Classes

"My country is no longer in Africa; we are now part of Europe. It is therefore natural for us to abandon our former ways and to adopt a new system adapted to our social conditions."   
 Khedive Isma'il, 1879

“Dubai….. is the new Cordoba.”
Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashid Al Maktum, 2006

 Today, Islamic architecture is a restive design category that is debated yet applied by scholars and practitioners alike.  Its definition in the last two centuries has undergone profound changes in substance and scope.  Beginning as revivalist trends that mimicked European historicism in the 19th century, Islamic architecture emerged as an identitarian style with the formation of modern nation-states in Asia and Africa.  After an interval in which vocal international modernism dominated, Islamic architecture came back on the wings of vernacular revival, critical regionalism, then postmodernism, which shaped its academic and professional parameters.  Recent critical challenges, including urban and ecological depredations, unprecedented wealth in the Gulf and socioeconomic disparities everywhere, and a radical Islamicist turn, provoked Islamic architecture to explore new sociocultural outlooks, environmentalist and climatic orientations, historic preservation and rehabilitation, as well as branding strategies.  This expanded purview at last ushered it into the global architectural discourse. 

This seminar analyzes how Islamic architecture, traditionally confined to an architecture of the past, became a contemporary design category.  It reconstructs the stages of its evolution and examines how it managed to incorporate diverse architectural, theoretical, political, cultural, technological, and socioeconomic currents within its core historicist foundation.  Finally, the seminar anticipates future directions of Islamic architecture as they can be gleaned in the shifts in the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Gulf experiment with glitzy cutting-edge parametric design flavored with Islamic references.

Research paper required.

Critical review of literature on Islamic art and architecture in the last two centuries. Analyzes the cultural, disciplinary, and theoretical contours of the field and highlights the major figures that have influenced its evolution. Challenges the tacit assumptions and biases of standard studies of Islamic art and architecture and addresses historiographic and critical questions concerning how knowledge of a field is defined, produced, and reproduced.

Researches the history and culture of an MIT community to contribute to its documentation and preservation. Through the practice of doing original research, students learn about the history of an MIT community. Provides instruction in the methods historians use to document the past, as well as methods from related fields.

Karl Marx is arguably the most influential writer of the modern era. Over the twentieth century, his texts moved millions, defining the course of history itself as states, governments and popular movements oriented themselves to take measure of—for or against—his thinking. His unfinished magnum opus Das Kapital rivals the Bible and the Quran in terms of its sheer ability to move political movements and fields of knowledge alike. In the liberal universe, Marx’s writing has been (not) read as advocating radically opposed political outlooks, as both prescribing pervasive state controls and radical, anti-political anarchism. Within the ex-socialist world, the ardor for “scientific socialism” left most of its adherents with little appreciation of the considerable imaginativeness, wit and intellectual agility with which Marx addressed the pressing issues of his time: the rise of modern industry and the corresponding labor movements, the nascent complexities of electoral democracies, international affairs and state power, international flows of capital and colonialism. In the process, Marx’s thought would leave an imprint on almost every field that he touched, and then some: postKantian philosophy, political economy, sociology, historiography, and the history of science. Marx’s readings of Shakespeare in itself makes up a subfield of literary criticism. This course will comprise a close reading of the principal Marx texts placed in their nineteenth-century context: from his early critique of postKantian philosophy (the neo-Hegelians), to his turn towards political economy (the Political and Economic Manuscripts), to his collaborative studies, with Engels, of English mill towns (Condition of the Working Classes in England), to the political upheavals of his time (Eighteenth Brumaire, the 1871 Communards and the French Civil War), his critiques of other utopian-socialist movements (The German Ideology), to his involvement with workers’ movements (The Communist Manifesto), to the great unfinished masterwork of his career, Capital/Grundrisse. The course will conclude with a study of Marx’s early confrontation with “underdevelopment” on the “Russian road.”

Supporting texts by the Althusser circle, Lucio Colletti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jacques Derrida, David Harvey, Ernesto Laclau, Teodor Shanin, Prabhat Patnaik, etc.

Requirements: attendance, presentations, keeping up with readings, final term paper. Term paper has to be drawn out of subject matter covered in class.

General study of modern architecture as a response to important technological, cultural, environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical challenges after the European Enlightenment. Focus on the theoretical, historiographic, and design approaches to architectural problems encountered in the age of industrial and post-industrial expansion across the globe, with specific attention to the dominance of European modernism in setting the agenda for the discourse of a global modernity at large. Explores modern architectural history through thematic exposition rather than as simple chronological succession of ideas.

What is the history of the building site? 

The paradox of the building site lies in the fact that, although the building site is inescapably essential to the realization of architecture, it must inevitably vanish, superseded by the durable forms of the completed building. Such traces that remain, in documents, photographs, or physical marks upon the building, have been of passing interest to architectural history for the information they reveal about the realized object, but the building site itself—as a place, as an event, as a design—has largely been ignored by architectural history and theory.

