Fall 2007 Territories of Investigation: Architecture and Ecology Responsive Systems Research Seminar
ARCH 338/638.04 Schedule: Tuesdays. 2:30 pm - 4:25 pm
Location: 142 East Sibley Hall
Professor: Chris Perry Prerequisites: ARCH 231/232 or ARCH 531/532 or permission of instructor.
Course Overview: This seminar will explore the assertion that architecture operates within the realm of circuitry. That is, architecture must be perceived as a collector, servo-mechanism, or transistor which absorbs, processes, and redistributes forces and information. This perception is motivated by the continuing, pervasive proliferation of electronic technologies, products, and interfaces. As a result, considerations of our environment – and, by extension, the field of forms and geometries that comprise architecture – as an in-variant or passive field are wholly inadequate. Rather, the environment must be considered as a field consisting of active components and temporal modules, and pulsating with the complex, manifold ebbs and flows of real-time, adaptive information, i.e. – data that do not merely track, say, the distribution of pedestrians or vehicles, but also act upon and thereby transform the very information being collected. In particular, this seminar will investigate both the correlations and distinctions between the formation of space by discrete devices, assemblies, and dynamic networks, and the demarcation of space by physical or otherwise static enclosures. Or, put more concisely, if elementarily, the productive tensions between the notions of machine and building. As a larger historical and theoretical framework, we will engage issues of systems design, organizational theory, technology, and urbanism in the postwar era – with particular emphasis on the late 50’s and 60’s – through a series of readings, seminar discussions, diagramming investigations, and presentations, all of which will lead to the formation of a collective research publication of the seminar’s work with each student contributing a chapter to that publication. This publication will include images and graphic content as well as text, so that graphic presentation will be viewed as integral and equal to our research process. This approach assumes an interdependence between critical work (history/theory) and projective work (design), and a blurring between the job titles of author and designer. To this extent, this publication of the seminar’s research will speculate on new ways of reading and scanning information content, on forms of pattern recognition as a way of navigating increasingly saturated media environments, and on new ways of producing and presenting research material.
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Buildings Out of Control
ARCH 464.01 Course Schedule: Thursdays. 2:30 pm - 4:25 pm
Location: G20 Goldwin Smith
Prerequisites: Open to architecture students who have completed Arch 361/661, and Engineering students at the instructor’s discretion.
Professor: Martha Bohm Course Overview: Buildings consume 40% of energy used in the US, half of which is used to provide a comfortable thermal and luminous environment to the occupants. This course examines who, in fact, controls this energy consumption: the architect, the mechanical engineer or the end user.
The long tradition of climate responsive, user-controlled, passively conditioned indoor environment has given way to a technologically dominated, computer-controlled, mechanically conditioned indoor environment. Despite these technological advances, building post-occupancy evaluations find that this practice has allowed the development of buildings that neither provide occupant satisfaction nor energy efficiency. However, new hybrid or “mixed-mode” buildings use intelligent facades, natural ventilation, and highly developed computer control systems to attempt to bridge the passive and active gap – an unconventional HVAC strategy that allows both the users and the computer control system to simultaneously operate the building.
The seminar readings and discussions will examine mixed-mode buildings from various social and technical angles: Does the commodification of the conditioned indoor environment preclude the design of passive or hybrid buildings? Do occupants accustomed to precisely controlled air-conditioned spaces know how to operate a building efficiently? Does decentralized control lead to higher energy efficiency? Occupants prefer operable windows, and mechanical engineers a tightly sealed façade – can the architect’s design mediate between the two? Can the aggregate knowledge of the building occupants create a more efficient building than a computer control system? What is the nature of the interface between the two?
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The Architecture of Nothing
ARCH 464.02 Course Schedule: TBA
Location: TBA
Prerequisites: ARCH 361/362 or ARCH 661/662 or permission of instructor.
Professor: Kevin Pratt
Course Overview:
Architecture tends to be a maximalist enterprise: we are given a problem and asked solve it with concrete, steel, stone, wood, and glass, ordered by normative methods of assembly and accepted rules of systemic logic. However, we usually fail to consider the basic assumptions that underlie our choices of systems, technologies, materials and methods of organization. This class will look at the design process from the point of view that doing nothing – using no resources, no energy and no materials - is, from an ecological point of view, almost always the best answer to a design problem. Unfortunately, achieving much while doing little is inevitably technically challenging. While brute force methodologies of achieving architectural ends often appear to grant the designer wide latitude in making formal and programmatic decisions, the sheer weight of material and energy management systems necessitates tectonic hierarchies that overwhelm well intentioned strategies. We will examine ways of avoiding, dematerializing,
downsizing and eliminating the built environment, focusing on recycling, passive strategies for achieving comfort, programmatic modification, virtual spaces, lightweight structures and temporary construction systems.
Coursework will include readings, instruction in the use of analytical software and midterm and final papers.
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Ecological Literacy
ARCH 461/DEA 422 Course Schedule:Tuesdays and Thursdays. 10:10 am -12:05 pm
Location: TBA
Prerequisites: The class is limited to 40 upper-level and graduate students.
Professors: Jack Elliott
Course Overview: ARCH 461/DEA 422 is a design-oriented lecture/seminar course for students who are concerned about the role they play as design professionals in affecting the biophysical world. The course’s prime objective is to develop a new worldview founded on a broader sensitivity for things living and an accompanying set of meaningful environmental ethics. The course’s secondary objectives are to develop a deeper knowledge of environmental issues, construct conceptual frameworks for analysis of these issues and to demonstrate how ecological knowledge can be applied to design.
The course consists of a series of one-week topics combining a variety of learning experiences as vehicles for developing ecological awareness as it pertains to design. The emphasis will be maintaining a sustained participation by the student throughout the semester. Students will engage in readings, writings, guided nature hikes, site visits, guest lectures, and class discussions. Course projects will include weekly reading assessments, an eco-sensitivity project, and a real-world LEED team project. Student presentations will be conducted at the end of the term. Readings are from State of the World 2008, Worldwatch Institute, Ishmael, Daniel Quinn, and Worldchanging: A User’s Guide For The 21st Century, Alex Steffen
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