Uncertain Futures - Part 1

Uncertain Futures

Uncertain Futures Two Years of Student Research at the MIT Department of Architecture

Two Years of Student Research at the MIT Department of Architecture SA+P Press

2009

Forecast MIT and friends ruminate on the future of architecture.

Amale Andraos Architect, Work AC. How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

Taking work in the largest sense (including our name), there seem to be three futures that we deal with on a daily basis. The first is our future—as a practice, as teachers, as a team, etc.… and for this future, there is an intuition of where things might go, which we use loosely, but ultimately, we can only have faith in accidents.

The second future is the future in the work, what is imagined to produce a project. For this future, we rely on many various threads—narrative, use, performance, the imagined life—or death—of a project…. There is no expectation that any of these narratives will necessarily happen once the project is out of our minds and into the reality of others, but experience has shown that it is precisely the awkward meeting—if any—of the reality and its projection that is most exciting. This is why we still project regardless of how it is received.

The third is the visionary future—a long architectural and urban tradition in which we are finding our best inspiration at this moment. For this future, we imagine many of our projects to be first steps towards this future. We are actively engaged in imagining an alternate urban/suburban/rural condition, for example, which projects like Public

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Farm 1, Locavore Fantasia, the PlugOut tower, and the Edible Schoolyard at 216 all try to address as prototypical urban insertions, both as fantastical musings as well as actual attempts to experiment in building today the utopias of tomorrow.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

I don’t know if the world has changed as much as the way we think about it, experience it, and represent it. Everything is more fluid, there are boundaries but they are constantly shifting and being reframed; we are very conscious of the networks within which we work and we use them to move, to think, to connect, and to find grounds to act on.

Everything seems flatter; there are multiple voices on any given subject and they all share the public stage, almost equally. All the tools, the various mediums are out there, accessible, and ready to be appropriated. History is a field to be sampled or from which to be inspired, or not, etc.…. In this sense, we feel what is happening in architecture is not so different from what has been happening in other fields such as art or music. If you look at the music scene, for example, there was the big electronic revolution in the ‘90s; the rock and rock star were dead. Now we have DJ stars, super groups, alternative collectives, one-person-full-on-bands,

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acoustic guitars, contemporary folk, etc.… (and they all seem to play downstairs from our office at Cake Shop).

And so as architects, it’s exciting to have shed the old clichés and boundaries a decade ago and to now be moving across disciplines and areas of expertise that come together punctually for a conversation or a project.

we have to engage in the present, as our current action determines what happens tomorrow.

What are its implications for your work?

The supranational collapse of the global economy, a system that caused a vulnerable reality constructed on the fragile base of an unleashed capitalism.

The field of architecture has to learn to deal not only with the critical state of our environment and shrinking natural resources, but also understand the effects of shrinking cities, climate change and massive global migration. Only transdisciplinary efforts will lead to complex solutions for a complex condition.

We don’t feel bound to address this or that theory, or this or that genre of architecture. That doesn’t mean that we are not interested in or aware of their existence, but in the end, we are biased towards experience and the overall feeling at this moment is one of being quite free to experiment, discovering new possibilities, or rediscovering old or abandoned ones. Maybe the most interesting implication for us is that thinking across scales as well as across disciplines has become so ubiquitous, it is no longer a “wow” end in itself.

We need to go further now. ____ Ute Meta Bauer MIT Associate Professor, Visual Arts. Curator.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

The future is difficult to deal with, as it is an unpredictable space we never reach anyway. To understand the future,

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

What are its implications for your work?

are looking for deeper elements that speak more to continuity. We are looking to connect the viewer to values that are deeply rooted in an awareness of the present. By heightening, and thereby extending moments in time, we aim to connect the viewer to the ongoing passage of time. We are not so interested in the academic idea of “Future.”

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

The financial meltdown?! Joking aside, there are issues of globalization that I think will transform architecture. The current failures of our economy may in fact present opportunities that turn the profession as a whole toward the greater issues that confront us.

Head, MIT Architecture Department.

Architect, Atelier FCJZ. How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

Through technology. I am super interested in how technology in general is changing and will further change the way we live, work, build, and design.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

Climatic change and technological development have been and are pushing architects to be inventors of different life styles and new kinds of living environments.

What are its implications for your work?

What are its implications for your work?

I was “conceptual” before and that’s not good enough any more. With my practice Atelier FCJZ, we are now trying very hard to marry concepts to technologies in our projects. ____

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

Nature is implicit in our work on a perceptual and functional level. Our design process integrates energy engineering, daylighting, structural engineering, art and architecture.

We aim to build upon our past work, our partnerships and collaborative relationships to pursue the continuum of the revelatory moment. ____

We hope that our work might have an influence over the future, but really, we

Yung Ho Chang MIT Professor, Architectural Design.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

Intellectual work never ends. ____ James Carpenter Architect, James Carpenter Design Associates, Inc. Spring 2009 MIT Lecture Series Speaker. Written with Ben Colebrook.

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Alexander D’Hooghe MIT Associate Professor, Architectural Design. Architect, ORG.

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One may speculate about a trajectory of historical development of our societies.

But this activity should not result in historical determinism. Our value judgement on the likely trajectory sets up an imperative to act, in order to either bend and redirect, or else radicalize its direction.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

There are four great challenges for which we need to weaponize.

First, the socio-economic crisis now contracting the global economy destroys the consensual conventions of architecture: instead of condominiums, collective minimums? The resulting aesthetic will be either one of poverty (as modernism initially conceived itself to be, before it became an aesthetic for exclusive homes for progressive wealthy clients); but if the situation deteriorates more, the dominant social aesthetic could however flip into the opposite of this: a formal language of excess, cornucopia, plenty, offering through art what is abjectly missing in daily life.

Second, the energy revolution, which is a more narrow and precise question than the naive desire for a benign ecology. The minimization of energy usage in both the production of work and in its consumption, without losing

quality and value, could increase greatly the elegance of architectural and urbanistic solutions.

Third, the interweaving of urban areas into enormous territorial conglomerates—whether Bos-Wash, or Europe’s Blue Banana, or the Pearl River Delta.

These expanses are our second nature.

They allow for endless navigation without any possible exit from the system. Within them, “urban design”—as the making of an urban condition— means nothing—because the urban condition is already total. A disciplinary redefinition becomes unavoidable: what are “urban design’s” figures?

Instead of “urban,” are we going for “territorial” or “public” design as a field of inquiry?

Fourth, the looming threat of identity crises across the world congealing into a global crisis of belonging: one in which the pressures of globalization yields such fears and perceived threats that the fundamentalist mindset returns, albeit this time not (just) in Europe, but indeed across the globe. It would amount to a global disintegration.

What are its implications for your work?

Understanding the limitations of architecture and urban design liberates the field from having to save the world.

So the first exercise is one of reduction.

So what are the outlines of architecture’s disciplinary project in the face of

the four horses of the apocalypse sketched above?

First, post-crisis projects will be more simple and sturdy, with a minimum of glorious statements and a maximum of potential applications. The projects refocus as primary sheltering exercises with a reduced investment in iconic expression.

Second, energetically minimal projects have a longer life-span beyond paying off the construction loan. They are infrastructures of shelter, rather than objects of subjective whim.

Third, a project’s legibility depends on its difference from its background —an endless semi-urban continuum.

When our second nature of endless semi-urban stuff is confused, chaotic and complex, the project will need to become precise, clear and simple.

When the suburban condition is one of endless connectivity, the project will need to appreciate the cause for separation.

Fourth, its aesthetic is NOT simply a poly-interpretable statement of identity. In the face of the global identity crisis, modernism’s answer—that meaning had to be constructed by the observer—is not populist enough: instead, an active celebration of the values of the liberal project, just like Stalin’s Soviet Palace actively condensed, simplified, explained the values of Stalinism.

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The new aesthetic that stems from it may hardly be pretty but it could be one of the sublime. ____ Arindam Dutta MIT Associate Professor, History, Theory, Criticism. Historian, Writer.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

Radical uncertainty.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

Accelerated flexible accumulation, resulting in new clienteles and geoeconomic constituencies, with the hopeful demise of humanism.

What are its implications for your work?

Obsolescence. ____ Tony Fretton Architect, Tony Fretton Architects.

Spring 2009 MIT Lecture Series Speaker.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

We are always in the present.

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What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

The collapse of the financial system and the politics that went with it.

What are its implications for your work?

Learn to live simply, work with what you have and can get. ____ Mark Jarzombek MIT Professor, History, Theory, Criticism.

Historian, Writer.

Architecture: A Failed DisciplineI First published in Volume 19, (Spring 2009), pp. 42-3. Reprinted with permission of the author.

According to Nicolai Ouroussof, architecture critic for the New York Times, the economic recession combined with the investment in new infrastructure that President Barack Obama has promised could potentially lead to a reassessment of architecture in the US. “If a lot of first-rate architectural talent promises to be at loose ends, why not enlist it in designing the projects that matter most,” such as “schools, parks, bridges and public housing?” (December 21, 2008, NY Times). I admit it is always good to remind architects of

their obligations. And Americans could learn something from Europeans in this respect. But this is also an all-too-easy position and Obama or not the fact is that Enlightenment values are in disrepair along with its much vaunted ideal of the social contract. Failed democracies, failed nations, failed banks, failed capitalism, failed socialism... It is a great moment to feel the pulse of history! Some might see this as an opportunity to renew our faith in the social contract, in justice, law and fair play. But though Enlightenment ideals are not dead, they are hardly alive either. Making sense of this will be a global challenge for the coming generation of thinkers and politicians; perhaps architecture can have a voice too, for if there is one discipline that can best be identified with both the Enlightenment and its failure it is architecture. Its failure was made clear

by Georg Friedrich Hegel who argued in the 1820s that architecture simply could not keep pace with the needs of the Spirit after the Middle Ages.I Whether one agrees with him is irrelevant, for the point is that as a result of his position poetry, music, painting and the sciences were given importance in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy whereas architecture was left in a philosophical limbo from which it has never recovered. But it was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise.

One has to remember that only a few decades before Hegel gave his lectures, architecture had a promising

position in the philosophical project.

Enlightenment thinkers sought to change it from an art that was the purview of elites into a discipline integrated in the structure of the social and natural world. Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand assumed that architecture could rid itself of subjectivism and arbitrariness; Benjamin Latrobe predicted that the age of the amateur, gentleman architect was about to end and that architecture would soon become a profession like medicine and law. The trouble was that Horace Walpole’s papier-mâché Gothic at Strawberry Hill (1750) had decoupled the relationship between architecture and materiality; and Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Campo Marzio (1762) had decoupled the relationship between architecture and knowledge. So by the time Hegel separated architecture from its presumptive philosophical legitimacy the serious damage had already been done. The Industrial Revolution went on to make a mockery of Neo-classicism’s historicist models; John Nash’s clients transformed Neo-classicism into an instrument of class superiority; and colonial plantations gave it a bad taste that no amount of Jamaican sugar or Indonesian coco could make palatable. The Neo-Gothic alternative never transcended its Romantic paternalism or its fussy attachment to craft and religion.

The Beaux-Arts, of course, carried on with Durand’s position, but its architectural extravaganzas were increasingly out of touch with the industrial era.

Heavy doses of Functionalism,

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Constructivism, Brutalism and Contextualism could not put the truth back into architecture even though there were many who desperately attempted it: John Ruskin in the 1860s, Le Corbusier in the 1930s, Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in the 1950s, the architectural Heideggerians of the 1970s and in the 1990s, and the Lefebvre-ites who seemed so persistently fascinated with the elusive “everyday.”

The call for a “professional” architectural approach did not die, of course.

In fact, once professionalism freed itself from its Beaux-Arts and Victorian Era cloakings to adopt the Modernist agenda, it reached out with increasing strength into academe in the form of the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). NAAB’s insistence on the legitimacy of the ‘social contract’ has made architecture’s continuing disciplinary ambiguity all the more obvious especially since NAAB blindly equates social contract with professional practice. In case you missed it, the NAAB is designed around a “core values” model that is based on the principle of providing “discipline and stability” to architectural education and the profession and the potential for “innovation and change” in a rapidly changing world.II The quotation marks were not added by me, but written into a recent NAAB document!

But since when have “discipline and

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stability” been “core values?” And what are core values when the last two hundred year of architectural history has proven that such values have been, if anything, shifting signifiers. This is not a lament. We should not retreat to some phenomenological, neo-purist desire for authenticity and we should most certainly not presume that our precious subjectivity is in any way real.

Instead we should celebrate architecture’s disciplinary failure; we should acknowledge its post-Enlightenment status as a “quote-un-quote discipline,” work its failure into our theoretical frameworks and even— as I think is possible—engage it in our architectural practices, for just because something failed does not mean that it stops being relevant or—just as importantly—stops having a history.

Recently, advocates of Sustainability have taken up the cause of trying to return meaning and purpose to architecture. They want Sustainability to be architecture’s new Enlightenment. But there is no way architecture—even if allied with, and supposedly purified by, the natural sciences, “ethics” and ecomanagement – can live up to the demand that its agenda be transparent to social causes. And so it continues.

Will the predicted death of star-architecture legitimize the call for architecture to pay more attention to social reality, as some seem to hope? Perhaps, but John Soane was onto something when he designed the Bank of England at a time when England was close to

becoming a failed nation state, having spent almost all its resources fighting wars in Europe and buying tea in China on borrowed money. Although he designed it with admirable skill, in 1830—a mere ten years after Hegel announced the death of architecture— he asked a friend and former associate, Joseph Gandy, to produce a rather amazing painting that showed the building as a ruin. It gives us an Hegelianesque, counter-view to the ideology of hope and optimism. And so, one hundred and eighty years later, the questions for us might be: What does the assembly hall of a failed democracy look like? A school for a failed educational system? A park for a failed public space? A housing complex for a failed social policy? A city for a failed urbanity? A court house for a failed immigration policy? These are some of the pressing design issues in our future.

I’ll take the question literally. Architecture, as an anticipatory discipline, compels the formulation of future conditions, objects, and contexts.

Such formulations require concepts of the future, modes of forecasting or anticipating. In my work, I’m trying to discern (or locate) these concepts within historical practices in order to see how they give rise to particular possibilities, plausibilities, or, in the weaker cases, mere probabilities.

There are many different modes to be examined, from the convictions of prophecy (see Jencks, Charles) to the vexations of determinism (see Banham, Reyner) with any number in between.

now capable of representing, with an unprecedented encompassing subjectivity, other futures alongside the present. Among the concepts of the future readily discerned in the recent past, analogical modes like the formulation of alternative histories now have a vital relevance for contemporary speculations. Might architecture be poised for a brave leap, away from narrow presumptions about present causes and future effects, toward unfamiliar formulations of futures for an entirely different present?

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

It’s possible. ____

See also: Mark Jarzombek: “The Cunning of Architecture’s Reason,” Footprint (#1, Autumn 2007), pp. 31- 46.

II Accreditation Review Conference First Critique – Emerging Model Summary [http://www.naab.org/documents/ home_origin.aspx?path=Public+Docum ents%5cNAAB+News] ____

Doesn’t it appear, though, that one mode of anticipation—causality—has acquired a near-repressive dominance over the others? It’s clear enough that the apparently inarguable directness of cause and effect, has, from its foothold in the scientific revolution, gained an ascendency through the technological acceleration of the twentieth century.

And perhaps fairly so, but more recently it has provoked an increasingly deafening feedback from architecture’s predilection for the pragmatic, the plausible, the (merely) probable. Yet with this tendency have developed media technologies that are even

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Timothy Hyde Assistant Professor, Harvard GSD. Architect.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

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What are its implications for your work?

Caroline A. Jones MIT Professor, History, Theory Criticism.

Art Historian, Writer.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

As a historian of the contemporary, I deal with the concept of future as a trope—let’s call it the narcissism of past epochs. The singular spokesmen (usually men) who imagine themselves to own its path rarely get it right.

Perhaps Filippo Tomasso Marinetti predicted (a century ago in the Futurist Manifesto) something of our ongoing addiction to speed—but could he have precisely imagined our yearning for slow food, “mindfulness,” and the cult

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of Simple? “Future” is too often yesterday’s tomorrow, and the art that lasts is often that which struggles with the legacy of the past rather than indulges the hubris of being able to “shake free” and light out for new horizons. The past is where we struggle with the subjects we want to become. The future is a fantasy.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

The experience of “global” as internal to our world, not external to it. The enlarging of the frame or viewpoint to include the non-Western, the nonEuropean, the non-Northern. The collapse of dialectics into the new epistemology of surfaces and spheres.

What are its implications for your work?

My own scholarship has moved from the smallest of artworlds (New York City) to the world itself as “picture” and representation. I am now focusing less on the individual (“unique”) art object and more on the object as part of an assemblage of other objects, entrained in world pictures (the biennali, the art fair, the exposition). This is not “world art” (in the analogy with “world music”—a sampling of ethnic variations and flavors that enliven the menu of our consumables). Rather it is art from

dominant cultures put into contested fields of representation that claim to be world pictures. ____ Sheila Kennedy MIT Professor of the Practice.

Architect, KVA. Scattered Fabrications with a Chance of Agency How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

It seems almost nostalgic to speculate about the concept of future in architecture. Throughout modernism, the discussion of “future” has been overused and underserved. The current topic you propose, “Certain Futures,” works well to encapsulate the historically modern antagonism of future and present. It puts into question the absolute nature of the “certain” by allowing the word to be a qualifier of many possible futures, while also leaving open the possibility that any such future might indeed be certain.

The concept of future brings up two modes of thought and action in architecture that taken alone are self-limiting, but taken together are essential to the contemporary practice of architecture. One is the mode of thinking sited in some unspecified moment “of the future.” These projects “of the future” give license to projections of the architectural imagination to magically displace the specific needs and problems

of the present. The other is a mode of direct action where architecture is so attentive to the local and immediate material conditions of the present that it loses its ability to define an alternative future reality. This mode limits its potential for widespread impacts—both within architectural discourse itself and in the larger territory of the world.

The practice of architecture has always been about linking possible realities with the potential to transform specific terms and conditions of the present.

Architecture formulates a vision for how things could be in the future, then creates a set of plans and instructions for getting there from the present. Our practice at KVA MATx remains committed to the idea of agency in architecture and the full engagement of the architectural imagination, which inevitably must involve a considerable address of the present. By agency, I mean the capacity, condition, or state of acting on or exerting power through the particular expertise of the architect.

Agency may be used to advance systemic change within institutions assumed to be “given,” to create new cultural ideas, to shift people’s perceptions, and propose new ways to get things done. This position is not always well understood with respect to the inevitable future orientation of “pure” academic research at universities. That is in part why our materials research division MATx was created—to establish an organizational model for research within practice.

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What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

The world is experiencing a significant shift from centralized regimes of production and consumption to more distributed models. This transformation encompasses the rise in micro-credit organizations, information-sharing through crowd-sourced and opensourced networks, the movement towards hybrid global/local fabrication, and the shift from centralized electrical power to distributed energy generation.

In architecture, the tendency towards decentralization is compounded by the scattering of architecture’s own fabrications: the ways in which architecture’s stories (theories and histories) are represented and told, and the ways in which the material things of architecture are imagined and made (objects, tools, buildings, and cities). This diversification weakens the discipline but, at the same time, serves to catalyze emergent local/global networks of collectivity.

There is then the chance of an expanded agency for architecture to link emergent local/global issues with the internal discourses of the discipline.

Three transformations are of particular interest: the decentralization of the construction industry (who makes what and how), new forms of access to energy (how it is delivered, in what

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material form, and to whom), and the shift in our cultural understanding of materials from having static properties to dynamic material behaviors. The dispersed model of the “new infrastructure” will engage a collection of active materials, each with formal and aesthetic problems and potentials that may be designed, fabricated and integrated into distributed surfaces, objects and elements of architecture and urbanism.

What was once thought to be “beyond” the physical structure of architecture is now actually material and thus decisively in the territory of the architect.

As the culture of materials change, so do disciplinary notions of “infrastructure” inherited from modernism: “served” and “servant,” “front” and “back,” “center” and “periphery.” We now have the opportunity to imagine alternative organizations of architecture and urbanism from the cavity wall typology of modernism to the modern division of the city into “sectors” of industry, leisure, and living.

What are its implications for your work?

These transformations have shaped the direction of our research at KVA MATx, the organization of our studio as an interdisciplinary practice, and the physical form of our studio workplace, which integrates a design floor, a large prototyping workshop, and an optoelectronics “skunkworks.” At KVA MATx, whether we are consulting for industry

manufacturers or university clients or for our own initiatives, we try to see the organization of the various threads of a problem in their present “pre-figural” moment, before they actually form themselves as a pattern. The goal is to define the value of their emergent potential to transform what could happen in the future. One takes that knowledge back into the present in order to identify the obstacles that stand in the way of that future, and design a way forward to get there from the present.

Intuition is important in this effort, as is design, which always produces knowledge about a problem. Historical research and precedent are increasingly important. A degree of tenacity also helps. New problems are being confronted at the intersection of the small scale of the object with the larger scale of urbanism. In our practice, we find ourselves returning to the fundamentals of form, form families, and the development of aesthetic questions for material phenomena (electricity, media, information access) once considered to be without form. Ironically, the parametric software and CAM tools that allow us to begin to consider questions of emergent digital materiality also have the potential to distance us from the present conditions of practice. Construction in practice requires the fluid movement from the virtual 3-D digital model to a flat, 2-D schedule of parts which are then assembled into a 3-D physical reality. Digital machine outputs in

practice require the architect to work directly with materials in the material/ machine interface and be much more adept at understanding and predicting material performance. Yet in many schools, 3-D printing and the segregation of studio, classroom, and workshop are beginning to erode the architect’s ability to make things, to understand the resistance of materials.

