transportation, Indigenous stories, language, and culture will take root and thrive. Author: Xin Feng, MLA I AP + MDes 2022 Instructor: Daniel D’Oca, Associate Professor in Practice of Urban Planning Option Studio: As of Right: First Nations Reclaim the City Credits: The Harvard Indigenous Design Collective (HIDC), The Squamish Nation, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs Duration: 4 min, 10 sec   During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade.

WELCOME … Grounding Landscape in a Virtual Semester

In the summer of 2020, in anticipation of the virtual semester, nearly forty “Welcome Packages” were designed, created, and shipped across the world to incoming MLA I students entering their first year virtually. The project, led by Emily Wettstein, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture, sought to ground and connect students in a distance education by pairing practical materials for various first semester courses, such as large-scale plots and 100+ laser pieces for their first studio site model, with more whimsical touches like an American elm tree leaf from Harvard Yard, a scale figure pop-up card, and a personal hand-written note. Every detail was considered — from packaging with high-quality vellum to be reused in drawings to a Mylar strip printed with the colors and lineweights for an AutoCAD CTB Plot Style to enclose the package contents. The packages proved to be indispensable for students’ first semester courses, but more importantly, students were truly touched, citing how they felt embraced, cared for, and truly welcomed into a community. This projection pairs the unpacking of the package contents with the resulting student work from the first semester Landscape Representation I course, also led by Emily Wettstein. This course explores the generative agency of representation as a process of thinking, making, and designing through an exercise sequence focused on diverse conceptions of site, and site agents. Over the course of the semester, students are empowered to develop an iterative practice to articulate and advance their own representational voice and position. This projection overlays work from each student into a collective piece that traces our shared learning experience over the first semester.   Instructor: Emily Wettstein, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture Animations by: Rae Pozdro Duration: 1 min, 14 sec Welcome Package Collaborators: Melissa Eloshway Jungyoon Kim Joanne Li Pablo Pérez Ramos Fabrication Lab Computer Resources Group (CRG) Thanks to: Anita Berrizbeitia Jacob Lipton Landscape Representation I Teaching Assistants: Melissa Eloshway Brittany Giunchigliani Lucy Humphreys Chelsea Kashan   During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. View some images and short clips from this film’s screening below:

Snapshot: Selected Works from the Department of Architecture Fall/Spring 2020-21

A series of six projections highlight recent student work from the Department of Architecture’s Core and Options Studios.  

The Redacted Block

The urban block takes form as a measured space enclosed by streets and occupied by buildings. It is a unit of enforcement, conceived as a modern-day fortress through its surveillance, policies, and restriction of unpredictable movement that divides and deprives communities. This fortification of the urban block was deployed through the practice of checkerboarding, a practice in which the US government broke up traditionally communal Native lands into disjointed parcels. Checkerboarding is an exercise of opposition, establishing a reductive, contrarian binary to create property. Combined, fortification and checkerboarding create a colonial metropolis. From loosely-bounded rural plots to regimented suburban neighborhoods to the fortress urban block, the evolution of cities marches towards regimented permanence and exclusion that consolidates power through cyclical dispossession. A pattern enabled by a narrative that where there is development there will inevitably be decline and only after ruin, can development begin again. The Redacted Block uses redaction as a generative tool to create new meanings and moral, aesthetic, and formal correctives under the right to opacity. We envision that the redacted block will be a space of contradictions. While the exterior exudes completeness and permanence, the interior gravitates towards incompleteness and abstraction. After property will be defined by co-existence and must acknowledge those displaced. Redaction will be the means to reconfigure the borderized existing architecture. And allow for a hyper-densification of the site to create a new interwoven community of existing, returning, and future residents. It is a reimagination in line with Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s response to Audre Lorde, that the crucial point of “The Master’s Tools” is the apostrophe denoting ownership. The redacted block is a speculation on the power of agency: to countervail regimes of property and to generate the world after property. Authors: Kathlyn Kao (MArch II 2022) and Cindy Yiin (MArch II 2022) Option Studio: After Property Instructor: Emanuel Admassu, Design Critic in Architecture Duration: 2 min, 2 sec  

