Download - Abstract 2007-2008
Education is all about
trust. The best teachers embrace the future by trusting the
student, supporting the growth of something that cannot be
seen yet, an emergent sensibility that cannot be judged by
contemporary standards. A school dedicated to the unique
life and impact of the thoughtful architect must foster a way
of thinking that draws on everything that is known in order
to jump into the unknown, trusting the formulations of the
next generation that by definition defy the logic of the present.
Education becomes a form of optimism that gives our field a
future by trusting the students to see, think, and do things
we cannot.
This kind of optimism is crucial at a school like the GSAPP
at Columbia. The students arrive in New York City from around
55 different countries armed with an endless thirst for experi-
mentation. It is not enough for us to give each of them exper-
tise in the current state-of-the-art in architecture so that they
can decisively assert themselves around the world by produc-
ing remarkable buildings, plans, and policies. We also have to
give them the capacity to change the field itself, to completely
redefine the state-of-the-art. More than simply training archi-
tects how to design brilliantly, we redesign the figure of the
architect. Columbia’s leadership role is to act as a laboratory
for testing new ideas about the possible roles of designers in
a global society. The goal is not a certain kind of architecture
but a certain evolution in architectural intelligence.
Architecture is a set of endlessly absorbing questions for
our society rather than a set of clearly defined objects with
particular effects. Architects are public intellectuals, crafting
forms that allow others to see the world differently and per-
haps to live differently. The real gift of the best architects is to
produce a kind of hesitation in the routines of contemporary
life, an opening in which new potentials are offered — new pat-
terns, rhythms, moods, sensations, pleasures, connections,
and perceptions. The architect’s buildings are placed in the
city like the books of a thoughtful novelist might be placed in
a newsstand in a railway station, embedding the possibility
of a rewarding detour amongst all the routines, a seemingly
minor detour that might ultimately change the meaning of
everything else. The architect crafts an invitation to think and
act differently.
GSAPP likewise cultivates an invitation for all the disci-
plines devoted to the built environment to think differently.
Its unique mission is to move beyond the highest level of
professional training to open a creative space within which
the disciplines can rethink themselves, a space of specula-
tion, experimentation, and analysis that allows the field to
detour away from its default settings in order to find new
settings, new forms of professional, scholarly, technical, and
ethical practice.
The heart of this open-ended laboratory is the design
studios. All the overlapping and interacting programs at the
school — Architecture, Urban Design, Historic Preservation,
Urban Planning, and Real Estate Development — teach design
and are united in their commitment to the global evolution
of the 21st century city. Every semester, the school launches
more than 35 explorative studio projects that head off in dif-
ferent directions before reporting back their findings in juries,
exhibitions, and publications that stimulate an intense debate
and trigger a new round of experiments. With a biodiversity
of continually evolving research trajectories, the school oper-
ates as a multi-disciplinary think tank, an intelligent organism
thinking its way through the uncertain future of the discipline
and the global society it serves.
As in any other architecture school, the real work is done
in the middle of the night. Avery Hall, the school’s neo-clas-
sical home since 1912 — with its starkly defined symmetrical
proportions communicating to the world the old belief that
the secret of architectural quality is known, universal, and
endlessly repeatable — now acts as the late night incubator
of a diversity of possible futures. At its base is Avery Library,
the most celebrated architectural collection in the world, a
remarkable container of everything architects have been
thinking about in the past, neatly gathered within the tradi-
tional quiet space of a well organized archive. Up above are
the dense and chaotic studio spaces bristling with electronics
and new ideas. Somewhere between the carefully catalogued
past and the buzz of the as yet unclassifiable future, the dis-
cipline evolves while everyone else sleeps. Having been con-
tinuously radiated by an overwhelming array of classes and
waves of visiting speakers, symposia, workshops, exhibitions,
and debates, the students artfully rework the expectations of
their discipline.
The pervasive atmosphere at GSAPP, the magic in the air
from the espresso bar to the pin-up walls to the front steps to
the back corner of the big lecture hall, is the feeling of being
on the cutting edge, straddling the moving border between the
known and the unknown in our field. It is hopefully an open,
questioning atmosphere in which students are able to do work
that teaches their teachers. In the end, a school’s most pre-
cious gift is its generosity towards the thoughts that the next
generation has yet to have.
Now in the fifth year of its tradition of
constant change, Abstract again re-shuffles the GSAPP in
an effort to show the multiplicity of positions along with the
unexpected moments of clarity in the array of activity that
defines the school. This year, we worked with the notion that
the core of any academic institution — what makes a school
great — is not its size, location, or age, but rather the people
that flow through it, the work they produce within its walls,
and the conversations and ideas they exchange that bring it
to life. This issue of Abstract focuses on people — students,
teachers, researchers, critics, historians, academics, practi-
tioners, lecturers, administrators, visitors — and the myriad
things they do to enrich the life of the school.
The book is divided into three graphic parts: portraits,
text, and work. The portrait book presents some of the faces
we see around the school — lecturers, jurors, critics, and
students. The text book revisits in a more traditional struc-
ture the programs, courses, studios, and research that occur
at the school. These texts are what inspire and provoke the
excitement and dedication among the students to work so
hard and produce such accomplished work. The work book,
organized alphabetically by the person or people respon-
sible for each image, provides the opportunity to understand
each individual’s work, sometimes from a variety of different
classes, as a cohesive effort that is driven by that individual’s
motivations, interests, and talents.
Expanding on last year’s encyclopedic index of classes,
studios, and projects by key word, this year’s indices provide
at a glance an introduction to the people that make up the
school, the issues with which they are currently engaged,
and the ways they understand and define architecture.
Through a combination of the thematic organization of the
indices, the departmental or programmatic organization of
the text book, and the organization by author of the work
book, we hoped to show what goes on at the school in a more
comprehensive way.
Thanks to editorial assistants, Katie Shima and Brian
Brush, and to photographers, Mark Bearak and Jong Seo Kim.
It has once again been a joy to work with Stefan Sagmeister,
Joe Shouldice, and Richard The with assistance from Daniel
Harding at Sagmeister Inc., who continue to surprise us with
their fresh ideas and ambitious graphic sensibility. Special
thanks to Dean Mark Wigley for his clarity of vision and his
unceasing efforts to push the school beyond itself.
This year we suffered a great loss with the passing of our
dear colleague Paul Byard. There are so many beautiful
words that could be said — and have been said — to help us
remember and treasure all the things that were so special
about Paul, but all would fall short in the end, and it is in the
falling short that we understand the depth of our loss.
I only want to say here that basically Paul was in love
with buildings — deeply, sweetly, passionately, and elo-
quently in love. And at the heart of this unending affection
was a resolute, even militant commitment to the idea of the
public good. Paul championed the very highest aspirations
of our discipline. For this, and so much more, we all loved
Paul and will always love him.
Architects are united by a naïve yet irrepressible opti-
mism: the thought that even the smallest change to the built
environment creates the possibility of a better society. This
is why Paul was so important to so many romantic victims
of architecture.
We are united in celebration of a beautiful and impor-
tant voice. A voice that we were so lucky to hear for so long.
A voice that was so absurdly eloquent that we will never stop
hearing it.
The following is an address Paul made at the faculty
meeting in May. It was his way — dignified and hopeful — of
saying “good-bye” to us.
I am for my part in these days coming to the end of an extraor-
dinary opportunity for which I am grateful to you all, to bring to
a climax at least fifty years of thinking about architecture and
what it does for each of us.
As of course one learns only at the very end, this percep-
tion about architecture has been central to what I have been
practicing in the world as an architect and teaching here as
your colleague for the last thirty-five years and in the last
eight or so as Director of the Historic Preservation Program.
The perception about architecture is, if you will, a meta-thesis
about architecture, a theory behind the theories offered to help
us understand what in fact we are all serving together when
we serve architecture here. It will ideally be expressed in the
book “WHY SAVE THIS BUILDING: The Public Interest in Archi-
tectural Meaning” which I remain optimistic will be published
next year by Norton.
The thesis is simple. It sees architecture as a civic para-
digm. It sees each new building as an argument for itself by the
lights of its times, a proposition about our state and what we
ought to do about it — an opportunity we force upon ourselves
every time we build to see ourselves at our best and at our
worst and then to try to adjust and do better. Please note, first,
the basic critical truth about the paradigm, that it is indeed
the way we all first seriously react to architecture: how are we
doing? Then at the critical core of that reaction is the crucial
commitment to improvement, the fundamental irreducible
optimism of our enterprise. How can we do better? We don’t
do architecture to make things worse. We make architecture
in the passionate conviction that we have something to teach,
our way is the way to go. You grab the observer like the Ancient
Mariner, saying, listen, dammit, this is what you have to know if
you want to do better! And then you hold him for just as long as
you can and until your next colleague takes him ever so gently
away, saying, no, no, mine is the far better way to go.
This thesis — the view of architecture as a civic paradigm
about human improvement from which we all willy-nilly ar-
chitects and amateurs and ordinary citizens, powerfully and
critically learn — this thesis is what’s in it for all of us, say
I, in architecture. This is the public interest in architectural
meaning that ideally gives architecture its claim on all of us
as human beings and gives it the remarkable legal power I
have specially tried to help us to remember and exploit. It is
the common goal of all of us serving new and old architecture
— and at least the core of my insistence over these years that
in the School architecture and historic preservation are all in
it together. At our ends of the Hall, that is, we work on two
questions about the civic paradigm that grade seamlessly into
each other. We look at new architecture to see what’s proposed
now and how much we could be doing to do better now. What
wonderful possibilities we have! At the same time, we look at
old architecture as it ages into the past to see what we used
to think we should do to do better. When we look back, we
can sometimes see a certain comforting sameness. We can
dwell on sameness when we want to feel smug. But the real
revelation across time is in difference, in all that’s changed, in
all we need to do to keep on changing. Good heavens, we say,
we used to do THAT?
Again, we are all in it together here in the service of our
art and I very much hope we stay that way. These are not good
times for any of our ideals. On the other hand it does seem to
me a reason to believe we are not foolish in our optimism, that
I should be right now even now among you this noon, bringing
at last out of a lifetime yet another idea about architecture that
you might not have thought of before and that might in the end
lift us all just a little further along.
Thank you!
The three-semester Core Studio
sequence develops a capacity to work with skill and inven-
tion at all levels of architectural design. Studio methods vary
with each of the design critics, but there is a common desire
to re-think architectural and urban problems at each phase
of developing a project. Explorations include new organiza-
tions of building processes, new systems of manufacturing
and construction, and new considerations of use and pro-
gramming. In recent years the programming aspects of the
studio have become a focus of invention, and this year both
Core 1 and 2 focused on complex, program-intensive projects
— addressing highly defined programs in Core 1 and giving
specificity to “generic” programs in Core 2.
The Core Studios are taught by a group of faculty who
collectively guide each of the twenty studio sections that col-
lectively constitute the three semesters of the Core Studio
sequence. Each semester, the Core Studios are coordinated
by an individual faculty member who leads the group of six
or seven design studios.
Students and faculty work within emergent forms of
contemporary and historic New York urban life. Looking to
sites in the city, the studios seek to understand the texture
and public nature of their work, and to respond to the com-
plexity and diversity of New York constituencies. Employing
an array of both local and global data sets, analysing historic
urban form, and projecting the potentials of new program-
ming and redevelopment issues that are re-shaping the
city, the studios also aggressively coordinate work with new
means of fabrication, tectonics, and structure. Each faculty
member offers a unique form of exploring these issues as a
network of design potentials that are understood to be sus-
taining, but also re-defining the role of the architect.
As a whole, the Core is coordinated to give parallel
structure to the studios. The first two semesters consider
the conceptual implications of architectural space as a
form of speculative research. Core 1 and Core 2 consist of
a semester-long project divided into distinct phases and
exercises that fold into the development of an architectural
proposal for an urban site. With each phase of the project,
emphasis is placed on synthetic design processes that rigor-
ously address issues of site and program on both conceptual
and practical levels. The third and final semester of the Core
Studio sequence is focused on the design of urban housing.
Students work in teams of two and carry each project to a
high level of resolution in terms of materials details, ulti-
mately responding to demographics, social needs, and po-
litical realities. While the studio sites are within metropolitan
New York, the studio is equally based on a renewed analysis
of the history of housing policies both in New York and in
the United States. Students are asked to bring the analytical
expertise of the first two semesters to these issues and to
create a project that addresses a full spectrum of concerns
from the immediate detail to the larger urban and political
consequences of design.
Line, plane, surface,
and volume are mathematically bonded and interrelated.
In architecture, the geometrical properties of the line are
associated with columns and beams, the plane with walls
and floors, and surface and volume with the resultant space.
Many significant works of architecture provide examples that
allow us to understand the mathematical relations of these
elements in new ways.
The brief of the studio was threefold. First, melting ice
was documented in several iterative drawings. Second, stu-
dents designed a sleeping pod for climatologists, who work
36-hour shifts, to take naps while working. Finally, students
designed an outpost building for Columbia University to
house an atmospheric research lab, with domestic quarters
for two rotating lab principals. The focus of the research was
the existence and trajectory of particles in water and air. This
lab was to take regular samples of high altitude air using air
balloons and deep water samples, to register the chemical
composition of them. The site was on Pine Island, in Long
Island Sound.
Starting with the imperative to
design a spatial fabric from within by synthesizing material
and information infrastructures, the studio explored rich
resonances between highly informed intricate fields and
their capacity for retexturing existing forms of connectivity.
Departing from modernist conceptions of movement through
space, this version of spatial fabric exhibits its own behav-
ioral tendencies resonating with pervasive challenges of the
contemporary milieu. The capacity to compose spatial fabric
within emphatically complex conditions of probabilistic pro-
gramming is the alternative to the logics of low-resolution
bubble diagrams. Within a context of curatorial practice and
evolution of drawing, a deep multivalent interface grown
from such composure drifts through poly-scalar fabric
thresholds housing a multitude of drawing expressions and
ways of navigating them.
Initiating the process by learning from algorithmic
logics found in plant growth, which exhibit non-linear dif-
ferentiation and redundancy as alternatives to the more
deterministic optimization models found in typical building
structures, students set up generative machines via algo-
rithmic protocols and parametric fine-tuning, articulating
the behavior of discrete agents. This action-packed compo-
sure delivers expressions at different orders of scale. Design
is extended to the whole design ecology: designing tools (via
scripting), connecting to and informing modes of production
by understanding constraints as positive input for design,
and re-casting the designer’s role from the one who controls
from the top to the one who engages the participates in prac-
tice of design search. The increasing ability to trans-code
between different layers of this ecology through informa-
tion increases the potential to receive from and adapt to the
“host” conditions.
Materials and their meth-
ods of building are increasingly multiplying as our inher-
ent notions of material significance and signification are
increasingly challenged. This studio challenged the oppor-
tunities and limits of the material and immaterial nature of
architectural production. Building begins with a dialogue of
construction strategies between experience, interpretation,
and translation into program, structure, and representation.
Modes of material experimentation are utilized as a vehicle
through which to articulate and clarify the students’ concep-
tual position and strategies. These strategies for making are
discovered through a constant variable. As an idea William
Richard Lethaby puts forward: “…the building interest: the
delight in experimental construction, is the adventure into the
unknown… This adventure into the constructional unknown is
done by using an elegant technology.” As a Janosian condi-
tion, it reconciles the art of thinking with constructing. The
first “step” is devoted to the conjuring of “idea” as a visceral
intersection between the “eye of the mind” and the body of
building possibilities.
WHAT IS THE FIT BETWEEN STRUCTURE AND SPACE?
“Zero weight and infinite
span;” the structural engineer Robert Le Ricolais could
encapsulate the program of structure as a material com-
petition between extension and gravity. But the program of
space is a much more raucous exchange among subject, city,
material, and purpose. The contemporary museum, with its
mix of functions, variety of required spans (and seeming
imperative of unique sculptural expression), is a site con-
tested between structure and space. Sometimes structure
asserts its geometric and conceptual perfection (think of
the space frame, the long span truss, the geodesic dome).
Space is the remainder, left over and “universal”, evicting
impurities of program or site. Other times, architecture’s
specificity carries the negotiation, and structure is simply
called in to figure things out. Here, space retains its perfec-
tion, and structure must distort. A project for the Drawing
Center could explore what exists between structural order
and spatial contingency (and vice-versa), and re-program
structure and its performance norms in relation to space:
span vs. weight vs. fabrication vs. cost vs. a moving eye per-
ceiving a series of art works over an interval of time, in a
continuum of scale from body to city.
Drawing is line weight
Drawing is inscription and prescription
Drawing is making, re-making, and re-making again
Each mark and symbol contains cultural and physical attri-
butes that are elemental to program and space; the graphic
technique becomes the crucial liaison between these ele-
ments and the physical realm.
A combination of traditional techniques and digital
translation define the terms and limitations for the multiple
methods and opportunities for display within the public
realm. The limitlessness of drawing and therefore the lim-
itlessness of display go far beyond the scale of paper and
the screen; like drawing they are the innovation via the au-
thor’s “hand”.
The new home of The Drawing Center lies across the
boundaries of Chinatown, SoHo, and Little Italy. The influ-
ences surrounding the site are vastly diverse, culturally and
economically. The impact of each constituency was individu-
ally considered through the notion of public space (program
“X”) through which the studio’s proposals considered the
ideas of threshold, skin, and section. These components
were investigated; making, re-making, and re-making again
established the basis of architectural language developed
by each student.
Through the proposed process of editing and refining
these ideas, the realized work represented here attempts
to harness the power, beauty, and richness of the site en-
meshed with the vision of The Drawing Center, in hopes
of providing an edifying public epicenter within the city of
New York.
Architectural
drawings in contemporary practice shift back and forth
between classical forms of representation and an unfolding
of new material relations. This unstable position of the image
and architect is by now recognized as fundamental to archi-
tecture’s productive imagination. It proposes that the excess
of one moment becomes the material of another moment’s
image. In the studio, architectural drawing both supports and
resists direct instrumentality; the studio produces a steady
flow of excess and develops the alternative analytical means
of seeing this excess as already internal to architecture — it
attempts to provide the situation for an architect’s engage-
ment with and estrangement from drawing practices.
In the studio, the line is converted from a strictly divi-
sional and vectoral mark on a plane surface to a mobile and
flexural steel wire in dynamic relation to others and prior
to a surface. Surfaces are made of lines assembling and
shifting in responsive fields. Each person becomes expert
in a particular form of the lines’ assembly, organization, and
performance in an array of building, drawing, and occupa-
tion. Each works with the movement of the line to building
as an always re-negotiated act.
This drawing provokes a discussion with the Drawing
Center where the themes of the drawing’s performance
in and of the world were constant. The project mined the
several sites of drawing: one specifically architectural and
concerned with how drawing performs in the architectural
imagination between idea and building; another embedded in
the institution’s practices of exhibition, and finally the draw-
ing as a site and product of a specific artist’s performance.
Delineate: “To
show by drawing or description, portray.” That certainly could
be one concise definition of architecture. Show and tell.
The task: develop a spatial portrayal — the spatial
delineations of culture, context, and commerce of the mu-
seum as an architectural type. The Drawing Center, one
of the most engaged arts organizations in New York City,
having been drawn into the melodrama of Ground Zero
as one of its two sole cultural institutions, and then sub-
sequently rejected for refusing to sign the equivalent of a
Patriot pledge of allegiance not to exhibit any art that might
be politically critical, is planning to move and expand its cur-
rent Soho operation.
These are matters of portrayal of space and site, of
tectonic characters delineating programmatic exchanges
along the borders of inside and outside. Architecture as the
performance of delineation. Architecture in the act of show-
ing and telling.
In the ter-
ritory of our search, abstraction commingled with both real-
ism and idealism. Through expansive, intricate, and rapid
iterative material experimentation — episodic searches
within and against critical and conceptual fields — we jour-
neyed toward the development of extraordinary spatial
proposition. To transcend what we knew, we sought ways
to facilitate inspiration and exploration. Audacious investi-
gations revealed possibility — at times as diaphanous and
ephemeral as firefly wings — emerging from and informing
ideas robust with substance and conviction.
In a modified dynamic of the often uncanny Surrealist
exercise of the exquisite corpse, the adjoining of discrete
imaginations yielded utterly unexpected opportunities. We
maintained confidence — despite endless reasons for doubt
— open and receptive to interrogating strange and fluid as-
sociations and prospects which were awakened when multi-
ple, seemingly contradictory, potentials were pursued. Work
produced in this province provided a mirror to society — not a
pure reflection, but rather a distorted twist — avidly dissect-
ing and re-structuring realities, and enabling us to project a
kaleidoscope of complex spatial promise.
Our strong-minded pioneering was steeped in liminal
frontiers. The subtlety of this condition demanded calibra-
tion and judgment, modulating unpredictable terrain be-
tween the perception of the known and the ethereality of
potential. Grappling with the partial and uneven geographies
of poetic imagination, we embarked on a sometimes ardu-
ous, sometimes wild journey, pursuing the consequence of
our intellectual, visual, and visceral passions.
This core studio
explored how the act of delineation produces a state of
“between-ness” or differentiation, a condition resulting from
acts of drawing. Drawing forms a repetitive action whereby
the condensation of marks and gestures opens new figura-
tions upon a page or within a screen. But one might contend
that drawing is also a process of extraction that moves or
projects the specific characteristics of something into anoth-
er state. The studio operated in three dimensions (model and
construction), which afforded the opportunity for material
exploration at every stage of a project’s development. These
material investigations, which included the existing condi-
tions of the site, provided a kind of resistance and elicited
intelligence in the process of developing concepts and forms.
The project for the Drawing Center evolved through iterative
stages and relied upon the development of techniques of
fabrication, both analog and digital. The intellectual ground-
ing of the studio was mined through lectures, discussions,
and readings; these group debates allowed each student
to craft his/her own position relative to the agenda of the
studio. Architecture is by its very nature a site of human
exchange and the creation of a social act. Therefore, every-
thing over the course of the semester was contextualized
within a social sphere of practices, ideas, and events.
In the United States the number
of housing starts are a key indicator of the country’s eco-
nomic health. As a commodity, housing is understood to
produce value on behalf of investors at its point of sale, but
it also produces long and short-term forms of value in how
it is financed and how the debt associated with its purchase
is secured and traded.
Housing in the United States is a critical financial instru-
ment that is simultaneously laden with countless narratives
of private life, domestic rituals, and everyday life. The degree
to which these narratives can be jointly addressed has domi-
nated the production of housing design; that is, housing has
managed its financial risk in large part by managing the nar-
ratives of its visual and social roles. To this end it is possible
to say that housing has suffered a deep lack of technological
innovation as the financial risk associated with its production
and financing has been assuaged by its semiotic and linguis-
tic appeal and its pandering to memory. Despite the outward
appearances and figural qualities of housing design, few
architectural programs are as saturated by deeply rooted
forms of political, economic, and social thought — indeed
political and social ideologies — as housing.
The Decade-Long Federal Implementation of a New
Urbanist Prototype
In the United States alternatives to market-based housing —
i.e., public or social housing — have rarely found firm ground.
Housing is primarily a product of private markets, save for large
concentrations of federal public housing in the northeast and
in Chicago and Detroit. In New York City almost 400,000 people
live in public housing (8% of the city’s rental apartments are
NYCHA units), and today there is not a serious, or even minor,
backlash against public housing in the city; New York has been
a model of success for public housing. But New York is a rare
circumstance in the United States; there has been a steady
march in most cities towards reducing the role and presence of
public housing.
The 2007 Housing Studio at Columbia examined hous-
ing as a prototype, addressing unique sites and political his-
tories in New York City but also along a vector from a site in
the Bronx; to Armonk, New York (Westchester County) and
to Bridgeport, Connecticut (Fairfield County). The work was
primarily focused not only on the production of new proto-
types for housing but also on the re-invention of the term
itself: what is a prototype, how can it be deployed today, and
how does site affect prototype?
Re-Imagine these four sites; project a future housing site
and develop a prototype that can survive there.
Location 1 1937: The New York City Housing Authority
emerges as the largest Public Housing Authority at the dawn
of federal housing funding. Anticipating a great new stream
of federal monies, the city, and in particular Robert Moses,
position New York to receive more of this new funding than
any other city.
Location 2 1967 –75: New York is called the “Ungovern-
able City” and its mayor, John Lindsay, is characterized as
presiding over the fall of the city. In this turmoil housing is
not only called a “crisis” but it is also often called a “right,”
setting a stage for a battle that has never been far from the
center of any NYC Mayor’s agenda.
Location 3 1983: Post Modern Classicism manages to
“sample” the film of the destruction of Pruitt Igoe — the
troubled public housing block in St. Louis. The author of the
book — here un-named — a genius at riffing the conditions
of the moment — signals that modern architecture is not so
much the cause of Pruitt Igoe’s ills but that it can be “killed”
nonetheless. A broad and troubling message is given: mod-
ern architecture and its prototypes are discredited if not out-
right destroyed because the opportunity to do so emerged.
In Europe the closing of the door on modern architecture is
not so conclusive.
Location 4 1987: New Urbanism reverts to a simulacrum
of the past “town” plan — managing the real time fear and
paranoia of a society that realizes it has not been “home” in
some time. It gains a greater hold on the imagination of gov-
ernment and developers and becomes the significant force
in development.
Using actual data
to produce meaningful results, students designed proto-
types for housing that tested the city. Inverting the studio
imperative to work on a built object/prototype that might
adjust itself to a future site, this studio’s work involved cre-
ating a set of urban parameters for a prototypical Housing+.
Housing+ implies beginning with the premise that cities are
not constructed of built objects alone, but of networks of
networks that inscribe multiple kinds of spaces, near and
far, material and immaterial, political and social, public
and private, institutional and non-institutional, formal and
informal. Housing + projects are design environments, not
design objects.
If Superblocks stand in for typical modernist examples
of urban transformation and HOPE VI stands in for typical
post-modern urban transformation, what kind of city might
our prototypes predict? Students tested the city with housing
prototypes in an attempt to be provocative and cause a ripple
effect on a resultant map of the city. All architectural proj-
ects and descriptions inscribe data. In fact some drawings
and maps are produced and generated with data alone. Con-
ventions of mapping, urban analysis, and architectural de-
scription were reformulated over the course of the semester
to produce alternate and refreshed land-uses, landscapes
and hence cities — housing prototypes. What kind of city do
you want to inhabit?
“When your house contains such a complex of piping, flues,
ducts, wires, inlets, outlets, ovens, sinks, refuse disposers,
hi-fi reverberators, antennae, conduits, freezers, heaters —
when it contains so many services that the hardware could
stand up by itself without any assistance from the house, why
have a house to hold it up? When the cost of all this tackle
is half of the total outlay (or more, as it often is), what is the
house doing except concealing your mechanical pudenda
from the stares of folks on the sidewalk?”
— Reyner Banham, “A Home is not a House”, 1965
The goals of this
studio were: to radicalize and instrumentalize the relationship
between the mechanical and the social, the infrastructural
and the architectural; to deploy the technological artifacts of
infrastructure to interrogate architecture; to use the social or
operational qualities of architecture to complicate and corrupt
seemingly neutral or purely functional infrastructure.
Students obsessively and meticulously researched six
infrastructural systems (HVAC, power, water, parking, com-
munication technology, waste management) and the ways
in which they mediate, operationally and spatially, between
the apartment, the building, and the city. The conception,
construction, and corruption of these systems at urban and
domestic, public and intimate scales, led to a new under-
standing of housing and the relationship between housing
hardware and software, between social-political constituen-
cies and service-mechanical components.
Buildings
are always prototypes. Unlike other comparative objects
(cars, airplanes, industrial products, furniture, ipods, etc),
buildings are always unique. This is both an exhilarating and
challenging reality: exhilarating in that as architects, we are
always innovating, always designing something new, and
challenging in that the development associated with refining
an object through multiple prototypes that allow the actual
object to be perfect is simply not how buildings are built.
Components of buildings, on the other hand, can be devel-
oped through prototyping that assures a high degree of reso-
lution and refinement. The network of coordination associat-
ed with the assembly of components that comprise a building
is where prototyping becomes logistically impractical.
It is exactly this limit of (physical) prototyping that is
addressed, and partially overcome, with recent design man-
agement software that creates virtual prototypes capable of
coordinating entire buildings before they become actual. The
design of Boeing’s 777 passenger jet was a benchmark for
virtual prototyping as it marked the first time that a jet of this
complexity was fully designed without a physical prototype.
Over 10,000 engineers in 26 countries collectively worked on
a single computer model that became the instructions for
production. This also serves as a benchmark for architec-
ture as this type of integrated design process is just begin-
ning to emerge as the model for building production. It also
questions whether digital prototyping effectively eliminates
the need for physical prototyping and if not (which seems to
be the case with the recent resurgent interest in fabrication
among architects) then what is the relationship between the
two? There are important issues surrounding this develop-
ment that were central to our research into redefining pro-
totype for architecture.
Whether subsidized by
governments or produced through speculative develop-
ment, housing requires that the architectural object medi-
ate between the needs of individuals and the logic of groups.
It involves intelligence at urban and architectural scales
simultaneously, and thus the design of housing always
entails having a vision for future city life as well as for vari-
ous modes of private life. Housing operates according to
different logics at different scales: cultural trends, idiosyn-
crasies of the domestic space, financial and social power,
legislation, technological development, and the larger life
of the city, all determine (often in an uneven way) aspects
of housing. Therefore the studio began with researching the
systems that regulate the very conditions of the possibility
of housing today, both globally and in the US.
Our task in the studio was to engage in a type of projec-
tive coordination of these forces. Throughout the semester,
we concentrated on developing an intellectual and political
attitude towards the city and the role of architecture in it. The
extent to which we were able to articulate this position inevi-
tably produced implications for our ability to imagine hous-
ing. We not only tried to anticipate the future of the American
city, but also imagined how architecture might change the
status quo; how architecture — through its formal intelli-
gence, its programmatic figuration, its material propensity
and construction, or its visual instigations — could affect
daily operations of individuals and groups.
Housing
occupies a spatial and perceptual territory where the domes-
tic and the urban, the intimate and the collective intertwine.
Believing that a single optimizing logic would be inadequate
to address the complexity of urban housing prototypes, pliant
strategies and tactics of organization were developed to
negotiate individual domestic terrains, orchestrate aggrega-
tions and collective intersections, and choreograph networks
of exchange across urban landscapes and social fields.
Strategies were tested across uneven environmental and
social pressures — recalibrating noise, waste, wind, horizon,
surface, porosity, density, concept, and metaphysics.
Through iterative and meticulous exploration, resil-
ient and responsive tools and performative systems were
developed and designed. Investigations oscillated through
analytical, immaterial, and material regimes in the develop-
ment of conceptual drivers that propel innovation at every
scale. Projects engaged relations among domestic rituals,
the territories in which they are enacted, and the urban in-
frastructures and social organizations they imply.
The field of our work included the magic of the real
and the potent possibility of the not yet imagined. Harness-
ing the power of potentially prototypical design strate-
gies and ensembles of techniques, each team negotiated
the complexity and banality, the density and dynamic inde-
terminacy of aggregated domestic practices within the urban
terrain. Redefining horizons of aspiration, discrete systemic
logics were cross-pollinated in response to both prosaic and
exceptional circumstance, revealing latent possibilities in in-
spired constructions of new realities, and imprinting new
landscapes of relevant social contestation.
(When) does the proto-
typical set the highest standard?
This final three-semester sequence of
Advanced Studios in the architecture program builds upon
the Core Studio sequence but also diverges from it in signifi-
cant ways. Beginning in the fourth semester, the Advanced
Studios share a common imperative in addressing the design
of a building to house a small or medium-scale institution,
with an emphasis on experimentation. Each studio, however,
focuses on a different institution and site while exploring
unique means of redefining and inventing the role of public
and/or private institutions and their relevance for urban life;
through critical analysis of existing institutional programs
and the invention of new programs, the individual studios
re-appraise and re-define the potentials of an urban institu-
tion. This year, the various studios’ programs ranged from an
urban agri-center sited in Brooklyn to mixed-use twin sky-
scrapers in Dubai to a space hotel in low earth orbit. Despite
the speculative nature of the projects, each studio took on
an ambitious analysis of form, structure, and typology as
well as environmental impact and emergent technologies;
students working on the space-hotel, for example, worked
closely with NASA space station architects in realistic and
meaningful ways. The fourth semester studios are always
very specific in nature, directed by each faculty member, but
they share the exploratory nature that is key to the school.
The Advanced Studios extend the students’ capacity for
more independent and investigative thinking about architec-
ture. A wide range of topics and projects are offered each
semester, and critics present studio projects that relate to
their specific areas of research and expertise. Students take
on specialized individual design trajectories in Studios 5 and
6 with sites and programs often dispersed globally. In the fi-
nal semester, studios travel to sites that support their studio
research topic. Travel is supported by GSAPP funding in the
form of Kinne Travel Grants.
The fifth and sixth semesters of the Master of Archi-
tecture program are combined with the final two semes-
ters of the Advanced Architecture Design program, Master
of Science. Eighteen studios are offered for students in
both programs, and each is led by either a full time faculty
member at Columbia or a visiting professor, often in teams
that combine professional expertise. Studios address new
realms of urban development, focusing on environmental
remediation, energy use, water, irrigation, transportation,
and infrastructure, and the potential impact and effect of
major urban transformations worldwide. Certain students
also develop close associations with GSAPP Research Labs,
using these as a way to evolve and test their ideas in an envi-
ronment that extends beyond the bounds of the school.
The complexity of conceptual issues, programs, and
sites builds upon the basic skills gained in the Core Stu-
dio and summer AAD sequence. Students are exposed to a
greater number of studio critics and consultants and must
assume responsibility for structuring their goals. Students
from the M.Arch. and AAD programs often work together
in these studios, and the diversity of backgrounds, experi-
ences, and specialties they bring forges a collective energy
each year that affects the studio production.
The Advanced Studio sequence fosters an experimental
design culture sensitive to the many different roles played
by architects in contemporary society. The Advanced Studios
seek a new threshold definition for these roles; this innova-
tion relies on the energy and contribution of the students to
create a new benchmark with each graduating class.
Optimization is calling. As new software allows architects
to model and measure the performance of buildings — in
relation to environmental systems, structure, and flows of
air and water — we face a sea of promising and highly rel-
evant numbers.
But now what? How do we improve the numbers? When
do we stop tuning them? How do we negotiate between com-
peting objectives? Which aspects of architecture should be
optimized in the first place?
This is the territory of Proof Two. In this studio about opti-
mization and testing, we aimed to create architecture through
the design of experiments rather than the design of solutions.
Yet while we employed serious tools of engineering and
computer science, we did not limit our studies to numbers. We
also valued positions about culture and program that were dif-
ficult to quantify.
We applied our research to the design of twin towers in
Dubai, addressing issues of tall buildings and energy, as well as
requirements of a large project currently under development
in the city.
Over the course of the semester, we had an informed,
critical, and open-ended discussion about the future of opti-
mization and the future of architecture.
In a milieu of genome
mapping, terabyte-scale personal media management,
nano-scale medicine, and private space tourism, the major-
ity of Americans still believe in Creationism over Evolution.
America is not just a religious country, it is a country of reli-
giosity. Everything — shoes, cars, soda pops, diet regimens,
operating system preferences — is not just marketed; it is
evangelized. Here (perhaps especially in California) the inter-
twining of personal redemption and self-realization is deep
in the local character.
One reason America is good at designing new spiritual
products is because it is so good at creating the demand for
them. In this studio we designed a new Mega-church for an
evangelical, charismatic Protestant Christian congregation
in downtown LA. Students carefully studied Gothic religious
architecture (among the most beautiful spaces ever created)
to consider their success in marrying the social, spiritual,
political, and sensual into a single design. The studio im-
mersed itself in local Mega churches to directly empathize
with the needs of this varied, complex client base.
The contemporary Mega church is sometimes an op-
portunistic adaptive re-use, taking over basketball arenas,
warehouses, even parking lots as needed, and always inher-
iting some of the atmosphere of these. As forms, they have
scale but often insufficient sacrality; they don’t achieve the
same resolution of political and sensual grandeur of cathe-
drals of the past. Part of this studio’s task was to give a more
official, more contemporary, more fantastic form to these
emergent political bodies.
The studio proposed to re-examine the possibilities of
form generation as an autonomous entity. In the context of
these conditions, the studio focused on the generation and
production of mutant micro-behaviors that would accumu-
late to create species from systems.
The studio proposed an
investigation of laterality in the design of a creative wing for
the Sense of Smell Institute (SOSI) at the Fashion Institute
of Technology (FIT). “Since its inception, the Sense of Smell
Institute has explored new olfactory frontiers and supported
innovative research projects that integrated the study of
olfaction with current issues in developmental, perceptual,
social and cognitive psychology, anthropology, neurosci-
ence and related disciplines” (Sense of Smell Institute,
mission statement).
The studio constructed an intensive environment for
research of emergent technologies and their reciprocal re-
lation with the material conditions of constructing architec-
turally. Sensation provides a means of exploring the inter-
section between emergent technologies and design through
a logic of bodily intuition. In displacing, amplifying, and re-
circuiting the sensory limits of the body to the spaces and
objects that surround it, they provide an extended field for
critically rethinking the relation between the technological
and the material. Non-coincidence in the relations between
phenomena, sensation, and cognitive perception were exam-
ined to critically re-examine the legacies of phenomenology
and Gestalt.
The studio examined
the pathways, institutions, and built products of the infor-
mal global trade in money. How is the movement of money
manifested, and in what forms, in urban centers worldwide?
Taking New York as a laboratory for experiments with this
phenomenon, the studio used visual, analytic, and design
tools to understand the flexible forms and institutions that
emerge with informal patterns of global migration.
Rather than accepting the common presumption that
the West or the developed world establishes institutions that
dominate the developing world, documented and responded
to the reverse trend, in which the developing world estab-
lishes new patterns in its host cities, dollar by dollar, person
by person. The result is a massive, still growing, dynamic
global network of physical and communication spaces. Ar-
chitects need to learn how to recognize and how to deploy
the spatial definition of these patterns: what do they look like
now? How are they transforming the city? What might they
look like in the future?
The concept of World Heritage
defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is exceptional in its uni-
versal application. Natural and cultural sites considered of
outstanding value to humanity are so designated and pro-
tected. Environments encompassing significant biodiversity,
archeological sites, and those evidencing acts of extraordi-
nary human achievement are deemed resources belonging
to all peoples of the world regardless of the territory in which
they are located.
This studio investigated the effects of climate change
on thirteen UNESCO World Heritage sites on the African
continent. Students sought to grasp the vast geological
and evolutionary time scales of these environments and to
understand the diverse but interrelated phenomena from
which these sites took form. An alternative energy source
available within each site was identified and the program of
tourism adopted as a means of intervention.
One
of the most provocative images of space exploration from the
19th to the end of the 20th century has been that of a space
station floating above the Earth to serve as a way station to
the universe. The visionary images for the space station as
they appeared in art, literature, and film greatly inspired the
imagination of scientists to probe the limitless territories of
the outer atmosphere and the eventual implementation of our
present-day and future galactic outposts. From early science
fiction projections it has been understood that once rocket pro-
pulsion could overcome Earth’s gravity and reach orbit, travel-
ers would be “halfway to anywhere” they might want to go.
From such a mythical concept one can imagine a hotel floating
in the LEO (low Earth orbit) serving as a transit point between
destinations on Earth, the moon, our galaxy, and beyond.
Based on current strong indications that ventures of
making new and competitive environments in LEO are eco-
nomically feasible and with a market growth analogous to
commercial air transport in the very near future, the studio
problem proposed architectural scenarios and artifacts for
LEO tourist environments. The broader research compo-
nent of the studio also investigated the known effects of
traveling and life in space with the essential elements:
space food, space suits, space medicine, space exercise,
etc. that informed the individual projects in order to offer
a total design package that accommodates a burgeoning
industry of space tourism.
The studio operated
through an opportunistic exploitation of limits, examining
the manner in which constraints can provide the catalyst for
architectural invention.
More specifically, the studio examined the potential
to rethink received architectural and urban formats
based on emergent socio-spatial conditions and new perfor-
mative criteria, engaging specific programmatic, environ-
mental, and physical imperatives to catalyze the architec-
tural imagination.
The focus of these investigations was the emerging
concepts of urban agriculture as a social and environmen-
tal practice and as a catalyst for re-organizing the relation-
ships between productive landscapes, buildings, and cities.
While engaging the broad cultural and spatial implications
surrounding the production, marketing, and consumption of
food in urban environments, the project entailed the design
of a highly specific architectural entity — a hybrid institu-
tion combining aspects of community center, information
clearing house, marketplace, and horticultural laboratory.
Conjoining engineered landscape and programmatic space,
the project acted as a demonstration site for urban agricul-
tural processes.
While its full potential and effects are yet to be evaluated,
the significance of the urban agriculture movement for the
studio resides in its capacity to dislodge imbedded concepts
of the constructed and the natural, provoking new spatial,
social, and programmatic possibilities. The studio asked how
urban agronomic practices might sponsor more imaginative
and sustainable built formations that synthesize the agrar-
ian and the metropolitan — wherein city and productive land-
scape are seen as contiguous and interrelated systems.
The Master of Science degree
in Advanced Architectural Design is a three-term program
consisting of summer, autumn, and spring terms.
The objective of the program is to provide outstanding
young professionals who hold a B.Arch. or M.Arch. degree
the opportunity to enter into an intensive, postgraduate study
that encourages critical thought in the context of design
speculation. Overall, the program emphasizes an experi-
mental approach to architectural design and research, rig-
orously grounded in multiple, complex realities. Specifically,
the program seeks to: 1) engage students in a worldly under-
standing of architecture that responds to the challenges and
possibilities of global urbanization by exploring the city in
all its forms; 2) articulate architecture as a cultural practice
that combines reflective thought, design experimentation,
and ethical responsibilities in an interdisciplinary milieu; 3)
produce architectural objects that reflect an open, critical
engagement with new and existing technologies.
The advanced studios frequently utilize New York City
as a design “laboratory” — a global city that presents both
unique challenges and unique opportunities. The required
summer lecture course, “Metropolis and After,” explores ar-
chitecture’s historical and contemporary role with respect to
changing notions of the city, while the accompanying sum-
mer elective courses are conceived as seminars in “strategic
thinking.” These are all designed to offer students a range
of approaches to working with complex cultural and tech-
nological issues. The program as a whole has long been a
site for young architects from around the globe to test new
ideas and confront changes that affect architecture and cit-
ies worldwide.
This studio sought to rethink the fabric of space
and its resolution in the context of algorithmic infrastruc-
ture and increased data populations applied to correspond-
ing emerging modes of production. On a global scale, the
studio worked on a proposal for ecology of micro-gardens
dispersed as series of climatic/sensorial inserts within
the existing city fabric. Within this framework the studio
expanded material explorations at various scales including
1:1 prototype fabrication and generative design via advanced
modes of scripting.
High-resolution and highly articulated yet adaptable spa-
tial tissue will release a series of micro-climatic conditions
in the city; new atmospheres. This internal ecology will nest
itself as an opportunity for participatory occupancy by its us-
ers. Students worked with the idea of production of space via
interaction of its inhabitants within the highly informed spatial
fabric. Drawing upon the material intelligence and non-linear
behavior of complex fabrics, the studio questioned normative
notions of hierarchical tectonics, instead encouraging the de-
velopment of networked or woven infrastructural ones.
Immense by way of their algorithmic origin, these sys-
tems are able to support probabilistic and improvisational
programmatic patterns. As a means of addressing a more
conventional understanding of architectural program, that
which fixes and regulates, the studio considered instead logics
of programming, those which are provisional and interac-
tive in nature and thus invested in processes of autonomy
and invention.
Simultaneously being an interface for unstable program-
matic occurrences, one experiences a creeping perception
of variations within the fabric itself. In its “genetic” memory
it is carrying potency for mesonic events. They reverberate
through space as intricate and interlaced fabric imprints. In
words of Brian Eno: the future will be like a perfume…
With the anticipated growth of
Manhattan in the next decade the studio set out by work-
ing through spatialised conceptions of making something
“a little larger”. The artificially constructed category of “not
necessarily spatial” served as the frame to the two driving
concepts: the idea of something like a thick digital drawing
pad that necessitates more than one person interacting with
it at the same time and the idea of intensifying the architec-
ture on a site with a limited spatial boundary. This intensifi-
cation was not seen in terms of making physically larger or
saturating experience, but rather constructing precise math-
ematical formulations, whose invented logics became the
material of construction of the thick drawing pad — enabling
a drawing that constantly evolves and changes in and of itself
— a drawing where there is no need of (re)presentation, but
in which things happen sometimes by themselves, always “at
the same time” and with absolute immediacy.
Multi-platforms — of “drawing/painting/image making
into architecture, and back again” — allowed the discourse to
be taken away from contemporary use of “teamwork” or “col-
laboration”, and more towards the strategic relation of “more
than one” and “more of the same.” This was a questioning of
not only how “new onto existing” can be thought about differ-
ently — outside of spatial or spatialised relations — but also
the specific ways in which to construct thought processes
that actively critique contemporary language of the genera-
tive, the evolutionary, growth, the parametric, etc.