Architects need to continually invent strategies for relevancy without giving up the realm of architecture’s unique areas of creative expertise. We need a formulation of research with a continuum between basic (core disciplinary) research and applied research, where one leads back to the other. This requires the architect to scrutinize the problems of the present in more detail, without compromising her or his ability to imagine alternative futures. What do we want to achieve? What can we do right now with what we already have?

How can this help us create better futures? The best projects of architecture will be those that have the ability to move between the future and the present to transform the discipline from within. ____ Jeannie Kim Director, National Design Awards, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

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The nature of my work is necessarily about the past, celebrating endings rather than beginnings and illuminating already established canons rather than positing new models. This sounds like an excuse, I realize, but is more of an admission that it is easier to work backwards than it is to look forward. To the tens of thousands of current architectural students of design, therefore— Onward! Excelsior!

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

Other than the obvious (global economic meltdown, epic unemployment, diminishing natural resources), I believe that the future of the discipline will be changed most by the next wave of technological revolution, i.e., the rapidly expanding and increasingly pervasive field of interaction design.

What this will mean spatially is not yet clear, but my hope is that it will be more relevant than our current fascination with harnessing the potential of the tools of digital fabrication through what still looks a lot like research in forms.

Hopefully, it will also produce a new organizational structure for the literal practice of architecture as well, and the end of the era of personality-driven aesthetic production whose apotheosis, as many have noted, was marked by the spectacle of the Beijing Olympics.

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What are its implications for your work?

In general, because of the aforementioned lag between design museums and design practices, we have the luxury of distance to figure out what this all means. However, design museums do need to think quickly about how to contextualize the past two decades of architectural production and, perhaps more importantly, about how to collect and archive the artifacts of the digital age. ____ Matthias Kohler Architect, Gramazi and Kohler.

Spring 2009 MIT Lecture Series Speaker.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

We focus on the material conditions of architecture, and the way in which these can be informed by digital processes. In our research, we push these boundaries, but believe that digital possibilities need to be anchored in material conditions.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

For our work, digitalization and the ever more increasing of availability of

processing and manufacturing techniques remain the most important transformations that continue to present architects with great opportunities and challenges to employ the complexities of design, construction, economics, and sustainability productively.

What are its implications for your work?

We strive to be designers of integrated design processes. The sound comprehension of the development of underlying digital systems, construction techniques, and resulting aesthetics is essential for their respective further development, but also for a critical, proactive position regarding the role of the architect. ____ Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani Professor, ETH Zurich. Architect.

MIT Spring 2009 MIT Lecture Series Speaker.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

My work is only about future: I try to accommodate the (material and immaterial) needs of the people using my buildings for the days to come.

Evidently, this is a bet, and the chances of betting wrong are substantial. I try to minimize them by looking at the past. It is the most remarkable repository of futures that we possess.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

The financial crisis and the consequent recession: We will all be poor, and will therefore be forced to choose accurately where to spend our money and for what. We will become more and more trustees of our clients, and we will have to work out for them not only a project, but also a program and a strategy. The architect will become less a technician (in the sense Le Corbusier used the term) and more something like a cultivated consultant; less a specialist and more a generalist; less an aesthetical and more an ethical operator. He might even become a figure similar to the old family doctor, combining disciplinary knowledge with a broad view, common sense and wisdom.

What are its implications for your work?

No implications; I have always tried to be that sort of architect. So if my forecast is correct, I shall have a lot of clients, make a lot of money and become a star. I am not sure I am looking forward to that. ____ John McMorrough Assistant Professor, Ohio State University. Architect.

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How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

As an architect, trained as a historian, increasingly operating as a critic / theorist, the future in my work is located in the recent past; in the detritus and dead ends of the discipline of architecture’s development to both show the contingency (as opposed to the inevitability) of its historical developments and to identify and elucidate the tools and techniques that enact architecture’s performance rather than its premise.

In this work, I consider my efforts as a futurist of the (relatively) recent past.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

Architecture today, as a profession, as a discipline, and as a field of study, is confronted with a dilemma. It is blessed with a great legacy of thought and techniques dedicated to the description and generation of the world in which we operate, but it is asked to play an increasingly diminished role in the creation of that world. At some level, this is a recurrent refrain; each generation of architects has positioned its own crisis, its own dilemma of presence. The latest dilemma seems to be how to conceptualize one of scarcity, not only of resources, but also of capital as an engine of transformation and change in a variety of environments

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(natural and artificial, economic and ecological—namely architecture, landscape and the city). At this juncture, the issue is not the type of architecture, but the continued existence of architecture as a practice, a discipline, and a field of knowledge. These challenges include the ongoing acquiescence of areas of professional responsibility to more nimble offshoots, but also the conceptual de-laminations of the discipline from its very own projects of formation. In the past the question was how to define what architecture is, in the future the question will be what architecture can be.

What are its implications for your work?

The continued elaboration of architecture’s internalized codes only serves to further entrench the discipline within an increasingly introspective and nonproductive stance. Architecture needs to re-situate itself within its productive and projective capacities, in its competencies in terms of the specifics of building, but also in the retooling and redeployment of its conceptual legacies. To address this condition, it is increasingly my belief that the site of maximum impact is within the structures of architectural education, not only in the training of future practitioners, but the way in which the pedagogy of the architecture school can act as a model for the profession. ____

Rahul Mehrotra MIT Professor, Architectural Design.

Architect, RMA. How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

For me the concept of future is about continuously imagining the effect of time on the work, whether it’s the effect of time on the material aspect of the work (weathering, transformation, etc.) or the relevance of the work in a future time. Architects tend to live too much in the past, as that’s the only location that seems plausible. The future and the present seem incredibly hard to discern.

In India (as in some other cultures), the word “Kal” is used to describe both tomorrow and yesterday. Thus to be working in these cultures involves seeing the past and the future as continuous and time as cyclic with the future as an endless repetition and simultaneous reinvention of the past.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

The rapidly shifting landscape of social locations is making the built environment an amorphous, fluid, and elastic condition. This is most sharply visible in the urban condition around the world and especially in Asia. Whether it’s the question of the environment, resources, or economies, the demographic make

up and their shifting locations will throw up new questions about the role of the architect and the profession in general.

Architecture will not be relevant as an autonomous activity.

What are its implications for your work?

The social will have to be one of the materials that inform and produce Architecture. The physical material and the economic forces that have molded Architecture in the recent past will have to include the social as a force that informs this process of design. Locating the work in a specific place and discerning the fluid landscape of demography and the culture it produces will be the challenge. Finding tools to map and understand these forces as part of our projections will be critical to any work in the future. ____ Michael Meredith Associate Professor of Architecture, Harvard GSD. Architect, MOS. How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

With regards to the Future, I’ve always enjoyed that quote from science fiction writer William Gibson: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of

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the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

I don’t know if it’s one monumental event, but more of a drift in the cultural field through multiple events. Perhaps the rise of the computer and the fall of the environment / economy will shape things to come. We’re quasi-experts in those, maybe. The “computer,” doesn’t mean parametric or digital design.

I think the Internet (webpages, blogs, … and email) will and has affected the architectural profession far more than CATIA. The blighted economy and environment will probably produce some other means of cultural promiscuity, perhaps the return of fantasy or pragmatism or the atmospheric fantasies of new pragmatisms. During this transformation the discipline will move beyond the disciplinary games of closereading plans and sections; they’re pretty boring in the light of everything else around us. But even as the world changes, architecture will continue to rely upon the need for defamiliarization and difference in order to produce discourse and narratives. With the shift, we will have to produce new indexes and new methods to discuss architecture. (I don’t think architects could sustain a truly pragmatic discourse of sustainability or optimization or engineering for very long, unless someone could clearly frame the pragmatics of pleasure.) Ultimately, architecture will limp along as it always has—both as a cultural historical discipline and a technical one, but cultural before technical.

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What are its implications for your work?

I know this is a cop-out, but it’s too soon to tell. We’re still working through it. ____ William J. Mitchell MIT Professor, Computation and Media Arts and Sciences. Director, MIT Design Lab. How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

Designs and plans, by definition, are descriptions of things that don’t yet exist. The “yet” in the definition is the important word. It signals engagement with a realization process, and an expectation that the things described will exist. (You can soften the “will” to “can” or “should” if you like, but I try not to do that.)

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

Designs and plans should be distinguished very carefully from predictions—the intellectual constructions that prophets and futurists conjure up.

A crucial role for designers is to demonstrate that commonly expected futures are not inevitable, and that hitherto unimagined alternatives are— with appropriate effort—both desirable

and possible. As Alan Kay’s famous old slogan has it, the best way to predict the future is to invent it.

What are its implications for your work?

In recent years we have seen a growing realization that industrial-era ways of making and operating buildings, mobility systems, and cities simply aren’t sustainable, and will have to change.

Simultaneously, a convergence of new technologies has opened up possibilities for reinventing the elements and systems of cities in ways that respond to urgent twenty-first-century needs.

My current work engages this reinvention—as illustrated, for example, in my forthcoming book Reinventing the Automobile. This is radically crossdisciplinary design work, and it doesn’t fit comfortably within traditional definitions of architecture and urban design. So much the worse, then, for those definitions. ____

sies in the past shows us that the future has never been foreseen accurately.

That leads me to say that the closest thing to the future is our present; that it is in our daily lives where the seeds of the time to come can be found.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

Obviously it is a cliché but it can be said that the new digital culture has changed our lives and will so even more our profession. Architects are obsessed with the new means of representation and the promise of images of the world to come. But I doubt they will have a substantial impact on today’s formal proposals.

Architectural representation shouldn’t be the only field in which we detect the new use of technology.

Rafael Moneo Professor, Harvard GSD. Architect.

Spring 2009 MIT Lecture Series Speaker.

I believe that the actual building industry ought to be changed at least as much as the means of its representation. That is something that hasn’t happened yet and that will result in a true change.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

What are its implications for your work?

Architects are tempted to believe that correctly anticipating the future is the greatest achievement in their field. And yet a survey of the architectural fanta-

As I stated above, the future is very close to the present and that is where I like to commit my work. ____

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Antonio Muntadas MIT Visiting Professor, Visual Arts.

Artist.

Selling the Future From The UN/NECESSARY IMAGE, edited by Peter D’Agostino and Antonio Muntadas, Tanam Press, New York., Reprinted with permission of the artist.

The following piece, published originally in 1982, features ad copy from various magazines about projecting the future. (see illustrations on page 20) ____ John Ochsendorf MIT Associate Professor, Building Technology. Structural Engineer, Architectural Historian.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

My research group studies the structural safety of thousand-year-old buildings and therefore we think in very long terms. How long will a building component last? How long should a building last? How do we design for an unknown future? Time is the fourth dimension in architecture and yet we don’t talk about it very often.

As designers, we must think about how future generations will inhabit, maintain, and dismantle our buildings.

Designers of electronics, cars, and other products are beginning to think

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about the end-of-life of their designs.

Where does an iPod go when it dies?

Most architects don’t like to acknowledge that their buildings will eventually be in a landfill, or will be recycled to become someone else’s building. The vast majority will be torn down. And even iconic buildings—from Gothic cathedrals to Fallingwater—are renewed with new materials over time.

No building is permanent.

Nasser Rabbat MIT Professor, History, Theory, Criticism and Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Architecture. Historian, Writer.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

The melting of the polar ice caps is an alarm bell. In the 21st century, our physical economy will exceed the carrying capacity of the planet, causing us to fundamentally rethink the way we live, work, and play. Architecture has a huge role and it will be a major part of the solution. Architecture cannot continue to be one of the biggest problems.

Utter specialization. The architect used to be by definition a Renaissance Man (and recently, woman) in all senses of the word.

What are its implications for your work?

Because of resource constraints and global warming, the 21st century is going to be a wild ride and we need to create new generations of designers, researchers, and teachers to lead the way. That challenge gets me out of bed in the morning. ____

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How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

By depending more on politicaleconomic analysis than on prediction based on historical precedents

What are its implications for your work?

Minimal. The trend in history is the exact opposite: we are becoming more worldly (or global if you prefer) in our inquiry. ____ Carlo Ratti MIT Associate Professor and Director, SENSEable City Lab. Written with Francisca Rojas, PhD Candidate (DUSP).

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

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The concept of future is at the core of our work at the SENSEable City Lab. Our goal is not only to design, but to predict what may be the greatest needs and opportunities in our cities as they evolve alongside technology. We illustrate solutions that may be out of reach of technology in the present, and work towards developing the scientific grounding for their realization.

Our approach begins with a vision for an urban future, or “urban demo.”

This vision is tailored to a particular city’s needs, and can be motivated by the challenges a place may be confronting, or by opportunities for providing new experiences or services due to advances in digital technologies. For example, in the Real Time Rome project, we created a visualization that overlaid information about the location of pedestrians and buses in real-time, thereby visualizing the supply and demand of transit and stipulating the potential for individuals to make efficient and informed decisions about their urban mobility.

Our urban demos are showcased at large public events and exhibitions in order to spur debate between a crosssection of city users, public administrators, and industry representatives, who have the possibility of further developing, implementing and using the urban futures we envision. As an example, to realize the Real Time Rome project, the Lab partnered with Telecom Italia, the largest mobile phone service provider in Italy, ATAC, Rome’s bus service

operator, and Samarcanda Taxi.

These urban infrastructure operators provided the aggregated, real-time information needed to illustrate the scale of urban activity supplied by their networks. The Lab then processed and presented this data in a series of realtime maps, which were exhibited at the 2006 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

After the completion of an urban demo or exhibition, the Lab transitions to a phase of long term research, where we explore the key theoretical questions and technological challenges behind each project. We also examine how the technologies we develop can help us better understand cities and influence their design.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

In the 1990s, excitement about new digital technologies was so great that some people believed we would all live virtual lives. The mainstream view was that the “death of distance,” as enabled by digital media and the Internet, would certainly cause the “death of cities.”

The digital revolution did not end up killing our cities, but neither did it leave them unaffected. A layer of networked digital elements has blanketed our environment thus lending our cities a

new layer of functionality. Sensors, cameras, and microcontrollers are used ever more extensively to manage city infrastructure, optimize transportation, monitor the environment, and to run security applications. Of greatest consequence is the explosion in mobile phone use around the globe.

More than 3.5 billion cell phones were in use worldwide in 2007. Across socioeconomic classes and throughout the five continents, mobile phones are ubiquitous.

All together, these digital objects and networks form an infrastructure that allows us to extract and insert information almost anywhere in the city, and in real-time. Processing this information and making it publicly accessible can enable people to make better decisions about the use of urban resources, mobility, and social interaction. This “feedback loop” of digital sensing and processing can influence various complex and dynamic aspects of the city by improving the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of the places we inhabit. For example, an automated trip planner that relies on real-time information about bus, train, and taxi location, as well as congestion and pollution levels can help transit riders to not only find the fastest travel route that matches their budget, but also that which has the least impact on air quality.

Such rich information can be captured and transmitted through ambient

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sensors and computers embedded in the urban environment and through personal digital devices such as mobile phones, so that people themselves can become probes, reporting on what is happening around them by intelligently harnessing the processing power and bandwidth they carry almost everywhere they go. As a result, our experience of urban spaces is transformed: it is no longer exclusively city designers and developers who give shape to our urban spaces, but almost anyone can participate in forming the digital layer of our environment. In short, the physical design and experience of the near-future city is intimately bound to the harnessing and transmission of digital information.

A comparable process has happened recently in the car industry. Until about twenty years ago common cars were made primarily of nuts and bolts. Today, more than 30% of the cost of cars is in electronics and by 2010 it is expected that more than 90% of innovation in the industry will be based on electronic systems. In addition to the physical structure that carries and protects the passengers, today’s cars include gyroscopes, ABS, GPS, wireless connectivity, and many other sensors. They also deploy sophisticated computer processing units that collect and distribute high-level information to enhance the driving experience and improve safety.

This indicates a revolution in terms of the skills required to design, build, and maintain today’s automobiles in

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comparison to those of merely two decades ago.

A similar revolution is about to impact our cities!

What are its implications for your work?

Research at the SENSEable City Lab thus focuses on developing technologies that can mediate between physical urban space and the layers of digital flows produced by everyday urban functions, and on analyzing the changes our cities undergo due to this new coupling with digital technologies.

Through our projects to date, we have explored areas such as interactive urban furniture, methods for datafusion, pervasive data-mining, realtime data visualization, and more.

Most of our work is carried out in partnership with public administrations and industry players. We bring our partners together with MIT researchers to jointly share a vision, develop technologies, and deploy projects. As an example, we have worked with the metropolitan planners of Copenhagen, Florence, Rome, New York, and Amsterdam and in concert with industrial partners such as Volkswagen-Audi, AT&T, Telecom Italia, and Mediaset.

This is made possible because we consciously integrate aspects of urban studies, architecture, engineering, interaction design, computer science

and social science. The rich and conducive intellectual environment at MIT allows the Lab to bring together researchers with all of these different backgrounds and thus create a lively and productive exchange of ideas.

Our group includes architects, graphic designers, urban planners, computer and electrical engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and social scientists representing over ten different nationalities. It is indeed a global, 21st century endeavor. ____ Bruce Sterling Writer.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

I’m a futurist.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

You mean besides a financial crash, environmental woes, demographics and major league energy issues?

I’m liking “generative architecture” à la Lars Spuybroek and Neri Oxman.

So, I surmise: ultra-cheap, brightgreen, power-generating, generative architecture for global geezers over seventy oughta be able to write its own ticket!

What are its implications for your work?

Where the hell am I gonna live? ____ Nader Tehrani MIT Associate Professor, Architectural Design. Architect, Office dA. The Future: Here and Now In recent discussions about architectural pedagogy and practice, much talk has revolved around the topic of multidisciplinarity; in parallel, a debate has ensued between the proponents of “integration” and those of the old project of autonomy. Questions like, “Should we be working from the outside in?” or “from the inside out?” bring back to life the age-old debate dichotomizing between a worldly and engaged architecture on the one hand (an architecture that is socially, ecologically, technologically, urbanistically, or politically engaged) and an architecture motivated by mandates cultivated within the discipline on the other.

To get around this simple dichotomy, let us imagine a position that strives for a difficult synthesis of the two—neither a happy marriage, nor a banal call for reconciliation, but a position that uses the discursive friction between the two categories (engagement and autonomy) to inform the possibility of disciplinary advancement by way of an expanded core. Inasmuch as social and

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political forces do not offer us techniques and mechanisms for the production of architectural matter, it is hard to imagine that the discipline’s autonomy could critically test the very social and political underpinnings that give foundations to its practices. In parallel, those practices concerned with performing great social good fall prey to an equal measure of impotence when lacking the instruments of design with which to perform.

To clarify, I am talking about “design,” the discourse on design, and the ability of design to advance culture in some way—this, so that we do not confuse the architect with the citizen, voting for the right causes (or the left ones as the case may be). Design has a mediated effect on society, and rarely does it have the direct kind of impact that education, food, and health care have on people. It is for this reason that architecture never actually lead to a revolution, though it served as a great frame for a good many. Architecture, as conceived through the lens of autonomy is a hermetic discourse by definition, and one with a narrow audience; its conversations and corollary effects, thus, remain important to only a small group (of architects). Some have argued that this is a reason for the need to engage, while others see the very power of autonomy as a tool for disciplinary advancement, but also for critique.

But this is the very law of specialization: its strengths and weaknesses emerge

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for the same cause: a disciplinary discourse that is particular, specific, but possibly cryptic to a wider audience.

The predicament of specialization is certainly not exclusive to our discipline; it has characterized many academic and professional spheres of culture after the Second World War. In architecture, specialization has resulted in the cultural marginalization of the architect. Once the director of a complex array of intellectual fields, trades, and economic forces, the architect is now the specialized surgeon of skins, office layouts, or curious spectacles. In turn, once absolved of the liabilities associated with related and expanded fields, the architect has also lamentably been freed from the intellectual investment and responsibility of cultural advancements in a more dense, interactive, and layered way. What has resulted is a form of disciplinary alienation, whereby different sectors of design have been surgically severed from each other. For this reason, quantifiable research with origins in traffic engineering determine urbanism in the similar way that life safety codes determine railing heights and yet, with notable exceptions, neither (quantifiable research nor codes) have been substantially challenged within the academy because few intellectual or theoretical frameworks have been set up to engage them outside of the bureaucracies that uphold their provenance. And yet, one of the most powerful vocations of the academy is to redefine the profession, to challenge its

practices, and to scrutinize its means and methods. In this sense, the academy is not there to support practice, nor to prepare students for the work force, but rather to imagine conceptual tools and cultivate attitudes that may have the power to impact many disciplinary platforms and types of practice in the future. This is particularly important if one revisits how the profession was positioned but ten years ago with respect to the digital revolution; the subsequent role of building information modeling, parametric platforms, digital fabrication, and the entire lateral rethinking of legal practices that ensued as a result of the reversal of drawing practices in the shop drawing phase demonstrates how changes in design thinking and the politics of design were paradigmatic—impacting not only how we practice architecture, but how we conceptualize it in its initial sketches, as it were.