Scarring the Statehouse: A Critique on Heritage

A provocation against South Carolina’s Heritage Act, a bill protecting the state’s Confederate memorials, this project scars the SC State Capitol building using the ten on-site Confederate monuments and twenty exhibited Confederate portraits. Through a series of strategic cuts into the facade, the monuments aim to flood the zone and antagonize the private spaces of legislation within. The inverted vitrines act as a thorn in the flesh to place critical pressure and acknowledgment of the heritage on the legislators who continually vote to keep them. Architecturally, the cuts disrupt the tectonic order of the neoclassical structure, provoking a desecration in and of itself. A similar strategy is applied to the Confederate portraits within, building niche’s around each to both disrupt the interior aesthetic of heritage and shield them from view. These interventions are intended to memorialize the recognition that heritage is not history, for when the monuments and portraits are one day removed, the scars remain to uphold accountability. Author: Rachel Coulomb (MArch I 2022) Option Studio: Cancel Architecture Instructor: Preston Scott Cohen, Gerald M. McCue Professor in Architecture & Director of the Master in Architecture II Program Credits: Historic Columbia, South Carolina Parks, South Carolina Statehouse Art Collection Duration: 4 min, 48 sec  

Urban Mutualism: A Mushroom Farm in a Factory

Can a new factory tap on the emerging social consciousness about production and extend it to consider an object’s end of life, bringing awareness to this pressing issue of waste? In the design of a new urban factory in Zurich, we propose the introduction of a bioremediation facility where mushrooms are used to decompose plastic waste while producing new raw material, mycelium. The mushroom farm and urban factory, manifest as two diametric opposites; a solid dark heavy concrete core with a light 3-dimensional grid wrapped around. Yet their two processes synergistically feed into one another, forming a closed ecological loop within. For instance, waste heat from the factory is used to heat the mushroom farm while the cultivated mycelium replaces plastic packaging used in factory production. This duality proposes a new paradigm of production, one that doesn’t just perpetuate existing modes of practice but takes into consideration pressing concerns of life cycle, ecology and material use. Authors: Jonathan Ng (MArch I 2022) and Edda Steingrimsdottir (MArch I 2022) Option Studio: Spatial Infrastructures Instructor: Jeannette Kuo, Assistant Professor in Practice Duration: 3 min, 14 sec  

An Inclined Factory and Other Civic Stories

This project proposes a new urban factory building which contains a data center in addition to typical manufacturing activity, considering these as simultaneous invisible infrastructures. The proposal attempts to demystify this traditionally undetected urban activity to a wider public through the inclusion of a historically public program: a sauna. A public escalator passes through the production spaces, allowing a larger populace to experience the production activities without being able to physically access the spaces. The receding profile of the building accommodates a flexible range of spaces as the building’s depth in plan recedes and opens up the bathing sites along the river to unobstructed sunlight. The balconies that line the sloped face make the production activity visible in the urban realm. The exothermic data center and the endothermic sauna form a closed thermal loop with the river—water from the river cools the data center whose heat in turns power the sauna. Authors: Jacqueline Wong (MArch I 2023) and Daniel Haidermota (MArch I 2023) Option Studio: Spatial Infrastructures Instructor: Jeannette Kuo, Assistant Professor in Practice Duration: 4 min, 28 sec  

A Generosity Beyond Means

Mass housing faces the persistent challenge of creating economically accessible living spaces in increasingly densely populated cities. Driven by cost-savings, housing units are often devoid of elements that contribute to one’s quality of life, being perceived as indulgent rather than essential. Located in Boston’s Jamaica Plain, the project invites us to consider how the manipulation of space can be used to enhance our quality of life. It shifts our perception from an absolute scale or material wealth to the relationship between the subject and their surroundings. In doing so, we expand our definition of a quality living environment to one no longer limited by economic ability, therefore providing for all, a generosity beyond means. Authors: Jonathan Ng (MArch I 2022) and Edda Steingrimsdottir (MArch I 2022) Core Studio: Fourth Semester Architecture Core: RELATE Instructor: Ron Witte, Professor in Residence of Architecture Duration: 2 min, 53 sec  

