Precedent

In the second semester of the second year studio, students focus on design research, inquiry, and production in relation to “site” and expand on their foundational knowledge. The main topics this semester are surface, system, and section, and there will be emphasis on research, analysis, concept development, design methodology, and synthesis.

Students will also engage in precedent analysis, representation, spatial formation, and building and landscape systems. The relationship between architecture and landscape architecture is becoming increasingly important. Landscapes are not just ecological, climatological, and topographic, but also political, social, historical, and economic. Landscape thinking offers a broader view of “site” that implicates any property within a larger network of forces, systems, and formations. To construct a site is to make visible its attributes across scales, which provide a framework for design intervention.

With the global climate crisis, architects need to develop new modes of operation and production and a new language for architecture. This semester challenges students to engage with the multiplicities of context, ground, and earth, and to understand multi-scalar systems, forces, formations, and flows, leading to new opportunities for design. A new language of architecture has the potential to become more integrated with site processes, producing more resilient solutions.