Fall 2022 Arc 3 Course Offerings
Credit: Warren S. Parker, Granite Railway Quarry Quincy Norfolk Co MA USA - 1923
Extractive Landscapes: Granite Motions
with Sonny Xu and Joseph Kennedy
One of the hardest and most commonly available forms of stone in earth’s crust, granite has been a widespread construction material throughout human history. However, the building industry has largely shifted from a reliance on granite to concrete due to the convenience and labor cost savings. The history of Quincy granite started around 400 million years ago, when the bedrock batholithic granite cooled under a volcanic micro-continent known as Avalonia. In this studio, we look 250 years into the past to investigate the history and enduring legacy of Quincy’s granite industry and its contribution to the city of Boston. We will examine the bi directional material flows between Quincy and Boston, from the granite quarried in Quincy that was used to construct Boston’s buildings and monuments, as well as the earth excavated from the Big Dig that was used to fill in the holes of many of the Quincy quarries. The title “Granite Motions” refers both to the movement of this material, as well as the traditional term used to describe a small informal stone quarry.
The studio is split into two equal halves, material sourcing and infrastructural assembly. The studio follows consecutive phases of raw material extraction, curation, refinement, relocation, construction and erosion. The instructors and students will together investigate solid-void relationships that give equal emphasis on both subtractive and additive building processes at a one to one scale. The goal of the studio is to bring students a greater awareness of where building materials come from, and not just that of a final built architectural form. The studio aims to shed light on how conventional industrial processes and material supply chains can be leveraged to enable a building that is both more well designed and environmentally aware.
Harbor Side Artists in Residence Program
with Farah Dakkak and Mary Shoufan
Our desire for spaces that celebrate openness, wandering, exploration, and social interaction have grown. Artists, architects, writers, theorists, and other professionals need space to create, discuss ideas, attend workshops, and sell their art.
Directed to artists interested in having an experience of total immersion in the making of contemporary art overlooking the harbor and within the thriving historic neighborhood of East Boston. Harbor Side Artists in Residence Program will be the center of contemporary culture open to the community that promotes research and artistic production. Artists will get the chance to live for a 3- month period while connecting with fellow artists, collaborating, creating, and selling their art on site.
The integration of climate resilience is critical to the future of the East Boston community. Open space, in conjunction with new waterfront development, must meet and exceed the resiliency goals set by the Climate Ready Boston initiative, to protect the neighborhood for years to come. Additionally, this project seeks to strengthen the connection to the waterfront and protect communities in East Boston from the burden of flooding. Studio designs will consider existing site condition constraints, urban context, flood pathways, and magnitude of flooding while seeking to create open space and equitable access along the waterfront.
Spatial Democracy
with Ignacio Cardona and Adrian Fehrmann
SomerVision is a comprehensive plan for the City of Somerville for the period 2010-2030. The document envisions a sustainable urban infrastructure that promotes diversity and community ties. However, the extension of the Green Line Transportation System - first through Union Square, later through East Somerville, Gilman Square, Magoun Square, and Ball Square- has aroused fears of undermining social networks with imminent risks of gentrification while emerges the need to consider the impact of transportation on the environment.
This course explores the framework of Spatial Democracy, which promotes an urban development that maximizes access to the opportunities offered by the city for all its residents. Spatial democracy can be trickled down into various design strategies, including economic, environmental, social, and governance.
First, urban agglomerations incentivize individual and community economic development. But, Spatial Democracy understands that urban development could promote sustainability by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the urban heat islands effect. Additionally, the right to the city, understood as a framework that enables equitable access to urban resources, supports the social perspective of Spatial Democracy. Finally, this framework promotes design strategies in overlapping management tools, urban design, architecture, and landscape, which facilitate urban governance.
To sum up, Spatial democracy emerges from the overlapping and hybridization of urban development, environmental adaptability, social inclusion, and urban governance. In this context, the anticipation of the impact of the Green Line on the city of Somerville is not only an ideal case but an urgent one to achieve a more democratic city space.
