Urbanism: Cambridge Ma

3 units

This design research seminar will focus on urban buildings adjacent to two transit stops adjacent to two major university campuses, Harvard and MIT, in the City of Cambridge, a Boston area city of about 105,000 people. Its continuing rapid growth as a center of research and digital economic activities have led to continuous transformations in its urban form, particularly in the past few decades. This seminar will combine historical and field research on some of the many architectural urban design interventions in Cambridge near the Harvard and Kendal Square subway stations. A class field trip will take place, and students with choose among several topic areas to produce detailed drawings and digital models of specific Cambridge urban interventions. There will likely be a publication of the work. Topic areas include the campus planning and built work of Josep Lluis Sert and others near Harvard Square; buildings on the MIT campus by Eero Saarinen, Frank Gehry, Fumihiko Maki, and others; and recent Kendall Square area corporate urban developments by Maya Lin and others.