Simply printing drawing from rhino may prompt a journey across three software platforms, two licensing pools, a handful of file formats, a user authentication, a deposit of $1.50, and a toolpath actuation which transcribes the data onto a sheet of paper as six hundred discrete droplets of ink per square inch. 

A large network of operations stretch across this relatively mundane action of labor, greased by the accommodations of our many software infrastructures. While many design softwares are envisaged as open “sandbox” environments, their being a conduit to labor often has users using software as a means to an end, while common use-cases ultimately direct the attention of future developments. The well-worn cartography gets vertically integrated with telescopic functionalities, while vast territories of potential intersection remain unrepresented and illegible. 

This course views the experimental technique and unsuspected intersection as a site for new artistic and political potentials. Rather than reverse engineering a desired outcome to a sequence of software protocols, we are proposing to consider new software protocols first and to discover what they produce. This approach is designed to complicate standard user-profiling while expanding our notions of what software-mediated design can look like. 

In an effort to deprioritize content and prioritize process, we will be centering the class around an archive of flower photographs. The method is as follows: Every participant will choose an image of a flower from the archive. Each image will be subject to a digital transformation of one’s choosing. The network cartography of each technique will be diagrammed. We will meet to see everybody’s flowers and discuss their techniques. The manipulated flower will then be exchanged for another’s, where 2,3, & 4 will be repeated. 

This class will be held as a joint project between the GSD J-Term and MIT IEP, facilitated by Zachary Slonsky (GSD MArch) and Aisha Cheema (MIT MArch). In the first meeting, we will walk through an example of this process being carried out between us two. Each image and diagram pair will be formatted to the page of a recipe book. At the end, these pages will be compiled, printed, and bound. The collective result will form an archive of deviant network practices, experimental techniques, and pretty flowers. Each participant will receive a physical copy. We hope to see you there!

This Site Planning practicum coincides with the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—a pivotal moment for New Orleans and for MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). Over the past two decades, DUSP faculty, students, and alumni have supported the city’s recovery and resilience efforts through long-term partnerships and planning initiatives.

The studio will re-engage with New Orleans through the lens of corridor-scale resilience, focusing on how underrecognized neighborhood/commercial corridors can adapt to climate and social challenges such as heat, flooding, and energy vulnerability. Students will develop Corridor Resilience Action Plans for three areas, building on the 2016 New Orleans Main Street Resilience Plan, while exploring neighborhood connectivity and how urban design, equity, and identity intersect. 

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 that 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 public and private sector design commissions and planning processes that have been clearly motivated by political pressures, as well as more tacit examples. Lectures and discussions focus on cases from both developed and developing countries.

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. Registration limited to students accepted to the MITdesignX accelerator in the fall.

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.

Weds the theory and practice of city design and planning as a means of adaptation with the insights of ecology and other environmental disciplines. Presents ecological urbanism as critical to the future of the city and its design, as it provides a framework for addressing challenges that threaten humanity — such as climate change, rising sea level, and environmental and social justice — while fulfilling human needs for health, safety, welfare, meaning, and delight. Applies a historical and theoretical perspective to the solution of real-world challenges.

Utopias, Camps, and the Architecture of War, is proposed as a design-research workshop that examines the layered histories of Terezín as a way to think critically about how architecture participates in the making of trauma, memory, and recovery. Conceived as a fortified utopian city and later transformed into a Nazi transport camp, Terezín embodies the shifting functions of urban space and architecture as both agent and witness. Its bastions, mounds, and urban fabric are not merely remnants but active carriers of political and historical meaning. By tracing the trajectory from fortification to camp, from architecture of war to the ongoing dilemmas of inhabitation, memorialization, restoration and reconstruction, this workshop foregrounds the ethical and epistemological challenges of engaging with sites where architecture itself was complicit in violence.

The studio is offered as collaborative project together with confirmed participating architecture schools: Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic (lead by Veronika Sindlerova); TU Dresden, Germany (lead by Angela Mensing-de Jong); Technion -Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (lead by Eliyahu Keller, Aaron Sprecher). Pending on funding, students should be prepared to travel to the Czech Republic and Germany during spring break.

Class meets in-person every spring term.

Program of thesis research leading to the writing of an SB thesis. Intended for seniors. Twelve units recommended.