Classes

Studies design as an interrogative technique to examine material sciences, media arts and technology, cultural studies, computation and emerging fabrication protocols. Provides in-depth, theoretical grounding to the notion of 'design' in architecture, and to the consideration of contemporary design methodologies, while encouraging speculation on emerging design thinking. Topical focus varies with instructor. May be repeated for credit with permission of department.

Studies design as an interrogative technique to examine material sciences, media arts and technology, cultural studies, computation and emerging fabrication protocols. Provides in-depth, theoretical grounding to the notion of 'design' in architecture, and to the consideration of contemporary design methodologies, while encouraging speculation on emerging design thinking. Topical focus varies with instructor. May be repeated for credit with permission of department.

Provides a practical hands-on introduction to digital fabrication, including CAD/CAM/CAE, NC machining, 3-D printing and scanning, molding and casting, composites, laser and waterjet cutting, PCB design and fabrication; sensors and actuators; mixed-signal instrumentation, embedded processing, and wired and wireless communications. Develops an understanding of these capabilities through projects using them individually and jointly to create functional systems.

Provides a practical hands-on introduction to digital fabrication, including CAD/CAM/CAE, NC machining, 3-D printing and scanning, molding and casting, composites, laser and waterjet cutting, PCB design and fabrication; sensors and actuators; mixed-signal instrumentation, embedded processing, and wired and wireless communications. Develops an understanding of these capabilities through projects using them individually and jointly to create functional systems.

Provides a practical hands-on introduction to digital fabrication, including CAD/CAM/CAE, NC machining, 3-D printing and scanning, molding and casting, composites, laser and waterjet cutting, PCB design and fabrication; sensors and actuators; mixed-signal instrumentation, embedded processing, and wired and wireless communications. Develops an understanding of these capabilities through projects using them individually and jointly to create functional systems.

Provides a practical hands-on introduction to digital fabrication, including CAD/CAM/CAE, NC machining, 3-D printing and scanning, molding and casting, composites, laser and waterjet cutting, PCB design and fabrication; sensors and actuators; mixed-signal instrumentation, embedded processing, and wired and wireless communications. Develops an understanding of these capabilities through projects using them individually and jointly to create functional systems.

Explores the foundations of design through a series of bracketed methods of production. These methods exercise topics such as form, space, organization, structure, circulation, use, tectonics, temporality, and experience. Students develop methods of representation that span from manual to virtual and from canonical to experimental. Each method is evaluated for what it offers and privileges, supplying a survey of approaches for design exercises to follow. First in a sequence of design subjects, which must be taken in order.

Explores the foundations of design through a series of bracketed methods of production. These methods exercise topics such as form, space, organization, structure, circulation, use, tectonics, temporality, and experience. Students develop methods of representation that span from manual to virtual and from canonical to experimental. Each method is evaluated for what it offers and privileges, supplying a survey of approaches for design exercises to follow. First in a sequence of design subjects, which must be taken in order.

Explores the foundations of design through a series of bracketed methods of production. These methods exercise topics such as form, space, organization, structure, circulation, use, tectonics, temporality, and experience. Students develop methods of representation that span from manual to virtual and from canonical to experimental. Each method is evaluated for what it offers and privileges, supplying a survey of approaches for design exercises to follow. First in a sequence of design subjects, which must be taken in order.

Explores the foundations of design through a series of bracketed methods of production. These methods exercise topics such as form, space, organization, structure, circulation, use, tectonics, temporality, and experience. Students develop methods of representation that span from manual to virtual and from canonical to experimental. Each method is evaluated for what it offers and privileges, supplying a survey of approaches for design exercises to follow. First in a sequence of design subjects, which must be taken in order.

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.

Core 2 provides students with conceptual tools and practical skills to address contemporary social and environmental issues with architecture’s means of operation. Considering various temporalities while designing an intervention in the Strand Theater in Dorchester, the studio aims to address diverse subjectivities and ecological practices through the organization of movement and flows of subjects and material. As a pedagogical strategy, the studio will distinguish three main systems of organization (program, circulation and structure) and encourage students to consider how they could overlap, be integrated, or remain differentiated as they relate to issues of order, choreography, tectonics, form, space, event and experience.

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.

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.

Interdisciplinary approach to design through studio design problems that engage the domains of building technology, computation, and the cultural/historical geographies of energy. Uses different modalities of thought to examine architectural agendas for 'sustainability'; students position their work with respect to a broader understanding of the environment and its relationship to society and technology. Students develop a project with a comprehensive approach to programmatic organization, energy load considerations, building material assemblies, exterior envelope and structure systems.

