Courses tagged with "Information environments" (108)
This studio will investigate the social, programmatic, tectonic and phenomenological performance and character of a student gathering place on the MIT campus. Whether it is simply for socializing or for more specific events, the student gathering place will serve as a refuge from the vigorous educational environment of the Institute, and it will reinforce a critical sense of "place" through the almost logical organization of its program. The place will foster a casual discovery of "being": a reflection upon the student's own existence based upon participation in group events and an intellectual attitude toward acting. To create a space that inspires, rather than imposes: such a discovery is the foremost challenge of this studio.
This architectural studio will have one main project for the semester: to explore the issues surrounding the redesign of an area in Havana, Cuba. It is a typical area about the size of a Law of Indies block that presently has a mix of housing, work, and shopping, in buildings that need to be replaced and others that need to be rehabilitated. There is also vacant land, and buildings that are unused. Part of the blocks front on the Malecon, the street next to the water. The other edge fronts onto a typical neighborhood. The intention is to study the culture through an understanding of one area of Havana and then design an "echo" in architectural form. The design will include public space as well as a mix of buildings: some new, some rehabilitated.
The project for this studio is to design a demonstration project for a site near the French Quarter in New Orleans. The objectives of the project are the following:
- To design more intense housing, community, educational and commercial facilities in four to six story buildings.
- To explore the "space between" buildings as a way of designing and shaping objects.
- To design at three scales - dwelling, cluster and overall.
- To design dwellings where the owners may be able to help build and gain a skill for employment.
- To provide/design facilities that can help the residents to gain education and skills.
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