Architecture and Urban Design Lab

Catalog description

Students in the LAB class are asked to immerse themselves into design thinking and research, with a particular focus on urban design. The aim of this LAB, while focusing on the many systems that structure urban life in New York City, is to produce a set of new ideas and design proposals to enhance the quality of life in the city. Whether we look at familiar urban systems (such as transportation, food, waste management) or other less evident systems (such as zoning, water, power, telecommunications, finance), the class will take as its challenge an understanding of all these as "designed" systems that can be affected by strategic interventions. While traditional urban design might focus first on streets and buildings and the spaces between them, the limitation of this established pedagogy is its failure to address the many interdisciplinary overlaps that occur in designing and occupying a city. The LAB will engage a wide range of formal and analytical assumptions that underpin the development of existing systems, even as we speculate on new propositions to restructure current socio-ecological frameworks. Introductory design, reading, and writing exercises will prepare students for an intense focus on a pressing urban problem, including a group design project that focuses on the climate emergency. Authors may include Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky (Discard Studies); Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro (Nonstop Metropolis); Ian McHarg (Design with Nature); Kate Ascher (The Works: Anatomy of a City); Jane Jacobs (Death and Life of Great American Cities); Lizabeth Cohen (Saving America's Cities); Carl Zimring and Steven Corey (Coastal Metropolis); Geoff Manaugh (The BldgBlog Book); Neil Smith (Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space); among others.