Shifting Centrality

Monuments are able to draw power and prominence through their architectural and urban features. Its placement on a high pedestal above the horizon line and an urban roundabout all contribute to the visibility and statue of a monument. America is battling the existence of confederate monuments. Throughout the country, monuments are in states of either still standing, hidden away, desecrated, or half removed. The monuments are so imbued in the city’s urban fabric, with long axis leading toward monuments or entire parks built so that the monument could stand at its apex. Shifting Centrality investigates canceling these monuments’ power and re-purposing them back to the public by cutting off the fundamental aspects that give the monument power. The roundabout loop is cut off, reducing its function to a typical intersection, and the residual space allows for new public space and stage. The monument’s pedestal is then re-purposed as a projection room, redirecting focus to the stage. The pedestal becomes background, reducing its monumental nature. Utilizing the nationwide need to store these monuments away, the project uses the funding for that storage to create the stage. The stage alludes to the existing roundabout while providing an entirely new focus. Author: Benson Chien (MArch II 2021) Option Studio: Cancel Architecture Instructor: Preston Scott Cohen, Gerald M. McCue Professor in Architecture & Director of the Master in Architecture II Program Duration: 6 min, 20 sec   During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. View some images from the screening of these films below:

Selected Architecture Thesis Projects: Fall 2020

Five films showcase a selection of Fall 2020 thesis projects from the Department of Architecture.  

Pair of Dice, Para-Dice, Paradise: A Counter-Memorial to Victims of Police Brutality

This thesis is a proposal for a counter-memorial to victims of police brutality. The counter-memorial addresses scale by being both local and national, addresses materiality by privileging black aesthetics over politeness, addresses presence/absence by being more transient than permanent, and lastly, addresses site by being collective rather than singular. The result is an architecture that plays itself out over 18,000 police stations across America and the Washington Monument at the National Mall, two sites that are intrinsically linked through the architecture itself: negative “voids” at police stations whose positive counterparts aggregate at the Mall. The critical question here is whether or not the system in which police brutality takes place can be reformed from within, or if people of color need to seek their utopia outside of these too-ironclad structures. This counter-memorial, when understood as an instrument of accountability (and therefore a real-time beacon that measures America’s capacity to either change or otherwise repeat the same violent patterns), ultimately provides us with an eventual answer. Author: Calvin Boyd, MArch I 2020 Advisor: Jon Lott, Assistant Professor of Architecture Duration: 11 min, 2 sec Thesis Helpers: Shaina Yang (MArch I 2021), Rachel Coulomb (MArch I 2022)  

The Magic Carpet

The Persian Carpet and the Persian Miniature painting have served as representation tools for the Persian Gar­den and the idea of paradise in Persian culture since antiquity. The word paradise derives from the Persian word pari-daeza meaning “walled enclosure.” The garden is always walled and stands in opposition to its landscape. This thesis investigates the idea of a contemporary image of paradise in the Iranian imagination by using carpets and miniature paintings as a tool for designing architecture. The garden, with its profound associations, provided a world of metaphor for the classical mystic poets. One of the manuscripts describing the Persian garden is called Haft Paykar – known as the Seven Domes – written by the 12th century Persian poet called Nizami. These types of manuscripts were made for Persian kings and contain within them miniature paintings and poetry describing battles, romances, tragedies, and triumphs that compromise Iran’s mythical and pre-Islamic history. The carpet is the repeating object in the minia­ture paintings of the manuscript. This thesis deconstructs the carpet in seven ways in order to digitally reconstruct the miniature paintings of the Seven Domes and the image of paradise with new techniques. Author: Goli Jalali, MArch I 2021 Advisor: Jennifer Bonner, Associate Professor of Architecture Duration: 8min, 28 sec  