This studio provided an open call
for preemptive, architectural action towards specific, pro-
ductive, beneficial, and constructive ends. Studio operations
systematically prompted productive explorations through
various collaborative modes. Immediately, the studio was
divided up into four groups, or collaborative clusters. Each
participant developed an initial stance into a proto-project,
then handed the developed stance off to another individual
within that specific collaborative cluster. Upon exchange, the
studio participant who just inherited another’s proto-project
took full, albeit temporary, ownership of that idea, and devel-
oped the project within a given timeframe. This exchange
occurred four times, until the project fell back into the origi-
nator’s hands. Through this high-performance engine, ideas,
techniques, strategies, and additional collaborative modes
emerged such that the breadth of projects developed through
the rest of the semester proved to be wide and diverse.
Further, this studio took the stance that fabrication is
an operational state of mind. In other words, the intent was
to simply add the Fabrication Lab’s machines to an existing
arsenal of tools through which one can work towards the de-
velopment and clarification of a project — to think through.
Navigating between traditional definitions of both “models”
and “prototypes”, and operating under the premise that any
particular construct physically generated through the Fab-
rication Lab should strive to demarcate a particular moment
of clarity with respect to a project’s overall thrust, ideas
(rather than machine capabilities) generated production.
What do hip-
pies and hunters have in common? One might think that
pacifist, vegetarian, long-haired idealists are at odds with
people who track and hunt animals and then stuff them
for display. However, a shared interest in nature preserves
and off-the-grid land use is creating unlikely alliances.
Environmentalists like the Sierra Club and hunters’ advo-
cates like Trout Unlimited have started to work together to
preserve wilderness and wildlife from encroaching housing
developments and industrial land use practices. Could this
signal a broader alliance between political movements?
For decades conservatives have accused environmentalists
of being anti-development, but this emerging cooperation
promises to frame the debate about sustainable land use in
a very different light.
Within this changing economic and political context,
wilderness is being reinvented. Wilderness promises a
place for escape, leisure, personal reflection, utopian ex-
perimentation, sublime awe, the challenge of the hunt, and
the threat of attack and exposure. To uphold this promise,
land must be constantly tended, reconstructed, regulated,
sold, and made profitable. What remains to be seen is how
emerging partnerships between government and business
will construct new definitions of wilderness, impact public
rights and access, and affect depleted natural resources
and global climate change. The focus of this studio was the
construction of wilderness amidst the contemporary context
of environmental crisis, market-oriented land development,
and government regulation.
The studio investigated issues of
excessive urban and architectural strategies in an extreme
climate, extreme economic and political context, and in an
environment of extreme and excessive implementation of
American style popular culture, as can be witnessed and is
currently in the making in cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Students examined the architectural strategies preva-
lent in contemporary urban development and excessive ar-
chitectural fantasies in places like the United Arab Emirates,
and developed architectural and urban strategies of their own
that critically responded to those conditions of (economic) en-
vironment, (architectural) culture and (body) politics. X-S City:
Abu Dhabi Capital Gardens is a utopia settling into reality.
For many designers across a range
of disciplines and scales, landscape has emerged as a
model for thinking about contemporary urbanism. At the
same time, huge leaps in technologies of landscape analy-
sis and representation have further expanded the edges of
the discipline. Today, landscape is integrally tied not only to
the urban realm, but also to the complex infrastructure of
mobile networks and geo-spatial information systems (GIS,
GPS, remote sensing, satellite imagery, Google geo-tag-
ging) that pervades our interaction with and representation
of “environment.”
In investigating this contemporary condition, this studio
tested new scenarios of imagining, building, and occupying
urban landscape form and the representation of nature. The
challenge of this studio was to invent hybrid architectural,
landscape, datascape, and urban patterns, reclaiming a
251-acre contaminated site on the New Jersey shore as a
new “public park.” In addition to interpreting the notion of
park, students investigated and designed a “visitors’ center”
relative to new interactive mapping technologies and exist-
ing social networks that link to lower Manhattan, the Statue
of Liberty, Ellis Island, and other nearby tourist landmarks.
Students were asked to design and choreograph the inter-
face — both physical and virtual — between visitor and na-
ture and to challenge traditional constructs and boundaries
of interaction between the two.
How do
you like your urbia? Sub- or Super-? In- or Ex-? Is it good
hi-rise, bad suburbia? Or is it good suburbia, bad hi-rise?
The sprawl, say in South Korea, of the ubiquitous hi-rise
tower communities or low-rise suburban spread?
How can we take the typologies of Suburbia and
Superurbia, of Ex-urbia or In-urbia, and develop new to-
pologies of exterior and interior — sub-surface and super-
depth, super-surface and sub-depth — in designing new
apartment towers in Shingal and a new low-rise subur-
ban development in Yangji. This performance of insides
and outsides, of social surface and depth, were explored
through the topologies of interior and exterior life — the
domestic drama and domestic comedy of life in houses
and life in apartments. Thus, these spatial topologies are
consequently psychological topologies, social topologies,
and political topologies.
ISSUES: ARCHITECTURE &
PHILANTHROPY, CELEBRITY, BEAUTY, LUXURY +
Carbon Footprint ‘Deep Compatibility’
Ecological ‘Sustainability’... In Every Way
Site: Astor Place_nyc
Then: Cooper/Carnegie/Hewitt/Mellon
Now: Brad/Angelina/George/Al/Bill/Leo/Julia
Program: Hotel (50 Suites)
Price: $2500 — 8000 Per Night
Restaurant/Lounge/Cocktail Bar/Smoking Room
Pool/Private Dining Room (50 - 150 Person)
Screening Room — Auditorium
GORGEOUS... in every way
Algorithms,
combined with the ever-expanding computational power of
machines, promise a new language for a new phase of fine-
tuned and unexpected architecture. They drive optimiza-
tion of building structure and environmental systems, they
generate complex forms and surfaces, and they control the
fabrication and assembly of building components. But their
scope and limits are still relatively unknown. This is the ter-
ritory of Proof, a collaborative, open-ended research studio
that explored new ground through the process of testing.
We learned by testing, and we tested by prototyping and by
drawing on the scientific method. We sought valid results by
iteratively generating hypotheses, designing experiments,
conducting controlled tests, and analyzing the results. We
sought verifiable results by documenting and sharing our
experiments publicly. More specifically, we used advanced
computational methods (genetic algorithms) and multi-
objective optimization software (modeFrontier), as well as
procedures of testing through computer simulation (compu-
tational fluid dynamics) and testing through physical proto-
types (digital fabrication and tow tank deployments).
Although we employed serious engineering and com-
puter science tools, we did not limit our studies to num-
bers. We applied our techniques toward efficiency and form,
while also applying them toward complex issues of culture,
infrastructure, and program that are difficult to quantify.
Throughout the process, we generated informed, critical, and
open-ended discussion about the future of architecture.
Urban Think Tank’s
S.L.U.M LAB has embraced the idea of teaching a studio
that develops a strategy of “urban retrofitting” rather than
demolishing the problem areas of the city.
Today one sees small medical centers, gyms, commu-
nity kitchens, and other small projects that create a sense
of pride and well being within the cities’ poorest areas, and
have a positive impact on the reduction of fear and crime.
The S.L.U.M condition, which we have coined as a Sustain-
able Living Urban Model is ad-hoc, complex, and extremely
contingent. We are working to compliment the programmatic
and social infrastructure of the slum with computational
analysis tools that can survey and categorize the physical
condition of the SLUM itself. We are also trying to propose
a set of tools that facilitate both analysis (de-contextualizing
and re-contextualizing) and the potential build-out of “slum-
technology”. We are trying to think of a technology transfer
both in AND out of the slum. The short-term goal was to
use the studio collaboration to author a platform for these
thoughts, tools, and methodologies. The studio goal is to
produce an association of architects, thinkers, students, and
builders that specialize in this “technology transfer” in all
forms of products, analysis, building structures, and modes
of exchange.
For most of its history Morocco
has been a destination as well as a transit point for migra-
tion streams of both political and economic refugees in both
directions. Casablanca in particular has absorbed rural Arab
populations and European ex-patriots alike, shaping its
cosmopolitan character. Dramatic increases in population
created opportunities for French planners and architects
to shape Northern African cities such as Rabat, Tangiers,
Algiers, and in particular Casablanca, where inventive new
housing solutions such as ATBAT-Afrique were executed in
the post war era of the early 1950’s.
With the acceptance of Spain into the European Union
in 1986, and Morocco being granted Associate EU status ten
years later in 1996, Morocco became the port of departure
of choice for Sub-Saharan Africans seeking an easy route
to Europe via Spain. Since 2003 under the open door policy
of the new Spanish Socialist Government, immigration to
Spain has reached a level of nearly 600,000 persons per year.
Recently, Spain has begun to exert more control over the
flood of immigrants via treaty agreements with Morocco and
other states to moderate the flow of Africans to southern
Spain. The new Spanish policy is to set up Migrant Reception
Centers within the host countries of origin where migrant
groups can be processed and receive one-year guest workers
visas. Building upon the reality of this situation, the studio
project proposed for the ATBAT-Afrique Site in Casablanca
was a joint Spanish-Moroccan Refuge/Reception Center for
African Migrants enroute to EU Countries via Spain.
The Architecture Of Possible Worlds
Proto Cells — Proto Organs — Proto Beings / Proto Nets
— Proto Neurons — Proto Bundles / Proto Types — Proto
Structures — Proto Strings / Proto Bots — Proto Genes —
Proto Species / Proto Space — Proto Worlds — Proto Life
> Compression < | < Decompression > / The Artificial
Worlds Of Protoarchitecture
How boring has
perfection become? Evidence of this lies in the fact that
our design obsessions are based on an appreciation for the
perversity of mutant form. Image-forms are the product of
speed up and slow down, slice and blend, fuse and separate
— repetitions of scenic rhythms learned from a lifetime of
being awed by cinematic affects. Micro-techniques for comb-
ing the thresholds of the horrific-becoming-beautiful and
the beautiful-becoming-horrific (grotesque) have imprinted
themselves as visual-temporal cues on my own design
retina. The importance of multiplicity has finally opened the
door for mutation as a permanent state of the present. This
is where the true transformation is happening. We are sub-
verting the logic of perfection: what used to be about mas-
tering the result of a non-perfect process is now about the
production of monstrosity and the grotesque through the
mathematical perfection of an evolving mechanism.
In the context of these conditions, the studio focused on
the generation and production of mutant micro-behaviors
that accumulate to create species from systems. The stu-
dio investigated perforations, nip tuck, bo-tox, fat, follicles,
hairs, and the subsequent deformations, evolving into an
investigation of exotic aesthetic isomorphism. The studio
explored the predominant effect of this “isomorphism” be-
ing the aggregation of diverse forms of design intelligence
into an almost universal condition of image production.
Perhaps some might see this as a triumph of superficiality
over depth, but it’s certainly also an intensification of the
conjectural and fictive logics of design. We see this as a real
and complex demand that global network culture makes on
producers of architectural content.
The New Jersey
waterfront is undergoing a significant transformation from a
derelict industrial working coastline into a cultural and rec-
reational amenity for the established and newly developed
adjacent residential and commercial communities. There is a
public desire to link these two waterfront initiatives with new
programs that negotiate between the ecological and urban
pedestrian landscapes.
The studio addressed the potential of rapid prototyping
techniques to develop both economically and environmen-
tally viable full-scale architecture. Through research and
exploration of emerging fabrication techniques with new
materials and their application to new architectural form,
students developed proposals for an architectural project
with potential prototyping capabilities using specific prod-
ucts and processes. New prototype recreational programs
were proposed for the floating projects, and students were
asked to create arguments and present evidence for their
viability at the site, co-existing with the regeneration of the
water’s edge at Liberty State Park. These programs and pub-
lic infrastructure require off-site fabrication and are ideally
suited to pre-fabrication techniques, as they would float,
cantilever, or span the cove inlet.
The studio worked towards full scale mock-ups, draw-
ings and the production of a fabrication scenario — utilizing
a technique and material relationship — positioned within
the architectural project.
The runAway project studio
reformats the process of architectural production in order
to broadcast architectural products. It is based on a com-
petition format with a series of design challenges evoking
the limits of architecture and combines aesthetic and social
programs. Each week a design challenge was reviewed and
a new challenge issued. Each challenge required students
to generate and commit to an architectural response in this
limited time frame. Each challenge was client- or context-
driven. Over the course of the semester, each student pro-
duced ten projects and a final studio catalogue.
EXTREME ENVIRONMENTS
On Friday, August 31, 2007 the NASA
Institute for Advanced Concepts closed its doors forever.
This think tank for science-based far-out concepts financed
research such as: un-manned self-replicating lunar facto-
ries, the space elevator, algorithmic based architectures
for self-healing spacecraft, shape-shifting spacesuits, and
system architectures for self-sustaining lunar colonies.
On August 5, 2007 a Russian-manned submersible went
to the artic seabed to plant a Russian flag, triggering a race
for land grabbing and a new territorial war between neigh-
boring nations. The flag was placed on a continental shelf
that the Russian government claims connects Siberia to the
North Pole. Under international law, no country can hold ter-
ritory in the North Pole or the surrounding Artic Ocean.
Two years ago, it took one hour for a 3000-year-old,
2 billion ton, 10-story ice island to break off the Canadian
ice shelf. The drifting island poses a threat to the shipping
and gas industries of Alaska, where it is expected to hit. The
ice island, slightly larger than Manhattan, is stable, and has
been explored many times since it was discovered to have
calved, or broken away from the coast.
Extreme environments are becoming everyday occur-
rences, and their extremities traverse the political, ecologi-
cal, and atmospherical. The extreme environment is one in
which all architects will soon have to operate.
What will new technologies bring to bear in extreme en-
vironments? How will biological life be sustained? How can
existing ecologies be preserved by our invasive presence?
What can architecture contribute to the already existing uto-
pian speculations of life in extreme environments?
Building for our physical neces-
sities is still often the main driving construction factor for the
development of cities. Nevertheless, today a few cities are
asking radically different questions which have more to do
with how much the virtual world is operating rather than the
physical world. How do we satisfy the pleasure of the mind,
“unlimited” capital, or our intention to exist as an idea, a
place, or a brand?
Those subjects are usually relegated to an afterthought
in most city planning, but not in a place like Dubai. Geopo-
litical investment and brilliant marketing have allowed the
small city of Dubai to become one of the major metropolitan
players in the architectural world. Fantasy and marketing
have become a way to attract capital, generating a city not
based on “demand” or “necessity” but on the satisfaction of
the materialization of a “virtual environment.”
We cannot consider anymore our reality without a con-
dition of the mental — or labeled differently the virtual — as-
sociated with the usual physical materiality. Reality is always
a combination of both, but in places where the virtual is so
powerful that it almost entirely generates the physical mate-
rialization, architecture imagination is seriously needed.
This studio built on the previ-
ous 13 studios into Not Not Architecture: an absolute posi-
tive, more architecture than Architecture = -1/X. We exam-
ined three ongoing re-definitions in the expanding field of
architecture: Architecture, Not Architecture, and Not Not
Architecture juxtaposed to the Merzbau of Egg City. This was
done through the production of a building every two weeks
on a site in Manhattan in, around, or elsewhere in counter-
point echo to the Hudson Rail Yards.
The Hudson Rail Yards act as a point of reference in
the double zero map of not not in Double Zero City, a hole
in the hole, a void in the void. The buildings were to be Pub-
lic Houses of any program, size, and site the student chose
made by drawing, painting, modeling, photographing, and/
or projecting by hand and machine.
We also studied a parallel investigation into Packed
Form via the Packed Book and the Packed House. Each stu-
dent made an analysis of a seminal packed house with its
packed book, or texts, forming paradigms for built manifes-
toes. This began with Wittgenstein’s House for his sister in
Vienna, included Chareau’s Maison de Verre in Paris, Ponti’s
Planchart House in Caracas, Venturi’s mother’s house in
Philadelphia, Eisenman’s House VI in Cornwall, Hejduk’s
Wallhouse II in Groningen, and ended with Arakawa and
Gins’ Bioscleave House II in East Hampton.
The studio dictum still stands: Sneeze, Blink, Build it!
This studio explored redevelop-
ment of the Oak Point industrial waterfront in the Hunts Point
neighborhood of the South Bronx. The program investigated
a new generation of “industry” in New York City, related to
the transformation from a biotic-based economy to a resto-
ration-based economy and from renewable to remediated
resources, using as a base line a feasibility study for an eco-
industrial park at Oak Point developed by Sustainable South
Bronx (SSBX) and the Greenworker Cooperative. This investi-
gation was coordinated with the goals of the NYC2030 Plan as
developed by the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and
Sustainability. Oak Point is one of the largest undeveloped
parcels of land in all of New York City. The studio questioned
current plans to build a new jail on the site, instead advo-
cating for an industrial recycling facility that would siphon
off reusable building construction materials such as scrap
metal, glass, and plastics that normally get sent to a land-
fill together with the rest of the waste flow passing through
the borough.
I’ve heard about some-
thing called (n)certainties (biotopes) 2.0 that builds up only
through multiple, heterogeneous, and contradictory sce-
narios — something that rejects even the idea of a possible
prediction about its form of growth or future typology.
It’s something shapeless grafted onto existing tissue,
something that needs no vanishing point to justify itself but
instead welcomes a quivering existence immersed in a real-
time vibratory state — here and now.
Tangled, intertwined, it seems to be a city, or rather a
fragment of a city.
Its inhabitants are immunized because they are both
vectors and protectors of this complexity. The multiplicity
of its interwoven experiences and forms is matched by the
apparent simplicity of its mechanisms.
The urban form no longer depends on the arbitrary de-
cisions or control over its emergence exercised by a few,
but rather the ensemble of its individual contingencies. It
simultaneously subsumes premises, consequences, and the
ensemble of induced perturbations in a ceaseless interac-
tion. Its laws are consubstantial with the place itself, with
no work of memory.
Many different stimuli have contributed to the emer-
gence of (n)certainties (biotopes) 2.0 and they are continually
reloaded. Its existence is inextricably linked to the end of
the grand narratives, the objective recognition of climatic
changes, a suspicion of all morality (even ecological), the
vibration of social phenomena, and the urgent need to renew
the democratic mechanisms. Fiction is its reality principle:
What you have before your eyes conforms to the truth of the
urban condition of (n)certainties (biotopes) 2.0.
The world is terrifying when it’s intelligible, when it
clings to some semblance of predictability, when it seeks
to preserve a false coherence. In (n)certainties (biotopes)
2.0 it is what is not there that defines it, that guarantees
its readability, its social and territorial fragility and its
indetermination.
The 75 pages of Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus made Wittgenstein famous and, at
the same time, effectively misunderstood. Soon after, he
designed a house for his sister in Vienna (1926) that marked
a revision in his thinking. Language was no longer under-
stood as a perfect mirror of reality but capable of what he
described as a “language game”. These notions were elabo-
rated in 30,000 manuscript pages he wrote before his death
in 1951. Two years after his death, the Blue and Brown books
and Logical Investigation were published. Unfinished work
based on his notes, it is without technical terminology and
provides an insight into the construction of reality. There are
of course many examples of “Language Game”.
Raymond Queneau and the mathematician Francois Le
Lionnais created Oulipo (OUvroir de LItterature POtentielle).
George Perec and Italo Calvino were members. This group
believed that literature is the outcome of linguistic devices
such as numerical speculations, laboratories for invention,
inasmuch as they construct rather than describe. New reali-
ties are proposed. Indeed, it is in this spirit we would like to
explore the possibility of this project.
In 1938 with Austria taken over by the Nazis, Wittgen-
stein traveled to Berlin to secure the so-called Aryan papers
for his two sisters who refused to leave Vienna. He obtained
these papers against 1.7 tons of gold, which presented at the
time 10% of the Austrian gold reserve. What we proposed for
our program was to imagine that Deutsche Bank decided to
pay back this enormous sum. The family decided to create
a foundation dedicated to Wittgenstein Philosophical Inves-
tigation and the students were invited to envision program,
site, and project.
Our studios all begin
with a theorem or hypothesis that we then try to explore and
demonstrate. The first of the series of studios addressed the
notion of “concept-form.” The second one tested the idea
of “topo-types.” In this third installment, we investigated a
highly architectural particularity: “repetition.”
We started with the hypothesis that there is no architec-
ture without repetition: with its rows of windows, columns,
bricks, steps, etc, architecture inevitably is the art of orga-
nizing repetition.
More than any other art, architecture depends on the
nearly endless accumulation of similar elements. We would
like to argue that contrary to popular belief, the more repeti-
tion there is, the better the architecture becomes.
Far from being boring, repetition is exciting and chal-
lenging and can lead to new discoveries, provided that you
exceed a certain threshold. In other words, we suggest that
quantitative excess is actually qualitative.
Yet all good architecture is often singular. This means
that it cannot be endlessly reproduced or repeated. For ex-
ample, imitating the repetitive curtain wall pattern designed
by Mies van der Rohe will not necessarily be good archi-
tecture, while its original was. Hence our claim: the best
architecture is often the demonstration of both singularity
and repetition, or singular repetition. We will therefore argue
in favor of “one-of-a-kind” repetitions.
Since the Renaissance, architec-
ture has responded to new socio-cultural eras with utopian
and dystopian schemes. Such fantasies have not only served
to advance the discipline, but have also been a means by which
architecture can research, analyze, and investigate society.
It is our contention that we are living in a new era
defined by the network. During the last fifteen years, the
Internet has joined us together and gone wireless; comput-
ing has become mobile while applications are increasingly
network-based; the mobile phone has become the world’s
most successful gadget; virtually any form of publication has
become available to virtually everyone. But these technologi-
cal changes are only part of a broader shift in society. If in
Fordist modernity the individual was located in a hierarchical
system and if in post-Fordism the fragmented individual was
in a system of flexible production and consumption, today we
conceive of ourselves as networked individuals, assembled
out of flows of people and things.
By and large, architecture has failed to deliver visionary
proposals for this moment. This studio set out to remedy that
situation. Students responded to our contemporary situation
by studying an aspect of network culture in depth and produc-
ing schemes based on an exacerbation of that condition that
could be utopian, dystopian, or both utopian and dystopian.
This studio was the
second installment in a decade-long project whose aim is to
examine received ideas in contemporary architecture cul-
ture; that is, formerly novel ideas which, due to recurrent
use, have been depleted of their original intensity, and which
ultimately forestall thought as they perpetuate. This ongo-
ing series of design studios and theory seminars proposes
to disclose, define, and date — and in the long run classify
and archive — received ideas prevalent over the past decade,
both in the professional and academic realms, in order to
ultimately open up otherwise precluded possibilities for
architectural design and architectural theory. To that end, it
focuses on design strategies and conceptual formulations,
particularly in terms of the means of representation and the
lexicon through which they are respectively articulated. This
project takes as precedent Gustave Flaubert’s unfinished
project, Le dictionnaire des idées reçues. Just as the latter, it
sets out to detect and collect received ideas and provide defi-
nitions — or, rather, a user’s manual — so as to render them
self-evident and thereby undermine their perpetuation. Yet
as opposed to the latter, it also seeks to use that collection
as a repository — or, rather, a dissecting table — for the
formulation of new architectural devices.
Borrowing a cue from
the Situationists, who conceived of a new psychogeography
of the modern city based on event and appropriation, the
studio adopted their tactic of temporal/spatial drift to move
through the geography of the home. New digital technolo-
gies — mobile phones, laptops, the internet, iPods, smart
homes — have created a new spatial/temporal matrix, a
new space/time pressure. These transformations mate-
rialize as the spatialization of time, a preoccupation of
experimental filmmakers like Tarkovsky, and more relevant
to architects, the temporalization of space. This studio
examined how these technologies impact the making
and inhabitation of the domestic sphere. We considered
how new domestic activities such as tele-commuting, for
example, create unexpected “situations,” events within the
house, rendering archaic the spheres of the “master bed-
room,” “family room,” “garage,” and “kitchen.” Instead of
assigning static functions and compartmentalizing spaces,
we looked for “patterns of regular doings” or “situations”
within the house, as well as considered how domestic
activities such as telecommunication have shifted private
activities into the public sphere. We used digital video
and animation to analyze and produce new modalities of
time in architecture: interactivity-body/material/technology;
mediaspace-virtual space/time; haptic sensing-perception
of intensities, durations, and modulations.
This studio explored the possible relationships between
energy and data management in hybrid cars and intercon-
nected this with houses to examine energy management
in relation to wider systems in urbanism and building. This
was carried out by transcribing and re-writing the Eames
House and the Toyota Prius as newly linked instruments,
seeking new prototypes for energy management in archi-
tecture. The focus was on how these implications impact
local urban design and enable new forms of building. The
work examined two moments in our recent history during
which architecture and design were cast against and within
the public imagination of innovation in computing and tech-
nological efficiency. Imagined as overtly benign — concepts
of efficiency in building systems were leveraged against
this imagination.
Architecture programs have traditionally posed design
studios at levels that seek to show building technologies
and refinement in building systems and technology. How-
ever, studios even at their most advanced usually operate
at a level where the proadvances require a deep level of
skill and knowledge, suggesting that innovation would oc-
cur at a more technically sophisticated level — later in the
development process. It’s critical that an architect incor-
porate high-level technical knowledge immediately at the
outset of a design endeavor. This studio ups the ante on
what is possible in studio and sets the stage for later work
to explore this more fully or to change course and instead
focus on a wider range of social or cultural goals while
having a deep technical content to the skill set.
The context is
Paraisopolis, a 70,000 inhabitant city that is less a place or
even an alignment of places than a condition and perhaps an
orientation of what makes up today’s cities in the global south.
In a sense, the announcement of a global south is premature
as even now events are unfolding in real time towards ever
accelerating global and local conditions. As the studio title
implies, Urban Think Tank focuses on the culture of architec-
ture in Latin America, and the studio semester was particu-
larly oriented as a kind of advanced post-housing studio.
The U-TT studio is an attempt to develop complex so-
cial and architectural strategies that transgress with distinct
ambitions in the urban reality. From systematic propositions
of public housing to the construction of public spaces that
find no time for incubating in the traditional practice, U-TT
negotiates legal and illegal zones, as a reminder of the per-
vasive control to which designers are all subject. The Sus-
tainable Living Urban Model proposes that architects work
as connectors between the two opposite forces of top down
planning and bottom-up initiatives to make them interact
powerfully and productively.
The students worked with politicians, policy makers,
community groups, global corporations, and international
professionals. The studio believes that the opposition of “le-
gal” and “peripheral” urban areas, the rich and the margina-
lised, are equally constitutive, and therefore a new model
of city visioning must be implemented for developing cities.
Thus the studio work makes an argument to deliberately
shift away from the mono-functional housing type to a strat-
egy of using hybridity to resolve the tensions between con-
ceptual polarities of wealth/poverty and public/private.
In 2010 Brasilia turns 50, reminding
us of its founder President Kubitschek’s famous campaign
promise to achieve 50 years of development in 5. In the last
50 years, the world’s 5th largest country has evolved, yet
its capital city remains frozen in time. How can we update
Brasilia without spoiling it? Students designed new annexes
to the ministries, overlaying an alternate future for Brasilia’s
architecture upon the 1960 master plan. Each project consid-
ered how the locus of power and monument at the scale of
a city could be transformed through their specific architec-
tural interventions, based on three paradoxes:
Government ministry functions are decentralizing — an
unanticipated phenomenon in 1957 when Brazil established
its new center. The opportunity to occupy the void left behind
by the departing bureaucrats allowed the students to rein-
vent the ministry annexes — buildings originally designed
to absorb the now placeless back-of-house functions — as
buildings with an updated political and social agenda. “Back”
became the new “Front”.
Brasilia’s master plan is protected by UNESCO, yet its
individual buildings are generally not protected, so long as
replacements forever conform to volumetric dimensions es-
tablished by Lucio Costa. Our second paradox was to design
buildings that would resonate with the two Brasilia’s: that of
our time and the one that is superimposed.
Unlike its European counterpart, Brazilian Modern ar-
chitecture was almost exclusively produced with concrete,
deriving from it the seemingly opposing qualities of monu-
mentality, plastic expression, permanence, and gravitational
freedom. Our third paradox therefore was to use this tradi-
tionally heavy and massive material in an innovative way.
Reality can be thought of in one of two
terms: the discrete or the continuous. Attempts to bridge the
two invariably result in all kinds of conundrums filled with
paradoxes and undecidability. As Badiou has argued con-
vincingly, it is necessary to subtract the idea of God from the
concept of the infinite since only then is it possible to render
effective Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the death of God.
The modern secularization of the infinite as a mathematical
concept has profound implications in dealing with the nature
of thought and the world including architecture.
The gap between the finite and the infinite has come to
symbolize what Lacan once suggested in a different context
as a hole in knowledge that resists absolute penetration by
thought. These concepts may seem too abstract and far re-
moved from normal day to day existence since the history
of architecture is essentially defined by the deployment of
discrete forms and shapes. Only with the development of
topology in the early 20th century have architects, such as
Frederick Keisler, began to think in terms of topology in the
design of architectural form.
The project for the studio was to design a formal build-
ing structure that incorporated elements of the discrete and
the continuous as part of its morphology. Emphasis was on
the generative development of architectural form as op-
posed to interactive sculpting of three-dimensional shapes
be they biomorphic or otherwise. Although no programmatic
function is given, each project had to manifest itself as a
proposition of architecture and the question of formal rela-
tions have to be solved in relation to this proposition.
For the past three
years, this ongoing series of studios has developed ideas
about the pairing of emerging fabrication techniques with pro-
grammatic identity. The outcome is documented in the book
Constructive Practices due out in the spring of 2008.
The studio developed incrementally with the first proj-
ects being skin systems, the second developing volumetric
depth, and the third fully three dimensional systems. In
each studio, the best projects anticipated the next sequence
of development.
The proposal for this studio was to use these as a basis
and link it to investigations in light from earlier studios. In
contrast to the earlier light investigations which were visual
and experiential, this studio combined the visual/formal with
the systemic performance of light as an energy source. The
goal was to expand (co-opt) the individual/experiential to
encompass the collective/sustainable. Light is received by
architecture to create both physical and psychological en-
ergy. The studio used as a springboard the most developed of
the last studio projects, returning to the manageability of the
skin when starting an entirely new mode of investigation.
The studio merged ideas of skin, structure, sunlight,
and systemic order, into the fabrication of an architectural
surface. The surface was constructed out of a mitigated du-
ality that merges the logical and physical approach with the
emotional and perceptual approach combining experiential
data with analytic data.
The effects of global warming
are simultaneously a threat to and a promise for one of the
last un-claimed territories on our planet: the Arctic Circle.
The Arctic Circle sits within a temporal boundary set by the
summer and winter solstice, during which time this region
experiences 24 hours of sunlight and 24 hours of darkness
respectively. With the melting of the “ice cap”, this vast
wilderness, also home to 4 million people comprised of 10
distinct ethnic groups, holds an unknown amount of natural
resources to be exploited.
At the turn of the year 2000, the United Nations es-
tablished a set of eight Millennia Development Goals, the
current focus being the eradication of extreme poverty and
hunger, the achievement of primary education, and the com-
bat against disease. Of the eight, two goals were set aside to
ensure environmental sustainability and to promote global
partnership for equitable development.
This studio investigated the role of the UN as protector-
ate of an increasingly significant and rapidly shifting territory.
In laying claim to a UN Regional Outpost for the Arctic Circle
students were asked to define strategies and techniques to
bring global awareness to the issues at hand.
Our research ranged from the history of the region, its
people, cultures, resources, and wildlife to the history of the
UN, its structure, goals, and potential intentions related to
the controversial topics of global warming, global develop-
ment, and the preservation of resources. We interrogated
non-traditional methods of inhabiting and utilizing extreme
transitional environments from which students were expect-
ed to develop responsive architectural proposals.
The intersection of CRISIS
and POWER provided the material, social, and environmen-
tal context and defined the critical milieu in which the studio
worked. CRISIS was taken as an opportunity for architectural
invention in areas where architectural design is rarely a pri-
ority. Each student identified a setting that was demonstra-
bly in a state of CRISIS — there are many... The focus of the
studio was on the SECOND STAGE OF RECOVERY after the
immediate CRISIS had passed and with it the first stage of
intense individual, collective, NGO, and Governmental activ-
ity. “FOLLOW THROUGH” is inevitably difficult, extremely
problematic and in many cases enlarges rather than dimin-
ishes the CRISIS. The studio addressed this predicament and
designed small-scale infrastructures and developed strate-
gies for their implementation and use, monitoring, feedback,
and the assessment of their value in use.
To achieve this we worked in the disciplinary hinterland
where architecture as a relational practice meets architec-
ture as an autonomous intellectual discipline. We believed
that in this hinterland there is a place for design and re-
search that shares some of the qualities that Michel Serres
identified as a “North-West Passage” — a place with re-
markable environmental attributes, promising rich rewards
for the integrated thinking that remains unexploited and is
vital for the architecture of the near future.
* COOL AID: Architecture as Agent, the Architect as Activist
— because it’s worth it.
Las Vegas is using
up its energy and water sources at an alarming rate. In fact,
the Southern Nevada Water Authority predicts that in the
absence of remedial action, there will be no water for hun-
dreds of thousands of Las Vegas Valley residents in just three
years. In contrast, according to the Energy Department of
California, a 100-mile-square area of Nevada, if equipped
with solar devices, could supply the U.S. with all the power it
needs. Given this, here are some questions this studio’s proj-
ects posed: Is it possible for architecture and engineering to
intervene in this crash course to disaster? Could the design
and assembly of smart environmental systems, which both
produce and conserve energy and resources, be turned loose
in the desert wilderness? Could new programs for occupy-
ing this wilderness be charged with the additional task of
producing energy and conserving water and other resources
and be put to work to serve both as public space and new
renewable resources?
An extreme example of urbanism and suburban-
ism, Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the
US today. Las Vegas is a resort, not an ordinary city, and
it offers a way to study the compelling phenomenon of the
populist, sprawling, post-industrialist, car-oriented urban
culture. Because of its history of rampant and unrestrained
growth, and particularly its very recent shift into a kind of
mega-scale building, it is experiencing tremendous infra-
structural pressures. Using Las Vegas as the test site, this
design studio addressed the potential for new systems of
energy production to be leveraged against the large scale
development of new public space currently being enacted
on Public Lands in Nevada.
The
intention of this studio was to take advantage of the impend-
ing demand for great amounts of public housing to mobilize
such program for the transformation of the city.
Design Techniques
The real “subject matters” of the studio were the design
techniques, and the studio developed three parallel lines of
work corresponding to three scales of reflection converging
in contemporary practice:
1) the investigation of a collective dwelling unit pertinent
for our time;
2) the invention of new types of “infrastructural” mixed
buildings, in which housing is a non-excluding protagonist,
capable of repositioning the center of gravity of contempo-
rary urban peripheries, revising its absent personality and
its deficit of environmental quality;
3) the fine tuning of design instruments applicable in
the new scenarios generated by convulsive urban growth: a
“design project” for the participation of architecture in the
transformation of the city and for the production of alter-
natives to the purely speculative development and all the
banality and inefficiency associated with it.
Situation?
The site of the studio was a really big abandoned plot in the
southeast of Madrid, used until recently as a factory of rein-
forced concrete pipes. The work was intended to be simul-
taneously pragmatic and experimental. The initial conditions
were presented as opportunities more than necessities.
What was at stake was not to solve problems or to develop
a therapeutic attitude, but instead the mobilization of the
energy that, no matter what will be deployed to build this
place, would be for the production of a new reality, unexpect-
ed and impossible to achieve through conventional methods
of planning and development.
ANARCHITECTURE 2…The
studio studied an important historical exhibition that ques-
tioned what architecture is…”ANarchitecture, 1974” was
an exhibition co-curated by Gordon Matta Clark and the
ANarchitecture Group: Jene Heighstein, Suzi Harris, Richard
Nonas, Laurie Anderson, and Bernard Kirshenbum. The
original exhibition twisted and redefined architecture. A hole
in the ground that led to an underground area became archi-
tecture, a pile of trash became architecture…Jene Heighstien
said “to relate it to the human interaction was the key”. The
hole didn’t have to be big enough to get into — but if you could
put your mind into it, it became architecture.”
Projects like Saemangeum
require us to formulate a new reason to justify our design
proposals. With this project type, the design service we pro-
vide can’t be legitimized based on an argument of “economy
of means,” the efficient use of materials, or any other one
that values the sensible expenditure of money. This proj-
ect, which will likely be realized, is now relatively common:
there are billions of dollars of available investment capital
and the equivalent of hundreds of million more in lease and
tax incentives, all bundled together with central government
blessings and support. For this new context in which feasi-
bility is not a function of cost, our two proposals acknowl-
edged the desire that architects produce eye-catching work
that has popular appeal, while attempting to define for our-
selves a meaningful reason for being. For this incompre-
hensibly large site — 20 km x 20 km or the size of Paris plus
2 Manhattans — we imposed the constraint of certainty to
focus the ambition for urban development to a limited area
and focal point.
PROJECT:
With an ever
expanding economy, and a transition towards capitalism,
the Chinese population with disposable income is increas-
ing at an astonishing pace. In addition, many Chinese —
mostly those working at state-owned enterprises-retire at
very early ages to make way for their young replacements.
When this is considered with the fact that the Chinese are
living longer lives, it is easy to project that there will soon be
sprouting new cities throughout China accommodating the
ever increasing need for leisure. What opportunities will this
demand yield to reinvent notions of leisure? How is leisure
defined in a culture where “conspicuous consumption” has
not, until most recently, existed? What kind of new leisure
cities and architectures will this produce? The project for
the studio was to develop a prototypical resort hotel for 21st
century China.
The Library, the Archive,
is the technical solution we humans have deployed to solve
the challenge of amnesia; a technique that intends to keep
the supposed beast inside each of us at bay. Yet given our
contemporary global, political and technological situation, it
is impossible to consider the “Library” as an institution with-
out acknowledging that an absolute redefinition of power is
taking place.
If information in many ways equals power, and if
awareness and intelligence are ever more modulated by the
emerging infrastructure of free and wireless Net, then the
Library must radically reconfigure itself as a new institution if
it hopes to survive. In fact, there is little hope for the library as
a conventional bastion of power and law. By the time today’s
policy makers realize the extent of the technological revo-
lution, distributed networks and information reservoirs will
have self-deployed to such an extent that the traditional form
of the library will be extinct. The spatial relationships that
have defined the transfer of knowledge in the city, in the li-
brary as an institution, will also have suffered a sea change.
Today’s surveillance culture insists that global safety
depends on an all seeing eye, a total pervasion of information
visibility. Much theorized by thinkers like Virilio, we engaged
this idea of an extended visibility and the erasure of space, in
the consideration of how we can design a library that might
function adequately as a filter, bulwark or conversely an ac-
celerator in this coming new age of control.
How do we satisfy the
pleasure of the mind? How should we offer a space for who
we “think” we are? How to construct an idea, an image, a
brand, a place?
Building for our physical necessities used to be the
main driving construction factor for the development of
cities. Rational economical decision based on demand and
supply generates an expected product. Nevertheless, today
cities like Dubai are asking radically different questions that
have more to do with the virtual and the visual world, which
produces a physical world, almost as a by product.
Geopolitical investment and brilliant marketing have
allowed the small city of Dubai to become recently one of
the major metropolitan players in the architectural world.
Fantasy and marketing have become a way to attract capi-
tal, generating a city not based on “demand” or “necessity”
(there is absolutely no local population need) but on the sat-
isfaction of the materialization of a “virtual environment.”
In Dubai, every construction has a name, a story, a mar-
keting manager, an assigned lifestyle, a “virtuality”. And this
virtuality in every way codifies and generates its physical-
ity. In fact entire new neighborhoods are based on a single
“word” that’s marketable, sellable, and associated with a full
range of “virtual” life style connotations.
We cannot consider anymore our present reality without
the condition of the mental — or labeled differently, the vir-
tual — associated with the usual physical materiality. Real-
ity is always a combination of both. Nevertheless, in places
where the virtual is so powerful that it almost entirely gen-
erates the physical materialization, architecture strategies
need to be re-assessed.
No architect
is complete without a Monograph.
A monograph is your personal visual manifesto.
A monograph is not a portfolio.
A portfolio is comprehensive; a monograph is deliberately
incomplete.
A portfolio is objective; a monograph is subjective.
A portfolio explains; a monograph mystifies.
A portfolio speeds through; a monograph hesitates.
A portfolio is stable; a monograph is unstable.
A portfolio is graphic. A monograph is therapeutic.
This is the studio where you finally make your monograph.
It is going to be a dirty, papery studio.
There will be no pin-ups, no powerpoint, no projections.
Everything you do: drawings, renderings, models, research,
will be presented as part of your in-progress monograph.
If it’s not part of the book, it doesn’t exist.
1. Your Self
Every hero must have a story.
Every story must have a book.
You will invent this hero. You will become this character.
Through a process of highly experimental and intuitive steps,
you will synthesize self, story, and book.
You will document your own vision.
2. Your Home
Every building must have a book.
Every book must have a building.
You will invent this building. You will develop this architecture.
Through a process of highly conceptual and intuitive steps,
you will synthesize home, building, and book.
You will design your own house.
Your monograph will be You.
You will be well on your way to finally existing as an architect.
This studio dealt with the question of meaning and of
representation, with reference to an object that is, strictly
speaking, meaningless: Money.
The circulation of money depends on any number of
material infrastructures, each with their specific set of pro-
tocols and techniques. Among these are banks, which have
long been objects of architectural representation, often
in monumental form. To design a bank today is to engage this
tradition at a moment dominated by finance capital, when “all
that is solid” may seem long ago to have “melted into air.”
This studio therefore asked:
What does money represent, today? For whom and to
whom? How? Why?
What does a bank represent, today? For whom and to
whom? How? Why?
What does the architecture of a bank represent? For
whom and to whom? How? Why?
What does architecture (as such) represent? For whom
and to whom? How? Why?
What should architecture represent? For whom and to
whom? How? Why?
To address these questions, each student was asked to
design a regional headquarters for the newly formed Banco
del Sur (Banco dol Sul, or Bank of the South) in São Paulo,
Brazil. The Banco del Sur was set up by eight Latin Ameri-
can countries as an alternative to the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), as a lending source for
development projects.
Located in the center of the
Buenos Aires metropolis, Palermo is the fastest growing and
hippest area of BA. The National Hippodrome is next to the
bunker styled 1970’s American Embassy located in Palermo.
The Hippodrome, like the stallion is at once a symbol of a
faded aristocratic past and a possible new image of brave
national identity.
With 12 Million inhabitants, the metropolitan area of
Buenos Aires has an added constant influx of international
tourism. This tourism creates a new desire for “exotic” en-
tertainment, which young local “impresarios” such as Alan
Faena have quickly capitalized on, creating new neighbor-
hoods, hotels, entertainment venues, and night clubs that
take advantage of narratives such as Tango, Asado, or Polo.
Our studio approached the paradoxical search for “local
tourist attractions” and re-invested the Hippodrome with new
spectacle technologies to capitalize on international visitor
ship. As a program, we proposed Club Hippodrome, a mix of
the old program with something new. The Hippodrome has
mutated as a form of entertainment since Greek and Roman
chariot times and can transform once again to embrace newer
forms of enjoyment, a new house of fun, day or night.
This studio
was the third installment in a decade-long project the aim
of which is to examine received ideas in contemporary archi-
tecture culture; that is, formerly novel ideas which, due to
recurrent use, have been depleted of their original intensity,
and which ultimately forestall thought as they perpetuate.
This ongoing series of design studios and theory seminars
proposes to disclose, define, and date — and in the long run
classify and archive — received ideas prevalent over the past
decade, both in the professional and academic realms, in
order to ultimately open up otherwise precluded possibilities
for architectural design and architectural theory. To that end,
it focuses on design strategies and conceptual formulations,
particularly in terms of the means of representation and the
lexicon through which they are respectively articulated. This
project takes as precedent Gustave Flaubert’s unfinished
project, Le dictionnaire des idées reçues. Just as the latter, it
sets out to detect and collect received ideas and provide defi-
nitions — or, rather, a user’s manual — so as to render them
self-evident and thereby undermine their perpetuation. Yet
as opposed to the latter, it also seeks to use that collection
as a repository — or, rather, a dissecting table — for the
formulation of new architectural devices.
The Building Technologies curriculum is based on
the belief that architects benefit from having a basic knowl-
edge of technical systems, not only as utilitarian ends in
themselves, but also as a means to help develop a build-
ing’s spaces, forms, and expression. The six-course required
sequence begins by outlining the environmental conditions
to which habitable spaces respond, and describing the
physical determinants of technical building systems. Next,
individual building systems — including structure, building
enclosure, environmental conditioning, and information
management — are explored in depth. For each system
studied, various design strategies, materials, fabrication
techniques, and didactic built works are explored. Field
trips, laboratory demonstrations, and short design prob-
lems are used to augment in-class study. As both a qualita-
tive and a basic quantitative understanding of elementary
systems are mastered, the curriculum shifts its focus onto
increasingly complex systems serving entire buildings.
The sequence’s last two courses (Building Systems 1 and
2) develop an understanding of how technical-utilitarian
systems are resolved, integrated with other systems, and
inform a building’s spaces and formal expression — first
through in-depth case studies of entire buildings, and then
by the preliminary design of an industrial-loft block. In both
courses, students work in teams with structural, mechani-
cal, and building-envelope experts.
