experiments in dwelling

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The University of San Diego, Department of Art, Architecture + Art HistoryARCH 301– Architectural Design Studio II, Spring 2011

Experiments in Dwelling: The Case of Las Palmas, Tijuana, Baja CaliforniaDaniel López-PérezCamino Hall C043

[email protected](619) 260 7415(609) 651 3133

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:05AM-12:15PMCamino Hall 043

Office Hours:Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:15PM-1:15PM

Course Overview:This design studio course explores architecture as cultural practice that structures both the physical and socialenvironment. A number of exercises will introduce the student to questions surrounding a wide range of scales inhabitation, from the scale of the body to that of the campus, city and region. Addressing the inherent materialenvironmental, cultural and social issues that form these questions is a central concern of the studio. Studentscan also expect to reach technical competency in a full range of design media, including drawing, model-makinand computer aided design. The goal of this design studio is the critical exploration into the inherent material,environmental, cultural and social questions that surround any architectural intervention, in this case the typoloof public housing.

The Rise of the Endless City:Throughout history, the design and development of public housing has been a fundamental concern for thediscipline of architecture. Since 1900, industrialization in all of its phases has led to the migration of vast amouof the world’s population from the rural to the urban environment. This shift has caused a change in the world’spopulation that lives in urban areas from 10% in 1900, 50% in 2007, to a projected 75% in 2050. Cities continuto grow at an unprecedented pace giving rise to the ‘Endless City’, or ‘Megalopolitan City Regions’ comprised multiple cities that form continuous urban and transportation corridors that exceed 10M in population.

1In the fa

of the transformation of the contemporary city into a vast and growing megalopolis, the need for innovation in thdesign and implementation of public housing has never seemed more urgent and full of potential.

‘Bajalta California’ is one of these Megalopolitan City Regions, a continuous urbanized area that includes SanFrancisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Mexicali with a population of over 42million. The ongoing staggering growth of the city of Tijuana eastward, until it meets the state boundary withTecate, becomes an opportunity for this design studio to face the question of public housing as a fundamentalbuilding block of the city and its future. The latest front in this growth is in the San Pedro Valley, a master plan o7,000 hectares called Las Palmas with a projected population of 1.2 million. The density characteristic of Tijuanis very high in extension yet low-rise in floor to area ratio, averaging 2-3 stories in height. The average

1 Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic Ed., The Endless City, The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and

Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society, 2010



development is very densely populated and continuous block formations 2-3 stories high, and hundreds of metlong. The brief of the studio proposes to study the terms that form the basis for the entire master plan for the LaPalmas project in the San Pedro Valley, study the existing residential typologies that are being proposed, and ttest alternative types in a very small sector of the plan, one the size of a single urban block. The purpose of theresearch is to propose designs that integrate the typological intelligence of the types that are being implementein order to explore their social, cultural and environmental flexibility; finding alternative and more sustainable

modes of urban inhabitation from within the scale and terms of the existing project.

Facing the constant growth of cities, architects have always been concerned with the question of large scalepublic housing, devising new plans that would be able to regulate this growth while proposing with each newgeneration, new modes of inhabitation. Given the social, cultural and political implications of public housing, themodels can be understood as urban manifestos aiming to reshape the city and the relationship between theindividual and the collective. In line with the general ‘low-rise’ ‘high-density’ development of Tijuana, it is useful study a number of low-rise and high density mass-public housing projects developed in the past as catalysts tolaunch the research: Le Corbusier’s Mass-Production Houses and the projects developed for CIAM Congressefrom the 1930s to the 1950s (Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), Team X and the Smithsons durithe second half of the 1950s, the Metabolist and Structuralists projects of the 1960s and 1970s, including RicarBofill, Moshe Safdie, and the more utopian proposals of Yona Friedman, Ron Herron and Peter Cook ofArchigram, Buckminster Fuller, Cedric Price, Andrea Branzi of Archizoom…

Le Corbusier and the ‘House-Machine’

‘A great epoch has begun. There exists a new spirit. Industry, overwhelming us like a flood which rolls otowards its destined end, has furnished us with new tools adapted to this new epoch, animated by thenew spirit. Economic law has unavoidably governs our acts and our thoughts. The problem of the housis a problem of the epoch, the Equilibrium of society today depends upon it. Architecture has for its firstduty, in this period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of values, a revision of the constituentelements of the house. […]If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in regard to the houses and look at thequestion from a critical and objective point of view, we shall arrive at the ‘House Machine’ , the mass-production house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful in the same way that the working tools andinstruments which accompany our existence are beautiful. Beautiful also with all the animation that theartist’s sensibility can add to serve and pure functioning objects.’