Up from the Past: Housing as Reparations on Chicago’s South Side

Do people know what the Illinois Institute of Technology and the South Side Planning Board and the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois and the United States government did to the Black Metropolis? If they know, do they care? Is it too hard to hold these entities accountable? If we held them accountable, could we find justice for those that were displaced? What would justice look like? What comes after Mecca? What types of spaces come after Mecca? Are they different than what was there before? Are they already there? What defines them? Can Reparations be housing? How many people are already doing this work? How many people are doing this work in academia? On the ground? Is the word “Reparations” dead? What do we draw from? Who is this for? Do white men own the legacy of the architecture that defined the Black Metropolis? How personal should this work be? How anecdotal? How quantitative? Does the design need to be inherently spatial? Or atmospheric? What should it feel like? How do I draw a feeling in Rhino? What are radical ways of looking? How do we reclaim racialized architecture? Do we? Should we even talk about these things? Author: Isabel Strauss, MArch I 2021 Advisor: Oana Stanescu, Design Critic in Architecture Duration: 4 min, 4 sec Soundtrack Created By: Edward Davis (@DJ Eway) Production Support: Adam Maserow, Evan Orf, Glen Marquardt Collaborators: Rekha Auguste Nelson, Farnoosh Rafaie, Zena Mariem Mengesha, Edward Davis (DJ Eway) Special Thanks: Caleb Negash, Tara Oluwafemi, Maggie Janik, Ann Whiteside, Dana McKinney Guidance: Stephen Gray, John Peterson, Chris Herbert, Cecilia Conrad, Lawrence J. Vale, Ilan Strauss, Mark Lee, Iman Fayyad, Jennifer Bonner, Mindy Pugh, Peter Martinez Collage Credits: Adler and Sullivan, Bisa Butler, Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, Deborah Roberts, Ebony G Patterson, Ellen Gallagher, Frank Lloyd Wright, Howardena Pindell, Jordan Casteel, Kerry James Marshall, Latoya Ruby Frazier, Lelaine Foster, Lorna Simpson, Mark Bradford, Mickalene Thomas, Mies van der Rohe, Nick Cave, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Romare Bearden, Sadie Barnette More Information: architectureofreparations.cargo.site  

Stacked Daydreams: Ceiling‐Scape for the Neglected

Elderly Care Adaptive Reuse of Hong Kong’s Vertical Factory This thesis operates at the intersection of three domains of neglect:

1. In the realm of building elements, the ceiling is often considered as an afterthought in the design process.
2. Across building types, the vertical factory sits abandoned and anachronistic to its surroundings. It spiraled into disuse due to Hong Kong’s shifting economic focus.
3. In society, the elderly are often subjected to social neglect, seen as a financial burden, and forced toward the fringes of society.

These parts experience obsolescence that led to indifference, and subsequently to boredom. I intend to draw the parallel of deterioration between the body of the elderly and the body of the vertical factory. Using a set of ceiling parts in the manner of prosthetics to reactivate the spaces into elderly care facilities, revert boredom to daydreams, and reimagine the concept of elderhood as an experimental second stage of life. Author: Zai Xi Jeffrey Wong, MArch I AP 2021 Advisor: Eric Höweler, Associate Professor of Architecture & Architecture Thesis Coordinator Duration: 4 min, 53 sec  

Citing the Native Genius

Reconstructing vernacular architecture in Hawai’i For over 120 years, Americanization has tried to demean and erase Hawaiian language, culture, and architecture. In contemporary discourse, the vernacular architecture of Hawai’i is mostly referred to as ancient and vague. As with many Indigenous cultures, Western perspectives tend to fetishize or patronize the Hawaiian design aesthetic. Within this hierarchy of knowledge is a systemic assumption that Hawaiian vernacular architecture cannot effectively serve as a precedent resource for contemporary architects. Those who do reference the original vernacular will often classify it as utilitarian or resourceful. Regardless of intent, this narrative takes design agency away from the people involved. As a corrective, a respectful use of vernacular domestic form would benefit designers that are struggling to connect with Hawai’i’s cultural and architectural traditions. Mining the European gaze and influence out of revivalist publications, archeological surveys and historic images reveal unique characteristics of Hawaiian domestic space. Geometric quotation and symbolic referencing are the foundational instruments in applying the discrete components, form, and organizational logic of the vernacular. The result is a design process that creates an amalgamation of decolonized form and contemporary technique. This residential project intends to revive Hawai’i’s erased domestic experience by revisiting the precolonial vernacular form and plan. Author: Taylor Cook, MArch I 2021 Advisor: Jeffry Burchard, Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture Duration: 5 min, 13 sec Special Thanks: Jeffry Burchard, Cameron Wu, Kanoa Chung, Nik Butterbaugh, Carly Yong, Vernacular Pacific LLC More Information: www.vernacularhawaii.com     During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. View some images from the screening of these films below:

