As architects, drawing and representation is one of our primary mediums. We draw futures that don’t exist, spaces that haven’t been changed yet. We draw and visualize and represent and render new possibilities, new futures, new kinds of spaces, new imaginations. The tools we use to design architecture, shape our understanding of what architecture is. Drawing and representation are not just ways of putting our thoughts into the world. They are also ways of shaping our thoughts and our beliefs, and in turn, what we decide to design, and in turn, what architecture we believe should be designed.

What is the role of architectural drawing and representation in relation to our built environment? What are the tools that are used to draw and represent? How have they and will they shape the way we draw and design architecture? How can we find ways of drawing that can enable us to be thoughtful and exploratory designers?

Architectural Drawing and Representation II is a class about drawing and representation, and it’s also a class about thinking about drawing and representation. The ultimate goal of ADR II is to incubate students’ personal relationship with drawing, representation, and architecture by considering drawing as a practice.​ Students are invited to develop their own style, and to invent their own drawing tools and representational processes. ADR II is an opportunity to play, explore new methods of representation, consider diverse points of view, test alternative outcomes, and to experiment with how our methods of representation shape our relationship to architecture.

Architectural education and discourse are inextricable from the sociopolitical. Institutional critique is taking new forms and necessitating new paradigms. This course aims to leverage collective and DIY knowledge building as a representational technique and a tool of power. Architects and contributors to the built environment must challenge hierarchical structures, the canonization of the discipline, and the efficacy of architectural institutions. Emergent networks allow participants to evaluate and retool their education and environment.

The course follows a tripartite structure of research, design, and implementation. First, students look at a diverse array of historical and contemporary DIY formats such as the zine, meme, catalog, almanac, instructional video, cookbook, hotline, and how-to-manual as transformative models of self-education. Next, seminar participants use visual representation techniques to organize, design, and develop antiracist content. Finally, students work in groups to design physical and/or digital delivery methods for their chosen campus or community; hacking formats such as the bulletin, newsstand, billboard, monument, or a method of their invention. What is the threshold for action? What are the visual tools and architectures of protest and resistance? How do we define the sites and formats of critique? How does a Power Tool expedite action and inform the problem of making?

The final project requires students to design a built manifestation that can be deployed on various campuses digitally and/or physically, such as a bulletin board, suggestion box, kiosk, newsstand, library, monument, or format of their invention.

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This course puts forth the challenge for students to develop robust data-driven methodologies and computational frameworks for creative iteration and validating design solutions through analysis, automation, simulation, optimization, representation, and so forth. The course is intended to provide foundational knowledge of relevant modeling software and visual programming interfaces, while also discussing contemporary applications of these tools in the industry.

This course is cross-listed in the Building Science and Technology Sequence.

In this seminar, students tested a variety of design methods from a multidisciplinary perspective—engaging computer science, architecture, and journalism––to best define the emerging field of public interest technology. To investigate this broad topic, we focused on research, design, and prototyping technology that would benefit Public Libraries and their many missions. The course framed Public Libraries as good examples of Public Interest Technology. Historically and today, libraries link information systems, information delivery, and public space. What can we learn from public libraries, and how can we engage with them to prototype Public Interest Technologies and expand their purpose? The course includes collaborations with New York City and Community Tech, Metropolitan New York Library Council, librarians, and generous input from the Queens Public Libraries in New York City.

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This course explores the design, curation, and conceptualization of online communal spaces, taking remote formats as an opportunity to innovate and speculate on possible futures. Starting off from the concept of the replica, students created immersive exhibition environments and installations exploring the intersection between the physical and the digital. This class is interested in 3D scanning as a process and its potential to drive and change design methods. It gives an introduction to practical scanning methods that can be applied in everyday situations, while speculating on the possibilities of 3D scans for the discipline at large.

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For this course, students work with and generate geo-spatial data at multiple scales: city, neighborhood and buildings. They integrate urban data exploration, environmental performance, and derive their own data within a computational design workflow.

This course is cross-listed in the Building Science and Technology Sequence.