Spring 2020 Arc 3 Course Offerings

Instructors: Nelson Byun & Yufan Gao

Urban Nature: The Sublime, The Picturesque, and The Beautiful

The Studio challenges the oversimplified binary relationship between landscape and architecture, natural and artificial environment. Students will learn to recall, recognize, and re-interpret diverse perceptions of landscape into architectural spaces that induce curiosity and engagement. Principal landscape concepts dating back to the 18th century - the Sublime, the Picturesque, and the Beautiful - will guide site observation and exploration. Rather than emulating these landscape themes in a traditional way, the studio focuses on distilling the qualities of nature, the emotions it provokes and imaginations it exerts, and re-interpreting them in the downtown cultural district of North Adams, MA. The final proposal will be a multi-purpose gateway and visitor center as framing device and participant in establishing the Sublime, the Picturesque and the Beautiful of the City.

Instructors: Christine Wilson & Adam Himes

FILLING THE VOID: Creating spaces of encounter over I-90 in Boston’s Chinatown and South End

Twentieth-century planning in the United States has left a legacy of highways and other urban transportation infrastructure that define hard boundaries between city neighborhoods and often induce disinvestment and decay along their edges. In Boston, Chinatown and the South End were divided by a trench, first for rail lines and later the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90), creating a physical and perceptual gulf between them. The neighborhoods on either side of the trench have, to varying degrees, endured parallel histories of overcrowding, urban renewal, disinvestment, and, more recently, gentrification, as their proximity to now-desirable areas like Downtown and the rest of the South End has attracted upscale development amidst Boston’s ongoing construction boom.

The ‘New York Streets’ neighborhood of the South End was wiped out during Boston’s first urban renewal project in the 1950s, and the newspaper plants built in its place were in turn pulled down for the Ink Block development and other adjacent luxury condo buildings. Meanwhile, Chinatown has faced consistent development pressure from both the adjacent medical center and more recent condo developments. Between 2010 and 2015, the percent of affordable units in the neighborhood dropped nearly 10 percent, and for the first time in more than 100 years, residents of East Asian descent were no longer the majority. Today, Chinatown and Ink Block represent two quite distinct communities separated by the single block of the MBTA/I-90 trench.

This studio will explore air rights development over two blocks of the MBTA/I-90 trench as a means to investigate the capacity for open space and multi-family residential development to mediate and feather the hard boundary line between the two existing neighborhoods into a more porous border area that is inviting to the communities on either side. Students’ projects will address fundamental issues of urban design, including the articulation of street edges, the definition of block corner conditions, and the relationships between built and open space and between public and private space. Through the introduction of open space and green roofs students will consider how their designs can reduce stormwater runoff, mitigate the urban heat island effect, and create wildlife habitat. Through a series of introductory exercises and independent studio projects, students will also explore architectural and landscape typology, density, and public programming as they relate to larger socioeconomic issues such as affordability, gentrification, identity, and equity.

Image from “House in a Bag?” Chicago Magazine, December 16, 2008.

Instructors: Justin Kollar & Elaine Stokes

Angst! Climatic Responses to the Human Condition

“Stop calling me resilient!” exclaimed posters in New Orleans after the city published its resilience master plan in the aftermath of Katrina. Put up by a prominent grassroots activist, the posters explain the perspective a bit more: “Because every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re resilient,’ that means you can do something else to me. I am not resilient.” Such a statement problematizes the language designers often use to discuss climate change. It requires a re-evaluation of the relationship between environmental hazards caused by climate change, as well as the social and economic inequalities embedded in the urban environment and, often, in the design process itself. What should architects do with such complex situations? Do we not also endeavor to understand the structure below the problem’s facade? Should we not strive to understand all of the forces that create space: environmental, social, and political that manifest in physical space? Aren’t our anxieties surrounding climate change not also marked by a shift in our social and political climates as well? Architecture must strive to look at the context of the issue rather than just learning to cope. It is here that the human dimension needs to be elevated----the anxiety, fears, and insecurity that typically lie beneath the architectural interventions that seek to protect from the worst of disasters.

This studio will focus on the impact that climate change will have on the human and natural environments along the Mystic River at the borders of Somerville, Boston, Everett, and Medford. Students should consider ways to embed flexibility in architecture that responds to ever-changing site conditions while addressing the psychological dimensions of change felt by communities. How can communities adapt to changing circumstances? Alternatively, how can urban environments change to enable these communities to thrive? Will we recede from or resist the forces nature confronts us with or will we find a way to live with them?

As a human with special knowledge and interest in the human condition, each student will drive the design program and project thesis by setting their own parameters during the first week of the semester. Design explorations will then be tailored by each student to work towards their own goals. Drawings and models will be an iterative process, with students working and re-working each drawing/model throughout the semester in order to hone the design, reflecting the continued working and re-working of the site over the course of several years to reimagine an architecture of resilience in more human terms.

Instructors: Tyler Hinckley & Rob Adams

RESILIENCY: Designing for Change

Resilience is defined as the ability of something to spring back into shape, or redefine its elasticity after a major transformation or event. So, how can the idea of resilience apply to the built environment? How can planning and design decisions impact the way a community responds to a natural disaster or sea level rise? How can buildings contribute to a more resilient society? This studio will seek to address these questions at multiple scales (macro to micro) and from various points of view (social, economic, environmental). To do so the studio will utilize the recent Coastal Resilience Solutions for South Boston as a framework for the studio, focusing on applying resilient strategies to the redevelopment of South Boston – a location threatened dramatically by sea level rise. After researching and analyzing the environmental and socioeconomic conditions of the area, students will test the potential for resilient design by focusing on building types such as a community center, library, and/or gallery.

The semester will be broken into two sections – Site Analysis / Program Development / Concept Design (8 weeks); and Site Design / Design Development (8 weeks). Emphasis will be placed on the process of design through the use of multiple methods of representation and study. Students will be expected to explore varied design techniques (physical modeling, virtual modeling, hardlined drawings, and sketches), and will be required to work at multiple scales.