GRASSROOTS: A Projection for International Womxn’s Week 2021

Projected on the facade of Gund Hall, GRASSROOTS asks the viewer to consider their own passions, histories, relationships, and voice. The questions focus on conceptions of roots, rootedness, care, support, needs, and change, which are all essential to grassroots action and growth. The words will be shone throughout International Womxn’s Week, and serve as a framework for Womxn in Design’s program of events. This year, we are reflecting on the ways those in our fields can undertake grassroots work, through their academic, professional, or extracurricular initiatives to both advance scholarship and break down long perceived barriers between ‘academic work’ and organizing, protest and other grassroots actions. Join us March 8 – 12 for workshops, care sessions, lectures, and panel discussions that call on all of us to, as our keynote speaker Ananya Roy has said, “produce scholarship that accompanies movements”.   Authors: Brittany Giunchigliani, she/her, MLA I ‘21 Ciara Stein, she/her, MUP + MLA I ‘21 Shi Tang, she/her, MLA II ‘21 Taylor Smith, she/her, MARCH ‘24 Xiaoji Zhou, she/her, MLA II + MDES ADPD ‘22 IWW Lead Team: Aggie Fielding (s/h), MARCH ‘23 Areti Kotsoni (s/h), MDES ULE ‘22 Berit Schurke (s/h), MLA I ‘22  Chloe Soltis (s/h), MLA I ‘21 Ciara Stein (s/h), MLA I + MUP ‘21 Morgan Vought (s/h), MLA I ‘22 Taylor Smith (s/h), MARCH ‘24 IWW Graphics: Shi Tang (s/h), MLA II ‘21  Xiaoji Zhou (s/h), MLA II + MDES ADPD ‘22 WID Co-Chairs: Brittany Giunchigliani (s/h), MLA I ‘21 Junainah Ahmed (s/h), MARCH ‘23 Shira Grosman (s/h), MLA I AP + MDES ULE ‘21 Generous Support From: African American Student Union (AASU) AfricaGSD  GSD Exhibitions GSD Radio Notes on Credibility Funding: GSD Career Services  GSD Communications Office GSD Student Services Thank you to all WID members, team leads, colleagues, friends, and family for making this week possible.  For the full list of International Womxn’s Week activities, please visit the Womxn in Design website. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Druker Design Gallery, Experiments Wall, and other exhibition spaces in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with installations shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. Watch some short clips from this film’s screening below:

Dual-Use: The function of a 21st century urban residential block

Four films highlight student work from Farshid Moussavi‘s Fall 2020 course, Dual-Use: The function of a 21st century urban residential block.  

Mutating Threshold

Home is commonly perceived as the limit between public and private, collective and autonomous. By mutating different types of working and living space, dual-use dwelling is inevitably confronted with the dilemma of privacy. An antique store owner might request more public exposure for their business while a writer, single parent might prefer a more intimate community for his or her children.    Though privacy is usually interpreted as the liberation from the burden of the social world, it does not mean absolute segregation or isolation. This project defines privacy as providing inhabitants the means to manage the balance between individuality and collectivity based on one’s preferences for sociability. It aims to fulfill different inhabitants’ definition for privacy meanwhile provides a spectrum of public space to create desired social embeddedness in a dual-use residential block.   Haussmann’s urban renovation created a splendid identity for Paris through designing buildings, blocks and the city simultaneously with a consistent language. However, this static and homogenous identity characterized with grand boulevards and unified facade doesn’t represent the diversity of contemporary Paris. This project explores how the diversity and inclusivity promoted internally in Haussmann’s block could be more expressive and engaging with the external urban context.  By Dan Lu (MAUD 2021) Duration: 2 min, 40 sec  