Throughout the Building Technologies sequence, stu-
dents are encouraged to apply their growing knowledge
to design problems posed in studio. Occasionally, studios
focusing on various aspects of the relationship between
technology and spatial and formal design are offered for
third-year students. The goals of the Building Technologies
electives are threefold: to explore the potential of techno-
logical systems to impact design; to understand historical
relationships among technology, philosophy, politics, and
architecture; and to take advantage of New York’s profes-
sional practitioners working with the technological “state
of the art.” The diversity of views regarding architectural
technology represented by the school’s design and tech-
nology faculty is reflected in, and thereby strengthens, the
elective offerings
The overall goal of this introductory course is to establish
a definition for structural design, distinguishing between
structural and architectural design and identifying specific
structural systems and components. The course familiar-
izes students with graphics and statics of structural analysis
and design, the performance and applications of structural
materials, and preliminary design using axially and trans-
versely loaded structural elements. Throughout the course,
developing a qualitative understanding and mastering basic
quantitative skills are stressed. All structural systems and
components studied are presented in the context of contem-
porary architecture. Whenever possible, examples of built
work serve to introduce a topic.
This course built on Structures 1, with a focus on the design
methods for different types of components and systems.
Topics included gravity and lateral systems, beams and
frames, trusses, and concrete and steel design. For each
topic, the principles of structural mechanics were exam-
ined, the governing code requirements were discussed, and
simplified methods of design were presented so as to focus
attention on the underlying design principles. Connections
between components in wood, steel, and reinforced concrete
were illustrated, and their qualitative design characteris-
tics were examined. Construction techniques and size limi-
tations were outlined. The course emphasized qualitative
understanding and basic quantitative skills.
The study of exterior building enve-
lope systems is introduced, in this course, by an overview
of environmental forces, followed by a study of exterior
wall construction techniques, within the context of struc-
tural behavior. Architectural, technological, and fabrication
constraints are considered in conjunction with the exterior
forces acting upon the enclosure systems. The class builds
on a series of exercises, culminating in a three-week final
project. In the final design problem, students design a façade
assembly and represent it in detailed construction draw-
ings, before attempting to construct a full-scale mock-up.
Primary design criteria included control of water infiltration,
heat loss/heat gain, constructability, formal expression, and
the relationship of exterior envelope to building structure.
In this course, students are asked to design and
analyze a variety of elements associated with the condition-
ing of inhabited space. Luminares, furniture, and enclosures
are all studied in relation to their visual, acoustical, and ther-
mal impact, as well as the ecological consequences of their
manufacture and maintenance.
Building Systems 1 builds
upon the discussion of basic structural systems begun in
Structures 2. Structural systems designed to ensure satis-
factory performance of an entire building in the face of gravity
and horizontal (wind and earthquake) loads are presented
for both framed or walled systems and non-framed systems.
Wood, steel, concrete, and masonry structural systems are
compared. The course culminates in a building analysis
project, in which groups of students document the materi-
als, construction methods, and performance of a post WWII
American project. Qualitative understanding and basic quan-
titative skills are stressed throughout the course.
The nine-
week problem is to design and detail a multi-story indus-
trial loft block. Students are asked to focus primarily on the
building’s technical utilitarian systems — including struc-
ture, enclosure, and environmental conditioning — and to
integrate their resolution into the building’s formal expres-
sion and spatial definition.
This course was part of a
new series of seminars in the building technology sequence
designed to engage current trends and ideas in the realm of
architectural science and their relationship to contemporary
design and theory. Intended to be a technical exploration
focusing on the research and development of team projects
towards a functioning prototype, the course included lectures
and discussions, topical experiments, individual work, and
visits with guest professors, lecturers, and industry advisors.
Contemporary architectural studio work often engages
the idea of dynamic space. Yet in many implementations,
the method involves technically difficult or aesthetically op-
pressive schemes to activate the architecture. This class
proposed that the control of lighting through the use of ma-
terials, devices, and controls could modify the program and
spatial aesthetics of architecture and offer new versions of
dynamic space.
Students focused on the innovative use of materials
that allow the general and selective transmission of vari-
ous forms of light (glass, water, acrylics, fabrics, papers,
gasses, and so on). Students also investigated systemic
programming of mechanical and computational devices and
luminaries to induce the dynamic activation of space and
architecture for a stated design goal. Experiments in class
looked at the interactions between various light sources
(incandescent, fluorescent, LED, laser, etc.) and advanced
materials, as well as the use of mechanical and computa-
tional controls.
The class was partially funded by industry partner Lu-
tron, who provided support, materials, and advisement to
the faculty and students so that the research of the seminar
could be deployed in a constructed experiment.
The constant
development of new materials and fabrication techniques
changes the ways in which architects and designers think
about standardization and construction. Since many digitally
driven fabrication techniques have short-circuited traditional
production systems, architects have the ability to completely
integrate processes from the design idea through fabrication
and installation. The focus of this course was to research and
explore emerging materials and fabrication techniques and
apply them to architectural program and form.
Materials cannot be separated from their physical prop-
erties and performance, and fabrication methods have inher-
ent limitations. New technologies are often born out of the
combination or hybridization of two or more existing materi-
als or processes. Through investigation and re-combination
of products and processes, students are asked to propose
and develop new composite materials and technologies.
The course is comprised of individual and team re-
search, student presentations, and design problems to
formulate architectural applications for new materials and
processes. The seminar also included presentations by, and
discussions with, a number of guests who are thinkers and
innovators in fabrication and new materials technology. The
final assignment involved the production of a fabrication
scenario — utilizing a technique and material relationship
— positioned within an architectural project.
The continued advance
of BIM, scripted processes, and computational design
has opened new territories of work for architects. These
opportunities reside not only in digital techniques for the
fashioning and deployment of material, but also for the
description and communication of these material relation-
ships. The class attempted to operate within a series of
digital and physical migrations: between different software
and geometric platforms, between design and documenta-
tion, and between extensive properties (weight, size, form)
and intensive performances. Focusing on a digital workflow
that could deliver true innovation in building systems, the
work of the class was supplemented through the facilities
of the Avery Fabrication and Carlton Laboratories to develop
proof-of-concept prototypes. To this end, the class present-
ed a framework for robust prototyping, using a plurality of
software to encourage students’ proposals through mul-
tiple stages of design, prototyping, and simulation. Projects
were encouraged to move towards a multi-modal operation
in both materiality and scales of production. Pluralism was
seen as a framework in which a manifold of software, mate-
rials, and manufacturing processes could be brought into a
productive nexus.
Advanced Curtain Wall
is the final offering in the GSAPP technology sequence and
offers an intense exposure to the custom curtain wall. It is
the intent of the course to provide graduating students with a
comprehensive understanding of the technical concepts and
specific skills necessary to undertake in actual practice the
design, detailing, specification, and construction administra-
tion of the custom curtain wall.
While the course emphasizes emerging technologies,
discussion of specific technical issues and methodologies
focuses on those aspects that directly inform contempo-
rary architectural design. Case studies of contemporary
examples are used throughout to illustrate the technical
content of the course. Students also explore hundreds of
mock-ups and samples at Prof. Heintges’ firm and visit proj-
ects under construction.
In the semester-long Technical Studio Design Problem,
students do not design ex nihilo. Rather, each begins the
project with a given, highly schematic architectural intent. In
executing this project, students are called on to integrate their
newly-gained technical expertise with their abilities to inter-
pret and develop an architectural design. Students prepare
detail drawings and outline specifications for a unique, custom
curtain wall design that they defend in a final formal review.
“Natural light is the only light that makes architecture
Architecture…” —Louis Kahn
This course focused on daylight as
a prime generator and articulator of architectural space.
Students explored the basic means by which daylight inter-
acts with both the environment and the building, the exterior
methods for the architectural mitigation and manipulation
of this interaction, and the various perimeter (lightshelves)
and core daylighting strategies (atria) that affect the building
skin as well as various advanced daylighting systems and
technologies. Students developed a working knowledge of
the Sun Angle Calculator, used for solar angle calculations
and the design of shading devices, as well as a familiarity
with the BRE Daylight Protractors, used for the calculation
of illuminance in simple spaces. While this was a technical
course, it explored daylighting technology and strategies as
they apply to the articulation of architectural space — mat-
ters of poetry and aesthetics.
This course focused on pragmatic energy and environmental
problem-solving methods and tools that address the issue of
human comfort in the built environment while addressing the
role and responsibilities of the ecological architect and sustain-
able architectural design in the broader social, economic, and
political context. The course combined lectures by the instruc-
tor and visiting experts with case studies and design assign-
ments that allowed the students to explore the experiential and
poetic implications of ecologically informed architecture.
How exactly do designs become buildings? First, relation-
ships must be forged among owners, architects, and con-
tractors, establishing the duties, obligations, rights, and
remedies of each. Second, all parties involved must consider
and abide by the public constraints and the public/private
relationships by which individuals have their rights limited
for the sake of the public good. The purpose of this course is
to give students an understanding of these transformational
processes — how to protect designs, from concept to realiza-
tion, and how to develop a sensitivity to the ethical and moral
issues of practicing architecture.
The History/Theory curriculum of the GSAPP stress-
es a broad social and cultural approach to architectural dis-
course. Architecture history is not seen primarily as stylistic
evolution, but rather as the consequence of a complex inter-
action between artistic, socio-economic, technological, and
ideological vectors. Most instructors of architecture history
at GSAPP have both professional and academic degrees. The
overall intent is to place the relationship between theory and
practice in a broad historical perspective.
The course offerings are structured to provide students
with an opportunity to acquire a general overview of contem-
porary architectural history and, at the same time, a degree
of specialized knowledge in areas of their own choosing.
Where the former is dealt with through a required lecture
sequence, the latter is met through specialized seminars.
The architecture history classes within the GSAPP are
supplemented by classes in the Department of Art History
and Archaeology. In this regard students are especially en-
couraged to take art history courses examining pre-1750
and non-Western topics. Students may also take courses
in other departments of the University, such as history and
philosophy, providing they meet basic distribution require-
ments of the GSAPP program.
The seminar concerned the relationship of architectural
form to urbanism and politics.
Autonomy is the deliberate act of deciding on a different
relationship between individuals and the inherited system of
knowledge. Since the Enlightenment, human evolution has
been shaped by a powerful system of knowledge and produc-
tion — capitalism — and autonomy has been the struggle
of politics and the arts against the heteronomy imposed by
that system. However, in recent decades the struggle has
seemingly lost its relevance. Politicians, artists, writers, and
architects no longer question their own intellectual integrity,
and “autonomy” is seen as a form of retreat. This is exem-
plified by the way the question of autonomy has generally
been understood in both architecture and art since the 1960s,
namely as autonomy of the “discipline” — an escape from
professional commercialization.
Against this interpretation, the seminar focused on a
different, more proactive idea of autonomy: architectural
thought as a mode of questioning architecture’s inevitable
complicity with power and its representations. In order to
sustain this alternative idea of autonomy, the seminar at-
tempted a genealogy of the concept of autonomy itself by
providing an integral and broad vision of its evolution as seen
through politics, poetics, and productions that have ques-
tioned, challenged, or reflected the cultural hegemony of
capitalism. A crucial issue at stake was the notion of form,
specifically architectural form, understood as a regime that
necessarily entails a definition of inclusion and exclusion.
U.S. housing policy has increas-
ingly moved toward less reliance on direct subsidy of low-
income and poverty rental housing during the past 20 years.
Between 1996 and 2001, more than 51,000 federal public
housing units were razed or converted to quasi-traditional
forms of market rate ownership housing. The scope and
speed of this transformation instigates a critical set of
questions and suggests that it would be advantageous for
U.S. housing to now be understood as parallel to conditions
in emerging economies worldwide, where the safety net of
public or state assistance has never been available to con-
stituencies struggling in the face of demanding and surging
market forces.
The seminar relied on student research and outside
advisors, including Nicholas Calace, Peter Hance, Nadine
Maleh, and Brian Loughlin, to examine how low-income
and poverty housing initiatives could expand their leverage
and their legitimacy by identifying and responding to hous-
ing needs in preventative ways. This course attempted to
forecast and reveal constituencies that are at risk and show
this in parallel to a wide range of world constituencies. The
ultimate goal was to justify the prevention of housing crises
by elaborating and making visible the complex set of other
social crises that result from unstable housing.
It is fashionable to render Modernist architecture in the
plural: Decorative Modernism, Vernacular Modernism,
Conservative Modernism, Domestic Modernism, Irrational
Modernism have all appeared in the recent literature.
Applying pluralism retrospectively to the modern move-
ment in architecture does disservice to the discourses of
the 1920s, which generally revolved around a central spine of
ideas. The problem is that these core ideas were not them-
selves coherent, leading to contradictory and incompatible
conclusions as well as different interpretations by the lead-
ing protagonists. It was left to the popularisers and theore-
ticians of the 1930s and afterwards to try to weld together
a coherent system of Modernist architectural theory and a
canon of buildings to represent it. And by then, the lead-
ing practitioners had already discarded the founding tenets
of Modernism.
This course was about the development of this retro-
spectively labeled Modernist architecture, in Europe, be-
tween 1918 and 1939. It sketched out the core ideas, most
of them well established before 1890, and then interrogated
the contradictory ways these ideas were interpreted at
different times in a series of case studies. To borrow
Venturi’s phrase, it looked for complexity and contradiction
within Modernism.
Using an interdisciplinary approach, this seminar explored
Japanese urbanism and Tokyo. Urban theories, history,
geography, fictions, films, sociology, and anthropology
along with cultural critiques helped situate the more per-
sonal experiences of the metropolis and the new “global
city.” In considering the formation of urban/geographical
entities, its infrastructure, and underlying ideologies of
these urban constructs, the course attempted to uncover
the mechanisms of the development of collective identities
and individual reconciliations. Theoretical readings — Henri
Lefebvre in particular — and traditional strategies for pen-
etrating cities were juxtaposed with literature, film, and
personal testimonies.
Tokyo was studied and situated in the seeming con-
tradiction of universalizing technologies and romantically
preserved particularities. The course focused on the mod-
ern city and the tension of western influence and modern-
ism. Topics included the importance of politics, the physical
(earthquakes), the formal, and the economic in exploring
the remarkable and rapid transformation of the city; the
dramatic solutions to the complexity of the modern city;
industries from tourism, cinema, advertising, and comics;
crime, safety, density, commodification, the informal and
the illegal, and growth and speed; the repressed and the
exploited quality of the city as it plays out the subway, shop-
ping, and entertainment. Through these investigations, the
course aimed to understand the factors behind the uses and
production of social space in the Japanese city.
Sweeping cultural changes at the end of the 20th century,
driven by the proliferation of information technologies
and service industries, have challenged the primary role
of history, theory, and philosophy in architectural, urban
design and planning discourse. Metaphors of chaos, com-
plexity, bio-urbanism, junk space, fluidity, transparency, and
dynamism have flourished. Yet the implications of this new
rhetoric on urban form, issues, and policy remain unclear.
Do these models effectively articulate the prefigurative
nature of capital, religion, and politics, or are they fashion?
This course considered the means by which architecture and
urban design can intercede in the complexity of contempo-
rary urbanism. This inherent critique of traditional practice
examines international examples of both normative fabric
and variant conditions including sprawl, generic landscapes,
informal settlements, preservation districts, marginalized
centers, and disused industrial zones. The seminar intro-
duced students to the logic of western market development
as it is applied globally and to the means and methods in
which contemporary urban fabric is conceptualized, created,
and controlled.
The first goal of this seminar was to try to under-
stand the critical shift in the cultural field of the interiority
of the discipline: from typology (fixed) to topology (dynamic,
evolving, mutations), and from the paradigm of the represen-
tation to the emergent condition of simulation.
The seminar explored techniques of aesthetics as the
ultimate condition of design.
Architecture is witnessing a biotechnological and
biopolitical shift in the vocabulary of tectonics: taxonomy,
ingestion, circulation, digestion, morphology, expression,
reproduction, prolapse, and affinity. Speciation, locomotion,
armature, orifice, membrane, interface, anthropocentrism,
actor-network, semi-living objects, genomic literatures,
biomimicry and its immolations, software and its latencies,
and camouflage. Learning from the “corruption” of film,
the aim of the class was to develop a critical, cinematic,
image-based approach to the production and thinking of
architectural form, embracing visual effect as the origin of
digital techniques.
Move away from the traditional discussion- or tutori-
al-based seminar organization toward production-based
research, the course looked at technique as a theory. The
main purpose of the seminar was to produce a critical
statement about the contemporary and near-future cultural
state of the discipline in relation to the production of affect by
focusing on the condition of the interiority or autonomy of
the discipline.
Teaching a survey of the history of architecture and devel-
opment in New York is a challenge because the city is so
rich in architecturally and historically interesting buildings
and neighborhoods. This class introduces most of the major
masterpieces of architecture in New York but increasingly
focuses on the city’s vernacular architecture — the everyday
buildings that comprise the basic fabric of the city and with
which residents and visitors interact on a daily basis. This
year, particularly close attention was given to the variety
of residential types that have developed in New York, from
the speculative row houses erected by Irish immigrants, to
German-built tenements, to the middle- and working-class
apartment buildigns erected by Jewish and Italian devel-
opers. Together these buildings create the neighborhoods
that lend character to the metropolis and have housed
generations of New Yorkers hailing from every corner of
the globe.
Public works, infrastructure — these terms connote less
things or objects, or even a class of objects, than the name
for an architecture of means, as totalizing as it is intermedi-
ary. In the realm of infrastructure, governmentality is mani-
fested as equipmentality: paths constituted by the tangled
relationships of welfare and expropriation, of economies
and biomes, of supports and shelters, of resources and
subjecthood. Each path appears to comprise a discipline at
odds with the other. Where is the basis and impact of public
works? Is it in the architectonic of decision-making? Is it in
the indirect production of demand by the creation of work?
Is it a mode of political inoculation against dissent? Or is it
related to the dilation of the money supply? Is it the articula-
tion of a technological rationality? In a manner of speaking,
public works is the apparatus through which the state makes
itself present, visible through building as the intersection of
these questions.
The course interrogated a number of these questions
and examined theories of public works from Daniel Defoe in
his Essay on Projects to the World Bank’s current delibera-
tions on infrastructure. A particular thrust of this course will
be its transnational, comparative focus. Through critical writ-
ings on infrastructure, this course examined this globalizing
force of infrastructural thought. Course readings included
key thinkers — Kant, Ruskin, Adam Smith, Patrick Geddes,
Heidegger — and their relationship to equipmental thought
and architecture. Case studies included Haussmann’s Paris,
the Tennessee Valley Authority, the British New Towns, and
the Ford Foundation Plan for Calcutta in the 1960s.
The second of the two-semester Architecture History
sequence, this course traces the history of modern architecture
through its transformation from 1895 to 1965 under the influ-
ence of two major forces: the process of modernization and
the development of ideology. The first of these derives from the
material changes brought about by technology and industrial-
ization; the second stems from the received idea of progress
and from the utopian legacy of the Enlightenment. The period
covered runs from the high point of the Art Nouveau to the
death of Le Corbusier. Rather than attempting a con tinuous
chronological account, the course is structured about a series
of thematic episodes — Futurism, Classical Rationalism, the
Deutsche Werkbund, Adolf Loos and Vienna, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Le Corbusier and Purism, Dutch Neoplasticism,
Russian Constructivism, the Weimar Republic and the New
Objectivity, Mies van der Rohe and the New Monumentality,
Italian Rationalism, the International Style in America, and
Alvar Aalto and Finnish Romantic Nationalism.
The title of this seminar derives from Hannah
Arendt’s study The Human Condition of 1958. It also makes
an allusion to Siegfried Gideon’s Space, Time and Architecture
of 1941. Apart from Arendt’s political philosophy, this seminar
deals with a series of themes derived from the essay topics in
Prof. Frampton’s book Labour, Work & Architecture, including
the work of such figures as Alvar Aalto, Pierre Chareau, Louis
Kahn, Tadao Ando, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
This lecture course attempted to trace the evolution
of the tectonic idea in modern architecture from the point
of view of the role played by structure and construction in
the development of 19th and 20th century form. The lecture
addressed itself to the poetics of construction as this has
made itself manifest over the past 150 years. The tectonic
suggests itself today as a critical strategy largely because of
the current tendency to reduce architectural form to a spec-
tacular commodity. This amortizable scenographic approach
has been accompanied by a dissolution of references in the
late modern world.
This seminar explored the fragmented, complex, and para-
doxical urbanism of contemporary cities outside the con-
ventional West. Do all cities have to resemble the urban-
ism of Western Europe and North America to be modern?
In an interconnected world of global flows, can these cities
be seen as modern, albeit, a different modern? This course
examined what happens when global modernity engages
with particular places, localities, and traditions.
The course began with the premise that modernity,
claimed and defined by the West, was fundamentally global
and that colonialism and modernity are connected. From
these perspectives students explored the cultural and sym-
bolic dimensions of spatial transformation. The seminar
focused on the ways in which globality and locality reconcile
when local settlement practices/spatial cultures encounter
global modernity. While recognizing the subjective position
of the Western academe, students critically examined duali-
ties such as “traditional” and “modern,” “West”, and “non-
West,” “Orient” and “Occident,” as culturally constructed
categories that frame professional understanding and in-
terventions in architecture and urbanism.
The course integrated a historical and cultural under-
standing of the architecture and urbanism of specific places
with theoretical discussions of concepts such as modernity,
tradition, culture, postcoloniality, globalization, representa-
tions, nationalism, and identity. Students investigated the
plural landscapes of ‘non-Western’ cities through the study
of spatial expressions such as historic quarters, public
spaces, colonial urbanism, planned capitals, squatter settle-
ments, the built environments of re-interpreted traditions
and cultural tourism, and the de-territorialized landscapes
of globalism.
This course was an examination of the various prac-
tices of C.A. Doxiadis (1913-1975) in relation to the cultural,
environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical milieu of the mid-
twentieth century. It began with his participation in the found-
ing of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945 and his
simultaneous launch of a traveling exhibition on the effects of
war and occupation in Greece. Following the success of this
exhibition and an almost constant series of media launches,
Doxiadis returned to Greece to establish an architectural
consulting firm that would soon have offices in 40 countries
and a university whose pedagogy was based on the invented
science of ekistics. Rather than being a chronological survey
of Doxiadis’ career, this course sought to find thematic reso-
nances between the practices of a long-dismissed and delib-
erately overlooked ideologue and contemporary politics of
“globalization.” Because the body of posthumous literature
about Doxiadis is relatively small, the course was arranged
thematically, using contemporary theoretical texts to ques-
tion the simple understanding of Doxiadis as an opportunistic
(and hugely unsuccessful) planner with a problematic attitude
toward the “developing” world.
Until quite recently in world history, Japan was a local and
rather invisible event. It was a slow, gentle, and gradual
evolution in an isolated island of the Far East for two thou-
sand years, compared with two hundred years in American
history of dramatic changes. In this isolation, the Japanese
have silently evolved their arts based on feeling rather
than reason. Their quest in arts was to realize what Nature
desired to be. There was Nature. Nature was with God, God
was Nature.
The Japanese often appear to be contradictory; their
culture remains very naive on the one hand and very so-
phisticated on the other. It appears to be simplest, and at
the same time the most complex.
It is an anti-Hamlet zone. It is the land of To-Be AND
Not-To-Be. So is Nature. So is Japanese architecture.
The history of architecture is one of the most durable,
fundamental, and complex facets of material culture. Apart
from agriculture, architectural production is one of the most
basic forms of social interaction requiring the organization
and mobilization of workforces. An examination of the de-
gree to which architectural production is systematized in any
historical period provides essential information concerning
the level of social stratification, centralization of power, and
ideological dominance. The Japanese carpenters completed
the highest degree of spatial and dimensional modulation so
that people could produce unlimited variations within a sys-
tem with the maximum degree of economy and aesthetics.
This is an untold secret of beauty behind traditional Japa-
nese architecture. It’s an ethic of living.
Cities today face unprecedented pressures
from the forces of globalization, the aftermath of the Cold
War, migration, technology, security, and climate change,
among other things. These forces are compounded by
effects of speed and media, which convert mere change into
rapid and even hyperbolic change. The effects — in terms of
poverty, the environment, health, exclusion, and violence —
are profound. In this disorienting landscape, there are lots
of opportunities for urban professionals. How to respond is
governed by ethical and political decisions, whether acknowl-
edged or not. Facing the questions of justice and ethics is
less a choice, then, than a matter of urgency — for multiple
disciplines — if there is to be any meaningful intervention in
contemporary cities.
This team-taught interdisciplinary seminar examined
a wide set of responses to and protests against the shapes
of the contemporary city and investigated various attempts
to create what might once have been called a better life in
the city. The seminar sought to juxtapose different visions
of what that life is, and foster debates between them. Be-
cause rather than being conclusions or absolutes, “ethics”
and “justice” are first and foremost questions for debate,
discussion, antagonism, and fundamental disagreements.
It is those challenges that the profession seems presently
to be avoiding, and it was therefore precisely where this
seminar was sited.
The modern metropolis —
cauldron of social transformation, technological innovation,
and aesthetic experimentation — is inseparable from the
equally modern notion of an international “avant-garde.”
However, in the course of their myriad encounters through
the twentieth century, both categories — the metropolis and
the avant-gardes — have become virtually unrecognizable.
In their place have emerged new configurations, new chal-
lenges, and new possibilities.
This course began and ended, therefore, with archi-
tectures that engage the city after “metropolis.” This is the
global city, the financial capital of advanced capitalism. But it
is also the city after the “city” — the result of massive urban-
izations stemming from regional and global migrations, as
well as massive dispersals (“sprawl”) that trace back to the
decades immediately following the Second World War.
Composed of virtualities (stock indexes, population
curves, desires), bodies (buildings, peoples, institutions),
and flows (money, traffic, power), the new city demands
attention at any number of levels. This course emphasized
architecture’s role in constructing cultural “imaginaries”
embedded in changing economic, technological, and politi-
cal circumstances. Of each piece of architecture and each
text examined, students were asked: what city or cities does
it imagine? For whom? How? To what end? In each, students
traced multiple, genealogical affiliations — the alliances it
forges, the subjects it conjures, the pasts it constructs, the
futures it projects, the others it excludes.
Much architectural
production of the past half-century has been haunted by
the ghosts of modernist utopias. Following a reformulation
of these utopias in the 1950s and 1960s, and simultaneous,
critical reactions to perceived modernist dogma, a collection
of practices and discourses emerged that were eventually
grouped together as “postmodern.” If these new directions
shared anything, it was an (often explicit) rejection of utopia-
nism in all its forms, in favor of eclectic, historical citation, a
new traditionalism, and/or a new populism.
This research seminar advanced the hypothesis that,
this rejection notwithstanding, the haunting persistence
of utopia’s “ghost” is an unrecognized hallmark of various
postmodernisms. This hypothesis was explored through in-
depth consideration of diverse works of architecture tradi-
tionally understood as postmodern. Students concentrated
on the projects themselves as bearers of discourse — built
contributions to a generalized, cultural postmodernism
that may also undermine or contradict the very same anti-
utopian currents they seem to represent.
The seminar therefore emphasized and developed tech-
niques of visual discourse. Its aim was to collect, document,
and analyze visual material for an actual museum exhibition,
mounted at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in
the spring of 2008. During the semester, the class also trav-
eled to Montreal for several days to work firsthand with the
CCA collections.
The objective of the two-semester Architecture History
sequence is to provide students with a basic critical under-
standing of major developments in European (and to a lesser
extent, American) architectural history during what is some-
times considered the modern period, from the late seven-
teenth-century to the post-World War II era. The course
emphasizes moments of significant change in architecture,
whether they be theoretical, economic, technological, or
institutional in nature. Each lecture usually focuses on a
theme, such as positive versus arbitrary beauty, enlighten-
ment urban planning, historicism, structural rationalism,
social utopianism, etc. Topics sometimes involve changes
generated by developments internal to architecture itself,
other times by events external to the discipline, at least as
it was conceived at that moment in time. The readings and
lectures stress the link between theory and practice, and
more generally, the relationship between architecture and
the broader cultural, social, and political context.
This seminar explored architecture theory from the
late seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, a
period that challenged Renaissance canons of beauty and
composition as it explored alternative means on which to
base architecture. While these new approaches were many
and varied, most might be seen as attempts either to find a
rational basis for architecture (structural expression, type,
functionalism) or to grant new freedom to the architect,
whether on the basis of personal preference or a desire for
sensational effect. But these efforts are themselves often
ambiguous, challenging any simple dichotomy between rule
and license, or rationalism and intuition.
Joseph Rykwert has referred to many of the eighteenth-
century theoreticians searching for a new grounds for archi-
tecture as the “First Moderns.” Although his characteriza-
tion aptly captures the innovative and critical aspects of their
thinking, this seminar did not view these new theories in a
teleological or even progressive manner. They do not all lead
to the modern movement or later twentieth-century explora-
tions; nor can one theory be considered today as necessarily
“truer” than another. But the insights (and misleading direc-
tions) that they engendered are critical to both formal and
theoretical inventions ahead — and, most fundamentally, in
expanding the very limits of architectural practice. European
architecture changed from the late seventeenth century to
the late nineteenth century from being an idealist practice
that assumed one universal language and that was primarily
directed toward the creation of churches and palaces to a
more historicist one that embraced a multiplicity of aesthetic
solutions and a broad range of building types (most notably
the new public institutions, such as museums, libraries,
courts, and prisons) and urban scales (parks, boulevards,
and new cities).
Case Studies: Le Corbusier, CIAM, Team 10
This course explored ideas of urban planning that emerged
in the Modern Movement in architecture in the first half of the
twentieth century and their influence on both visionary and
realized projects in the second half of the century. The class
focused primarily on a lineage of ideas and proposals that
both influenced and were influenced by Le Corbusier’s and
CIAM’s urban doctrine. The last section of the class exam-
ined two divergent reactions to Le Corbusier’s and prewar
modern urban doctrine: first, the new urban capitals whose
development was deeply indebted to Le Corbusier’s urban
vision, Chandigarh and Brasilia, and second, Team 10 urban
doctrine, including the proposals of the Smithsons, Jaap
Bakema, Gian Carlo di Carlo, and Candilis, Josic, Woods.
Students who were interested focused their independent
research on drawings from the newly acquired archives of
Shadrach Woods in Avery Library.
There has been little consensus in the past decade
about the critical mandate of architectural practice and the
mandate of theoretical writing on it. It is precisely that lack of
consensus that this seminar took on as a challenge. The sem-
inar opened by examining several collective attempts at theo-
rizing the current situation in architectural discourse, pub-
lished recently in Hunch, Log, the last issue of Assemblage,
and in the Harvard Design Magazine. Drawing out the most
salient themes from these, the course was structured in
terms of six coupled themes: city/global economy, urban
plan/map of operations, program/performance (relations,
effects, atmospheres), drawing/scripting, image/surface,
utopia/projection. Each of these themes was examined in
terms of the recent history of the coupled subjects — as topics
that are in the process of definition, rather than as singularly
defined themes. Although the conclusions of this seminar
could be only provisional, as the material considered was in
motion, so to speak, the most important point of the seminar
was the very act of (and the students’ collective readiness to
participate in) constructing a map within which they too have
to imagine their place and their course of action.
Theory, specifically architecture theory, interfaces with
other types of knowledge; theory itself is a specific form of
knowledge, simultaneously analytic, speculative, and instru-
mental. In effect, theory both differentiates and is differenti-
ated by intersections of materiality, thought, and events.
While not an object in precisely the same manner as a
building or a drawing, architecture theory nevertheless is
equally productive of relationships, both internal (among its
components) and external (beyond its borders). Generating
not spaces or images but instead concepts, theory is vitally
useful for ascertaining what is taking place, what occurred,
and — most importantly—what yet could emerge.
The seminar involved three particular three-week
excursions, following an introductory blast-off session.
Theoretical texts served as guides and means of transport.
Each excursion was seen as a journey either into or out of
architecture’s disciplinary specificity. Through this structure
— and the overall course organization — various opportuni-
ties for linkage, differentiation, and movement between the
concepts and arguments contained in the chosen texts were
rendered available. It was hoped that by these means, no two
students would take precisely the same journey.
This course examined the spatial, structural, and formal
qualities of music — qualities that reveal the connections
between music and architecture. Topics included empty
space, resonance, and ma; approaches to the concept of
pitch; approaches to the concepts of time and form; Bartok
and the Fibonacci series; Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern,
and the 12-tone system; indeterminacy and interpenetration
— the principles of John Cage; Xenakis and Le Corbusier;
Morton Feldman and weaving; Olivier Messaien, rhythmic
cycles, and non-retrogradable inversions; spatial music, e.g.
Gabrielli, Monteverdi, Berlioz, and John Cage.
Has Brand has replaced Ideology as the dominant
engine of design? If dreams of the “total work of art” once
fueled an architectural imagination that spanned from the
“teaspoon to the city”, the contemporary brand manual is
the apotheosis of that fantasy. Branding is, to borrow Mark
Wigley’s definition, both explosive and implosive; it regulates
the hyper-controlled interior and creates a network to repli-
cate design ideas at every scale. The contemporary branded
environment assumes every gesture from the minute to the
universal must be controlled and leveraged.
The seminar attempted to look at the brand phenom-
enon at a variety of scales, from books and buildings to cities,
networks and nations. The class was comprised of presenta-
tions by a series of visiting designers, each dealing with the
subject from a different (non architectural) perspective.
Each student or student team worked as an editor with
one of the guests to develop their presentation into mate-
rial for an article. The articles taken together were then
coalesced into a publication to be finalized over the summer
together with Swiss publisher Lars Müller.
Despite the virtuosity of much recent architectural
form-making, rigorous formal thinking is increasingly
rare in an age of fast technologies, image saturation, and
challenging social, environmental, and political problems.
But can architecture abdicate its concern for form without
negating its identity as a discipline and mode of expertise?
Is it possible for architects to undertake serious aesthetic
work while also engaging with urban and social reality? How
might form be thought in relation to contemporary life, insti-
tutions, and politics? These were questions raised by the
seminar in an effort to move beyond received and reductive
views of formalism in architecture. Viewing forms as pro-
duced in specific contexts and having specific motivations
and consequences, the class began with the Enlightenment,
then went on to consider some of the most important — and
politically inflected — 20th-century aesthetic theories,
including Russian Formalism and the Marxist critiques of
the Frankfurt School thinkers and later Manfredo Tafuri. It
counterposed this lineage to the “apolitical” Anglo-American
tradition represented by Colin Rowe, Robert Venturi, and
Peter Eisenman, among others, and their counterparts in
literature and the visual arts. It also explored phenomeno-
logical, structuralist, and poststructuralist approaches, and
concluded with a set of debates bearing on architectural
form-making today. The seminar was at once intended to
offer a selected history of modern theories of form and
formal method, to sharpen students’ skills of “close read-
ing,” and, most polemically, to explore the potential of a
strategic new architectural formalism today.
During the quarter century of sociopolitical and
technological change from World War II to the end of the
1960s, spanning from postwar planning and reconstruction
to the events of ’68 and the emergence of postmodernism,
architectural culture underwent a process of profound reori-
entation, self-questioning, and restructuring. The seminar
traced this historical trajectory decade by decade, paying
particular attention to issues of periodization, the interre-
lationship between material and discursive contexts, and,
more generally, the question of how “architecture culture”
is produced and reproduced at specific moments. Among the
topics discussed were postwar debates on monumentality,
humanism, and regionalism; the effects of wartime research
and technology; the formulation of new theories of structure
and organization; the ideological and cultural ramifications
of the Cold War; the institutionalization of the International
Style and its critique; the rise of consumerism, suburbia,
mass culture, and mass media; the impact of decolonization
and the incipient “global village”; the rise of a counterculture
and neo-avant-garde; and the emergence of the paradigm
of postmodernism/postmodernity. Each student focused on
a significant theme or issue, selecting an exemplary built
or unbuilt work from each of the decades under study. This
research was presented in three sessions over the course of
the semester and integrated into a major term essay.
This seminar viewed New York City as a catalyst for
questioning those canons of architectural and urban histori-
ography that tend to overemphasize the isolated monument.
Students scrutinized the evolutionary history of anonymous
urban fabric, often created by the uncelebrated architect or
builder, that comprises the major building volume of this and
all cities. The focus was on the culture of housing with the
intent to grasp the political and tectonic devices that lead to
specific fabrics in specific urban contexts. The city becomes
a crucible to be understood both forwards and backwards in
time, from extant present-day realities to underlying forma-
tional causes and vice versa. This exercise in urban foren-
sics was played back for other global cities, translated from
New York by the participants who apply the technique and
values to case-studies embedded in their own local knowl-
edge, culminating in a forum in which comparative projected
architectural transformation of fabrics becomes the basis of
critical discourse.
Is landscape the space left between and around buildings?
Should buildings be subsumed to the natural world or should
they dominate it? This course explored these questions by
examining the relationship between buildings and the land
upon which they are sited and by discussing the various fac-
tors that influence the design of buildings in the landscape
and of the landscape itself.
While much of the subject matter included came from the
long-standing tradition of landscape design’s basis in natural
systems, starting with the work of Frederick Law Olmsted in
the 19th Century and continuing with the work of Ian McHarg in
the 1960’s, the course also considered broader topics of sus-
tainability and the importance of understanding how concern
for the environment can affect the places we design.
The basic curriculum was supplemented by guest lec-
turers, including Mark Bunnell, Andrew Moore, and Linnaea
Tillett, and by the work of the students themselves who pre-
sented their individual projects to the entire class.
Inspired by the insight that simply thinking of a certain
musical phrase affects one’s body no less than if one actually
hears it, this seminar set out to introduce the possibility of
an Archimedean point that allows each individual to extricate
him/herself from any set of conventions, preconceived ideas,
paradigms, etc. Each week a pair of dialectically connected
concepts was considered. Students practiced a conceptual
analysis — something in the spirit of Paul Feyerabend’s
“anything goes” on one hand, and the systematic medita-
tions of Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction together
with Wittgenstein’s unsystematic empiricist reflection on
language on the other hand. Indeed, sometimes in more
recent writers — Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida — several
critical discourses and poetics can be found which were
derived epistemologically from Husserl’s insight, not unlike
an earlier generation of Russian Formalism, or Oulipo.
Above all, with the introduction of several poets and writers
together with architects and painters, the course aimed to
grasp more clearly the possibility of learning a measure of
Socratic irony in order to create other poetic strategies.
This lecture course focused on the period
from 1945 until the early 1990s, investigating how architects
and key architectural institutions (schools, museums, publi-
cations) responded to historical forces at work in a particular
historical context (aesthetic, socio-economic, political, tech-
nological, territorial). It also interrogated how and where one
can trace the legacy of this period of experimentation with
new programs, sites, materials, and media within current
practice, offering students both historical knowledge and
critical tools vital to positioning their own work within the
ever-shifting field of contemporary architecture. The class
covered both the continuation and transformation of modern
architecture after the war — including New Brutalism, Team
10, corporate modernism, regionalism, tropical modernism,
Neorealism, late modern formalism, and Good Design — as
well as the emergence of other practices that challenged the
modernist legacy or even set out to proclaim its end. Among
the latter were: the turn to systems theory and cybernetics of
the 1950s and important trajectories of experimentation with
prefabrication, computerization, and scientific method; the
experimental and “Pop” architecture of the 1960s, such as
Megastructure, Metabolism, and the development of notions
of “environment”; engagements with linguistic theory and
notions of “meaning,” the neo-modernism of the New York
Five, investigations into typology, and the rise of a seman-
tic and historicist postmodernism during the late ‘60s and
1970s; and the post-postmodern turn, from the architecture
of deconstruction to the architecture of “event.”
This seminar investigated what role architec-
ture and urbanism play (or might play) in current debates
over questions of political representation, human rights, the
organization of territory, surveillance, warfare, political con-
flict, defense, and cultural heritage as well as in questions of
citizenship, diaspora, humanitarian intervention, justice, and
democracy. Recent architectural publications were studied
along with key texts from recent debates within human
rights, political theory, and spatial politics in order to set
out a framework both for considering this work and through
which to identify new lines of research and further critical
prospects. If architecture has at times been identified with
ideals of social and political progress — being embraced by
the United Nations as having a role to play in rights issues
such as housing — the discipline has also provided techni-
cal support and spaces for colonization, apartheid planning,
encampment, and other forms of violence. The primary ques-
tion pursued during the course was how the architect might
position his or her work with respect to the complicated ethi-
cal and political questions raised by these fields of inquiry —
that is, how they might take responsibility. Sessions included:
National, International, Postnational; Democracy, Rights,
Justice, Public Space; Humanitarianism and its Discontents;
Extraterritorial Space/Camps; NonGovernmental Politics;
Media/Control Space/Networks; Technologies of Occupation
(Borders I); Technologies of Separation (Borders II); Public
Space/Protest/Political Acts; Cities at War; Urbicide; and
Responses to 9/11 and Terror.
Whether embraced under the rubric of their
progressive social and aesthetic potentials or rejected as
pernicious, even destructive forces, technological develop-
ments have played a significant role not only in architectural
production per se but also in the architectural imaginary.
This seminar traced important paradigm shifts from the late
eighteenth century to the present that emerged from the
discipline’s encounters with technology, particularly shifts
within formal, material, representational, and program-
matic characteristics as well as in understandings of the
human body, vision, space-time relations, environment,
techniques of power, and territorial organization. There are
many aspects of modern technology that formed part of this
story: the emergence of the industrial factory, thermody-
namic machines, electrification, and servomechanisms; the
impact of prefabrication and synthetic materials, advanced
ballistic weaponry, prosthetic devices, and biometrics; the
rise of the railway, automobile, airplane, and spaceship; and
the development of information technology (printing, pho-
tography, telephone, television, video) and computerization.
A key ambition of the seminar was to develop a historical
and theoretical framework for thinking critically and politi-
cally about the complex and shifting relationships between
architectural and technological transformation, one that
calls upon the architect and/or historian and theorist to take
responsibility for the implications of this shared archaeol-
ogy when making decisions regarding the nature of his or
her work.
This seminar set out to demonstrate that three
“operating platforms” within the field of architecture — exhi-
bitions, publications, and experimental forms of research —
have served as privileged sites through which the discipline
has addressed (or expressed) its relationship to historical
forces, frequently functioning as testing grounds at the very
forefront of its engagement with social, economic, aesthetic,
and technological transformation. Recognizing the domain
of architectural work as multi-faceted, as are the various
forms of practice and knowledge that reflect back upon it,
the course investigated what role these operating platforms
have played in the conceptualization and transformation of
architecture over the past century, identifying for instance
their contribution to seminal debates, to transformations
in architecture’s technical and aesthetic characteristics, to
the sponsoring of critical experimentation, as well as to the
careers of many architects. Through researching: publica-
tions, including magazines, reports, newspapers, and books
as well as the architects, critics, writers, and publishers
associated with them; exhibitions, whether in galleries,
museums, worlds fairs, expos, biennials, etc., and the archi-
tects, curators, and institutions involved; and paradigms of
research, including experimental and para-academic for-
mats and the collaborative arrangements, laboratories, and
institutes through which they function, the seminar identi-
fied a matrix of architectural expertise and modes of opera-
tion, as well as the diverse forms of public address to which
these have given rise.
This seminar examined how cities grow and develop over
time. It employed a theory of urban actors and conceptual
models as tools for the analysis of the city. Transformations
in these actors and models were mapped at various scales
over time in the course. Conceptual models provided a link
between the larger forces shaping a city network and the
physical, built city morphologies put in place by actors direct-
ing the resources at a particular moment in time. Students
constructed a city model of a city of their own choosing and
employed models derived from the course to illustrate the
structure and growth of that city, including its representative
public spaces and fabrics.
The course focused on the rules that generated the ini-
tial growth and on how they are transformed in later itera-
tions, innovations, or repetitions. A major focus was on the
relations between the public space in different growth pat-
terns in the city and the shifting/changing relations between
these growth centers. The seminar attempted to draw out
how these relationships develop over time and what impact
these changes have on specified areas of the city and its built
form, public space, or fabric. Various scenarios and city mod-
els were considered from around the world.
The course provided a historical overview of the major
figures of Italian Renaissance architecture from 1400 to 1600.
Stressing the dialectic of rule and invention implicit in the
revival of classical forms, the course explored the diverse
cultural and artistic factors in forging a new language based
on antiquity yet moving beyond its example. Topics included
the link between architecture and humanism; the role of
architecture in new urban strategies; the search for a new
type of canon that simultaneously presupposed and chal-
lenged the authority of Vitruvius and the study of ancient
buildings; the rise of new techniques of graphic representa-
tion based on orthographic and perspectival projection; the
emergence of the treatise and its articulation of universally
applicable theoretical norms; the transformation of archi-
tectural culture by printmaking, whose mechanical repro-
duction of image and text revolutionized the dissemination of
theory; the theorization of an architecture that drew both on
the precepts of nature and on the example of the other arts;
the assertion of unprecedented cultural status for the archi-
tect; and the relation of architecture to new uses of visual
representation that helped inaugurate the modern era.
