4.286 Interrogating Sustainability

Instructor: John Fernandez and Mark Jarzombek
Telephone: 617-253-5266, 617-258-440
Office: 5-418B, 10-303A
Send e-mail: fernande@mit.edu, mmj4@mit.edu

Units: 3-0-6
Level: H
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor

F 9-12, room 1-134

This seminar counts as both a BT and an HTC course

In recent years Sustainability has come under increasing criticism for its lack of historical and theoretical depth. This course will hope to address not only this issue, but also the broader question of what we mean by “environment” as a social, technological, and cultural construction. We will review a range of literature on the environment and ecology with a particular interest in those issues that pertain to architecture and building practices. We will study issues of management, philosophies of the Natural Science, Sick Building Syndrome as well as recent developments in eco-architecture and as the changing attitudes to nature. We will read recent theoretical approaches such has Risk Society by Ulrich Beck as well as the literature by William McDonough, Lester Brown, Mike Jenks, Richard Ingersol and others, including the work of earlier urban theorists, such as Constanatine Doxiades and sociologists Robert E. Park. The seminar will be structured around a series of debates around the topic.