Thrive – An Ethos of Collaboration and Support

This project creates a dual-use housing block with a peripheral vertical core of shared spaces that help increase chance encounters, visual connections and promote collaboration between diverse users. However, on the opposite face, the block maintains a private living condition with inset balconies buffering one neighbor from another. All units in this housing block are unique, catering to the diverse live-work relations that different individuals require. The project primarily deals with four broad work types: trade, service and tech, manufacturing, and agriculture. On each level there is a mix of units for all these work types which further facilitates interaction between these diverse user groups. By Devashree Shah (MArch II 2023) Duration: 2 min, 53 sec  

Dual-Use Vertical Village

The coronavirus pandemic has fast-forwarded a scenario previously thought impossible: billions of people have adapted to working at home. People’s work modes change overtime. The amount of space that they need, the location of workspace and its relation with the rest of the apartment change. This project proposes a new hybrid model—one that is able to conjugate desire of intimacy and sociability, and the needs for live and work. It brings together qualities of both apartment block typology and single houses, and it serves as a catalyst for the proliferation of diverse lifestyles. The project proposes active, playful living space that can be transformed as desired, thereby accommodating a spectrum of scenarios. On the ground floor, the project opens domestic architecture to the surrounding city. The inner street provides a new urban experience lined with shops and outdoor seating. Shared terraces on upper levels are spaces of conviviality that welcome the formation of social ties. At the unit scale, workspaces have been integrated into each unit in different ways. Four spatial strategies are employed to transform the apartment units: separate, split, expand and alternate. Rotating and sliding partitions empower residents to reconfigure their interiors as their lifestyles change overtime. By Qin Ye Chen (GSD MArch I 2022) Duration: 3 min, 32 sec  

Dual-Use

Dual-Use negotiates habitat, preservation, and biodiversity in the center of Paris, while creating a new and needed unit mix in one of the most tense real estate markets in Europe. La Petite Ceinture is 32 km long track-line circuiting Paris that originated in the 1850s and lost its purpose in the 1930s. Since then, a corridor for vegetation unfolded. This project imagines a reactivation of La Petite Ceinture by encouraging the cultivation of vegetation and other species, as well as creating a pedestrian promenade that introduces are coexistence of both. The site is located along a 200 m long segment of La Petite Ceinture, in the 19th arrondissement. The track is elevated 5 m above ground and is covered by vegetation and framed by large trees. While leaving the elevated track untouched, pockets are attached on both sides that house communal centers, working spaces, and entrance lobbies on the ground-floor. Residential buildings are being elevated above the track, framing the tracks below. Between building and ground, the structure bundles to minimize its foundation impact. The diagonal structure resists lateral forces as well as establishes a dialogue with the plants in between. Based on sun exposure, soil depth, and height potential, the location of the plants is designated. Consequently, La Petite Ceinture is repurposed as a public garden that attracts animals and the local neighborhood. It is being activated through the voltage of residents above and public spaces bellow, as well as the extension of the tracks in both directions that can morph into a pedestrian infrastructure circulating Paris. While the structure is embedded in the facade, a free floor plan allows a range of unique apartment perimeters while maintaining continuous vertical shafts for wet spaces and kitchens. Each apartment has two entrance doors and a bended living room. This configuration provides a greater flexibility; short term it can facilitate parallel uses, and long term it enables for resizing households. The design has been developed by Erik Fichter. Feasibility studies and pro forma have been developed in a partnership between Erik Fichter and Tristan Battistoni. By Erik Fichter (MArch I AP 2022) Duration: 4 min, 33 sec   During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. View some images and short clips from the screening of these films below: