Confronting Urbanization: The Interactive Tissue of Urban Life

3 units

This course invites architecture and urban design students to explore the urban condition through the lenses of its interactive tissue -- a tissue that includes smartphones, the World Wide Web, credit cards, highway systems, airports, sidewalks, and indoor plumbing. Within this frame of reference, students are encouraged to investigate, unearth, and document with surgical precision the emergent interrelationships between actors, the agency through which actors engage with the interactive tissue, and the ways in which these actors and relationships shape and influence one another. With the understanding that ideas are generated through speculation, projection, and experimentation, we will use the third dimension as a point of departure toward the fourth dimension of time, and we will aspire to the fifth dimension of lived experience. It is most welcomed that students bring their curiosity to the course, that they are interested in being investigative, and that they are open to various mediums ranging from reading theories of urbanization, drawing, and experimenting with physical/interactive objects to using projection as a tool to document their research in both analog and digital formats. The final product of this course will be a presentation during which students will present their research through multiple media outlets, which may include drawings, installation work, or moving images.