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Instructor(s)
Living Systems in Architecture supports development of your architectural thesis. The course will be framed by the research of the Living Architecture Systems Group and by readings in contemporary ‘abiogenesis’, the emergence of living systems. You will be asked to develop your own work in relationship to that material.
The course will be organized in four stages, moving from an investigation of a selected site and a related complex system drawn from the built, natural and social environment, design projections related to that site, a broad collection of literature and precedents, to an integrated research outline that proposes your own thesis approach. This working method is designed to help you to produce key ingredients of your thesis. It will be supported by templates and workshop sessions where early drafts can be developed and progressively refined. You will be encouraged to reach substantial depth and focus in your own work. . Design and experiments will be emphasized alongside text-based work. I will tend to encourage a wide range of architectural exploration that includes projections into the future and past, employing personal contemplation, cultural history, and technical development.. Practical support will be provided for the specialized crafts of creation-based research and scholarly writing. We will include the crafts of rhetoric and argument, and of design research including orthography and modeling, information systems, and form and material based manipulation.
At the end of the course, you will be asked to produce an outline formatted as a small book and unified by a common graphic format for dissemination. Alongside the formal LEARN online tool, we will use an online pin-up space where your accumulating work can be easily adjusted and organized, and the discussion space of the online tool Basecamp for class discussions and worksharing.