This course traced the development of the European
city from classical antiquity to the threshold of the Industrial
Revolution. Focusing on the configuration of architecture in
urban space, the course followed the evolution of the city
through a complex series of interactions among typological,
morphological, and topographical factors. Beginning with the
typological transformation of the agora and acropolis and the
concomitant emergence of paradigmatic urban forms from fith
century Athens to the rise of the Roman republic, the course
went on to examine the formal and functional dimensions of
the architecture of the Roman Empire; the medieval period,
with its continuities and discontinuities between classical and
Christian concepts of the forma urbis; new urban strategies,
architectural languages, and discursive codes associated with
utopian schemes, aristocratic and communal uses of public
space, and the rise of new towns in the Italian Renaissance;
the emergence of new urban models and related architectur-
al interventions from the inception of the Baroque era to the
end of the ancien régime; the role of typological innovation
in the urban fabric of London from Inigo Jones to the Great
Fire of 1666; the Enlightenment debate on nature, reason,
and the city; and a comparison of the contributions to urban
form of Laugier, Ledoux, and Boullée to the urban projects of
George Dance Jr., L’Enfant, and Jefferson. The course ended
with a comparative analysis of the effects of industrialization
on the urban centers of Western Europe and the USA. This
was a rupture which, in concert with the demographic explo-
sion of 1800, propelled the city between traditional modes
of typological, morphological, and topographical synthesis
by contrasting the economic benefits of technical rationality
to the aesthetic and philosophical values of naturalism and
the picturesque.
What is sustainable design? The current skepticism about
this term on the part of many architects and critics risks
trivializing what is a very significant set of questions. As
vast areas of the globe rapidly become more urban in both
planned and ‘informal’ ways, while buildings contribute at
least 40-50% of the greenhouse gases that bring about the
warming of the earth, it is timely, if not urgent, for architects
to consider the relationship of design to the environment
in an open-minded fashion. By weaving together design
research, writings about nature and the environment, and key
moments of environmental policy and activism, this seminar
sought to provide students with the intellectual framework
to think of sustainability in relation to architecture. In addi-
tion, students looked at how contemporary architects and
critics have responded to the concept of sustainability. The
questions considered included the following: does sustain-
ability stand in opposition to architecture as an instrument of
development? Is “sustainable development” an oxymoron? Is
sustainability a way of preserving privilege for the developed
world while “outsourcing” polluting industries and “e-waste”
to poorer countries? How can the values of environmental-
ism and sustainability be integrated into the ways in which
architects think? Can these values provide creative opportu-
nities, and even formal rigor, rather than limitation?
Should architecture be judged based on its his-
tory? Does contemporary practice grow out of a genealogy of
forms? Or, on the contrary, do architects develop ideas and
concepts embedded in their culture and time?
If architecture is a practice of concepts and ideas, this
course suggested that practice may precede theory as often
as theory precedes practice.
Covering the period from 1968 to the present, the semi-
nar began with Italian Radical Architecture of the late sixties
and early seventies, together with its counterpoint in Rational
Architecture, and ended with an examination of the yet un-
built work of today’s newest architectural practices in rela-
tion to issues of post-criticality and utopian realism.
This course examined the late modernist architecture
of the 1960s and 1970s. Bracketed by Mies van der Rohe’s
Seagram’s building, the ultimate monument of high mod-
ernism, and Philip Johnson’s AT&T building, which declared
the advent of postmodernism, this period produced the vast
majority of the modern architecture currently in existence.
Tending toward large commissions for corporate and
institutional clients, late modernism is not avant-garde.
Nor could it be. While the heroic modernism of the 1920s
and 1930s argued for an imminent, Utopian (or, in Freudian
terms, oceanic) future and the high modernism of the post-
war era announced its arrival, late modernism operated after
modernism had begun to take damage in the court of public
opinion. Unsure of its position, late modernism sits between
high modernism and postmodernism, between Fordism and
Post-Fordism. Faced with the stark knowledge that after the
victory of modernism, the battle of the avant-garde was over,
late modernists attempted to find ways of practicing in an era
in which innovation had seemingly come to an end. Because
of its relation to capital, late modernist architecture is often
deeply compromised, but in those failures, there are also les-
sons, and — just perhaps — a key to the current condition.
Network City explored key urban areas as ecosystems
of competing networks. Transportation infrastructures,
telecommunications systems, and financial networks have
simultaneously centralized and dispersed cities within
larger posturban fields. Areas such as the Northeastern
seaboard and Southern California form the core of global
capital, producing the geography of flows that structures
economies and societies today.
A fundamental thesis of the course was that buildings
too, function as networks. Students explored the demands
of cities and physical and social networks on program,
envelope, and plan since the late nineteenth century, par-
ticularly in the office building, the site of consumption, and
the individual dwelling unit, and the reciprocal influences
of such changes in these typologies on the urban context.
Students also looked at the fraught relationship between
signature architecture — the so-called Bilbao effect — and
the post-Fordist city in which architecture increasingly
seems obsolete.
Network City treated the growth of both city and sub-
urbia (and more recently postsuburbia and exurbia) not as
separate and opposed phenomena but rather as intrinsi-
cally intertwined. For their final projects, students produced
books integrating visual and textual arguments.
This seminar researched architectural research.
Its hypothesis was that both despite and through the pro-
liferation of research obligations and methods at postwar
universities, the most significant architectural research has
occurred outside the studio, away from the university, and
on the road. Tracking a history of architecturally motivated
travel, from the Grand Tour to contemporary expeditions, the
seminar compiled evidence in support of this premise, while
critically interrogating the consequences and effect of these
tours and the discoveries they claimed.
Road trip and field work were used as a pair of terms
to press on this research from two directions, challenging
mythologies of liberation, sensation, and experience from
one side and assumptions about techniques of observation,
data collection, and empirical analysis from the other. To
supplement these terms students assembled a databank of
research operations and rhetorics of the road, organized by
the categories, bodies, vehicles, cities, and documents.
The seminar emphasized the formulation of an architec-
tural outside, constituted in this case by encounters with ex-
ternal locations, urban configurations, populations, and spa-
tial organizations. Whether the terms of this outside are held
in place, outside of architecture proper, or smuggled back in,
the seminar illuminated a pervasive architectural fixation on
the conceptual and structural importance of the outside, at-
tendant notions of context, reference and their aberrations.
Architecture emerg-
es out of passionate and unending debate. Every design
involves theory. Indeed, architects talk as much as they
draw. This class explored the way that theory is produced
and deployed at every level of architectural discourse from
formal written arguments to the seemingly casual discus-
sions in the design studio. A series of case studies, from
Vitruvius through to Cyber-Chat, from ancient treatises on
parchment to flickering web pages, was used to show how
the debate keeps adapting itself to new conditions while pre-
serving some relentless obsessions. Architectural discourse
was understood as a wide array of interlocking institutions,
each of which has its own multiple histories and unique
effects. How and why these various institutions were put in
place was established, and their historical transformations
up until the present was traced to see which claims about
architecture have been preserved and which have changed.
Influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson
and Gilles Deleuze, as well as cognizant of the global flows
of cultural artifacts, knowledge, and affects, filmmaker/art-
ists Chris Marker and Andrey Tarkovsky detach the image
from the forward advance of the narrative to capture what
Tarkovsky characterized as an image’s “time pressure.”
In the past thirty years, architecture’s interest in film has
focused on the linear sequencing of frames drawn from
the film theory of Sergei Eisenstein and made popular by
Bernard Tschumi’s influential Manhattan Transcripts. In
contrast, “time pressure” enables the flow of time to emerge
as a rhythm of filmic sequences. Through close readings of
Lev Manovich to Elizabeth Grosz, Joan Ockman to Patrick
Schumacher, this course investigated how time, shaped by
durations, time pressures, and memory, influences the phe-
nomenal experience of architecture and the manner through
which architecture is thought. To shift into the spatial realm,
students considered how the paradigm of the archive, as a
store of material artifacts, and the new virtual realm of the
database, as a store of information, have emerged as spaces
for the accumulation of time. While architecture and film are
fundamentally different in their material presence — film and
video being linear in time and a more controlled subjective
experience, whereas architecture is spatial and therefore a
meandering, uncontrollable, subjective experience — there
is nonetheless much to learn from these temporal forms and
how they capture the vicissitudes of contemporary life.
Vernacular architecture often seems the antithesis, even
the antagonist, of modernism. Yet every form of modern
art — architecture included — has drawn inspiration from
vernacular subjects. Modern architecture has been slow to
acknowledge its genealogy, suspicious of historicist or neo-
traditionalist sympathies. The aim of the colloquium was to
investigate this convoluted relationship.
As a linguistic term, a vernacular is a specific local
dialect or language, originally posed in contrast to the
“universal language” of Latin. The Latin term verna also
implied power, a slave tied to a place rather than a per-
son. Architects have extended this to mean a “traditional”
or non-elite language of construction, meanings, and use,
typically associated with a specific place but often a vague
universal vernacular. This class considered various, some-
times conflicting conceptions from primitivist fantasies to
political and social hierarchies, focusng specifically on the
twentieth century, when intonations of the term “vernacu-
lar”, both positive and negative, encompassed informality
and class distinctions, authenticity and authority, and radi-
cal modernization and supposedly unchanging traditions,
as well as issues of regionalism and environmentalism and
beliefs about purportedly “organic” social and ecological
harmony. Geographically and culturally the class’s frame
of reference extended from Europe to the United States,
Latin America, and the colonial/post-colonial world of Asia,
Africa, and the Middle East.
All cities respond to diverse forces: grand master plans,
unregulated “cowboy development,” multilayered politics,
amalgams of traditions, inventions, and inevitable unex-
pected contingencies. American cities exemplify this frenetic
dynamic, having embodied the modern metropolis around
the world for over a century. This modernism is not a sty-
listic idiom but one of processes, human experiences, and
formal typologies that that have much in common with our
contemporary world.
Certain patterns can be discerned, but no single formu-
la can fully describe these dynamic processes. American ur-
banity varies across time and space, even as it borrows from
and exports to other nations. Multiple analytic methods are
therefore required to understand both the particularities and
the larger issues. How does architecture relate to location
and surroundings? To infrastructure and open space? Who
decides what gets built? How does it change over time? This
class tackled such questions. Students looked at competing
arts and policy professions within the shared domain of the
city, changing centers and peripheries, the shape of nature
and infrastructure, redefinitions of public and private space,
various types of interventions, the effects of what exists and
what is remembered, and the iconic and the unexpected.
In the last fifteen years, architecture has
been exposed to a radical set of changes in its visual tool-
kits and its technological environments. New hardware and
software, often imported from other fields and emerging at
a dizzying pace, have digitized and automated techniques of
architectural drawing and modeling and production, mul-
tiplied networks of communication into diverse infrastruc-
tures and media, increased the accuracy of analytic imag-
ing, and expanded databases and methods of data collection.
Architecture, because its core techniques are not simply its
own, cannot wall itself off from the many other disciplines
and practices — ecology, the military, science, geography,
popular culture — with which it shares, and from which it
often borrows, its tools.
Today, what can be defined as visual in design has multi-
plied exponentially and forced us to rethink all of our projects
and practices. The new Visual Studies curriculum thus places
“projects” in the center of the circle, and moves architecture
to the outer circle with an expanded definition of practice.
Visual studies now spans all the disciplines of the GSAPP,
such that a wide range of tools, techniques, and disciplines
are available in an expanded matrix of courses. Putting proj-
ects at the core of the curriculum emphasizes collaboration
across and between disciplines, studios, and seminars.
Visual Studies is divided into three broad sets of work-
shops: Analysis and Representation, Design Environments,
and Fabrication.
The workshops are structured to enable navigation
through a matrix of courses over a student’s time at GSAPP.
The curriculum focuses on a combination of distributed
courses, which taken together are designed to expose stu-
dents to the potentials and limits of various visualization
techniques. This allows students to build a customized cur-
riculum calibrated to their design studios and seminars.
It provides students with a critical framework for making
discriminating use of the array of available tools across the
disciplines of architecture, urban design, urban planning,
and preservation.
The focus of this course was on rethink-
ing the resolution and intricacy of the fabric of space in terms
of algorithmic infrastructure and increased data populations
applied to corresponding emerging modes of production.
Scripted 2D patterns and their physical computational coun-
terparts were tested through the scale of the body — the most
intimate skin — and the scale of spatial accessories — inte-
rior-scale, semi-structural and structural fabrics. Students
worked on development of explicit options primarily in Rhino
scripting or alternatively in Generative Components, explor-
ing in both cases the fabrication constraints of laser cutting.
Material Potency is a recurring design research semi-
nar aimed at exploring advanced computational systems and
evolving modes of production in design. It is a subset of the
research group CONTINUUM, which brings together a series
of professional and academic participants from a variety of
disciplines with the intention of exploring and as a result
capitalizing on areas of shared research. The work of CON-
TINUUM and Material Potency class was recently published
in the AD issue on Network Practice.
For further information, visit: http://biothing.org/wiki/
doku.php?id=wearable_potency.
Since Di architectura decem libri, in which
Vitruvius devoted an entire book to the design and use of
machines, architecture has steadily shifted its mechanical-
theoretical focus from construction to that of aesthetic inspra-
tion. The digital computing machine has recently emerged
as a tool for architectural design, yet symptomatic problems
have arisen translating digital creations to reality. Recent
advances in quantum computation have sparked a resurge in
the study of hybrid analog-digital computation, leveraging the
massive parallel efficiency of “real-world” computation.
This workshop utilized the equipment of the Digital Fab-
rication Lab as a test-bed for the exploration of CNC pro-
duction’s role in contemporary architectural design theory.
Students created a series of analog computational mech-
anisms based on a set of constraints developed to frame
the research. The mechanisms had embedded controls
programmed to be articulated and utilized in the material
world, where nature becomes the decision maker. Through
an iterative transformational process, the designs were de-
veloped, fabricated, and tested using architectural materi-
als. By engaging computational manufacturing techniques,
in combination with traditional assembly procedures (me-
chanical fasteners, folding, sealant, adhesives, etc.), in the
production of full scale design mechanisms, potentials were
realized for the integration of digital design in architectural
theory and practice.
Formworks researched and developed techniques
of mold-making and dynamic formwork. Using the casting
facilities of GSAPP’s Fabrication Lab and Printshop, students
developed robust casting mechanisms capable of producing
small runs of cast parts. The course focused on repetitive and
system-based castings — on the tectonics of the system in
particular — and students were expected to develop a flex-
ible system, with integrated detailing, that could recombine
in multiple ways. In their explorations of dynamic formwork
systems, students attempted to develop systems that went
beyond repetition by integrating specific parametric variation
to the cast form. The class put an equal emphasis on the quali-
ty and quantity of cast parts as well as of the formwork itself.
All of the machines and resources of the Fabrication
Lab and Printshop were integrated with the final cast pro-
totype system. While Solidworks and Rhino were the pri-
mary mold-making tools, in some cases 3DsMAX and Maya
were employed.
Student work was driven by rigorous research and a
clear sense of purpose. Students were expected to clearly
document their process as if it were an experiment that
someone else could repeat. The research sited the projects
within a clearly defined context, outlining particular goals to
achieve and problems to solve. The class provided a histori-
cal and theoretical context for the research with examples
of important projects using casting.
Computation in design must seek to expand
beyond geometric, mathematical, and logical precision in
order to engage the “real world”. Production and assembly
provide a means to interrogate potential roles of comput-
ers and digital media in architectural practice, providing
feedback to rule-based methodologies and techniques that
evolved into contemporary software packages and pro-
cedures. This workshop attempted to discover the hidden
discontinuities in the progression from design to manufac-
ture to assembly, when work embedded within the precision
of the machine is forced to perform in the world of nature.
Production is the fitness test of contemporary digital design.
Rule-based generative morphologies become a tool for the
visualization of fabricated potentials that are embedded with
the “intelligence” of the material world.
This workshop utilized the equipment of the Digital Fab-
rication Lab as a test-bed for the exploration of CNC produc-
tion’s role in contemporary architectural practice. Students
developed parametrically controlled architectural assem-
blies based on sets of constraints that framed the research.
The designs had control mechanisms programmed to be
realized in the material world, where nature becomes the
decision maker. Through an iterative process, the designs
were developed, fabricated, and tested using architectural
materials at full scale. By engaging computational manufac-
turing techniques in the production of full scale creations,
potentials were realized for the integration of digital design
in architectural practice.
TimeZone was an intervention in public space involv-
ing a series of low-cost, interactive, lightweight, “building
blocks” that provided direct video communication between
individuals of socially and economically diverse backgrounds
whose daily routines were aligned along a single time zone.
The project addressed the potential for public spaces to
stimulate group dialogue and revitalize public activities
across cultures and languages. In its broadest sense, it is
considered a provocation to address the digital divide and
some of the enormous economic inequities that members
of the United Nations have identified between people living
in the northern and southern hemispheres.
The design and fabrication challenge sought to cre-
ate interactive TimeZone blocks with maximum durability
and interactivity at a minimum cost. Clusters of TimeZone
blocks contained data projectors, cameras, speakers, sen-
sors, microphones, and wireless interfaces. Images ap-
peared on the blocks’ highly durable, water- and scratch-
resistant flexible surfaces, which served as touch-screens.
Proximity and touch sensors facilitated interaction between
users. The blocks were demountable and able to be crated
to remote parts of the world where they would be assem-
bled and put to use. During the summer of 2008, prototype
TimeZone blocks were constructed, connected, and tested
in public spaces.
The scope of this course
focused on using the medium of architectural photography
as a critical tool, to enable the visual depiction of buildings,
both contextualized and decontextualized. Photography is
capable of intentional and unintentional deceits in terms of
scale, context, and physical condition. Photography has also
been proven an excellent tool for displaying the shortcom-
ings and sensations unidentifiable by plans and sections.
Architectural photography can reveal the architect´s ideas
and intentions and can provide insight into a building´s
potential meaning. It not only provides documentary evi-
dence; it also serves as a stimulant for the critical mind.
Students in this course
brought architecture to life. This hands-on laboratory unfroze
buildings and created functioning interactive environments.
Students were introduced to the issues of responsive kinetic
architecture and the techniques of designing with electronic
circuits, and by the end of the semester they built a range
of exciting full-scale demonstrations for an exhibit at the
school or at a New York gallery.
In the past fifteen years, some of the most vibrant ex-
periments in architecture have used computer technologies
to develop new types of geometries — with curves, facets,
and non-standard shapes — and to fabricate architectural
elements directly from digital files without working draw-
ings. Some of these digital processes are now completely
integrated into practice while others are still being devel-
oped and redefined. Building on these investigations, a new
type of post-digital experimentation has called into question
the “muteness and inertness” of traditional materials. Re-
cently, some architects have been using new technologies
to explore and realize radically different kinds of spaces
that respond to their environment in real time: responsive
kinetic architecture.
Using the standard building blocks of inexpensive sen-
sors, simple microcontrollers, and shape memory alloy
actuators, students were able to create interactive environ-
ments without extensive training or a laboratory infrastruc-
ture. Dynalloy, the manufacturer of Flexinol shape memory
alloy actuators, donated materials for the class.
This workshop explored generative design methodolo-
gies through the application of algorithmic techniques, look-
ing at fundamental coding principles (recursion, feedback,
modularity, and I/O) while teasing out a rich taxonomy of
algorithms. Artificial life, material intelligence, interactiv-
ity, and other second-order principles were approached
from the vantage point of “dynamics” and “search” — or the
introduction of directed intelligence into a dynamic process
of making. Based on “feedback” from previous iterations of
the course, this semester focused on the interrelationship
between “development” and “behavior”.
Behavior and development were understood to be a sum,
or aggregate, of a multitude of innocuous decisions. Each is a
“dynamic”, or a process “in time” that necessarily feeds back
and regulates procedures to promote higher levels of form,
organization, and movement. Students developed a focused
inquiry into a specific area of algorithmic dynamics. Here,
“dynamics” is meant as an inclusive term for all kinds of
activity; formal development, flocking, embryology, automata,
FEA, fractals, and L-systems are all examples of time-based
recursive practices. The class fleshed out a vocabulary and
structural understanding of a wide array of algorithms and
sought out correspondences among dynamics, mapping, and
search heuristics. By casting a wide net, the course hoped
to see opportunities for portability and the development of a
critical stance towards algorithmic “tooling.”
As the architect’s computer switches
modalities from a tool that integrates design and the pro-
duction of data for actualization, new processes, and tech-
niques to more capably take advantage of this shift must be
explored and skillfully utilized. This workshop challenged
traditional methods of drafting and physical model build-
ing and explored a more parametric approach. Virtual 3D
models were drafted, subjected to multiple iterative trans-
formations, tested for design fitness in the realm of the soft-
ware, and output for testing in real space. Results of this
study included practical knowledge of how certain geom-
etries affect the performance of designs. Virtual models
were embedded with intelligent criteria established by the
designer to produce more controlled and specific results,
moving away from the abstract results of the generative
formal experiments of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. The fre-
quent use of 3D printers and laser cutters ensured a close
relationship between the virtual parametric model(s) and
their physical counterparts, enabling the designer to test
design concepts in real space in a short time and adjust the
design(s) accordingly. Topics included understanding para-
metrics, understanding geometry types, advanced modeling
techniques, implementing pre-written scripts, modeling with
relationships, recycling geometry, exporting techniques, and
data extraction for fabrication.
What is the place of BIM in architecture? Is it meant
solely for production, or can architectural design benefit from
the real-time feedback available from Building Information
Models? BIM can and will change the profession, and this
generation is responsible for how that will be. The intention
of this workshop was to develop a thorough understanding of
BIM and, in particular, the ways in which architects can inter-
vene in the process to push beyond mere efficiency. How is the
time gained from these tools re-appropriated? How can the
concepts of parametric modeling infiltrate the design process?
Using software that forces rigor, can architects learn from it
and re-apply those logics to other aspects of the design?
Students used Autodesk’s Revit to create a parametric archi-
tectural system with embedded variability. Once the system
was designed, Revit was used to create models that translated
into drawings for fabrication.
This workshop explored the multiple techniques and tactics
used to develop a short animation. As a means of communi-
cation, no other visual medium rivals the short animation in
its efficacy. It can make one laugh, cry, be horrified, believe,
and disbelieve, all within 30 seconds. Kinetic by nature,
animation can reveal aspects of architecture impossible to
represent in static images. 3D production software like 3DS
Max (the primary software platform for the workshop) is able
to explore the unique structure — linear time, filmic juxta-
positions, narrative, and abstract composition. This is the
“drawing” of contemporary architecture and design.
One part design project, one part technical instruction,
the workshop was structured around its project — a short
animation of an architectural space changing over time. Stu-
dents drew an animated sketch of an architectural space
using a 3D interface in combination with any other graphic
means necessary. The concept was then further developed
and refined through the use of advanced 3D techniques,
providing a broad-based knowledge of current digital anima-
tion practice.
This workshop
explored the multiple techniques and tactics of rendering:
sketch, visualize, analyze, quantify, synthesize. 3D software
such as 3DS Max (the primary software platform of the
workshop) allows the architect to navigate fluidly the con-
stant conception/representation oscillation of the design
process. The architectural rendering — whether abstract,
analytic, or photo-real — captures the energy of an idea
about space, while contemporary rendering techniques
have enabled the architect to embed more information,
with greater intent, into a single image.
One part design project, one part technical instruction,
the workshop was structured around the production of three
publication-quality images. Students sketched an architec-
tural space, using a 3D interface in combination with any
other means — 2D software, photography, hand drawing, etc.
— and presented that idea into three separate images. Once
formulated, the concept was further developed and refined
using advanced 3D techniques for modeling, lighting, mate-
rial application, and compositing, providing a broad-based
understanding of current digital rendering techniques.
Public awareness of environmental issues has increased
dramatically over the past few decades, and more and more
questions are being asked of designers and architects. Some
of these are answered at the urban scale with planning strat-
egies and creative infrastructure solutions, while others are
addressed at the micro level with advances in high-perfor-
mance materials. This workshop investigated the direct rela-
tionship between architectural form and adjacent environ-
mental conditions at the scale of the individual building.
Students began by working in the software of their choice
to develop an architectural proposal for a given program. This
proposal was then reconsidered, refined, or rejected using
Ecotect’s analytical functions for daylighting, thermal model-
ing, spatial visibility, and acoustics. Throughout the workshop,
students were encouraged to utilize rapid prototyping tech-
niques to better understand the relationship between vir-
tual models and physical output. Building on this foundation,
students used Ecotect not only as an evaluative tool but also
as a projective device. Working with some of the software’s
embedded scripting capabilities or directly from raw weather
data, students investigated formal proposals that addressed
specific environmental factors.
The relationship between the components
of structure and the components of enclosure is conven-
tionally considered to be mutually exclusive. However, in
an environment where material efficiency and speed of
fabrication is becoming more important, there exists an
opportunity for the designer to intervene within the fabrica-
tion process to assimilate both structure and envelope into
one hybridized system.
This course encouraged and enabled student designers
to use digital software as a generative tool and the laser
cutter, CNC Mill, plastic bender, and welder as a means to
bring virtual systems into the physical realm. The students
are asked to design a variable mesh of at least 15 cellular
components born from one complex tessellated surface.
Bridging the gap between digital conception and physical
construction, students used various digital platforms to
flatten the tessellated geometry into individual cells and
then shifted focus to the fabrication equipment where these
cellular forms where extracted from conventional acrylic
and aluminum sheet stock and reanimated into the digitally
generated, three-dimensional component system. The indi-
vidual cells were transformed using cutting, strip heat bend-
ing, welding, and folded manipulation in order to fabricate
a topological network of elements — a homogenous, self
supporting mesh. In effect, the students created structure
from non structure and complex systems from simple sur-
faces. Specific emphasis was placed on the development of
multiple systems of geometry and various materials within
the same structural network in order to discern elements of
surface and elements of connection.
The research objectives of this course encouraged
students to devise functional design applications, estab-
lish contextual relevance for their component systems, and
propose realistic fabrication scenarios based on quantifiable
material and mechanical constraints. Components were ex-
tracted from the digital realm, built at full scale, tested and
reevaluated, effectively taking them beyond prototype.
1. Agenda for Greener and Grander
After implementing environmental stan-
dards, why does green architecture look so bland? Passive
cooling, low flush toilets, and harvested lumber do not fore-
ground evocative design. During the last two decades, the
prevalent challenge for the sustainable design movement in
the United States has been to sluggishly modify the behavior
of the developers, architects, and planners responsible for
the sizable majority of new projects. What does it take to re-
create the “Bilbao effect” (artifact as stimulating catharsis)
ecologically? The profession has to restructure its pedagogi-
cal goals in terms of environmental studies. By educating
professionals on the sensibilities of green design, the ulti-
mate goal of this course was to make ecology visible.
2. Draw the Wind
Students were asked to choose an ecological system in
context and describe it, drawing or mapping in the factors
that were especially “unseen,” such as mapping flows of
gray water runoff in a parking lot, a flower opening for solar
income, sounds of highway traffic affecting bird habitat.
3. Exquisite Corpse
Like any ecological system, nothing is pure. Each individ-
ual, after accomplishing his/her task was asked to switch
with a partner. Students were asked to assist each other
in learning individual choices of media. All of the projects
were combined and recombined until the unexpected was
achieved. The prevailing goal for the final class product was
a visual representation of ecology as an “exquisite corpse”
of many competing systems. A collage of tiling environ-
ments onto environments.
Fabrication has always been a complex act
rooted in strategy, research, cumulative knowledge, intent,
collaboration, and expertise. Participants in this workshop
developed and documented procedures that took compo-
nents fabricated on the CNC mill(s) to a highly polished state
of finished refinement. In this workshop, “finishing” was
understood as pushing an intricate material development
process several steps beyond the CNC mill, towards some
articulately customized end. Fabulous composite effects
were systematically developed through the orchestration of
geometry, surface articulation, strategic tool-path combina-
tions and procedures, applied coatings, post-CNC processes,
and CNC feedback. Procedures and results were document-
ed in a standardized format and were compiled as a resource
for future reference within the Fabrication Laboratory.
The “time” of the institution, which organizes a kind
of monolithic memory structure on a political and cultural
level, contrasts dramatically with the time of the individual
subject, which is filled with myriad unpredictable details.
Similarly, the “time” of the built fabric of the city provides
an archetypal and shared memory which spans all cultures,
while the individual subject in his or her chance encounters
creates an absolutely unique memory that then cascades
into the urban form itself, in many ways. Urban morpholo-
gies are now on fast forward, as they adjust ever more rapidly
to global systems that provide individuals, collectives, and
institutions with constantly shifting ways to interact. The
global spaces of contestation for resources, identity, infra-
structure, military control, or desire that we see in films like
Demonlover (Assayas, 2003), Syriana (Gaghan, 2005), or Code
46 (Winterbottom, 2003) are not science fiction speculations,
but verifications of the wildly re-territorialized reality we
inhabit today.
Architecture operates as a key link in this dynamic rela-
tion, in its capability to slow down such time, unlike many
other disciplines tied into the practice of generating urban
morphology. This seminar studied these emerging “Post-
Empire” landscapes of control, systemic tendencies, and
new freedoms.
After a series of lectures, discussions, readings, and
film viewings, students created short films investigating a
particular aspect of the new urban archipelago. Conflating
fact and fiction, present, past, and future, these films were
problematized artifacts that challenged the idea of docu-
mentary filmmaking.
Researchers in fields like bio-
mimetics and systems engineering have discovered relation-
ships embedded within complex systems of seemingly unre-
lated components or, in the case of natural systems, plant and
animal life. These relationships (and dependencies) can be
shown to enhance the whole, perhaps improving the resiliency
of the system to changing conditions or improving efficiency
and reducing waste of limited resources. Another common
theme in complex systems, particularly natural systems, is
adaptive growth. They respond to specific demands and envi-
ronmental conditions present during their formation.
Research aimed at modeling natural systems resurged
in the 1980’s with “genetic algorithm” optimization tech-
niques showing promise. More fundamental to the notion of
adaptive design or generative design, however, is the ques-
tion of problem formulation. How do we build a system to
adapt? What does it adapt to?
This workshop investigated the formulation of an adap-
tive system based on optimization methodologies. Here, the
notion of optimality — generally understood to be a singular,
mathematical minimum — is reconsidered as a catalyst for
design. A rigorous definition of optimization was applied,
translating a “generalized design model” into a parametri-
cally controlled “performance design model.” Students
explored how the performance model is easily tested and
evaluated against a variety of performance measures, in-
cluding testing by structural analysis.
The existing zoning framework attempts to define
architectural potential as a set of static parts or modular
components. Rather than satisfying a range of possible con-
ditions, the collection of zones repeatedly fails to produce the
effects prioritized, even as new zones are generated. The
ubiquity of the “special” portends this failure as zones lose
any universal ability and become merely a lowest common
denominator from which specialization can occur.
Recognizing that professional city planners are in-
creasingly expected to edit and even produce 3D models,
the course explored such visualization techniques in rela-
tion to urban planning. Working from very basic geometric
components and using the New York City Zoning Resolu-
tion as a framework for investigation, students generated a
spatial system. This course was part of an ongoing project
that seeks to design zoning mechanisms capable of generat-
ing their own specificity. To accomplish this, the strategy of
parametrics was employed, making dynamic the field of pos-
sibility and allowing its logic to develop recursively. Feedback
loops and corruption became part of the system, not foreign
to it. Height limits, sky exposure planes, setbacks, side-
yards, and other points of spatial regulation were defined as
parameters in the production of a 3D system.
Recognizing drawing as the intimate
practice fundamental to the architect’s productive imagina-
tion, Drawing 1 worked with the several strands that sustain
the fragile links among architect, idea, and material. The
course introduced a process of questioning — in the work
itself — the relationships between measure and things that lie
at the center of architectural convention and representation.
The correspondences between drawing and building
are supported not only from the instrumental effect of one
producing the other but also through their mutual use of the
plane as a primary organizational structure and their perfor-
mative roles as mediating apparatuses. The course situated
drawing in ongoing discussions of media culture and the roles
of the instrument in producing object, fields, and effects.
Lectures and essays attempted to cut across these
zones of shared performance, making building and drawing
participating forms of knowledge and exchange while the
projects focused on the memory-intensive and speculative
practices of drawing. Projects, lectures, and readings were
organized around the distinctions of cutting into an ongoing
milieu, projecting from one surface to another, the traces
formed at a meeting of two surfaces, and the folding of one
surface into another.
Working between the surface constructions of drawing
and building, the course attempted to construct responsive,
even tactical, working spaces where insight corresponds
with the architect’s ability to adapt while maintaining a radi-
cally consistent view.
When one arrives to this city the fictional New York of cinema
is often wonderfully foreign and familiar to the New York that
one sees; it creates moments one occasionally confuses with
one’s own memories and experiences. It is undoubtedly the
city’s ability to re-characterize itself for every genre of film
making that leads to this confusion. Transcending between
action, drama, romantic comedy, sci-fi, documentary, thrill-
er, musical, it is a city made for everyone and every situation.
As this city suggests it can be all things for film, one cannot
help but wonder about all the different ways it could be re-
read for architecture.
Within the larger question of the role of animation in
architecture this course explored how the city can be re-
framed to communicate multiple agendas through moving
image. It sought to determine a cinematic language more
akin to architectural representation by re-presenting the city
back through an architectural lens. Reappropriating filmic
techniques that shift from the poetic to the analytical and
the explicative to the generative, students created moving
image works that projected and recalled memories embed-
ded within the city. Students spent time working with the
camera and understanding techniques of cinematography,
digital editing, narrative structures, and, where necessary,
post production work.
How can one represent the immaterial qualities of architec-
ture through current digital practices? As the greater role
of digital representation has been focused on the geometric
and formal order of architecture, the ambition of this course
was to review representational techniques so that they may
account for its symbolic, temporal, and invisible qualities.
Looking to other disciplines which are also heavily in-
volved in the nature of representation, such as photography,
sculpture, and cinema, it seems as though it is not through
verisimilitude but through deliberate manipulation of their
respective mediums that a heightening of the viewers’
senses and awareness is created. Examples of this can be
found in the manipulated images of Yves Klein’s “Leap into
the Void,” in Jeff Wall’s “A Sudden Gust of Wind,” and in the
visual effects of Jean Pierre Jeunet’s films that reflect the
emotional states of his subjects rather than simulating their
physical experiences. If other disciplines, using the same
software, are able to bring to the fore complex ideas and sen-
sations, why should architecture fail to take similar oppor-
tunities with methods of representation, instead choosing to
concentrate on “truthful” depictions of architectural form?
This course was about generating and critiquing moving im-
age compositions that require a deliberate manipulation of
both image and time in an effort to capture architecture’s
elusive qualities.
How can one represent the immaterial qualities of architec-
ture through current digital practices? As the greater role of
digital representation has been focused on the geometric and
formal order of architecture the ambitions of these courses
are to review representational techniques so that they may
account for its symbolic, temporal, and invisible qualities.
This course was a cinematic exploration of things archi-
tectural, focusing on narrative and content. Beyond the goal
of exploring architectural issues through a cinematic lan-
guage — like the Eames’ films from the 50’s to the late 70’s
— a further aim of the course was to counter the growing
presence of prosaic architectural flythroughs. Discussions
covered narrative structures which lead to polemical and nu-
anced views, the characterizing of architectural experiences
and (re)humanizing architectural ideas. Students focused
on representing the observations, concerns, and positions
pertinent to architecture that cannot be accounted for via
traditional methods of architectural representation.
The Carceri (Prisons) series of etchings by Piranesi marked
a significant turning point in the 18th century of visually
representing architectural spaces. Breaking from the rigid
mathematical rules of linear perspective that had dominated
architectural representation since the Renaissance, Piranesi
sought to focus on the evocative qualities of images rather
than the geometric order that was privileged by the conven-
tions of perspective. The theatrical nature of his etchings
have since been noticed by many outside the discipline of
architecture and were of great influence to film makers such
as Eisenstien and more recently Spielberg. Another such
visionary, Hugh Ferris, who also created cinematic render-
ings of architecture and also proactively distorted the linear-
ity of perspective, wrote in an article on the role of architec-
tural renderers: “… it would appear that he is not so much
permitted as actually required to slight incidental facts of his
viewpoint in favor of the essential facts of the subject which
he is viewing” (Ferris 1926). This course was interested in
the highly instrumentalized practice of digital representation
and aimed to explore methods that fracture the making pro-
cess of contemporary digital images in an effort to describe
the poetic aspirations of an architectural proposition above
its geometric description. For the culminating project of this
course, students created short animations through uncon-
ventional digital and practical techniques.
The prevailing model of professional book production
is firmly entrenched in the Fordist Assembly-Line. Writing,
design, production, printing, and distribution are each han-
dled discretely by specialists as the project proceeds through
a chain of command and production, where economies-of-
scale and their required capital investment necessarily limit
who and what can be published. Recently, laserprinters,
cellphones, photocopiers, page-layout softwares, instant
messaging, word processors, and increasingly fluid commu-
nications networks have facilitated the shift to a just-in-time
mode of print production; books can be produced by a wider
number of less-specialized individuals, design revisions can
be made on-the-fly, quantities can be smaller, and the dis-
tribution network can be more responsive. A book might rea-
sonably be written by the designer who begins a layout and
works with an editor who commissions a writer and sources
a printer to produce fifty copies by next Wednesday.
Coincident with this shift are opportunities for self-
publishing, economies-of-scope, and alternate networks
of distribution to form an accessible, powerful and portable
platform for modeling design ideas. This workshop provided
a background in the graphic design and production of short
books and explored alternative printing, publishing, and dis-
tribution strategies, including a number of new alternatives
such as Print-On-Demand, Online Archives, iPhoto Books,
PDFs, Digital Offset, and Subscription services.
This workshop introduced fundamental technical and
critical skills to engage the computer on its own terms,
fostering an understanding of the software, protocols, and
languages that construct a computer. Complex computer
programs can be (and usually are) built in an ad-hoc fash-
ion, using smaller pieces of existing or free software. It is
exactly this string and sealing wax approach, as British
designer Anthony Froshaug once described, that can yield
work that is not over-determined by existing commercial
software packages nor limited by production techniques.
To this end, students used existing Processing projects —
modifying, taking apart and re-using the code and structures
to produce their own projects. In the process, they gained an
understanding of fundamental programming methodologies
and a specific facility with Processing to explore concise pro-
grammatic experiments.
The software-savvy architect can reclaim an intimate
relationship not only with the design but also with the means
of production. The goal of the course was to understand the
computer as a simultaneous site of design, of production,
and of distribution; and this collapse of functions at one
place and in realtime allows the creation of computational
forms, models and organizations that are constantly rear-
ranging, re-configuring and recalculating.
The notion of program in graph-
ic design is inherently vague, and the functions demanded of
it are multivalent and often contradictory; graphic designers
sell something while appearing not to, demand conformity
while promising freedom, etc. But whatever the program-
matic demand, the graphic answer is almost invariably
narrative. Graphic design, in that it shapes texts, organizes
information flow, structures hierarchies, navigates spaces,
and is doled out in chunks that find their completion in an
imagined public.
This class examined the friction generated when graph-
ic design and architecture overlap (or when graphic design
is injected into or spread onto architecture). How is the epi-
sodic aspect of designed space changed, intensified, under-
mined, or reinterpreted by the graphic design that coexists
within it? How can the designer investigate and critique the
notion of the “visitor experience” and try to understand the
way in which graphic design is often the first filter through
which a public understands a building?
Students worked specifically on a proposal for the de-
sign of a space programmed as a tourist destination within
a new building in Beijing. Part 1 concentrated on the manner
of graphic narratives that unfold within architecture and how
designers conspire to affect an unseen and unknown audi-
ence. What kind of stories can be told in public space? How
are they parsed? And how can they both be motivated by,
and interpret, the essential sequence of the architecture that
frames them? Part 2 built on the proposals developed in Part
I and moved into the area of form and media: once a story has
been identified, what are the devices by which it is delivered,
how do those devices change the content, and how can they
be deployed within a given architectural space?
This class generated architectural work by drawing lines with
film or video cameras. Motivated by the virtual fly-through’s
freedom from gravity and Dogme Collective’s handheld
principles, this course used camcorders as primary tools
for making architecture. The course opened with a series of
film clips in which camera movement produced a provoca-
tive spatial effect as well as readings about cinematography
relevant to architecture and an introduction to some of the
more standard devices used for camera movement in the film
industry. Students were then asked to choreograph various
camera paths over a given location in New York City and to
design and build camera appendages corresponding to ideas
about movement. The class culminated in the creation of
short films with an emphasis on film production rather than
film editing.
This course examined the intersection of
geospatial and information-based mapping. The seminar
focused on methods of cartographic representation that
addressed the confluence of data and geography through
the mapping of political borders, natural resources, trans-
national infrastructures, and questions of extra-territorial-
ity. Special attention was given to mapping strategies and
instruments developed outside the field of architecture.
The format of the course was a combination of lectures
and discussions on assigned reading. Presentations focused
on emerging geospatial software such as ArcGIS. Google
Earth Pro, and NASA Whirlwind as well as contemporary
geospatial techniques and tools such as digital elevation
modeling, data interpolation (krigging), LIDAR scanning,
and advances in satellite imaging. Using these and other
techniques, students were asked to choose a site from which
to create analytical maps exploring ways to visualize dispa-
rate layers of information. Reading included the work of Eyal
Weizman, Derek Gregory, Manuel Delanda, and others.
In this workshop students explored
the generation of visual constructs dealing with the notion of
simulation and representation. Simulation was understood
as the origin of a reality, not as a representation of a formal
construct, by generating behavioral models and abstract
events without a tactile origin. The simulation gives origin to
sequential representation of an unknown event that progres-
sively yields to the generation of a tangible visual fabric.
The primary methods of investigation used in this
course were threefold. The first involved the notion that a
simulation could give origin to sequential representation. In
this case simulation was the unknown event that progres-
sively yielded to the representation of a tactile fabric. The
second used representational constructs to generate new
perceptive realities; a represented environment was bent
by anamorphic architectural events. Finally, visual narra-
tive was used as a generative formation of a simulation, an
environment without atmosphere or perceptive origin.
This workshop focused on the topological study of form.
Understanding form as a composite of mathematical data,
one can begin to investigate the underlying structure of post-
Euclidian geometry. Students also investigated fluid dynam-
ics as a morphological system, as opposed to the norma-
tive approach or regarding fluids as vector-based systems.
Finally, students looked at how the generative morphologi-
cal behavior of fractals could generate “structures” of form
that would incorporate space-form relations.
The two primary methods of investigation were gen-
erative geometry and generative perception. Generative
geometry can be based on the use of a line system to gen-
erate a “structure” of forms that incorporate space-form
relations. The morphology to be studied or animated can
also be based on an object, a system, or a network whose
morphology is in interaction with a topologically equivalent
entity. Generative perception can be based on time-based
material effects performing on pre-defined geometry. In this
case the morphology is revealed over time by animating vi-
sual properties of an object, a system, or a network.
This timely workshop offered students a unique
opportunity to participate in a spectacular global event by
working on the design of the costumes for the 2008 Beijing
Olympics Opening Ceremony to be presented on August 8th,
2008 (8/8/8) at 8PM in the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic Stadium
designed by Herzog & de Meuron. As a member of the
Opening Ceremony’s design team (including film director
and chief Zhang Yimou, set designer Mark Fisher, special
effects artist Cai Guo-Qjang, and adviser Steven Spielberg,
among others) costume director Eiko Ishioka established the
program, design, and production milestones for the class.
Reflecting the celebratory spirit of the Olympics’ and
Beijing 2008’s three main themes — Green Olympics, High-
Tech Olympics, and People’s Olympics — the students’ work
was intended to support the needs of the performers, inves-
tigating the human body’s most intimate architecture and
the future potential of its clothed form.
Dynamically alternating between phases of research,
design, critique, and production, the outfitted presence of the
ceremony’s cast and crew were developed and detailed head-
to-toe. Of paramount importance was the wardrobes’ visual
amplification, as live and televised performances from the
grand size of the stadium to intimate scale of the bodies up
close needed to be considered. The course served as a platform
for discussion, testing, and speculation between future tech-
nology, human needs, the global environment, and beyond.
This workshop examined the role of agency
within generative design processes. The course engaged
algorithmic techniques in the development of a computa-
tional methodology emerging from research into swarm
intelligence. While discussing the political and social role
of agency, the workshop focused on an abstract design
methodology, recasting simple decision-making ability into
agents capable of self-organizing into an emergent system.
Scripting formed the basis for algorithmic models that
enabled localized interaction of agents to generate proto-
architectural forms, structures, and articulation. Unlike
the typical application of swarm systems in design, this
workshop went beyond a simple mapping of these complex
systems, mining their self-organizing potential to negotiate
between complex sets of desires and parameters in the gen-
eration of architecture. The workshop operated through the
development of scripting and code, expanding on an existing
library of relatively simple functions and recombining them
to develop more complex generative algorithms.
Computational design is shifting away from a reliance
on heavy platforms such as Maya into lightweight scripting
environments, enabling the intensive iteration required for
emergent processes. In anticipating this shift, the workshops
focused on the newer, lightweight languages of Processing
and RhinoScript.
In this workshop, students looked at case studies, using video
work done for O.M.A., Gucci, and Oppenheim Architects.
Lessons covered video compositing and post-production
effects (green screen compositing, motion graphics tech-
niques, motion tracking, camera tracking, etc.) using a vari-
ety of software. Class assignments focused on using these
techniques to illustrate work being executed in the students’
studio courses.
Environmental simulation has been a marketable trade for
some time now. The popularity and practical utility of vir-
tual spaces has grown in direct proportion with the fidelity
of consumer technology. Today’s desktops and entertain-
ment consoles can maintain perfect fluidity while handling
sophisticated algorithms that add uncanny nuance a user’s
first-person experience.