If the emergence of autonomy in the ‘70s and ‘80s has already been challenged by notions of “performativity,” sustainability, and other legitimating narratives, the current climate of crisis and change will prompt many, in the fury and panic for (economic) survival, to throw form under the bus, claiming that all the excesses of form somehow drove us to the inevitable downfall. Of course, we know well that there was an entire cultural and financial apparatus that upheld the last decade of experimentation and speculation, and that “form,” was merely a symptom, not the

cause of excess (or affluence, while it lasted). For this reason, let us not forget that the abundance of proposals for New Urbanist villages in the Middle East were operating on the same financial platform as the architectural icons of Koolhaas, Hadid, and Gehry.

If their ideological claims diverged, they all participated in parallel formal follies, and were the victims of the same real estate Ponzi schemes. Thus, before anything, I would like to resuscitate form as the main protagonist for this occasion, since now, more than ever, we need to inspect its devices, histories, and possibilities

gize the formal discipline in more than accessory ways: do these agents help us build our alibis and reinforce our own narratives? Or do they actually make us work, think, and prioritize differently?

At any rate, maybe a bit of both is important, as rhetorical advances are as strategic as substantive changes, especially at critical moments.

Many have argued that, in the last decade, the world of architectural practice has been able to get ahead of pedagogy, adopting multi-disciplinary platforms as a way of advancing knowledge in less obvious ways, while the academic studio, for the most part, has been and is being run on a model that is over 100 years old. In many cases, practice has been embedding collaborative agents from other fields of expertise within the design process.

In practice, there is nothing like a good value engineering session to overturn all our intellectual advancements.

Some may consider the current global state as a collective value engineering session, which would be a productive analogy if value engineering conversely were seen as an impetus to argue for intellectual indispensability. Arguments for indispensability may involve finding material, geometric, and aesthetic corollaries, not so much in deterministic ways, but in an interactive wrestle— one that pits the formal against the performative in complex and contradictory ways, in ways that escape oversimplification, and in ways that acknowledge conflicting technical and cultural parameters.

The structural and mechanical engineer have become indispensible for architecture to function, like prostheses, as have, more recently, real estate specialists, ecologists, or CAD/CAM specialists to name a few, with the corollary of having the potential to render architecture non-essential. The larger question is also to what degree can we escape traditional consultancy models to ener-

We need to move beyond the consultancy model and argue for the techniques that are unique to “design,” which are part of its expanding core.

Seen in a broader context, the multidisciplinary platform can also be seen as a check and balance device—, if not by design, then by default a very pragmatic outcome. In a field where our political remoteness is felt even

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with a fantastic administration bent on reviving the state of infrastructure, we have yet to see where the architectural discipline can be set in an alliance with the infrastructural projects now launched: for now, America is mending its bridges, literally, but it is hard to imagine that there is any talk of imbuing those very structures with engineering invention, urbanistic agendas, or programmatic possibilities. Part of this political remoteness is the result of a lack of education—that is, the education of our audiences: in Washington D.C., on corporate boards, in local communities, and on design review committees. Let us not forget the zealous ways in which the New Urbanists have educated their audiences, if by ideological sentimentality, then also by earnest hard work in the trenches of the democratic process— activism at all levels, design, lobbying, local and national representation. If the formal project requires outside intellectual platforms to discipline its forms, in turn, American patronage requires a healthy dose of education to engage the cultural possibilities of architecture in more informed and receptive ways in order that their critiques can be more relevant. But if we do not know how to communicate—or sell—our discipline in a more layered, conversant, and multilateral way, our biggest danger is to extend our own political irrelevance.

For this reason, new engagements between structure and ecology, urbanism and materiality, or infrastructure

and public space—to name a few odd bedfellows—need to be cast so that architecture may yet find its voice between the inside and the out, and beyond the disciplinary and worldly. ____ Sarah Whiting Assistant Professor, Princeton University School of Architecture. Architect, WW Architecture.

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

optimism of Obama’s election and the economic pessimism of the market crash cannot but affect architecture.

The field (profession) and the discipline (academia) have to engage reality, but that obligation does not mean (again) that we need to figure out how to repackage the old—it means that we need to be more nimble, figuring out ways that design (architecture, urbanism, landscape, graphics) can have an effect, can fuel political possibilities, can avoid being overly compromised by economic factors.

Architects necessarily traffic in the future. One of the reasons why too many architects simply repackage the old is that clients can’t test drive something that hasn’t been built yet, and so giving a client something familiar appears to be the safest option.

But architects who don’t want to spend their lives simply refrying old beans (and we certainly don’t; we’re always looking for new recipes…), have to figure out how to work the future. This mandate on our practice has a strong influence on my writing: even when working on a historical topic, I’m always considering future implications and possibilities.

What are its implications for your work?

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

Riken Yamamoto Professor, Yokohama GSA. Architect, Riken Yamamoto and Field Shop. Spring 2009 MIT Lecture Series Speaker.

The potent combination of the political

While most economic downturns tend to encourage people to think small, Obama’s advocacy for rethinking infrastructure, and his big ambitions in general, offer some hope for big thinking. My current book project focuses on the challenge of a big urban project, and while it’s a historical case study (Chicago’s Near South Side in the 1940s), the problem of how to make big scale changes remains my central interest in terms of contemporary problems for practice (and writing). ____

How do you locate the concept of future in your work?

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I suppose I should take this question seriously….

Once a building is erected, it will stay there for at least a hundred years, regardless of its building type. The buildings that we build today will probably still be looked at and used by future citizens in a hundred years’ time. Thus we are responsible for the well-being of these people. Through these buildings, future citizens will learn what we were thinking when we built them, what our era was like, and what kind of future we envisioned.

Architecture is a medium through which the present era and zeitgeist can be conveyed to future generations.

Like a time capsule.

We are responsible for the future.

“To create architecture is to create the future” is our motto at Yokohama Graduate School of Architecture where I currently teach.

What recent transformation in the world (or in your field of expertise) will significantly affect the role of the architect, or the profession of architecture in the future?

Here is another serious answer to a serious question….

One of the most drastic transformations was the subprime debacle. It was effectively a debacle of all-American globalism, which caused worldwide panic because the entire world was

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involved in this American standardization, or Americanization. Thus America is doubly responsible for this situation: first for attempting to blanket the entire world with American globalism, and then for allowing this globalism of its own making to fail.

From the 1990’s onwards, many people in Japan were attracted towards American globalism, and soon became obsessed with money-making. Architecture and the building industry were no exceptions, and were exploited as means for money-making. Due to excessive mitigation of plot ratios, central Tokyo has been transformed into a pitiful state with forests of ugly skyscrapers. We all know that developers have no interest whatsoever in how the urban landscape is created. From the 1990’s onwards, the Japanese government and developers alike have been preoccupied with attracting investors from around the world. Buildings became mere investment objects. The problem that architects are currently facing worldwide is the lack of work caused simply by the investors’ debacle. Buildings became unnecessary as investors, who considered buildings as investment objects, vanished from the scene.

When I think about how to teach architecture students within such context, I sincerely believe that the teachers’ philosophy is being put to the test.

What are its implications for your work?

There is hardly any work left in Japan.

Our ongoing projects are in Seoul, Tianjin, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Taiwan: mostly collective housing and public buildings. Housing, or collective housing, has hitherto been planned predominantly by private developers.

This holds true in Japan, China, as well as in America and Europe. Through my own involvement in designing collective housing, the main design criteria from the 1990’s onwards seems to have been the building’s capability to attract investment. This trend is particularly evident in Japan, China, and Korea.

I think that the housing supply system should be revised drastically.

At present I am thinking of a concept I call ‘Community Area’. The common practice of a single family occupying a single housing unit is taken for granted.

Although the ‘1 House = 1 Family’ system is a fundamental structure underlying the governing system of a modern nation, I believe this system can be changed. I have been thinking whether something like a ‘Community Area System’ could work. ____

own history. Seen together they are an accumulation of projections, anticipations, and often, utopian imaginings.

Ultimately they serve as an index of the present moment, producing an image of the aspirations, ambitions and anxieties of today. The self-conscious speculator of futures is deeply embedded in the present.

On the other hand, futures are made and actively produced. Futures are multiple and contingent, but, most importantly, active. In the production of possible futures, we believe in the agency of design to realize multiple outcomes. In our work, the desire to enable the unscripted, unanticipated and open-ended figure prominently within the design process and project to allow for multiple scenarios. These works have open agency and are future imperfect.

J. Meejin Yoon MIT Associate Professor, Architectural Design. Founder, MY Studio. Co-founder Höweler + Yoon Architecture.

Future (Im)perfect Speculations on the future have their

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MIT - Uncertain Futures

Uncertain Futures Editor Ana Miljački, Assitant Professor of Architecture Student Editors Lisa Pauli, Morgan Pinney and Buck Sleeper

Two Years of Student Research at the MIT Department of Architecture Editors: Ana Miljački, Lisa Pauli, Morgan Pinney and Buck Sleeper

Assistant Student Editors Stephen Form and Oliver Wuttig Introductions to research projects and studios were provided by the instructor of the class or studio, and in the case of theses, by the thesis student. In the case of special projects, participants in the project provided the description. All texts have been edited by Stephen Form and the editorial team.

Introductions to each chapter were written by Ana Miljački.

Graphic Design Emile Molin and Emma Sainz Layout Lisa Pauli, Morgan Pinney, Buck Sleeper and Oliver Wuttig Text and Copy Editing Stephen Form and Morgan Pinney Pattern Pages Emma Sainz, Buck Sleeper and Oliver Wuttig Publisher SA+P Press Cambridge, MA 2009 Printing Regal Printing Limited.

Hong Kong, China Contact Uncertain Futures Room 7-337, MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139-2307 ISBN 978-0-9794774- 4-7 Copyright 2009 © 2009 SA+P Press, all rights reserved.

SA+P Press

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2009

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Department of Architecture Course Offerings

4.661**

4.665

4.6xx History, Theory, and Criticism

4.645

4.621

4.619**

4.607

4.628

4.617

4.638

4.634

4.510

4.5xx Computation

4.666 11.943

4.640

4.522 4.523

4.689

4.656

4.541 4.589

4.503 4.562

4.580**

4.560*

4.520 4.521

4.564

4.542

4.583

4.462

4.4xx Building Technology

4.461

4.464

4.430

4.411

4.463

4.497

4.493 11.495

4.481**

ELEC

4.370

4.3xx Visual Arts 4.312 4.313

ELEC

4.390

4.388

4.314 4.315

4.389

4.343

4.123

4.1xx / 4.2xx Architectural Design / Architecture Studies

4.222

4.103

4.215 11.309

4.288

4.144

4.THG

4.155

4.THG

4.214 11.314

4.290

MArch 2

4.255 11.304

MArch 3

MArch Thesis

4.236 11.463

4.244 11.333

4.254 11.303

4.262 11.311

4.163 11.332

4.210

MArch 1

4.241 11.330

4.220

4.156

4.106

4.124

Required Coursework >

4.213 11.308

4.221

4.143

4.105

4.175**

4.189

SMArchS

Electives 35

4.237

4.242 11.331

4.259 11.949

MIT - Uncertain Futures

MIT School of Architecture and Planning MIT School of Architecture andArchitecture Planning MIT School of Department

4.662

4.644

4.681

4.581 4.582

4.692

4.623

4.556

4.447 1.819

4.489

4.431

4.396

4.397

4.330 4.331

4.352 4.353

4.285

4.247 11.337

Discipline

Architecture

4.6xx: History, Theory and Criticism 4.6xx: History, Theory and Criticism

Media Laboratory

4.5xx: Computation 4.5xx: Computation

11

Real Estate

Real Estate

11

Urban Planning 11

Urban Planning

4

Visual Studies

Visual Studies

MAS

Architecture

4

11

4

4.367

4.295 11.942

4.3xx: Visual Art

4.3xx: Visual Art

4.230 11.468

4.286 11.945

4.252 11.301

Electives continued

4.297

4.XXX

4.4xx Building Technology 4.411 4.430 4.431 4.447J / 1.819J 4.461 4.462 4.463 4.464 4.481 4.489

4.210 Precedents in Critical Practice 4.213J / 11.308J Advanced Seminar: Urban Nature and City Design 4.214J / 11.314J Water, Landscape, and Urban Design 4.215J / 11.309J Sensing Place: Photographing the Urban Landscape 4.220 Urban Housing, Paris, London, New York 4.221 Architectural Studies Faculty Colloquium 4.222 Professional Practice 4.230J / 11.468J SIGUS Workshop: Learning from Community 4.236J / 11.463J Structuring Low Income Housing Projects in

Developing Countries 4.237 The New Practitioner: Dialogue Tools and Techniques 4.240J / 11.328J Urban Design Skills: Observing Interpreting and

Representing the City 4.241J / 11.330J Theory of City Form 4.242J / 11.331J Advanced Seminar in City Form 4.244J / 11.333J Urban Design Seminar 4.247J / 11.337J Urban Design Policy and Action 4.252J / 11.301J Introduction to Urban Design and Development 4.254J / 11.303J Real Estate Development II 4.255J / 11.304J Site and Urban Systems Planning: Prototype Design in Sustainability, Japan 2030 4.259 / 11.949 Special Problems in Urban Design: Advanced Seminar in Landscape and Urbanism 4.262J / 11.311J Ideal Forms of Contemporary Urbanism 4.285 Research Topics in Architectural Studies: Urban Morphology Workshop: Mid-rise High-density Mixed-use Housing Appropriate to Shanghai 4.286 / 11.945 Research Topics in Architectural Studies: Landscape

Heritage Conservation Workshop, Nizamuddin Dehli 4.288 Preparation for SMBT Thesis / SMArchS Thesis 4.290 SMArchS Pre-Thesis Preparation 4.295 / 11.942 Special Problems in Architecture Studies: Asia Modern, Architecture and Urbanism 4.297 Special Problems in Architecture Studies: Seminar in Operative Criticism / Conversations in Contemporary Architecture

4.312 / 4.313 Advanced Studio on the Production of Space 4.314 / 4.315 Advanced Workshop in Artistic Practice and Transdisciplinary Research: The City as Stage, The City as Process 4.330 / 4.331 Introduction to Networked Cultures and Participatory Media: Brain, Body, Network 4.343 Photography and Related Media 4.352 / 4.353 Advanced Video 4.365 Advanced Projects in Visual Arts 4.367 Studio Seminar in Public Art 4.370 Interrogative Design Workshop 4.388 Preparation for SMVisS Thesis 4.389 SMVisS Thesis Tutorial 4.390 Visual Arts Independent Studio 4.396 Special Problems in Visual Artis: Autism Studio 4.397 Special Problems in Visual Arts: Networked Cultures and Participatory Media

(Map: Ying Chee Chui and Buck Sleeper) 37

course number

* 4.560 is required only of students entering * 4.560 is required onlyin of students entering in the second year the second year ** courses shown are** each required only ofeach their required only of their courses shown are respective areas of study respective areas of study

4.103 4.105 / 4.106 4.123 / 4.124 4.143 / 4.144 4.155 / 4.156 4.163J / 11.332J 4.175 4.189

Freehand Drawing Architectural Design Skills I & 2 Architectural Design Level I Architectural Design Level II Architectural Design Level III Urban Design Studio Case Studies in City Form Preparation for MArch Thesis

course number

credit hours / week credit hours / week

4.1xx Architectural Design

4.2xx Visual Arts

4.240 11.328

4.XXX

4.4xx: Building Technology 4.4xx: Building Technology

4.2xx Architecture Studies

4.540

MAS.551

and Planning

4.2xx: Architecture Studies 4.2xx: Architecture Studies 4.1xx: Architectural Design 4.1xx: Architectural Design

4.553

4.557 MAS.552

Discipline

MAS Media Laboratory

4

4.693

Department

Building Technology Laboratory Daylighting Architectural Acoustics Design for Sustainability BT I: Material and Construction BT II: Introduction to Building Structural Systems I BT III: Introduction to Buildng Structural Systems II BT IV: Energy in Building Design Building Technology Seminar

Preparation for Building Technology PhD Thesis 4.493 / 4.495 Special Problems in Building Technology: Design for a Sustainable Future 4.497 Special Problems in Building Technology: Design / Build Seminar: El Salvador

4.5xx Computation 4.503 / 4.562 4.510 4.520 / 4.521 4.523 4.540 4.541 4.542 4.553 4.556J / MAS.551J 4.557J / MAS.552J 4.560 4.564 4.581 / 4.582 4.583 4.589

Advanced Visualization: Architecture in Motion Graphics Materializing Design Computational Design I: Theory and Applications Computational Design II: Theory and Applications Introduction to Shape Grammars I Introduction to Shape Grammars II Background to Shape Grammars Workshop in Architectural Computation Design without Boundaries Mobility on Demand Geometric Modeling Formal Design Knowledge and Programmed Constructs Proseminar in Computation / Research Seminar in Computation PhD + SMArchS Forum in Computation Preparation for Design and Computation PhD Thesis

4.6xx History, Theory, and Criticism 4.607 Thinking about Architecture: In History and at Present 4.617 Issues in Islamic Urbanism: Balancing Globalism and Regionalism,

The Heart of Doha Project 4.621 Orientalism and Representation 4.623 Mughal Landscapes: History, Heritage and Design 4.628 Special Problems in Islamic and Nonwestern Architecture: Modernization and Colonization, Cairo in the Long 19th Century 4.634 Renaissance Architecture 4.638 Advanced Study in Renaissance Architecture 4.640 Advanced Study in Critical Theory of Architecture: Historic Preservation Theory and Practice 4.644 19th Century Art 4.645 Selected Topics in Architecture: 1750 to the Present 4.661 Theory and Method in the Study of Architecture and Art 4.662 Advanced Study in the History of Urban Form 4.656 Advanced Study in Modern Architecture: Much Maligned Morphologies, Third World Urbanism and Postwar Theories of Change 4.665 Advanced Study in Modern Architecture 4.666 / 11.943 Special Studies in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architectural and Urban Form: Water in Environmental History, Policy and Design Reading Group 4.681 Advanced Studies in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture: Global Constructivism, Art, Construction, Design 4.689 Preparation for HTC PhD Thesis 4.692 Special Studies in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art: The Art / Science Thing / Theories and Aesthetics of Empire 4.693 Special Studies in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art: Collect, Classify, Consume: Ornament, The Rococo and After

MIT - Uncertain Futures

Introducing the Introduction As an undergraduate student at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, I took a design studio entitled “The Laboratory of Uncertainty,” taught by a South African architect / artist Rodney Place. The specific task of the studio was to study the phenomena of “use, abuse, and misuse.” The object of my investigation was the bicycle and its relationship to urban and domestic space. Over the course of the studio, I developed an interest in design research, and with it, confidence in the pedagogical model of a design laboratory.

As far as uncertainty went, it seemed that it was all about cracking open certainty to discover design possibilities. How that applies to our future I am not certain. When the editorial team of Uncertain Futures takes on the task of cataloging the certainties we rely on as designers and architects, they end up cracking open uncertainty itself.

Like Certain Agendas in Architecture published in 2007, Uncertain Futures is more than a mere collection of student work. It is a critical assessment of the past two years of research at MIT. It is a platform for reinterpreting, debating, and projecting what we have done and what we will do next in the very near, uncertain future.

Yung Ho Chang Professor of Architecture Head of the Department of Architecture, MIT

39

MIT - Uncertain Futures

Uncertain Futures Uncertain Futures is an invitation. In staging this snapshot of the work produced at MIT in the last two years (since the publication of Certain Agendas in Architecture in 2007), we concerned ourselves with narratives of relevance that drive both the pedagogical projects and the research at MIT. Uncertain Futures is an invitation to a conversation with MIT about the types of narratives of relevance that we—architects, scholars, researchers—tell ourselves daily, in order to do our work, in order to demand the extraordinary, in order to invent, experiment, and innovate. Since architecture is fundamentally an anticipatory discipline, the collective and individual stories of relevance that architects weave have everything to do with the way we imagine the effectiveness of our designs and ideas in the future.

Even when relevance is conceived of in historical terms (and even in conversation with disciplinary histories), the hope for it fundamentally involves a projection.

Descriptions of the future that circulate in the collective imagination, the very concept of future, and certainly the link between the idea of the future and the concept of progress (framed by Modernism’s particular alliance with time) seem now less clear and less reliable than ever before. It is hardly contentious that our world is more entangled than it has been historically. More importantly perhaps, we are able to track that entanglement better than ever, which has in turn allowed us to keep complexities alive longer without having to resort to simple taxonomies of questions and overly simplistic responses to them. While this particular relationship between describing and acting may be reassuring when it comes to the question of impacting the world, it hardly supplies us with ready-made goals for the future. The ideological and material content of our hopes for the world, as well as ways to imagine and describe those hopes, have to be (are in the process of being) retooled to fit our complex sights. It is similarly easy to see that the sheer capacity we now have to retrieve knowledge (both on the successes and the errors of the past) and to simulate future conditions, amounts to something like a specifically contemporary alliance with time: delivering us into a “synchronic society.” In a synchronic society (per futurologist Bruce Sterling’s definition), the future itself is at stake—as a future with more options, not less—a future that makes futures possible. And finally, if the certain and continuous depletion of resources, climate mutation, and wars for fuel were not enough to jolt our collective capacity for historical thinking, then our global financial crisis may be as useful for the discipline of architecture as it is destructive for the profession of architecture.

