Master/Piece workshop will study 3 buildings that are considered seminal in contemporary architecture, built by architects that remain active in practice. We will discuss why those works are key and the chain of reactions and trends that detonate in architecture culture, their traces and impact in peers and in other projects. We will focus deep in the conceptual to constructive scales and the masters will join the class to culminate the analysis and conversation.

This part-seminar, part-workshop looks to identifying changing patterns of creativity across the arts under influence of new technical apparati (phono, photo, filmic…) looking to trace the emergence of rule-based generative processes and their accelerating proclivity via current computational media. While there is evidence of parametric praxis as far back as the Roman engineer, Vitruvius, and iterative geometric processes implicit in historic Islamic and Oriental art forms, it is in the late 19th century and early 20th century that vivid new modes of auto-poietic praxis take hold, as if aspiring to a far greater degree of machinic salience. The resulting artworks - literary, sonic, kinetic, plastic - quite radical in their disjunctive form, were often scorned as bizarre in their novelty and aspiration. Yet their influence, looking to exceed intuition and direct creative aptitude in favor of symbiotic (human-machine) drives, was formative for modes of avant-garde production early C20th, and extends to ever-more normative generative practices late C20th and early C21st. As computation then absorbs all such prior disruptive apparati, imbuing them with powerful generative potency, so such lineage seems destined to become established, even dominant, in mainstream patterns of production and reception. We will look at a variety of cultural fields, but architecture will be the prime focus here, since despite being held to be slow to adapt to technical change, one finds pioneering works that offer plastic counterpoint to more agile literary or kinetic art forms...

This seminar component encourages looking backwards to vivid pioneers of auto-poiesis (in areas of your choosing), intending that you recognize that such creative method is vital to the final artwork (how working in a new manner leads to a new art-form). But pivoting to the workshop component, this prompts a looking forwards in you attempting precisely-indeterminate formative-isms, deploying such insights into creative experimentation via a now-digital imagination (whether using a computer or not). The lineage of experimental creativity intends to offer framing to new aptitude and imagination, and to theorize changing artistic motivations under influence of emerging technologies, as a means to release auto-poietic aptitude in your own work. At root is the idea that creativity or design is not static, but shifts through history under influence of the various technical systems that society adopts, none more powerful than the  current shift to digital media. This invites profound changes in cultural production and reception, aided by gaining insight into prior autopoietic habitudes as a key to emerging creative drives: it requires technical acuity and aesthetic openness.

Note:  For spring 2022 BSAD and Design minor students can take 4.s00 as a restricted elective in place of 4.043. Consult your advisor for details. Design Intelligence is a new subject that introduces students to a practical, hands-on approach to machine learning and artificial intelligence. Providing a new lens through which to engage machine learning through aesthetic, form-finding and behavior, the course introduces students to topics such as k-nearest neighbors, regression and classification, neural networks, and generative adversarial networks, as well as how to collect and prepare data for training their own models. Situated within a graphic, product and interaction design context, students will learn to develop a new kind of creative practice that not only actively engages in shaping the future of artificial intelligence, but is also instrumental in addressing its biases and failures in creating a more equitable and just society. 

Introduces critical theories and contemporary practices in the field of urbanism that challenge its paradigms and advance its future. Includes theoretical linkages between ideas about the cultures of urbanization, social and political processes of development, environmental tradeoffs of city making, and the potential of design disciplines to intervene to change the future of built forms. Events and lecture series co-organized by faculty and doctoral students further engage and inform research.

Introduces a range of practical approaches involved in evaluating and planning sites within the context of natural and cultural systems. Develops the knowledge and skills to analyze and plan a site for development through exercises and an urban design project. Topics include land inventory, urban form, spatial organization of uses, parcelization, design of roadways, grading, utility systems, off-site impacts, and landscape strategies.

Focuses on the synthesis of urban, mixed-use real estate projects, including the integration of physical design and programming with finance and marketing. Interdisciplinary student teams analyze how to maximize value across multiple dimensions in the process of preparing professional development proposals for sites in US cities and internationally. Reviews emerging real estate products and innovative developments to provide a foundation for studio work. Two major projects are interspersed with lectures and field trips. Integrates skills and knowledge in the MSRED program; also open to other students interested in real estate development by permission of the instructors.

Examines ways urban design contributes to distribution of political power and resources in cities. Investigates the nature of relations between built form and political purposes through close study of a wide variety of situations where public sector design commissions and planning processes have been clearly motivated by political pressures. Lectures and discussions focus on specific case studies of 20th-century government-sponsored designs carried out under diverse regimes in the US, Europe, and elsewhere.

Examines the evolving structure of cities and the way that cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas can be designed and developed. Surveys the ideas of a wide range of people who have addressed urban problems. Stresses the connection between values and design. Demonstrates how physical, social, political and economic forces interact to shape and reshape cities over time.

Students continue to work in their venture teams to advance innovative ideas, products, and services oriented to design, planning, and the human environment. Presented in a workshop format with supplementary lectures. Teams are matched with external mentors for additional support in business and product development. At the end of the term, teams pitch their ventures to an audience from across the school and MIT, investors, industry, and cities. 

Examines innovations in urban design practice occurring through the work of leading practitioners in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. Features lectures by major national and global practitioners in urban design. Projects and topics vary based on term and speakers but may cover architectural urbanism, landscape and ecology, arts and culture, urban design regulation and planning agencies, and citywide and regional design. Focuses on analysis and synthesis of themes discussed in presentations and discussions.