2/9/23 note: Schedule change:

Lecture: M 2-5 in N52-399
Lab: F 2-5 in N52-399

This design-research and fabrication workshop invites both students with research interests and those with fabrication skills to join in the design development of an installation in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. The class will travel to Venice to install over spring break.

The approved installation design proposal combines two-dimensional line drawings of maps and timelines of the African diaspora into a three-dimensional space-time field centered on the diasporic settlement of diasporic working women.

For a brief historical period during the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic workers were recognized as “essential workers,” however, the period of honoring them for the risks they took so that the privileged class could remain safe at home was brief and eclipsed by the rush to normalcy. Domestic workers are essential to the functioning of capitalist economies, yet most receive low wages and lack access to critical services.

The workshop will consist of interrogation, development, and fabrication in two tracks: one for the development, and material fabrication of a design concept; and one for research on women in the African diaspora, cities, settlement, and labor. Both tracks are essential to the installation and development of the design components. Students may opt to focus on one or the other.

Workshop participants will continue the development of an approved design concept and material studies from the 2023 IAP on the same subject. The goal is to produce a full-scale woven construction that concretizes linear drawings and maps in explorations of cord (lengths of thread, filament, and rope) held in tension by an armature supported from above.

The BLACK City explores the dynamics of race, housing segregation, and Black community building in American cities over time. The BLACK City Editions explore both general and specific conditions of Blackness in America by representing socio-spatial phenomena that reflect customs, laws, and events at the national and local scales from gentrification to restrictive covenants to racial expulsions and sundown towns to the enduring topographies of segregation and integration.

This workshop extends research on the Black City through the lens of gender.

The intent of the workshop is to spatialize the systems that produce racialized female identities while also revealing female agents and moments of transactional agency within architectural and urban contexts. The installation as an architectural object will reveal hidden systems and provide a setting for participants to explore the process of tracing pasts, situating presents, and projecting futures.

Undergraduates welcome.
 

2/7/23: Note: Recitation room changed to 9-450A

This class is a pre-approved Architecture + Urbanism elective for Spring 2023.

The Drawing Together Practicum is a social and ecological resilience effort in New York City that explores new methods to scale community participation in urban design. Bringing together Green City Force (GCF), NYC public housing residents, MIT faculty, students and researchers, this practicum will demonstrate a community-led planning and design process for the siting, co-design, and operation of community spaces, Eco-Hubs, using new digital platforms. GCF’s Eco-Hubs align local green services for food, water, waste and energy behavior change and neighborhood transformation strategically with local, city, state, national and global goals for climate and equity.

Alongside building a digital framework to scale-up community engagement in existing and future Eco-Hubs, we will engage in conversations about the role of technology and digital skills in workforce development training. Expanding on GCF’s capacity-building strategies and through guest lectures from experts in workforce development, and green economy employers, students will discuss the potentials for creating a sustainability-focused, data science curriculum that supports farm development and operations as part of GCF’s workforce training program.

Introduces a range of practical approaches involved in evaluating and planning sites within the context of natural and cultural systems. Develops the knowledge and skills to analyze and plan a site for development through exercises and an urban design project. Topics include land inventory, urban form, spatial organization of uses, parcelization, design of roadways, grading, utility systems, off-site impacts, and landscape strategies.

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.

Examines the evolving structure of cities and the way that cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas can be designed and developed. Surveys the ideas of a wide range of people who have addressed urban problems. Stresses the connection between values and design. Demonstrates how physical, social, political and economic forces interact to shape and reshape cities over time. Introduces links between urban design and urban science.

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.

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.