Provides instruction in architectural design and project development within design constraints including architectural program and site. Students engage the design process through various 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional media. Working directly with representational and model making techniques, students gain experience in the conceptual, formal, spatial and material aspects of architecture. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication provided.

Introduces fundamental design principles as a way to demystify design and provide a basic introduction to all aspects of the process. Stimulates creativity, abstract thinking, representation, iteration, and design development. Equips students with skills to have more effective communication with designers, and develops their ability to apply the foundations of design to any discipline.

4.314 U / 4.315 G

Examines artistic practice as a form of critical inquiry and knowledge production. Offers opportunity to develop art as a means for addressing the social, cultural, and ecological consequences of technology, to build bridges between industry and culture, and to challenge the boundaries between public and private, and human and non-human. Provides instruction in evaluating models of experimentation, individual research, and collaboration with other disciplines in the arts, culture, science, and technology. Supports the development of individual and collective artistic research projects. 

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

Fencing is both the act of collective recognition and appropriation of a portion of land or physical space: it is the act of its delimitation and separation from the rest of the world-nature. It establishes the two topological, imaginary, geometric, technical regions of outside and inside. It formulates the problem of the mental or physical constitution of the limit, of the boundary and its violation. An act of architecture par excellence, the enclosure is what establishes a specific relationship with a specific place and at the same time the principle of settlement by which a human group proposes its relationship with nature-cosmos. But the enclosure is also the form of the thing, the way it presents itself to the outside world, through which it reveals itself.

In the opening editorial of Rassegna, published in 1979, Vittorio Gregotti proposes a theme that can be considered the manifesto of both a way of understanding the discipline and of questioning its boundaries. Architecture is primarily understood as the effort of a multitude. While evoking a primordial act of territorial conquer, the emphasis is on the collective and ritual nature of the gesture. Both act and form, the enclosure doesn't produce a solitary figure nor an abstract, generic principle. Its presence is always in relation to a particular place. It establishes a new order and generates a new equilibrium within a given territory. Further on, the editorial argues for the need to redefine the notion of enclosure at the highest possible level of abstraction, recognizing how its definition in terms of pure function (that of preventing the crossing of a body, a gaze, a law...) is what allows apparently disparate objects to be brought together under a single notion. The catalogue of examples that follows is actually rather heterogeneous and incomplete. Its limitation is also its generosity: we feel entitled to expand it and pick up Gregotti's discourse where he left off.

Enclosures is a studio focused on the architecture of the perimeter. It intends to stimulate an in-depth research into the possibilities generated by the fundamental act of delimitation. The project will be explored as a selective device, producing certain conditions of inclusion and exclusion, creating and erasing connections, sustaining acts of separation and suspension, enabling detachment and otherness. Opposing the dominant conception of architecture as production of singular — self centered — objects, the studio will stress the dialectic nature of the enclosure in relation to an underlying notion of context. The activity of the studio — ideally conceived as an appendix to Rassegna 1 — will be organized around three main tasks: a collective work of iconographic collection, the construction and manipulation of an organized taxonomy of case studies, and the development of site-specific proposals.

"Architecture is sometimes polarized between two disciplines - art and technology. We try to apply this
expression towards the architecture of the earth. We are now in the era of the ‘tabula pronta’ - where the
earth is ready and there is no need for a blank canvas; we just have to live with it.”

ARCHITECTURE OF THE EARTH is a space to bring in harmony. A testing ground that seeks
to connect new emerging technologies with nature to create a distinct yet familiar architecture. It
is through this intimate encounter that we can understand, learn and unlearn, maybe then
innovate.

Architecture of the Earth explores the creative resources that are shaped by the environment we
inhabit. We need to learn to manipulate the existing ground with common forces and energies
that constitute the spatial event, without causing irreparable damage. This will give rise to art
and experiments that can be transformed into a new standard language of building across the
world. This process of design will allow students to explore the immense complexities that are at
play. It would also develop skills of observation and analytical outlook that architects need to
develop to read the spaces that the principle generates.

