For the next generation of architects, technology has become a greater and more differentiating force than ever before. As computational power increases at exponential rates and data becomes ubiquitous, formal methodologies in architectural design are giving way to an evidence basis. New modes of making in architecture are being disrupted through changes in manufacturing, materials, and information technologies in a globalized world. What bricks and mortar may have been to earlier methods of architecture, today the focus is squarely on performance of design in the built environment. Does design drive greater productivity? A better sense of community and well being? Lower energy use? Less material waste? Broader and shared economic development? The subjective narratives of decades past on these subjects are today turning into data and hard facts. Performance and its measurement and verification have become a function of an architecture searching for the right solutions.

Urban conditions continue to drive discourse on the global stage. As cities grow globally and see the effects of unprecedented migration, the effects of design are ever present. Scarcity of resources, driven by rapid population growth and demographic change, need to be addressed head on by the architectural community. Energy and its efficient performance in buildings has become the critical issue across architecture to address the questions of global climate change. And even while working harder inside the building construct, architects must think outside the building boundary, to wider notions of integration in systems including water, transportation, waste, and energy. These are the pieces of a global puzzle that will be waiting for them as they graduate.

Below is a selection of student projects from various Spring 2020 and Fall 2019 courses in the technology sequence, which is an integral part of the school and part of the training for the next generation of architects that will shape our built environment. Students must explore and experiment as always, but realize that abilities to rationalize and prove are more interconnected with design as it touches every aspect of development across the world.

This course provides students with an understanding of what structural design means and how it’s carried out. Students gain familiarity with basic elemental forms, structural assemblies and systems, and new and emerging materials. Through project-based and hands-on work, students gain an understanding of structure, empowering them to integrate their newfound technical knowledge including load-resisting systems into architectural concepts.

This course provides students with an understanding of what structural design means and how it’s carried out. Students gain familiarity with basic elemental forms, structural assemblies and systems, and new and emerging materials. Through project-based and hands-on work, students gain an understanding of structure, empowering them to integrate their newfound technical knowledge including load-resisting systems into architectural concepts.

This course introduces students to the technical design of building envelopes. It covers the tools and methods of facade design, starting with system typologies and design principles and moving on to performance criteria, documentation methods, and project execution strategies. During the schematic design phase, the focus is on understanding and defining façade types and materials. During the design development phase, performance criteria are introduced with a focus on structural and thermal performance requirements. During the construction documentation phase, students review the enclosure design and construction process and consider the relationship between design and cost.

This capstone course asks students to develop a design proposal with integrated technical systems. Structural form, environmental systems, materials, construction methods, and fire protection elements are developed systematically and integrated with one another. It brings together key areas of study from environmental systems, structural systems, and enclosures. Concepts and principles learned in previous courses are applied to the comprehensive design of a fully detailed building, and student deliverables include comprehensive schematic design, design development, and construction document drawing sets.

This course begins by zooming out to study technical systems that operate outside the walls and the site of a building. Beginning at the city and regional scale, students consider the processes building users undertake to move around the city and into the site. They understand how the flows of water along the ground, from the sky, and underground may impact building design and look at where electricity, natural gas, solar insolation, wind energy, and gasoline comes from and the impact of their consumption on the world at-large. By progressively studying urban systems at an increasingly granular scale starting with the entire city, moving down to the neighborhood, site, and immediate building perimeter, a full understanding of the interplay between a building and multiple urban system is developed.

The class follows an analytical approach by dissecting individual Super Tall building components and their interrelationships to each other to build a comprehensive understanding of how these buildings behave using New York City as a laboratory. Student teams are assigned one of the following categories: vertical circulation, enclosure and building maintenance; super structure; building services including mechanical, electrical, and plumbing; fire and life safety; and construction logistics. Each team develops a series of three‐dimensional infographics that visually represent the categorical fundamental building blocks of the Super‐Tall.

This course offers an intense exposure to the custom curtain wall. It provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the technical concepts and specific skills necessary to undertake in actual practice the design, detailing, specification, and construction administration of the custom curtain wall. The course emphasizes current and emerging technologies of the curtain wall and discussions focus on specific technical issues and methodologies that directly inform contemporary architectural design.

This course explores the detailed design of building cladding through an understanding of materials and their physical properties. There is an emphasis on sketching details at large scales (often 1:1) by hand to facilitate a proper understanding of everything involved at the interface between the interior and exterior environments and the other necessary building systems. Students develop a deep understanding of many different cladding materials and what it takes to remain in command of the entire building process from design concept to built work.

The goal of the course is to engage with historical approaches to surface embellishment in a contemporary context. In doing so, students will create new modular architectural elements suitable for mass production. In this context, architectural elements are versatile, non–structural, low–relief three-dimensional modules suitable to serial production as castings or extrusions. In a word—tiles.

Providing adequate housing is a challenge for nations around the world - both in advanced economics and in developing ones. The challenge will only grow worse in the coming years, and by 2025, an estimated 36 million new housing units will be needed in the world’s twenty largest cities alone. The modular construction industry is predicted to grow at a staggering rate in the coming decade. However, current modular construction practices present inherent weaknesses: a severely limited design range and restricted capacity for customization. This course proposes a framework for capitalizing on this inflection point by leveraging a system-based, modular approach to architectural design in conjunction with emerging material and manufacturing technologies.

This course introduces students to the fundamental properties of materials and fabrication techniques. It provides hands-on experience in individual and cooperative building skills, focusing on the connectivity of analog and digital methods, as well as encouraging a type of analytical and creative engagement in making physical things.

This course is a workshop in tiling and modularity, as well as an exploration of the potential architectural systems and effects that arise from a hands-on study of those organizational practices. Emphasis is placed on techniques and applications of mold-making: as a method of repetitive production, as a problem-solving act of constructability, and as an analog of building construction systems writ large. For all components of the course, students use the shop as a testing ground for their ideas in physical form. Students produce a relatively short run of objects that are either identical or related according to a formal system. Students also propose, illustrate, and demonstrate their own innovative approach to fabrication efficiencies and scalable architectural technologies.

This course investigates the complex relationships between humans and non-human urban inhabitants. Students study urban animal wildlife, indicator species, and microbial communities and work with biologists and ecologists to identify new potentials in designing for biological systems. Through the process of fabricating, situating, and testing prototypes, the class aims to create a reflective space for deeply considering the details of these new interactions and to discover unforeseen opportunities, twists, and challenges. Project outcomes are physical devices in the form of multispecies interfaces, bio-receptive materials, and infrastructure modifications that propose new multispecies collaborations across all scales.

The architectural history of tension and compression surfaces is the beginning point for this course. Research is conducted through continuous analogous modeling methods. Surfaces are determined through the interactions of forces and materials and a methodology for surface generation is determined. This tactile knowledge is then used to produce shells or other types of structures that, when combined, create shelter at model scale.