Resiliency: Designing for Change
with Tyler Hinckley and Rob Adams
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 focus on a waterfront site in Portland, Maine which is threatened by climate change. We will apply planning strategies developed for similar cities like the recent Coastal Resilience Solutions for South Boston as a framework for the studio, focusing on applying resilient strategies to the redevelopment of the Portland waterfront. After researching and analyzing the environmental and socio-economic conditions of the area, students will test the potential for resilient design by developing a community sailing center project on a waterfront site in downtown Portland.
Local [ECO]nomics: Reinvigorating the Local through Ecology
with Andrew Leonard and Ruben Segovia
Ecology is defined as the interaction of an organism and its environment. Ecology, therefore, is the essence of what local is, it only exists as an interaction in a place. It is through the lens of ecology that you will make all decisions this semester. We will not be distracted by the tropes that place ecology as something that is of “nature” and is not “human”, on the contrary we will look at how both the human and the non-human interact with the spaces that are created. The “urban” environment is just as much an ecology as “nature”, organisms interact with their environment in each and it is through these interactions that you will approach your design for the site.
The site, located east of Assembly Square in Somerville, MA, sits between a rail line and the newest train stop on the T, and the Mystic river, immediately south of the Mystic River Locks. The City of Somerville is one of the densest cities in the area with over 19,500 ppl/sq mi compared to Boston's less than 14,500 ppl/sq mi, and has one of the lowest percentages of open space at ~6%, compared to Boston’s generous ~20%. East of the site is Assembly Square, a new development that has all of the hallmarks of a developer driven approach including a lack of human scale, no sense of place and a tilt towards gentrification. To the east, across the Mystic River is the newly built Encore Cassino, a completely internalized facility that caters to those who come into the building, ignoring the locality where it is situated. This local juxtaposes the rest of Somerville which is known for a series of squares in different neighborhoods, each with their own identity, created by and serving the local community. It is in these dichotomies that this studio will situate itself. The intersection of natural and urban systems and infrastructures, and the impacts of out of scale, inward looking development in a City defined by localness.
This semester you will explore novel approaches to urban design, landscape architecture, and architecture. You will test all of your moves and intentions against ecology, open space, localness and urban functionality. Natural and human system will receive equal importance in all design moves, both landscape and architectural, and the health of the local community, in all aspects, will encompass your design. This will be done in a forward thinking and pragmatic way that will explore how architects can play an integral role in developing healthy, equitable, and vibrant places.
EVOLVING EASTIE: East Boston’s Piers Park Phase 3
with Mateo Yang and Amanda Foran
A large volume of data is often collected through public engagement to ensure that all the voices of individuals and stakeholders are heard in the making of spaces and programs. Environmental data and climate projections are also informing how the future of urban waterfronts must be developed to mitigate disaster. However, our collective memories and understanding of ‘place’ are often vague, shifting, and, as with all memories, retain a dreamlike quality and emotional connection to land that is less quantifiable, but just as significant. How can we simultaneously reach forward for a better future while understanding and engaging the past? How might architectural interventions, informed by both present and latent landscape narratives, strengthen public architecture and open spaces?
This studio will test ideas of designing for the public life of the city through the dual lenses of cultural and ecological narratives. Through mapping, we will explore alternative ways of seeing and interpreting the past and designing for the future. Design has the capacity to create meaningful connections to its human and non-human inhabitants, our collective past, and a range of systems - this studio will aim to design unexpected futures that arise from new understandings of these overlays.
Revitalizing Sunset Park Waterfront
with Jessica Wolff and Lily Wubeshet
To propose a design intervention at Sunset Waterfront Park in Brooklyn, NY which is responsive to context and human occupation based on the specifics of the program. The proposal must address at least one social and one environmental issue - to be developed from your critical and detailed site analysis. The intervention is to be established at two scales with clear concepts: (1) an urban/landscape intervention and (2) an architectural one.