While design is frequently deployed as a problem-solving instrument, it can unintentionally result in ethical dilemmas and unanticipated outcomes. This course uniquely combines the critical lens of art with the transdisciplinary framework of DesignX, promoting introspection and thoughtful deliberation before diving into design solutions. This class initiates a collaboration between ACT and the Morningside Academy of Design through DesignX. Students engage with a transdisciplinary ensemble of influential speakers. The lecture series also allow students to innovate and explore a social impact design. Undergraduates are welcome. 

4.s36 Syllabus (MIT Certificate Protected)

9/6/23 - first meeting of class will be in room 7-336 (previously listed as 3-329)

(pre-approved for MArch Urbanism elective Fall 2023)

Through this class, students will explore the idea of creating a "climate corps" for MIT: a way for students (and potentially alumni) to take action for climate and environmental justice on campus and in Cambridge and greater Boston community, while building skills and experience.

The class will involve robust stakeholder engagement (fellow students and student groups, alumni, faculty, staff, administration, community partners ...) and the delivery of recommendations and scenarios for the creation of an MIT Climate Corps. MITOS will be 
either the client or at the least a close partner to the class.

Undergraduates welcome.

(pre-approved for MArch Urbanism elective Fall 2023)

he last decades have seen the relentless acceleration of planetary-scale environmental and social challenges. Phenomena as widespread urbanization, human-induced climate change, or the operationalization of natural landscapes interrogate both the agency and the limits of architectural practices. The goal of this workshop is to explore how our architectural responses to the local impact of those planetary phenomena can trigger new forms of spatial and political organization — a possibility we will refer to as cosmopolitical design. 

We will study the idea of cosmopolitical design by investigating the relations between seven main areas of action: 1) Geovisualization, geoknowledge and geoimagination; 2) Architecture After Planetary Urbanization; 3)Territorial Design Across Scales; 4)Ecology as Planetary Praxis; 5)Climate Cosmotechnics; 6)Autonomy and Cosmopolitics; and 7)Decolonization and Cosmopolitics. Together, these seven areas aim to situate the local interventions that constitute the core of architectural practice as catalysts of broader processes of spatial and political structuring.  

The workshop is conceived as a collective design-research exercise, combining lectures, discussions and workshop sessions. In the lectures we will see how each of the seven aforementioned topics acted as a trigger of planetary-oriented architectural practices during modernity, and we will start reflecting upon and questioning the resulting modes of spatial production. Our discussions will build upon the lectures and upon a highly plural body of literature including thinkers from across the planet. We will read texts exploring the ideas of critical cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitics, cosmotechnics, pluriversality, world-ecology and decolonization.  

At the beginning of the course, each student will select a topic of design-research, conducing to the final production of a small individual book. Our emphasis will be on the production of strong and consistent visual narratives. Together, we will explore the synergies and convergences between your research topics, and conclude the term gathering the exercises in a collective volume. 

Clients, funding, consultants, contracts–architects are enmeshed in financial mechanisms that forever remind us of our direct reliance on local and global economies. Money talks and architecture follows: our work articulating the interests of those served while fluctuating with the rapidity of the market. And while this relationship may be fixed, perhaps we can find ways to resist its normative logics, which exacerbate social inequalities and consolidate power in the hands of the few and the privileged. This workshop will explore alternative economies and financial arrangements to find ways to re-code capitalism’s tendencies, desires, and outcomes. We’ll draw from a range of writing–from queer theory to post-colonial studies to literary criticism–to undo dominant financial orientations.

We will ask whether in addition to designing architecture, we can also design the market that demands architecture – to produce economic scenarios under which we might build. Each week we will pair readings in economic anthropology (studying how economies are shaped by behavior, cultural values, and social relationships), texts from other disciplines, and case-studies to invent atypical demand-chains, work against models of optimal performance, and instrumentalize culture to undercut efficiency. We will look at how we might produce clients, programs, and actor networks rather than responding to the whims of the market. We will consider how we might think of economic arrangements as tools for designers.

We will read, write, and compile a compendium of research for a publication on the topic. Students are encouraged to find broad reaching examples–from the domestication of post-war military technology to the proliferation of sharing economies to recent trends in reuse and the circulation of materials.

We will focus on buildings, materials, and products, largely drawn from North America in the 20th and 21st centuries, but may also look further afield. The course will focus on real examples of immaterial and material phenomena, inventing new languages and representational strategies along the way.