Unfortunately, supplanting physical reality is still not
an option as the fidelity of the technology is still not quite
there. As such, the architect remains obligated to deal with
the familiar set of terms and obstacles before realizing his
or her vision. However, the current state of the art is not
without unique characteristics of its own, making it a candi-
date for a new form of expression. In addition, it is possible
to envision alternatives to the architectural paradigm given
its close resemblance to the physical domain without the
restrictions of physical law.
This workshop focused on the use of the Unreal game
engine to simulate physical environments and architectural
proposals in an interactive format. Students worked with the
software in conjunction with 3DS Max or Maya to develop
personal theses on the applicability of this technology within
the profession and/or a new definition for the practice of ar-
chitecture at large.
The most advanced engineering achievements of humans
pale in comparison to the very practical and sophisticated
systems of even the most common plants. Plants’ ubiquity,
even in New York City, offers the possibility of direct, visceral
study. This course used plant form as a basis for the appro-
priation of industrial design techniques into architectural
constructs. Details in everyday industrial objects surround
architects but are only rarely used in buildings. The use of
CNC and rapid prototyping technologies has expanded the
vocabulary of recent architecture to include industrial design
details. Puzzle connections, Velcro, snap fits, folding pat-
terns, and other common industrial design technologies
offer new possibilities to architects through their various,
mechanically performative qualities. While industrial design
techniques present an expanded set of tools for architects,
the use of these tools for buildings requires a substantial
translation from one set of constraints to another. This
translation of techniques was addressed in the course
through the appropriation of techniques and the physical
realization of architectural constructs. Students contend-
ed with such constraints as tolerance, fit, stretching, and
assembly sequence.
With the burst of
the Internet bubble in the late ‘90s, computing, cyberspace,
and the digital revolution were delivered a healthy dose of
fiscal responsibility. While certain divisions of technology
have been forced to readjust to the demands of the economy,
the architectural profession has largely been undaunted in
its use of computing. Computing in architecture has reached
such a level of now ubiquity that the idea of practicing without
it seems incomprehensible. It has altered the standards of
representation, retooled construction techniques, and made
communication of complex information instantaneous.
In this state of ubiquitous computing, the architect is
asked to not only grasp these new technologies but also to
integrate them into the built environment. As the edge be-
tween the virtual and real becomes increasingly thin, the
architect must not only be proficient in this interactivity, but
tool it toward new ideas and potentials that are rife within
this expanding territory.
While Fundamentals of Digital Design is an introduc-
tory course in computing, it builds on the student’s advanced
ability to question, shape, and interrogate space and time.
The course interrogates the computer as a design tool of
representation and analysis. This interrogation is framed in
the concepts, techniques, and methodologies of computer
aided design. Students study the operative relationship be-
tween 2D and 3D data and are asked to explore the reaches
of their potential.
“Model: a system of postulates, data, and inferences pre-
sented as a mathematical description of an entity or state of
affairs; also: a computer simulation based on such a system”
(Merriam Webster Dictionary)
The object of this workshop was a physi-
cally accurate model of light and, by extension, of material.
The goal was to make a real rendering by selecting an archi-
tecture as the subject of the model, taking photographic data
of a particular site under specific lighting conditions, gen-
erating a physically calibrated digital material library, and
using a rendering engine to synthesize these elements into
distinct images. A minimal number of class lectures intro-
duced important concepts and demonstrated their poten-
tial. The software included Adobe Photoshop, 3DS Max, and
multiple free shareware High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI)
processing programs.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a
powerful tool for analyzing spatial patterns. Often referred to
as a system of spatial databases or visual databases, GIS is
used by many different fields to understand everything from
spatial clustering to management of natural resources. For
example, an epidemiologist might use GIS to determine the
source of a contagious disease while an economist might
use it to understand how industries cluster and if there are
environmental reasons for this clustering effect.
This advanced research seminar was designed to ex-
pand students’ knowledge of the tools available for spatial
analysis, enabling them to develop unique research ques-
tions and methodologies for answering those questions
using unique sets of software tools. With the ultimate goal
of teaching students how to develop quantitative research
methods, the course required each student to develop and
test a hypothesis through the use of spatial analysis.
Mapping is a key component of site investigation. Maps
reveal unexpected spatial relationships, allowing designers
to better understand their territory.
Data is the key component to making maps. The science
of mapping is based of the idea of translating data — wheth-
er found or collected — into a visually comprehensible form.
In other words, maps reveal the spatial nature of data.
GIS is a visual database. It allows one to easily interpret
and visualize vast quantities of spatial data. The output of
this visual data has traditionally been through GIS, but in
this course students combined GIS databases with a variety
of output options, including Google API, Google Earth, Arc-
Globe, and 3D modeling software. Exploring the collection,
creation, interpretation, and mediums for making maps,
students devised a “hack” to interpret site data.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a tool
for managing data about where features are (geographic
coordinate data) and what they are like (attribute data), and
for providing the ability to query, manipulate, and analyze
those data. Because GIS allows one to represent social and
environmental data as a map, it has become an important
analysis tool used across a variety of fields including: plan-
ning, architecture, engineering, public health, environmen-
tal science, economics, epidemiology, and business. GIS
has become an important political instrument, allowing
communities and regions to tell their story graphically. GIS
is a powerful tool, and this course introduced students to the
basics, gave them an understanding of its possibilities, and
enabled them to use it in their own research.
The Ph. D. program in archi-
tecture is oriented toward the training of scholars in the field
of architectural history and theory. Its structure reflects a
dual understanding of the scholar’s role in the discipline at
large, as a teacher and as a researcher making an original
contribution to the field, with an emphasis on expanding and
reinterpreting disciplinary knowledge in a broad intellectual
arena. Course requirements are therefore designed to give
entering students a solid foundation in historical knowledge
and theoretical discourse, with sufficient flexibility to allow
the initiation and pursuit of individual research agendas. The
program’s focus is on the history and theory of modern and
contemporary architecture and urbanism in an international
and cross-cultural context, from the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury to the present. Within this, a wide range of research
is supported through the varied expertise of the faculty
and through strong relationships with other departments
throughout the University and beyond. Students are resident
in the program for five years.
Since antiquity the term polis has captured both the idea
of city as physical settlement and that of city as community/
state. This thesis will explore this constituent ambivalence
as it took form in the early-modern period, tracing a series of
historical shifts in the way the city was envisioned in France
from the reign of Louis XIV until the Revolution. The proposal
is to study the urban imaginary of this period by comparing
the figures of the city produced by architects and utopian
writers to the ideas formulated under the rubric of “police
science,” the theory of the government and administration
of the city. The thesis will examine two historical phenom-
ena and their mutual relation: first, the emergence of a new
“rationality” of the city, as it developed in the discourse and
practices of the police, the institution that most controlled
urban transformation; and second, a profound cultural
change in the way the city, in both its material and political
sense, was conceived. The hypothesis is that the new ideas
and representations of the city that emerged in the eigh-
teenth century involved a fundamental re-articulation of the
relation between State and civil society; the police offers a
critical means to understanding that re-articulation.
This dissertation is a study of Marco Zanuso (Milan, Italy
1916-2001). The study will show how the methodology of this
architect and industrial designer, formed during the second
World War and the 1950s in Milan, emphasized the engage-
ment of current capabilities in production, inventive reuse
of physical and logistical structures, and attention to social
need. These themes will be explored through case studies
of individual objects, including factories, domestic buildings,
schools, and industrial design objects such as furniture and
televisions. Analytical comparisons to projects by contempo-
raries in the reconstruction mood of 1945-1960 will include
Milanese architects who made similar use of béton brut and
elementary construction systems, such as Vittoriano Viganò
and Figini and Pollini; and designers who shared Zanuso’s
proclivities for mass design and design with roots in pre-
existing cultural forms and productive capacities, notably
Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. The central chapters of
the study seek, through these investigations, to understand
Zanuso’s notion of “mass” design in architecture and design,
and to compare this notion to Reyner Banham’s “machine
age” idea entailing, on one hand, the application of technol-
ogy to the enhancement of everyday life and invention of new
forms of living; on the other hand, rejection of the formal
tastes associated with “academicism” in traditional archi-
tecture. Further, the study probes the limits of this età della
macchina, in particular the decline of the machine-age style
in Zanuso’s work amid the twilight of the industrial develop-
ment for which such projects were optimized, as industrial
production and cultural structures were replaced with those
of a “tertiary” economy and other post-industrial cultural
manifestations in the early to mid-1970s.
Chicago architect Dwight Perkins was a pivotal
figure in the progressive social and political reforms that
were especially strong in the Midwestern United States
during the opening decades of the twentieth century. He
had personal and professional connections with prominent
local reformers such as Jane Addams, John Dewey, Charles
Zueblin, and Jens Jensen. The contention of this dissertation
is that this milieu shared a set of socio-political ideals that
revolved around the goal of fostering a mutually responsible
social democracy in place of laissez-faire individualism and
that the realization of this goal took on architectural form
through Perkins’ designs for new social centers, namely:
settlement houses, public schools, playgrounds, parks,
and recreation facilities. Perkins and his compatriots envi-
sioned these spaces as loci of democratic exchange, and
when grouped together they operated as a town planning
formula for creating self-governing democratic communi-
ties. This dissertation seeks to explore: 1) the substance of
the social reforms desired by Perkins and his fellow progres-
sives, which touched on issues such as assimilation, the role
of public education in molding citizens, the importance of
group recreation and nature study in promoting democratic
behavior, as well as an emphasis on health, hygiene, safety,
and efficiency; 2) the way in which Perkins’ social centers
institutionalized certain middle-class values, especially
with regards to gender roles and economic class; 3) the way
Perkins realized and symbolized these agendas in his archi-
tectural designs.
The dissertation argues that Lima, Peru, 1945-
1975, functioned as a significant site of experimentation for
modern architecture and planning in developing solutions
for the effective provision of low-cost mass housing. It is
structured as a social history of the production of housing
innovation and focuses on three types of projects exempli-
fying the range of housing and urban solutions explored
in Peru in this period: barriadas, informal settlements
constructed without the assistance of design profession-
als; aided self-help housing schemes, where architects
provided technical assistance to the resident-builder; and
PREVI (Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda), a model neigh-
borhood deriving from an international design competition
that foregrounded questions of technological innovation and
aesthetic form. The dissertation examines the work of two
key figures involved in the creation and implementation of
these experiments, John F. C. Turner and Peter Land, as a
point of entry into building up an image of the networks of
professional associates, theoretical and political influences,
policies, and programs underlying these new approaches
to housing.
A key element of the approach will be to examine the
development of housing innovation through the interactions
of three main spheres: the conditions of possibility that
made Peru a fertile site for experimentation under a suc-
cession of very different political regimes; the influences on
architectural discourse that led to the development of alter-
native approaches to housing; and the context underlying the
emergence of new ideologies and practices of development
in this period, as witnessed by the growing professionalism
of international development agencies.
This thesis explores three architectural constructions
in wilderness areas associated with the transcontinental
railway system in Canada. The works were planned and
executed over a period of economic expansion, territorial
consolidation, and national self-definition in which wilder-
ness ideals played crucial roles in Canadian nationalism.
A series of town plans, a resort hotel system, and a totem
restoration project worked at different scales using distinct
strategies for inhabiting lands rendered newly accessible by
the railway. Beyond the physical occupation of territory, each
scale of intervention contributed to representing a specific
idea of a place. New grid-plan railroad towns, CPR hotels,
and totem poles emerged respectively as icons for prairie,
mountain, and Pacific coast landscapes. These then became
a set of interlinked reference points for the representation
of the nascent nation. Seen as inhabiting untouched land-
scapes, each project was conceptually framed and aestheti-
cally shaped by wilderness ideas. This close study aims to
elucidate the conception, construction, and representation of
these works and the ways in which they embodied Canadian
values — including ideas of resource exploitation, aesthetic
pleasure, and autochthonous origin — and claimed this
seeming synthesis as an embodiment of national values.
This dissertation claims that media conditions pose
such a challenge to modern art and theory in the postwar
period that it cannot be ignored. It is necessary to develop a
conceptual framework for modern art on the basis of a justi-
fied media vocabulary in a historical and theoretical sense.
Since such a vocabulary hardly exists, this dissertation will
engage in a conceptual history of a variety of media terms
(such as media, multi-media, mixed media, mass media, and
the so-called “new” media), as well as its singular form of
medium (which in art theory has primary significance), and
explore how they have been used and interpreted in modern
art theory from 1960 through the 1990s. With this ground-
work of media terminology, this thesis will confront the rival
theories that have developed in regard to the discourse of
media and medium (such as the antithetical discourse of
Clement Greenberg and Marshall McLuhan) around a cen-
tral theoretical problem: the aesthetic medium versus the
technological media, for example, or the debate between
“medium” and Bild (image). Although the impact of media
will primarily be shown in the field of art theory, the interdis-
ciplinary ambition of this thesis is to be relevant to other cul-
tural disciplines as well — in particular architecture, where
the question of architectural medium and its intersection
with other media is similarly raised.
The Confucian metaphysical philosophy devalued material
artifacts, and, as a result, architecture was not tradition-
ally seen as a scholarly field. Architectural study as an
academic discipline only began as a formal discipline in
the last decades of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) when it was
introduced by westerners. Since then, Chinese scholars
have produced a significant and culturally influential body
of architectural history, a thorough account of which has yet
to be done — either in English or in Chinese. The objective of
this analytical study is therefore to cover the writings of the
most important architectural historians that worked during
the first stage of the discipline’s development in China.
It is found that these historians actually interweaved
native learning skills and architectural history, a discipline
originated from the West, to fulfill the need for a national
identity caused by the asynchronous modernization. This
is particularly embodied in the methodologies and histori-
cal styles that they remodeled. Contrary to most prevailing
post-colonial theories, their methodologies and historical
styles exemplify a positive and confident local response to
foreign input. By scrutinizing these historical texts, this dis-
sertation provides a new perspective on the early history of
global architecture.
With an emerging global society reshaping archi-
tecture’s disciplinary imperatives to address such needs as
ecologically sustainable design or the varied demands placed
upon architects as they work within and create increasingly
complex public spheres, new graduates in architecture must
be prepared to navigate a multi-disciplinary profession.
Architects must not only design, but also must develop new
forms of expertise. Leading the field in innovation and exper-
imentation, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning
and Preservation’s research laboratories focus on three key
interrelated initiatives: the development of new technologies
and fabrication methods, cultural analysis of local and global
conditions, and investigation of the urban and built realms.
To involve these research laboratories more directly in
the educational mission of the school, GSAPP offers a
one-year program in Advanced Architectural Research for
graduates who have completed degrees in the Master of
Science Advanced Architectural Design (MSAAD), Master
of Architecture and Urban Design (MSAUD), and Master
of Architecture (MARCH). AA Research places the same
emphasis on the research labs that the Masters Programs
place on the design studios. Students expand the knowledge
and skills acquired in completion of the master’s degree in a
setting dedicated to applied research. Students devise a two-
semester advanced architectural research project to inves-
tigate specific questions in the field of architecture. Under
the supervision of a lab director or faculty member, students
utilize their expertise to create innovative design responses
to address those problems. All research is experimental in
spirit, but nonetheless directed toward how this knowledge
can be applied to engage real issues concerning how archi-
tecture shapes the world.
This research project examined public spaces that are
home to conflicting political and religious interests. In a
public space, the encounters between diverse political and
religious interests of the people can result in rough social
relationships. What is the relationship between the materi-
ality of the public space and the conflict it hosts?
The three case studies examined were the Malmo East-
ern Cemetery in Malmo, Sweden, by architect Sigurd Lew-
erentz, the Gardens of Forgiveness in Beirut by Gustafson
Porter architects, and the Cañada Real Galiana Cattle Trail in
Madrid, Spain. These three cases illustrate the rough, some-
times hostile, encounter of the distinct interests of the local
administrations, private owners, and users.
The analysis yielded three possible interpretations: 1)
conflict in public space is a frame for democractic discus-
sion — for the imagination and vindication of new uses; 2) it
is a spectacle for the media — an object under the control of
those in power; or, 3) it is a tool with which the architect can
exercise control over design decisions.
With this methodology for the analysis of projects host-
ing political-religious conflicts, the research aimed to ex-
tract the principles that structure these landscapes and that
cause their failures and their successes, with the ultimate
goal that these principles may be applied in the organization
of other problematic landscapes in the world today.
Museums not only reflect societies, but also
have the ability to re-imagine them. As digital technolo-
gies bring profound changes to the relationship of society
to art, culture, and history, the museum institution seems
to not yet address them as a real possibility for reinventing
itself, while its emphasis is still oriented to the construction
of iconic buildings. The “Virtual Museum,” a common term
today, remains a static experience that uses the computer
as a mere viewing terminal. Given this context, one cannot
help but ask: what is the next museum?
This research project explored the possibility of an in-
teractive database museum that could use digital data sets
rather than traditional material objects as the repository for
memory. Institutions today have the capacity to store huge
amounts of digital data, and while raw data does not nec-
essarily have value for most people, relational databases
are able to transform it into information, which can have a
cultural value. As a result, digital databases have the latent
potential to build an institution’s collective memory — to
become its museum. Databases are also dynamic environ-
ments where the user can perform operations, adding a sec-
ond potential: interaction.
The next museum research project presents and tests
these hypotheses. m u s e (h) u b gsapp is the first prototype
of an interactive database museum, using the school’s video
archive of lectures as a testing ground.
This project experimented with several concep-
tual, bodily, and architectural dimensions, investigating the
ways in which bodily positions open up — and close down —
fields of communication. It attempted to create surfaces that
could in turn create relations among individuals.
The material chosen should combine both bodily and
social aspects in order to actively engage the users. It should
emerge from the body, and be adaptable, instantly likable,
and universally accessible. Something as simple (and po-
tentially silly) as water-wings become a vehicle of transfor-
mation of space and, more importantly, a social experience
of space. In short, through permutations of surface, the
designer can create specific experiences of the space that
affect relationships between people.
Inflating and layering the water-wings on the floor, then
folding them further into simple yet endless configurations,
the water-wing carpet provides a sense of infinite mobil-
ity. Intimacy itself unfolds (face to face), or folds and closes
(back to back). Through these strategies the social space
itself becomes intensified. The carpet not only transforms
itself but also transforms the conversation on it.
Colored Liquid Crystal (CLC) is a switchable mate-
rial that changes its optical properties when a low voltage
is applied, modulated and monitored by a microcontroller.
It performs both as a light filtering material and also as a
transparent information display. It has the potential to be
used in architecture as a façade and as an interior material,
as a scenic component for performing arts and as a material
for industrial design.
The invention relies on rethinking the technology used
for the manufacture of regular black and white liquid-crystal
displays to construct an architectural and design material.
The particularities of this new transparent material are that
its tincture level can be changed dynamically and that it is
“structurally” colored, meaning that the color is achieved
optically, by interference effects, rather than by pigments
or metallic depositions.
Morphologically it consists of three elements: the actual
CLC — a multilayered transparent film system — a micro-
controller, and a software interface. Sensors and actuators
can be also implemented to constitute a material that is not
only active but interactive as well.
The Bris Block is a precast concrete element to
be implemented as a bris soleil. While the bris soleil is a
sustainable element because of its ability to control envi-
ronmental conditions, the Bris Block is a single unit that
can adapt to control a wider range of conditions due to its
reconfigurability. Six different configurations are possible,
ranging from 33% to 73% porosity. Configurations can be
recombined with one another to create a dynamic bris
soleil. Each block weighs only 36 pounds and spans a total
of 42 inches (32-inch bond) with a height of 18 inches. The
material economy of the block enables construction to be
more environmentally friendly and easily installed. Using
polypropylene/polyethylene blended synthetic macro-fibers
as reinforcement allows replacement of structural steel and
economized cross-sectional material. After several itera-
tions, the block can be fabricated as thin as 1.5 inches at a
material cost of only $5.
The history of the Icelandic Turf farm dates back
to the first settlements in Iceland in the late 9th century —
a vernacular tradition that remained the principal form of
habitation in Iceland well into the 20th century, when Iceland
abruptly turned into a modern industrial society. Permanent
building materials, hygiene, and effective infrastructure
became the new rule, while the turf farm turned into a
symbol of a morbid past. The inherent design knowledge
of the turf farm tradition has ever since been underesti-
mated and even neglected with few important exceptions.
The research analyzed the turf farm as a building mode in
which landscape and building fuse together — architecture
that springs from the earth and blends into the natural sur-
roundings, utilizing the earth as protection from the wind
and to control temperature. Due to the ephemeral nature
of turf as building material, a considerable part of the turf
farms have found their origin again and fused with earth. The
first part of the research drew from the writings of foreign
visitors about the farms and built up to a second part, where
contemporary examples of turf farm-inspired architecture
was presented and analyzed. The analysis concluded that
the turf farm continues to be highly potent and plausible
in modern architectural context and that it merits further
research and rediscovery.
This project traced the genealogy of the last generation
of post-industrial glass — its architectonic and engineering
antecedents as well as the alterations that technical devel-
opment, environmental concerns, and “immaterial” culture
have produced.
Although the scope of the research covered the de-
velopment of new glass technologies that addressed static
issues, such as structural glass, and those that dealt with
questions of hazard and security, the main focus was on op-
tically advanced technologies, for three reasons. First, due
to their molecular-chemical manufacturing process, the
micrometrical scale of their components, and the variety of
functions that they perform, Advanced Optical Glasses (AOG)
embody a contemporary notion of materiality. Second, AOG
also belong to the group of present-day materials that would
be defined in terms of mass, energy, and information. That
is, not only do they have a material value; their performance
is their meaning. Finally, AOG also question the very notion
of transparency as defined in modern and contemporary
architecture; they open up a wider range of optical and me-
chanical interplay among the material, the light, and the
users that define a space. For instance, they have lost part
of their transparent nature in favor of expanding the possi-
bilities of thermal and visual light, as an architectural meta-
attribute. Their levels of transmission, reflection, diffraction,
translucency, transparency, and opacity can be dynamically
changed, and they have the ability to transform daylight into
electricity and transport it from one place to another.
“Through Glass” — a contribution to the Engineered
Transparency Symposium at GSAPP in September 2007 —
was an invitation to reflect on the unique implications of these
materials — constituted through the interaction of the human
eye with the multilayered glass — for the built environment.
Through a series of experiments, this study explored the
inherent properties of carbon fiber, in particular the mate-
rial’s performance. The experiments evolved in an iterative
fashion, each prototype testing for specific criteria.
The prototypes were fabricated by creating silicon rub-
ber molds, applying layers of resin and carbon fiber, and
removing the excess resin through a vacuum process to
increase the strength-to-weight ratio. The complexity and
detail of the project was achieved through the 3-axis mill
and the water jet. The following categories were established
to guide the development of each of the prototypes: extreme
curvature tolerance, refinement of surfaces, material thick-
ness through layering, and hidden connections using either
resin or embedded magnets.
The research resulted in new possibilities for the fabri-
cation and application of carbon fiber with relevance for the
field of architecture.
This project re-investigated American domesticity
through objects and their implications in space and rep-
resentation of the domestic realm. According to a study
released in 2005, the size of an average American house has
doubled since the 1950s. The cause of such drastic expan-
sion was attributed to the increasing demand of the storage
spaces due to the accumulation of the stuff; thus, the home
becomes a mere container.
The investigation was twofold: first, the project com-
piled an inventory of ideas and objects that have become a
part of evolution of stuff and its architectural implications.
The investigation focused on the kitchen and the bathroom,
examining compilations of standard and idealized objects
and images. The objects were mapped for their places in
storage (i.e. hidden vs. displayed) and for their travel routes
within a house at large. The stuff could then reorganize a
typical house through the ways objects travel, as objects
became more of the main inhabitant of the house.
This research was to serve as the base for the second
part of the project, in which the average American house
would be re-imagined using the organization of domestic
objects and storage in the design process.
The Historic Preservation Program once again offered
courses and programming to balance the theoretical and
practical natures of the discipline. The Fall Conservation
Workshop used the Van Cortlandt House, owned by the
Historic House Trust of New York, as a site for building
investigation, as well as the Paul Rudolph-designed Orange
County Courthouse in Goshen, New York.
Jorge Otero Pailos’ History/Theory Workshop on In-
terpretation used the Phillip Johnson Glass House in New
Canaan, CT as a site for analysis. Paul Byard and Craig Konyk
led the Joint Architecture & Preservation Design Studio and
traveled to Casablanca in September to imagine a new cen-
ter for rural immigrants in this very old city. With the support
of the Kress Foundation, and under the leadership of George
Wheeler, further improvements were made in the conserva-
tion curriculum.
Over the January break the Historic Preservation Pro-
gram and Avery Hall hosted the Third International Archi-
tectural Paint Conference. The event drew hundreds from
around the world who specialize in uncovering, restoring,
recreating, and documenting architectural finishes. Many
Preservation students assisted in the conference, and their
help is gratefully acknowledged as key to making this a suc-
cessful event.
In March, the James Marston Fitch lecture was held on
a Wednesday night as part of the GSAPP lecture series, with
Nikolaus Hirsch, a German architect who has worked inno-
vatively with new and old architecture. In April, Traditional
Building Magazine showcased the Historic Preservation Pro-
gram at the GSAPP in their “Pillars of Preservation” series.
In May, we graduated 24 students.
Studio is the core course of the first year, and revolves
around the study of a section of New York City. Students
began by documenting individual buildings, and moved
through the first semester by understanding and document-
ing ever-more complex elements of the built environment
in the study area. Students explored buildings from the
perspective of conservation, design, history, and planning.
Studio work included graphic presentations, written presen-
tations, and oral presentations.
Studio 2 continued the work of the Fall
Semester Studio 1 in the same study area within New York,
extending the understanding of that area from beyond its indi-
vidual building components to the neighborhood and region.
Issues of designing appropriate infill buildings on vacant or
underutilized lots were explored in a design charette at mid-
semester. Studio 2 culminated in a Preservation Plan for the
area, which evaluated the historic resources against local
zoning, economic realities, physical assets, and problems,
and members of the study area’s community, testing student
ideas against neighborhood personalities and politics.
This course examined the development of American archi-
tecture from the earliest European settlements to the cen-
tennial in 1876. Beginning with the earliest Spanish, French,
Dutch, and English colonial architecture, students explored
the American adaptation of European forms and ideas and the
development of a distinctly American architecture. The course
lectures and readings examined high style and vernacular
architecture in rural and urban environments throughout the
settled parts of the United States. The course was supple-
mented with tours and the examination of original drawings
and early architectural publications in Avery Library.
The course was devoted to the exploration of combina-
tions of old and new architecture to understand how the new
can extend the meaning of the old and how it extends that
meaning when the old architecture is said to be “preserved.”
Architecture of Additions understood combined works as
one of the most challenging and illuminating of the contem-
porary building types, one having special relevance to almost
all contemporary architectural practice.
This workshop was taught with the third-year Additions
Design Studio in the Architecture Program. The problem
for the studio was a major addition to an important modern
building that required an understanding of the meaning of
the old building — all of the ways its form and materials
express the values it sought to represent and serve at the
time — and the ways that meaning might or might not be
extended, enriched, and brought forward by the addition.
This course was a comprehensive introduction to the field
of preservation planning that examined the constitutional
underpinnings of landmarks regulation and the emergence
of historic preservation as a discipline analogous to urban
planning. Also addressed were the issues of applying preser-
vation planning tools, including local individual and historic
district designations, National Register nominations, special
zoning and neighborhood conservation districts, and pres-
ervation easements. Financial incentives for rehabilitation,
including investment tax credits, property tax incentives,
and revolving loan funds, were examined. Current issues
in preservation planning including open space preserva-
tion, combating sprawl, and preserving rural landscapes
were addressed. Guest speakers highlighted preservation
in Chicago and Pittsburgh, illustrating similarities and differ-
ences in practices in the field in other American cities.
Structures, Systems, and Materials 1 familiarizes students
with the structures and materials of traditional building,
beginning with wood framing and load-bearing masonry
walls. In addition to learning how buildings are made, stu-
dents also learn how buildings often fail and what can be
done about it. Fieldtrips to see the situations discussed in
class were integral to the course and occurred weekly during
the first half of the semester.
This course was designed to familiarize students with
the history of the major building types that comprise the
physical fabric of New York City. The development of building
types was used as a lens through which to examine various
New York neighborhoods and the ways in which they have
developed and changed.
The physical and stylistic evolution of these building
types were discussed, and, through walking tours in vari-
ous New York neighborhoods, students examined how these
buildings worked within the evolving form of the city and its
neighborhoods. Among other types of buildings, students
looked at the development of residential architecture, par-
ticularly row houses, townhouses, and multiple dwellings;
the changing nature of commercial architecture from mod-
est low rise structures to great skyscrapers; and the evolu-
tion of public and institutional architecture from the small
buildings of the early city to some of the great architectural
complexes of America. Also discussed were issues of design,
planning, and preservation in the neighborhoods visited.
This course engaged the principles and practices of archi-
tectural finishes conservation, preservation, and mainte-
nance. Students acquired the skills to know what questions
to ask about finishes conservation, and how to begin answer-
ing them. This course included lectures, laboratory, and site
work. Types of finishes covered in the course included paint,
plaster, stucco, murals, twentieth century composite wall
and ceiling finishes, tile linoleum, glass, and wallpaper.
This hands-on conservation course took place both
on site and in the laboratory, including documentation,
sampling, materials analysis, synthesis of information,
and recommendations for conservation. Two distinct sites
comprised the focus of the course. The first was the 18th-
century Van Cortlandt House Museum located in the Bronx.
This well-loved building has been reworked to incorpo-
rate elements of the Colonial and Federal periods at least
twice, exposed the students to issues of alterations and the
whims of interpreters. Students also investigated several
issues of concern to the museum, such as water infiltration
problems. Their work culminated in a presentation to the
owner and a report for the museum archives. The second
site was Paul Rudolph’s 1967 Orange County Government
Center, a Brutalist building in Goshen, New York. Unlike the
Van Cortlandt House Museum, this largely neglected build-
ing is plagued with deterioration issues and — students felt
— overall not well suited to its purpose as a court building.
Here, in addition to acquiring in-situ and off-site concrete
examination skills, students investigated issues of material
properties, performance, and deterioration mechanisms.
Recently there has been a greater demand for architectural
conservators at archaeological sites. As archaeologists
become increasingly aware of their ethical responsibility
to conserve the architectural remains uncovered, the need
for this type of expertise is acutely felt. The first part of
this course looked at philosophical and ethical differences
between structures that can be rehabilitated as architecture
and those that will be stabilized as ruins, while reviewing
the international organizations and charters that have been
set up for this purpose. The second part of the course dealt
with techniques of conservation, including site improve-
ments, recording methods, reburial, consolidation, protec-
tion, sheltering, materials analyses, and state-of-the-art
technology applicable to archaeological sites. Laboratory
sessions, guest lectures, and field trips in the New York area
supplemented lectures, readings, and projects.
Impetus for the preservation of cultural heritage has devel-
oped through the recognition of sites as non-renewable
resources. Training is readily available in the specific tasks
required to implement preservation, but far less attention
has been paid to the larger, more complex and compre-
hensive issues of management — the process by which the
individual components of preservation come together and
either succeed or fail. To address this lack of consistency,
the Australian ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments
and Sites) committee proposed the Burra Charter, which
expanded the premises of the Venice Charter. This docu-
ment revolves around the identification of site significance,
which is then used to define and guide the management
policy within ethical, scientific, social, political, and finan-
cial contexts.
This course utilized the conservation process outlined
in the Burra Charter as the basis for a rational approach
to managing cultural sites. The course had an international
focus and reviewed case studies — some presented by
recognized experts — from both historic and archaeological
sites. The course first focused on the compilation of back-
ground information and identification of the key interested
parties. It then progressed to the analysis of site significance
and assessment of existing conditions and management
constraints. Finally, the development of the management
policy and strategies for its implementation was reviewed.
The delicate balancing act between cultural enhancement
and exploitation was explored, as well as the need to periodi-
cally monitor and reassess management policy.
Students learned to critically evaluate the management
process and to recognize the needs of the various interested
constituents. The class explored the latest tools and the vari-
ous disciplines required to perform the series of tasks that
make up the complex mosaic of management.
This course was an introduction to the legal mechanisms
protecting historic resources in the built environment, focus-
ing on the legal principles underlying preservation laws,
including the constitutional issues relating to governmental
regulation or real property. Federal, state, and local historic
preservation laws and their complementary relationships
were studied in the context of relevant environmental and
other land use laws.
This course was a survey of American architecture since
the country’s first centennial. As America ascended to its
current position of hegemony during the late 19th and 20th
centuries, its architects helped refashion the built envi-
ronment to serve the needs of a growing and ever-diverse
population. Hand in hand with the satisfaction of pragmatic
requirements, American architects were called upon to ful-
fill deeper psychological wants, such as the country’s desire
to have a national history. The American complex about the
brevity, artificiality, and exterior dependency of its history,
structured, with varying degrees of intensity, the evolution
of the architectural discipline. Out of this deep-seated, and
by no means exhausted, anxiety about producing, preserv-
ing, and identifying American history, came a sophisticated
architectural culture — one capable of foiling, exploiting,
subverting, and manipulating the various contradictions
of modernity.
From the standpoint of this relationship between history
and modernity, the course analyzed the American architec-
tural struggle to be progressive and accepted, exceptional
and customary, and to simultaneously capture the future
and the past. Each lecture considered the production and
reception of built (and written) works by renowned figures
and anonymous builders. By considering American archi-
tecture’s successes and failures in terms of the engagement
between architecture and other disciplines over time, the
course aimed to gain a richer sense of the historical charac-
teristics that have informed its evolving nature.
Run as a seminar, this workshop provided an opportunity
for in-depth research and analysis of the built environment,
using the rich resources of New York City as the primary
source. The aim of this course was to explore contemporary
ways of understanding and transforming the built environ-
ment, particularly given the interdisciplinary nature of the
field. Traditional models relating theory and practice depend
on the closed teleological principle of striving towards com-
pletion and are therefore inadequate; these models ulti-
mately create the fiction that to be complete, theory must
exclude practice, and vice-versa. Students were asked to
consider alternative principles of openness for relating
theory and practice, and to explore the correlative ways to
imbricate the aesthetic and the intellectual in the production
of interventions and interpretations.
This seminar reviewed the structural and decorative uses of
metals in buildings and monuments. The metals reviewed
included iron and steel, copper and copper alloys including
bronze and brass, lead, tin, zinc, aluminum, and nickel and
chromium. The seminar examined the history of manufac-
ture and use; mechanisms of deterioration and corrosion;
and cleaning, repair, and conservation.
This course built on information introduced in Part I, bring-
ing the material up to the present in terms of understanding
modern building systems and materials. It addressed how
steel frame and concrete buildings are made and how they
often fail. The organization of the course relied upon not only
the study of the chronological development of the building
arts and sciences, but as each building system was intro-
duced, the discussion of the pathology modes and conserva-
tion approaches followed within the same week.
The Hudson River Valley has been described by the National
Park Service as “the landscape that defined America.” In
recent years, the valley was designated by Congress as a
National Heritage Area, by President Clinton as an American
Heritage River, and by New York State as the Hudson River
Valley Greenway. Yet the valley continues to face great chal-
lenges to its character and historic context through the
planned (and unplanned) development of cement plants,
energy facilities, destruction of historic buildings, and
sprawl. In this course, through readings, lectures, class
dialogues, case studies, and field trips, students examined
the history of the preservation of cultural and natural land-
scapes as well as preservation techniques, such as regional
planning, heritage tourism, and the use of conservation
easements, now in use nationally and internationally.
This course offered an introduction to the theoretical and
practical issues governing the practice of historic preserva-
tion. Students developed their individual points of view based
on lectures and group discussions on the principle facets of
the field — namely, the history of the profession, past and
present theory, basic research and documentation methodol-
ogies, technology, and professional practice. Such basic con-
cepts as values and significance in heritage conservation and
standards in the field were questioned, and selected examples
of contemporary practice were critically evaluated.
These laboratories comprised a three-semester sequence
designed to provide a basic understanding of building mate-
rials, to demonstrate how to identify these materials and
evaluate their conditions, and to show how to generate the
information and data necessary to propose and evaluate
conservation treatments. Through lectures, laboratory exer-
cises, and field trips, these three courses examined wood,
paint and other finishes to wood surfaces, concrete, mortar,
stucco, and plaster.
This thesis addressed the issues surrounding the con-
servation of dalle de verre (also known as faceted or slab
glass). A number of prominent buildings, as well as many
less architecturally significant structures contain panels
of this twentieth-century adaptation of stained glass.
Dalle de verre is defined as ¾" to 1" thick slabs of glass (or
“dalles”) set in a matrix of concrete or epoxy. It was widely
discussed in stained glass literature of the 1950s and 60s,
but little attention has been paid to this technique in more
recent decades.
Although a number of buildings featuring dalle de verre
panels have already required conservation or restoration,
there are no standard recommended treatments, and work
has always been conducted on a case-by-case basis. Con-
servation work has been performed by both stained glass
conservators and architectural conservators, although they
tend to approach the materials in different ways. This thesis
investigated the reasons that dalle de verre fails, its modes of
deterioration, and then focused on solutions to these issues.
In particular, previously applied or attempted conservation
treatments were evaluated and new possibilities discussed.
Issues of authenticity, architectural intent, and aesthetic
quality were investigated in applicable cases.
This thesis evaluated America’s aging shopping centers
as potential Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit projects.
Currently, many older shopping centers in inner-ring sub-
urbs are closed or struggle for business due to competition
with newer retail centers, the perception of an outmoded
design, and sprawl developments that draw the consumer
base. Most of these closed or struggling shopping centers
are subsequently abandoned, demolished, or extensively
renovated with little or no concern for historic character.
The results of this thesis suggest that the Historic Re-
habilitation Tax Credit Program offers a realistic alternative
to the typical design approach and financial structure ap-
plied to the redevelopment of these retail sites. Although this
approach should be considered only one element of a finan-
cial package, it is a potentially valuable tool with far reaching
effects. Monetary investment in the historic rehabilitation
of America’s first-generation regional shopping centers
extends beyond the preservation of individually significant
structures. It has the potential to aid in revitalization efforts
in declining and deteriorating inner-ring suburbs, while also
offering continued life to these important sources of social
and community identity that have become defining elements
in landscapes across America.
The New York City Landmarks Law seeks to ensure that
architecturally, historically, and culturally significant struc-
tures will be around for future generations. However, other
policies in the city, such as the zoning code, can either com-
plement or detract from the law’s provisions. The purpose
of this thesis was to investigate how New York City Zoning
Resolution (ZR) §74-711, which allows for bulk and use modi-
fications to historic landmarks, has affected architectural
integrity. This thesis examined a non-random sample of nine
§74-711 applications filed for properties within the Ladies’
Mile Historic District for the time period 1989–2008 and
found a positive effect on architectural integrity.
The purpose of this thesis was to determine whether a
preservation easement effectively preserves the architec-
tural and historical values of a modern residential interior.
Following the introduction, a general discussion about the
development of modern residential interiors and preserva-
tion easements set the background for an in-depth overview
of the case studies, modern residences protected with pres-
ervation easements including interior restrictions. The case
studies were the Henry B. Hoover House (Henry B. Hoover,
Lincoln, MA, 1937), the Ginzton House (Joseph Allen Stein,
Los Altos Hills, CA, 1948) and the Conger Goodyear House
(Edward Durell Stone, Westbury, NY, 1938). These case stud-
ies added depth to the broad overview, providing an oppor-
tunity to discuss the development of individual interiors, the
character-defining features and spaces, the preservation
easement restrictions, and any subsequent rehabilita-
tions. The case studies demonstrated preservation ease-
ments effectively protect the character-defining features
and spaces of modern residential interiors; however, the
restrictions are arbitrary and open to interpretation if the
easement-holding organization does not actively monitor
the restrictions or have the expertise to recommend appro-
priate design solutions. Furthermore, the best approach for
protecting a modern residential interior is through restric-
tions that blanket a character-defining space.
In the contemporary imagination, the notion of the artist
studio unconsciously provokes images of light-infused,
expansive, industrial spaces within older urban buildings.
This visual representation, as well as common discourse on
the subject, often points to 1960s artist colonies as the key
historical reference point for the birth of the modern urban
studio building.
Although the legacy of these stories is powerful and ap-
propriate within the overall history of artist studio buildings,
as well as historic preservation, it does not accurately portray
its roots. Present-day accounts of creatively preserving his-
toric buildings through conversions to artist studio buildings
can, in part, be attributed to well-publicized examples that
began to appear in the 1960s and 1970s. But it has unfortu-
nately masked a richer, more complex account of the long-
term relationship between artist studio buildings, cultural
values, urban development, and historic preservation that has
been actively developing since the mid-nineteenth century.
The objective of this thesis was to examine and identify
how the historic evolution of the artist studio building in the
United States continues to resonate in preservation today.
It recognizes from the outset that the “adaptive use — art-
ist studio building model” is a highly successful prototype
for the preservation of older, underutilized buildings. This
thesis explored the questions of why it became successful;
what events precipitated its development; and seeks clues
in the nineteenth century buildings that prefigured their ap-
propriateness for adaptive use.
Arte Mundit® cleaning paste has seen increased use for the
cleaning of stone building interiors. One significant advan-
tage to this product is the ease of removal and disposal of
the cured latex film that is part of the cleaning system. Arte
Mundit® is also generally effective as a cleaning system but
little work has been done that addresses the potential long-
term effects to stonework as a result of residue left after
cleaning. In response to this concern, this thesis explored
the following questions: Does Arte Mundit® leave residues
on or in the substrate it is meant to clean? Does the amount
of residue vary with the type of stone?
In order to answer these questions, an in-depth analysis
of the product and several stones used in architectural inte-
riors treated with Arte Mundit®, specifically granite, Berea
sandstone, Indiana limestone, Tennessee marble, travertine,
and Texas Cream limestone was conducted. Each sample was
examined by microscopy, under ultraviolet light measuring
capillary uptake. After the application and removal of Arte
Mundit®, the samples were tested for the presence of re-
sidual latex using Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) and Pyrolysis-
Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (py-GC/MS). The
presence of absorbed electrolytes before and after treatment
with Arte Mundit® was measured using conductivity.
Based on the six interior stones tested, it can be con-
cluded that after treatment using Arte Mundit® residue
from the product remains on the stone. Within the sample
set, a correlation was noted between the presence of residue
and the overall surface topography.
This thesis explored the use of age criteria in historic pres-
ervation, focusing on how the fifty-year rule has contribut-
ed to the field’s current concept of the recent past. Within
contemporary governmental practice, preservationists have
largely concentrated on protecting the inherited resources of
previous generations. Now a rising constituency in the field
seeks not only to protect resources from the distant past,
but also those of its own lifetime, namely, the recent past.
This thesis examines how the notion of the recent past has
emerged in historic preservation, relating its development to
fundamental struggles with age, collective memory, and his-
torical objectivity. Relying on the passage of time to achieve
a level of objectivity, governmental preservationists have
instituted age criteria to differentiate the recent past from
the distant past and exclude it from consideration. However,
the rise of interest in the recent past among non-govern-
mental preservationists is evidence of the shortcomings
of the current age criteria. In particular, the fifty-year rule
has perpetuated age biases, facilitated the neglect of recent
resources, and impeded the ability to establish valuable links
between living collective memory and the built environment.
The benefits and drawbacks of current age criteria include:
the gain of claims to detachment and historical objectivity
versus the loss of resources and living collective memory. In
conclusion, this thesis asserted that governmental practice
should eliminate the fifty-year rule as a determining criterion
for evaluation, as well as suggest how the recent past might
be incorporated into the mainstream activities of historic
preservation.
Recognized internationally by UNESCO as a site of universal
heritage, Le Havre, France, is an ideal case for presenting
the utility of oral history to the field of Historic Preservation.
Reconstructed after World War II by Auguste Perret, the
city’s importance has, to this point, been defined by expert
scholars and institutions as it relates to the fields of archi-
tecture and urbanism. The detachment from a first-hand
understanding of Le Havre’s rebuilding has limited these
groups’ concept of significance. Through oral histories,
this thesis gave voice to Le Havre’s residents (the insid-
ers) and complemented the accepted outsider perspective
with a social dimension previously ignored, creating a more
complete history of Le Havre’s postwar reconstruction. This
thesis argued that oral histories do indeed provide an avenue
of historical research integral to the process of evaluating
a historical site’s meaning. Oral history can and should
be considered a primary tool by which to inform preserva-
tion’s work.
The act of providing water to the thirsty is considered
extremely noble in Islam. In Islamic civilization, this led to
the evolution of the sabyl, or charitable water dispensary. In
Cairo, the sabyl emerged in the fourteenth century, evolving
into an elaborate construction absorbing diverse architectur-
al styles. It attracted patronage from a wide range of wealthy
Cairenes who sought to perform a righteous deed fy sabyl
Allah (in the way of God) while asserting their social status.
Over the course of six centuries, sabyls dispensed water
from cisterns filled and replenished with Nile water by the
saqqys (water carriers). They were an integral component
of the water supply system of Cairo until the introduction
of piped water in the ninetieth century. For this reason,
as well as various social and urban changes that began
around the same time, numerous sabyls were razed or left
to deteriorate.
