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.

In an AI-enhanced future, humans will become better at everything. The machine targets real-world artificial intelligence challenges designed to help address issues related to climate change, and urbanization in cities. X Machine is an accelerator workshop designed to bring computer science and architecture together to create the most innovative and impactful technology solutions. The program's aim is to provide mentorship and technical support, with a focus on the problem statement and early-stage technology design ideation.

Undergraduates welcome.

The Professor has been steering a start-up housing group (DECOi) looking at automated composites via robotics. As part of this, they have developed design>build software to be able to generate complex detail quickly enough to keep pace with automated production. This has involved a highly skilled team of programmers and digital architects, mostly from MIT: Marc Downie (Media Lab PhD), Jorge Duro-Royo (Media Lab PhD), Kii Kang (SMArchS Computation), with framing and oversight offered by Professor Mark Burry, who pioneered parametric modeling for the Sagrada Famila in Barcelona over 30 years ago. As yet, this has focused on accelerating design>build capability, but all of the team members have a keen interest in how computation alters design imagination, and all have flirted with rule-based generative processes in their architectural work. All are intrigued by AI as it applies to design, yet there are as many versions of what AI "is", or might be.

The workshop aims to probe these differences, with students selecting what they feel are salient opportunities to develop some aspect of generative spatial/material aptitude, in the hope that it starts to offer clarity by being worked through into actual designs. The general premise is that the rule-based generative processes that emerged late C19th and steadily developed through the C20th are already taking hold in mainstream practice, and are destined to become the dominant mode of architectural production C21.

Students will be asked to step into speculative design protocols to gain insight into some aspect of auto-generated objects or buildings. The DECOi team is friendly, daring, and very team-oriented. There is no real expectation of computation as it's more adopting a creative mindset; but there is certainly a rare team of computational expertise to draw upon.

What we are finding is that once there is a high-speed and exact generative capability, so things like energy analysis, life-cycle analysis, techno-economic analysis can also take place "in seconds", offering technical feedback during the design process, which seems to be a real breakthrough. We also see opportunity for real-time co-design with clients, or even self-design in deploying the parameters offered by a cloud-based generative system. This seems to then offer potential for a vast expansion of architectural expertise, which currently involves itself in just 2% of global buildings! The expansion of architectural expertise and the liberation of design practice is then also an area that will merit our collective discussion, perhaps couched in terms of environmental benefit.

The Castaways Brick Fogon Fabrication Workshop is a direct extension of the spring 2024 Spoon Climate Studio & Workshop exploring the material properties and circularity of ‘waste’ brick. The Fall 2024 Fogon Workshop will be specifically focused on a selected, single brick stove design from the studio that was developed over the summer, and how it is fabricated in San Gregorio, a traditional farming community of chinampera farmers in Mexico City. The Workshop will continue to work with Cocina Collaboratorio, a local non-profit and will hold online reviews and discussions with local members of the San Gregorio community who will use the fogon.

The fogon, a traditional open hearth and wood cooking stove has its origins in Mesoamerican Nahuatl culture and family life. The development of the selected fogon design and its fabrication raise intriguing challenges: the fogon must mediate heat for cooking, hold cooking utensils, safely channel smoke in a chimney, be structurally stable and be scaled in size to provide a public gathering place for inter-generational cooks to prepare and share traditional food for community events.

The Workshop offers a hands-on opportunity to learn how an unconventional material—broken and irregular waste brick—can have new life in a functional prototype that can be replicated and adjusted as needs be on additional sites in San Gregorio. Students will produce detailed fabrication documents, brick jigs and layout tools and innovative instructions for building the fogon. The Nahuatl language has no word for ‘waste,’ which inspires a larger scale circularity project that represents how this ‘waste’ brick fogon could include local brick makers, undervalued forms of wood for fuel, and excess food harvested from local restaurants and chinampas. The Workshop will travel to Mexico City during a portion of the IAP period in January 2025 to build the fogon.