Situated near the Gowanus Canal, Sunset Waterfront Park is undergoing a number of exciting development proposals. As a former brownfield site, the area needs to be evaluated for EPA requirements. Its history as a busy industrial waterfront draws valuable interest as well as its potential to be a thriving adaptive reuse node. Students will need to address important adjacencies such as Gowanus Canal, Views to the Statue of Liberty, Ferry connections and Greenwood Cemetery. Students will also research various master plans underway for this site and its larger framework.
(Post-) Industrial Renaissance: Near-future Redevelopment of an Oil Terminal in a Clean Energy Era
With Dan Lu and Matthew Gindlesperger
Landscape is conventionally perceived as the amenity or beautification in an urban environment defined by buildings and infrastructure. Learning from the theory of Landscape Urbanism, this studio asks students to investigate the agency of landscape as a significant urban form. As a piece of green infrastructure, landscape unfolds its efficacy as it mitigates sea level rising and urban heat, combats coastal erosion and manages stormwater. Its flexibility and temporality can address the ever-changing urban conditions in a more effective way than permanent built forms. It can also be described as “a salve for the wounds of the industrial age” as it remediates and revitalizes post-industrial sites in a city. The studio will speculate on the post-industrial life of an oil terminal along Chelsea Creek in the Boston Harbor area. As the country strives to achieve a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050, fossil fuel industries will be confronted with a gradual drawdown. The decommission of those facilities, especially oneswithin urban context, will provide exciting opportunities for post-industrial renaissance. The studio will explore the multiple roles of landscape when imagining the near-future redevelopment of the oil terminal. In the recent decade, many underutilized industrial sites have been transformed and revitalized to accommodate non-industrial, mix-use developments. Despite their economic success, many of the redevelopment projects, such as the Hudson Yards in New York City and the Seaport District in Boston, are criticized for their lack of diversity (who are they serving?), inclusivity, and unique identity. To steer away from proposing a generic post-industrial project, the studio asks students to approach the site from the following perspectives: How might we deploy different demolition, preservation, reconstruction, or adaptation strategies for the industrial remnants that belong to the legacy of the oil terminal? How might we create an integrating relationship between the redevelopment and the larger working-class neighborhood to tackle issues such as environmental injustice and affordability to improve equity, livability and resiliency? How might we use this project as a prototype for other waterfront oil terminal redevelopments beyond the site in a clean energy era? Students will take on an interdisciplinary and cross-scale design approach to addressing these subject matters.
Site!
With Snatiago Aurelio Mota and Stefano Romagnoli
The Architecture Studio 3 :: Site!, led by Santiago Aurelio Mota and Stefano Romagnoli, introduces graduate students within the BAC ́s Master of Architecture program to the complex dynamics of the site. We argue that thinking through a site necessarily means approaching sites from different disciplines, domains and lenses, such as landscape and urban ecology, adaptive ecosystem management, energy and material flow studies, and more. Ultimately, the studio work will be developed in a transdisciplinary fashion as an attempt to ground the overarching considerations of human activities, through design, as a major disturbance force within ecological dynamics.
The studio will engage with sites selected by the students in and around the Harvard Forest to propose a catalog of timber architectures of different typologies by taking advantage of the documented history and the wealth of data produced, curated and assembled for this geographic location, as one of the first Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites. We are especially interested in expanding the designer ́s notions of place into "deeper" considerations of time and space, convinced that the Harvard Forest is the perfect site to accomplish this through engaging students with, as William Cronon describes, the long term documentation of the changes in the land. To learn more about the Harvard Forest, please visit the website or read their Biennial Report here.
The Harvard Forest and by extension all of the studio work and potential proposals are located within the unceded land and ancestral home territory of the Nipmuc people. This studio is aligned with the Harvard Forest in the commitment of remembering the violent past and continuing to support the relationship building efforts with the tribe to ensure that the land and its benefits are mutually accessible and sustaining.
This studio will heavily rely on the information repositories available online at the Harvard Forest webpage, specially the Data & Archives website section. Students are required to familiarize themselves with the existing datasets in order to take full advantage of this unique opportunity.