How can insights from choreography inform more just and equitable ways of urban planning? In what ways can choreography help us to decolonize the urban landscape? How can choreography make us attentive to a community’s emotional, cultural and corporeal memory? How can dance, as a three-dimensional bodily practice, help us to move beyond scripted spaces and codified routes? These are the questions we tackle in Choreographing the City, a course developed with Theatrum Mundi, prof. Richard Sennett and CAST-supported MIT visiting artist and choreographer Dr. Adesola Akinleye.

Both choreography and planning organize time and space to shape movement; both emerge through practice and experience; and both have physical and social outputs as well as constraints. Looking at the interdependencies of these terms, this class will generate an interdisciplinary dialogue between choreographic and spatial practices. Through readings, group discussions and creative practices, the class participants will mobilize choreography as an epistemological tool in order to 1) expose the colonial remnants on which the city rests, 2) emphasize the climate-induced changing structures of the city, and 3) open up pathways towards a decolonized and fair urban commonwealth.

Additional work required of students taking graduate version.

Focused on the practices of varied practitioners — film directors, artists, musicians, composers, architects, designers — whose writings relay a process of thinking and feeling integral to their forms of material production. Testing various ways aesthetic forms and their shifts — historic and contemporary — have relations to still emerging contemporary subjectivities (felt emotion in a human body), the class studies productions created by participants and case studies of varied producers, and generates new work individually and/or collaboratively via diverse media explorations. Includes reading, writing, drawing, and publishing, as well as photographic, cinematic, spatial, and audio operations productions. Activities include screenings, listening assignments, and guest visits, in addition to readings, discussions, and presentations.

Examines the technical and conceptual variables and strategies inherent in contemporary video art practice. Analyzes structural concepts of time, space, perspective, and sound within the art form. Building upon the historical legacy of the moving the image, students render self-exploration, performance, social critique, and manipulation of raw experience into an aesthetic form. Emphasizes practical knowledge of lighting, video capturing and editing, and montage. Presentation and critique of student work, technical workshops, screenings, and reading discussions assist students with final project.

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

Introduces advanced strategies of image and sound manipulation, both technical and conceptual. Covers pre-production planning (storyboards and scripting), refinement of digital editing techniques, visual effects such as chroma-keying, post-production, as well as audio and sonic components. Context provided by regular viewings of contemporary video artworks and other audio-visual formats. Students work individually and in groups to develop skills in media literacy and communication.

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. 

Advanced Photography and Related Media is a studio seminar course which addresses Historical Memory and the Politics of Representation. The course is designed for students who wish to explore photography and related media as tools for artistic practice. Students are encouraged to explore analog, digital and new technologies while researching and studying visual strategies used in photography, film, art and visual culture at large. 

Through lectures, readings, film screenings, student-driven projects, guest lecturers’ presentations and critique sessions, students experiment with a range of artistic strategies. Throughout the semester they engage in cross disciplinary research and work on a project individually or collaboratively. On a weekly basis, students discuss theoretical texts related to various artistic practices, cutting across a range of media and various historical contexts. 

Students are encouraged to work with a diversity of media and formats including film, video, sculpture, multimedia installations etc., providing images/photography remain central to their projects. Students from various disciplines are invited to enroll. 

This course is open to all students with a background in photography or any related media - Introduction to Photography or the equivalent. Students from various disciplines are encouraged to enroll and submit a portfolio of 15+ images of previous works. 

Introduces history and contemporary practices in artistic photography through projects, lectures, artist visits, group discussions, readings, and field trips. Fosters visual literacy and aesthetic appreciation of photography/digital imaging, as well as critical awareness of how images in our culture are produced and constructed. Provides instruction in the fundamentals of different camera formats, film exposure and development, lighting, black and white darkroom printing, and digital imaging. Assignments allow for incorporation of a range of traditional and experimental techniques, development of technical skills, and personal exploration. Throughout the term, present and discuss projects in a critical forum.

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. 

AI technology is being developed, deployed, and used in a growing number of domains to perform complex tasks such as driving cars and speech recognition; actions that could only have been performed in the past by humans. A recent study by McKinsey Global Institute estimates that about 70% of companies will have adopted at least one type of AI technology by 2030, and that 60% of current occupations can be automated in the next 10 years. Therefore, AI could potentially become the most disruptive technology in human history and will have profound impacts on every aspect of our lives, especially on the technology design and labor market. 

Recognizing the critical role that AI will play in defining the future not only of technology, but also geopolitical interactions, many countries now regard AI as a national priority. The United States launched the American Artificial Intelligence Initiative in 2019 with the mission to promote its leadership in AI research, development, and application. One of the eight national strategies identified in this initiative is to “provide education and training opportunities to prepare the American workforce for the new era of AI”.  

X Machine is a mini accelerator workshop course designed to unite computer science and design/architecture together to create innovative and impactful technological solutions to problems in the built and human environment. This half semester course promotes the development of strategic thinking and technical exploration in the realm of AI, with a focus on problem framing and early-stage ideation. The course will provide students with an opportunity to extend a foundational knowledge of AI within an interdisciplinary context. Working in small teams, students will incorporate design thinking approaches that put the user at the center of the creative process as they develop AI-empowered technological solutions. Teams will work on the ideation and conceptualization of either a product, process, or service-based solution that solves real world problems. Students will learn how to design and create a prototype, learn how to maximize their engage with their users/customers, and learn how to determine the value proposition that will make the startup successful.