‘Mass-Production Houses’, Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier, 1931

The prototypes developed by Le Corbusier’s ‘Mass-Production Houses’ can be understood as some of theearliest results from his famous manifesto where the house is a machine for living. Stemming from the MaisonDom-Ino reinforced concrete patent, Le Corbusier develops a number of low-rise and high-dense housingschemes that explore a whole array of dwelling units, and their combination into a whole set of differentiatedwholes. The relationship between the dwelling units and how they form the whole, and their flexibility was at theforefront of these projects. Flexibility was paramount, both in terms of the arrangement between the units, as was that of the units themselves, offering open areas with open and reconfigurable ways of occupying them. A flurelationship between the interior and exterior was also at the center of these projects, where interior spaces flowseamlessly to the exterior, and where the line between landscape and building becomes almost indecipherable



In the project of ‘Mass-Production Houses in Reinforced Concrete’ (1915), the flexibility in the inherentarrangement of the plan, similar to the growth of a domino set, and its placement on the site, appear as alandform. This flexibility in the site’s placement coupled with a more synthetic relationship to the surroundinglandscape would become core concepts that Le Corbusier would develop across a number of projects. In thecase of the ‘Citrohan’ House (1921), named to resonate with the mass-produced automobile Citroen, LeCorbusier focused inwardly in the organization of the rooms and all the parts that form the building envelope

(windows, doors, etc) proposing that they should be consistent. In addition, he argued that even though the houcould be designed primarily in functional terms, the aesthetic value should also be considered, and emphasizedthe importance of ‘proportion’, or a modular logic that would relate the proportions of each part with regards to twhole. In the ‘Freehold Maisonettes’ (1922) an effort to blur the relationship between the inside and outside canbe seen, one where the duplex units are given a very generous amount of exterior space, rendered and describas hanging gardens. In these, the relationship between interior and exterior space, and building and landscapebegins to dissolve, where the trees grow seamlessly into the cavities of the terraces.

The indeterminacy of modes of inhabitation in terms of functions, inside or outside, is also crystallized by arendering that depicts ‘boxing in the hanging gardens’. In the housing projects of ‘Bordeaux-Pessac’ (1924) andThe Honeycomb Planning Principle (1925), through different combinatory strategies, the arrangement of the unbegins to be shuffled, causing a differentiated form for the whole, and the production of a number of different untypes. In this sense, the capacity for the overall field to be capable of complex repetition proposes a deeper andmore complex relationship between the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’. Finally, the ongoing effort to reach a more

synthetic relationship between the building and the landscape culminates in the Plan Obus in Algiers (1932) whis in itself a landform, a topographical formation with a highway on top and a field of differentiated dwelling unitsmade porous by hanging gardens following the contours and topography of the Mediterranean coast line. Thelargest and perhaps most famous realization of these concepts is the Unite D’Habitation in Marseille (1947-52)building composed of the stacking of two mirrored duplex units, a hotel, and an elevated public street with shopIn this case, the relationship between the building and its environment is mitigated by a deepened and complexbuilding envelope (brise-de soleil), and a large public deck on the roof. In this deck, artificial rock formations areintroduced to complement the pools and common public areas, proposing a space similar to a ship deck to lookout to the land forms around one, but one that begins to resemble the features and qualities of those verylandforms within it. Finally, le Corbusier’s efforts to make the buildings more porous, vegetated, shaded, andcloser to landforms in figuration, can be understood at the most basic level as augmenting their relationship to tenvironment, or in other words passively sustainable. In contrast to the modern notion of the tabula-rasa, theselow-rise-high-density projects as in themselves embedded in the landscape and inseparable from it, proposing

number of techniques to make the relationship between environment and building more passively sustainable,robust and inseparable.



From the ‘House-Machine’ to the ‘Appliance-House’

1. The idea of modern architecture includes the link between the phenomenon of architecture and that of general economic system.

2. The idea of ‘economic efficiency’ does no imply production furnishing maximum commercial profit, butproduction demanding a minimum work effort.

3. The need for maximum economic efficiency is the inevitable result of the impoverished state of thegeneral economy.

4. The most efficient method of production is that which arises from rationalization and standardization.Rationalization and standardization act directly on working methods both in modern architecture(conception) and in the building industry (realization).’

‘La Sarraz Declaration, Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, 1928

Form the 1930s to the 1950s, and in light of the periods of reconstruction after WWI and WWII, the concern witexploring and defining the relationship between large-scale housing and how it builds up the urban fabric was athe center of all of the CIAM conferences. This relationship was illustrated in the form of a number of ‘grids’ or‘scrolls’ that were meant to be distributed to all of the CIAM members. Eventually CIAM shifted from a Germandominated congress in its early stages, to a more English and Dutch make up by the time of CIAM’s dissolutionand creation of Team X. A decisive moment in this transition has been traced to the CIAM IX Congress Grid(1953), where the abstract terms of the Athens Charter, Dwelling, Work, Recreation and Transportation wherechanged to: House, Street, (Relationship) District, City, in search of better understanding not only the material

characteristic of the built environment, but also the emotional needs of its people. The physical terms in which trelationship between dwelling and the urban fabric had now been critically extended by the group that wouldbecome Team X; in an effort to understand the relationship between physical form and the ‘socio-psychologicadimension of the city’s inhabitants. Identity, Association, Cluster and Mobility became the concepts that wouldstructure the CIAM X Scroll (1956), which described the relationship between the individual and the collective awell as that of the collective to its environment.

1. It is useless to consider the house except as a part of a community owing to the interaction of these oneach other.

2. We should not waste our time codifying the elements of the house until the other relationship has beencrystallized.

3. ‘Habitat’ is concerned with the particular house in the particular type of community.

4. Communities are the same everywhere: 1. Detached house – farm, 2. Village, 3. Towns of various sort(industrial / admin/ special), 4. Cities (multi-functional)

5. They can be show in relationship to their environment (habitat) in the Geddes valley section.

6. Any community must be internally convenient – have ease of circulation; in consequence, whatever typof transport is available, density must increase as population increases, ie. From least dense to mostdense



7. We must therefore study the dwelling and the groupings that are necessary to produce convenientcommunities at various points on the valley section.

8. The appropriateness of any solution may lie in the field of architectural invention rather than socialanthropology.

‘Doorn Manifesto’ (1956), Team X primer , 1962

Throughout the 1950s, the British architects Allison and Peter Smithson led an effort to define ‘identity’ and‘association’ as the basis of the term ‘relationship’. This in turn gave rise to the development of a number ofresidential arrangements at different scales adopting low-rise and high-density solutions. As a continuation of LCorbusier’s fluid relationship between building and landscape, the village-infill projects developed by theSmithson’s in the 1950s (Fold Houses, Close houses, Terraced Houses) can also be described as following an‘ecological’ argument, where ‘habitat should be integrated into the landscape rather than isolated as an objectwithin it’.

2Those projects were illustrated in a set of boards developed for the tenth CIAM congress in Dubrovni

If Le Corbusier had proposed the house as a ’machine’, Allison and Peter Smithson would further develop thatconcept through a number of prototypes that now understood the hose as an ‘appliance’. Starting with The Houof the Future (1956), built as a stage for the Scottish Daily Mail Ideal Home exhibition that same year (and wassupposed to represent a house twenty-five years later, or 1981) the Smithsons trajectory spans from the vision

to the pragmatic. The House of the Future proposes a sealed environment where the figure ground condition hbeen reversed, leaving a void that they described as ‘un-breathed air’ in the middle, surrounded by a tightlysealed and seamlessly compartmentalized continuous interior. Appliance House and Cubicle House (1956-57)explore the transformation from a courtyard layout to one where functional cores or cubicles are floating freelythroughout the plan, and begin to take multiple shapes and heights. Similarly, the Rumble Villa and theRetirement House (1959) explore two different figure ground plan configurations, one that develops a triangulainterior courtyard space that divides the living spaces along its three faces; and the second where the livingfunctions become discreet volumes that float freely in an open plan. Both solutions aggregate in radically differways, resulting in linear versus irregular arrangements in search of a strict parceling system.

2Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture, a Critical History, Third Edition, ‘This critical awareness was amplified at the tim

by the Smithson’s own village-infill projects of the mid-1950s – their ‘close’ and ‘fold’ houses – and by their insistence,following the ‘ecological’ argument of their Doorn Manifesto of 1954, that ‘habitat should be integrated into the landscaperather than isolated as an object within it.’, 1980, p.273



From Spatial to Ecological Urbanism

1. The future of towns: they will be centers of leisure, of entertainment, centers of public life, centers oforganization and of decisions of public interest. The other functions (work, production) will be more andmore automated and consequently less linked to the great agglomerations. [… ]

2. The new society of towns must not be influenced by the town planner. Social distinctions between thedifferent quarters must be spontaneous. […]

3. The big cities must be able to contain, in place of industry, agriculture. […]

4. Towns must be air-conditioned. The air-conditioning of towns permits a greater freedom and a greaterefficacy as to usage: the streets become centers of public life.

5. The buildings which collectively form the physical town must be on a level with modern technology(today’s bridges, for example, are often several miles long).

6. A new town ‘risen from the desert’ is not generally viable. Big cities come into existence through thedevelopment of former small towns: the big city must be an intensification of existing towns.

7. The three-dimensional technique of town planning (spatial town planning) permits the grouping ofquarters both juxtaposed and superimposed.

8. The buildings that make up towns must be skeletons that can be filled at will. The fitting out of skeleton

will depend upon the initiative of each inhabitant.

9. We do not know the optimum size of a town. […]

10. Foreseeing a tendency for the population to gravitate towards the cities, it is no exaggeration to estimathat in the near future cities will contain 80-85% of humanity (instead of 50% as present). Hence the laragglomeration that has the advantage socially (entertainments) and technically (air-conditioning,transport) will win the day over other types of agglomeration.

Yona Friedman: Ten Principles of Space Town Planning, 1962

If by the start of the 1960s urbanism followed primarily two models, the vertical city and the horizontal garden ca third model emerged in the form of a spatial garden city. The spatial theories of Yona Friedman along with the

structuralist and metabolist project gave rise to a new urban manifesto, and in turn a whole series of projects thformalized it. If Yona Friedman’s spatial manifesto from 1962 arrived at the same time as the Utopian projects oFuller in Manhattan (1960), Ron Herron’s ‘Moving City’ (1964) and Peter Cook’s ‘Plug-In City’ (1964); two projewere realized formalizing the terms of spatial urbanism.

The first project is Moshe Safdie’s Habitat ’67 in Montreal (1967); where a very porous and highly differentiatedspatial aggregation of living units is achieved from a limited set of standardized prefabricated units. The differebetween the very large structural columns and beams that give support to the whole while providing the primarycirculation routes (both for people, electricity, water, sewage) and the light prefabricated living units is incrediblyconsistent with Friedman’s three-dimensional town planning. The second project is Ricardo Bofill’s Walden 7Complex in Barcelona (1972-75), where once more an aggregate of standardized units are assembled around



hollow interior to form an enormous public plaza from which smaller exterior streets lead to each of the units.Once again, the strategic combination of the different units dissolved the reading of any order, turning it into akaleidoscopic and crystalline space. The fragmentation of the overall figure through a consistent reshuffling of aof its parts creates an environment closer to a natural formation, augmenting the environmental performance othe building and the spatial quality of the public spaces both through their sheer scale and apparent randomnesAs homage to the Unite, the roof top is also a large public plaza where pools, air vents and amorphous rock

formation co-exist with the inhabitants.

In parallel to these two projects that seek to ‘formalize’ the ‘informal’ field of spatial urbanism, a more radicalsolution appears in Andrea Branzi’s ‘Non-Stop City’ of Archizoom Associates (1968-71), dissolving the fieldaltogether. Non-Stop City becomes a radical manifesto in the non-figural, opting to represent an experiential,rather than a formal or figural, alternative reality. Varying flows of information and products create an open andperceptive field based on sensorial and affective networks, rather than discreet typologies. In this model, both tfigure ground, nature and artifice, house and garden have been dissolved into a single synthetic vibrating surfadeepened by its network of sensorial and cognitive connections.

