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

2/3/23 Note: Room change from 5-216 to 7-429 (Long Lounge)

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

Geo—Design aims to articulate the “geo—” (from the Greek gaîa for 
“earth”) and to bring it to bear on the agency of design in a world facing climate change. Such ability to respond, or response-ability, requires a  shift from the framing of the planet as “global” and “common” to ground, situated, and diffract geography, climate, and technology. Geo—Design  also begs a transformation of the framework through which design engages the Earth and climate––of the concepts, scales, domains, modes  of representation, methodologies, and formats of work. Approached as such, design acts as media between the geographic and technological, within what it means to represent and to live with the Earth in ethical  deliberation and in aesthetic practice. 

Act I: What planet are you on? The Globe as Data Model 

From this critical moment on, the good old-fashioned Earth may no longer be envisaged in terms of natural dimensions, but is rather to be conceived of as a colossal work of art. It was no longer a foundation but instead a construct; it was no longer a basis but instead a vessel. 
― Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, 1968.  

The term “geodesign” has a history in the global vision of a “Whole Earth” or “Spaceship Earth.” In the Cold War, the large-scale deployment of satellite technologies and increased computational capacity made it possible to view the Earth as an interconnected whole, both visually—through the iconic “blue marble” photograph—and conceptually, through the use of global computer models and simulations. In landscape architecture, regional land use and planning, and other environmental design fields, the term geodesign, as framed by Jack Dangermond and Carl Steinetz, has come to describe the application of such computational tools, and in particular geographic information sciences, to model, visualize, and analyze ecological systems within design workflows.  

The climate crisis has brought the Earth once again as a site, system, and an artifact for disciplinary thought and action. Over the past thirty years since the establishment of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has gone from 352 Parts Per Million (PPM) to 417 PPM in 2022. In 2006, Paul Crutzen—Nobel Laureate in chemistry and coiner of the term “Anthropocene”—noted with alarm the “grossly unsuccessful” policy efforts to get anthropogenic greenhouse emissions under control and posited climate engineering—the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the environment—as the “escape route.” Beyond mitigation and adaptions, geoengineering has come to refer to heterogenous, mostly hypothetical, set of technologies that extend modern weather control technologies—ranging from cloud seeding to mimicking volcanic eruptions with aerosol stratospheric injection through Cold War large-scale weather Arctic modification schemes, and carbon dioxide sequestration in the deep layers of the earth and the ocean.  

Critics on the Left have warned that with it’s easier to imagine the deliberate transformation of the entire planet than that of our political economy. Enthusiasts for a ‘good’ Anthropocene have seen in “today’s unprecedented crises an opportunity to invest in nature,” in the words of the new European Bauhaus Earth initiative; an enthusiasm echoed in other Masterplanet portfolios of project pitches. Beyond critics and enthusiasts of geoengineering, the abstraction of climate change into an archetypal global problem has shaped a planetary promissory response, with little attention to the specificities of the geographies of deployment or to the histories of each climate technology.  

No one lives on the globe. This model, we are often reminded, is a hypothetical Archimedean viewpoint of an outside from which an “objective” agent, standing at a point that is firm and immovable, can move the entire construct. The global imaginary had legitimatized Imperialism and the forced displacement of matter—humans, plants, animals, molecules, and technologies—across the planet. The depleted globe has since become a reflection of the paradoxicality of global governance—a scientific consensus on global warming and the failure to take action on the climate. Where does geo-design “land” amidst and beyond the violence of such planetary abstraction?  

Act II: Down to Earth

There is no Earth corresponding to the infinite horizon of the Global, but at the same time the Local is much too narrow, too shrunken, to accommodate the multiplicity of beings belonging to the terrestrial world. 
― Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, 2018. 

The climate crisis calls for a form of inquiry and engagement that is down to Earth.  
The course Geo—Design is an inquiry into models and imaginaries that seeks to open other practices on how to engage with climate, geography, and design. In doing so, geo-design reckons with geopolitics—both the old geopolitics of nation states competing for their interests and a new called for geo-politics, which “is not about human politics overlaid on the Earth’s static frame, but politics concerning contradictory portions, visions, aspects of the Earth and its contending humans.” In this respect, the course asks: How might designers work assiduously from the midst of such systems and situations—grapple with and inherit the planetary mine and plantation—to reclaim a future still worth living? How does design think speculatively (like a planet?) around proposed interventions in earth systems? And what kinds of worlds are such proposed programs or projects likely to produce 200 years from now? 

Act II is informed by contemporary scholarship on the Earth, such as the “terrestrial,” “planetary,” and “world,” and explores approaches to climate and technology in geo-philosophy, geo-humanities, geo-aesthetics, and geo-engine. In particular, it engages the work of Bruno Latour (Down to Earth), his exhibitions (Reset Modernity! and Critical Zones) and his engagement with the political arts (in performance, see Trilogie Terrestre; and in architectural speculative cartography, see Terraforma).  

