Spring 2021 Electives

Form and Narrative: Painting, Film, Architecture

The focus of this study will be the human subject in relation to design, form, space and meaning as depicted in the still images of Johannes Vermeer paintings and the moving images of Alfred Hitchcock films.

Architects, in contrast to most other artists, have a non-direct relation to their medium. As an architect, one does not typically craft a building directly. One makes propositions, explores alternatives and communicates to various audiences by means of other media, i.e.. three-dimensional model making, drawing, painting, photography, or computer imaging. The architect remains a generalist and it is prudent that she or he understand other media.

Such a study promises a two-fold return. First, one encounters the possibility of cross-fertilization whereby issues discovered in one discipline may be appropriated within another. This opening up of possibilities is matched by a complementary and equally useful limitation of possibilities. The study of any one medium helps define its unique properties and appropriate limitations.

Architecture & Ecology

In our time of climate change, this course brings together people and discourses from many disciplines in pursuit of more resilient social-ecological systems within our built environments through dialogue, interdisciplinary research, design, and action. The course is affiliated with Georgia Tech’s Serve-Learn Sustain initiative, and actively supports its commitment to helping Georgia Tech students develop the expertise needed “to help create sustainable communities where humans and nature flourish, now and in the future.” It does so first by providing introductions to design research methodologies, critical theories and practices of ecological science and thinking, and those of sustainability through readings and dialogue with distinguished researchers working in these areas. Secondly, each student develops, in dialogue with the seminar, a line of research investigating interrelationships between natural and cultural spheres and the design of the built environment—ones relevant to their individual interests and the world at large.

Urban Ecological Design

The course introduces how urban design integrates urban ecology, systems science and emerging technologies for shaping urban environments. Cities can be regarded as an urban metabolism or complex systems, in which the metabolic processes, or flows and fluxes of energy, matter, water, organisms, transportation and human movement as well as social and economic activities, determine the physical forms and spatial configurations of cities (Baccini and Brunner, 2012).

white: the other color

White operates as a double agent. Defined both as a conceptual absolute (the presence of all light, the absence of all pigment) as well as a relative category, a perceptual limit (the palest elements in the visual field); understood as a basic color term and also as "non-color", white performs both absence, a default setting, and presence, part of a polemical proposition.

In this seminar we will first cover some basic material about optics, perception, and cognition, including how cultures recognize, label, and give meaning to various colors, including white.

Next, we will explore how the concept of white has been deployed in Western architectural discourse: from the polychromy debate, to the early modern period (Adolf Loos, le Corbusier, Weissenhof-siedlung), the New York Five, as well as in current practice (Siza, SANAA, et al).

The third section will look at the ideology of white -- its contribution to narratives of mastery, purity, and hygiene -- together with its collaborating role in defending and policing "white space" (apartheid, red-lining, sundown towns, "micro-aggressions", and the list goes on ...).

Representing Renovation / Reuse / Time

This workshop will focus on methods of representing intervention projects—projects in which old buildings are used to make new designs. This is fundamentally an exercise in representing time, which is a challenge relevant to any type of project.

We will survey existing intervention projects, focusing on the tools the architects chose to represent them, and discuss critical writings on reuse and the relationship between history and architecture. We will look at new high-tech tools including 3D scanning, augmented reality, and projection which are used as supplementary methods for representing layers of building history.

Concrete Workshop: Parametric Precast I

Concrete Workshop : Parametric Precast I is a two semester research based workshop focused on developing next generation precast concrete wall systems. Working in groups, the students in the course will develop state-of-the-art variable precast wall systems. The workshop will focus on issues of Aesthetics (pattern and composition), Performance (thermal and structural), Process (from forming to erection), Material (cement based steel reinforced structures), and Economics (efficiencies of material and construction). The course will engage the Digital Fabrication Lab (Covid permitting) where students will be expected to push the limits of computational design and digital fabrication within the context of precast concrete design and construction.

The Connell Workshop: The Art of Drawing

This workshop will explore a wide range of these issues in hand drawing - tone, line, contour, gesture, composition, and the historic humanistic forces that shaped them. These drawing and critical thinking investigations can be divided into two general categories - those of perception and those of conception. Perception being the way in which we see the world, and conception being the way in which we attempt to order the world.

The first step in the origination of any concept - the point at which elusive and constantly evolving ideas are committed to paper, becomes the guide upon which all following decisions are based. This moment of “capture”, then, is of critical importance. It demands an ability to analyze a myriad of often competing forces and distill their essence into one primary and overarching idea. How do we know what we are going to draw if we don’t know what we think? We will develop these “sketchbook” techniques through a series of drawing exercises and discussion of philosophical texts.

Material Diversions: Off-the-Shelf

MATERIAL DIVERSIONS is a space for experimentation. A space for Action Design where we connect our head with our hands and our hands with the materials that build architecture. It is through this intimate encounter that we can understand, learn and unlearn, maybe then innovate.

As part of Material Diversions, OFF-THE-SHELF places the focus at the intersection between regimentation and freedom, critical dichotomy of our contemporary culture and life. Most of the materials we build with are standardized. Standardization enables a shared technical language, the simplification (order) of complex worlds, interchangeability of services and parts, affordability of products through economies of scale... but many times this means flattening repetition, prescribed application, the perpetuation of mediocre or obsolete practices, or the disappearance of improvisation and play as part of the design process. Standards -whether inherited, enforced or agreed- can be at times liberating and at times suffocating, but despite their normative condition, standards are there to be updated, challenged and reimagined. A flexible space for customization, experimentation and reinvention that can inform the next generation of standards is very much needed.

Athletic Center Workshop

Interactive workshop focused on developing concepts for the Georgia Tech Athletic Association's plans to reinvigorate their athletic headquarters complex at the northeast corner of Bobby Dodd Stadium. This new facility will impact every Georgia Tech student-athlete’s experience for athletic and academic success, through innovative strength and performance training, nutrition, sports medicine, and academic support.

Plan-Making Workshop

The aim of this workshop is to equip architectural design students with the analytical tools and compositional skills essential to the development of more fully articulated design proposals. Directed research will be conducted through case study analyses of the spatio-compositional logics of key architectural projects as genetically encoded in plan and in their plan-to-section relationships. Understanding will be constructed through close reading of exemplary plans accomplished through redrawing and rigorous diagrammatic decomposition; and by reference to their operative design ideologies and material relations.

Theories of Inquiry

The aim of systematic inquiry in any discipline is to make a reliable and significant contribution to its stock of knowledge. The purpose of this course is to give students knowledge of the principles by which a project systematic inquiry make this kind of a contribution. The focus is strictly on principles, and practical knowledge will only be given passing consideration. Practical knowledge is certainly necessary to any conduct of inquiry, but it is quite specific to individual disciplines and best acquired through actual research work in the discipline. Instead, students will learn about the reasons and beliefs on which standard methods and approaches to inquiry are based. Throughout the focus will be on topics and concerns relevant to study of architecture and the built environment.

Design Scripting: Advanced Programming

Computer programming has been broadly adopted in several discourses to solve problems, automate workflows, process analysis, and so forth. For architects and designers, computer programming is even used for exploring design ideas, creating new designs and simulating the performance of designs. This course will introduce students to advanced programming through three biweekly assignments and a class project implemented in Python, Java and Grasshopper. The course consists of lectures and workshops given online in synchronous way with three in-person meetings during the semester. Students are expected to establish the fundamentals of and the skill sets of computer programming after the semester.