Research and project activities, which cover the range represented by the various research interests and projects in the department. Students who wish a letter grade option for their work must register for 4.URG.

Research and project activities, which cover the range represented by the various research interests and projects in the Department.

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 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.

Students will explore the design potential of building thresholds, passages, and openings. Every threshold is on the verge of–. Choosing and isolating a threshold allows for an in-depth study of the passage between interiors, and exteriors, and of the in between space itself. For example, in Marcel Duchamp’s door 11 rue Larrey from 1927, the threshold is an opening to, a closure of, and as such it holds the space between both conditions.

In their threshold (re)designs, students will explore multiple threshold design options–each approached through a different tectonic lens. The variations will be supported by two studies: 1. an exploration of a range of cross-cultural threshold precedents drawn from editions of GA Detail, Global Architecture, El Croquis, and when possible, detailed vernacular and classical examples to establish the tectonic lenses; 2. An exploration of material, spatial, and atmospheric properties and qualities, and the bodily performances required of the passage.

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 are informed by repetition, variation, and singularity (uniqueness). Examples are the chance compositions of John Cage and the wall drawings of Sol Le Witt. Other models for this exploration include 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 class will draw from these examples to devise constraints and rules to conceive of and structure thresholds.

Since the threshold selected by student is from an original design that was given much consideration previously, each new speculation suggests alternative design approaches and potentials for the original building design, and, for their future approach to design in general.

The sequence of weekly meetings intends to scrutinize typical atmospheres that tend to surround designers along with the design process. In other words, it is the world affecting architects and pushing them to react by producing architectural propositions. Following a series of proposed 14 topics (as listed below), the discussion will be guided with the purpose of checking their pertinence and validity. Exactly how it happens in a design process, those topics are presented as a first outline, to gain a sharper contour throughout the sequence of discussions. The focus will be on the design process, specifically on the successive moods it inescapably implies.

For over thirty years my academic and professional activities have been closely related to this research. The book: Sao Paulo, reasons for architecture, resulting from my PhD, focuses on how experiencing a city impacts in one’s way to imagine architecture, but it was informed directly and reflects continuously in everyday practice of designing.

Topics (on process)

1. about design process
   (a supposedly infallible method that, by definition, can never be completed)
   (on source, design as a tool to apprehend the world)
2. design as reading (the language of the physical world, given or constructed)
3. design as walking (promenade is an architectural experience)
4. design as talking (a sequence of dialogues and its specific way to record it)
   (design and abstract thinking)
5. design and concept (the strength and permanence of an idea before becoming a thing)
6. design and precision (geometry and aesthetic rigor, lineaments)
7. design and imagination triggers (genealogy of imagination; abstract thinking)
   (on concepts)
8. design and purpose (know why and know what)
9. design and synthesis (an increasingly demanding filter)
10. design and tolerance (cultural and industrial meaning)
11. design and dissolution (as dissemination of meanings)
12. design opposes to alienation (purpose, pleasure, engagement, fulfilment are require
    (on the nature of architecture)
13. architecture is an open source (vulnerability and strength)
    (on architecture and humanism)
14. architecture to refrain human madness 
    (For Alberti, architecture takes one single task of refraining the madness that dominate mankind; M. Tafuri)

Structure

The dynamic of the classes would be:

• each topic will be introduced in the previous session to allow a week to students for preparing evidences or references (texts, drawings or images) for the discussion in the following week.
• each session will start with students’ presentations followed by discussions; at the end of each session, a short lecture will introduce the topic for next session;

Pedagogical Objectives

The attempt of naming typical moods, strategies and dilemmas potentially experienced along with a design process, has two clear goals:

• to make students more familiar about crossing different moods in the process.
• to made students more comfortable dealing with uncertainties, unknowns, fallibilities, errors; in short, all that one has been trained to avoid.

Students select thesis topic, define method of approach, and prepare thesis proposal for SMArchS degree. Faculty supervision on an individual or group basis. Intended for SMArchS program students prior to registration for 4.THG.

This edition of the class will be structured around four key debates: 1) the city and the urban, 2) spatial forms of the political, 3) world systems and urban economies, and 4) environmentalism. We will analyze these topics both cross-historically and cross-geographically, consistently moving between historical and contemporary urban formations.

The class will explore these four questions by examining the various artifacts and mechanisms that make up the urban environment (infrastructures, buildings, plans) and the spatial structures they generate. Throughout, we will consider cities as part of broader processes of territorial structuring, investigating how cities depend on these processes for their functioning while also contributing to their shaping.

The class debates will be complemented by an individual, semester-long design-research project, which will be discussed through presentations and dedicated workshops.
 

Preparatory research development leading to a well-conceived proposition for the MArch design thesis. Students formulate a cohesive thesis argument and critical project using supportive research and case studies through a variety of representational media, critical traditions, and architectural/artistic conventions. Group study in seminar and studio format, with periodic reviews supplemented by conference with faculty and a designated committee member for each individual thesis.

Builds on Core I skills and expands the constraints of the architectural problem to include issues of urban site logistics, cultural and programmatic material (inhabitation and human factors), and long span structures. Two related projects introduce a range of disciplinary issues, such as working with precedents, site, sectional and spatial proposition of the building, and the performance of the outer envelope. Emphasizes the clarity of intentions and the development of appropriate architectural and representational solutions.