This seminar will take the building site as its focus of inquiry. Readings and discussions will develop several approaches to a knowledge of the building site as a point of organization, material transformation, and intellectual and physical work. These approaches to the building site will address questions such as the valuation of tools and techniques, the legal armature of contracts and regulations, the social conventions of race, class, and gender, and the cultural appraisal of work and craft.

The goal of the seminar will be to develop prototypical approaches to the history of the building site, with a series of experimental digital histories. Students in the seminar will carry out detailed and speculative research into selected building sites, and will use that research in digital representation to create model histories that will expand the historical accounting of a building site to include information extending from wages to weather reports.

Examines the manner in which key theories of technology have influenced architectural and art production in terms of their "humanizing" claims. Students test theories of technology on the grounds of whether technology is good or bad for humans.

Examines the sonic phenomena and experiences that motivate scientific, humanistic, and artistic practices. Explores the aesthetic and technical aspects of how we hear; measure or describe vibrations; record, compress, and distribute resonating materials; and how we ascertain what we know about the world through sound. Although the focus is on sound as an aesthetic, social, and scientific object, the subject also investigates how resonance is used in the analysis of acoustics, architecture, and music theory. Students make a sonic artifact or research project as a final requirement.

Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Examines themes in the history of design, with emphasis on Euro-American theory and practice in their global contexts. Addresses the historical design of communications, objects, and environments as meaningful processes of decision-making, adaptation, and innovation. Critically assesses the dynamic interaction of design with politics, economics, technology, and culture in the past and at present.

Studies theoretical and historiographical works pertaining to the fields of art and architectural history. Members of seminar pursue work designed to examine their own presuppositions and methods.

Introduces students to the world of French photography from its invention in the 1820s to the present. Provides exposure to major photographers and images of the French tradition and encourages students to explore the social and cultural roles and meanings of photographs. Designed to help students navigate their own photo-saturated worlds; provides opportunity to gain practical experience in photography.

Taught in English.

Seminar in a selected topic in the history of art, with a particular emphasis on developments from the 18th century to the present. Includes short field trips to museums and collections. Oral presentations and research paper required. 

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Major Exam covers a historically broad area of interest and includes components of history, historiography, and theory. Preparation for the exam will focus on four or five themes agreed upon in advance by the student and the examiner, and are defined by their area of teaching interest. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Major Exam covers a historically broad area of interest and includes components of history, historiography, and theory. Preparation for the exam will focus on four or five themes agreed upon in advance by the student and the examiner, and are defined by their area of teaching interest. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Minor Exam focuses on a specific area of specialization through which the student might develop their particular zone of expertise. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Minor Exam focuses on a specific area of specialization through which the student might develop their particular zone of expertise. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Preliminary study in preparation for the thesis for the SMArchS degree in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. Topics include literature search, precedents examination, thesis structure and typologies, and short writing exercise.

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

Required for doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. Prior to candidacy, doctoral students are required to write and orally defend a proposal laying out the scope of their thesis, its significance, a survey of existing research and literature, the methods of research to be adopted, a bibliography and plan of work. Work is done in consultation with HTC Faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program guidelines.

Required for doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. Prior to candidacy, doctoral students are required to write and orally defend a proposal laying out the scope of their thesis, its significance, a survey of existing research and literature, the methods of research to be adopted, a bibliography and plan of work. Work is done in consultation with HTC Faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program guidelines.

Welcome to MIT! If you are coming because you love building, let this seminar be your red carpet. You will be meeting once a week with two faculty, Profs. Steve Leeb (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Les Norford (Architecture), who love building cool systems. We will learn about MIT together while we are understanding and building exciting systems that use and convert energy. We will drive an electric go-cart and compare it to a gasoline-powered vehicle. You will design and build your own set of stereo speakers and a power amplifier to audio system you can keep. We'll look at motors and circuits to control these devices. We will be working in an amazing new prototyping laboratory, and you will get to develop an energy experiment of your own design. Join us!

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Les Norford will be the advisor to this section 4.A22. Les is a mechanical engineer who teaches in the Department of Architecture and has a special interest in environmental issues. He's studied buildings and how people live and work in them around the world. Les earned his BS in engineering science from Cornell University and his PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University.

All Advising Seminars receive six units of credit and are graded P/D/F.

Note:  For spring 2022 BSAD and Design minor students can take 4.s00 as a restricted elective in place of 4.043. Consult your advisor for details. Design Intelligence is a new subject that introduces students to a practical, hands-on approach to machine learning and artificial intelligence. Providing a new lens through which to engage machine learning through aesthetic, form-finding and behavior, the course introduces students to topics such as k-nearest neighbors, regression and classification, neural networks, and generative adversarial networks, as well as how to collect and prepare data for training their own models. Situated within a graphic, product and interaction design context, students will learn to develop a new kind of creative practice that not only actively engages in shaping the future of artificial intelligence, but is also instrumental in addressing its biases and failures in creating a more equitable and just society. 

