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.

Place is location, but it’s also people, relationships, and memories, the site of things forgotten, suppressed or unrecorded, terrible and ordinary ways of being. The experience of people and peoples who have migrated, been displaced or exiled add further complexity to place: perhaps, an unshakeable orientation to elsewhere or a sense of in-betweenness; or, a simultaneous yet imperfect belonging to both here and there, to neither here nor there; an intermittent or constant feeling of being entirely out of place. What is a diasporic sense of place, how do we image or describe it, and how might it reimage space and place to define a territory for spatial practice?

This workshop is part of Self and Work, a series that began in 2018 as part of Experiments in Pedagogy at MIT Architecture. Self and Work centers the personal, the body, and lived experience as site of knowledge.

We will study work by authors and artists whose lives and works are profoundly influenced by their own relation to place. Forms that give direction to the semester project are: cartography, annotation, oral history, installation, film. An experimental approach to critique is central to the workshop and will be discussed and shaped as part of the process. Collaborative work will be encouraged.

Territory as Interior — Economies and Ecologies in the Barbanza Peninsula aims to link architectural and territorial design. We have a dual objective: to propose economic and productive activities which contribute to revitalize the Barbanza peninsula in Galicia (Spain), and to investigate technologies of construction that use local material resources. Students will initially research and map the area's key economic sectors and resources and then they will propose a building that combines the productive activity they find most crucial with the use of critical local materials.

Introduces advanced topics in building simulation for design and control of envelope and thermal systems for architects, engineers, environmental consultants, and beyond. Students will gain conceptual knowledge and technical skills to drive design decisions based on environmental performance. The focus of final design projects will be to reduce operational energy usage and carbon intensity. Course format will include a combination of traditional lectures, hands-on exercises, and design project development.

Contemporary urban theory and studies of the city generally tend to revolve around the examination of issues: inequality (economic, ethnic, gendered); the role of various “-isms”  (capitalism, liberalism, neoliberalism, colonialism, etc.); Foucauldian ideas of biopolitics and territory; migration of various sorts; environmental factors; data. Very few analyses appear to take stock—and in many cases demonstrate much understanding— of how cities work, i.e. the mechanisms and institutional structures through which all the above issues manifest themselves. This course is designed as a historical and theoretical introduction to the basic mechanisms that govern the making and working of cities, which otherwise, given their large variety and unevenness of types, defy any viable ontological definition (hence the title above). Through a series of case studies showing the evolution of these features across the world, successive weeks are designed to take seminar participants through a step-by-step understanding of the functional elements that make up a city: the idea of economic base (entrepots, industry, services, markets, and so on); interest groups; the making of land markets; legal statutes as to property and jurisdiction; the basis of authority; rent gradients (their invention and spread across the world); the political economy of transportation and logistics; fiscal structure and revenue (including zoning); the provenance of projects; security (police, fire and hygiene risks); and the institutional economics of (biopolitical) provision (housing, utilities, schooling, etc.). Students taking the course can expect themselves to be equipped with a technical, if not entirely neutral, grammar that will enable them to assess their interest in issues with the actual mechanics of urban functioning or dysfunctioning, as the case may be.

12/4/24 Update: class will now meet MW 10-1, room 13-1143

4.s37 UG | 4.s33 G

Introduction to basics of biomimicry and natural algorithms in computational design and artificial life. You don’t have any prior programming or modeling software experience is needed. Advanced folks will be accommodated on an individual project-based track.

Students learn about the cultural and visual implications of automation and biotechnological advancements driven by computational technology, exploring their aesthetic significance through data and algorithms.

This is a beginner’s guide to ethical solutions to design problems in computational design and data concerning nature through visualization and art. It considers the broader impact of design decisions on communities, society, and culture.

This is a low-level, beginner-friendly introduction to the basics of data visualization in processing and Python, biomimicry, agent-based systems in Grasshopper visual coding and C#, and animation in Maya.

This course investigates the interdisciplinary and generative possibilities of publication, emphasizing its role as a practice of expanding public engagement and imagination. Throughout the semester, students will explore worldmaking strategies, speculative fiction and an array of publication methods ranging from traditional techniques—leveraging ACT and MIT’s extensive resources such as riso printing, book binding and maker labs—to experimental approaches in digital media, performance, political systems, architecture, contemporary art, design, and AI.

Rooted in the definition of publication as the act of ‘making public,’ this course offers an opportunity to experiment with the collective meaning-making strategies of editorial work through and beyond printed matter. Participants are encouraged to bring in their personal research and projects to develop them with the lens of artistic publication. The semester culminates in a collective exhibition or public representation of the work produced.
 

UG: 4.368; G: 4.369

Focuses on the production of artistic interventions in public space. Explores ideas, situations, objects, and materials that shape public space and inform the notion of public and publicness, with an emphasis on co-production and cooperative ethics. Examines forms of environmental art in comparison to temporal and critical forms of art and action in the public sphere. Historical models include the Russian Constructivists, the Situationists International, system aesthetics, participatory and conceptual art, contemporary interventionist tactics and artistic strategies, and methods of public engagement. Students develop an initial concept for a publicly-situated project. Includes guest lectures, visiting artist presentations, and optional field trips.

Additional work required of students taking graduate version. 

UG: 4.s30  G: 4.s35

An introduction to the tools and concepts of capturing and transitioning forms between the human scale and nanoscale. The generation of simulation-based art projects reflects these explorations and the ways they can be used in the context of art, culture, and technology. What dialogs can engage with society when operating on sub-visible scales or taking forms from the nano into the human macro scale, creating artistic simulations, motion from form, or form from motion?

Students will collaborate with MIT Nano on final projects intended for public exhibition in a gallery setting.

4.341 UG | 4.342 G

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. Lab fee required. Limited to 20.