41

MIT - Uncertain Futures

Epistemological, technical, material, and political uncertainties abound, and, inspired by them, the editorial team wondered how has the school that always saw its mandate as one of making previously unthinkable things possible—through directed innovation or tinkering—adjusted its narratives of relevance to engage the contemporary predicament of the future itself.

Embracing the spirit of the Agenda book series (and the Certain Agendas book that preceded ours), we decided to treat the assembly of MIT’s researchers and projects as just that: an assembly, a parliament in Bruno Latour’s sense, of projects, scholars, and issues, each having the agency to push back on others and to “make things happen.” Not unlike our predecessors in this task, we saw our role as that of reading the work produced in the last two years at MIT, the way an archeologist might interpret their findings, or the way a coolhunter might intuit emergent cultural and material patterns. This ultimately means that we were interpreting the logic intrinsic in the work through the prism of our question about the narratives of relevance.

postulating the role of the architect and of the discipline of architecture in a complexly entangled world, often linger in the subconscious of these projects. This is where they sometimes need to stay in order to function at all. In making public the deepest assumptions that seem to operate across the work of MIT’s assembly of scholars, in framing the work along the above-listed six typologies of imagining relevance for architecture today, we invite the community of architects and researchers outside of MIT to respond, to help us clarify our concerns, and to enrich our conversations.

On behalf of the editorial team, Ana Miljački Assistant Professor of Architecture

Uncertain Futures only loosely registers the formal educational structure of the school. In reading this book, one will be able to determine whether a project or a set of concerns emerged from studios, workshops, or theses, but since we were interested in the concerns that traverse across the formal structure of teaching and research, our chapters are meant to be read as constellations of different proposals, in each case producing several different and specific futures along a thread of common concerns. Just as the projects in each section are meant to complement, inflect, and enrich each other, the chapters themselves are not seen in opposition to one another. In fact, what may seem as the core uncertainty in one often becomes the very basis of design in another.

Starting with a literary handshake of sorts, the book opens with a collection of conversations that we initiated with a number of MIT’s own actors and its affiliates and friends. This introduction concludes the Forecast section as our own response to our questionnaire. The Forecast questionnaire is followed by seven chapters, each collecting work around a specific concern: Hybrid Natures, Alternative Geographies, Office 2020, Tricks and Tracks, Home for the Multitude, Expanded Infrastructure, and Future Harvest. The stories of relevance, which in some ways mediate between the circumstances exterior to any given project and the design process,

43

MIT - Uncertain Futures

Table of Contents Forecast MIT and friends ruminate on the future of architecture.

1

Hybrid Natures —Core II Studio: Omnibus: A Crossing for Everyone —Workshop: Aqua Tethys —Option Studio: Digital Mosques —Workshop: Taipei International Workshop —Core III Studio: Systems Biology Lab —Thesis: Notes On “Camping” —PhD Research: MaterialEcology Design Research

51 55 73 77 89 95 105 111

Alternative Geographies —Urban Studio: Landscape Architecture in Old and Navi Mumbai —Option Studio: Nodal Towers —Workshop: Continuity / Transformation, Japan —Thesis: Arctic-tecture for the Global Commons —Thesis: Programmed Emptiness

119 123 129 141 147 153

Office 2020 —Option Studio: Ebb and Flow —Workshop: Fabricating the Float —Option Studio: Reconstructing the Sichuan School —Workshop: El Salvador Design / Build —Option Studio: Housing for the Ancient City —Option Studio: Unsolicited Architecture

161 165 175 181 185 189 195

Tricks and Tracks — 4.123 Starters — 4.124 Reps — 4.195 Tensional Integrity — 4.370 Fly Away — 4.370 Self-Power — 4.370 Sweet Reaction — 4.370 Big Stink — 4.370 Double Take — 4.462 Crash and Burn — 4.592 Friction Fit — 4.THG Balancing Act

211 214 226 244 246 248 249 250 251 252 254 255

45

MIT - Uncertain Futures

Home for the Multitude —Core III Studio: Reinventing the Box —Workshop: Shanghai Housing —Option Studio: The Sustainable Civic Center —Option Studio: Saving City Hall —Thesis: O! Canada?

—Thesis: DWELL —Thesis: The Infrastructural Space of Appearance

259 263 279 283 287 293 301 307

Expanded Infrastructure —Option Studio: Paris Métropole Douce —Urban Studio: Kunming Groups —Option Studio: Public Facilities Skyscraper —Option Studio: Infrastructural Permanence —Workshop: Saemangeum Masterplan —Research Group: SENSEable City Lab —Workshop: Smart Cities —Thesis: Beyond Program

315 319 327 333 339 347 355 365 371

Future Harvest —Option Studio: Soft Space —Workshop: Beijing Summer Workshop —Thesis: The Sprawl of the Wild —Thesis: Modern Homestead —Thesis: Adaptive Toldo Systems —Thesis: Or Else

381 385 393 399 407 413 419

School Culture —Snapshots —Department Lectures —Faculty —The Great Game —Resources and Publications

429 429 445 456 458 460

47

MIT - Uncertain Futures

49

MIT - Uncertain Futures

Hybrid Natures A world in which eyeballs and skin tissue could be grown in petri-dishes and sold on the black market by the representatives of a pan-continental race to rather humanly sad “replicants” became so easily imaginable, almost tangible, in recent years that Blade Runner effortlessly turned into a common adjective. As often happens with good sci-fi, many of Blade Runner’s science forecasts are hardly shocking 30 years later in our postgenome, post-Dolly world. The genetically engineered—which permeates the Blade Runner dystopia—is not exactly synonymous with hybrid, or with nature, but it has been one of the most recent ways in which the status of nature has been made more uncertain and unstable in the last decade.

All natures are constructed today, and all hybrids take the forefront of things natural in the 21st century. The 21st century is shaping up to be a real nightmare for purists.

The term “hybrid” makes sense as long as the old categories of classification are still at least partially valid, as long as technology is still something we explain in its own expert terms, as long as we remember programmatic purities, as long as humans are defined in opposition to all other mammals, as long as we hold onto the mythical “memory” of wilderness as an originally pure and uncontaminated state, and as long as most cars run on gas.

The history of architecture is replete with hybrids, but they have never before dominated the scene, and they have never been as wet and as wired as today. Although the often-contested hybridity of the discipline of architecture is implicated here, we use the term more specifically within the context of imagining futures in the architectural studios of MIT, as an architectural equivalent of a horticulturalist’s or a genetic engineer’s series of lab test. Some of the projects in this chapter show the results of obsessive attempts to hatch new futures out of a few elements with known properties. A courtyard parti, we know, supports internalizing; a subway car follows only several possible turning radii; a prayer ritual involves three distinct body positions; a Vierendeel truss can solve long spans and does not obstruct passage within its own height. Together, these known properties could produce a monster or an entirely new register of fitness. Above all, we are interested in projects that suggest more definitively that the future is in the hybrids. Thus, in the projects that follow, you will find hybridity in many modes: as a concentration of intelligence that finds form through a kind of Darwinian evolution in design (may the fittest design win!), hybrids as willed and guided innovation, hybridity as an ethos, or as the political core of a project’s social imaginary. Thus, cross-programming

51

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures

Table of Contents

and typological mutations are augmented with questions that may seem to be category errors at first blush: Could the digital meet the spiritual through scripting spatial density? What shape can one build out of sweat?

Does it still excite us to eat oysters standing naked with boxing gloves just a floor above a copy machine and a floor below the kindergarten?

Can the architecture of public transportation still support a public, and could it be financed by a health club?

Core II Studio: Omnibus: A Crossing for Everyone Instructors: Ana Miljački, Nader Tehrani.

—Dendriform Station, Buck Sleeper —The Overlap, Jae Kyung Kim —Supersizing, Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi —Dualities, Pamela Ritchot —The Public Insertion, Ying Chee Chui —Track Attack, Lisa Hedstrom —YMTA Sweat Machine, Lisa Pauli Workshop: Aqua Tethys Instructors: Julian Beinart, John de Monchaux.

—Landscape Operation Option Studio: Digital Mosques Instructors: Arindam Dutta, Mark Goulthorpe.

—Toq Mosque, Casey Renner —Megaphone Mosque, Justin Shea —Infinite Mosque, Coryn Kempster Workshop: Taipei International Workshop Instructors: Adèle Naudé Santos, David Small, J. Meejin Yoon.

—Open Cage —Dream Da-zhi

55 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 73 74 77 78 80 84 89 90 92

Core III Studio: Systems Biology Lab Instructors: Mark Goulthorpe, Jeannette Kuo. —Check Out My Petri Dish, Joe Michael —Department of Systems Biology, Rafael Luna —Building Tissue, Laura Rushfeldt

96 100 102

Thesis —Notes On “Camping,” Ryan Murphy

105

95

PhD Research —MaterialEcology Design Research, Neri Oxman 111

53

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures

Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone Spring 2008 - Core II Studio 4.124 Instructors: Ana Miljački, Nader Tehrani.

Coordinator: J. Meejin Yoon.

TAs: Sarah Dunbar, Garett Hwang.

Within the urban context, transportation nodes and community centers have been key components of the modern city. The bus terminal was once the center of commuter life and an emblem of mobility accessible to all.

The word “bus” comes from Latin “Omnibus,” meaning “for everyone, for all.” The bus terminal and station are second tier civic structures, overshadowed by other transportation hubs and public architecture. Similarly, the YMCA, an institution founded as a recreational and community center capable of social transformation, seems today to have experienced a decline in stature and use. Despite the public and socially all-inclusive evolution of the Y and the continued need for local transportation, the bus terminal and Y have become marginalized in the cultural imaginary. They are public programs in need of architectural reinvention.

The first portion of the studio focused on circulation systems, environmental systems, and structural systems as derived from the specificities of public systems of transit and recreation. Students were asked to rethink span, enclosure, and ground in order to reconfigure the architecture as a conduit for movement and activity through a transformative process.

The studio then engaged the constraints of program relationships, movement logics, structural systems, and site parameters, as a catalyst for architectural invention at a public scale. Students were asked to re-examine and re-imagine the terms of engagement between architecture and infrastructure to create a new public hub in the city. Negotiating the complex systems of public movement, public gathering and social activity, the studio focused on performative criteria as a generator of architectural form.

Hybridizing an MBTA bus terminal and a YMCA, the studio examined these highly specific programs to mine the spatial possibilities within their independent and inter-related logics.

55

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone

6

spline shapes projected to patch surface normal from ground plane

operations

Operations

surface figure Surface Figure

90° 90°

Project to Surface

Pick Points

1

patch surface generated from elevated point cloud

Surface

7

random points and bounding box

2 spline shapes are tangent at point. control points correspond to area vertices

Shape Profile

8

typical loft cross sections 12”

24”

plan: typically unique

typical elevations of loft sections

varies on point cloud

72”

varies on program type

*note: set spline degree @ 2

72” typical

3

a A

a

Lofting

9

a

for any position (a) residing within the area defined by point (A), then point (A) will be the closest point

varies on point cloud

varies on clearences

spline shapes are tangent at line. control points correspond to area vertices in addition to edge midpoints *note: set spline degree @ 2

Spline Shapes

4

Elevated Point Cloud

5

Thickness

10

node height set based on clearences and topographical requirements

30’

15’

dendriform typologies 6

patch surface generated from elevated point cloud

Surface

spline shapes projected to patch surface normal from ground plane

90° 90°

Project to Surface 7

Shape Profile

8

typical loft cross sections 12”

24”

standard slab

widened slab

planter

seating

> small rise in elevation at column head > projection onto flat surface

> small rise in elevation at column head > projection onto flat surface > expanded column

> large z value at capital to accomodate plant and soil material

> large z value at capitol to produce spatial vessel > inclined projection surface

plan: typically unique

typical elevations of loft sections

varies on point cloud

72”

varies on program type

72” typical

Lofting

9

varies on point cloud

varies on clearences

ramp

stair well

locker / room

park

> small z value at column head > projection onto inclined surface

> small z value at column head > column widened to house stair > aperture for lighting and entrance

> variable z value at column head > column widened to room-like proportions > aperture for lighting and entrance

> variable z value at column head > column shaft truncated to allow direct contact with ground

Thickness

10

Dendriform Typologies dendriform typologies

standard slab

widened slab

planter

seating

> small rise in elevation at column head > projection onto flat surface

> small rise in elevation at column head > projection onto flat surface > expanded column

> large z value at capital to accomodate plant and soil material

> large z value at capitol to produce spatial vessel > inclined projection surface

Buck Sleeper - MArch Instructor: Nader Tehrani.

ramp

stair well

locker / room

park

> small z value at column head > projection onto inclined surface

> small z value at column head > column widened to house stair > aperture for lighting and entrance

> variable z value at column head > column widened to room-like proportions > aperture for lighting and entrance

> variable z value at column head > column shaft truncated to allow direct contact with ground

Dendriform Station (Exercise 1) - The multitude of mushroom-shaped columns at Dendriform Station loosely defines a ground plane dedicated to the movement and intersection of pedestrians, local buses, and trains. The forest of concrete trunks provides shelter from the elements and respatializes the act of waiting. Meanwhile the flared tops of each column construct a deeply pocketed landscape, within which collective form gives way to individual occupation. Columns deform to satisfy a range of programmatic requirements: elevators, stairs, and a ticket booth are accomodated within.

57

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone

Programs Legend area 250 square feet

Activity physical

capacity (sf) basketball

6300

volleyball

4800

adult woman

tennis

1800X2

senior

strength training

2000

swimming

5600

aqua kickboxing

3000

adult man

junior general program intergration possible program intergration

aquacise

3000

running

34000

Users

Space Needed

Spatial Intergration

volume

gymnasium

fitness room

swimming pool

runnig track

well-pare

misc

play

3000

Taekwondo

3000

Kokikai Ki power

3000

Tai Chi Aikido selfdefence

3000 3000

folk dance

3000

cardio salsa

3000

hip-hop

3000

asian dance

3000

yoga

3000

baby-sitting child care

600 600

playground

community hall

day care

classroom

school age child care

800

adult wellness art computer center

800 800 800

lecture hall

3000

locker

2000

spectator areas climbing

1200 0

deck

5000

bath rooms

bath rooms

1600

office

office

1500

cafe

2000

lobby

1500

lecture hall

locker

roof deck

cafe

lobby

Jae Kyung Kim - MArch Instructor: Ana Miljački.

The Overlap - Architectural possibilities are found in the overlap of the YMCA and MBTA programs. The site has three main urban flows that are made by buses, subways, and pedestrians. The building negotiates these paths without becoming a wall obstructing the urban fabric by using vertical circulation to lift the building from the ground plane. The programs of the community health center sit atop these circulation elements. The intersection of vertical circulation and horizontal bands of program provide spaces for minor program elements such as small theaters, reading rooms, and playrooms.

Finding overlapping playground - play room

gymnasium - spectators’ area - stair - day care - roof garden

program

?

program

lounge - stage - steps - theater - reading room

steps - bleacher - community hall - multimedia room

classroom - elevator - computer room

Ideas rest area - running track - cafeteria

spatial overlapping

programmatic overlapping

gymnasium, swimming pool

circulation, climbing wall

gymnasium, community hall

circulation, running track

lecture hall, roof deck

swimming pool, spa

circulation, spectators area

moment : spectator's area

gymnasium, roof deck

swimming

class rooms, roof deck

swimming pool, roof deck

day care,classroom

59

roofdeck,runningtrack

spa

roof deck, playground

moment: window

day care, playground

lecture hall, community hall

café, roof deck

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone

The Super Wall

The Stair Master

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi - MArch Instructor: Ana MiljaÄ?ki.

Supersizing - Initial site and program manuals were produced for a better understanding of the different natures of the transit station and community sport complex. The site manual resulted in a massing strategy that negotiates the scale with the adjacent residential plots to the west.

This is accomplished by breaking the massive form into a series of sliding boxes that allow neighboring residents multiple views through the complex.

The program manual suggested the necessity of a tool to mediate various programs in the building. Conventionally, stairs and landings are meeting places for people to congregate when they cross paths on their ways to different places. The Stairmaster is introduced as a series of supersized stairs to accommodate the diversity of YMTA programs. It also provides gathering and spectators’ space.

61

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone Programmatic Dualities programmatic dualities programmatic props

use

organize

interact

pleasure / necessity - survival

distributed / centralized

destination / circulation

stadium

activity surface

hop on the top

tot spot

A

B

A C

B

C

a dip a lap a soak

become the audience

nourishment

adventure wall

arms

ropes

legs

mats

core ball

stretch

body time

out

fitness

w/c gym shower

states of undress

gym pool

rock on

adventure ground

adventure zones

HI!

Pamela Ritchot - MArch Instructor: Ana MiljaÄ?ki.

Dualities: A Merging of Program - In the complex organization of the YMCA and MBTA programs lay the opportunity to draw on the inherent dualities in its dynamic programmatic pairing. The complex coexistence of occupants reveals a coalescing of many pairs of uses such as pleasure and survival, public event and private experience, as well as multiple and singular experiences. Diagramming these dualities depicts new programmatic interactions and reveals new organizational techniques that explore the many different registers on which these dualities, or lenses, develop.

HI!

greet

These programmatic dualities then become extruded, multiplied, or supersized in one dimension within strips that follow the logic of the train. Through these strips, a social and transportation hub exists in which the embedded integration of two complex programs interlock and reveal their differences through the subversion of understood notions of programmatic experience.

HELLO

HI!

assemble with purpose

“business room�

do the locamotive

mobility track

63

HI!

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone

program organization

The Public Insertion - Conceptually, the conical shape of the site not only acts as an urban strategy but also an architectural opportunity. Two directions of grids are established according to the size of the program and the conical form. An orthogonal grid defines the size of the programs, divides the space, and provides the basis for the structural walls. The conical grid frames views and funnels users through the building.

The YMCA is a place for gathering different groups of people: children, teenagers, adults, and seniors. Different age groups enjoy different programs in the YMCA and each group has its own specific programs and shared programs.

Each specific program is the world for each age group and thus the shared programs—swimming pool, gymnasium and running track—become the common worlds between them.

CHILDREN

ADULTS

TEENAGERS

SENIORS

RUNNING TRACK

structural grid according to program

SWIMMING POOL

structural grid

GYMNASIUM

Ying Chee Chui - MArch Instructor: Ana Miljački.

care

daysroom clas

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specific programs

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s senior

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adults connections between specific programs

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n childre

s senior

sports bars

en childr

adults

rs teenage

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comm

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common programs

65

um

nasi

adults

y cafe

hall lobb

re office

gym

common programs

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone

Pool

Locker Room Below Climbing Wall Below Lower Track Bus Waiting Upper Roof Terrace Gymnasium Playground Lower Roof Terrace Classrooms

Lecture Hall

Community Hall

Day Care Train Waiting

Upper Roof Terrace Cafe and Lobby

Ground & First Level Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

Roof Level Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

Second Level Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

Pool

Locker Room Below Climbing Wall Below Lower Track Bus Waiting Upper Roof Terrace Gymnasium Playground Lower Roof Terrace Classrooms

Lecture Hall

Upper Roof Terrace

Community Hall

Day Care Train Waiting

Upper Roof Terrace

Track

Lower Roof Terrace

Track

Cafe and Lobby

Classrooms

Pool Deck

Track

Climbing Wall

Track

Cafe & Lobby

Train Waiting Area

Lecture Hall

mp Section

Train Track

Ground & First Level Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

Roof Level Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

Second Level Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

Concrete and Steel Column System Pool

Adapts for Head Height Tread Height Registration

Concrete Plate

"Delaminates" from Steel Structure

Concrete and Steel

Shear Wall Locker Room Below

Stairs Adapt to Become Wall

Climbing Wall Below Lower Track

Stairs Adapt to Become Floor Plate

Bus Waiting

Gymnasium Playground

Classrooms

Lecture Hall

Folded Plate Structure

Community Hall

Day Care Train Waiting

Upper Roof Terrace

Upper Roof T Cafe and Lobby

Track

Track

Pool Deck

Community Hall

Pool

Climbing Wall

Gymnasium

Track

Daycare

Playground

ymnasium Section

Train Track

Train Track

Ground & First Level Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

Lisa Hedstrom - MArch Instructor: Nader Tehrani.

Track Attack - The sequencing of program was designed around two running tracks in the YMCA. At all times, one of the tracks will be used as circulation, while the other is used for jogging or racing. This defines the spatial activities of the YMCA by either dividing spaces or letting them bleed together. For example, a track running through the gymnasium allows adults to play basketball at full court during their lunch breaks and children to play at half court when they arrive for after-school day care. The rotation and displacement of the tracks informs the geometry of the outer skin, while allowing circulation to service every level and accommodate the triangular site.

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Second Level Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone

















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





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



Lisa Pauli - MArch Instructor: Ana Miljački.

YMTA Sweat Machine - Three main factors influenced a decision to activate the building through a sweeping inclined structure around structural thermal cores.

Firstly, due to increased attention on the rise of obesity in the US, the architectural form of the YMCA is designed to demand physical activity: inclined circulation replaces workout machines. Secondly, the production of sweat and heat informed the design since many programs inherent to the YMCA and the MBTA produce large amounts of both. For example, the warm outer wall of a sauna warms a person waiting for the train. The third consideration, a contextual one, uses a form shorter and more sensitive to the low-rise buildings at the western end of the site while allowing the YMTA to open up and transition across the site into the taller buildings on the opposite end.