Interdisciplinary approach to design through studio design problems that engage the domains of building technology, computation, and the cultural/historical geographies of energy. Uses different modalities of thought to examine architectural agendas for 'sustainability'; students position their work with respect to a broader understanding of the environment and its relationship to society and technology. Students develop a project with a comprehensive approach to programmatic organization, energy load considerations, building material assemblies, exterior envelope and structure systems.

Interdisciplinary approach to design through studio design problems that engage the domains of building technology, computation, and the cultural/historical geographies of energy. Uses different modalities of thought to examine architectural agendas for 'sustainability'; students position their work with respect to a broader understanding of the environment and its relationship to society and technology. Students develop a project with a comprehensive approach to programmatic organization, energy load considerations, building material assemblies, exterior envelope and structure systems.

Interdisciplinary approach to design through studio design problems that engage the domains of building technology, computation, and the cultural/historical geographies of energy. Uses different modalities of thought to examine architectural agendas for 'sustainability'; students position their work with respect to a broader understanding of the environment and its relationship to society and technology. Students develop a project with a comprehensive approach to programmatic organization, energy load considerations, building material assemblies, exterior envelope and structure systems.

When designing for the child, architects must attempt to put themselves in the mind of their younger selves with invention, imagination, investigation, and exploration serving as primary drivers. The classroom becomes an experiential space where children are encouraged to discover and understand their relationship to the world around them. The focus of this intensive studio is the design of educational spaces for children culminating in a public K-2 dual-language primary school in Boston.

Students will delve deep into the pedagogy and process of dual-language learning through architectural form, daylight, and environment. Dual-language schools are grounded in an approach to teaching young children their home language as well as English, in parallel. In addition, they provide essential resources, serving as de-facto community centers to families within immigrant communities. This is especially important today, as populations of refugees and migrants seek asylum in cities like Boston.  

As practicing architects, we synthesize detailed information and multiple ideas in the design of buildings. The studio will promote programmatic and formal invention through an iterative design process that is grounded in deep engagement with how people use and experience architecture. How do we create architecture that bridges the relationship between the child and their community?

“Perhaps our largest challenge [as teachers] is to overcome the fear of disequilibrium – our own and that of our students – and trust that those instances in which the bedrock of our assumptions and understanding begins to waver mark the edge of new understanding” Naomi Mulvihill. How Do You Say Twos in Spanish, If Two is Dos? Language as Means and Object in a Bilingual Kindergarten Classroom. 

This is an intensive studio with an emphasis on experimentation and production. There is no pre-determined or expected solution to the problem; students will delve deep into the intersection of pedagogy of dual-language learning, architectural form, and daylight, and take calibrated risks to produce new and extraordinary outcomes. As practicing architects, we synthesize detailed information and multiple ideas in the design of buildings. The studio will promote programmatic and formal invention through an iterative design process that is grounded in deep engagement with how people use and experience architecture. How do we gain new understanding of the relationship between the child and the community through design?  

The program will be a dual-language lab school, of approximately 22,000 square feet, located in Roxbury, MA. The school will serve students from kindergarten through second grade and provide spaces for the broader community. Dual-language schools are grounded in an approach to teaching young children their home language as well as English, in parallel. Beyond the classroom, this school model supports families within diverse immigrant and indigenous communities. We will engage directly with teachers from the community who specialize in dual-language learning, to better understand the nuances of the neighborhood and complexities of teaching multiple languages to young learners.  

The studio’s methodology will synthesize four areas of exploration sequentially: Within the classroom unit, how will engaging the specific pedagogy of dual-language learning lead to innovative design? How is the rigorous study of daylight integrated with the performative and programmatic design of the classroom and the entire building? How does the aggregation of classrooms create a larger organizational strategy for the building that supports the community of teachers and students? How does the identity of the building relate to the larger community of the neighborhood and city?  

Daylight conditions will be modeled using both Climate Studio software and physical models. The small size of the project will enable each student to study multiple design alternatives and variations for the program, site, massing, and envelope, using feedback gained from both analog and digital tools. 

The studio will meet twice weekly, Tuesdays and Fridays (50% virtual, 50% in person). The studio will be taught primarily by Stephen Cassell and Kim Yao. Their partner, Adam Yarinsky, will attend key pin-ups and reviews. There will be a studio trip to New York City to visit relevant projects and Architecture Research Office (ARO).  

KIT FOR A BIT: Architectural Assemblage and Leisure is part of a series of studios interested in flexible architectures that are adaptable to programmatic changes. The studio will ask students to design future-ready architectural kits that incorporate material temporalities in both ecologically responsible and culturally rich ways.