Today, over one-hundred sabyls survive in the UNESCO
World Heritage Site of Historic Cairo. While a few well known
examples have undergone conservation, most are unused
and in poor condition. This raises the question, how can the
sabyls of Historic Cairo be preserved? This study adopts a
multidisciplinary approach to answer this question, including
elements of history, design, conservation, and planning. It
concludes that sabyls are potentially useful buildings that can
be integrated back into the lives of Cairenes and play a role in
the revitalization of Historic Cairo. In order for this to be real-
ized, Egypt must reconsider its preservation policies.
The early to mid-century central station, identified today
as a power station or power plant, has intrigued communi-
ties, architectural historians and preservation organizations
alike, with chimneys soaring to the height of neighboring
church domes and imposing classical facades conspicuously
distinguishing themselves among a landscape of low-scale,
rather austere industrial buildings. Sited in historic indus-
trial zones once discrete from cities’ downtowns, power sta-
tions are now a part of the metropolitan core, as expanding
urban borders have engulfed these zones. This inclusion in
the downtown landscape has created increased development
pressure that frequently results in plans for the stations’
demolition. Their historical and architectural significance
has been well established and recognized. However, whilst
the equally-obsolete and significant industrial buildings that
surround them find new uses in the form of residences or
commercial spaces as post-industrial zones in downtown
redevelopments, the historic power station frequently rests
vacant and deteriorating; a brown-field site whose potential
for reuse is often overshadowed by its intimidating size.
The family farm retains a complex physical and social
identity in twenty-first century America. Even as fewer and
fewer people are directly involved in agriculture, the role of
farming in American life engenders debate as visions of red
barns, green pastures, and wholesome products clash with
industrial scale agriculture, rural sprawl, and processed
foods. Diverse policy discussions pertaining to land use,
cultural identity, public health, and environmental safety
have coalesced around the buildings, fields, and products of
the farm, creating multi-faceted connections — and tensions
— across the country.
Through four agricultural case studies in Wisconsin,
California, New York, and Vermont, this thesis evaluated
and critiqued the largely peripheral role the field of historic
preservation has assumed in these debates and argued that
preservationists can offer a critically important perspective.
The research explored new annunciations of historic signifi-
cance and authenticity that wed traditional discussions of
architectural form with other dimensions of historic con-
tinuity emerging from the foods and fields of the farm. By
better integrating preservation goals with those of farmers,
farming advocates, and agricultural policy-makers the work
forges a central role for holistic historic preservation plan-
ning in agriculture.
The Columbia MSRED program is an accelerated one-
year master’s degree offering special emphasis on core
competencies in real estate development, finance, enter-
prise management, and product implementation, combined
with frameworks for public policy partnerships and market
research methodologies.
The Columbia MSRED is the “D” School — not a “B” for
business school — as the entire emphasis is on the develop-
ment sector exclusively, and not on general business. The pro-
gram is unique in its curriculum, which offers two semesters
of real estate finance, and in that it focuses its core curriculum
on critical success factors and best practices for development,
including real estate law, market analysis, politics of develop-
ment, public/private partnerships, international development,
construction technologies, product development, architectural
development design, and asset/enterprise management.
Additionally, the MSRED program benefits from a
breadth of working professional adjunct professors to bring a
real-world and current practice set to campus. The program
has exposed students to a long-standing roundtable discus-
sion series that brings over 225 real estate industry leaders
to campus each year to discuss current trends in real estate
development. A continuing success within the program is
the Case Study Studio, which teams MSRED students with
GSAPP students in other programs to collaboratively explore
development approaches on a set of actual sites. Students
also benefit from the GSAPP’s Center for High Density Devel-
opment, a senior research lab and seminar on the fiscal, so-
cial, environmental, and investment benefits of high-density
development.
The GSAPP’s MSRED program, with its intensive core
curriculum and practitioner adjunct faculty, is uniquely suit-
ed to motivated individuals seeking to radically alter their
career paths with significant new employment options in the
real estate development industry.
The course objective was focused on training students
for rapid development decision-making and management of
team-based processes and critical success factors. Training
used real world case studies of actual development sites
that required defining new development plans and focusing
on essential feasibility. A series of four intensive team char-
rettes involved programming and design for selected sites.
Teams produced financial analysis, market analysis, and full
design documents for each case study.
Module 1: Brooklyn, Residential Infill
Located on Bergen Street at Classon Avenue,
this case study centered on creating a residential scheme
that responded to its context. The core issues focused on
developing the appropriate unit size, sales/rent per unit, unit
mix, and a feasible parking solution. Solutions included con-
textual and high-rise proposals and were marketed towards
a broad mix of demographics including: workforce, student,
and high-end residential product types.
Module 2: Newark, Mixed-Use
Sponsored by Cogswell Realty Group, this project
focused on urban revitalization. This site located adjacent to
the Broad Street Station in Newark, created an opportunity
for a market-driven, mixed-use solution. The major issues
included distance to Manhattan, a derelict site, and market
conditions. Proposals comprised office, residential, hotel,
retail, and community space.
Module 3: Harlem, Mixed-Use
This Kimco-owned site located at 125th St. and
Frederick Douglass Avenue was the subject for proposals
incorporating various mixes of uses including retail, residen-
tial, commercial, and hotel. Solutions sought to maximize
the site’s FAR while developing an appropriate tenant mix.
Module 4: 330 Lower Manhattan, Hotel
This Tishman Construction-sponsored module
focused on the adaptive reuse of a manufacturing building
at 330 Hudson Street. Solutions focused on renovation of
the existing and the addition of a new tower above to uti-
lize the site’s air rights. Schemes involved various mixes of
boutique hotel.
The intent of this course was to investigate the political
issues surrounding real estate development. Areas of focus
included interest groups and coalitions, fiscal analysis, and
the legal framework of development and the concept of
eminent domain, and how these issues are dealt with in the
press. More in-depth discussion of these issues unfolded in
a series of local case studies, including the High Line, Coney
Island, South Street Seaport, Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards,
Moynihan Station, and Manhattanville.
Through lectures, written assignments, and case stud-
ies, students investigated new possibilities for the field of
real estate through turnaround strategies and new product
development. How will the re-positioning of assets affect
institutional ownership over the long term? What chal-
lenges face corporate executives with new workforce and
workplace issues? What new real estate products could
increase absorption or induce demand? What role will
architectural design play in the future? Topics included an
overview of marketplace and historical forces that shape
real estate form, fashion and functions; the process of
representation, with an emphasis on the relative accuracy
and utility of representational techniques and marketing
presentation formats; the psychology of the design process
and the developer’s role in recognizing and “managing” the
emerging design concept; site context issues, including
relationships of project design to site influences, scale and
grain, responsibility for design continuity, and respect for
traditional materials; the master planning process, its his-
torical precedents, and current efforts to create real estate
value; development programming and design management;
and turnarounds and repositioning strategies, including the
creation of new value from existing properties, stabilizing
under-performing special assets, improving yields on exist-
ing assets, and portfolio exit strategies.
This course was structured as a series of topically
oriented roundtable discussions with invited profession-
als appropriate to the topic. The weekly sessions were
selected to cover a wide range of building types and real
estate industry functions — most of which are not covered
in depth elsewhere in the MSRED curriculum. This was the
Tenth Annual Columbia Roundtable Series. Topics included
affordable housing; managing the relationships among bro-
kers, lawyers, and developers; capital markets and oversup-
ply vs. investment returns; careers in real estate; corporate
real estate and the sustainable workplace; alternative and
opportunistic investments and new sources of equity; sus-
taining market position and value in high-density residential
development; hotel development; trends in mortgage origi-
nation and security; pension funds, advisors, and alternative
investments; and REITs and institutional investors.
This course investigated the relationship between business
and design, aiming to cultivate a more integrated approach
to development. It introduced students to the fundamental
aspects of architectural design and how they relate to the
larger context of urban planning and urban development.
The approach of the course included hands-on design proj-
ects, lectures from visiting professionals, and walking tours
of the city.
This course explored the legal side of development. Topics
included purchase and sale agreements, examining the
key issues and problems involved in the sale of developed
real estate as well as the practical concerns of both the
seller and buyer; company organization and how to choose
an appropriate form of organization for real estate own-
ership and development; hazardous substances and the
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation
and Liability Act; contractual relationships between owner
and architect; methods for structuring construction projects
and the roles of the owner, architect, general contractor,
subcontractors, construction manager, and project man-
ager; ground leases and commercial leases; various meth-
ods of financing; multiple ownership properties; securitiza-
tion; affordable housing and various ways to structure such
developments; and development agreements and economic
development projects, exploring the evolving relationship
between the public and private sectors in the realm of eco-
nomic development projects.
“… by and large, developers as a breed have only one special-
ized skill not generally available in the population: they have
the ability to do fairly high-level arithmetic, in their heads,
while talking about a completely different topic. What devel-
opers do, fundamentally, is run the numbers. And the most
impressive number they run is the one in which they manage
to divide extremely large dollar figures by 43,560, which is the
number of square feet in an acre. By so doing they can and do
reduce much of the human experience — quite accurately, as
it turns out — to the Deal.”
—“Edge City”. Joel Garreau. Anchor, 1992, p. 224.
This course was an introduction to methods of financial anal-
ysis for real estate investments. Topics included methods of
valuation, cash flow forecasting, computer modeling, debt,
leverage, and deal structures. Emphasis was placed on the
financing of individual projects and was specifically oriented
toward numerical analysis, making use of case studies and
computer spreadsheet analysis.
This course provided a broad perspective on real estate
issues, trends, and opportunities in international econo-
my. Real estate development is at the nexus of the global
issues of rapid urbanization, economic development, public
policy, and capital flows, and it therefore provides insights
into both policy and financial issues. The course brought
together students of international affairs, real estate, eco-
nomic development, and public policy that wished to broaden
their exposure to the unique aspects of international real
estate development. Examples of projects in Asia, Europe,
and the Americas were used to demonstrate the processes
and risks involved in international transactions and invest-
ments in real estate. The course covered topics including
current and potential opportunities for investment and
development in international real estate markets, financial
and market analyses, capital flows, cultural, political and
social-economic considerations of doing business in inter-
national real estate development, and the respective roles
of public and private sectors.
This course explored public sector involvement in real estate
development and developed a set of skills and an under-
standing of resources necessary to manage the complex
blend of governmental powers and conflicting goals and
agendas that are inherent in public/private development.
Students examined the motivations, powers, and constraints
of public agencies, approaches to planning projects, solicit-
ing support, sustaining momentum, and structuring public/
private partnerships. Case studies were drawn from a variety
of projects, primarily in the New York metropolitan region.
The course focused on the following general themes: fun-
damentals of government initiative (public purpose and
political context as well as governmental resources, con-
straints, powers, and process); characteristics of public
sector development (multiple mandates and constituen-
cies; focus on process, equity, and precedent; short-term
political orientation versus long-term planning and invest-
ment horizons; political risk taking priority over capital risk;
motivation by public benefit rather than investment yield);
similarities with private development, elements of success
(entrepreneurship, market responsiveness, and intelligent
design); striking a balance between private goals and public
purposes (the fiduciary role in developing public/private
partnerships, governmental versus private planning initia-
tives, and promoting the public interest).
“Good design is good business” — the mantra of this course —
reflected the idea that the creation of a well-designed building
is critical to the success any development project. The course
was directed toward students in real estate development
seeking to learn the essentials of modern architecture and
the concepts associated with creative, practical architectural
design across various real estate product types, including resi-
dential apartment buildings, office structures, hospitality and
resort properties, and retail properties. Students investigated
the importance of urban design, sustainability, and preserva-
tion and acquired skills in reading buildings plans, negotiating
with zoning and code regulations, and selecting an architect
and design team. The course offered a real-life perspective on
architectural design issues, with evaluative exercises on built
examples and several class visits to top architectural firms in
New York City.
Market analysis is an essential component in real estate
transactions. Individuals and institutions use the analysis to
make critical decisions in markets that change frequently
and often unevenly. The year 2007 found a great deal of
uncertainty in the marketplace, in the U.S. and worldwide.
This course provided a basis for looking forward in the ever-
shifting markets to arrive at a reasonable determination of
real estate development and investment potential.
Decisions for financing, investing, development, public
policy formulation, and asset management and disposition
require comprehensive market analysis as one major step in
the development and financing process to: (1) reduce risk, (2)
achieve anticipated returns, and (3) make informed invest-
ment, development, and policy decisions. The analyses are
applicable to both the public and the private sectors, to both
non-profit and profit-based organizations.
Columbia’s Urban Design Program exploits the peda-
gogical potential of the studio as a form of design-based
inquiry. To explore how the city is thought, projects are seen
as critical instruments to focus on topics in contemporary
urban design practice. All three studios emphasize a multi-
scalar approach to the urban site (local, neighborhood, met-
ropolitan, regional, and global) and approach urban design
as an inter-disciplinary practice that engages with and nego-
tiates between different actors in the urban dynamic.
In general the curriculum is focused on the futures of
cities that have come of age in the modern industrial era
and now face the transition to new forms and meanings,
in dialogue with new cities in development. Particular em-
phasis is placed on questions of urban infrastructure and
urban ecology. A dialogue is woven between New York City
and other world capitals with analogous contemporary
conditions, moving between recent theoretical debates on
future urbanism and applied projects that directly engage
the realities of the transformation of the post-industrial city.
In this way, the program attempts to engage both the daily
reality of our urban condition and the theoretical abstrac-
tion of current academic debate. Within this position, urban
design is pursued as a critical re-assessment of conven-
tional approaches relative to questions of site and program,
infrastructure, and form-mass, as they have been defined by
urban design practice during this century. The urban design
curriculum is unique as a coherent pedagogic position on
the role of architecture in the formation of a discourse on ur-
banism at this moment of post-industrial development and
indeed, of post-urban sensibility relative to the traditional
Euro-American settlement norms.
By proposing an expanded architecturally-based teach-
ing model for urban design, the program advocates working
from the “ground up,” rather than adopting “a top down”
master-planning approach. It takes advantage of archi-
tecture’s traditional concerns for site specificity, spatial
experience, construction logics, economics of organization,
morphology, and physical form, while also engaging forms of
knowledge associated with disciplines such as urban plan-
ning, urban ecology, and landscape design. In this sense,
the program is considered experimental, exploratory, and
unorthodox in comparison to the established canons of the
traditional architectural design studio.
The sequencing of the studios is intended to build the
linguistic substructure that is essential to urban design
thought and practice. The use of language evolves from how
representation of the urban site determines the quality of
site knowledge (representation) to more specifically how
discourse on the city determines interpretations of its past
and projections of its futures (discourse) to the invention
of the strategic languages of public engagement involving
operational mechanisms for urban transformation at both
the formal and programmatic levels (public synthesis). This
sequence asserts that the grounding conditions of an urban
design project — site and program — are complex mecha-
nisms that must be actively and critically constructed rather
than simply accepted as “givens” beyond a designer’s control.
While each urban design studio presents students with dif-
fering urban conditions and programming opportunities, all
three semesters together reinforce the program’s commit-
ment to help individual designers to develop rigorous urban
design tools and methods, to acquire a working language to
communicate urban design ideas, and to enhance the critical
skills needed to test and refine urban design strategies.
Urban Design Students
As an interpretive framework,
the notion of the urban constellation directs attention to the
ever-shifting collection of physical and non-physical systems
that interact to configure urban experience. As a design activ-
ity, constellating focuses on assembling the array of physi-
cal forms, infrastructural interconnections, development
models, and social agents needed to create new forms of
public space. To create urban spaces that afford lasting value
while still maintaining capacity to accommodate change
over time, students manipulated the underlying systems
structuring urban experience to effect urban transforma-
tion through projects that aspired to more than polishing the
surface appearance of the city. Their work aimed variously to
amplify the local; discover profitability in wastelands; create
constructive interferences between urban systems; enhance
urban green stock; facilitate alternative occupations of public
places; and construe public space from intersecting social,
economic, and ecological sheds.
Twentieth century
New York enjoyed a reputation as a prototype for urban life,
in all of its cultural and industrial manifestations. However, in
the current global environment New York’s status as the global
“model city” is being challenged against a new set of localized
conditions. These include changes in land value, use and zoning,
shifts in various levels of policy, stewardship, and ownership
(public, private or public/private) to the reconfiguration and
implementation of complex and interrelated natural and man-
made systems. In fact, the flux and rapid change in both global
and local conditions and dynamics are being observed and
are provoking the design fields to engage the engineering and
science fields to embark on a common search to understand
and respond to the relations between macro trends and
micro behaviors that have large predictable and unpredict-
able consequences.
The Urban Design Fall Studio 07 re-envisioned New York’s
multiple scales and territories of operation to challenge an
underlying assumption that the coherence of traditional forms
of the city (core and edge) have been thrown into question by
processes of distribution and collection linked to broader
global transformations, such as changes in environment or
emerging economic forces. The design groups developed ur-
ban models, i.e. the studio’s collective explorations of the “new
model city,” with clear consideration and precise positioning
of site specific projects in relation to broader concerns such as
sources and resources, geography and cartography, capacity
and flow, density and intensity, quality and quantity, territory
and boundary, vitality and equity, etc…
In the con-
text of dramatic ecological threat, economic uncertainties,
and severely overcrowed road systems elevating tensions
between the city center and its periphery, the United Nations
Development Programme published Thailand Human
Development Report 2007: Sufficiency Economy and Human
Development. The report highlighted the stark contrast
between Thailand’s impressive overall economic and social
progress and the many deep-rooted development challeng-
es that remain. Incomes are highly skewed, many people
still live in poverty, and the provision of essential services
differs greatly in quality and quantity in different areas of the
country. At the same time the natural environment is under
great stress, and family and community life is strained by
migration and urbanization.
The Carbon Studio engaged the Sufficiency Economy
Model through a critique of an earlier BMA/MIT Bangkok
Master Plan along the Khlong Phadung Krung Kasem Canal
and at the Hua Lamphong Railway Station. The urban design
teams found new strategic, formal, and material pathways
toward a sustainable future, producing a final report (http://
www.lulu.com/content/2503696) that was presented to the
local university partner, Chulalongkorn University, and pub-
lic sector partner, The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.
The report organized the projects into three general themes:
projects that addressed density, currents, and movement in
the city, focusing on its density as well as the various services
supported by different infrastructure systems; projects that
implemented urban design models based on the research of
causes and effects of increased CO2 emission, on both local
and global scales; and projects that took a holistic approach
to address the role of carbon reduction in future urban de-
sign models, asserting that change can only succeed through
culturally and socially inclusive design strategies.
The focus of the Urban Planning Program is on future
physical, economic and social well being of the world’s cities.
The rapid pace of global urbanization has been accompanied
by an increasing polarization between the well off and the
poor in the cities of both the more developed and less devel-
oped nations of the world. Unless these polarizations and the
ensuing antagonisms are reversed, global urbanization and
the population migrations it has engendered will work to the
detriment and not the betterment of all of us. Developing the
capacity of the next generation of planners to adapt to and
address the social and environmental challenges brought
about by a rapidly urbanizing world is a central concern of
the Program. The Urban Planning program began this aca-
demic year with a new director, Robert Beauregard.
The Program was re-accredited by the Planning Ac-
creditation Board (PAB). The site visit occurred in the fall
semester and the decision to re-accredit was received in late
May. The Program had a number of visiting professors dur-
ing the year. Richard Tomlinson from Johannesburg taught
full-time to maintain the commitment to international de-
velopment and planning. Ana Baptista taught Environmental
justice in the fall semester. And Chester Hartman, a nation-
ally-recognized housing expert, taught Housing Policy and
housing studio in the spring semester.
On the faculty side, Peter Marcuse and Laura Kurgan
taught a course on ethics and justice in planning and ar-
chitecture. Stacey Sutton began a project on neighborhood
development in Korea. Smita Srinivas continued her work
in India with the Technological Change Lab. Sarah Williams
worked with an art project in Brooklyn to set up cell-phone-
available interpretation of sites of interest, identified through
GPS data. Elliott Sclar completed work with the Rockefeller
Foundation on poverty in the global south. Bob Beauregard
lectured at universities in Helsinki, Turkku, and London.
In addition, the program, with the help of Janet Foster,
made progress in establishing better management proce-
dures and providing a greater degree of transparency. The
students organized the weekly lecture series (LIPS) and pro-
vided helpful advice through the Program Council.
New York City has currently planned or has
underway a number of megaprojects (e.g., Hudson Yards,
the World Trade Center site, the Columbia/Manhattanville
development, East River: Manhattan, Brooklyn Parks, and
Governors Island) that will involve a great deal of construc-
tion activity. These projects pose logistic issues related to the
movement of construction materials into the city and onto
sites with little room for storage.
Moreover, the movement of construction materials by
truck generates traffic and safety issues and could be re-
directed to barges on a meaningful scale. The purpose of this
studio was to explore the economic, social, environmental,
and other aspects of the siting and design of construction
materials transfer sites along the NYC waterfront for the
movement of construction materials in and out of this island
geography. The client was the Regional Plan Association.
This studio addressed various issues facing
Manhattanville Homes, a large state-aided, high-quality
public housing project between Broadway and Amsterdam,
and 129th and 135th streets. Principal issues addressed
included NYC Housing Authority’s plan to capture/reuse
project open space (parking areas, recreation areas) and the
movement of several hundred units into the Sec. 8 program.
Related issues were the status and fate of small neighbor-
hood-service businesses on Amsterdam between 125th and
135th Streets threatened by gentrification. Clients were the
Manhattanville Tenants Association and the Manhattanville
Area Consortium of Businesses.
Stamford’s East Main Street and the sur-
rounding neighborhood are experiencing a rapid trans-
formation. From its prior role as a center for low-density
automobile dealerships and other automobile-related uses
comes a more intensive development profile with new rental
and condominium apartment buildings and pedestrian-ori-
ented retail stores among other new uses.
One of the critical challenges to this situation is to de-
velop a multi-modal transportation strategy for the corridor
that will encourage further redevelopment while preserving
and enhancing neighborhood quality of life. The goal of the
studio was to situate the corridor so that it complements the
major office and retail development of the downtown core.
The objective was also to make the corridor into a village
center with its own identity. The client for this studio was the
East Main Street Neighborhood Association.
The Tigre Delta is located about 20
miles north of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Once a collection
of small towns, agricultural farms, a few industries, rec-
reational activities, and informal housing populated mainly
by households in need, it is now filling up with tourist facili-
ties and gated communities targeted to upper-middle-in-
come households. Yet, the number of poor households has
remained unchanged. Moreover, the ecological sustainabil-
ity and economic feasibility of the area are uncertain.
The purpose of the studio was to address the develop-
mental challenges posed by the rapid (sub)urbanization of
the Tigre Delta. Particular attention was given to sustain-
ability and social justice issues. The client for this studio was
the Tigre Municipality/Local Development Corporation.
The client for this studio was the Greenwich
Village Society for Historic Preservation, which is the lead
organization in a consortium of community groups and orga-
nizations. The groups were concerned about the contraction
and development of St. Vincent’s Hospital on Seventh Avenue
and 11th, 12th, and 13th Streets in Greenwich Village in New
York City. The hospital plans to consolidate all of its facili-
ties into one building and sell all the rest to a developer for
market housing.
Because the entire hospital campus falls within the
Greenwich Village Historic District, any plans to demolish or
build must go through public hearings and be approved by the
Landmarks Preservation Commission. St. Vincent’s Hospital
is also governed by special zoning regulations, therefore the
City Planning Commission and the City Council must also ap-
prove any such changes after extensive public hearings. These
hearings were held during the winter and spring of 2008.
St. Vincent’s plans would be, by far, the largest devel-
opment ever in the Greenwich Village Historic District since
its designation, and the largest development anywhere
in Greenwich Village in at least 50 years. This studio consid-
ered many important planning issues: historic preservation,
density and zoning, urban design, traffic and transportation
issues, housing diversity, and open space. It also engaged
a number of important approval processes so it afforded stu-
dents an opportunity to learn about these processes directly.
The studio worked with recommendations, alter-
natives, changes, and modifications to the proposal but
also developed a greater vision for the best kind of plan
for this area. The expansion also raises important ques-
tions about how more than one social and public good can be
reconciled — the change and expansion of a valued health
facility and the preservation, livability, and development of a
historic neighborhood.
Cities are run by city-governments. These governments
are providers of infrastructure and goods themselves, and
they also regulate the provision of goods by private firms.
They promote health and welfare through land use and
environmental regulation, and they are charged with ensur-
ing that political power and economic resources will be
distributed equitably. Yet governments operate in societies
where resource allocation is governed primarily by markets.
Economics provides tools — often controversial ones — to
guide decisions about when and how government should be
involved in providing or subsidizing services and in shaping
market activity.
In evaluating whether to adopt a project, the following are
some of the factors the planner must consider. (1) Projects
often yield benefits and require costs over long periods of
time. Paving of a road, for example, must occur at the begin-
ning of the life of that road, whereas the benefits from the
road will occur for many years after the paving was com-
pleted. Do the benefits exceed the cost? (2) The benefits
from a project may be uncertain. For example, should the
government invest in a firehouse in a particular location?
(3) User fees for a particular project may not be sufficient to
cover the cost of providing the service. For example, should
the government provide a particular public transportation
services if the fares would not cover the cost of constructing
and operating the service? (4) A project may be designed
to achieve a particular result. For instance, the purpose of
including a work requirement in welfare programs is often
to enhance the earnings of welfare recipients after they
leave these programs. Does the requirement produce the
desired result?
This course explored the political, scientific, economic,
legal, and cultural impacts of environmental justice (EJ)
and risk analysis. Through theoretical and practical read-
ings, detailed case studies, media content analysis, and
an exploration of social movements, the course examined
how claims of environmental injustice are intertwined with
the politics of race, class, and gender inequalities, as well
as cultures of science, technology, and risk assessment.
The course analyzed the political implications of research
into disproportionate environmental impacts, EJ litigation
under the Civil Rights Act, and policy responses to address
claims of environmental injustices from the local to the
international level. The course also explored the impact
that community-driven actions, particularly those aimed at
addressing adverse health and environmental impacts in
communities of color, have had on the political, legal, and
cultural landscape of environmental politics and risk. Case
study topic areas included urban air pollution, community
land use planning, clean water access, occupational safety,
and international development.
This course weaved together the substantive history of
the planning profession in the United States with its intel-
lectual evolution. It focused on the planning function and
related planning roles. This course considered different
rationales for undertaking planning, alternative ways of
practicing it, the relationships between experts and citi-
zens, and the political tensions within planning practice.
Particular attention was given to the interplay of power and
knowledge; ethics and social responsibility; and issues of
race, gender, class, and identity.
This course taught digital methods of creating visual infor-
mation and was designed to build those skills fundamental
to understanding and communicating projects from the
scale of the building to that of the city. Classes observed
and discussed techniques of effective visual communication
and the methods and details of realizing such work using
the computer. Students were encouraged to bring design
studio projects to be measured, interpreted, outlined,
extruded, sliced, detailed, annotated, and displayed in a
pin-up and portfolio.
Many issues related to housing have vexed planners and
policy makers for decades. Why is there a shortage of
affordable housing? Should everyone be guaranteed a right
to decent housing? What is decent housing? When, if ever,
should the government intervene in the provision of hous-
ing? Does rent control really keep rents affordable? Should
policymakers concern themselves with what type of neigh-
borhoods people reside in? Introduction to Housing provid-
ed students with the analytical skills to address these and
many more difficult questions dealing with how to house our
diverse population. Students learned to analyze and inter-
pret the plethora of housing data available publicly in order
to assess housing market conditions in a particular locality.
With these skills students are better prepared to formulate
effective housing policies.
Planning in a Design Build World focused on the skills, prod-
ucts, tools, methods, processes, and relationships among
the variety of disciplines required to accomplish strategic
infrastructure design and real estate development planning.
The intense level of interdisciplinary coordination required
from concept through construction on any public/private
development project is overwhelming without exposure to
the professions integral in implementation of pro-formas
and policies. The course established a basic understanding
of who does what within the overlapping field of disciplines,
how projects move forward, and who is making ultimate
decisions and with what information. The class also sought
to push boundaries; for those with design, economic, or
environmental backgrounds: what keeps us from achieving
our sustainability goals and recommend actions to remedy
these. In what ways can the environmental review process be
leveraged as an innovative urban design tool? How does one
discover a place for creativity or even make a positive differ-
ence in a field predominantly defined by market demands,
bureaucrats, and egotists? With the belief that New York
City has had a unique way of defining and answering such
questions throughout its history (most recently with the
PLANYC2030 effort), students investigated these topics and
visited field offices and development sites, and honed visual
and verbal communication skills.
This course served as an introduction to how public entities
(cities, states, public benefit corporations) finance urban
development by issuing public securities. Beginning with an
examination of how public entities leverage limited capital
resources through the issuance of debt, including a review of
statutory and political considerations as well as limitations
put on such debt, the class explored the limitations of tax-ex-
empt financing and the kinds of development that can qualify
for such financing. By examining different kinds of develop-
ment financing, including mass transit, health care facilities,
schools, public utilities, airports, and housing, students were
able to see the major forms of tax-exempt financing that are
available. The class also delved into rating agency require-
ments, security disclosure rules, market dynamics, and the
mechanics of offering bonds for public sale. Students dis-
cussed criticism of public financing and looked at failures
and bond defaults. Students were expected to review offer-
ing statements and related financial information for actual
financings being marketed in the public markets. The course
consisted of a mix of lectures, guest lectures from practitio-
ners, discussion, and group presentations.
Today, for the first time in human history, more than half
of the world’s population lives in cities. With increasing
urbanization, uneven economic development, and deplet-
ing resources, cities in the 21st century demand serious
consideration in order to appropriately manage them. The
idea of minimizing human impact on the natural environ-
ment is now a generally accepted goal. At the same time,
exploiting resources, both natural and cultural, is accepted
as necessary to achieve the goals of economic development.
While consensus is possible on the broad objectives of urban
sustainability, the approaches, and efforts at accomplish-
ing them vary widely. Debates rage between revolution and
reform, more technology and less, to embrace urban density
or abandon city life. Meanwhile, the universal goals of sus-
tainable development have to be reconciled with the particu-
larities of a place, its history, culture, and social institutions.
This course explored the diversity of contemporary debates
around sustainability and the city and investigated the man-
agement of change in the urban environment to nurture
positive and enduring relationships amongst the natural and
social worlds, and the built environment. The objective was
to work towards a framework for making cities sustainable.
Topics included sustainability and the crisis of urban devel-
opment; perceptions of nature and urbanism; globalization,
culture and politics; tourism and heritage; innovations to
promote sustainability including mixed use and transporta-
tion, green building and urban greening, water and energy
resources; disasters; climate risks; housing, community,
equity, and gender.
Although many urban planners see this subject as formulas,
models, and attempts to predict travel behavior, it is more
understandable when one seeks to relate land use and the
potential transportation connection. The hierarchy of trans-
portation modes begins with the shortest distances between
two points — walking, usually up to a distance of a mile or
20 minutes and biking which takes one a bit further. The
automobile and various modes of transit, such as the bus
and rail, are much more regional and are part of a network.
In dense urban areas, where space is at a premium, transit
is the way to travel because more people are moved more
rapidly. However, America’s love affair with the automobile,
furthered by major funding for highways across a mostly
low-density environment, does not always relate the most
appropriate mode of travel to land development. This course
contrasted the rise, fall, and latest attempts at knitting tran-
sit into the metropolitan fabric while trying to improve the
dilemma of too many people taking to the road for the con-
venience of being stuck in traffic.
This course presented the fundamentals of land use plan-
ning as practiced in the US today and gave students the
opportunity to develop and design a land use plan for a small
hypothetical city. Prior to developing the HypoCity, students
studied contemporary land use planning issues, including
urbanization and urban growth trends, ethics, quality of
life indicators, ecological land use planning, and inner city
revitalization. Attention was also given to what constitutes a
comprehensive plan, principles of good plan-making, where
to start, specific steps to take, information needs, and how to
choose methods to accommodate a range of community sit-
uations. Through case study analysis of several large-scale
planned developments in New York City, students learned
analytic and synthetic skills, practiced oral, graphic, and
written communication skills, and participated as effective
members of a planning team.
Each team determined the socioeconomic, cultural, en-
vironmental, and political aspects of their HypoCity to form a
context for planning that allowed them to pursue particular
issues of interest. Teams assessed existing and emerging
community conditions; formulated goals; translated pro-
jections of economic and population change into their land
use implications for land, location, and community services;
determined the suitability of land and locations for various
land uses; and applied computer technology to specific plan-
making tasks such as map presentations, land suitability
analyses, and the drawing of plans. The tangible result of
the semester’s work was a professional-grade land use plan
that incorporated the fundamentals of land use planning and
the particular innovations created by the planning teams.
The nineteenth century development of urban planning as
a profession and academic discipline had its basis in public
health initiatives designed to improve the quality of life of
urban dwellers. Contemporary environmental challenges
are once again uniting the fields of urban planning and
public health. In the next 50 years, urban planners seeking
to improve the quality of life for increasing numbers of urban
residents throughout the world will grapple with major social,
political, economic, and environmental issues that affect the
physical structure of cities and the health of their residents.
Topics range from increases in urbanization and population
growth in poorer regions of the world, to the global spread of
infectious diseases and the creation of new refugee popula-
tions brought about, in part, by global climate change.
Working together, scientists and professionals from ur-
ban planning and public health may better ensure that new
communities are built and old communities are revitalized to
be more egalitarian, sustainable, and, ultimately, healthier
for all residents. The goal of this course was to provide the
ideas and information necessary to integrate environmen-
tal viability and sustainable development with other primary
concerns of urban planners and public health scientists and
practitioners, namely, social justice, human rights, environ-
mental integrity, and health in the broadest sense, to include
well-being and quality of life.
The physical shape of cities at each moment in time is a
reflection of social choices. These choices are constrained
by history, social values, technology, population change,
and economic opportunities. Clearly, issues of power, social
equity, and cultural sensibilities are embedded in these con-
straints. The ways in which these constraints operate are
both powerful and complex. Although they play themselves
out differently in different places, there are still strong simi-
larities in the patterns among various places. This course
explored the dynamics through which the physical shape of
urban settlements emerge. Students sought to compara-
tively understand how urban space is organized in both the
developed and the developing world. In this they were guided
by an attempt to understand what is place specifically and
generically in each case. The goal was not to develop a one
size fits all theory of urban space, but rather to develop the
ability to read how the dynamics of urban space play them-
selves out in specific cases.
New York City appears to be in a state of great transforma-
tion. At this time, New York is viewed by many as a place
where a mature American city can re-shape itself through
comprehensive planning and design of its built environment,
infrastructure, transportation, and neighborhoods. What are
some of the distinctive problems that make New York unique
and, at the same time, a potential model for other cities?
The course provided an understanding of the collabora-
tions, conflicts, tools, and strategies surrounding planning in
New York today. It focused on a selection of current planning
projects, small and large, ranging from the Hudson Yards
in Manhattan to the Atlantic Yards plan in Brooklyn, and
from Jamaica and Willets Point in Queens to Hunts Point
in the Bronx. The students’ inquiry centered on the Mayor’s
PlaNYC, examining its goals and recommendations and as-
sessing the challenges to its implementation.
There is probably no other activity that links people and place
in more complex ways than work. Work remains a primary
locus of human identity and mobilization. Even with labor
migration between cities and across countries, urban work
continues to anchor people to their surroundings in multiple
ways. Particular labor markets have specific characteristics.
Furthermore, the changing division of labor appears to dra-
matically affect the manner in which people participate in
social, economic, and political facets of urban and national
life. The increasing inter-connectedness of sectors across
national boundaries complicates the governance of work.
Since work is a major influence on urban transportation
systems, housing, other public infrastructure, processing
zones, and factories, these trends are of particular interest.
In this course, students critically examined the institutions
that create markets from work, as well as paid and unpaid
work. Understanding how work is structured and governed
today around the world provides a better grasp of the every-
day functioning of city-regions and an appreciation of how
they can be planned and governed to promote economic
development and equity. It also provides a historical and
contemporary theoretical context within which to enquire
about scales and types of governance.
This advanced seminar for Ph.D. students focused on under-
standing the State. Students looked at its component orga-
nizations, institutional underpinning, norms, rule-making,
and other processes of administration, but also addressed
issues of symbolism and power. The course covered diverse
topics such as: the state as policy arena, democracy and
types of governance, organizational theory, questions of
bureaucracy, rationality and planning, the emergence of
informal and formal institutions, rule-making, behavioral
and cognitive frameworks for state action, state sanction
and legitimacy, and public sector reform.
Political economy can be described as the study of institu-
tions and modes of governance. It attempts to capture dif-
ferent models of how society’s politics and economy are
intertwined. It is also a discerning look at the language,
models, and actual history of social change. There are many
“schools” within the field of political economy attempting
to describe issues such as the role of the state, the opti-
mal path to development, and the most equitable forms of
redistribution. These also comprise strong behavioral and
institutional assumptions about locality and nationality and
how to run urban and other development projects.
On a regular basis planners are called upon to either col-
lect original data or obtain data from secondary sources.
Therefore, planners must be comfortable summarizing,
analyzing, and presenting quantitative data, and be comfort-
able developing logical empirically based arguments using
statistical techniques and analytic methods. Additionally,
urban planners are often called upon to review quantita-
tive analyses and assess the validity of arguments made by
others, as well as design independent research studies to
test various hypotheses and make effective decisions. This
course prepared graduate students in urban planning to
critically review analyses prepared by others and to conduct
basic statistical data analyses independently.
Mega-events are events that a country and city can expect
“to host” once only in the space of some decades. There
are essentially three types of mega-events: World’s Fairs/
Universal Exhibitions/EXPOs, the Olympics, and the FIFA
Football World Cups. These events are located in a host city
(World Fair and the Olympics) or host cities (Football World
Cup) and involve a tremendous amount of investment in
infrastructure, hospitality services, marketing of the coun-
try and city and, of course, tourism. As such, mega-events
can have profound urban impacts. An interesting and recent
feature of mega-events is that they are now also occur-
ring in developing countries, for example, the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai Expo and the FIFA 2010 Football
World CupTM in South Africa.
This course betrayed a special interest in mega-events
in developing countries but included references to mega
events, past and present, throughout the world. This in-
cludes the bidding process to host a mega event, which has
become inordinately expensive. New York’s bid for the 2012
Olympics is a case in point. The purpose of the course was
to examine the impact of mega-events on cities, their infra-
structure, economy, and management.
To a considerable degree urban policy in developing coun-
tries is formulated and propagated by multilateral and
bilateral development agencies, global development con-
sulting firms, foundations, and academics who consult to
all these agencies. A significant feature of these agencies
and academics is their working with host governments, from
national to local, to engage in “knowledge sharing,” “best
practice,” and “policy development based on what works.”
In addition, specialist agencies have been constructed to
enhance public-private partnerships and privatization and
to increase “deal flow.” In the last decade or so, along with
notions of “best practice” coming to include working with
NGOs and CBOs, have arisen local, regional, and interna-
tional NGOs such as Shack/Slum Dwellers International
(SDI), Homeless International and the Centre on Housing
Rights and Evictions (COHRE) that promote a “rights-based”
approach to urban policy.
The purpose of the course was to explore the formu-
lation of urban policy in developing countries, the influ-
ence of these institutions on urban policy, and the role of
the web in “knowledge sharing.” The course included case
studies on particular policies in a number of countries and,
inter alia, “knowledge sharing,” “best practice,” “hints,” and
“housing rights.”
The National Environmental Policy Act and the several state
or local regulations requiring environmental impact assess-
ment — including the New York State Environmental Quality
Review Act (SEQRA) and the New York City Environmental
Quality Review (CEQR) process — require public decision-
makers to consider potential short-term and long-term
environmental effects of projects or actions. These regula-
tions and processes set forth specific procedures or method-
ologies to follow in the preparation of environmental assess-
ments or environmental impact statements. The regulations
also require incorporation of public participation and agency
coordination at several steps in the process. This course
explored the key procedural elements of NEPA, SEQRA, and
CEQR; examined the key analytic techniques used in impact
assessment; and investigated how application of environ-
mental impact assessment affects project outcome.
For the built environment to operate properly, engineered
service systems and roadways are needed. For it to be
healthful and pleasant, modern utility networks and support
facilities have to be developed. To move human settlements
toward sustainability, advanced technology and sensible use
of natural processes should be put in play. The institutional
and financial frameworks, within which service systems have
to be implemented and maintained, need critical attention.
Within this context, the practical scope of the course
encompassed what is generally known as subdivision de-
sign and municipal engineering. Subdivision design deals
with the most common form of city building during the last
half-century in North America. While frequently dismissed
as sprawl, new attitudes and practices can create attractive
communities in balance with the natural environment and
municipal infrastructure. Municipal engineering has been
a concern in human settlements since ancient times. Dirty
water, abysmal sanitation, and lack of mobility have plagued
city residents for centuries and persist today in much of the
developing world. Only in the last century have workable
systems been developed that can handle livability problems,
albeit through heavy investment in engineered systems. New
approaches seek to minimize fiscal cost by relying more on
natural processes.
It is not enough for professional planners and design-
ers to just appreciate these concerns; they must be able to
work actively and responsibly in the structuring and imple-
mentation of the base systems and new concepts.
Vibrant commercial corridors are the lifeblood of a neighbor-
hood. This thesis focused on how local community groups
affect the vitality of commercial corridors. Much research
has been done on how business improvement districts and
empowerment zones affect retail corridors, but little atten-
tion has been given to those communities that do not ben-
efit from these initiatives. Focusing on one neighborhood in
Queens, New York, the research indicated that commercial
corridor vitality is as much a result of the entrepreneurial
spirit of the residents who live there as of how the incentives
given by non-profits and government agencies are shaped.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg set a target in
PlaNYC 2030 to cut by 30% New York City’s carbon dioxide
emissions by 2030. Forty-nine percent of that reduction is
predicated on improving the energy efficiency of the building
sector. This thesis examined the implementation barriers
for a municipal-level policy on demand-side energy reduc-
tion. The findings suggested that the policy environment
poses three barriers. First, the City government does not
have full jurisdiction to regulate energy efficiency in build-
ings. Second, energy efficiency is a negotiating tool of the
political marketplace. Third, financial and human resourc-
es limit the City’s capacity to implement effective policy.
Millions of homes are expected to enter into foreclosure
over the next year. This thesis focused specifically on the
needs of localities that are affected by high rates of mort-
gage foreclosure. Interviews with policy-makers and fore-
closure experts in three localities that have been hard hit by
mortgage foreclosure — Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio;
and Stockton, California — were used to determine specific
problems facing localities. Comparing this data to President
Bush’s Foreclosure Prevention and Mitigation Plan, it seems
that the President’s proposal fails to solve key problems that
localities cannot resolve without federal intervention. These
findings have implications for the ability of cities to respond
to the mortgage foreclosure crisis.
South Africa adapted the concept of the developmental state
to demarcate its role in directing economic growth, develop-
ment, and the redistribution of social and economic resourc-
es to redress systemic poverty and repression. Through the
Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) 1994,
housing provision for the poor and marginalized segments
of the population became a primary example of the govern-
ment’s commitment. Housing provision has produced over
two million units, yet beneficiaries in some urban contexts
have chosen to be relocated to informal housing and to sell
these units.
This thesis asserted that unsustainable provision has
resulted in this condition. The central question is whether
housing provision has resulted in unsustainable housing for
the urban poor. The hypothesis asserted that this is the case
and that it is necessary to address the needs of the urban
poor particularly with regard to employment. The research
traced relevant policy frameworks and models regarding
housing and economic development and integration to un-
derstand the rising phenomenon of unsustainable housing
for the urban poor. The results of this research concluded
that integrated development is a useful mechanism in link-
ing housing and employment to increase sustainability for
the urban poor, yet more needs to be done to deepen the
level of integration.
In response to the threat of atomic devastation of American
cities during the Cold War, several federal agencies studied
urban vulnerability and put forth recommendations for sur-
vival under an attack. Chief amongst these was dispersal of
population and industry from dense urban areas. In 1950, a
group called Associated Universities undertook a federal
study, Project East River, which imagined an atomic bomb
detonating in Manhattan. This thesis examined how federal
recommendations for dispersion for civil defense were articu-
lated at the city level in New York in order to illustrate the
historical relationship between density and security.
E-grocery stores, like FreshDirect in New York City, hold
the potential to greatly impact the way that urban food mar-
kets function, yet they remain largely unstudied. Empirical
accounts suggest that the sudden increase in food choice
that e-groceries provide in neighborhoods underserved by
bricks-and-mortar grocery stores, which are often low-
income and minority areas, fuels gentrification. This thesis
tested that observation by spatially analyzing FreshDirect’s
deliveries by zip code from 2002–2007 in relation to the
variables of income, rent, property value, and number of
supermarkets, as well as by surveying FreshDirect cus-
tomers. The quantitative analysis revealed little correlation
between FreshDirect deliveries and demographic indicators
of gentrification, yet the qualitative analysis suggested that
people do use FreshDirect for better food options in gentrify-
ing neighborhoods. These findings help explain the relation-
ship between food retail and neighborhood appeal and have
broad implications for urban food access.