This part-seminar, part-workshop looks to identifying changing patterns of creativity across the arts under influence of new technical apparati (phono, photo, filmic…) looking to trace the emergence of rule-based generative processes and their accelerating proclivity via current computational media. While there is evidence of parametric praxis as far back as the Roman engineer, Vitruvius, and iterative geometric processes implicit in historic Islamic and Oriental art forms, it is in the late 19th century and early 20th century that vivid new modes of auto-poietic praxis take hold, as if aspiring to a far greater degree of machinic salience. The resulting artworks - literary, sonic, kinetic, plastic - quite radical in their disjunctive form, were often scorned as bizarre in their novelty and aspiration. Yet their influence, looking to exceed intuition and direct creative aptitude in favor of symbiotic (human-machine) drives, was formative for modes of avant-garde production early C20th, and extends to ever-more normative generative practices late C20th and early C21st. As computation then absorbs all such prior disruptive apparati, imbuing them with powerful generative potency, so such lineage seems destined to become established, even dominant, in mainstream patterns of production and reception. We will look at a variety of cultural fields, but architecture will be the prime focus here, since despite being held to be slow to adapt to technical change, one finds pioneering works that offer plastic counterpoint to more agile literary or kinetic art forms...

This seminar component encourages looking backwards to vivid pioneers of auto-poiesis (in areas of your choosing), intending that you recognize that such creative method is vital to the final artwork (how working in a new manner leads to a new art-form). But pivoting to the workshop component, this prompts a looking forwards in you attempting precisely-indeterminate formative-isms, deploying such insights into creative experimentation via a now-digital imagination (whether using a computer or not). The lineage of experimental creativity intends to offer framing to new aptitude and imagination, and to theorize changing artistic motivations under influence of emerging technologies, as a means to release auto-poietic aptitude in your own work. At root is the idea that creativity or design is not static, but shifts through history under influence of the various technical systems that society adopts, none more powerful than the  current shift to digital media. This invites profound changes in cultural production and reception, aided by gaining insight into prior autopoietic habitudes as a key to emerging creative drives: it requires technical acuity and aesthetic openness.

Master/Piece workshop will study 3 buildings that are considered seminal in contemporary architecture, built by architects that remain active in practice. We will discuss why those works are key and the chain of reactions and trends that detonate in architecture culture, their traces and impact in peers and in other projects. We will focus deep in the conceptual to constructive scales and the masters will join the class to culminate the analysis and conversation.

In collaboration with the University of Cape Town, this three-week workshop will focus on the design of affordable and mixed-income housing in Woodstock and Salt River, two of South Africa’s oldest suburbs. Situated near the city center, adjacent to District Six and other neighborhoods that witnessed the brutality of the Group Areas Act (1950), both Woodstock and Salt River are home to a diverse community of Capetonians who rely on the many factories and industrial sites scattered along the railway. While the apartheid state failed to divide their lands and displace their inhabitants, rising property prices today continue to jeopardize their cultural and economic diversity.

For their narrow streets, Victorian row houses, and location at the base of Table Mountain have attracted several predatory developments that accelerated the grabbing of properties owned by working-class residents and small businesses. Raising the flags of gentrification are countless refurbishments, new developments, and ‘beautification’ projects that have, consistently, prompted the involuntary displacement of those who can no longer afford any proximity to their own heritage.

With housing shortage in Cape Town sounding the alarm of permanent displacement, the need for affordable developments (and policies that regulate access to them) is clear. But in the absence of substantive frameworks that reclaim the right to housing, this need has too often been mitigated by mediocre provision schemes that achieve affordability at the expense of quality and social/spatial justice. Such is the case of the infamous “Reconstruction and Development Program,” which dotted the edges of the city with poorly designed and executed single story houses (later known as the notorious RDP houses). This inability to generate convincing urban alternatives rallied under a banner of resistance several NGOs and activist groups that mobilized in the last few years for the provision of medium to high density social housing that is affordable, well-designed, and well-located. In 2016, the “Reclaim the City” movement succeeded in its campaign to earmark city-owned parcels for social housing, protecting them from the grip of pure profit. And by 2019, the City of Cape Town identified several sites in Woodstock and Salt River, with new housing typologies yet to be realized.

In building on these recent developments, the workshop will propose and design affordable strategies that leverage the potential of public-private partnerships. Through meetings and collaborations with stakeholders, community members, and housing experts in Cape Town, students will develop mixed-income and mixed-use approaches that champion the right to the city.

Together, these proposals will center on the role of housing in combatting involuntary displacement, generating new modes of social and economic mixity, improving the inner-city fabric, and providing equitable typologies that maximize spatial quality and opportunities for income generation.

The workshop will culminate in an exhibition, a public presentation, and a publication.

Travel to Cape Town June 12-July 4.