1. Urban Refunctionalization. Foster the reuse of the existing estates, to fit the present city to the new neof diffuse work, of mass enterprise, of creative economy, and of cultural production and consumption.

2. Great Transformations through Microstructures. The quality of the city is made by the quality of itsdomestic objects, tools, facilities, products shown in the shop windows, people, flowers in their vases. [

3. The City as a high-tech favela. Avoid rigid and definitive solutions and foster reversible facilities that cabe dismantled and transformed, allowing the interior space to accommodate new activities that areunforeseen and not programmed. Thus a city that considers as a value the integral liberalization of theurban system.

4. The city as a personal computer every 20 square meters. Avoid specialized typologies, rigid facilities, aidentification between form and function; create interior spaces similar to functionoids, that can host ankind of activity in any place, changing their function in real time.

5. Cosmic hospitality. Realize (as in the Indian metropolis) the conditions for a co-habitation between ma

and the animal kingdom, technologies and divinity, alive and dead people. A metropolis lessanthropocentric and more open to biodiversities, to the sacred and to human beauty.

6. Weak urbanization models. Create threshold areas between city and countryside, through hybridterritories, half urban and half agricultural; productive territories, horizontal, hospitable (but withoutcathedrals), following seasons and weather, allowing conditions of flexible and discontinuous housing.

7. Shade borders and fundaments. Realize architectural facilities with crossable perimeters, to create anurban texture where the difference between interior and exterior, public and private, is intended todisappear, creating an integrated territory without specializations.

Andrea Branzi, ‘For a Post-Environmentalism: Seven Suggestions for a New Athens Charter’, MoshenMostafavi ed., Ecological Urbanism, 2010, p.110-11



Thirty years after Branzi’s Non-Stop City, the exploration into formalizing the informal in search of deciphering tfluid genetic make-up of the urban fabric returns with NoMad’s winning Europan Scheme for the city of Barakal(1999). NoMad’s Barakaldo proposes an extreme hybridization that operates at a number of levels: within a rigcatalog of the residential types themselves, within residential commercial and cultural programs, and finally, witthe figural properties of the buildings, turning the figure-ground condition of the project into a synthetic,expandable and overall irreducible aggregation. A second contemporary example of extreme hybridization isBIG’s MTN Mountain Dwellings (2008). In this project both an upper green landscape, an intermediate set ofresidential units, and a lower multiple story car park are mixed to form quite literally a mountain. Once again thefigural conditions of what would normally be two or three different urban programs are amalgamated into a singirreducible field where urban patterns of inhabitation are radically reconsidered. The ambitions of Branzi’s Non-

Stop City and Safdie’s Habitat ’67 can be argued to re-emerge in these two contemporary projects.

After a decade of focusing on iconic projects whose virtue lied in their uniqueness, figures, the discipline ofarchitecture returns to focusing on systems that can reconstruct the urban fabric, background. Taking into accosociety’s collective renewal in search of a deeper social, financial, and environmental consciousness, thisreconstruction has never seemed more urgent, and full of possibilities. The potential to arrive at a more syntherelationship between urban populations and the environment, breaking down and hybridizing the categories of t‘natural’ and the ‘man-made’, promises to be the first collective step towards the reconstruction of our endless growing cities, becoming the focus of research for the studio.



Phase I: From the Unit to the BlockFrom the outset, each member of the studio will be asked to write their own urban manifesto, and to compile anumber of images in the form of a collage, that illustrates the concepts behind it. Each student will develop thistext and set of images throughout the term, using it as a device from which to assess the ambitions of theirindividual project.

In the first phase of the semester, each student will be asked to choose a residential case study from thecollection documented in Total Housing, Alternatives to Urban Sprawl, published by Actar, 2010. Each membethe studio will be encouraged to buy the book treating it as a textbook or manual in residential design, and toconsult the web site http://www.actar.com/totalhousing/ which collates additional information on the projectscovered and the different architectural office that designed them. Each project will then be analyzed, both withrespect to the living units, and how they aggregate to form the whole. All of the analysis of the projects will bestandardized and collated into an internal document that the studio can share in the development of the secondand third phases of the project.