When economies are over-dependent upon their natural
resources as a growth stimulus, their innovative capacity
can lag during a resource boom from a misallocation of capi-
tal away from traditional sectors like manufacturing. As the
resource diminishes and investment is re-directed, there is a
danger of finding technology-dependent sectors in obsoles-
cence. In a time when resource endowment appears to be a
curse upon economies, it is relevant to cite examples which
have defied this trend by curtailing manufacturing disinvest-
ment using resource upgrading as a stepping stone towards
further diversification.
In East Texas there has consistently been interplay be-
tween the business community and the state and national
level government. This dynamic was first instrumental in
securing Department of Defense research and manufactur-
ing contracts in resource-based industries like refining and
petro-chemical upgrading. The resulting downstream supply
chains and highly skilled engineering labor pool associated
with this same refining process eventually contributed to fur-
ther diversification into the aerospace and semi-conductor
industries. Provincial, regional, and local policy-makers in Al-
berta are currently leveraging their oil sands wealth to mimic
the integrated clustering of Houston’s refining industry out-
side of Edmonton in order to retain the value-added revenues
within the province. As similar refining facilities continue to
come on-line in the Middle East and East Asia, however, the
same linchpin of subsidized innovation that proved crucial
to Houston’s sustained economic growth may be critical in
securing both Houston and Edmonton’s economic future.
Considering the backdrop of industrialization and demo-
cratic transition in South Korea, the following question
comes up: how was public participation institutionalized
in South Korea after the change of government from an
authoritarian military government regime to a participatory
democracy? Considering the strategy of development in
terms of the extent or degree of the government’s involve-
ment, what types of public participation have arisen since
the post-military government? How far can public partici-
pation affect the outcome of development strategy under
the democratic government, compared to its effect on the
outcome under the military government?
The research used several urban redevelopment
cases and examined specifically institutionalized partici-
patory types in South Korea and the state’s position. The
research concluded by claiming the state’s strong position
in South Korean development in both military and demo-
cratic government, and suggested several issues to plan-
ners: planners should fully understand the locally embed-
ded characteristics for regional, national, and international
development. In addition, as far as the meaning of public
participation for South Korea, “is the democratic way al-
ways the best way?’”
The increased use of synthetic landscape elements to
replace natural ones throughout New York City combined
with recent concerns regarding the potential environmental
and public health risks associated with these elements pose
a possible environmental justice threat. This thesis exam-
ined that threat through a spatial analysis of the geographic
location of synthetic turf fields along with anecdotal evidence
gathered through interviews and surveys. Incomplete infor-
mation about synthetic turf also presented the opportunity
to analyze risk perception of policy-makers and users when
a knowledge gap exists. The findings begin to hint at an ineq-
uitable distribution of synthetic turf in environmental justice
neighborhoods and reveal that risk perception differs based
on access to information and option availability. These find-
ings led to a set of policy recommendations including careful
planning of the placement of future synthetic landscape ele-
ments, increasing access to information about synthetic turf,
and expanding opportunities for community involvement.
The contest over urban public space, both physical and polit-
ical, is central to the debates over street vending in India.
With the liberalization of the Indian economy and the 74th
Amendment to the Constitution, discourses of public/par-
ticipative space, civil society and its institutions like the Civil
Courts have implicitly disempowered these workers in the
informal economy. This thesis attempted to identify the ways
in which street vendors in Mumbai have claimed urban space
(both physical and political) from State institutions. Street
vendors engage in interactions that range from formal/
legal/secular politics to informal tactics. These include:
jurisprudence and negotiation of the law through civil courts,
formulation of policies through the activities of organizations
like NASVI, claims of welfare through organized activity and
protests, and informal tactics. Thus, participation of street
vendors in public space needs to be analyzed with respect to
different scales, actions of the leadership, daily interactions
with the State, and the particular working class and ethnic
politics of Mumbai.
The Ph.D. Program prepares students for careers in
teaching, research, and advanced practice in the fields of
urban planning and urban policy. The program has as its
specific field of inquiry the articulation of space (under-
stood as material form, not mere geographic territory) and
the socio-economic, political, and physical urban processes
that produce and reproduce the built environment. These
investigations take place at various spatial scales from
the neighborhood to the global and focus both within and
outside the United States. Organizing this inquiry are ques-
tions related to the efficiency and effectiveness of planning
practices, social justice, and deeper questions related to the
growth and development of societies.
Ph.D. Candidates
The shift toward more expansive forms of digital production
within the design and construction industry affords oppor-
tunities of not only reconfiguring the relationships between
the key players, but also incorporating industry sectors not
typically associated with building construction. At the core of
this shift is the integration of communication through vari-
ous forms of digital networks, CNC fabrication being just one
among many, with the ambition of developing a comprehen-
sive, well organized, easily accessible, and parametrically
adaptable body of information that coordinates the process
from design through a building’s lifecycle. This is the broader
context for the goals of the Avery Digital Fabrication Lab.
The intent of the new fabrication lab is twofold: first,
to develop techniques for merging design and fabrication
through digital networks (an organizational goal), and sec-
ond, to develop new building systems using CNC technology
for prototyping full-scale components that structure the
logic of larger assemblies (a material goal). What distin-
guishes CNC technologies for architecture is the opportunity
it affords to reposition design strategically within fabrication
and construction processes such that what architects actu-
ally produce — drawings — shifts from loose representa-
tions of buildings to highly precise sets of instructions that
are coordinated and integrated into a full description of a
building. At a more modest level within this comprehen-
sive organizational picture, CNC has also influenced design
methodologies as architects begin to respond more directly
to the conditions of digital production as a means for both
pragmatic concerns like cost and efficiency and more con-
ceptual potentials like variability and customization. These
are the topics of research and experimentation for the lab.
During the past year, the Lab has embarked on a number
of initiatives and projects. The Lab has been working closely
with the Engineering Department on the submission of joint
CU-RISE and NSF-IGERT grants. The Lab has recommitted
itself to its research goals by modifying its access policy to
that of providing a Lab for proposed student research and
studio projects. The Lab has continued in its work with Nata-
lie Jerimijenko on the Urban Space Station project to design
and build greenhouses for rooftops in NYC. One USS will be
installed with the design and prototyping help of the Lab and
its students this summer on a building on the NYU campus. In
addition, the Lab and it’s students produced a set of modular
silicone molds for a project that is being cast in Toulouse,
France, for the office of Anzalone+Bayard Architects, as a
continuation of applying the research to full scale architec-
tural projects on Columbia’s campus each summer. The Lab
is in the process of compiling a book documenting the last
three years of digital fabrication at the GSAPP.
In the context
of ubiquitous computing — as tiny, inexpensive, networked
computers literally disappear into the woodwork of our
buildings — the exploration of living architecture becomes
ever more interesting and important. During the past year,
the Living Architecture Lab launched several new full-scale,
functioning, responsive prototypes that address energy,
environment, and ubiquitous computing.
LIVING CITY
Living City (www.thelivingcity.net) is a platform for build-
ings to talk to one another. With the support of the Van
Alen Institute New York Prize and a grant from the Graham
Foundation, the Lab installed a wireless sensor network
on the facade of the Empire State Building and another
on the facade of the Van Alen building. Each network col-
lected interior and exterior air quality data and shared it
with the other building. Then a prototype building facade at
the Van Alen Gallery breathed in response, controlling air
flow and making visible environmental conditions. With the
facade as a location of sensors, of wireless communication,
and of responsive actuators, the city acquires a new level
of interactivity. For a second version of the project, Living
City was simultaneously installed for the shows “Vapor” at
Southern Exposure Gallery and “Feedback” at Eyebeam Art
and Technology Center, allowing a building in San Francisco
to communicate with one in New York.
LIVING ARCHITECTURE: RESPONSIVE KINETIC
SYSTEMS LAB
In two more semesters of this Visual Studies workshop, stu-
dents created full-scale functioning prototypes that built off
of the projects in previous years and left open source docu-
mentation for those in the future. In the spring, students
explored the use of environmental sensors and presented
work in progress in a public charrette at Eyebeam, as part of
the Feedback exhibition.
LIVING LIGHT
In May 2008, the Living Architecture Lab won a competi-
tion sponsored by City Gallery to design a permanent public
installation in Seoul, Korea. The proposal, Living Light, is a
map of the city bent into a 40’-wide semi-enclosed pavil-
ion. Different neighborhoods of the map glow and blink in
response to both data about air quality and interest in air
quality. The pavilion will be constructed by November 2008
in a busy plaza at the city’s major bus terminal.
REVOLUTION DOOR
In further development of this project by Fluxxlab, affiliated
with the Living Architecture Lab, a full-scale prototype of
the Revolution Door was showcased at Eyebeam’s Feedback
exhibition in spring of 2008. Gallery visitors entered through
the Revolution Door, converting metabolic energy into elec-
tricity and illuminating the LED entrance signage for the
show. Fluxxlab is also working on a new prototype called
Powerslide that converts the sliding motion of common
building components such as doors, windows, and drawers
into a source of energy.
The CHDD is a Research Lab found-
ed in 2003 within the Master of Science in Real Estate
Development Program to explore the benefits of density.
The Center’s objective is to encourage high density develop-
ment by promoting research and analysis of both benefits
and critical success factors for urban and suburban high
density development, to demonstrate that developments of
high density are the most economically fertile, operationally
effective, fiscally responsive, environmentally responsible,
and culturally supportive environments.
The work of the Center is carried out in the CHDD semi-
nar, each of which builds upon the research done the previ-
ous year. This year, students were organized into teams to
investigate selected research topics in each of five modules
through weekly reading and written assignments, surveys,
and final presentations. The Center also reaches out to the
larger community through its website, field trips, publica-
tions, and conferences.
VISUALIZATION RESEARCH MODULE
Design industry surveys established the need for the cre-
ation of a searchable online database of images of best-in-
practice developments. The search criteria for the database
were the result of a survey completed by over 100 design
professionals.
EQUITY GROUP RESEARCH MODULE
A survey of high-profile pension funds, opportunity funds
and private equity groups showed that High density proper-
ties suffer less occupancy loss in down markets, have more
stable cash flows, rebound faster during down markets and
are better recognized by investors during fund raising.
DEMOGRAPHICS RESEARCH MODULE
Interviews and research show that Baby and Echo Boomers
create demographic waves that coincide with ideal ages to
live in multifamily housing creating a more demand for that
product type. An opportunity exists to develop new housing in
dense areas to accommodate the specific needs of boomers
living in city centers.
METRICS RESEARCH MODULE
Research collected in collaboration with Cushman and
Wakefield revealed that higher density CBDs lead to: higher
rents, higher sales, lower cap rates and lower volatility in
asset values.
POLICY RESEARCH MODULE
Interviews, research and case studies revealed that cities
that implemented policies to stimulate density achieved
increased property values and fiscal revenues and spawned
additional development.
The convergence of computation and biogenet-
ics, an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of human
civilization, has ushered in a new ontology of existence —
one that entails a new modality of architectural thought
and production. The Institute for Genetic Architecture is a
response to this challenge, bringing forward a new paradigm
of architecture: genetic architecture based on the philo-
sophical notion of genesis understood in the most general
and far-reaching sense of the term with references to both
abstract and concrete domains of instantiation.
Theoretical impetus for the Institute is founded upon
the idea that information is the currency that underlies ev-
erything; it manifests itself in various scalar and specifica-
tion regimes of organization. The general economy of infor-
mation ranges from one bit, conceived as a minimal unit of
a self-replicating system, to the dynamics of co-evolutionary
systems such as the Internet with its second-order phase
transition looming in the near future — a Global Ubiquitous
Computing (GUC) System that will, once it is fully incorpo-
rated into its infrastructure, saturate the planet Earth with
a monadic concept of the global brain. With this in mind,
the Institute for Genetic Architecture is directed toward the
generative construction of possible worlds engendered as
well as mediated by computation. The Institute is a multi-
disciplinary enterprise with a two-fold intention: research
and development into genetic architecture and its dissemi-
nation into the cultural domain. The program for research
and development focuses on (1) theoretical issues pertaining
to a philosophical genetics of architecture, (2) formal meth-
ods of computational morphogenesis, and (3) construction
of physical as well as virtual proto-species of genetic archi-
tecture. At the level of morphogenesis, genetic architecture
is concerned with the instigation of the autonomy of the gen-
erative, which serves as the constitutive basis for the logic
of appearance or emergence: self-replication and mutation
that are the basis for the formation of complex organization.
As such, it is informed by developments in automata theory,
artificial life, artificial intelligence, algorithmic information
theory, complex adaptive systems, molecular and develop-
mental biology as well as by complex forces that led to the
history of architectural production. The program for com-
municative action addresses (1) cultural and philosophical
issues raised by the new paradigm including a reconception
of the conditions of possibility of the discipline of architec-
ture and (2) problems as well as opportunities induced by
the emergence of demiurgic capitalism — radicalization of
the concept of culture through capitalization of the logic of
evolution. To this end, the Institute functions as a catalyst
and venue for research and development into the forma-
tion of new concepts and formal models for the generative
construction of possible worlds. The ambition is to foster a
symbiosis enabled by the ecology of computation with the
aim to engender diverse species of genetic architecture: one
that is viable and essential in the formation of a brave new
world that is utopic in its aspiration.
C-Lab, is an experimental re-
search unit devoted to the development of new forms of com-
munication in architecture, set up as a semi-autonomous
think and action tank at the Graduate School of Architecture,
Planning and Preservation.
Since 2005, C-Lab has collaborated with Archis and
AMO on Volume, an independent bimonthly for architecture
to go beyond itself. The first issue edited exclusively by C-
Lab, Volume 10: Agitation!, was released in January 2007,
followed by Volume 13: Ambition in September 2007.
Since then, C-Lab has moved into other media. The lab
created an immersive graphic for the New Museum that vi-
sualizes charitable donations to arts and culture around the
world, as well as an installation for the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis about waste management in suburbia. C-Lab
has also contributed to the magazines Urban China, Domus,
and Perspecta.
C-Lab is currently editing a forthcoming issue of Volume
on “Content Management.” Similar to online content man-
agement, architecture is designed to have a public surface
and a protected interior, to encourage visitors and at the
same time limit the use of the property inside, to provide
problem-free navigation yet direct and track visitor move-
ment, and to mark out what content is accessible and what
isn’t. The issue will be available in the fall of 2008.
Over the next 25 years, it is projected that
China will account for 50% of the world’s new construction.
The majority of this construction will occur in existing cities
or newly formed urban areas. It is the mission of the China
Lab to become actively engaged with this rapid urbaniza-
tion and spatial production occurring in China, through both
research and design. By forming strategic collaborative rela-
tionships with institutions, private practitioners, developers,
governments, etc., the lab intends to cultivate a productive
exchange that has the potential to yield unpredictable and
vital outcomes that will provide alternative urban strategies
for the increasingly urbanized world.
GOLF CITY, HAINAN, CHINA
During the summer of
2007, China Lab participated in an urban design workshop
organized by USC Dean, Qingyun Ma. Three institutions (USC,
Tongji University and Columbia University) collaborated on
the master plan of a new resort city for 30,000 inhabitants
on the tropical Chinese island of Hainan. China Lab was rep-
resented by five GSAPP students (Johnna Cressica Brazier,
Tat Lam, Sid Wichienkuer, Egbert Chu and Tom Wu) and two
post-graduates (Mercy Wong, MArch 07, and Li Xu, MArch 07)
and was directed by Jeffrey Johnson.
EXPORTING CHINA FORUM
China Lab organized its first symposium during
the spring 2008 semester. China Lab invited three influential
Chinese architects (Yung Ho Chang, Qingyun Ma, and Doreen
Heng Liu) and a leading critical thinker on Chinese culture
(Ackbar Abbas) to discuss the influence of Chinese architec-
ture, urbanism and culture on global spatial practices.
MEGA-BLOCK STUDENT COMPETITION
China Lab sponsored its first student competition during
the spring 2008 semester. The objective of the competition
was to reconsider the Chinese mega-block development.
Mega-block housing developments — at a rate of over 10
new superblocks completed each day — are taking over the
fabric of Chinese cities. Twenty-three student teams from a
half-dozen institutions submitted alternative proposals for
Mega-Block development?
The Spatial Information Design Lab was created in 2004, as
an interdisciplinary research unit in the Graduate School
of Architecture, Planning and Preservations at Columbia
University. It is a think- and action-tank specializing in the
visual display of spatial information about contemporary
cities and events. Spatial Information Design is a name for
new ways of working with the vast quantity of statistical and
other data available about the contemporary city. By reor-
ganizing tabular data using unique visualization techniques
and locating it geographically, the goal is to correlate dis-
parate items of information and picture the patterns and
networks they create. Putting data on a map can open new
spaces for action and new options for intervention, as the
often-unseen shapes and forms of life in the city become
visible through this process.
Over the last year the Spatial Information Design Lab
has exhibited widely, developed a series of publications re-
lated to ongoing work, and developed new collaborations.
“Architecture and Justice” was exhibited in Design and
the Elastic Mind at MoMA in February and was acquired
for the permanent collection. This work was also exhib-
ited in JUST SPACE(S) at the Los Angeles Contemporary
Exhibitions(LACE), and at the THINC gallery in Syracuse New
York. “Architecture and Justice” has also resulted in three
SIDL/GSAPP publications that are available for distribution at
the GSAPP. SIDL is currently completing an extensive report
on “Justice Reinvestment” in Central City, outlining a plan for
Prisoner Reentry and Community Rebuilding in Post-Katrina
New Orleans. The team testified before the New Orleans City
Council in July of 2007, and as part of the Crime Summit in
August 2007 and has also initiated an extensive social net-
working project to facilitate participatory design strategies
linking policy initiatives to design initiatives.
SIDL is near completion of a GIS database for Nairobi,
Kenya. This database will have a profound impact on the Nai-
robi planning community as it will be provided at no-cost,
allowing stakeholders to work easily with rarely accessible
data. The release of this data will set a precedent for infor-
mation provision in the developing country context by putting
data directly in the hands of those who can make decisions
about its future. The Lab has also started a new research
initiative that looks at the unique spatial clustering patterns
of cultural industries. Relationships continue to be made
with New York City agencies regarding data sharing and
recommendations for spatial analysis, including a project
that analyzed the spatial patterns of services complaints for
the New York City Department of Sanitation. GSAPP GIS re-
search continues to be supported by the Spatial Information
Design Lab. New tutorials have been developed for the web
site, workshops have been provided for Architecture and Ur-
ban Design Studios, and the Lab has acquired new datasets
for world cities including Las Vegas and Beijing.
Research Fellows:
Research Assistants:
The Urban Landscape Research Lab is an inter-
disciplinary applied research group at Columbia University
in the City of New York. It focuses on the role of design in the
analysis and transformation of the joint built-natural envi-
ronment and studies ecological processes and urban sys-
tems as hybrid phenomena through targeted pilot projects,
practical strategies, and experiments.
This landscape/ecology-based approach to urbanism
brings together a wide range of disciplines such as archi-
tecture, landscape architecture, urban design, preservation,
civil engineering, conservation biology, economics, climate,
and public health, to focus on specific environmental and
development issues as they relate to built form.
The Lab’s teaching and research interests share a com-
mon objective: to effect positive change in the urban land-
scape in terms of biodiversity, climate change, water quality
and access, waste, and sanitation. The Lab focuses on the
physical design of infrastructures, landscapes, and dense
urban fabrics as change agents in a collaborative, interdisci-
plinary working model that involves feedback, exchange, and
monitoring efforts with scientists and engineers.
Projects range from retrofitting existing patterns of
land settlement with habitat and wildlife corridors, to the
public reclamation of brownfields and restoration of wet-
lands, to green roofs and mitigation of heat island effects,
to the visualization of new development models for waste
handling and processing. Issues are explored through joint,
interdisciplinary studio formats, and through funded re-
search projects in partnership with scientists, government
agencies, and community activists.
A parallel goal is to evolve the design disciplines at the
GSAPP in response to current environmental contexts and
technologies, and to marshal the design expertise of the
GSAPP toward the engagement of policy makers and the
public in the reshaping of the 21st-century urban landscape.
ENVISIONING GATEWAY
The Lab completed a report for the National Parks
Conservation Society as part of an effort to revitalize Gateway
National Park, a 26,000 acre recreation area in the NY-NJ
harbor under Federal jurisdiction. The project explored what
it means to be a national park today, and how to create a new
interface between one of the most vital cities in the world and
its immediate environment. The research involved mapping
critical habitat, transport, and historic fabric, among other
components, and explored the larger potential of Gateway
as an ecological, cultural, and recreational resource for
the region. The study delineated future directions for the
Park’s transformation and is targeted towards both decision
makers and the public-at-large. Van Alen Institute was inte-
grated into the process and subsequently hosted an interna-
tional design competition. These efforts were underwritten
by the Tiffany & Co. Foundation.
AUDUBON DESIGN GUIDELINES
The Lab, through a grant from the US Fish and Wildlife
Service, directed the production and publication of Bird Safe
Building Design Guidelines in collaboration with the NYC
Audubon Society. As researcher Daniel Klem has observed,
collisions occur “wherever birds and glass coexist,” although
night lighting, transparency to vegetation indoors or to sky
beyond, and the mirroring of adjacent habitats are primary
indicators of potential strikes. As the popularity of glass as
a building material continues to rise in urban and suburban
areas, it becomes ever more urgent to find ways to mitigate
this impact on neo-tropical migrants, a population already
in severe decline due to habitat loss and other factors. The
Guidelines examine the apparent causes of bird mortality in
the built environment; convey the ecological, economic, ethi-
cal, and legal justifications for bird conservation; advocate a
series of preventative and rehabilitative strategies describe
precedents for regulatory initiatives; and explore new glaz-
ing technologies. They are intended for use by architects,
landscape architects, planners, glass technicians, build-
ing managers, the construction industry, state and federal
agencies, and the general public. The Bird-Safe Building
Guidelines received the 2007 NY Chapter ASLA Award in the
field of Planning, Analysis, Research and Communications.
Kate Orff addressed the 2008 USGBC’s National GreenBuild
Conference on this topic.
AAR(ie)L is an international forum for archi-
tects, artists, critics, curators, and theoreticians whose
primary aim is to establish points of intersection between
different disciplines and domains of knowledge. By engaging
faculty and students at all levels and from different depart-
ments and disciplines both within Columbia and beyond,
AAR(ie)L simultaneously provides a locus for intellectual
ferment, encounter and exchange and an opening to the
broader architectural and art community. AAR(ie)L seeks to
increase the scope and enhance the non-linear perspective
of both art and architecture. This will serve to enrich and
amplify the modes of knowledge that constitute these dis-
ciplines, both as they are translated across and within their
respective fields and in relation to other areas of inquiry.
AAR(ie)L reflects and at the same time fosters the inter-
action that occurs amongst individual artists and architects.
Case studies of architect collaborations with artists is a fo-
cal point for ongoing post-graduate student involvement and
research (e.g. Richard Serra and Peter Eisenman; Frederick
Keisler and Richard Hamilton; Walter De Maria and Steven
Holl; Le Corbusier, Edgar Varese and Yannis Xenakis). The
Lab not only provides a framework for the study of past in-
stances of such interaction but even more so, is dedicated to
the initiation of future points of intersection between artists
and architects. At the core of the Lab is not a historical or
archaeological outlook but instead, a look towards important
precedents of the past only to increase the perspective of the
present and to take part in shaping the future.
The Lab draws from the widest possible range of prac-
titioners, both within the US and abroad, individuals and or-
ganizations alike. From this it participates in and encourages
an ever-widening sphere of practice that furnishes the Lab
not only with its knowledge base, but enables its members
to articulate subjects of common interest. In this way, the
members themselves help direct the functioning and pro-
gramming, as well as its publications, colloquia, exhibitions,
and seminars.
Programs, competitions, and specific projects are eval-
uated and analyzed on an ongoing and comparative basis.
The various projects, exhibitions, and events are accompa-
nied by publications. Already slated and in the process of
being executed is an exhibition on the work of Austrian archi-
tect and artist Walter Pichler, to open at the end of 2008.
The Technological Change Lab is a re-
search and advisory program associated with Columbia’s
University’s Urban Planning program within the Graduate
School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. The
research and philosophical engagement of the Lab is with
the nature of technological and industrial change, and the
manner in which efficiency, equality, and conceptions of
equity are instituted and play out in practice. The Lab’s focus
is on the social and employment relationships within which
technological change is embedded — from pharmaceuti-
cals to construction to communication technologies — and
the nature of markets and corresponding regulation of the
economy. The Technological Change Lab emerged from Prof.
Smita Srinivas’ research on several aspects of technological
change in India and Europe and has since expanded rapidly.
TCL’s research aims to engage several practice, theory, and
philosophical dilemmas that affect national and city-regional
economic development and social policies.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Currently, projects exist on multiple industrial sectors and
their employment and welfare realities, and regions with
ongoing and planned projects across several countries.
There are three ongoing core projects at the TCUSP Lab
using quantitative, qualitative, and visual techniques: 1) the
Employment and Social Protection Institutions study engag-
es the economic, spatial, and industrial sectors and is part of
an ongoing book project of Prof. Srinivas; 2) the Cooperation
by Design study integrates technology, cooperation, and
diffusion models, economics, planning, computer science,
and engineering and is led by Prof. Srinivas and Fred Weber
of the Earth Institute; 3) the Technology Employment and
Regional Inequality project study in India and Brazil looks
at economics, statistics, employment and health analysis,
and regional indicators and is led by Prof. Srinivas and Dr.
Luciana Pereira.
PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICITY
There have been many speaking invitations and invited plenary
presentations in the U.S. and overseas for Prof. Srinivas and the
Technological Change Lab, including the following events:
Joseph Stiglitz’s Columbia University IDG/IGERT
Development and Globalization Third Annual Symposium to
speak on “Globalization and Labor Standards”, April 2008
United Nations/UNESCO (Latin America and Caribbean
Region), a plenary presentation in Montevideo on Science,
Technology, Innovation, and Social Inclusion, March 2008
International Labour Organisation, as an invited speaker to
workshop in Bangalore, India, Nov 2007 and as contributor to
a book on Global Production Networks and Decent Work
Rutgers University Centre for Innovation Studies, to speak
on Health access, and Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology
sectors in India, April 2008.
The Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of
Pennsylvania, an invited op-ed for “One in six globally, but
is India counting its own workers?” (India in Transition); the
editorial is syndicated in the Hindustan paper with an approx.
circulation of 5–10 million readers
Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, as a panelist
for the Women in Design ”International Practice” panel with
Saskia Sassen, Farshid Moussavi and others, March 2008
National Academies of Science, Prof. Srinivas spoke on
S&T vs. Social Policy in the Global Economy: Challenges of
National Industrial Governance to the NSF sponsored Urban
Institute workshop in Washington D.C, Sept. 2007 on India,
China, U.S.
International AIDS vaccines Initiative, New York: completion
of work in 2007 on Vaccine R&D Models of all vaccines to date
and organisational and industrial implications
Advisory Board
Student Research Affiliates
Special thanks to Dean Mark Wigley and Associate Dean
David Hinkle for their support and enthusiasm for the Lab’s
continued expansion and impact and to the GSAPP Finance
office for its assistance.
For more information, please see:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/TCL
In a complex
city in which cultural scenarios overlap, interconnect, and
sometimes collide; in which the temporal dimensions of
each citizen’s experience are dissimilar; in which local and
global, physical and virtual dimensions co-exist, it is nec-
essary to identify a set of design tools that could respond
to design complexity. In the last fifteen years, architects
adopted advanced digital tools such as algorithms, dynamic
relationships, parametric systems, mapping, morphogen-
esis, cellular automata, and bifurcation with broken sym-
metry in order to address this need. The goal of the NSU
is to consolidate research in the field of complex systems
in architecture.
NSU encourages large-scale, interdisciplinary efforts
in which architects, urban planners, engineers, acoustic
engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, and neu-
roscientists can be brought together for collaboration. In
its theoretical analysis and development of research tools,
the NSU has focused on using Complex Adaptive Models for
architecture and on the digital implementation of previously
developed computation methodologies and their transfor-
mation into simple architectural modelling tools. By means
of concrete examples and simplified case studies, inter-
disciplinary teams evaluate individual tools that have the
capability to respond to formal, managerial, and structural
problems in an architectural context. The research work is
integrated into the GSAPP curriculum; research seminars,
symposia, and publications act as the environment for es-
sential components of the experiments.
RECENT PROJECTS
PROTOTYPING THE CITY
The Politecnico di Torino, the Architectural Association,
and Columbia University worked together to produce this
architectural design project. The project involved students
in workshops at the Torino World Design Capital Summer
School and culminated in the invention and production of
a temporary structure for the event Designing Connected
Places. Parametric design systems were used to conceive
this experimental public space.
The research project was developed as a partnership with
Impresa Rosso, creating a direct connection between the
advanced computational design techniques studied in an
academic setting and the reality of professional practice. The
project focused on the qualitative and quantitative under-
standing of algorithmic responsive devices as applied to the
constructed reality of a women’s hospital façade system.
The goal of this study was to develop a project responding,
simultaneously, to interior programmatic shifts as well as
to external site information. The solutions were combined
and mediated between mathematical performance data and
empirical architectural applications.
PARAMETRIC BOOKSHELVES
This project was developed for the Italian Fashion Firm
GB Sportelli, in collaboration with Nuova Ordentra. It was
a system of aggregated units responding physically to a
variety of spatial requirements. The project investigated
the relationship between a conceptual model and its local
application. The Bookshelves were made using very simple
techniques (2D CNC cuts), allowing for the production of end-
less configurations.
APPLIED RESPONSIVE DEVICES: MESUREABLE AND
NON-MESURABLE FIELDS OF ARCHITECTURE
ARD‘s objective is to develop a direct connection between
the expression of a specific expectation (functional, formal,
and aesthetic) and its achievement through the development
of a code-based model. ARD innovation includes the way in
which quantitative and qualitative parameters (i.e. social,
physical, sensorial, cultural, and economic) are aggregated
in order to emphasise the concept of formal adaptation.
From a methodological point of view the ARD process
takes advantage of research done in other scientific fields.
In ARD methodology the first step consists of articulating
goals, analyzing existing conditions, and translating them
into inputs for a digital model. From an epistemological
perspective ARD’s research operates as an heuristic device
aiming to challenge the boundary existing between the mea-
surable and non-measurable dimensions in architecture.
CONFERENCES + EXHIBITIONS
Politecnico di Torino
Non Linear Design Strategies, Architecture and Complexity
www.polito.it
Emerging Possibilities of Testing and Simulation Methods
and Techniques in Contemporary Construction Teaching,
Faculté Polytechnique de Mons
http://www.eaae.be/eaae2/documents/event_associated/
event40CallForWorkshop.pdf
Institut Architectura Avancada de Cataluna
Applied Responsive Devices
www.iaacblog.com
Ghent University, International Conference
ANALOGOUS SPACES
http://www.analogousspaces.com/default_analog_hp.aspx
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture
EAAE/ARCC 2008: Changes of paradigms in the basic under-
standing of architectural research
http://www.karch.dk/uk/Menu/The+School/Events/EAAE+%
2F+ARCC+2008:+Changes+of+paradigms+in+the+basic+und
erstanding+of+architectural+researc
University College Falmouth
Network of Design
www.networksofdesign.co.uk
Creating an atmosphere
http://www.conferencealerts.com/seeconf.mv?q=ca1x0xsm
Established in September 2006,
the Network Architecture Lab investigates how computation,
communications, and changing social networks impact
architecture and the city. Over the last quarter-century as
technology, economics, the public sphere, culture, urban-
ism — even subjectivity — have mutated, the network has
emerged as the dominant cultural logic. The Netlab seeks to
understand the consequences of these changes and develop
appropriate architectural and urbanistic responses. In doing
so, the Netlab embraces the studio and the seminar as
venues for architectural analysis and speculation, explor-
ing new forms of research through publications, new media
design, film production, and environment design.
During the 2007–2008 academic year, the Netlab
brought to fruition a sustained series of analytic projects.
Published by ACTAR, Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies
in Los Angeles examines a radically changed urban landscape
of out-of-control complexity. Using Los Angeles as a case
study, fifteen essays accompanied by maps by Netlab as-
sociate Leah Meisterlin examine the contemporary city at
three scales of landscape, fabric, and objects. Throughout,
we understand the city as the product of an assemblage of
networked ecologies, e. g. dynamic systems composed of hu-
man, biotic, and artificial agents linked not only by proxim-
ity but also by social, natural, and technological networks.
Networked Publics, done in collaboration with the Annenberg
Center for Communication at the University of Southern Cali-
fornia and published by MIT Press, explores how new and
maturing networking technologies reconfigure the way that
we interact with content, media sources, other individuals
and groups, and the world that surrounds us. Netlab director
Kazys Varnelis also edited The Johnson Tapes: Conversations
Between Robert Stern and Philip Johnson, an oral history
of the twentieth-century architect produced by the Temple
Hoyne Buell Center for American Architecture.
While completing this series of projects, the Netlab is
launching the Network City project. In collaboration with
ACTAR, the Netlab will analyze the last decade of the con-
temporary city, in particular how broadband and wireless
networking technologies and the increasing forces of glo-
balization are transforming the way we regard the global
urban condition. Increasingly, it is common for us to dwell
in multiple spatial conditions at once, to connect to mul-
tiple, dispersed networks for purposes of work, information,
consumption, (social) connection, and play as we physically
navigate the space of the city. In a related book-length work
entitled Network Culture, Varnelis builds on his conclusion to
Networked Publics to explore how new socio-technical condi-
tions frame our world.
The Historic Preservation Program
was started by James Marston Fitch in 1964 and by 1974 had
grown to become an independent Master of Science in the
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
In 1977, when Norman Weiss joined the program’s faculty,
architectural conservation was first established as an aca-
demic discipline in America. From those beginnings the
Conservation Sector now comprises eight faculty members,
led by its Director of Conservation, Dr. George Wheeler, and
offers over eleven courses.
The broader goal of the sector is to provide students
with a basic understanding of the historical technologies
involved in the production and/or fabrication, modes and
manifestations of deterioration, and means and methods
of maintenance, repair, and conservation of the materials
of architecture. Based on this broader knowledge, specific
skills are developed in field examination and documentation,
analysis, and both laboratory and field testing and evaluation
of conservation treatments and repair methods.
THE CURRICULUM
Exposure to historic technologies and to the properties
of materials of architecture begins in the two-semester
Structures, Systems, and Materials sequence and is further
developed in the three-semester Architecture Conservation
sequence. In this later sequence, maintenance, repair,
and conservation techniques are also explored. Teaching
methodologies include lectures, site visits and field dem-
onstrations, training sessions, and laboratory testing and
analysis. The Conservation Workshop focuses on site-
specific field documentation of structures, materials, and
their conditions, field and laboratory testing and analysis,
and developing recommendations for treatment. In the past
two years, the Workshop has focused on properties in New
York City’s Historic House Trust — The Bartow-Pell Mansion
and The Van Cortlandt House Museum. The collaboration
has been supported Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The above
core offerings are augmented by lectures, seminars, and
laboratory courses in Conservation of Archaeological Sites,
Architectural Finishes in America, Analytical Methods in
Architectural Conservation, Architectural Metals and
Conservation of Architectural Stone. In addition, a twelve-
week summer internship and a thesis are required. A list of
recent thesis titles is given below.
Core Courses
Structures Systems and Materials 1 + 2
History of Technology of Architecture
Principles of Materials Science for Architectural Materials
Principles of Engineering for Architecture
Architecture Conservation 1, 2 + 3
Technology, Deterioration, Evaluation, and Conservation of
Architectural Materials
Advanced Courses
Architectural Metals
Technology, Deterioration, and Treatment
Architectural Finishes in America
Technology and Conservation
Conservation Archaeological Sites
Problems of Conservation in Archaeological Environments
Analytical Methods in Architecture Conservation
Advanced Instrumental Analysis
Conservation Workshop
Documentation and Field Work
Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Architecture
(in development)
Engineering Diagnostics and Conservation of 20th
Century Architecture
RECENT THESIS TITLES
Lime Mortar Models, Curing and Conservation: Fort
Laramie National Historic Site, Wyoming
Borates as a Wood Preservative
Let It Grow: Climbing Vines Do Not Have To Be Removed
From Buildings
The Electrical Resistance Moisture Meter and Infrared
Thermography: Assessing the Effectiveness of Two
Non-Destructive Techniques for Moisture Diagnosis in
Structure Contaminated by Hygroscopic Salts
Natural Extractives as Wood Preservatives: The Potential
of Phytochemicals in Preservation
Proprietary Alkoxysilane Systems and their Efficacy on
Fine-Grained Marble
Casein as a Modifier for Lime-Based Grouts
Physical and Intangible Palimpsest: Making a Case for
Graffiti Preservation
Calcium Bicarbonate as a Consolidation Material for
Calcareous Stone
Biological Growth and Historic Garden Sculpture: the
Case of Villa La Pietra
Lincrusta-Walton: History of a Versatile Embossed
Wallcovering
An Evaluation of Adhesives Used for Marble Repair
Ethyl Silicates as an Alternative Binder for Grout and
Mortar for Use with American Sandstones
Creep and Fatigue in Stone Adhesives
An Evaluation of Pinning Materials for Marble Repair
Cleaning Historic Building Interiors: The Question of
Residue Using Arte Mundit® Cleaning Paste
Conserving Dalle de Verre: New Approaches to a
Modern Material
The Space/Time interface Lab was founded
in 2007 as a means of experimenting with new temporal
technologies that influence both the experience and pro-
duction of space, whether architectural, urban, or virtual.
As a research unit of the GSAPP, this interdisciplinary lab
brings together research and methods from the fields of
film and video, social history, visual cultural studies, infor-
mation visualization and database design, and urban and
spatial mapping to examine the changing role of percep-
tion, memory, and space in our current digital age. If the
museological turn of today’s culture — that is the storage
of massive quantities of information on-line and in hard
drives, the archiving of images and artifacts by museums
and individuals, and the preservation of entire urban dis-
tricts and pristine landscapes — has had a profound effect
on how places are lived in and transformed, then how might
a more nuanced understanding of these new temporal forces
assist the architects, planners, and artists who shape our
environment? The Space/Time interface Lab’s experimental
projects seek to bring together institutions and designers to
innovate new ways of visualizing and presenting the cultural
memory and history of under represented publics.
VISIBLE HISTORY PROJECT
A forthcoming STiL collaboration, the Visible History Project,
creates a virtual museum whose database houses images
and documents from little known nineteenth- and twentieth-
century black museums and expositions in the United States.
Expandable and flexible, the navigable database extensively
catalogues these previously invisible institutions and events
from the period of Reconstruction to the present. The new
virtual museum will re-present the curatorial ethic of those
who crafted the exhibitions whose ideological messages
ranged from racial uplift to Pan Africanism to Civil Rights
to Black Nationalism. Detailed information will be available
about particular exhibits, thus highlighting the relevance of
visual and material culture in the development of black his-
toriography. As a database the collection offers the prospect
of navigating the virtual space of the exhibition and visual-
izing the content of the exhibits in ways unimagined by those
who crafted the original expositions and buildings.
The Shape of Two Cities: New York/Paris Program is designed
to develop a student’s critical appreciation of urban forms,
their genesis, and the role of architecture, preservation, and
planning in the creation of the contemporary urban environ-
ment. As a one-year intensive liberal arts program with a
strong studio component, the curriculum focuses on both
design issues and the urban history and theory of these two
cities. In addition the program provides an introduction to
the disciplines of architecture, urban studies, and planning
for highly motivated undergraduates who have completed at
least two years of study at their home institutions. Previous
study in these disciplines is not required for admission to the
program, allowing students from a broad range of academic
and professional backgrounds to participate. The program’s
curriculum is designed to provide students with a better
understanding of the design and urban studies disciplines
as they are practiced in both New York and Paris, offering
a unique context that engages students as well as critics
and instructors from architecture, urban studies, and other
fields with a critical dialogue across cultures using two of
the world’s great cities.
New York and Paris are important global cities, each
still representative of its highly unique culture. For students
these cities offer an ideal opportunity to explore the histori-
cal, social, and political development of urban form, and to
clarify the roles of architects, planners, and preservationists
upon it. During the first semester the students are enrolled
at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Pres-
ervation in New York and enjoy the resources of the School
and Columbia University. In the following semester students
are based at Reid Hall, Columbia University’s center for
French cultural studies, located in the center of the Mont-
parnasse district in Paris. Reid Hall offers reading rooms,
lounges, a 4,000-volume library, administrative offices, and
an extensive network of activities to help students bridge the
gap between American and French cultures. The program
offers two studio options, Architecture and Urban Studies,
with a core curriculum supporting both concentrations. The
core curriculum consists of lecture courses and seminars
that help ground research projects in the physical, intel-
lectual, historical, and cultural contexts of both New York
and Paris, providing students with critical analytical meth-
ods with which to interpret the development of urban form.
Course work is supplemented by visiting lecturers and critics
representing both the professional and academic communi-
ties in each city. Students who elect the Architectural Design
Studio pursue a series of increasingly complex studio proj-
ects that focus on the analysis, creation, and representation
of urban architecture. The Urban Studies Workshop engages
students with a studio-based approach to the issues and
discourse of the contemporary city by exploring a variety of
conceptual, analytical, and design tools for understanding
and operating within urban contexts.
The Shape of Two Cities draws students from colleges
and universities across the nation, with new schools elect-
ing to participate each year. The program offers thirty-two
course credits applicable toward Bachelor of Arts or Bach-
elor of Architecture degrees granted by participating institu-
tions. Enrollment is limited to 35 students and provides an
excellent preparation for graduate and professional study.
Upon graduating from their respective institutions, many
students are admitted to graduate programs in architecture,
urban planning, and historic preservation at universities in-
cluding Columbia, Harvard, M.I.T., Pennsylvania, and Yale.
In the fall semester of the New
York/Paris program students created a dense emergent
surface, a matrix of 16 panels that informed a final design
proposal. The semester began with a one week design
problem: creating a path linking two of Central Park’s great
museums — the American Museum of Natural History and
the Metropolitan Museum of Art — and a pavilion housing
an artifact of interest to both: Olmstead’s Greensward com-
petition entry drawing. At the end of the semester students
revisited and transformed this path and pavilion, re-pro-
gramming it to house a café/bodega.
Intervening between these two design projects was the
bulk of the students work, a matrix of panels. Each panel
represented one of twelve one-week analysis and design
projects. These projects, a tactical survey of drawing and
demonstrating, manufacturing and mapping, hopscotch
back and forth between two cities — an actual site in New
York and a virtual site in Paris — and ascended and descend-
ed along a scale of six different operational dimensions:
clothes, chair, room, building, street, and city. The project
emerged as one of sampling and re-mixing, sequencing and
re-sequencing, figuration and reconfiguration, all at intimate
and urban scales.
A wide range of material practices and representational
techniques, from metal-forging to orthographic manipula-
tion, were deployed. Inspired by Perec, Cortezar, Calvino, and
other literary practitioners of misdirection, students aimed
for intensities, densities, and the shapes of two cities.
Using New York City as a model, the Urban Studies studio
aimed to investigate and challenge limitations of the con-
temporary instigators impacting the development of the
new urban landscape. Twentieth-century New York enjoyed
a reputation as a prototype for urban life, in all of its cultural
and industrial manifestations. However, in the current global
environment New York’s status is being challenged against
a new set of localized conditions. These include changes in
land value, use, and zoning, shifts in various levels of policy,
stewardship, and ownership (public, private, or public/pri-
vate) to the reconfiguration and implementation of complex
and interrelated natural and synthetic systems. The studio’s
initial ecological and sociological research investigated the
role of these fields in the critical configuration and manipula-
tion of both physical form and abstract space. From the con-
sideration of natural ecologies and economic trends toward
regulation of density and urban form or the negotiation of
the history and culture of a place, New York’s Waterfront
City in the making today allowed the Urban Studies studio to
explore and test the potential impact of our environmental
choices on the urban and the larger region facing ongoing
new transformations.
This semester the Paris
Design Studio reflected upon two orthogonal coordinates:
X, represented by the Périphérique ring road and acting as a
physical, cultural, and sociological demarcation line between
Paris and its suburbs; and Y, represented by the North/South
geographic meridian of the Enlightenment, passing through
the Paris Observatory and exemplifying the power of reason
and abstract thought. Structured by these two physical and
conceptual coordinates, a strip, two miles long and half a
mile wide, was selected, starting at Place Denfert-Rochereau
and ending in suburban Gentilly, beyond the Périphérique.
Tools were devised to observe, explore, and analyze the site
in view of establishing a programmatic and spatial scenario
for design: 1) layers of factual and phenomenological maps
leading to geographic, historical, and perceptual briefs for
selected urban “moments;” 2) machines that are the codi-
fied and abstracted spatial and tectonic transcription, and
the manifestation of the architectural DNA of four iconic
Parisian buildings; 3) the figura, an urban profile intended
to reveal and articulate the program’s typical spaces, atypi-
cal spaces, and structure, in relation to the site’s capacities
and potential for saturation. Students selected a portion of
their figura to be developed architecturally, using the map-
ping briefs and the machines as tools to inform the project
and test its spatial and urban assumptions.
The spring urban studies workshop aimed at developing criti-
cal tools to approach contemporary urban issues and site spe-
cific research. Through a sequence of exercises or “frames”
combining different modes of analysis (empirical, icono-
graphical, historical) students engaged with selected themes
or issues related to chosen sites, but also with the manner in
which perception of the city is conditioned by different forms of
representation (maps, photography, cinema, advertising, etc.).