Materially, KIT FOR A BIT: Architectural Assemblage and Leisure will be looking at flexible architectures, paying particular attention to the assemblage techniques, the tectonic approaches and construction systems that make a built environment that is adaptable, reconfigurable, reprogrammable… our precedents will range from readymade building systems, to long span warehouses, to open plan buildings, to flat pack systems and other parts-thinking architectures.

Programmatically, KIT FOR A BIT: Architectural Assemblage and Leisure will focus on public recreation and exercise, looking into the relationship between our bodies and all scales of the material and digital environments in which we leisure. We will be designing spaces for physical enjoyment, whether indoor or outdoor, collectively or alone, spaces where the bodily and the architectural come together through materials, objects and social protocols.

To this end, we will be visiting gyms, sporting clubs, recreation centers, public parks, courts and fitness studios. Spaces that are designed to withstand wear and tear, sweat, friction, impact, heavy equipment or exposure to the elements, often requiring the use of durable and robust materials, making it all the more important to design them through flexible material and programmatic strategies that allow for their use and future reuse.

Architecturally then, this studio will look closely at the material intelligence and equipment required to create polyvalent spaces. In KIT FOR A BIT, we will favor assemblage, layering, modularization, long spans and open plans to design architectural kits with a disposition towards flexible programming and material reconfiguration. Given the program, a distinct design challenge will be to imbue these utilitarian kits with social appeal, body readiness and engagement.

In addition, leisure environments often combine the physical and the digital, with immersive sound systems, remote workouts, digital trainers, point-of-view track shots, obstacle course simulations or interactive technologies. The studio will dedicate a small but distinct portion of the semester to incorporating these mediums to the projects. Students enrolled in this studio will have access to the media production equipment, from greenscreen systems to XR gear, available through the faculty’s Lab.

The studio is not interested in team evangelism, in body exclusionary fitness paradigms, in gargantuan stadiums for global attraction, nor is it interested in elite performance oriented training but rather in the design of spaces and protocols for physical activity, public play, collective well-being, inclusive embodiment and just feeling good.

KIT FOR A BIT: Architectural Assemblage and Leisure will be traveling to Governors Island in New York City, per invitation from the Institute for Public Architecture (IPA) where we will be staying for 4 nights / 5 days. The IPAs Headquarters and residences are located on the Block House which is a historically landmarked building in the exceptional context of Governor’s Island. Also a historically landmarked island which is within 5 min. Ferry distance from NYC yet undeveloped. The island is a national park whose only tenants are a spa, a dance club and luxury camping ground and the only full time tenants are the guests and residents of IPA. Students will have the unique opportunity to be, in addition to the luxury campers, the only overnight residents of this protected island. Governor’s Island will also serve as the site for the studio projects this semester.

We will be meeting Tues + Thurs from 1-5pm and a few scheduled Fridays. The course welcomes SMarchs students.. Mandatory lottery process.

On Vessels is a studio concerned with architecture as an act of subtraction and the articulation of voids, rather than a process of addition and the making of objects. Space-making will be conceptualized as acts of removal, displacement, carving, sculpting, excavation, and erosion of material in contrast to the more typical methodologies associated with building; those oriented toward the assembly and orchestrations of parts, products, and constructions systems. The studio will find inspiration outside of the western cannon of architectural precedents in order to ground the studio’s research in, for example, industrial designed objects, works of land-art, and subterranean spaces not typically deemed “architectural.” At the outset of the studio, we will explore the “vessel” as a conceptual model for the containment of space, that will expand the way we imagine the shaping of space at an architectural scale.

The emphasis on the designing of voids is, in significant part, a pedagogical apparatus to draw focus to, and bring new modes of formal/figural rigor to, a relatively yet-undisciplined (this term to be unpacked and debated throughout the semester) realm of form-making in subterranean architecture. Historically, underground space-making has been informed by industrial, utilitarian, militaristic, apocalyptic, and sacred motivations. The studio will eschew programs that are deterministic and/or singular in their means to generate underground space, and instead identify programs that are more more pliable, ambiguous, and enigmatic in order to prompt students to develop new forms of discipline/guiding principles for the designing of voids.

Another important aspect to the pedagogical apparatus of the studio is the aim to distill the architectural problem to fewer, yet-more-fundamental, layers of consideration within architecture studio pedagogy. On Vessels is a studio intended to focus students’ attention and effort on the conjuring of form, light, experience, atmosphere, and the engagement with myriad modes of representation that will aid in bringing students’ imaginations to life. Although this studio is one which is ultimately concerned with voids, the studio will be heavily invested in the modeling of objects as a way to depict the voids students are conceptualizing, designing, and developing. The reciprocal relationship between the making of casts and the making of molds/formwork will provide a conceptual space within which students will revel during the testing of, the rehearsal of, and the refining of underground worlds.

