UG: 4.032, G: 4.033

Provides an introduction to working with information, data and visualization in a hands-on studio learning environment. Studies the history and theory of information, followed by a series of projects in which students apply the ideas directly. Progresses though basic data analysis, visual design and presentation, and more sophisticated interaction techniques. Topics include storytelling and narrative, choosing representations, understanding audiences, and the role of designers working with data. 

Graduate students are expected to complete additional assignments. 

Provides instruction in architectural design and project development with an emphasis on social, cultural, or civic programs. Builds on foundational design skills with more complex constraints and contexts. Integrates aspects of architectural theory, building technology, and computation into the design process. 

Introduces the tools, techniques and technologies of design across a range of projects in a studio environment. Explores concepts related to form, function, materials, tools, and physical environments through project-based exercises. Develops familiarity with design process, critical observation, and the translation of design concepts into digital and physical reality. Utilizing traditional and contemporary techniques and tools, faculty across various design disciplines expose students to a unique cross-section of inquiry.

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.

“Architecture &” is a course framework that situates architecture (and cities) relative to a shifting subject that ranges from material, light, use, limits, time, memory, narrative, posthumanism, thresholds, etc.

This course is an exploration of the later stages of architectural design that occurs in architectural detailing and construction mock-ups. To initiate this course, students will select a building threshold from a project that they have previously designed and use it as a basis to produce 5-10 new threshold variations. The threshold variations will be a detailed response and study of select architectural precedents. For the final project, students will select one threshold design to build a physical model at full (or half) scale.

This course offers students the opportunity to explore the design potential passages, openings and closures. Choosing and isolating the threshold allows for an in-depth study of the passage between interiors, and exteriors, and the space in between. Each threshold is on the verge of; as illustrated in Marcel Duchamp’s door 11 rue Larrey from 1927, it is both an opening to and closure of and holds the space between two conditions.

Students will design and detail openings in response to atmospheres and spaces and inhabitants. Students will also explore multiple design options as each design will be approached through a different tectonic lens. Students will not redesign the entire building—only the threshold. Since the threshold is from a design that each student gave much consideration previously, each speculation on the threshold design hints toward alternative design approaches and potentials for building design.

The approach to tectonic studies is informed by a range of precedents from literature, mathematics, art, music and architecture. In art and music, instructional compositions informed by repetition, variation, and singularity (uniqueness) from the chance compositions of John Cage to the wall drawings of Sol Le Witt. Other models for this exploration are the books Elements of Style by Raymond Queneau and 99 Variations on a Proof by Philip Ording, two works that begin with a simple premise that is reinvented one hundredfold by a new set of principles, techniques, contexts, and histories.

Queneau the cofounder of OuLiPo (workshop of potential literature) begins with a narrative, while Ording begins with a theorem, yet each uses the same method to generate new perspectives of the original through an exploration of style. The OuLiPo group applied constraints and mathematical rules to conceive of and structure narratives. Architectural precedents will be drawn from editions of GA Detail, Global Architecture, El Croquis, and when possible, detailed vernacular, traditional African, Islamic, Japanese, and European examples. 
 

Master/Piece wordshop will study 6 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.

Note: The first meeting of this class is on Monday, February 12

Building towards a campus-wide climate corps, this workshop will host students who want to engage in campus and community-based climate projects. Students from across MIT will come together to develop ideas and design prototypes that respond to climate and climate justice imperatives, working with campus and community-based class collaborators. The workshop is part of the multi-year Civilian Climate Corps Initiative (MCCCI), conceived as a pilot for an annual course. Students will have the opportunity to engage in multi-faceted design of “climate pilots” at the intersection of climate, community and careers, learn from experts engaged in these facets of design on our campus and in the local communities of Cambridge and Boston, and from each other through reflection and teamwork. The project will respond to three major themes of farms, heat risk, and green careers. Students will be able to choose the “climate pilot” they would like to work on. Students with their own projects that fit the criteria may email the professors.  The course is open to undergraduate and graduate students from across the Institute. Key collaborators will include MITCCCI partners PowerCorps Boston; Eastie Farm, and the MIT Office of Sustainability (MITOS); and other campus and community partners. 

Students have the option to take the course for 3 or 9 units. In-class time will be devoted to guest lectures and group work. Out of class, students taking the course for 9 units will conduct weekly reflections, research, and work with each other, with site visits to get to know the organizations and sites. Students taking the class for 3 credits will conduct weekly reflections and make targeted contributions to team projects. 

Undergraduate: 4.s37 | Graduate: 4.s33

This hands-on studio class will expose students to the technical skills needed for successful screen printing. Students will produce single and multicolor prints on paper and fabric using a variety of methods.

This is an H1 Half-Term Subject which meets February 5 - March 22, 2024 (includes final exam period)

If the architectural drawing moves something unknown to something known (from vision to building), the reverse could be said of the architectural survey.

The potential of the architectural survey lies in its mobilizing of something known into unforeseeable future uses (from building to visions). This course centers on recasting the architectural survey from conveyor of building facts to instrument for building stories. Operating somewhere between the limits of absolute truth and virtual truth, our research will aim to uncover new ways of engaging architecture’s relationship to vision, documentation, and the art of renewal (or preservation) against the backdrop of racial, economic, and material conditions in the turn-of-the century South. More specifically, the site of the course will be Tuskegee University and the legacy of Robert R. Taylor, the first accredited Black architect, MIT graduate, and designer and builder of a significant portion of the campus’s brick buildings.

Students will consider Taylor’s work both in the present context and its inception under Booker T. Washington’s leadership.

In addition to rigorously surveying a building through traditional and non-traditional survey methods and media, students will engage Taylor’s legacy through on-site field work paired with archival research. Observations will be filtered through distinct ways of looking to describe an existing building not as it is but as it is seen by the student. The results, a set of unconventional as-built drawings, will question and advance visuality as architecture’s essential resource.

For this course, travel is required and will take place prior to the start of the spring semester (Sunday 1/28-Thursday 2/1). The travel week will involve a mix of tours, teaching, discussions, and on-site surveying. Following our travels, class days are formatted around lectures, readings, discussions, tutorials, desk and pin-up critiques.