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Lisa Pauli - MArch - Roofscape (Exercise 1)

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Omnibus: A Crossing For Everyone

71

Workshop: Aqua Tethys (Fall 2008) Instructors: Julian Beinart, John de Monchaux.

The workshop’s focus was the site and building design of the Aqua Tethys spa situated about 110 kilometers east of Bratislava in Slovakia. The site lies above a major sea 22 million years old which yields mineralized water at a temparature of 80 to 90 °C, sufficient as a source for thermal use and for energy supply. Students were asked to design an environment for a healing center, water park, hotels, apartments, research center, production facilities, and sports and recreation venues.

Students produced four projects: a dispersed plan clustered on three prominent locations on the site; a concentration of activities along a centrally terraced water street; a dramatic setting which combined a variety of evocative experiences similar to the grand spa complexes of the 19th century; and a regional landscape plan which maintained a working agricultural setting and incorporated existing villages surrounding the site. The work included attention to contemporary issues and intentions in the field of tourism and leisure, as well as attention to implementation of the proposed designs.

Featured work by: Victor Eskinazi - MCP, Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi - MArch

reception is a landmark of the hotel complex Reception is a landmark of the hotel complex

Publicpool pool public

*

*

Landscape Operation Hotels / Resorts

From an ecological perspective, the meadow will The proposal for Aqua Tethys spa/resort complex is perform an important function of filtering fertilizers a blend of subtle and forthright adaptations of the from runoff water before it reaches creeks, streams regional landscape of the site in order to establish the and rivers. It is expected that water contamination identity of the project/place. The resulting landscape from agricultural production in the region will be sigis a sweeping visual composition made of meadows, buildings create courtyard gardens nificantly reduced. Finally, the analysis of geographiproductive landscapes, and carefully sited buildings cal slopes and sun angles on the site is conducted to that take advantage of the large scale landscape landscape slippig underneath define the “zones� appropriate for certain types of interventions. plants and meadows.

Landscape connections are proposed as a means of establishing a network of villages. Open space is the sole generator of form for the project. As the site sits in a pattern composed of small villages surrounded by agricultural land, a formal relationship between village and landscape creates a unique character in the region. The proposal intends to create a landscape core utilizing the productive landscape and meadows as a public connector to virtually and physically connect the spa/resort complex and the adjacent villages.

Victor Eskinazi - MCP, Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi - MArch

05

01

1 - typical Typical hotel hotel development development

H

02 2 - Private and

private and public areas

public areas

03 3-M ixing / inserting

mixing / inserting private and public areas

private and public areas

04

stacking on slope

otels / Resorts

move through spaces 4people - Stacking onpublic slope people move through public spaces

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures

Digital Mosques and Transnational Production Spring 2007 - Option Studio 4.156 Instructors: Arindam Dutta, Mark Goulthorpe.

TA: Azra Aksamija.

To an unprecedented extent today, architectural production and conception is irreducibly transnational. The increased traffic of technologies, materials and designs across borders—assisted by the celerity of digital media—has brought its own complexities and conflicts of productional and social cultures. To examine this complexity, the studio proposed to study a religious building type whose constructional and social logics may today offer potentials for investigating the cutting edge of such a transnationality: a mosque.

As building types, mosques are an epitome of the global spread of ideas.

In addition to their complex surface iterations, arabesque patterns and Islamic ornaments, they were at the center of discussions on form throughout nineteenth and twentieth century architecture. At the same time, modern architecture eschewed any involvement with the doctrinal in order to assert a formal ecumenism; the geometrical and “constructivist” logic adopted by modernism might today itself be under investigation by the pervasive role of software and transborder production.

Students, therefore, traveled to two different sites, Cairo and Samarkand— influenced as much by the global spread of a religion, Islam, as well as the remnants of the ancient transnational Silk and Spice Routes—to investigate the tremendous diversity of culture and built form encompassed within a shared doctrine. As an exercise in simulating this double transnationality, students had to investigate construction systems and material traditions both with reference to their regional provenance and their potential portability across borders.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Digital Mosques and Transnational Production

TRANSVERSE SECTION A-A’ 1:200

Connection to Aquafer CONNECTION TO AQUAFER

Casey Renner - MArch

LONGITUDINAL SECTION B-B’ 1:200

Toq Mosque - Prayer times in Islam, while providing fundamental structure during the day, are also highly variable according to geographic location and season, and the qibla direction is also unique to each location. The underlying attempt for the design of a mosque was to use the duality of regularity and variability of prayer times with respect to sunlight and season. The ideal mosque in this sense could signal all possible prayer times (daytime) throughout the year by calculating precise shadow angles.

Located in Samarkand, Uzbekistan this project seeks to continue a lineage of covered intersections within the central city—known as Toqs (domes)—that are both used as nodes for multiple incoming streets, as well as climate tempered marketplaces and gathering points.

Acting both as a thoroughfare for the local street market as well as a central mosque, the task was to accommodate both the profane aspects of a busy street market with the purity of a prayer space. Accordingly, the street path is unaffected at ground level, while the mosque occupies a steel cloud overhead.

WOMENS’ PRAYER SPACE MENS’ PRAYER SPACE

As a structural strategy, transverse spanning of the streets is paramount, though additional cross bracing is needed.

Parametrically controlled planes are therefore oriented to not only collect focused beams of light at prayer times over a yearly cycle, but also to provide a three dimensional structural grid.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Digital Mosques and Transnational Production

Justin Shea - MArch Megaphone Mosque - At one time, minarets in Cairo were utilized by a muezzin to make the call for prayer. Five times a day the muezzin would climb to the top of a minaret and call out to the Muslim people. The distance that the muezzin’s voice could travel would help establish the location of the next mosque. Today, in most of Cairo the muezzin has been replaced by a megaphone and a recorded voice.

The sound is distorted and often incoherent. It would seem as though the relationship between the muezzin and the Muslim people has been lost.

Megaphone Mosque is a study of both sound and generative form. The goal was to develop a relationship between the sound produced within the mosque and the architectural form. The minaret itself is used as a megaphone, transmitting the voice of the muezzin through sound chambers out to the public along the Nile River. The prayer space also creates sound through hollow chambers beneath the floor. During prayer, as the knees and head touch the ground, sound resonates from the chamber making the devotee aware of his neighbors. In this sense, the community is connected through both the muezzin’s voice and the sound of prayer.

81

Justin Shea - MArch - Megaphone Mosque

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Digital Mosques and Transnational Production

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Digital Mosques and Transnational Production

Coryn Kempster - MArch Infinite Mosque - Central to Islam is a very personal connection to the infinite through communion with a spiritual infinity (God) and a spatiotemporal infinity (community —Muslims everywhere facing a single position on earth and praying at the same time).

Traditional Islamic ornament helps prepare the mind for this experience through its highly-articulated patterning which can trigger an overwhelming sense of complexity from a limtied number of repeating parts. This immersion in a physical infinite becomes a gateway to the act of communing with infinity itself.

For a mosque on the island of Zamalek in Cairo this effect is amplified by adding a third dimension to the patterning.

85

Coryn Kempster - MArch - Concept Model

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Digital Mosques and Transnational Production

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MIT - futures - Hybrid Natures

MIT - futures -Taipei International Workshop

Workshop: Taipei International Workshop (January 2009) Public Space Interventions for the Da-zhi Community Instructors: Adèle Naudé Santos, David Small, J. Meejin Yoon.

For more than 20 years, Taipei City has had the policy of mandating installation of public art in urban spaces with 1% of all public construction budgets reserved for public art funding. Intensive discussions about the significance and quality of public art in Taipei have raised two issues, namely, the community value of art in public space, and the inclusion of art forms other than sculptural objects. This workshop re-examined issues of contemporary public space making and proposed interdisciplinary design alternatives that engage multiple forms of media, temporality, and space making to transform specific sites in the Da-zhi community.

Open Cage, installation detail

Charged with the mandate of proposing site-specific urban installations within Da-zhi which capture the public imagination, engage the community, and create new identities, these interventions were seen as a catalyst for change. Working in collaborative teams with students from MIT’s Architecture, Urban Design, and Media Lab programs as well as Shi Chien University’s Architecture, Industrial Design and Media programs, several proposals were conceived and tested in the sites. The projects ranged from site specific installations to nomadic temporal installations and from guerilla branding strategies through media devices and urban design interventions. Students experimented in these multi-disciplinary teams with different methods, mediums and scales of intervention. The Da-zhi District became a platform, a theater for various experiments to be tested during the on-site workshop.

Featured work by: Florence Chen, Robert Chen, Jiun-jie Jett Chiou, Ann Lin, Chou Cheng Kuan, Chang Shun-yi , Thera Tseng, Feu Tu, Kevin Wang, Soda Wei, Hsiou-ju Wu, Chang Jae Zain - SCU, Lisa Hedstrom, Tim Olson - MArch, John Kestner, Richard The - MAS, Ching Yi Chou, Yao Zhang - SMArchS (Urbanism).

89

Open Cage: Jiun-jie Jett Chiou, Chou Cheng Kuan, Chang Shun-yi , Feu Tu, Hsiou-ju Wu, Chang Jae Zain - SCU, Lisa Hedstrom - MArch, John Kestner - MAS, Yao Zhang - SMArchS (Urbanism)

Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures Nighttime Visibility: Mingshui Road MRT Tunnel Installation Community Messages Crosswalk Signals Signage on Roads Old Temple

Old Pond Traditional Market Old Stream Old Port Old Path

Mechanisms for Intervention:

Use Existing Signage:

Use UV Paint and Lights:

Reference Da-zhi’s past

Use the same level of detail.

Let symbols illuminate at night.

Reference events and things from Da-zhi’s past.

Use existing lamp posts and safety lighting.

Use QR Codes:

Communicate messages used in the past.

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Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures

Dream Da-Zhi: Florence Chen, Robert Chen, Ann Lin, Kevin Wang, Soda Wei, Thera Tseng - SCU; Ching Yi Chou - SMArchS (Urbanism); Tim Olson - MArch; Richard The - MAS

Da-zhi Surveys Asking questions differently.

The Dream Horn A Device which collects people’s dreams in a playful, strange way.

Da-zhi DreamBulbs An architectural intervention with a negotiable usage.

Works as a dialogue machine.

Da-zhi Dreamscape A temporary installation in public space which displays the Da-zhi dreams in a playful way.

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MIT - futures - Hybrid Natures

Systems Biology Lab Fall 2007 - Core III Studio 4.143 Instructors: Mark Goulthorpe, Jeannette Kuo. TAs: Sandra Frem, Alexander Tsamis.

Harvard University’s newest department, Systems Biology, headed by the renowned biologist Marc Kirschner, currently comprises 11 faculty from a variety of domains, mandated to “discover the origins of novelty in nature,” which, given the bewildering complexity of natural systems, requires as much exchange of ideas with other areas of scientific/cultural endeavor as it does actual laboratory research. Hence the new department building needs to be a fulcrum for exchange of ideas, and opens questions of the necessary identity or aesthetic of such a pioneering post-genome-project endeavor.

The wet lab laboratory type is particularly burdened given the need for containment of infectious waste, which usually results in a stacked and highly serviced arrangement lacking architectural vigor. Yet here, the requirement for contrasting wet lab space with more open space that permits social and scientific exchange, introduces a need for an imaginative spatial solution.

Given the extraordinary developments of contemporary bio-science, stimulated immeasurably by computational technologies that have allowed biological complexity to be illuminated, the studio offered the opportunity to reflect on the cultural and technical influence that such development will sponsor across all areas of human activity, both technical and cultural.

Kirschner’s own work looks at the constrained genetic variancy implicit in all natural organisms, which offers a fertile parallel to parametric generative systems in architecture. Indeed, at issue was the extent to which the activity within a building could or should be made manifest in its implicit or explicit form.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Systems Biology Lab

para_m

F L AT P L A

site context

organizational concept: internal promenade based on social gradient urban promenade LOW social gradientlow specificity interaction

site1 0plan 0’

faculty lab space

tissue culture lab climatic lab computation lab microscopy lab seminar halls restro oms kitchen ver tical circulation

informal so cial space small meeting ro oms loung e space reception administrative

central dining larg e lecture hall librar y informal so cial space outdo or/garden space commercial/retail

100

HIGH

Joe Michael - MArch Instructor: Jeannette Kuo. Check Out My Petri Dish: Architecture for Introverts A typical double loaded corridor is widened and multiple large areas of vertical circulation connect social spaces sectionally, revealing pockets of shared laboratory and social spaces. This internal promenade is not intended as a continuous looping path from ground level to roof, but instead as a method by which users will actively cross paths in section during their day-to-day activities.

Edge conditions are maintained and siting reflects master planning for a quad layout on the new Allston campus. Wet labs are left as large, open, and rectilinear spaces in plan, allowing for maximum flexibility in a constantly 97

changing field. Sectional shifts are expressed in façade, indicating the areas that are regular and repeated versus those that are unique and volumetric.

Joe Michael - MArch - Exterior Perspective

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Systems Biology Lab

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Systems Biology Lab

LONGITUDINAL SECTION

Rafael Luna - MArch Instructor: Mark Goulthorpe.

Department of Systems Biology - In order to generate a new educational environment, the public and private realm are hybridized into a single building. Private program is twisted around a public atrium, creating spaces for interaction. The openness and transparency of the institutional program reflects a new exploration for the way research should be conducted. The building itself works as an instigator for social interaction between campus students and neighborhood residents.

Service Concept Diagram

SERVICE CONCEPT DIAGRAM SERVICE CONCEPT DIAGRAM

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SCALE 1/8” = 1’0”

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Systems Biology Lab

ADJACENT BUILDING 4

ADMINISTRATION

SOUTH FACADE

ATRIUM

MECHANICAL

Laura Rushfeldt - MArch Instructor: Mark Goulthorpe.

Building Tissue - Through the use of fluid dynamics simulation software, logic and notational systems of bird flight and flocking were used to study flows and clustering properties of the site. The project proposes a “building as connective tissue,” sited between 2 adjacent buildings.

Spaces are programmed as compartments within a large, open atrium. A new, socially driven lab typology is proposed even as the building provides the usual spaces required for lab work. Extreme specialization within each compartment will not adversely affect the whole; the building tissue is reconfigurable per embedded rules.

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LAB SPACES

AUDITORIUM

ADJACENT BUILDING 2

MIT - futures - Hybrid Natures

Notes On “Camping” Thesis Fall 2008 - Ryan Murphy - MArch Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon.

Reader: Adèle Naudé Santos.

The public perception of landscape is still primarily shaped by eighteenthcentury English aesthetics—pastoral idealism disassociated from infrastructural reality. This idealism is on display in most cities in the form of municipal parks which Koolhaas states can be read as both “an operation of preservation” and “a series of manipulations.” Further support of this assertion is the means by which municipal parks preserve an appearance of naturalness. Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, the site of this thesis, is continually constructed and managed by a staff of hundreds, assuring the right varieties of vegetation, constant fish stocks in a polluted river, purposeful insect infestations, etc. If this presentation of nature is wholly synthetic, can it be re-imagined as an architectural project?

Modern architecture adopted the conditioned interior as a means of isolating the interior from exterior. Pushed to its logical end, could the conditioned interior become a new municipal park?

The thesis proposes that the preservation programs of the park be recast as a new interior pleasure garden that makes visible Fairmount Park’s necessarily synthetic construction.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Notes On “Camping”

Determining an Aquarium Size One inch in fish length equals one gallon of water.

Determining an Aquarium Size

one inch in fish length equals one gallon of water one inch in fish length equals one gallon of water

0

1”

2”

3”

4”

5”

0

1”

2”

3”

4”

5”

1”

12”

= =

average length of trout

= =

1 gallon

9” 31’-

1 gallon

or or 4.75 gallons

4.75”

4.75 gallons

31’-9”

4.75”

31’-9” 9” 31’-

= =

20,000 20,000

-10,000 fish released annually -10,000 fish kept in stock -10,000 fish released annually -10,000 fish kept in stock

12”

average length of trout

+ +

1”

+ +

Determining an Aquarium Size

”

31’-9

240,000 240,000

-needed to support 20,000 fish

-needed to support 20,000 fish

32,083 ft³ 32,083 ft³

volume of water in proposed Fairmount Park aquarium volume of water in proposed Fairmount Park aquarium

” Fairmount Park aquarium 1’-9size

3 based on the Schuylkill River trout stocking program

Fairmount Park aquarium size based on the Schuylkill River trout stocking program

square footage in relation to tank volumes total square footage tank foot print assuming 10’ deep volume

square footage in relation to tank volumes total square footage ”

31’-9

tank foot print assuming 10’ deep volume

31’-9” ” 31’-9

”

31’-9

31’-9”

”

31’-9

32,083 ft³ 32,083 ft³ Monteray Bay Aquarium

Chicago Shedd Aquarium

Georgia Aquarium

240,000 gallons - 32,083 ft³ 20,000 ft² 12 gallons of tank per ft²

1,700,000 gallons - 227,257 ft³ 322,000 ft² 5 gallons of tank per ft²

3,000,000 gallons - 401,041 ft³ 422,000 ft² 7 gallons of tank per ft²

8,000,000 gallons - 1,069,444 ft³ 550,000 ft² 14 gallons of tank per ft²

Chicago Shedd Aquarium

Georgia Aquarium

240,000 gallons - 32,083 ft³ 20,000 ft² 12 gallons of tank per ft²

1,700,000 gallons - 227,257 ft³ 322,000 ft² 5 gallons of tank per ft²

3,000,000 gallons - 401,041 ft³ 422,000 ft² 7 gallons of tank per ft²

8,000,000 gallons - 1,069,444 ft³ 550,000 ft² 14 gallons of tank per ft²

Fairmount Park Aquarium

Fairmount Park Aquarium

107

Monteray Bay Aquarium

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / Notes On “Camping”

Determining Fairmount Park Hotel size Assuming 100 guest rooms.

Determining Fairmount Park Hotel size assuming 100 guest rooms

Offices

+

100

16’-0”

- three @ 100 ft² each

Lobby - 600 ft²

Restaurant / Café - 1,200 ft² 24’-0”

6’-0”

circulation allowance

A A

A B C

Section A

Kitchenette/ Dining Nook

Section B

Entry/ Toilet

B Primary Floor Plan

The Cabin

Sleeping Loft Plan

The Cottage

B

The Lodge

Lower Level Floor Plan

Upper Level Floor Plan

Section A

Section B

Section A

Section C

Shower

Section B

Camping Units, Plans and Sections The Cabin: Efficiency unit complete with kitchenette, shower, dining nook, and retractable double bed. There are a total of 4 cabins within the project, each with a maximum capacity of 2 occupants.

The Cottage: Family-sized unit complete with kitchen, shower, dining nook, bedroom, sleeeping loft, and sleeper sofa. There are a total of 5 cottages within the project, each with a maximum capacity of 5 occupants.

The Lodge: 2 Family-sized units complete with kitchen, bath, dining area, 2 bedrooms, and sleeper sofa. There are a total of 5 lodges within the project, each with a maximum capacity of 12 occupants.

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MIT - futures - Hybrid Natures

MaterialEcology Design Research Fall 2008 - Neri Oxman - PhD candidate Design and Computation Group

How can we contribute to human and environmental good by learning about material and design from nature? Over the last century of design, the creation of artifacts has been characterized by the growing separation of form and material. Materiality is, by tradition, secondary to form.

With the exception of a few pioneering cases in contemporary design, the material realm has been humbled from its equal footing, and not without consequences in product and spatial design. The work of MATERIALECOLOGY explores how matter is applied across multiple scales to mediate between object and environment, between human and object and between human and environment through the development of a unique approach to computationally-enabled form-finding procedures. This new approach operates at the interface of computer science, material engineering and ecology.

110

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / MaterialEcology

Cartesian Wax. (left page) Resin composites, 2008, MoMA, Permanent Collection

Monocoque, detail. (above) Resin composites,2008, MoMA Permanent Collection

The project explores the notion of material organization as it is informed by structural and environmental performance.

A continuous tiling system is differentiated across its entire surface area to accommodate a range of physical conditions of light transmission, heat flux, and structural support.

The surface is thickened locally where it is structurally required to support itself, and modulates its transparency according to the light conditions of its hosting environment.

Twenty tiles are assembled as a continuum comprised of multiple resin types—rigid and/or flexible. Each tile is designed as a structural composite representing the local performance criteria as manifested in the mixtures of liquid resin. The work is inspired by the Cartesian Wax thesis as elucidated by Descartes in the 1640’s. The thesis relates to the construction of material perception and effect in our experience of the physical world. According to Descartes, essence wax is whatever survives the various changes in the wax’s physical form. The form of the wax embodies the processes that have generated its physical form and final features, and thus could be engineered to control their physical memory.

Monocoque (French for “single shell”) stands for a construction technique that supports structural load using an object’s external skin. Contradictory to the traditional design of building skins that distinguishes between internal structural frameworks and non-bearing skin elements, this approach promotes heterogeneity and differentiation of material properties. The project demonstrates the notion of a structural skin using a Voronoi pattern, the density of which corresponds to multi-scalar loading conditions. The distribution of the shear-stress lines and surface pressure is embodied in the allocation and relative thickness of the vein-like elements built into the skin. Its innovative fabrication technology allows creating composite materials that present combinations of mechanical properties.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Hybrid Natures / MaterialEcology Raycounting.