“Perhaps our largest challenge [as teachers] is to overcome the fear of disequilibrium – our own and that of our students – and trust that those instances in which the bedrock of our assumptions and understanding begins to waver mark the edge of new understanding” Naomi Mulvihill. How Do You Say Twos in Spanish, If Two is Dos? Language as Means and Object in a Bilingual Kindergarten Classroom. 

When designing for the child, architects must attempt to put themselves in the mind of their younger selves; with invention, imagination, investigation and exploration serving as primary drivers. The classroom becomes an experiential space where children are encouraged to discover and understand their relationship to the world around them. This will be an intensive studio about the design of educational spaces for children culminating in a public K-2 dual-language lab school in East Boston.  

Students will delve deep into the pedagogy and process of dual-language learning through architectural form, daylight, and environment. As practicing architects, we synthesize detailed information and multiple ideas in the design of buildings. The studio will promote programmatic and formal invention through an iterative design process that is grounded in deep engagement with how people use and experience architecture. How do we create architecture that bridges the relationship between the child and their community?

The program will be a dual-language lab school, of approximately 30,000 square feet, located in East Boston, MA. The school will serve students from kindergarten through second grade and provide spaces for the broader community. Dual-language schools are grounded in an approach to teaching young children their home language as well as English, in parallel. Beyond the classroom, this school model supports families within diverse immigrant communities. We will engage directly with teachers, who specialize in dual-language learning, to better understand the nuances and complexities of teaching multiple languages to young learners. 

The studio’s methodology will synthesize several areas of exploration sequentially: Within the classroom unit, how can the specific pedagogy of project-based dual-language learning lead to innovative design? How can daylight integrate with the performative and programmatic design of the classroom and the entire building? How can the aggregation of classrooms create a larger organizational strategy for the building that supports teachers, students, and their families? How can the school relate to the larger East Boston neighborhood and the city beyond?

Daylight conditions will be modeled using both Climate Studio software and physical models. The small size of the project will enable each student to study multiple design alternatives and variations for the program, site, massing, and envelope, using feedback gained from both analog and digital tools. 

The studio will meet twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays (50% virtual, 50% in person). The studio will be taught primarily by Kim Yao and Adam Yarinsky. Their partner, Stephen Cassell, will attend key pin-ups and reviews. There will be a studio trip over Spring Break to New York City to visit relevant projects and  Architecture Research Office (ARO).  

In memory of co-creator Virgil Abloh 

Studio trip: during Spring Break

“To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.”
bell hooks

“A revolution on a world scale will take a very long time. But it is also possible to recognize that it is already starting to happen. The easiest way to get our minds around it is to stop thinking about revolution as a thing — “the” revolution, the great cataclysmic break—and instead ask “what is revolutionary action?” We could then suggest: revolutionary action is any collective action which rejects, and therefore confronts, some form of power or domination and in doing so, reconstitutes social relations—even within the collectivity—in that light. Attempts to create autonomous communities in the face of power, would, for instance, be almost by definition revolutionary acts. And history shows us that the continual accumulation of such acts can change (almost) everything.”
David Graeber

This studio explores the structural frameworks and spatial implications of the climate crisis in its various manifestations, as well as, crucially, the role of the architect within the climate movement. The ambition is to ask , as Denise Ferreira da Silva writes in Difference Without Separability, “..what sort of ethical opening can be envisioned with the dissolution of the grip of the Understanding and the releasing of The World to the imagination”.

The environmental crisis is not a question of scientific advancement, or innovation and just as little a design problem. It is a political crisis: we know what we should do, we know what we could do, we even know how to. Yet we don’t.

Predicated on the idea that "justice" does not have a clear definition or measure, the studio will be working closely with the Stanford Legal Design Lab to map and challenge political structures - historic and current ones, raising questions of policy, code and laws in direct relation to the environmental crisis.

With a sober yet imaginative sense of what is possible, the studio will identify and propose a range of projects at various scales, ranging from tactical strategies (Extinction Rebellion’s use of tensegrity structures being a prime example), to questions of managed retreat (specifically looking at the program recently launched by the Biden administration, the first of its kind, to fund the relocation of communities) and as far as A Global Moratorium on New Construction, questioning the architect’s very own role.

The studio will be working closely with marine biologist, policy expert and co-founder of the non-profit think tank Urban Ocean Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, as well as journalists, activists and community members.

“We are all projects of collective self-creation. What if, instead of telling the story about how our society fell from some idyllic state of equality, we ask how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles that we can no longer even imagine the possibility of reinventing ourselves?”
David Graeber & David Wengrow