This reflexive dimension of “reading” the city was a central
issue throughout the course of the studio, accompanying and
informing each student’s personal site research.
Investigations focused on the Saint Blaise quarter in
the 20th arrondissement of Paris, which is currently part
of a major urban renewal project sponsored by the French
State. The task was to observe and analyze the interplay of
different actors, uses, and social and spatial conditions so as
to elaborate critical models for future development. Special
attention was devoted to community-based initiatives as they
pertain to the design and use of public space.
Architecture holds a unique position in a liberal
arts curriculum, and a liberal arts education in architecture
holds a unique position in relationship to the discipline. In
recent years, architecture has expanded its role in the world
to become as much an intellectual practice as a technical
practice. If the goal of a professional education in archi-
tecture is to prepare students to participate in the world as
practicing architects, a liberal arts education in architecture
introduces the student to the scope and range by which that
is possible. It explores the vast and continuously evolving
landscape of architectural ideas and practices, whether
related to the built environment or to related disciplines. It
establishes a mind-set; an intellectual foundation for under-
standing architecture before the practice of architecture
even begins. The purpose of an undergraduate education is
to teach students to think about and through architecture as
a way to understand the world.
In architecture courses, we establish an intellectual
context for students to participate in the ongoing construc-
tion of knowledge about the relation of form, space, and
materials to human life and thought. We cultivate models
of inquiry that engage speculation on the built environment
and its potentials and teach students how to use many dif-
ferent media to represent their ideas. Students learn to see
architecture as one of many forms of cultural production,
and their work as inquiry into the larger ideas and issues
that animate a liberal arts curriculum: what is the relation
of people and the structures they make to nature and the
environment, to specific sites and needs, to the micro and
macro forces that influence our experiences, to the forces
of history, politics, or economics, and to the ideologies and
aesthetics of the day?
Barnard and Columbia Colleges offer a major in archi-
tecture introduced through a series of studio and academic
courses that explore the multiple relationships between ar-
chitectural design, history, theory, and criticism. Students
are expected to develop technical skills, design excellence,
and a critical understanding of architecture as part of our
visual, social, and political history and culture. There are
two tracks to the architecture major: the first, while incor-
porating lectures, seminars, and scholarly research, is more
strongly studio-based and; the second, while incorporating
introductory level design studios, is focused on the history
and theory of architecture, and is more strongly allied with
the Art History departments.
The required sequence of courses begins with two in-
troductory design studios, Architectural Representation:
Abstraction and Perception, and the introductory lecture
course Perceptions of Architecture. Together, these cours-
es provide a foundation of material both majors continue to
build upon. The studio-based major requires Architectural
Design I and II, a two-semester design studio that introduces
students to more rigorous conceptual, social, and theoreti-
cal study through comprehensive design projects. Senior
course work includes senior seminars, an advanced elective
design studio, or independent research, and a thesis for stu-
dents completing a history/theory major. The curriculum for
both majors requires that students complement their work
in the major with related course work in other disciplines,
providing a link between architecture and other social and
cultural issues.
All departmental courses are developed by faculty in
relationship to overall curricular goals and evolving depart-
mental pedagogy, with many courses team-taught. While
most courses are longstanding traditions, each year the
department is intentionally infused with new input from
the Special Topics in Architecture courses and the interests
fore-grounded by the Emergent Architect Visiting Faculty po-
sition. The department is committed to continually strength-
ening its relationship to NYC and has therefore developed
this adjunct visiting teaching position as a bridge to the city
— an opportunity to expand our dialogue with our colleagues
and a chance to support emerging architectural talent.
The major, while independently directed by Barnard
College, is closely linked to the Graduate School of Archi-
tecture, Planning and Preservation through both on-going
pedagogical discussions as well as through our teaching
assistants who are current students from various gradu-
ate programs. Courses in the major, as well as field trips
and other events, take full advantage of our location in
New York City, and many of our students gain experience
through internships in the city. The major has an active stu-
dent club, Architecture Society, that supports workshops
for students and links students to the larger community.
Those majors who choose to apply to graduate school are
regularly accepted at the most competitive graduate pro-
grams in the country.
This course served as
an introduction to architectural design as an analytical,
representational, and productive act. Emphasis was placed
on an understanding of iterative and informed process and
the development of a methodology for both working and cri-
tique. Students were asked to work through various analyti-
cal and conceptual approaches in order to critique existing
and potential visual, spatial, and programmatic conditions.
Students worked through various modes of representation
(collage, sketching, orthographic drawing, physical model
etc.) and were encouraged to experiment with ways of
making. Ultimately, the class explored the “what,” “why,”
and “how” involved in the generation of design.
This course was specifically designed for students
majoring in departments other than architecture. Students
were encouraged to fold their individual academic interests
into their work and class discussions, in the hope that a
cross-pollination of ideas and perspectives would enrich the
overall architectural discourse in its various contexts (social,
historical, spatial etc.).
This course explored the conventions of
the representational language of architecture. Both two-
dimensional orthographic projection (plan, section, eleva-
tion) and three-dimensional elaborations (axonometric,
model) were used to analyze space and were investigated for
their abilities to reveal and conceal relationships in space.
Particular emphasis was placed on the revelatory value and
limitation of this abstract language — a language that is both
a concise method for abstracting architectural space (as an
analytical tool) and a generative method for speculating on
design (a conceptual ignition).
The course posed a series of challenges that allowed for
the sequential development of both technical skills and con-
ceptual thinking. While developing independent approaches
and projects, all sections of this course incorporated a proj-
ect that used either an existing building or urban space as
the subject for a field of inquiry concerning the making and
the meaning of abstract architectural representation. That
investigation involved three projects designed as a process
for critical analysis and production: documentation, analy-
sis, and invention/intervention. All projects required creative
thinking and precise execution with refined craft in the ser-
vice of ideas.
This course introduced
visual perception as a catalyst for the critique, representa-
tion, and design of architecture. Students learned to use and
analyze various spatial media to invent and represent archi-
tectural space. Emphasis was placed on developing a criti-
cal understanding of how space is perceived as well as how
different media can be deliberately manipulated, controlled,
and constructed as part of a creative and inventive design
process. While the course reflected on the historical and cul-
tural production of visual perception, it primarily conducted
this inquiry through making, drawing, and building. Issues
of inhabiting and experiencing a specific space, such as the
activities performed, the perception of that performance,
and the physical attributes of the space, were explored as
part of the creative development of projects.
Source media included photographs, drawings, films,
videos, models, objects, games, texts, and virtual and real
spaces. This material provided both the focus and the me-
dium of the analysis and design. The multiple methods of
analytical and representation skills that students developed
functioned as generative tools in continued design work,
forming the basis for critiquing existing space and media,
and for generating new spaces and their representations.
In this two-semester sequence, students investi-
gate architectural design as a mode of cultural communica-
tion as well as imaginative experimentation. As the studio
sequence evolved, emphasis was increasingly placed on the
relationship between material, tectonic, and programmatic
organization and the social and cultural contexts of a site
of investigation.
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 1: CENTER, PERIPHERY,
DENSITY + DISPERSAL, END/BEGIN?
“It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude...”
—Charles Baudelaire, “Crowds,” Paris Spleen, 1869
“The sound of gates gives way to the clatter of data banks...”
— Paul Virilio, “The Overexposed City,” 1991
The city of den-
sity and proximity may not be the only way to understand
cities like New York, but Baudelaire’s image of the urban
intensity remains at the heart of many urban and non-urban
projects, even as a simulation. Yet lest we fall into the trap of
romance by taking Virilio’s statement as a mere lament that
the drastic changes to the physical and social fabric of the
city somehow signal the “end” of the city, architects must
continually reconsider how the older layers of the city will
operate under new ways of looking and thinking. Mindful of
the changes wrought by telematics, we might still look upon
the unavoidable if not quite knowable corporeality of the city
with a new sense of possibility. The spaces and politics of
the city might still generate new interventions. This semes-
ter examined two of the many layers that make up cities
and regions — the dense fabric of the mid-block passages
of midtown Manhattan and the frayed edges of the island’s
changing waterfront. What is possible in these familiar yet
changing sites? Students took on the tensions and possi-
bilities first of the mid-block passages with the design of an
insertion for a new type of exchange or interaction, then at
the water’s edge with the design of a bike-share station.
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 2: THE EXPANDED LIBRARY
The New York Public Library branch system, planned
and built with money from Andrew Carnegie in 1901, exempli-
fied, at its best, an ideal of distributed access to knowledge
that would “improve” those that partook of a library’s offer-
ings. Today, the 85 branch libraries are perhaps one of the
rare instances of (legally) public interior space, and these
facilities are used by a wide cross section of the population.
In addition to their traditional role of offering books and peri-
odicals, the branches serve as community information nodes
and computer centers. These new roles challenge, redefine,
and enrich the tradition of local access to knowledge. This
semester was intended to push further the ongoing changes
and possibilities for the branch library in an increasingly glo-
balized social realm.
The programmatic detail is a small-scale design in-
vestigation into the connections among material, program,
and physical and psychological space. The programmatic
detail is the transformation of static, determined program
elements into integrated, dynamic space(s) that materially
engage and chart the relationship between the body in space
and its movement in time. It may be a building block or mor-
phological code and is generative of a more complex spatial
system or architecture; it may be one instance of a larger
whole yet to be determined. Building on their programmatic
details, students designed an expanded branch library that
would not only provide all the opportunities of a branch li-
brary in the New York Public Library System but also include
facilities for a unique program, the Center for Urban Peda-
gogy (CUP), that would engage students, the larger public,
and professionals in projects about the urban environment.
Sited in Lower Manhattan, this project transfigured the
students’ research into the activities of a library — read-
ing, searching, consuming, borrowing, meeting — and the
building systems that support them — enclosure, structure,
aperture, security, display. The programmatic detail was an
intensification of these relationships, un-sited and fragmen-
tary. The expanded library project was the development of
those relationships into a sited whole.
The development of new technologies
and the design strategies they have fostered have allowed
two prevalent notions of design practice to be challenged.
Architectural documentation no longer needs to be
understood as representing a designer’s intentions. More
than ever before, architects have the opportunity to simu-
late their virtual intentions and test them prior to actualiza-
tion. Simulation packages allow for virtual testing, such as
finite element analysis (FEA), and computer numerically
controlled machines (CNC) allow for the scaled physical
output of ideas. These possibilities allow the architects
greater control over the materials and resistances the work
will encounter when actualized.
These opportunities allow for closer collaboration
with the consultants and trades that, previously, assumed
responsibility for integrating building systems, such as
structure, the conditioning of air, life-safety, etc. into the
architect’s design intentions. The result many times was a
compromised or value-engineered built condition. This no-
tion of systems integration had largely been outside of the
academy’s scope of architectural education.
Can a building be thought of as a measured construct
of the multiple systems that give it form — a calibrated and
performance-based organization? The idea here is that ar-
chitecture is not a slave to building systems; rather, each
system becomes architectural in its spatial configuration
and its ability to produce effects.
The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American
Architecture was founded in 1982. Its mission is to advance
the study and appreciation of American architecture, urban-
ism, and landscape. A separately endowed entity within the
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation,
it sponsors lecture series, conferences, exhibitions, publica-
tions, fellowships, and awards programs.
Over the last two years, the Buell Center’s program has
been focused on the FORuM Project, dedicated to rethink-
ing the relationship of architectural form to urban and con-
temporary life. The project culminated this spring with the
launch of a six-book publication series, the presentation of
an exhibition entitled “Form as Strategy,” and a symposium.
A highlight of the exhibition was Guy Debord’s original Game
of War, shown for the first time in the United States.
The Buell Center also inaugurated the Paul and Naomi
Goodman Fellowship this year, an award of up to $20,000
for a graduating student to carry out a project of social
significance related to the interests of Percival Goodman
in the year after graduation. Goodman (1904–89) was an
architect, planner, and social thinker who taught at Colum-
bia for twenty-five years. The fellowship is underwritten by
Raymond Lifchez, a GSAPP alumnus. The first recipient is
Avik Maitra, whose project, “Radecology: Malawi,” is aimed
at finding new ways to prevent and contain malaria in Malawi
through improvements in organizational systems and build-
ing techniques.
Joan Ockman stepped down as director of the Buell
Center in June after fourteen years. Reinhold Martin was
named her successor.
BUELL EVENTS
Lectures
Panel Discussion
Debate + Book Launch
Book Launch
Located on the lower floors of Avery Hall and its exten-
sion, the world’s leading architectural library supports the
work of students and faculty at the School by providing,
within a series of spaces designed for study and learning, a
wealth of research materials and outstanding reference and
access services. Orientation tours of the library, offered to
students at the beginning of the fall and summer semesters,
are strongly recommended.
The Avery Architectural Library was founded in 1890,
following a gift to Columbia by Samuel Putnam Avery. The
university’s Fine Arts Library was added in 1978 and the re-
named Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library now holds
over 400,000 non-circulating books and periodicals related
to architecture, urban planning, art history, archaeology,
historic preservation, and the decorative arts.
The Library’s recently updated web site offers the best
introduction to its collections and services (www.columbia.
edu/cu/lweb/indiv/avery/index.html). The book collection
begins with the first printed text devoted to architecture,
Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria (Florence, 1485),
and continues with holdings of unique depth and extraordi-
nary range through to the present. Avery also includes the
Ware Memorial Library, a circulating collection of over 9,000
books on architecture, urban planning, and real estate.
Over one million documents make up Avery’s Draw-
ings and Archives collection, including original drawings
by masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier;
original photographs by Lewis Hine, Joseph Molitor, Samuel
Gottscho and others; and the complete or partial archives of
many major American practices, such as Richard Upjohn,
Alexander Jackson Davis, Greene & Greene, Warren & Wet-
more, Harold van Buren Magonigle, Stanford White, Wal-
lace K. Harrison, Gordon Bunshaft, Philip Johnson and the
Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company. The collection
is a major source for historical exhibitions and for primary
research in architecture. Available by appointment, the col-
lection welcomes students, scholars, and professionals.
Avery Library also produces the Avery Index to Architec-
tural Periodicals, now an operating program of the J. Paul
Getty Trust. Begun in 1934, it is the most extensive periodical
index in the field of architecture, and provides citations to
over 600,000 articles in architectural and related periodi-
cals. The Avery Index is accessible to students as one of the
databases offered on LibraryWeb.
Avery Library began a long-awaited process of reno-
vation and expansion in 2003. Phase one mainly consisted
of the creation of a new Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Study
Center for Art and Architecture, equipped with new storage,
processing and study facilities for Avery’s Drawings and
Archives collection and for the University’s art properties.
Avery’s ground floor reading room, designed in 1911 by Wil-
liam Mitchell Kendall of the McKim, Mead and White firm,
has also been renovated and renamed the Miriam and Ira
D. Wallach Reading Room. It is linked to the Wallach Study
Center by a 1970s underground extension designed by the
late Professor Alexander Kouzmanoff.
The School is the beneficiary of a consid-
erable bequest from the late William Kinne Fellows and has
at its purpose the enrichment of students’ education through
travel. Traditional procedures of disbursement include indi-
vidual, non-competitive grants for summer travel for second
year architecture and first year preservation and planning
students, third year achitecture studio trips, and a limited
number of competitive scholarships for two to three months
of travel open to all graduating students in the school.
The GSAPP Committee on Fellowships and Awards
decides each year how to disburse the annual interest of
the William Kinne Fellows Trust, according to the following
procedure: available funds are divided among the programs
in the school, proportionate to the length of each program
and the number of students enrolled.
This year the
Publications Department of the GSAPP produced a series
of publications that together represent the interdisciplinary
activity of the school and its embrace of experimental prac-
tices. Major publications include Living Archive 7: Ant Farm
(ACTAR), edited by Felicity Scott as part of a series of publi-
cations that reassess prominent archives related to seminal
moments in architectural production.
The New Urbanisms series also continued with the
publication of New Urbanisms 10: Designing Patch Dynamics,
edited by Brian McGrath, Victoria Marshall, Richard Plunz,
Joel Towers, M.L. Cadenasso, J. Morgan Grove, and S.T.A.
Pickett. The work of the Spatial Information Design Lab led
by Laura Kurgan published three pamphlets of their innova-
tive research: Scenario Planning Workshop, The Pattern, and
Architecture and Justice. Serial publications include Volume,
produced by C-LAB, Archis, and AMO as well as Future Ante-
rior, and the Real Estate Roundtable series. The publications
program also continues to support the work of GSAPP stu-
dents in studios and seminars, as characterized by Kathryn
Dean’s Constructive Practices — Between Economy and De-
sire and the latest in the series of collaborations between
the Department of Architecture and Historic Preservation,
Building on Templo Mayor. Forthcoming publications include
Engineered Transparency — The Technical, Visual and Spatial
Effects of Glass (Princeton Architectural Press), a volume
generated by the interdisciplinary conference held in the fall
of 2008; Part Animal, a book that emerges from dialogues
generated by two conferences convened by Catherine Ingra-
ham; Living Archive 5: Gordon Matta-Clark, the next volume in
the Living Archive series which invites reexamination of the
Anarchitecture group; the launch of the Research Notebook
series, a publication generated by the research initiatives
of the Ph.D. program which begins with a reconsideration
of Shadrach Woods’ Paris-Nord project; and The Colors of
the Brain, a book that represents the three-part collabora-
tion between The Museum of Modern Art and Studio Olafur
Eliasson in the spring of 2008.
The major exhibitions mounted at the GSAPP
this year continued two series of projects. Ant Farm:
Radical Hardware and “Build in Uncertainty”: Unpacking
the Shadrach Woods Archive exhibited in the Arthur Ross
Architecture Gallery add to The Living Archive, a growing
body of exhibitions that interrogate and open pivotal archi-
tectural archives to public view and to conceptual reexami-
nation. Michael Meredith: Glimmering Noise continues a set
of exhibitions of contemporary architectural experiments
with media forms and strategies.
ANT FARM: RADICAL HARDWARE
Ant Farm: Radical Hardware presented
an early period of work by the experimental architecture col-
lective Ant Farm. Curated by Felicity Scott and Mark Wasiuta,
the exhibition tracked Ant Farm’s prescient and critical
encounter with the spaces and apparatuses of the “video-
sphere” across a range of projects and media ecologies.
The exhibition pursued the question of how this young
group of radical architects would begin to experiment with
video as a form of environmental research and architectural
production, and how their early projects would begin to en-
gage and subvert official media networks to offer alterna-
tives to an emerging telecommunications space saturated
with administered images. Appropriating both military and
media strategies Ant Farm waged an “image war” through
various “image technologies.” Among other targets, obso-
lete spaces, infrastructures, and outmoded forms of inhabi-
tation were under attack.
Reflecting the wide-reaching practice of Ant Farm, the
exhibition included 35 mm slides, video footage, projected
films, do-it-yourself manuals, and plans for van conversions,
as well as the “linear media” of architectural drawings, blue-
prints, photo collages, letters, mail art, and other archival
materials. The exhibition brought together documents from
the collection of Ant Farm patron, Marilyn Oshman, from the
Ant Farm archive at the Berkeley Art Museum, and from Ant
Farm members Chip Lord and Curtis Schreier.
At the core of the exhibition were thirteen early Ant Farm
video projects, from the diaristic Ant Farm’s Dirty Dishes, to
the environmental data recording of World’s Longest Bridge
to the Ant Farm collaboration with TVTV (Top Value Televi-
sion) and their alternate coverage of the 1972 Republican
and Democratic conventions. An important opportunity for
the exhibition was to participate in the Ant Farm video res-
toration project with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film
Archive. Several of the videos appeared in the exhibition as
result of this shared project.
Through the video work and other early projects the
exhibition focused on the imbrication of Ant Farm’s media
practices and their spatial propositions. In Electronic Oa-
sis psychedelic images were projected as background for
Ant Farm’s performances. In Truckstop Network, inflatable
nodes, animated by 35 mm slides and video images, would
help organize alternate communities and economies built on
“energy credits.” In The House of The Century the domestic
interior was infiltrated by communication devices and media
archives. Yet Ant Farm image technology not only posited
spaces intensely occupied by images but also offered a rec-
ognition of a newly formed media environment distributed
across several networks and regimes of power. Ant Farm’s
projects claimed their own image power and argued the ne-
cessity of occupying the temporal, spatial flux of the media
environment, while proposing a recoding of those networks
and infrastructures, out of which would emerge new ecologi-
cally oriented spaces and for which radical hardware would
have to continually evolve.
“BUILD IN UNCERTAINTY”: UNPACKING THE SHADRACH
WOODS ARCHIVE
“Build in Uncertainty” marked the
arrival of the Shadrach Woods papers at Avery Library from
the generous donation of Val Woods. The exhibition col-
lected key documents from this archive, sampling a range
of material from the early years of Woods collaboration with
his partners at the office Candilis-Josic-Woods, to his own
later writing and independent design practice.
The curators stressed that for Woods the call to “build
in uncertainty” was a provocation to work within an uncer-
tain social and urban environment and toward an uncertain
future. The exhibition allowed an additional uncertainty: the
relation between Woods’ large scale planning and architec-
tural projects, and his later speculations on the social role
of architecture, articulated in his theoretical texts, Urbanism
is Everybody’s Business and Man in the Street.
The tensions among these various uncertain rela-
tions and modes of work helped structure the exhibition.
Documents around the perimeter of the gallery mapped the
historical evolution of Woods’ work through several major
phases and projects. A timeline beginning with work for the
Atelier des Batisseurs (ATBAT) moved through designs for
housing in France, the Berlin Free University, major urban
planning schemes, and other episodes of the Candilis-Josic-
Woods office, and ended with Woods’ own practice, his stud-
ies of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and other projects
for New York City in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. At the
center of the gallery documents exhibited the development
of the “stem,” the “web” and other of Woods’ most impor-
tant conceptual and formal strategies. These documents
reveal Woods as not only an important architect, but also as
an important intellectual contributor to pressing post-war
debates on the questions of form, urban organization and
social space. A collection of related documents and texts
from Woods’ research, lectures, and other writings opened
up Woods’ role as pedagogue.
Curated by doctoral students Elsa Lam and Brad Wal-
ters the exhibition benefited from the contributions of many
participants. The initial impetus for the exhibition came from
Mary McLeod and was given important direction through the
work of students in her doctoral seminar, organized around
study of the Woods archive. A series of contemporary pho-
tographs of projects by Candilis-Josic-Woods, taken by Mat-
thew Worsnick in conjunction with a research trip for the
seminar, was exhibited in Avery Hall concurrent with the
exhibition in Ross Auditorium.
MICHAEL MEREDITH: GLIMMERING NOISE
Michael Meredith’s video project, Glimmering Noise,
recalls the media experiments of architectural practices from
the 1960’s and 1970’s, and their critical encounters with film
and video. At the same time the project is equally in conversa-
tion with a more conventional form of media — network televi-
sion — and associated forms of public performance.
The video stages an anachronistic encounter between
Meredith and a television talk show host, modeled on Wil-
liam F. Buckley from the 1960’s era of his program, Firing
Line. A conceit of the project is that the host’s dialogue is
assembled from quotations of Meredith’s own texts. The host
appears both as Meredith’s other voice, and as throwback to
the fraught political era of late 1960s. Meredith cites his “re-
pulsive fascination” for Buckley and his aggressive telegenic
performance. The video plays on this ambivalence through
the asymmetry of the dialogue; the Buckley character deliv-
ers a stream of Tafuri citations, exhortations to beauty and
lamentations on architecture’s obscurity while Meredith,
hesitant and uncertain, sits in near mute response.
The project at once establishes and erodes a connec-
tion between the two characters and between historical pe-
riods. While the video is entranced by the performance of the
host, by his generational power, and by the conviction of his
declarations, the interruptions register most clearly. Glim-
mering Noise is ultimately positioned around questions and
expressions of doubt. Acting through the gaps, stammers,
and breaks in Meredith’s dialogue, this doubt impinges on
the formation of architectural knowledge and the techniques
and spaces of self promotion and publicity into which archi-
tects are increasingly interpolated.
CONFERENCE INSTALLATIONS
Two installations in Avery Hall, conceived in relation
to GSAPP conferences, served as important critical supple-
ments. In conjunction with, Engineered Transparency, AAR
student Rosana Rubio-Hernández designed and installed,
Through Glass, an exhibition that traced a genealogy of
recent “post-industrial glass.” The project examined the
transition from early glass technologies to recent Advanced
Optical Glasses and commented on the architectural signifi-
cance of the evolution toward the dynamic, transformable
character of new glass material. The exhibition asserted that
new forms of glass reveal a range of optical conditions and
scopic possibilities that question the presumed inertness
and simple transparency of architectural glass in both its
modern and recent incarnations.
For the symposium, The Colors of The Brain, faculty
member and Director of publications Jeannie Kim, with the
help of M.Arch students Troy Therrien and Cheryl Wing-zi
Wong, installed a complex geometric landscape. The sym-
posium examined current theories and scientific studies of
color in and around the work of artist Olafur Eliasson. Where
Eliasson might work with retinal after-images or other per-
ceptual effects, the installation manipulated space percep-
tion by overlapping, and interleaving competing perspectival
views, creating a space of optical illusion that altered and
fluctuated as viewers moved past the installation and came
into focus only from certain defined locations.
Exhibitions Crew:
The school offers a wide range of events in the form of
evening lectures, lunchtime lectures, debates, conferences,
symposia, colloquia, and informal discussions that reflect
the diversity and interests of its programs. Intended to fur-
ther enrich the GSAPP experience, school events are gener-
ally open to the public — inviting all who attend to engage in
the ideas explored and contribute to discussions.
There are more than 250 guest speakers at the school
in a typical semester. The Wednesday evening lecture series
brings internationally prominent practitioners, historians,
and theorists to the school to speak on issues of architec-
ture, planning, development, and urbanism. Often live feeds
broadcast the lectures to many of the rooms throughout the
building and informal receptions follow so that the audience
can continue their discussions on the issues presented.
Monday nights typically feature public debates on major
questions facing the disciplines or discussions of recent
exhibitions, books, and films. In addition, the Architecture,
Urban Design, Planning, Preservation, and Real Estate
Development programs maintain their own lecture series
that are open to the entire school community. The school
and its programs sponsor special symposia and large-scale
conferences — often in collaboration with other universities,
museums, and cultural institutions — drawing prominent
guests, faculty, and students together to discuss issues of
timely and historical importance. There are also impromptu
lunchtime lectures scheduled throughout the semester fea-
turing the recent work of important visitors to New York City
or young practitioners and scholars.
In the 2007-2008 academic year the main GSAPP events
program alone featured roughly 30 lectures, 20 debates, 10
conferences, colloquia and symposia, and book launches
and screenings in addition to many other specialized events
sponsored by the school’s various programs. It is a testa-
ment to the energetic culture of the school that, despite the
fact that (out of necessity) the events are held in the evening,
on weekends, and during lunch, they are typically filled to ca-
pacity, often even exceeding the space that they are intended
for and spilling into hallways and vestibules of the school.
The result of this overwhelming array of events requires
students, professors, and visitors to invent an itinerary,
constructing and refining their own curriculum.
FALL
Lectures
Book Launches
Screenings + Debates
Debates:
Conference
Tech Talks
Screenings
Debate + Exhibition Opening
Discussion + Exhibition Opening
Buell Lectures
SPRING
Lectures
Debates
Book Launches
Debate + Book Launch
Conferences
Symposium
Tech Talks
Screening + Debate
Discussion + Exhibition Opening
Buell Debate + Book Launch
Buell Panel Discussion
Buell Lecture
Buell Book Launch
GSAPP End-of-Year Exhibit
The GSAPP Office of
Development and Alumni Relations, established in 2005, is
dedicated to building a strong framework for alumni com-
munication, collaboration, and networking, and to establish-
ing a strong base of support for the school, its students, and
its programs.
GSAPP ALUMNI SCHOLARSHIP FUND AND THE AVERY
HALL SOCIETY
The Avery Hall Society was created in recognition of GSAPP
annual donors. All Avery Hall society members are acknowl-
edged in the annual GSAPP Alumni Scholarship Fund
Newsletter, and Alumni Leaders receive a special invitation
to the annual Alumni Leaders Dinner with Dean Wigley and
the scholarship recipients. Alumni Contributors donated
$250-$499, Alumni Patrons $500-$999, Alumni Leaders
$1000+, and GSAPP Partners $10000+.
Gsapp Alumni At A Glance
~ 9,060 living GSAPP alumni
Alumni by Program
M.Arch + B.Arch: 2,628+
MsAAD: 1,420+
MsAUD: 681+
MsUP: 956+
MsHP: 802+
MsRED: 914+
Ms ArchTech: 254+
Certificate HP: 5+
Ms Planning/Housing Design: 60+
Ms Health Services Planning/Design: 30+
Alumni by City
2373 New York City
143 San Francisco, CA
123 Los Angeles, CA
92 Chicago, IL
86 Washington, D.C.
63 Philadelphia, PA
63 Seattle, WA
60 Miami, FL
48 Portland, OR
42 Atlanta, GA
THE ONLINE ALUMNI DIRECTORY
The GSAPP Online Alumni Directory was launched in
September, 2006. Membership in the community is free and
available exclusively to GSAPP alumni. The directory allows
alumni to stay in touch with each other, conduct professional
networking, and update their contact and employment infor-
mation. For more information, visit: www.arch.columbia.
edu/alumni
2007-2008 GSAPP ALUMNI EVENTS
Alumni Weekend, October 26-27, 2007
During Alumni Weekend 2007, alumni and friends returned
to Columbia for the School’s third annual Alumni Weekend.
The Class of 1957 celebrated its 50th anniversary alongside
members of the most recent graduating class; the Cohort
of 1968–1975 came back to celebrate their time at GSAPP
and share their extraordinary accomplishments; and we cel-
ebrated Associate Dean Loes Schiller’s commitment to the
School and to our students over the last 37 years. This special
event emphasized this important relationship, and several
new scholarship funds were launched by our ever-generous
alumni to help support current and future students.
The closing dinner was an emotional and unforget-
table evening. As each of the new scholarship funds was
announced, especially those devoted to underrepresented
communities, a sense of history and a deep bond between
generations of graduates of the school intensified. It culmi-
nated with the presentation of the Loes Schiller Endowed
Scholarship Fund and a series of moving tributes to Loes
and her dedication to the School.
EVENTS AND PARTICIPANTS INCLUDED
Keynote Lecture & Reception: On Community
Alumni Leaders Dinner
Special annual event for the Alumni Leaders of the
GSAPP Alumni Scholarship Fund
Panel: Forty Years After the Insurrection
Panel: Manhattanville: The Columbia Expansion
Panel: GSAPP: Urban/ism and Community?
Featuring GSAPP faculty:
DISCUSSIONS & TOURS
Avery Library
Avery Digital Fabrication Laboratory
Manhattanville Walking Tour
Dinner Honoring Associate Dean Loes Schiller
Included a dinner celebration, the announcement of new
awards and scholarship funds and the presentation of the
Loes Schiller Endowed Scholarship Fund.
DEBATE
The Enlightened Developer?
An exploration of the cutting edge where development
meets design.
Young Alumni Lecture: Pitch Black
The Class of 1957
The Architecture Class of 1957 celebrated its 50th
Anniversary during Alumni Weekend 2007. GSAPP would like
to acknowledge this milestone and thank the Class for their
generous contributions to the Class of 1957 Scholarship.
Team Gleam
For one night only, 120 blown glass lanterns were
assembled to light the Alumni Weekend Dinner, honor-
ing Associate Dean Loes Schiller. The glass pieces were
distributed among the departing guests at the end of the
night. The project formed part of an ongoing investigation
into the meeting of digital design and artisan production.
Team Gleam is interested in those qualities and effects,
which, whilst digitally generated, have a material richness
and depth that lie beyond the anemia of digital rendering.
www.gleamlab.com
Special thanks to Associated Fabrication for their generous
donation to GSAPP in support of the Team Gleam project.
Thanks to Phillip Anzalone, Danny O’Shea, and 160 Glass.
STRUCTURES AND SURFACES
“The Furniture of Poul Kjaerholm and Selected Artwork”
Gallery Talk with the Curator
LECTURE + BOOK LAUNCH + RECEPTION
“Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 4th edition:
Architecture in the Age of Globalization”
CAREER DAY
GSAPP’s second annual Architecture Career Day
took place on Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29.
Sixteen firms from across the country came back to Avery
Hall to meet and interview current students. Thank you to
all the alumni and firms who joined us and to GSAPP Career
Services Assistant, Amy Finley (M.Arch 2008).
Alumni and representatives from the following firms at-
tended: 5Design, Gensler, Brennan Beer Gorman, Kondylis
Design, Cetra/Ruddy Incorporated, Panelite, dbox, Perkins
+ Will, Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn, SB Architects, FLAnk,
SMWM, Freelon Group, Stephen Yablon Architects PLLC, FX-
Fowle, workshop/apD.
MsRED ALUMNI CAREER EVENT
MsRED Class of 2008 officers co-organized an MsRED
Alumni Career Event on April 14th at Havana Central (for-
merly The West End). MsRED alumni in various sectors par-
ticipated in round-table discussions with the students. Many
thanks to the MsRED alumni who attended, and congratula-
tions to the 2008 class officers, Rachael Gray Shipkin and
Bryan Ramm, for organizing such a successful event.
Alumni from the following firms attended: The Hudson
Companies, Athena, Jonathan Rose Companies, Forest City
Ratner Companies, Rockrose Development Company, The
Drivin Group (formerly Pulte Homes), The Setai Group, The
Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd., ESPAIS New York Corpo-
ration, The Related Group of Florida, SL Green Realty Corp.,
Vornado.
GSAPP IN PARIS
Alumni Reception with Dean Mark Wigley
Sunday, September 30
Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre
“No house in France better reflects the magical promise of
20th-century architecture than the Maison de Verre. Tucked
behind the solemn porte-cochere of a traditional French
residence on Rue Saint-Guillaume, a quiet street in a wealthy
Left Bank neighborhood, the 1932 house designed by Pierre
Chareau challenges our assumptions about the nature of
Modernism. For architects it represents the road not taken:
a lyrical machine whose theatricality is the antithesis of the
dry functionalist aesthetic that reigned through much of the
20th century.”
—Nicolai Ouroussoff/M.Arch 1992, “The Best House in
Paris”, The New York Times, August 26, 2007
A special thank-you to Robert Rubin/GSAS 1989, Architecture
Ph.D. Candidate, and Stéphane Samuel for their hospitality
and generosity.
GSAPP IN BOSTON
During the AIA National Convention Alumni Tour and
Reception with Dean Mark Wigley and Charles Renfro
(MsAAD 1994), Partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro May 15, 2008
Boston Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)
GSAPP IN SAN FRANCISCO
Alumni Tour, Discussion and Reception with Dean
Mark Wigley and Henry Urbach (M.Arch 1990), Curator of
Architecture and Design, SFMOMA
June 4, 2008
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Master of Architecture
Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design
Master of Science in Urban Design
Master of Science in Historic Preservation
Master of Science in Urban Planning
Master of Science in Real Estate Development
Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prizes
Chosen by each critic for best design problem in final semes-
ter of Advanced Studio, (open to M. Arch, AAD, UD).
Bangkok Carbon Studio: Living Thai-pologies
Bangkok Carbon Studio: Amphibious Bangkok
Slum Lab — 002 Micro Ideas for a Big World
Saemangeum Urban Planning Proposal
Closing the Loop, Energy and the Development of
Public Lands
Bangkok Carbon Studio: Delta Ecotone
Anarchitecture 2
A library for the Multitude
The Discreet and the Continuous
Closing the Loop, Energy and the Development of
Public Lands
Think Tank 2.2: Money
Systemic Skins
Resort China
LOT-EK Monograph Studio
Central Areas of Mixed Use in the Periphery
Annex: Brasilia 2010
Cool Aid v 2.0 — Crisis Ethics
The Dictionary of Received Ideas
UN on Ice
Building Virtual Realities — Dubai Studio III,
Wild Horses/Educated Men: Club Hippodrome
WILLIAM KINNE FELLOWS MEMORIAL
TRAVELING PRIZES
Experiments in “New” Living: Documenting the
Sustainable City (or “Our Utopia?”)
InBetween: Nuanced Conditions in the US-Mexico
Border Zone
Glass & Architecture: Intersection in Glass Technologies
Between the Industrial and Artisanal
Spectrum of Control: Digital and Handcraft in Japanese
Building Culture
Go West: Crises of Megacity Identity and the Great
Opening of China’s West
Post-Olympics Boom: The Projected Development of the
Architectural Identity of Beijing after the 2008 Olympics
The Reciprocal Urban Scenarios in Japanese Cities
Shao W. Deng (AAD)
The Disappearance of the Façade in 20th Century
Architecture Through the Lens of Japanese Essentialism
Dirt and Domesticity: Hakka Earthen Structures
What can brown(field) do for you?
Paving for Development
SCHOOL-WIDE KINNE AWARDS
Invisible Urbanism in West Africa
New Domestic Landscapes: Urban Innovation in the Era of
Suburban Decay
Preservation of Fascist Architecture in Contemporary Italy
Some Disassembly Required: An Investigation into the Local
Impact of Teak Procurement in Northwestern Thailand
TRASH: Economy of Waste in Garbage City, Cairo
Watering the Thirsty: Preserving the Sabils of
Historic Cairo
Experiments in Water Management in Peru: One nation,
Three diverse geographies
Crossing the Line: The Qinghai-Tibet Railway
The Theme of Death in Italian Architecture from WWII to
the Early 1970s
Wading the Waters: Exploring Malawi’s Infrastructure of
Water and Health
BUILDING TECHNOLOGIES HONOR AWARD
To the student who most demonstrates an ability to incorporate
building technologies into the issues of architectural design
VISUAL STUDIES HONOR AWARD
For innovative use of computing media in architectural or
urban research, design, and fabrication
SCHOOL SERVICE AWARDS
For outstanding service to the School and contribution to
student life.
School Service
Student Life
HONOR AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN DESIGN
In recognition of the high quality of work in the design stu-
dios during the student’s program of studies
GSAPP PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN URBAN DESIGN
To recognize the student whose work in the Urban Design
Program has been most outstanding
ALI JAWAD MALIK MEMORIAL HISTORY AND THEORY
HONOR AWARD
In recognition of high quality of work in the history and
theory sequence.
CHARLES MCKIM PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN DESIGN/
SAUL KAPLAN TRAVELING FELLOWSHIP
To recognize the student whose work throughout the stu-
dios has been outstanding, funded by a bequest from Saul
Kaplan (M.Arch ‘57); the prize is for travel and study follow-
ing graduation
WILLIAM WARE PRIZE AND SAUL KAPLAN
TRAVELING FELLOWSHIP
To recognize the student in the Advanced Architectural Design
Program whose work throughout the studios has been out-
standing, funded by a bequest from Saul Kaplan (M.Arch ‘57).
The prize is for travel and study following graduation.
Alpha Rho Chi Medal
For leadership and service to the School and promise of
professional merit
New York Society Of Architects’ Matthew Del
Gaudio Award
For excellence in total design
American Institute Of Architects’ Certificate
In recognition of scholastic achievement, character, and
promise of professional ability
American Institute Of Architects’ Medal
In recognition of scholastic achievement, character, and
promise of professional ability
BUELL CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF AMERICAN
ARCHITECTURE AWARDS
Catherine Hoover Voorsanger Writing Prize
Awarded by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study
of American Architecture for an outstanding essay on
American architecture
PERCIVAL AND NAOMI GOODMAN FELLOWSHIP
To carry out a project of social significance related to the
interests of Percival Goodman
Radecology: Malawi
CATHERINE HOOVER VOORSANGER WRITING
COMMENDATION (a School-wide award)
Awarded by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study
of American Architecture for an outstanding essay on
American architecture
STUDENT NOMINATED AWARDS
To the student whose dedication and resiliency within an
urban design collaboration has significantly contributed to
the team’s collective efforts, and in doing so has earned the
respect of the graduating class
To the student whose ridiculous commitment within studio
and the School at large has earned the respect of the
student body
To the students whose relentless optimism within the
studio and the School at large has earned the respect of the
student body:
To the student whose work questions the standards of archi-
tecture and promises to change the profession
HISTORIC PRESERVATION PROGRAM AWARDS
Robert C. Weinberg Prize for Excellence in Preservation
Planning and Design
“Watering the Thirsty: Preserving the Sabils of
Historic Cairo”
Robert Weinberg Prize for Historic Preservation Theory
and Interpretation
“Mind the Gap: Historic Preservation and the Recent Past”
Conservation Sector Prize
“CLEANING HISTORIC BUILDING INTERIORS:
THE QUESTION OF RESIDUE USING ARTE MUNDIT
CLEANING PASTE”
Historic Preservation and Oral History Prize
“GROUND UP: ORAL HISTORY AND THE INTERPRETATION
OF LE HAVRE, FRANCE”
Historic Preservation Design Prize
“THE FRAMING OF PATRONAGE IN MEXICO CITY’S
HISTORIC CENTER: PROJECT FOR THE CENTRO
FOUNDATION IN THE EX-ROYAL CONVENT OF
JESUS MARIA”
Preservation Planning Prize
“DORMANT SMOKESTACKS AND SILENT TURBINES:
THE ADAPTIVE REUSE OF EARLY TO MID-TWENTIETH
CENTURY POWER STATIONS”
Historic Preservation Student Peer To Peer Award
To the student whose wild participation in Preservation has
earned the respect of the student body
URBAN PLANNING PROGRAM AWARDS
Outstanding Leadership Award
For outstanding leadership in the Planning program
Charles Abrams Thesis Award
For a masters thesis that best exemplifies a commitment
to social justice
“RE-ENTRY AND THE ROLES OF BRIDGE PROGRAMMING:
RECONNECTING FORMER PRISONERS AND THEIR
COMMUNITIES”
Planning Challenge Award
For a masters thesis that makes a substantive contribution
to our understanding of a contemporary planning issue
“MUNICIPAL ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
PLANNING: MOTIVATIONS, IMPLEMENTATION,
DOCUMENTS, AND IMPACTS IN HIGHLAND PARK,
NEW JERSEY”
Planning Research Design Award
For a thesis that exemplifies a commitment to research
methodology and/or planning techniques
“THE FRESHDIRECT EFFECT: HOW DOES FOOD CHOICE
AFFECT A NEIGHBORHOOD’S APPEAL?”
American Institute Of Certified Planners Outstanding
Student Award
For outstanding attainment in the study of Planning
New York Chapter Of The American Planning
Association’s Robert C. Weinberg Award
For academic excellence in Urban Planning
Urban Planning Student Peer To Peer Award
To the student whose dedication, reliability, and sheer
willingness to help others has earned the respect of the
student body
This catalog has been produced through the Office of
the Dean, Mark Wigley. The archive of the student work,
containing documentation of projects selected by the
studio critics at the conclusion of each semester, is
utilized in the making of ABSTRACT.
Copyright 2008 by the Trustees of Columbia University
in the City of New York
All rights reserved.
Published by the Graduate School of Architecture,
Planning and Preservation of Columbia University.
New York, NY 10027
Editor: Scott Marble
Assistant Editors: Katie Shima, Brian Brush
Design: Sagmeister Inc., New York
Photographers: Mark Bearak, Jong Seo Kim
Printing: Asia Pacific Offset, China
(ISBN) 1-883584-56-6
The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American ArchitectureColumbia University
FORUMPROJECTFINALE
Des
ign: W
illi K
unz
Stu
dio
Friday,April 46:30pm
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
Columbia University
BIOPOLITICS AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN ARCHITECTUREBuell Evening Lecture sponsored by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Sven-Olov WallensteinProfessor of Philosophy, University College of Södertörn, and of Architectural Theory,
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Author, Den moderna arkitekturens filosofier (The Philosophies of Modern Architecture, 2004);
Bildstrider: Föreläsningar om estetisk teori (Image Wars: Lectures on Aesthetic Theory, 2001);
editor-in-chief, SITE magazine
with responses by Reinhold Martin, John Rajchman, and Anthony Vidler
Saturday,April 53:30pm
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
Columbia University
FORuMPROJECT PUBLICATIONS BOOK LAUNCHwith presentations by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Svetlana Boym, Brian O’Doherty, McKenzie Wark and Alex Galloway,
Brian Evenson and Deborah Natsios, David Reinfurt of Dexter Sinister, Enrique Walker and
the Automatic Architecture School (Marcella del Signore, Aimee Duquette, Cristina Goberna, Chris Kroner)
and excerpts by Pellegrino D’Acierno from
THIRTEEN WAYS OF CROSSING THE PIAZZA
6:30pm
South Gallery, Buell Hall
Columbia University
FORM AS STRATEGY EXHIBITION OPENING AND RECEPTIONExhibition dates: April 7 through April 26
with works by Archizoom, Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord, Peter Eisenman, Will Insley, Ilya Kabakov,
Brian O’Doherty (Patrick Ireland), Hermann Nitsch, Radical Software Group, Martha Rosler, and Bernard Tschumi
The FORuMPROJECT is a two-year program dedicated to exploring the relationship of architectural form
to politics and urban life. It was initiated in fall 2006 and has been carried out under the auspices
of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, and the Berlage
Institute, Rotterdam. Project conceptualization: Joan Ockman and Pier Vittorio Aureli
The FORuMPROJECT Publications are copublished by The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study
of American Architecture and Princeton Architectural Press. For information and book orders, please go to
www.papress.com.