Resin composites, 2008, MoMA, Permanent Collection Raycounting is a method for originating form by registering the intensity and orientation of light rays. 3-D surfaces of double curvature are the result of assigning light parameters to flat planes. The algorithm calculates the intensity, position and direction of one, or multiple, light sources placed in a given environment and assigns local curvature values to each point in space corresponding to the reference plane and the light dimension. The models explore the relation between geometry and light performance from a computational-geometry perspective. Light performance analysis tools are reconstructed programmatically to allow for morphological synthesis based on intensity, frequency and polarization of light parameters as defined by the user.

The project is inspired by one of the first rapid prototyping technologies from the 1860’s known as photo sculpting. The method was developed with the aim of regenerating accurate 3-D replicas of a given object by projecting multiple prints of different angles and carving them relative to the reference artifact. Photo sculpting employs 2-D projections to regenerate 3-D objects; Raycounting employs 2-D planes as they are informed by light to generate 3-D form.

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Alternative Geographies When, in 1982, Michel Foucault famously told architects that they were no longer the technicians and engineers of the “three great variables: territory, communication, speed”—speaking of the historical fate of the profession of architecture over several centuries—all entities in the world that were previously capable of commanding large regional developments were indeed waning. This is to say that, insofar as there has ever been a single agent with the kind of appetite for territorial development that interested Foucault, it would have to have been a government—a “big” government or a socialist-leaning one—and by the 1980s their effectiveness and even their existence (in the case of the Eastern Bloc) was in question.

To those architects who encountered Foucault’s statement in the 1980s and 1990s, it either represented a direct challenge (which in many cases they vowed to take on to useful and interesting ends in their own work and towards a type of expansion of the discipline) or it summarized their own deepest fears about their relevance. Although Foucault’s (above quote) statement had the capacity to reach the vain core of the discipline, it also just presented things as they were. Architects have historically had all the stamina necessary to dream of shaping “territory, communication, speed,” but they were rarely structurally in the position to also single-handedly realize those dreams at a geographic scale.

For a while, it was hard to imagine planning entire territories or even to imagine the agents capable of sponsoring them, both within the disciplines of architecture and urbanism and in the political and economic realms.

Also, viewed through the postmodern episteme, planning in both spatial and temporal terms just seemed too authoritarian, too naïve, and, simply, too passé. In the relatively brief historical period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the rise of China and the more lavish oil-empires, only corporations had the financial means and sufficient arrogance to dream big, and they were, for the most part, operating through the logic of market opportunism, commissioning office towers, corporate campuses, and production facilities. Their activities did reshape the geography of entire regions, though not through carefully planned regional development and often at the expense of it.

The visible pilings of economic, ecological, and material debris left in the wake of twenty years of unchecked operations of “global” and “multinational” corporations have contributed to our recent change of heart when it comes to thinking big and thinking long-term. In an intellectual climate

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Table of Contents

in which steering modernization no longer seems by definition “bad,” “naïve,” and “authoritarian,” but newly necessary, could the architect’s expanded expertise also, and finally, ensure his/her ability to impact longterm regional development? This question is posed in one way or another by all the projects in this chapter.

Steering away from direct, head-on, and overly righteous proposals, the following work nonetheless proposes design engagement with challenging, even extreme, political, cultural, and climatic circumstances. Taking some of the logistical lessons from the corporation’s repertoire of cunning and persuasion and anticipating trends in modernization in the remotest parts of the world, the work that follows re-imagines regional politics and daily life through programmatic and architectural means. It imagines alternative geographies, and proposes organizational methods, financial schemes, and architectural designs that could structure the possibility of those alternatives.

Urban Studio: Landscape Architecture in Old and Navi Mumbai Instructors: Rahul Mehrotra, Alan Berger.

—In Between Green, Sabrina Kleinenhammans —Ghats as Urban Connectors, Claire Abrahamse Option Studio: Nodal Towers Instructor: Eric Höweler.

—Bigness for BosWash, Andrea Brennen, Katie M. Flynn —Jumbled Tubes, Sarah Dunbar —South Station Skyscraper, CK Dickson Wong

123 124 126 129 130 134 138

Workshop: Continuity / Transformation, Japan Instructor: Shun Kanda.

—Photography and Research

142

Thesis —Arctic-tecture for the Global Commons, Andrea Brennen.

—Programmed Emptiness, Sarah Dunbar.

147 153

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Landscape Urbanism in Old and Navi Mumbai Fall 2008 - Urban Design Studio 4.163 / 11.332 Instructors: Rahul Mehrotra, Alan Berger.

TAs: Shiben Banerji, Christina P. Markel.

Along Mumbai’s Eastern Waterfront, conflict over land and divergent visions of the city are building to a flash point. The waterfront extends over 40 km and includes over 600 ha designated for use as a port. However, less than half the dock is regularly used, and the infrastructure reserved for ancillary operational activities, like warehousing and cargo evacuation, is considerably underutilized. Older wharves, now too shallow for modern ships, have been turned into (illegal) ship-breaking and salvage yards.

Large tracts of land adjacent to the dock are littered with oil storage installations fed by an offshore oil terminal. All these areas along with the Indian Navy’s dry dock are officially off-limits to the general public. The only parts of the waterfront connected to the rest of the city are smaller jetties used by fisherman and commuter ferries. Consequently, designing a system that gives citizens access ot the waterfront without displacing the operational activities of the port will be the key challenge for the studio.

The studio examined the entire waterfront within the context of a rapidly changing ecological, spatial and economic context. The studio’s first task was to connect the Eastern Waterfront to the rest of the city and to Navi (New) Mumbai, which is just across the harbor from it. Integral to this goal was the definition of new mass transit infrastructure that would intersect with the region’s existing public transport systems. Given what was known about the region’s changing ecology and economy, this effort was supplemented by a re-zoning of the Eastern Waterfront, arriving at a mix of programs and densities for the entire area.

The Eastern Waterfront forms a critical portion of the city that must be re-imagined as Mumbai transitions into a post-manufacturing economy.

The low density of the site is in stark contrast to the rest of the city, particularly the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the docklands.

This suggests that the largely underutilized rail yards and roads within the port area could be reconfigured to support the city’s overloaded transit infrastructure, and that vacant warehouses could be re-programmed to meet Mumbai’s pressing needs for additional social infrastructure.

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Sabrina Kleinenhammans - SMArchS (Urbanism), with Wayne Higgins - MArch, Nida Rehman - SMArchS (Urbanism), Andrew Trueblood - MCP (See full caption see next page)

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Alternative Geographies / Landscape Urbanism in Old and Navi Mumbai WADALA

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VICTORIA TERMINAL

WELLINGTON CIRCLE

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Claire Abrahamse - SMArchS (Urbanism)

(Caption with previous page) Sabrina Kleinenhammans - SMArchS (Urbanism), with Wayne Higgins - MArch, Nida Rehman - SMArchS (Urbanism), Andrew Trueblood - MCP In Between Green - The project focuses on the existing TRANSPORT LINKAGES ACCESS infrastructure of the harbor train line and GREEN a main road LINKS following the bay. Both transportation systems create a corridor of high accessibility. Given the frequent intersection of both, interstitial spaces within this corridor are well-connected to other parts of the city but usually underutilized due to their “landlocked” position.

MAHUL CREEK: SITING TENSION LINES

PUBLIC SPACE IMAGEABILITY PROMENADE

Ghats as Urban Connectors - The degraded and fragile environmental filter around Mahul Creek is inundated with high levels of polluted runoff from the land. A key challenge to urban life—the lack of clean water—is evident here; almost a quarter of Mumbai’s drinking water must be trucked into the city every day.

The project questioned the existing water infrastructure, as well as the lack of green open space in the city and poor connection from the Island City to the mainland across the bay. Slices were cut through the site between rail stations and new water transportation points created at the edge.

127

These slices were seen as public, and were grafted with programs related to water treatment and the environmental significance of the site, intending to preserve these aspects without dictating how the rest of the city’s edge might be developed.

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Alternative Geographies

Nodal Towers Fall 2007 - MArch Option Studio 4.155 Instructor: Eric Höweler.

TA: Matthew Chua.

Looking at early models for designed cities such as Le Corbusier’s city for 3 million inhabitants—part of the utopian/dystopian visions of the future —we see that the tall building was not an autonomous object, but rather part of a field condition: one that was tied to an urban and regional plan.

The renderings show an integrated understanding of concentration of density and height with circulation.

The tall building can be seen as a node in a network. It is not merely an architectural object of extreme dimensions, but rather an intricately engineered structure—a combination of market forces, zoning constraints, and building technologies—that engages the city and the region through its physical and infrastructural extensions. Tied into a network of transportation and infrastructure, the tall building can be seen as a node or hub: an architectural instance of extreme density and programmatic richness.

The studio studied the tall building not only through the lenses of building type, technological structure, and financial instrument, but as part of larger urban regional phenomena. Recognizing the relationship between the tall building and its regional and territorial extents, and the phenomena of the BosWash megalopolis, the studio designed for two sites along the corridor: its nodal endpoints of South Station in Boston, and Union Station in Washington DC. Looking at contemporary trends in urbanism, we see simultaneous tendencies towards hyper-concentration and dispersal. As cities continue to grow denser, broader, and taller, new building types emerge: urban-scaled structures combining density and interconnectedness. The tall building can be seen as a new extreme building type, combining a quantitative concentration of volume with a proximity to transportation, communications and networks.

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Andrea Brennen, Katie M. Flynn - MArch Bigness for Boswash - In his “Theory of Bigness,” Rem Koolhaas writes that at a certain scale, the conventional tools of architectural design are no longer valid. If this is the case, how are architects supposed to operate when asked to tackle “big” projects? If Rem can begin with a tall building—the downtown athletic club—and turn it on its side to make a landscape plan (Park de la Villette), why not take another New York icon—Olmstead’s Central Park in New York—and flip it upright to make a building?

In Central Park Tower, 10,000,000 ft2 of mixed-use program is divided between two sites: Boston’s South Station, and D.C.’s Union Station. At the macro scale, the two buildings are envisioned as a series of 100 ft-wide bars (the optimal leasing depth for floor space). These bars are arranged horizontally in D.C. and vertically in Boston so that the plan of one project refers to the section of the other. Interlocking modular programmatic components are packed together in such a way as to leave spaces that can be colonized by a pervasive green circulation and recreation system. “Follies” at this scale host large public program, and the meandering picturesque green paths, lined with retail, connect these follies to draw visitors through the sites.

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SELF BUNDLING SINGLE UNIT SELF BUNDLING - Uncertain Futures - Alternative Geographies / Nodal Towers SINGLEMITUNIT SELF BUNDLING SINGLE UNIT SELF BUNDLING SINGLE UNIT SINGLE UNIT

MIXED PROGRAM MIXED PROGRAM MIXED MIXED PROGRAM PROGRAM

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scale 1/50” = 1’

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RESIDUAL GREEN RESIDUAL SPACEGREEN RESIDUAL SPACEGREEN RESIDUAL GREEN Residual Green Space SPACE SPACE RESIDUAL GREEN SPACE

RESIDUAL GREEN RESIDUAL GREEN SPACE ONLY RESIDUAL GREEN SPACE ONLY RESIDUAL GREEN Residual Green Space Only SPACE ONLY SPACE ONLY RESIDUAL GREEN SPACE ONLY

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Sarah Dunbar - MArch Jumbled Tubes / BOSWASH - Fazlur Kahn’s use of bundled tubes in the Sears Tower inspired a scheme for “jumbled tubes,” a building scheme which uses the varying floor plates resulting from a collection of jumbled tubes to accommodate different programs.

The scheme depends on the redundant use of many small steel members and the strength of intersecting oblique tubes to generate an architecture that is both materially dense and visually open.

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Sarah Dunbar - MArch - Study Model

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coolest restaurant in the universe helipad

all 4 = restaurant

presidential suites

presidential suites lobby

sports club

hotel + service apartments = breakfast lounge + sports club

service apartments

office + residential = daycare

daycare

hotel

wild card

wild card

apartments

gym

gym

gym

office + hotel = rockclimbing center + gym rockclimbing cavity

wild card

wild card

CK Dickson Wong - MArch

boston grand theatre

waterfront park and museum cluster

retail loop

South Station Skyscraper - Located in Boston, the South Station Skyscraper is an inquiry into the existing mixed-use skyscraper typology. The design introduces “intersection programs,” where amenity programs share spaces with transfer lobbies. In addition, configurable green spaces are introduced on every level of the skyscraper, which prompt the user to tailor a generic floor space to their own identities.

train station

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Workshop: Continuity/Transformation, Japan (Summer 2008) Instructor: Shun Kanda.

Joint workshops with: Kyoto University of Art & Design, Keio University (Tokyo), National Chengchi University (Taiwan).

“Continuity / Transformation” is a large topic, often culturally based, yet a phenomenum that is increasinly global and ubiquitous, affecting the quality of life and the quality of the environment around us. Within this complex topic, this workshop studied a particular slice in architectural form-giving in actual context.

The workshop was interested in the physical form and spatial quality which respond to, and sustain the continuity of a people’s connection to their natural surrounding, climate, cultural traditions, and long-established techniques of place-making.

While the workshop valued these notions of continuity, its focus was primarily on other particularities: the make-up of a sound, beautiful folk architecture, or the traditional urban neighborhood which needs to be maintained/sustained. Which aspects can be transformed to incorporate the emerging technology of materials and methods of construction, of an architecture closely aligned to the shifts in lifestyle, the place of the home and work, out in the street, the public environment, and the outdoors?

Each summer during a month-long sojurn, MIT students with the collaboration of students and faculty of Japanese universities, conduct field research, analysis, and case-study work of communities which face specific local, current, and real issues. The results of the work were presented at a public review and later documented in the form of a report.

Participants MIT: Rachel Gealy, Haruka Horiuchi, Leslie Lok, Ekachai Patamasattayasonthi, Lisa Pauli, Robin Willis - MArch

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Curtain of Bicycles, Day and Night - Nagiko Aramaki, Hiroaki Hemmi, Mitsunori Sakamoto - Kyoto University Art and Design.

Toolkit - Haruka Horiuchi, Leslie Lok - MArch. Mariko Inoue, Ryo Kinase, Takuya Murakami, Ryosuke Ooka - Keio University. Image: Leslie Lok

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Spaces for interacting with water and people - Haruka Horiuchi, Lisa Pauli, Robin Willis-March. Image: Robin Willis- MArch

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Arctic-tecture for the Global Commons Thesis Fall 2008 - Andrea Brennen - MArch Advisor: Ana Miljački.

Readers: Mark Jarzombek, John Ochsendorf.

Environmental agendas in architecture have enjoyed an increased attention recently, as a result of the emerging “sustainable” design ethos.

This framework of sustainability initiates a rethinking of the scale of an architectural site—a building must be understood as situated not only in a specific territory, but also in relation to a much larger and more abstract global environmental system. With this new systemic understanding of a “site” comes the opportunity for a different mode of architecture—one in which the architect has a hand in designing not only the architectural object, but also tactics for and potential effects of its implementation.

Operating in the spirit of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog—a 1970s counterculture bible for “whole systems” thinking—this thesis examines Antarctica as a testing ground for an expanded mode of architecture.

Antarctica, with its extreme environment, scientific value, and legal status as a Global Commons, is a site that cannot be understood in any way other than through its relationship to a larger global environmental system. This reality, when combined with the continent’s mystique, creates an unparalleled opportunity for architectural innovation.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Alternative Geographies / Arctic-tecture for the Global Commons Station 2 Plan 1/16” = 1’

Skin System Detail

1

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facility with Station 2.

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structured access to commons for individuals; opportunity for education housing for staff

SITE 1 $

protection of bio-diversity; food security

A PE

medical care

tourist attraction

tourist attraction + education

housing

medical care

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access to commons for private scientists; global benefit of scientific research

MOST POPULAR ANTARCTIC TOURISM DESTINATIONS + NUMBER OF VISITORS PER SEASON

OFFSET BY

consequences:

benefits:

providing a destination could lead to more tourism, which increases the potential for environmental destruction

EXISTING RESEARCH STATION

access to commons provided; increased tourism dollars and transport infrastructure used to support seed bank

Half Moon Island Whalers Bay

Neko Harbor Cuverville Island Port Lockroy Goudier Is., Jougla Pt. Petermann Islands Almirante Brown

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Programmed Emptiness Thesis Spring 2008 - Sarah Dunbar - MArch Advisor: Alexander D’Hooghe.

Readers: Yung Ho Chang, Sanford Kwinter, Ana Miljački.

This thesis project is a design for a monastery and research institute sited in the Yangbajing Valley of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, 80 km northwest of Lhasa. The altitude— 4,000 meters above sea level—and the wide open space of the site are ideal for the research of gamma and cosmic rays, which require the deployment of large arrays of devices that detect the passage of these tiny particles through the earth’s atmosphere.

Coupling of metaphysical and cosmic studies in the same institute would enable dialogue across disciplines. Additionally, the construction of such an institute would require an international initiative, bringing a global and public architecture to the region, and providing China with an opportunity to use this unique landscape for ends other than tourism or the extraction of resources.

While the landscape is marked and delineated from its surroundings by the placement of the research arrays, the architecture takes the form of monumental buildings, which attempt to mediate the open space through brute form and scale.

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Roads A network of roads connects the points of the radio telescope array and radio towers, and is delineated from its surrounding by a perimeter road.

Built Large mountain-like buildings, added along the road network to house research and monastic activities, act as beacons in the open landscape.

Radio Telescope Forty to fifty large millimeter antennae are arrayed, forming a radio telescope, used to study deep space.

Cosmic Ray Array Solar-powered tanks are arrayed every 200m in a large, circular grid. The tanks detect the passage of gamma and cosmic rays through the atmosphere and relay data to a central station

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Office 2020 Can you imagine a wholly nationalized architectural profession? This is how the architectural field was restructured in Czechoslovakia in 1948: imagine every single architect in a country working under one single institutional roof. Expertise moving around as necessary. Starchitecture not an option. It would (it did), of course, get tiring and oppressive, but that is not the point of our mental experiment. The point is that it is not easy to imagine a wholly different structure of the architectural office.

Habits, and especially bad habits, are hard to shake in the profession and in academia alike partly because they are in fact habits of mind and partly because they participate in an ecology of ego cultivation, satisfaction of culturally (and therefore economically) codified client needs, NAAB dues, and, in general, in the reproduction of the relations of production—to use that cumbersome, but precise, Marxist term. It is equally hard to imagine real challenges to the structure of patronage in architecture. The global financial crisis, however, might turn out to be our new organizing engine, forcing architects to look for new models of engagement.

There are only a few rare examples of experiments initiated and formulated within the protected realms of academia that have historically managed to pose a real challenge to the structure of the profession. The formation of AMO out of Harvard’s Project on the City was perhaps stunning for that very reason. Its final effect might be closer to claiming a specific market niche for an office or two rather than a wholesale shakedown of the profession, but the fact that its logic and its methods were, in part, tested and fine-tuned within the realm of academia demonstrated the extent to which the ruling protocols of architectural production could be challenged.

Although it became almost too hard to notice in the last few years, as the star-spangled icon cities of the Middle East occupied the center stage, or the center spread, of our collective architectural imagination, the architectural profession and even the discipline have been expanding incrementally, but steadily. The core architectural expertise now includes strategic thinking, imagining development and recovery (for municipal and national governments), inventing new materials, and relying on budget-driven ingenuity. And yet, if the delivery mechanisms for architectural expertise stay unchallenged, the architectural profession (and by extension the architectural discipline) will remain subject to a service industry’s basic turns of luck.

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The models of practice that are at the core of the work collected in Office 2020 each test hypotheses for the functioning of the profession and the very organization of an architecture school studio. Thus, we want to highlight the extent to which the following experiments, each with its own type of swagger, challenge the school. Some do this by establishing a real research link between the agents of political power (which is equal to agents of change in these circumstances) and the studio, preferring to skip the formal professional entity of an office. This direct link between our freshest design thinking with schools in China, ancient cities in Thailand, and the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was possible because, in each case, the need for intervention seemed urgent, the politicians were enlightened, and the students and researchers eager to dive in. These engagements either produced a very specific, fine-tuned design, or prototypes and kits of parts that could be interpreted and deployed in more remote contexts. On top of turning the school into the very site of intervention, some of the work collected in Office 2020 poses an even more radical challenge to the structure of the studio—either allowing the distributed authorship logic that is perfectly acceptable and even essential in the architecture office to infiltrate the studio, or by forming an imaginary office whose professional ethos is radically different from any office we know.

In all cases, the work that follows asks: what if we did things differently?

How would the things we make be different? What could be the shape of a smart and successful office in 2020?

Option Studio: Ebb and Flow Instructor: J. Meejin Yoon.

—Foldscape, Tidal Stitch, Float Your Boat, Crew Cut

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Workshop: Fabricating the Float Instructor: J. Meejin Yoon.

—Floatscape

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Option Studio: Reconstructing the Sichuan School Instructor: Weijen Wang.

—Beichuan Middle School, Steve Preston Workshop: El Salvador Design / Build Instructor: James Adamson.

—Amún Shea Entry Plaza Option Studio: Housing for the Ancient City Instructor: Jan Wampler.

—Sukhothai Housing Kits, Case, Kaminski-Coughlin Option Studio: Unsolicited Architecture Instructor: Ole Bouman.

—Office for Unsolicited Architecture (OUA)

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Ebb and Flow: New Bedford Community Boathouse Fall 2007 - Option Studio 4.155 Instructor: J. Meejin Yoon.

TA: John Snavely.