By the end of this class, student will be able to develop a conceptual business plan for an AI-based technology solution and apply for other programs at MIT such as Sandbox, DesignX, The Engine, etc. 
 

Biodiversity is declining worldwide, driven foremost by the intensification in land management and the transformation of natural areas for agriculture, production forestry, and settlements. Urban areas have doubled since 1992 and, in comparison with 2020, are projected to expand between 30% and 180% until 2100, depending on the scenario applied. Notably, most of the urban growth is often located in regions of high biodiversity and affects ecosystems far beyond urban areas, through resource demands, pollution, and climate impacts. Therefore, biodiversity conservation in urban areas needs to be shaped in a way that supports global conservation efforts. This course introduces the relationships between urban environments and biodiversity, how urban biodiversity influences ecosystem functions and underlying services that affect human well-being and whether urban habitats are hotspots or ecological traps (or neither) for biodiversity. The course will focus on six key topics: Socioeconomic and social ecological drivers of urban biodiversity, urban biodiversity response to technological change, relationships with ecosystem services, urban areas as refugia, spatiotemporal scale in urban biodiversity assessment, and ecological networks. The course will answer several questions such as: which synergies and trade-offs among biodiversity and ecosystem services exist in urban areas, which factors drive the relationships between socioeconomic, and environmental drivers with biodiversity at different spatial scale, and how do urbanization-induced changes in ecological network complexity and diversity affect ecosystem functions.

As there are gaps in our understanding critical to improving biodiversity conservation policies and management in urban areas that need to be filled to improve global biodiversity outcomes. Students will work on developing strategies for improving and managing biodiversity in three cities in Colombia.

Working on three cities in Colombia, students will various data types to first assess the performance of existing biodiversity policies, design methodology for biodiversity management in urban areas using novel approaches such as aerial technology and artificial intelligence, and develop a research framework to accommodate biodiversity conservation with urban areas and highlight ways forward at the science-policy interface. Throughout the class, students will gain skills to understand how to improve urban habitat mapping; (2) integrate multiple urban gradients in the biodiversity assessment framework; (3) using satellite data and AI based methods to improve our mechanistic understanding of the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services; and (4) approaches to extend the involvement of citizens in biodiversity management in urban areas.  The course is meant to provide a solid framework, broad overview, and a rich set of references for future pursuits involving urban biodiversity.

This course is assumed that enrolled students are interested in learning about and discussing the topic of urban biodiversity. Although the course will generally cover the topic of urban biodiversity and urban ecology, it will be flexible enough to allow for individual student outreach into topics of specific interest with regard to urban, big data, AI applications in urbanizing areas.

A workshop that explores the identity of Western/Modern Architecture through four lenses (Objects, Modes, Positioning, and Agency) from a cultural studies perspective. In each section, we will analyze the ways that the field of architecture mediates and constructs spatial forms and spatial knowledge.

In Objects and Modes, a range of material tropes may be explored from machine aesthetics, structural rationalism, vaporization (transparency, whiteness), object v. space, model v. analogue, abstraction v. ornamentation, etc.  In Positioning and Agency, polemics by which the discipline is identified may be explored including autonomy, agency, socio-spatial subjectivities, public v. private hierarchies, duration v. temporality, etc. 

The course will be structured by group discussions of assigned readings and precedents that will inform several experiments in form that explore threshold conditions defined by each student. All experiments will be modeled and represented orthographically. Each student will select one experiment to be fabricated (at a scale to be determined). The goal is to parallel the analysis of texts with an analysis through making.

How can we expand the capacity for architecture as a discipline to address heterogeneous visions and desires? The spaces we inhabit are social constructions that begin in the mind before they are materialized as objects and spaces. This course explores connections between thought and forms in a non-linear manner along two adjacent and conversant paths. Each theme introduced is considered through the lens of the standard cannon of Western/Modern Architecture: Architecture + “X”. The primacy of Western/Modern thought and forms has been predicated on an (often) absent “other.” In a turn toward a heterogeneous understanding of the discipline, the themes are also considered through the lens of power relations and hierarchies ( i.e. what the cannon leaves out: Architecture + “X” + subordination).

Readings and discussions are intended to guide discussions and production that asks “What is below the surface of forms (objects, buildings, spaces)? Readings encourage looking beneath the formal language of objects, buildings, and spaces, to ask “By what social relations and confluence of ideas did this come to be?” Assignments encourage looking at the formal language of objects, buildings, and spaces, to encourage individual formal explorations of the themes and issues uncovered in the texts. The workshop is intended to encourage productive discussions between the two modalities on the creation of ideas and forms historically and in the moment.

This course continues the Imprint publication workshops begun in 2020, which led to the student-designed and produced Imprint 01 & 02 last year. This class will help conceive the Imprint 03 publication, and a student team will be hired from its members to produce the publication in Summer 2022. This spring's class will function in a workshop format with three primary goals: 1.) To help students engage and acquire skills needed to conceive and produce a complex graphic design project like Imprint; 2.) To help students ask, and answer fundamental questions guiding this year's publication’s strategy: What can a book be? Who decides? And how does one curate a selection of essays in an edited volume or journal?; 3.) To catalyze exploration, and engagement with the intricate connections between text and image authorship in publications across design history. The class will be an opportunity (for all students in each graduate degree area in the Department of Architecture) to reflect on previous Imprint issues, revise the project’s structure and future goals, and as a way for new students to get involved in bringing the Imprint 03 project forward in summer 2022.