Brief

This course performs a critical analysis of urbanism’s relationship to “natural disaster” as the basis for cultivating novel processes of postcarbon city building. An initial survey of “natural disasters” is conducted from prehistory to present and develops into an atlas of events categorized as geological, meteorological, hydrological, climatological, biological or extraterrestrial phenomena. Events are editorially conditioned through the lens of earth, air, fire, and water as elements which define pre-modern systems of knowledge and precede the scientific development of thermodynamics. Conduction, convection, and radiation are utilized as universal flows to describe the emergence of cities, the disasters which destroy them, and reconstruction. Notions of utopia are questioned and collaged with the postdisaster site to elevate its conventionally conservative status towards more progressive possibilities of social and environmental justice.

Precarbon/postcarbon, lowtech/hightech, and permanent/temporary material system dichotomies are cross-pollinated to form multiscalar genotypical models embedded with potentialities of thermodynamic intelligence. Deployed at the postdisaster site, the models exchange energy, matter, and information with local conditions to initialize, multiply, diversify, densify, and self-organize. Hyperdisastrocesters (low-density camps) grow into Hyperdisastroburghs (medium density small cities) and ultimately into Hyperdisastropolises (high density vertical cities), establishing patterns of increasingly complex interplay between earth, air, fire, and water. Fluctuations, feedback loops, bifurcation points, and dissipative restructurings define Hyperdisastropias and unfold towards a horizon where architecture and its environment coexist in dynamic equilibrium.

The objectives of this studio are to: perform philological analyses of  concepts of disaster as critiques of “disaster relief” and “disaster recovery”; clarify the ways in which there is no such thing as “natural” disaster but only planning, policy, and design disasters; invent systems of representations for visualizing “natural” disasters as thermodynamic phenomena driven by morphologies of conduction, convection, and radiation; rediscover examples of passive design intelligence in indigenous precarbon architecture; articulate methods for deploying emerging postcarbon building strategies at-scale; exemplify the potential of robotic and/or CNC fabrication technologies at postdisaster sites; display possibilities for material systems which are capable of evolving from low to medium to high density building typologies; generate prototypes of passive-design provisional shelter with the capacity to be rapidly deployed across a variety of climate types; achieve an assemblage of Hyperdisaster design processes which leverage thermodynamic principles to create complex internal system behaviors that transform energy from the environment into flows of work capable of replacing fossil-fuel driven building systems.

Notes: the studio will travel to postdisaster sites throughout the Midwest region, exact location(s) TBD per students interests, anticipated costs are $500 per student, travel and associated costs are optional;  students enrolling in this studio are strongly encourage to enroll in or audit Prof. Zuroweste’s elective Arch 528A “Postnatureness: An Ecological Approach to Artificial Intelligence,” MW 09:00a - 10:20a, which will feature technical training related to artificial intelligence that will be very beneficial in this studio.

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Course Bibliography:

Baudrillard, Jean. Utopia Deferred: Writings from Utopie, (1967-1978). New York: Semiotext(e), 2006.

Benjamin, Walter. On the Concept of History. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.

Bloch, Ernst, and Anthony A. Nassar. The Spirit of Utopia. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Borradori, Giovanna, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Habermas. Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, and Brian Massumi. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, Hugh Tomlinson, and Graham Burchell. What Is Philosophy? London: Verso, 2015.

Harvey, David A. Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.

Iturbe, Elisa. “Architecture And the Death of Carbon Modernity.” Log, no. 47, 2019, pp. 10–23.

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso Books, 2019.

Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Jameson, Fredric. “The Dialectics of Disaster.” Dissent from the Homeland, 2003, 55-62.

Koselleck, Reinhart. Critique and Crisis Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015.

Koselleck, Reinhart, and Richter, Michaela. “Crisis.” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 2 (2006): 357-400.

Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture A Reader in Cultural Theory. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2016.

Macauley, David. Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011.

Martin, Reinhold. Utopias Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again. Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Morton, T. (2009). Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (First Edition). Harvard University Press.

Odum, Howard T. “Trophic Structure and Productivity of Silver Springs, Florida.” Ecological Monographs 27, no. 1 (1957): 55-112.

Oudenampsen, Merijn and Miguel Robles-Durán. “Mobility, Crisis, Utopia: An Interview with David Harvey.” Open, no.11 (Im)mobility (2011): 92-105.

Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle. Order out of Chaos. New York, NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1984.

Ricoeur, Paul, and George Taylor. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1986.

Rudofsky, Bernard. Architecture without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture. Albuquerque, NM: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1964.

Simmel, Georg. Soziologie. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958.

Tafuri, Manfredo. Architecture and Utopia Design and Capitalist Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.

Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2006.

Worster, Donald. “Hydraulic society in California: An ecological interpretation.” Agricultural History 56, no. 3 (1982): 503-515

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Learning Outcomes:

1. Develop a poignant design research trajectory which critically positions students’ interests within and beyond the discipline of architecture as the basis for students’ future career paths beyond ISU CoD.

2. Clearly define personal value systems related to urgent contemporary environmental and social justice issues, with an emphasis on establishing robust and flexible intellectual frameworks supported by environmental aesthetics.

3. Integrate complex empirical data with advanced theoretical notions to propose cogent speculative projects which weave energy, matter, and information into high performance post-carbon assemblages of architecture, landscape, and urbanism.

4. Produce a critical mass of design research work to be curated and edited into a publication ready studio book that includes proper image rights and text citations.

5. Fabricate exhibition-quality scaled physical models and full-scale material system mock-ups which demonstrate a multiscalar finesse of energy becoming matter becoming form.

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Course Catalog Description:

Advanced studio as incubator for examining progressive agendas within or beyond the discipline of architecture. Innovative research that is academically rigorous, critically informed, speculative, and design-led is encouraged. Projects and creative outputs vary per studio instructor.