Act III: An Uncommon Planetarium

We need researchers able to participate in the creation of the responses in which the possibility of a future that is not barbaric depends. 
―Isabelle Stengers, In Catastrophic Times, 2015. 

Act III proposes to “diffract” and “situate” the geographies of climate change and of proposed climate engineering solutions within a series of sites of concern that are iconic to the global imagination such as the “global commons”. Each week grounds a climate engineering technology—speculative or deployed—within its own history and in a specific relevant geography. The sites include: Mount Tambora (volcanic eruption, aerosol injection into the stratosphere), Amazonia (carbon offsets, deforestation, and fires), Arctic (glacial melt/ Surface Albedo Modification), Pacific Ocean (ocean acidification, salmon, and deep-sea mining), Indian Ocean (Monsoon, Cloud Seeding, Sky Rivers). Each pairing of - geography/technology will serve 1) to ground the crisis into specific geographies; 2) to unearth the ecological and political controversies brought forth by the climate crisis and proposed climate engineering solutions; and 3) to explicate a design research method on earth matters—air, water, ice, vapor, carbon, rock, trees.  

Throughout, the course draws on and discusses the work of designers who seek to reclaim the Earth towards new geo-political engagements and deploy an array of media towards that—visual description, material sensors, computational processes, building, forensic reports, community activism, speculative narratives, institution building, and various combinations thereof of. Practices include: Formafantasma, Andres Jaque–Office for Political Innovation, Cooking Sections, Susan Schuppli, Paulo Tavares, Lindsay Bremner, WAI Think Tank, Design Earth, Harrison Atelier, Peter Fend, Lateral Office, Cave Bureau, Terreform ONE, Liam Young, Nerea Calvillo, Studio Folder, Karrabing Film Collective, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, amongst others.  

In a semester-long design research, each student produces their own research on controversies surrounding a specific geography of concern/geoengineering technology of concern as it is impacted by the climate crisis. Students will develop this design research in textual, graphic, and model form, including interviews with experts at MIT and beyond. The final submission format is a planetarium that mediates your design research findings to a broad audience. This format learns, amongst other references, from Smout Allen’s model-devices and Formfafantasma’s Cambio exhibition and publication. 

4.s22 Syllabus (MIT Certificate protected)

Focuses on understanding the emerging field of human-centered design and its approach to real-world design challenges. Through group working sessions, design reviews, and presentations by leading design practitioners, thinkers, and business leaders, the class explores core methodologies on how design brings value to human experiences and to the contemporary marketplace. 

For Spring 2023, serves as 4.051 restricted elective.

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.

Introduces critical theories and contemporary practices in the field of urbanism that challenge its paradigms and advance its future. Includes theoretical linkages between ideas about the cultures of urbanization, social and political processes of development, environmental tradeoffs of city making, and the potential of design disciplines to intervene to change the future of built forms. Events and lecture series co-organized by faculty and doctoral students further engage and inform research.

Examines the complex development of cities through history by tracing a diachronic accumulation of forms and spaces in specific cities, and showing how significant ideas were made manifest across distinct geographies and cultures. Emphasizes how economic, spiritual, political, geographic and technological forces have simultaneously shaped and, in turn, been influenced by the city. 

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.

Preliminary study in preparation for the thesis for the SMArchS degree in architecture design. Topics include literature search, precedents examination, thesis structure and typologies, and short writing exercise. 

Note 1/30/23: Schedule change from TR 1-6 pm to TR 2-6 pm.

As the US population continues to relocate to sunbelt states, Phoenix has become one of the fastest growing metros in the country. This influx of new people during recent extreme droughts has pushed water resources and heat impacts to their limits; Phoenix is now the hottest city in the US. For those who still live in the urban core, the lack of shaded landscape and abundance of heat absorptive building materials has produced dangerous living conditions. Our studio is tasked with the challenge of designing “cooling” infrastructure, through architectural and landscape, while providing housing solutions for the inner loop neighborhoods of Phoenix. We will examine the inner loop of Phoenix to reimagine how new landscapes, infrastructures and housing typologies can be combined for “cooler,” safer, and healthier living.

This joint urban studio presents a new pedagogical model that brings together planners (DUSP students) and designers (ARCH) around a shared urban challenge. The studio will be offered as 2 study modules. The first module, which takes place over 6-7 weeks and includes a spring break trip, will focus on research -‘reading’ the metro landscape through analytical representation and mapping, and then further programming and writing a project brief which will inform design projects goals and parameters. The second module, which takes place over the following 6-7 weeks, will advance the learnings and briefs created in the first module to work on the design project in two groups. Working collectively, one group will develop a vision plan for the future of the inner city loop, and the other will be working on designing a ~60 unit housing cluster within an existing ‘loop’ neighborhood. As a whole the studio, through its research and design components, seeks to promote new approaches to urban living that address environmental, social, and economic challenges as presented by the Phoenix inner loop.