BRIEF

      

INSTRUCTORS:  Lauren Shirley, Kyle Sturgeon

COURSE NUMBER: CD105F

DURATION: 15 weeks

SCHEDULE: Tuesdays, 7:15pm - 10:00pm

LOCATION: 320 Newbury Street, Room #504

FALL 2013 COURSE BRIEF

In architectural practice, the ”greening” of buildings has become a banality. In academia, the green wall and the green roof are too often merely signifiers – tentative placeholders for a connection between humans and their environment. In this workshop, the proxy 'thin green line' will be pushed, pulled, and recast in order to choreograph new productive partnerships between buildings and their dynamic context. 

'50 Shades of Green’ asks designers to articulate and deploy innovative hybrid systems in order to realize the social values, programmatic relationships, and spatial experiences they wish to see in our constructed landscape.

The semester is organized into two parts; both of which emphasize detailing and diagramming as primary means of conveying information. Part 1 is a collaborative investigation of four topic areas through the critique of built precedents that aggressively utilize sustainable technologies. Part 2 asks each student to develop a design polemic - individually selecting a scale, program, and site for intervention - that takes advantage of, or amplifies a case study's ambitions. At the close of the semester, work will be collected in the form a booklet, intended as a resource and provocation for the larger BAC community.

IN THIS COURSE, STUDENTS WILL:

·      Pursue a polemic about a sustainable and productive urban lifestyle, and then... 
·      Develop a productive system that supports one of three possible urban sites
·      Construct a catalog of precedents, which we will re-draw, interrogate, and index 

STUDENTS WILL BE EVALUATED ON THEIR ABILITY TO:

Work collaboratively. 
You will learn to work with multiple partners over the course of the semester. Every student is expected to maintain a professional, timely, and balanced workflow with your classmates.

Realize the diagram. 
You will learn to express objects, buildings, and landscapes as components of scalar systems through tactical diagrams.

Engage the details. 
You will develop a command of representational conventions such the 3D extruded detail, and section perspective.

Question the status quo; interrogate the unsubstantiated claim.

You will develop critical thinking, research, and discussion skills in pursuit of a design polemic.