Global Arc

Reducing the Embodied Energy (EE) of new and retrofitted buildings is a crucial part of addressing the climate crisis. Early classes will be devoted to the pros and cons of various methods of measuring EE. Questions: Can we curb EE without being able to measure it accurately? What if the things we do to make buildings more operationally efficient -- including following Passive House guidelines -- vastly increase their EE?

This seminar, which evokes Rosalind Krauss' pathbreaking essay "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" (which first appeared in October in 1979), explores tensions, analogies and exchanges that characterize the complex relationship between modern architecture and contemporary art. Its aim is to show not only that these two areas of aesthetic production and critical inquiry are joined in a single field, as Krauss argues, but also that the unity of this field did not emerge until fairly recently in the history of modernism.

This seminar is aimed to develop and discuss a new theory of the building envelope, able to replace the historical disciplines of the facade. The focus lies between technology and theory and the method will be research driven. The hypothesis of this seminar is that the envelope's performance occurs primarily through material embodiments rather than through superficial, ornamental representation. The discussion will depart from the concept of façade material assemblage, which addresses the evolution of artificial ecologies as a method. We have identified 12 façade assemblages to structure this theory, and we will devote one session to each.

This course examines the notion of the "ordinary," and the ways in which it has been exploited as a site of inquiry in the architectural debate, particularly from the mid-1950s to the present. Structured upon a series of projects dealing with the scrutiny of so-called existing conditions--from Alison and Peter Smithson to Aldo van Eyck, Reyner Banham to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Rem Koolhaas to Atelier Bow-Wow--we will interrogate the ways in which architecture has dealt with emergent and seemingly irreducible urban phenomena, as well as has by the same token constructed a peculiar practice of architectural theory.

Investigating the rich interplay between form, space, skin, structure, material assembly, performance and representation, this course seeks to develop creative and productive approaches for analyzing very recent buildings.The past decade has witnessed the realization of a wealth of buildings, which has been documented in over-sized books, design blogs, and glossy magazines but not carefully dissected with inventive analytical tools. This analysis will be positioned within the context of the history of building analysis, and buildings key to that history.

The research course explores the consequences of the economic growth experienced in Latin America in the past 25 years on the social and spatial organization of cities. We will analyze how the modification of political systems and the parallel neo liberal restructuring of economy have impacted on the production of space. Critical analysis will consider the connections between new phenomena of urban transformation, renewed social articulations and the surge of responses from the design fields. Within the general frame of a contemptuous concept as "Latin America", the research course will explore for local differentiations and particularities.

This course starts from the premise that to engage the spatial politics of cities of the Americas, we must engage with the senses. We will ask how vision, affect, and smell shape our understandings of and connections to urban space. And conversely, how different spaces condition our sensorial experiences. Employing the critical, interpretive and theoretical knowledge of the humanities, we examine how these sensorial markers of belonging in urban spaces relate to and expand social markers of citizenship, political boundaries, gender, class, race, and ethnicity.

This seminar/laboratory examines the history of glass architecture and its future. Glass will be explored through the framework of cultural, technological, and perceptual filters. Students will analyze a selection of twentieth century and contemporary glass buildings and their details, as well as films and artwork related to the subject. The class will be divided into collaborative groups to design and build full-scale architectural interventions on campus that rethink glass today. Students are encouraged to work in a range of media from conventional architectural materials to new media to performance.

The seminar intends to use the research, briefing, programming, and design of the workplace as a means to examine the role of the architect and designer as a professional contributor in the knowledge economy. We will use the workplace as a site of practice in which the architect is engaged with the driving forces of the economy: advanced information technology, new ways of working that are distributed across space and time, the global business imperatives that segment work across continents. We will examine the issues of workplace design at every scale from the desk to the city to the region.

This course is intended to expose the students to a range of major works, built and unbuilt, of architecture from 1950 to the present. This course will focus on these particular buildings as they open themselves to a textual analysis. These analyses are intended to open up issues such as criticality, autonomy and singularity as they begin to evolve in architectural building (as opposed to texts) in the last half of the 20th century. This course will concentrate on individual buildings not architects. Each analysis will be accompanied by an illustrated presentation and selected readings.