In 1967, the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot’s famous question, “How long is the coast of Britain?” examined the paradox that the length of an edge is indeterminate—the measured length of a coastline varies with the scale of measurement, making the length essentially limitless as the scale decreases toward zero. Sited along the Acushnet River, this infinite and indeterminate edge between land and water became the territory of investigation for the studio.

After its heyday as a leading American whaling and fishing town, New Bedford became an industrial area, taking a toll on this urban estuary.

In 1982, New Bedford became the largest marine EPA Superfund site for polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination, requiring the dredging of approximately 450,000 yd³ of contaminated sediment. The studio worked closely with the City of New Bedford to transform the waterfront edge into a vibrant public space with the design of a Waterfront Community Center and Boathouse. The studio studied the landform and natural processes that render the relationship between water and land in a constantly negotiated flux. Issues of indeterminacy, transformation, and temporal flux as inherent in architectural, landscape, and material processes were explored.

In order to find, create, and construct a new common “ground” between land and water for the city, the studio engaged this investigation through a set of protocols that take on the design process as a collaborative and indeterminate venture. The studio worked in shifting and aggregating teams throughout the semester to test multiple hypotheses for the architectural intervention simultaneously. Moving from the initial twelve schemes, the studio worked collaboratively, voting on which schemes to move forward with, re-organizing teams and re-consolidating designs to arrive at two final proposals for the City of New Bedford and the New Boathouse Advisory Committee. The studio constituted the design phase of the project; a design-build workshop followed in the spring semester.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Office 2020 / Ebb and Flow: New Bedford Community Boathouse

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Introduction to boat house design began with topic-based research: boat house prededents, sails, boat construction, rowing, alternative energy, and waterways.

After introduction to the site, a plethora of design ideas were produced.

After two critiques and further discussion, concepts were grouped and initial design teams formed.

Project “Acushnet Gap” was eliminated after our first presentation to New Bedford and a subesequent smaller post-presentation review at MIT.

FS TS FB CC

“Tidal Stitch” dies as exploratory Materials group is born to work at a greater level of detail. Remaining groups refine their designs.

FS

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FB CC

“Double Ups” is born and “Sky Lite” dies. Teams restructure in anticipation of the next presentation to New Bedford.

Studio Participants

Boathouse Studio Elimination Process

Left column (top to bottom) William Abrahamson - MArch; Seth Behrands - MArch; Mary Hale - MArch; Thaddeus Jusczyk - MArch; Yuchen Liu - SMArchS (Computation); Ryan Murphy - MArch; Christopher Taylor - MArch; Lucille Ynosencio - MArch

The diagram traces the iterations, project teams and finalists for the Boathouse Studio through an elimination process based on public reviews with the city of New Bedford and internal reviews at MIT.

Right column (top to bottom) Gabriel Chan - MArch; Stephanie Hsu - MArch; Colin Kerr - MArch; Kevin Moore - MArch; Adele Phillips - MArch; Andrew Wit - MArch

Legend: FS: Foldscape, TS: Tidal Stitch, FB: Float Your Boat, CC: Crew Cut

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FS

FB

Only “Float Your Boat” and “Fold Scape” remain for the final stretch. A third team is formed to handle documenting the studio and book design.

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Office 2020 / Ebb and Flow: New Bedford Community Boathouse

Foldscape (FS)

Float Your Boat (FB)

As its name suggests, Foldscape’s form is derived from an investigation into the spatial qualities of a folded plane. A dock folds first into a wall and then into a roof, forming the outer skin in a clear, simple compositional move. This formal strategy demands a dramatic structural system, which is visible throughout the project and creates a second layer of spatial complexity which helps to define the building’s architectural character as a new beacon along the Acushnet waterfront.

Inspired by flotsam, the natural phenomenon by which floating masses congregate at the water’s edge, Float Your Boat comprises a collection of individual floating modules assembled to create a functioning boathouse. Each module would be built at MIT and then transported via natural waterways from the Charles to the Acushnet river. There, each module would be secured into place.

Total area: 10,000 ft2 Storage capacity: 30 eight-man shells

Total area: 7,000 ft2 Storage capacity: 20 eight-man shells

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Office 2020 / Ebb and Flow: New Bedford Community Boathouse

Tidal Stitch (TS)

Crew Cut (CC)

Just as its name implies, Tidal Stitch occupies the Acushnet River’s tidal zone, binding together both the open water and the land. The floor plan allows for diverse registries of tidal activity. Boathouse program is separated into independent bars of space, each of which is separated by outdoor public areas that have unique relationships to the water.

The second floor of each programmatic bar connects to the others via glazed catwalks, circulation corridors and lookout points onto the water.

Crew Cut draws visitors to the water by embedding itself in the land and simultaneously soaring out over the river.

Landscaped public space blurs the boundary between land and water along the Acushnet’s constantly shifting tidal shore, and the dock draws people through the building to deeper water for boating and sightseeing. The cantilevered multi-purpose volume extends above the surface to provide both a new view from above the water and an unobstructed view from the dock.

Total area: 11,000 ft2 Storage capacity: 36 eight-man shells

Total area: 14,000 ft2 Storage capacity: 20 eight-man shells

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FOLDscape 1) floor suspension system

1 - Floor Suspension System

1) floor suspension system 1) floor suspension system

FOLDscape FOLDscape

FOLDscape

1) floor suspension system 2) glue-lam superstructure 2) glue-lam superstructure

2 - Glue-lam Superstructure

2) glue-lam superstructure

floor and window system 5) floor and window system 5)

5 - Floor and Window System

floor and window system 5)

2) glue-lam superstructure 3) floor beams 3) floor beams 3) floor beams

3 - Floor Beams

3) floor beams 4) floor joists

STRUCTURAL BAY DIAGRAM: not to scale 4) floor joists

floor and window system 5) roof joists 6) roof joists 6) roof joists 6) 6 - Roof Joists

roof joists 6)

STRUCTURAL BAY DIAGRAM: not to scale 4) floor joists STRUCTURAL BAY DIAGRAM: not to scale

- Floor 4)3 floor joistsJoists

FOLDscape Structural Bay Diagram (not to scale)

STRUCTURAL BAY DIAGRAM: not to scale

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Workshop: Fabricating the Float 4.182 (Spring / Summer 2008) Instructor: J. Meejin Yoon.

TA: James Graham.

The participants of this workshop designed and fabricated an autonomous and reconfigurable spectator and launching float as a temporary substitute for the future community rowing facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

The Float was conceived as a mobile event space that could cluster to create a floating public space and viewing deck or align linearly to create a launching platform for an eight-person crew shell. These floats were intended to bring the community out on the river and provide them with a new way to experience the previously PCB-contaminated Acushnet River.

These floating pods move along the Acushnet River around New Bedford’s upper harbor and can dock in various areas along the city’s waterfront.

The project serves as a new beacon to New Bedford’s community and visitors, marking the transformation of the previously polluted waterfront into a new recreational waterway for the community.

Students worked in a collaborative environment, interacting closely with government officials and engineering consultants. This communityoriented design project provided the first steps towards re-capturing the potential of the city’s neglected Acushnet River. The workshop engaged city officials, community groups, and structural engineers in the design process. Using both high precision computer numerically controlled cutting tools, such as the water jet cutter, and hand tools, the students fabricated and assembled the floating modules on campus in the wood / metal shop. Made from aluminum pontoons, aluminum structural ribs, and tauri decking, the floats were completed on MIT’s campus and transported to the site. The workshop ended with floating the modules from a nearby launch to the harbor in New Bedford.

Floatscape, detail.

Spring Workshop Participants: Seth Behrends, Keith Case, Gabriel Chan, Mary Hale, Stephanie Hsu, Thaddeus Jusczyk, Colin Kerr, Ethan Lacy, Yuchen Liu, Kevin Moore, Ryan Murphy, Eliot Stulen, Christopher Taylor, Andrew Wit, Lucille Ynosencio - MArch. Benjamin Harwood - MArch (GSD). Suhni Chung - BSAD. Summer Build Team: Job Captains: James Graham, Thaddeus Jusczyk, Christopher Taylor - MArch. Team: Seth Avecilla, Adele Phillips, Morgan Pinney, Eliot Stulen - MArch. Jesse James - BSAD.

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22 2

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Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi - MArch - Victor Eskinazi - MCP

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Floatscape Configuration Diagram 2 2

The floats may be configured as three autonomous floating landscape-islands, as a linear boat launching platform for crew boats on the river, or as one larger floating landscape-island. Each float is made from an aluminum 3 frame with infilled planks mounted onto three pontoons.

33

3

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The linear boat launch allows boats to be lowered into and removed from the river on one side while providing seating for spectators on the other side (the high ridge in the landscape).

2 3

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The larger, floating landscape / island can accommodate a crowd in the river- spectators, picnics, parties on the river, or a destination for individual rowers to congregate.

Launch Day.

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi - MArch Victor Eskinazi - MCP Float construction in the MIT wood shop-and courtyard.

Infilling Float 2.

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Reconstructing the Sichuan School Fall 2008 - Option Studio 4.155 Instructor: Weijen Wang.

TA: Kanda Song.

On May 12, 2008, a devastating earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter 90 km northwest of the city of Chengdu, hit the central and northern areas of the Sichuan province, China. It took the lives of 90,000 people and made 40 million homeless. It damaged cities and villages covering an area of over 10,000,000 ha. Amidst the magnitude of the disaster, seven thousand school buildings collapsed and nearly 5,000 school children lost their lives.

Schools should be considered among the safest buildings as they are almost sacred places where parents send their children for learning.

The damage to schools caused by the earthquake not only traumatized children and parents who lost their loved ones, it also shook the very foundation of communities’ trust in the institutionalized system.

Working with the government of Dujiangyan city near Chengdu in Sichun as well as donors from Beijing, this studio designed, with the goal of eventually helping to build, a school in the Urmei village of Dujiangyan city.

The studio was a collaborative venture among three universities: Tsinghua University in Beijing, the University of Hong Kong, and MIT. The reconstruction of a school after an earthquake provided more than an opportunity to challenge the institutionalized educational system in China and explore the quality of campus spaces. It provided a real opportunity to establish a process: one that might be able to repair the wound the earthquake left between the populace and the institution, regain the trust from children and parents, and rebuild the identity of a community, both physically and spiritually.

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Concrete Floor Slabs

Beams

Concrete Beams

Concrete Block Insulation Intererior Finish

Shear Wall

Interior Finsh Insulation Concrete Block Brick

Columns

Building Structure

Concrete Floor Slabs

Window Units

Concrete Beams

Steve Preston - MArch Beichuan Middle School - The school is conceived as a series of floating planes that transition from the stepped landscape of the central function hall. The school is a unique landscape, carved by corridors, verandas, and courtyard spaces. The main structural system consists of reinforced concrete beams, columns, and shear walls.

Typical walls are constructed of concrete block and include insulation, weatherproofing, and an exterior rain screen of local stone. The system was designed to be simple, redundant, and buildable by local craftspeople.

Floor Plan 183

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Workshop: El Salvador Design Build 4.497 (January 2009) Instructor: James Adamson - Jersey Devil Design / Build.

Advisor: John Ochsendorf.

Technical Instructor: Charles Mathis.

TAs / Student Organizers: Ethan Lacy, Zach Lamb.

For this two-week project, a team of fifteen MIT Architecture and Planning students designed and built an iconic entry plaza for AmĂşn Shea, a growing school and community center campus in the mountain town of Perquin, El Salvador, run by the nonprofit organization Perkin Educational Opportunities Foundation. The 9 ha campus currently houses a community center, two classroom buildings, a neo-natal clinic, and a combined dining hall / nutrition center, with a library, swimming pool, and university slated for future development. The plaza provides shade, seating, and a connection between buildings on two levels.

In two intensive days of design, followed by ten strenuous days of manual labor under the searing sun, the group completed a project conceived of as an oasis where people could gather, play, and learn. A rivulet of water flows across the site, passing through a series of channels, pools, and cascades, and a network of platforms and planters steps down alongside the water pools to connect the two levels. To complete the plaza, a small steel and wood pavilion occupies the center of the site, providing shade and shelter. A grove of bamboo planted in the center of the structure will grow out above the roof, paralleling the growth of the campus and its community.

Workshop Participants: Jordan Allison, Andrey Dimitrov, Emily Lo, Leslie Lok, Yushiro Okamoto, Alice Rosenberg - MArch.

Deborah Buelow - SMArchS (Urbanism). Jason Tapia - SMArchS (Building Technology).

Dorian Dargan, Sung Mi Kim - BSP. Harriet Provine - BSAD.

Dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.

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Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi - MArch - Victor Eskinazi - MCP

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Housing for the Ancient City Spring 2008 - Option Studio 4.144 / 4.156 Instructor: Jan Wampler.

TA: Stephanie Hsu.

Sukhothai, Thailand is a beautiful city which after many centuries still has a magic that transcends everyday life. It was designed and built by creative and intelligent architects and builders. Walking through it, one can sense the pride of the buildings, and the spaces between the buildings, the paths and places of the city and the overall plan. Few cities of today match the creativity of this endeavor.

Sukhothai has always had people living in the city and they have always been part of the beauty of the overall environment. Current residents must continue living in the old city while respecting the monuments of the past.

Cities that are not inhabited by people are not really cities; they become frozen and soon lose their excitement. It is people that make a livable, joyful city.

The project for the studio was to design a demonstration project of housing for a World Heritage Site in Thailand. The studio sought to counterbalance the building of high-rises in Bangkok and create a new form of housing connected to the ancient city.

The studio worked at three scales—dwelling, cluster and overall collective— to form not only the site but also the smallest scale of the family. During the semester, students worked in teams of two to produce different approaches to fulfilling these goals. The ideas generated in the studio were meant to provide a framework for the future of Sukhothai.

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Family Cluster - multiple living areas grouped around common outdoor space for close knit group

linear

fc1

Shared outdoor living space semi-public deck at +1m

facing

combined

fc2

fc3

fairly open entrance small private deck

multi entry public front with commercial more open back

fc4

multi entry more open back dual kitchen

fc5

commercial potential under long component

Multi Cluster - distinct living and outdoor areas for multiple families

mc1

2 family groups with common semi-public deck seperate entrances

mc2

2 family groups with common semi-public deck common entrance

mc3

3 family groups with common semi-public deck common entrances

“L�

mc4

3 family groups with common semi-public deck seperate entrances

mc5

2 family groups with common semi-public deck common entrance commercial potential

Classic Combo - multiple units ganged up in a row type corner

Live work shop combo private entry / public back public entry live work shop combo private entry / public back public entry

Keith Case, Ian Kaminski-Coughlin - MArch Sukhothai Housing: Kit of Ideas - Five basic configurations of living and service space (both observed on site and designed after) are combined to create small clusters that support communal living for multiple generations or

families. Depending on qualities of adjacency, shared facilities, and privacy these clusters will appeal to different user groups.

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mc5

3 family groups with common semi-public decks common entrances

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Keith Case, Ian Kaminski-Coughlin - MArch Sukhothai Housing: Kit of Parts - Exploded Axonometric of the Sukhotai Housing Typology shows structural and wall elements. Small level changes help to create a fine gradient of privacy between shared deck space.

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Unsolicited Architecture Spring 2007 - Option Studio 4.144 / 4.156 Instructor: Ole Bouman.

TA: Saeed Arida.

Architecture has stretched beyond three of its most respected limits: —Its definition as the art of making buildings.

—Its discourse through scripted printed media and static exhibitions.

—Its training as a matter of master and apprentice.

The pushing of these limits challenges the mandate and self conception of architecture. Architecture needs new modes of operation, converging the creation, the mediation and the appreciation of space.

Meanwhile, architecture as always, has confined itself between the four cornerstones of its self-esteem: —A client who needs it.

—A budget that pays for it.

—A place that grounds it.

—A program that justifies it.

But suppose…

— You don’t ask where you can find a client.

You ask where are you needed.

— You don’t ask what will pay your bills.

You ask where investments can be made.

— You don’t ask where architecture can be built.

You ask when it can happen.

— You don’t ask what is it for.

You ask what could be its purpose.

Perhaps then we need to abandon one or more of those cornerstones.

This studio aimed to find practical strategies to go beyond the functional limits of architecture as we know it. It intended to find professional resolutions to the new questions above. It did so by establishing, in the course of four months, an imaginary architecture office for “unsolicited architecture.”

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OUA Portfolio - Work from this studio was published in Volume 14: Unsolicited Architecture as a portfolio showcasing the services, methods and a sample of projects developed by the firm, Office for Unsolicited Architecture (OUA).

Volume - Volume is an independent quarterly magazine that sets the agenda for architecture and design.

For more information go to http://volumeproject.org/

OUA is: Saeed Arida, Project Advisor, Ole Bouman, Tactical and Strategic Advisor, Andrea Brennen, Strategic Development + Planning, Gabriel Chan, DSUP Managing Principal, Damien Hoi-Lung Chan, DGCC Managing Principal, Andrey Dimitrov, dRp Managing Principal, Edmund Kwong, NPM Managing Principal, Ryan Murphy, LAD Managing Principal Michelle Petersen, AM Managing Principal, Shirley Shen, RSD Managing Principal, John Snavely, Chief Financial Officer, Vasilena Vassilev, Graphic Strategy + Web, Dan Smithwick, Public Relations + Marketing, CK Dickson Wong, TS-SI Managing Principal

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MIT - Uncertain Futures

Tricks and Tracks

In an era when most big narratives lie dismantled and scattered around our disciplinary fields, available in wikisized quotes for our quick access at no cost whatsoever, all lessons and all disciplinary knowledge begin to resemble do-it-yourself catalogues.

If we were to print one, a Whole Architecture Catalogue would be a collection of circumstantial questions followed by flash research and tactical responses. This situation is both more hopeful and more design-friendly than the image of an “ideology graveyard” might suggest. In fact, ideologies— their tenets and effects—would have to be included as types of tricks and as possible tracks in this catalogue.

A condition in which all histories and at least a number of futures are simultaneously available—where descriptive geometry and Rhino software complement one another, or where Gaudi’s hanging models are as good a structural lesson as the script for a robotic bricklaying arm—has been dubbed most recently “the synchronic society” (by our favorite futurologist Bruce Sterling). It has also been called schizophrenic (by a number of philosophers and theorists) and anticipated as “the epoch of simultaneity” (by Michel Foucault, as early as 1967). No matter how we describe our contemporary condition, making a hundred mistakes, testing a thousand hypotheses, and keeping the winning solution side-byside with the monsters is exactly what architecture and design need to do in

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a world where our access to history’s successes and failures is easy.

Tracking tricks becomes as important as coming up with them.

We may mourn the loss of the deep knowledge of history with every Wikipedia entry we read, but if there is any lesson to be learned from the projects in this section, it is that invention can be incremental, tactical, and tool-based; and although historical thinking might not be foregrounded here, a form of historical knowledge is the content of this research. Research, especially long-term research, which is what architectural education is for most of us, can be conducted through fragments of hypotheses, moments of clarity, and nuggets of skill.

Tricks and Tracks is a selection of useful nuggets of knowledge and skill, produced in various corners of MIT. Still, as you will see, a great many of the projects in this chapter come from the first year studios. The main reason for this heavy representation of first year Masters studio work is that in many ways the first year of architectural education resembles (in its shock and versatility) a Borgesian encyclopedia of disciplinary knowledge or our imaginary DIY Whole Architecture Catalogue.

It is in the spirit of open source, and for the purposes of advancing that collective disciplinary catalogue of successes and errors, that we have organized the works in this section in the form of a catalogue: each project is identified

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks

Table of Contents

by the MIT course number (locating thus the particular educational circumstance of its production) and a name for the particular recipe we offer.

— 4.123 Starters — 4.124 Reps — 4.195 Tensional Integrity — 4.370 Fly Away — 4.370 Self-Power — 4.370 Sweet Reaction — 4.370 Big Stink — 4.370 Double Take — 4.462 Crash and Burn — 4.592 Friction Fit — 4.THG Balancing Act

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214 226 244 246 248 249 250 251 252 254 255

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / STARTERS

STARTERS Core I Studio 4.123 Fall 2007 - Instructors: Andrew Scott, Nader Tehrani. TAs: Dimitris Papanikolaou, Casey Renner.

Fall 2008 - Instructors: Simon Kim, Jeannette Kuo, J. Meejin Yoon.

TAs: Ryan Murphy, Skylar Tibbits, Andrew Wit.

The goal of the first semester of the three-studio core track is to provide an intense calisthenic foundation invested in short exercises with a range of both conceptual and technical challenges.

Thus, this is a moment of intense “workouts,” with an emphasis on establishing a relationship between process and product; as a launching point for invention, the emphasis of this semester is on exploration, experimentation, and speculation.

From a historical vantage point, the conceptual and the technical have been linked in significant ways: if the invention of the compass enabled the projection of an arch (or arc), the spline is now the product of a tool (or software) that enables curvatures whose ability to arc is not restricted to the parameter of a single point, but rather the dynamic relationship between two fixed points and multiple movable control points

The task of this studio was to establish concrete techniques, interrogating both historical and contemporary models, as a vehicle to advance the conceptual claims and speculative potentials of the architectural project. Each project was evaluated not only for the architectural deliverables of each project, but also for the process and iterative claims that are born out of certain techniques and their aligned ideas. Since not all ideas are “architectural,” it was also important to establish the peculiarities of our discipline, and in turn which devices, mechanisms, and governing instruments are central to the medium of architecture.

