ARC3015Y F
Instructor: Mariana Ibanez, Simon Kim
Meeting Section: L0104
Tuesday, 2:00pm - 6:00pm; Friday, 9:00am - 1:00pm, 2:00pm - 6:00pm

Architecture of a city - as a proposition or a form of intellectual investigation - is tethered to a built, shared environment. Its implicit and explicit meanings and affects are to be developed in material and also in behavior over time.

To do this, we will imbue architecture and urbanism with duration, with its own agency and selfgovernance in the location of New York. With new media and new materials, it is not impossible to conceptualize the built environment as a sensate and sentient field of beings. Our role as designers and as inhabitants is to coordinate and live in this new city and new nature as a shared endeavor. The site of the New York World's Fair of 1964 is an ideal postindustrial model with an ideology of advanced thinking of newenvironment and ecointelligence.

This studio will break from the classical hierarchy of humancentric design and allow for nonhuman (all manner of flora, fauna, and matter) authorship and stewardship. Rather than design from a compositional position, and to dwell in a seamless zone of human comfort, this studio will engage in a design process with transformations over time, to produce environments that change and behave for otherthanhuman requirements (such as seasons, water, air, animal).

We will consider the postwar projects of Gordon Pask, Nicholas Negroponte, and the writings of Timothy Morton and Gilbert Simondon, while rejecting the mechaideologies of Archigram and Evangelion. Architecture that is sensate and nervous do not need to look like giant robots, and projects based in nonhuman agency should not be simplified to an easy reading or cliche.

 

If the term ‘Anthropocene’ defines the global impact of human activity, the city is at the concept’s core. Although on one hand a ‘humancentered’ approach to urbanism can generate positive discussions on the quality of life, all too often it is used to place humans at the hierarchical apex of the ecological system. Therefore, rather than a holistic vision of the city, massive imbalances continue to degrade the global ecology; paradoxically massive social inequalities also escalate as wealth accumulation becomes a geopolitical game of subdividing the city as ‘realestate.’ In fact modernist planning classifies the city along functionalist lines of housing, business, retail, production, and the like fragments that on the surface seem to define humancentered ac tivi ties, but in practice can easily be captured by power structures.  - A. Zaera-Polo

 

Goals: On Immersive Architecture

The premise of the studio will be to accelerate the urban growth of a new model of synthetic nature, augmented architecture, and compound beings so that there is no sense of a critical distance. This polemic denies a separation of environment and occupant to be encompassing and immersive. We will develop behaviors and duration in architecture and ground, and apply it to a new model of Synthetic Nature and Augmented Architecture. The scope of the work in fall option studio is the large urban scale. To that end, we will 1. transform the shoreline of Flushing Meadows with a masterplan that is reactive, interactive, and sensate. We will then 2. focus this world into a protocommunity of synthetic beings made of people, flora, fauna, and new technologies who operate and dwell as a conservatory of new bodies of knowledge and forms of life.

If the tasks for Immersive Architecture is to remove the anthropo-centric model of architecture, and replace it with a networked synthetic nature and ecology, then the challenge is to define the narrative of common space or the public. These may be presented relationships that are seamless, or difficult. The World's Fair site was entirely human-made in the 1960's - it was originally a natural wetland and garbage dump. The site can undergo another transformation where the biodiversity, biomes, and ecosystems are not only fully engaged, but have a role in 1. human industry, 2. nonhuman cultures, and 3. natural history. For this reason, the dimensions of politics cannot be ignored - what are the rights, social standing, and identity of the nonhuman? Do they have issues similar or responsive to politics of gender, race, ideologies?

We will be going to the NY and the World's Fair site in October to investigate the site and its physical / historical traits, while finding qualities of plural and muti-species life. The site is 13000 acres of land that is adjacent to LaGuardia airport, has a mile of shoreline on Flushing Bay, and is bound by Grand Central Parkway and Interstate 678.

On Programme

We work with programme of a conservatory. Rather than determining architecture from a top-down application of function and use, we are more interested in a durational and temporal occupation of space that is for both the human and nonhuman. In this effort, a conservatory is traditional a place of preservation, of sustaining a body of knowledge or craft. It also refers to a conditioned space for maintaining nature out of its normal context.

Schedule

1. Research Phase of The Immersive from masterplan of synthetic nature in and out of context.

Learning to model and to draw in Duration:
Agency, Behaviour
Transpositions, Transformations
Responsiveness, Interaction

2. Design Phase of The Immersive with a programme of conservatory.

Site design will be in the World's Fair Requirements: Full development of Conservatory diagrams, drawings, prototypes, images, videos.

Site methodologies: Synthetic Nature, Material Regimes, Risk and Resilience, Shared Ecologies

Instructor Bios:

Mariana Ibañez is an Argentinian architect involved in practice, academia, and research. She is Associate Professor of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and co-founder of Ibañez Kim. Before joining MIT, Mariana taught at Harvard University Graduate School of Design for eleven years as Assistant and Associate Professor. She is an external examiner for the Architectural Association, and is on the awards jury of the Boston Society of Architects, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rotch foundation. As an academic and editor, Mariana’s research is in the disciplinary core of architecture and its growing periphery, with a focus on the relationship among technology, culture, and the environment. Her recent publications include Paradigms in Computing by ACTAR D, and Organization or Design, published by a + t. Mariana has a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Buenos Aires, and a Master of Architecture and Urbanism from the Architectural Association in London where she received thesis honours. Upon completing her graduate studies, she worked at the Advanced Geometry Unit at ARUP before joining Zaha Hadid Architects where she was Project Architect for the London Aquatic Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games, among other projects. Mariana has exhibited work at the MoMA New York, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, and The National Art Museum in Beijing, with projects for the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

Simon Kim, AIA, OAA is an architect registered in California, Massachusetts, and Ontario, Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, and Director of the Immersive Kinematics Research Group. As principal of Ibañez Kim, he is interested in the integration of architecture and urbanism with active and emotive behaviors. In particular, Simon works to bring meaningful and sensate agency into our objects, homes, and cities. Simon has collaborated with artists, theater groups, and performers such as the Dufala Brothers, Grace Kelly Jazz, Carbon Dance Theatre, Pig Iron Theatre. He has also curated shows at the Slought Foundation, Traction Company, and SINErgy Gallery. His work has also been exhibited at the ICA, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and MoMA New York. Simon received his professional degree from Carleton University, and first registered as an architect while working at Tate Snyder Kimsey. After completing the Design Research Laboratory Master of Architecture and Urbanism programme at the Architectural Association, Simon worked as a designer and project architect for Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry. At MIT he worked as a Research Associate with Bill Mitchell on modular, networked energy for buildings and landscapes, and was awarded a Master of Science. Simon has taught studios and seminars at Yale, Harvard, MIT, and the Architectural Association. He has taught workshops at Smart Geometry, UNLV, and the University of Calgary.