Courses tagged with "Information environments" (40)

Today, computer-based simulations are becoming increasingly popular, especially when daylighting and energy conservation are amongst the key goals for a project. This two-week workshop will expose participants to the current daylighting simulation models and beyond, by introducing realistic and dynamic assessment methods through hands-on exercises and application to a design project. Open to students and practitioners.

This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

Subject combines practical instruction, readings, lectures, field trips, visiting artists, group discussions, and individual reviews. Fosters a critical awareness of how images in our culture are produced and constructed. Student-initiated term project at the core of exploration. Special consideration given to the relationship of space and the photographic image. Practical instruction in basic black and white techniques, digital imaging, fundamentals of camera operation, lighting, film exposure, development, and printing. Open to beginning and advanced students. Lab fee. Enrollment limited with preference given to current Master of Architecture students.

This course presents principles of naval architecture, ship geometry, hydrostatics, calculation and drawing of curves of form, intact and damage stability, hull structure strength calculations and ship resistance. It introduces computer-aided naval ship design and analysis tools. Projects include analysis of ship lines drawings, calculation of ship hydrostatic characteristics, analysis of intact and damaged stability, ship model testing, and hull structure strength calculations.

This class is a general study of modern architecture as a response to important technological, cultural, environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical challenges after the European Enlightenment. It focuses on the theoretical, historiographic, and design approaches to architectural problems encountered in the age of industrial and post-industrial expansion across the globe, with specific attention to the dominance of European modernism in setting the agenda for the discourse of a global modernity at large. It explores modern architectural history through thematic exposition rather than as a simple chronological succession of ideas.

This class focuses on representation tools used by architects during the design process and attempts to discuss the relationship they develop with the object of design. Representation plays a key role in architectural design, not only as a medium of conveying and narrating a determined meaning or a preconceived idea, but also as a code of creating new meaning, while the medium seeks to establish a relationship with itself. In this sense, mediums of representation, as external parameters to the design process, are not neutral tools of translating an idea into its concrete form. They are neither authentic means of creativity, nor vapid carriers of an idea. Therefore, an important aspect in issues of meaning is how the architect manipulates the play of translating a concept to its concrete version, through the use of a medium of representation. The course is a continuation of the equivalent course taught in the fall semester and specifically focuses on digital media. The course is intended to establish a reciprocal relationship with the design studio, feeding from and contributing to its content.

The course investigates e-Learning systems from a business, policy, technical and legal perspective. The issues presented will be tackled by discussion of the design and structure of the various example systems. The connection between information architectures and the physical workplace of the users will also be examined. The course will be comprised of readings, discussions, guest speakers and group design sessions. Laboratory sessions will be focused on implementation tools and opportunities to create one's own working prototypes. Students will learn to describe information architectures using the Unified Modeling Language (used to specify, design and structure web applications) and XML (to designate meaningful content).

How do we define Public Art? This course focuses on the production of projects for public places. Public Art is a concept that is in constant discussion and revision, as much as the evolution and transformation of public spaces and cities are. Monuments are repositories of memory and historical presences with the expectation of being permanent. Public interventions are created not to impose and be temporary, but as forms intended to activate discourse and discussion. Considering the concept of a museum as a public device and how they are searching for new ways of avoiding generic identities, we will deal with the concept of the personal imaginary museum. It should be considered as a point of departure to propose a personal individual construction based on the concept of defining a personal imaginary museum - concept, program, collection, events, architecture, public diffusion, etc.

This workshop investigates the current state of sustainability in regards to architecture, from the level of the tectonic detail to the urban environment. Current research and case studies will be investigated, and students will propose their own solutions as part of the final project.

This seminar engages in the notion of space from various points of departure. The goal is first of all to engage in the term and secondly to examine possibilities of art, architecture within urban settings in order to produce what is your interpretation of space.

This workshop explores how designers might become as sensitive to space as they are to objects. Through a number of projects and precedent studies, architectural design is studied in relation to the Space Between. The design process is studied in reverse, considering space first and objects second. This is not to imply that objects are not important, but rather that space is equally important.

This seminar is open to graduate students, and is intended to offer a synoptic view of selected methodologies and thinkers in art and architectural history (with many theorists from other fields). The syllabus outlines the structure of the course and the readings and assignments for each week; the goal is to become aware of the apparatuses of discourse, and find your own voice within them.

This course covers theories about the form that settlements should take and attempts a distinction between descriptive and normative theory by examining examples of various theories of city form over time. Case studies will highlight the origins of the modern city and theories about its emerging form, including the transformation of the nineteenth-century city and its organization. Through examples and historical context, current issues of city form in relation to city-making, social structure, and physical design will also be discussed and analyzed.

This class will be constructed as a lecture-discussion, the purpose being to engage important theoretical issues while simultaneously studying their continuing historical significance. To enhance discussion, three debates will be held in class. Each student will be required to participate in one of these debates. Each student will also be required to write three short papers. Class participation is essential and will be factored into the final grade.

The course will portray the history of theory neither as the history of architectural theory exclusively, nor as a series of prepackaged static pronouncements, but as part of a broader set of issues with an active history that must be continually probed and queried. The sequence of topics will not be absolutely predetermined, but some of the primary issues that will be addressed are: pedagogy, professionalism, nature, modernity and the Enlightenment. Classroom discussions and debates are intended to demonstrate differences of opinion and enhance awareness of the consequences that these differences had in specific historical contexts.

This studio discusses in great detail the design of urban environments, specifically in Providence, RI. It will propose strategies for change in large areas of cities, to be developed over time, involving different actors. Fitting forms into natural, man-made, historical, and cultural contexts; enabling desirable activity patterns; conceptualizing built form; providing infrastructure and service systems; guiding the sensory character of development: all are topics covered in the studio. The course integrates architecture and planning students in joint work and requires individual designs and planning guidelines as a final product.

This class presents an analysis of the development of housing models and their urban implications in Paris, London, and New York City from the seventeenth century to the present. The focus will be on three models: the French hotel, the London row house, and the New York City tenement and apartment building. Other topics covered will include twentieth-century housing reform movements and work by the London County Council, CIAM, and American public housing agencies.