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Saša Živković - MArch Instructor: J. Meejin Yoon. Fall 2008 Swarm Bridge - The bridge consists of individual units which are, on their own, useless. Only through the interaction of many units can the bridge perform its spanning function. Each unit in the swarm has simple rules regarding its connections to adjacent units, and, through these rules, the swarm may assume different forms or react to the structural needs of the bridge. With no given pathway across, the individual is allowed to choose his or her own, but the user must choose carefully; the swarm bridge is dangerous.

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Curtis Roth - MArch Instructor: J. Meejin Yoon. Fall 2008 The crossing mediates two uneven surfaces while testing the configurative potential of the folded unit. Shifting unit dimensions and angles of unit nestings to both accommodate the passage of a body through the aggregation, while

simultaneously resisting the external forces on the structure.

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Gao Yu - MArch Instructor: Simon Kim. Fall 2008 Flower Unit Bridge - This bridge project uses sheet materials to create a self-sustaining structure. By varying the angle and keeping the length of a triangle the same the “flower units� display varying curvature when they are fully closed. Using fully closed units to act as the structural frame determined the overall form of the bridge. The bridge provides different openings as view points, introducing skylights that draw nature inside and enhance experience for bridge pedestrians.

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Yoonhee Cho - MArch Instructor: Jeannette Kuo. Fall 2008 The purpose of this project was to design a crossing bridge that spans 40 ft with a vertical shift of 8 ft.

Through explorations with paper, it was discovered that the structure was made stronger by folding it. Furthermore, when it was twisted as much as possible, it became the strongest. There was a clear reason: a twisted cylinder does not have purely horizontal pieces.

Thus, it can resist when it is pushed from both directions. From this basic idea, the bridge was developed as three layers whose diameters can be effectively adjusted. This means an inner space can also vary in size and shape.

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The original twisted structure was translated into a truss structure, with the inner and outer layers made of 1 ft wide elements. According to the average level from +0.0 ft to +8.0 ft, the most suitable area was chosen for the path on which people can walk.

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tools—Tricks—Tracks / STARTERS

Otto Chun Lun Ng - MArch Instructor: Jeannette Kuo. Fall 2008 Laminating Flows - The challenge of the project is to bridge the three buildings with different floor levels. To create a new circulation hub, the existing courtyard is used as the major communal plaza for ground circulation and stretched up as a vertical communal plaza for vertical circulation.

In this vertical circulation hub, layers of stairs and ramps are laminated together. The width of the paths vary based on the estimated pedestrian flow with the given programmatic arrangement.

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The stairs transform as “stramps” and become a library extension, fusing with the circulation hub. Many spontaneous activities can also happen at the circulation hub, fostering a dialogue between the ground plaza and the vertical plaza.

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / REPS

REPS Core I Studio 4.124 Fall 2007 - Instructors: Andrew Scott, Nader Tehrani. TAs: Dimitris Papanikolaou, Casey Renner.

Fall 2008 - Instructors: Simon Kim, Jeannette Kuo, J. Meejin Yoon.

TAs: Ryan Murphy, Skylar Tibbits, Andrew Wit.

In this exercise, students considered the design of a system. In order to develop the system, students were asked to establish a single material palette, and consider the relation between structure, skin, and assembly process. The system was held up against a series of configurative hurdles, specifically, how it turns three corners: between two vertical surfaces, between ground and vertical surface, and between covering and vertical surface.

In addition, the system must have

demonstrated the possibility of at least four types of apertures: one for the passage of circulation, one for light, one for air, and one for a view. Most importantly, this exercise should be treated “systematically� as a serial problem, and as a problem about variation, permutations, and the possibility of customization. The problem of the system was to be considered as a negotiation between material palette, geometry, structural factors, as well as the means and methods of assembly.

Thus, the question of integration was an important factor in weighing strategies and options.

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi - MArch - Instructor: Nader Tehrani - Fall 2007

The final exercise of the first semester was dedicated to examining the relationship between figuration and configurative practices. Broadly speaking, configuration is dedicated to the examination of building systems, material blocks, joints, and the assembly process that precedes the shaping of design. It is invested in the intricate relationship between the parts and the whole.

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Lisa Pauli - MArch Instructor: Nader Tehrani. Fall 2007 Loomstate - This project utilizes a tensegrity system at a micro scale to form a new building skin. The innovative envelope explores advantages of weaving through the lens of a loom; the weft and warp of a structural weave are altered to create varying densities of opacity. As each loomed member is pulled or stretched, larger openings are formed through structural “snags.�

The resulting facade wraps around a building, providing structure and enclosure around any geometric volume.

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Jae Kyung Kim - MArch - Instructor: Nader Tehrani - Fall 2007

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grain densitygrain density grain density

1' 1'

basic unit 1’ x 1’ 2’ x 2’

basic unit 1’ x 1’

1' 1'

1'

2’ x 2’

2'

1'

1'

2'

2’ x 2’

3’ x 3’

2'

3'

3’ x 3’

3’ x 3’

4’ x 4’

3'

4'

3'

4’ x 4’

4’ x 4’ 4'

4'

2’ x 2’

2'

2'

E.Q

E.Q

3’ x 3’ 3'

3’ x 3’

3’ x 3’

3'

3'

4'

E.Q

E.Q

E.Q

E.Q

E.Q

30°

20°

10°

degree of rotation

2'

1'

50°

60° 50°

70° 60°

as floor 90° 80°

80°

sitting

90°

3'

4'

3'

4'

4'

degree of opacity degree of opacity

depth 60°

80° 70°

depth

steps as floor

70°

90° 80°

90°

90° 80°

as floor

steps

sitting steps

as wall sitting sitting

3'

40°

50° 40°

3'

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3'

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depth 30°

3

sitting as wall as wall

sitting

3 3

shelf sitting

shelf

as roof shelf

90°

80°

sitting

sitting sitting sitting

sitting as wall

wall as wall assitting

shelf shelf shelf

sitting

4’ x 4’

4'

4'

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3

sitting

as roofas as roof roof

shelf

shelf

shelf as roof

room room room

as roof as roof

room

light well light well light well

room

3 Ying Chee Chui - MArch Instructor: Nader Tehrani. Fall 2007 3

The Fish Chapel Coffering System This project is a study of material properties and structural systems. Plywood and a coffering system are chosen for exploration. Material, grain density, rotation, depth, joint assembly, turning 3 corners, and aperture are explored.

4’ x 4’ 4’ x4’4’x 4’

1'

1'

degree of opacity

2'

3’ x 3’ 3’ x3’3’x 3’

2'

1'

2’ x 2’ 2’ x2’2’x 2’

2'

1'

90° 80°

80°70°

degree of rotation degree of rotation

3'

basic unit basic unitunit basic 1’ x 1’ 1’ x1’1’x 1’

60° 70°

50° 60°

40° 50°

30° 40°

20° 30°

90°

80°

70°

60°

50°

40°

20°

10°

4’ x 4’

3

E.Q 90°

10°

3'

3'

3'

2' E.Q E.Q

4’ x 4’

2'

E.Q

E.Q

Q

3' 3'

2’ xE.Q2’

E.Q

2'

1'

1'

1'

1'

2’ x 2’

E.Q

1'

1'

1'

rotation rotation

1'

E.Q E.Q E.QE.Q

E.Q

2'

rotation

E.Q E.Q

2'

1'

1'

1'

1'

E.Q E.Q

E.Q

1'

E.Q

1'

1'

basic unit basic unit E.Q E.Q E.Q E.Q 1’E.Qx 1’ 1’ x 1’

basic unit E.Q 1’ x 1/2’ E.Q1’E.Qx 1’ 1’E.Qx 1/2’ E.Q

E.Q

1/3’ 1’ x 1/3’ 1’ x 1/2’

3'

2'

2'

2'

1'

1'

1' 1' 1'

1'

1'

basic unit 1’ x 1’ 1/2’

1'

1' 1'

1'

1’ x 1/2’

1'

1'

1’1’xx1/2’ 1/3’

1’ x 1/3’

1' 1'

1’1’xx1/3’ 1/4’

1’ x 1/4’

1' 1'

1’ x 1/4’

room

A new coffering chapel redefines the urban spatial qualities of the existing site. There are 3 main site strategies: regeneration of path, 3 definition lines, and the preservation and relocation of trees. The long prayer journey is a room as roof room light well as roof room promenade of different programs, light well lighting effects, and transparency.

Finally, the path comes to a new prayer space that serves as the destination of the journey.

light well

light welllight well

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Otto Chun Lum - MArch Instructor: Jeannette Kuo. Fall 2008 The Public Intimate - The “Public Intimate� building is built from the ground up. The design of the ICA-annex performs as a dynamic civic building filled with public and social activities while spatial volumes are transformed to create a contemplative space that provides audiences with an intimate experience of conemtemporary performing arts. The continuous surface begins immediately at the street, and through folding, bifurcation, and knotting, renders circulation surfaces and spatial columns from the ground up to the sky.

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi - MArch Instructor: Nader Tehrani. Fall 2007 The new MIT chapel is an aggregation of stacking timber. Each wood member shifts between one and five degrees, creating a dramatic peel opening in the Hall of Prayer. The spaces between timbers create apertures that allow

filtered natural light into the main hall.

From an urban perspective, the new MIT chapel is an extension of both the Infinite Corridor and the communal space of the Student Center.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / REPS

Phillip Seaton - MArch Instructor: Simon Kim. Fall 2008 Stranded Columns - Beginning with an interest in tying users’ perceptual experience in the student union to their direction and purpose of progression, a methodology followed from the premise of continuing column grids from the surrounding library, cafeteria, and auditorium buildings into the courtyard in between. By continuing the column grids in this way, a new field was created which possessed remnants of the fields on all sides, while also providing opportunities in the spaces of overlap for programmatic interpretation.

The viability and value of treating the columns as something other than solid vertical masses was studied.

The columns were interpreted as bunches to be frayed, or as thin strands to be used in combination to achieve the same structural capacity of one large straight column.

The floor plates then evolved in pursuit of three purposes: to satisfy the circulatory and programmatic needs, to work materially with the construction of the column strands, and to create appropriate gathering points for the strands of columns to achieve the original goal of allowing users to perceive their path only if viewing it directly.

Yip Ho Kwan - MArch Instructor: J. Meejin Yoon. Fall 2008 The street is a public platform open to everyone while the theater is a restricted space for performance. By superimposing the street with the theater, the “building� becomes a multi-staged platform for public and private, acci-

237

dental and intentional performances.

Through linking the two ground levels by the street platforms, the building can act as a public park and provide a better connection between the two levels.

E “‘C”

=

ECTION

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / REPS

INTERLOCKING

TWIST

SLANT

OBLIQUE

=

=

=

=

CIRCULATION

SEQUENCE

VIEW

MOVEMENT

Yushiro Okamoto - MArch Instructor: Simon Kim. Fall 2008 Theater Oblique - The Theater Oblique proposes a new linkage between the city and the theater. The theater directly funnels the sound, heat, and excitement from the interior to the corresponding public space. The interlocking oblique figures that form this relationship cre-

ate a semi-exterior connection between the city and the theaters with a variety of light, views, and circulation pathways traveling through the cave.

239

Yoon-Hee Cho - MArch Instructor: Simon Kim. Fall 2008

Gao Yu - MArch - Instructor: Simon Kim - Fall 2008 (Full caption see nect page)

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / REPS

section through Summer street

The purpose of this exercise was to design four theaters: two indoor and two outdoor theaters. Because the site area is relatively small in relation to the spatial requirements, the maximum volume is utilized. By shifting the four theaters within this volume horizontally

and vertically, buffer space emerges between each theater. The buffer spaces serves as required secondary spaces for each theater: circulation, supporting programs, and views.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / REPS

Gao Yu - MArch (Previous page) Instructor: Simon Kim. Fall 2008

Curtis Roth - MArch (right page) Instructor: J. Meejin Yoon. Fall 2008

Oblique Theaters - In order to expand the interaction between performers and audience, a system of points and lines were used to define two discrete paths for the user groups. The routes intertwine to form four theaters between them.

The projection allows the two linear plots of theater and site to twist. As the drama is projected from the interior to the exterior, it’s simultaneously spliced with the site itself. The convergence of the stages allows for an increased presence in the site within the projection.

So for a producer, the knowledge that one’s work will be spliced with the existing site conditions forces one of three responses, 1: to ignore it and allow for any unexpected convergences between your work and the random events of the site, 2: to embrace it and attempt to develope a contextuality within your own production, 3: to “hijack” the condition by planting actors amongst the site, transforming the site itself into a stage.

Two types of interactive, spatial moments emerge from this formal system.

The first type is identified as “transitional” space: between the theater and the back-of-house the audience and performers encounter each other visually. The second type of space is identified as “mixing”: the café area adjacent to the lower outdoor theatre allows for a complete mixing of the two user groups.

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The second approach is a pure geometrical investigation which is related to the polygons that initiate the creation of tensegrity systems. For this exercise, the truncated tetrahedron was used in the process of parametrizing the geometry which, in return, resulted in completely new types of tensegrity units that are beyond the regular shape of the original polygon. arrpt42 arrpt43 arrpt4

Tensescript - In this project two types of approaches toward tensegrity systems were investigated. First, the surface-based approach, which follows the geometry of a given surface and returns a bidirectional tensegrity system. This system can be used to create tensegrity domes, chimneys, tents and any long span structure which needs to become a quickly deployable system. arrpt35

Masoud Akbarzadeh - MArch January 2009 - Instructors: Simon Kim, Juhong Park, Skylar Tibbits.

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TENSIONAL INTEGRITY

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / TENSIONAL INTEGRITY

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / FLY AWAY

FLY AWAY 4.370 Interrogative Design Workshop: Give Me Shelter: Bodywear Mary Hale - MArch Fall 2007 - Instructor: Regina Moeller.

The Monumental Helium Inflatable Wearable Floating Body Mass Just as shoes protect feet, scuba equipment enables underwater exploration, and space suits permit extraterrestrial inhabitation, Bodywear mediates the way we relate to and survive in the space around ourselves. However, Bodywear need not always serve such practical purposes.

The Monumental Helium Inflatable Wearable Floating Body Mass is

Bodywear that functions as a means of mental escape. It expands the personal envelope, defies gravity, and provides a delightful new way of moving by forcing its occupant to wear an object of a culturally undesirable physical proportion: a jiggling 13 foot diameter piece of clothing. By rejecting societal norms, the wearer achieves corporal, mental and emotional freedom from the heaviness of everyday life.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / (left) SELF-POWER - (right) SWEET REACTION

SELF-POWER 4.370 Interrogative Deisgn Workshop: The War Veteran Vehicle Workshop Thaddeus Jusczyk - MArch Spring 2007 - Instructor: Krzysztof Wodiczko. TA: Coryn Kempster.

The Speakerwheelchair: Vehicle for Parrhesia - For many disabled veterans, the wheelchair is an unwieldy reminder of the horrors of war. But, can it provide the veteran with the tools necessary for free personal expression?

The Speakerwheelchair juxtaposes a user-controlled sound system with a wheelchair, turning the machine into an instrument for performance, and a vehicle for self-expression. Contrasting

SWEET REACTION sounds are emitted from each side, and are altered by the speed and direction of the wheels’ rotation. The veteran controls the input to the speakers, and can use the varying sounds to contrast conflicting sounds and emotions. The veteran is given an iconic presence in a crowd as a performer with a complex story to tell, empowered with a new virtuosity. The wheels can be easily removed and replaced, and the performance can begin with their installation.

In a uniquely personal experience, the veteran can move through the crowd in a mode of self-expression.

4.370 Interrogative Deisgn Workshop: The War Veteran Vehicle Workshop Matthew Trimble - MArch Spring 2007 - Instructor: Krzysztof Wodiczko. TA: Coryn Kempster.

MACED - On behalf of War Child International and like-minded organizations, this project aims to engage with viewers’ sense of sympathy, freedom, and equality, so that they might contribute to the cause of peace. It serves to convert concern into action, as a demonstration both of the nature and effects of war. War veterans cannot help but be subjected to destructive psychological associations formed by their experiences. Instead of trying

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to gradually re-experience the familiar (which is certainly pertinent in a clinical setting), this vehicle can serve to transport certain associations into unfamiliar territory, thereby rebuilding them in a constructive, helpful manner.

Rather than making an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), this project provides veterans with the tools for making a MACED (Mentos and Coke Explosive Device), designed to go off when jostled or lifted. The explosive liquid not only shocks the viewers, providing an immediate experiential link between them and the veteran, but arouses their curiosity by revealing a display related to the victimization of children in war.

The movable piece on the wall acts as a medium to enable the two to physically interact, while the screen lets them see themselves existing together as a whole.

The wall gives a third perspective.

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / (left) BIG STINK - (right) DOUBLE TAKE

video camera

monitors showing the view from the camera

BIG STINK

DOUBLE TAKE

4.370 Interrogative Deisgn Workshop: The War Veteran Vehicle Workshop

4.370 Interrogative Design Workshop: Conflict, Trauma, Design

Gabriella Woo - (Mass Art) Spring 2007 - Instructor: Krzysztof Wodiczko. TA: Coryn Kempster.

Mio Uchida - MArch Fall 2008 - Instructor: Krzysztof Wodiczko. TA: Catherine McMahon.

The Power of Smell - One of the five basic human senses is to smell. It is well known as a fact that smell can provoke various emotional sensations, most from memories regardless of good or bad. Veterans, who have experienced extreme situations, were exposed to certain smells that are not so common to majority of non-veterans.

My project for a war veterans’ vehicle is to create a wearable mask that sprays smell in and also out to other people,

thereby sharing with society the veteran’s experience of war. It is hoped that this mask will be used as a protest tool and to help veterans to fight through traumatizing memories of war.

Wall for a Different Perspective - In this project, a wall is used to think about the relationship between two individuals at the threshold of separation / integration. While the wall exists as a physical boundary between the two, it sumultaneously provides the opportunity to sense the existence of the other, who shares the same space and time.

The moveable piece on the wall acts as a medium to enable the two to

251

physically interact, while the screen lets them see themselves existing together as a whole. The wall gives a third perspective.

MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / CRASH AND BURN

CRASH AND BURN 4.462 BT II: Introduction to Building Structural Systems I Spring 2007 / Spring 2008 - Instructor: Spring 2007: John Ochsendorf.

Spring 2008: Patrick McCafferty.

Column and Beam Testing - The first part of this required course examined how structural form responds to vertical and lateral loads. Through a column and a beam project, students designed, built and tested balsa wood structures to failure. The assignments provided a hands-on understanding of how structures resist loads through form. An emphasis was placed on the relationship between structural analysis and design by encouraging graphical methods and

an understanding of static determinacy.

By load testing the structures, not only could students evaluate the performance of their own columns and beams against their classmates, but various modes of structural failure could be observed. The differences and similarities between theory and reality could be studied.

In order to focus on economic and environmental issues architects confront when designing any structure, each project was evaluated not only in terms of how much load it could resist before failure, but also by how much material it used.

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MIT - Uncertain Futures - Tricks and Tracks / (left) FRICTION FIT - (right) BALANCING ACT

FRICTION FIT

BALANCING ACT

4.592 Digital Design and Materialization

4.THG Building Technology PhD Research

Spring / Summer 2008 - Instructor: Lawrence Sass. TA: Kenfield Griffith.

RA: Dan Smithwick. Digital Modeling Consultant: Dennis Michaud.

Digitally Fabricated Housing for New Orleans - This class served as an exploration into digital fabrication techniques dealing with the design and materialization of CNC-cut wood structures. Building upon current research in MIT’s Digital Design and Fabrication Research Group, the class investigated computation as a tool for design translation methodologies in architecture.

The students developed digital models,

tested scale prototypes and constructed full-scale mock-ups. This research served as the basis for designing and fabricating an exhibition structure for the Museum of Modern Art’s summer 2008 show, “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.”

(Participants, Researchers: William Abrahamson - MArch, Lara Davis - MArch, Marissa Grace Desmond - MArch, Pierre Fuller - MEng, Sola Grantham - (GSD) MArch, Madeline Hickman - BSME, Ayodh Kamath - SMArchS (Computation), Ian Kaminski-Coughlin - MArch, Anna Kotova - BSAD, Edmond Kwong - MArch, Yuchen Liu SMArchS (Compu-tation), Aliya Popatia - BSAD, Laura Rushfeldt - MArch, Krit Sangthong - MArch, Chris Stanton SDM, Lin Yang - SMArchS (Computation))

Philippe Block - PhD (Building Technology) Spring 2009 - Advisor: John Ochsendorf.

Stone Masonry Pavilion - This 30 ft by 30 ft unreinforced stone masonry pavilion for a private residence outside of Austin, TX features novel and surprising forms for compression-only structures. The form-finding design process was iterative. The internal force distribution was altered by manipulating the graphical reciprocal-force diagrams. This provides a high level of control to “shape” and fine-tune the three-dimensional solution. The updated internal force distribution at

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each step is then used as a measure for the thickness of the vault: the vault becomes thicker where more forces accumulate.

The vault is designed using Thrust Network Analysis. This new graphical and interactive design tool for exploring three-dimensional equilibrium structures was developed by Philippe Block as part of his PhD work.

(Project Collaborators: Escobedo Construction (Buda, TX).

Information and News: http://equilibriumstone.wordpress. com/ - http://web.mit.edu/masonry/projects.html)

MIT - Uncertain Futures

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