Phase II: Prototypical Flexibility and TransformationIn the second phase of the term, each student will be asked to develop their own prototypical living unit, andaggregation. The scale and diversity of the prototypical systems developed will be within the scope of the unitsanalyzed in the first phase. The individual prototypes will be assessed in term of the qualities of their individualunit types as well as their capacity to aggregate into complex wholes. Similarly to the projects analyzed, the

capacity for the system to accommodate different users, programs, populations, unit types, infrastructure, and awhole range of public spaces in accordance to the ambitions of the urban manifesto, will be some of the terms which the projects will be assessed. A strong emphasis will be placed on the concepts set out by Total Housingincluding connectivity, efficiency, and flexibility. Please refer to the glossary for a paraphrased description of thesub-terms that form each of these concepts.

Phase III: From the Block to the City: The Case of Las Palmas, Tijuana, Baja CaliforniaThe third and final phase of the project will propose to deploy the residential prototypes developed in the seconphase, onto a specific site, which in this case is an urban block that is part of the project of Las Palmas, locatedthe San Pedro Valley, Tijuana’s final 7,000 hectare extension eastwards to the border with Tecate. Workingclosely with the planning and development agencies of the project, the studio will design a number of residentiaalternative models, respecting the distribution of the master plan that already exists, and adopting the scale ofunits and mixture of programs that is being proposed for the project. A site trip will be scheduled to the site at

some point during this final phase of the project.



Student Learning Outcomes Students will demonstrate competency in reading and producing architectural drawings; making physical modeand/or producing 2D and 3D digital models. They will demonstrate proficiency in communicating their ideas usitechniques and conventions of architectural representation.

From a selection of sketches, diagrams, drawings, models and oral presentations students will demonstrate an

understanding of the interplay of form, structure and function in 3D space; an ability to analyze architecture bydividing it into its organizational, structural, functional, and experiential components; an understanding of sites acontexts of architecture in scales ranging from that of human body to the city.

Students will be introduced to the production of a creative project responding to a specific or typical program. Tproject may consist in a design solution or an original contribution to disciplinary knowledge. The creative projeshould demonstrate a synthesis of student’s learning and competencies; and take risks by considering alternatsolutions. Students will demonstrate an ability to take responsibility for their design choices and judgments; toarticulate a critical claim and defend their project in front of a public of peers, professors and/or invited jurors.

- Students will demonstrate an intermediate competency in the skills of reading and producing digitaldrawing and modeling, both in two and three dimensions, through the use of several CAD softwarepackages.

- Students will demonstrate an intermediate competency in the skills of model making across a number scales, and in a range of different materials from paper to wood and plastics. Some of these models wibe produced from the information extracted from their digital models.

- Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of architectural forms and systems, through thedrawing and modeling of their project as described by the exercises assigned throughout the term.

- Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of the potential inherent in the flexibility of architectuforms and formal systems, through the iterative drawing and modeling of variations stemming from theproject.

- Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of the synthesis between the spatial potential inhere

in architectural forms and systems and their formal and technical realization; synthesizing the relationsbetween architectural form and its function.

- Students will learn to critically research architectural precedents, and will acquire proficient knowledge some important examples in the history of architecture.

- Students will demonstrate critical skills in analyzing the physical and social aspects of an architecturalsite.

- Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of the scales of intervention in architecture, from thescale of the body to that of the city, as well as the corresponding set of questions related to each of the



ExpectationsStudents are expected to keep all of their models and periodically photograph them as a record of their designprocess, as part of the materials to be submitted for evaluation at the end of the semester.Students are expected to keep all of their digital files and periodically print drawings from them.Students will be asked to turn in their digital files at key moments throughout the term, such as midterm and finareviews, in order to evaluate the progress and evolution of their project and as part of the materials to be

submitted for evaluation.

The design studio will be a place for exploration, a lab for experimentation. The method of work will move acrosphysical and digital drawings and models, setting up a feedback loop. This process of translation across these in itself be seen as a form of exploration and design. In addition to individual discussions, the studio will often hgroup presentations and discussions where the students are expected to participate.

Throughout the term, there will be a number of public presentations where guests from outside USD will be invito review the work of the studio.

GradingA number of exercises throughout the term will together add up to 70% of the overall grade. The grading for eawill be determined by the documentation provided for each pin-up, public presentation and included in the finalsubmission. The remaining 30% will be divided equally between attendance (15%), and general class

participation (15%).

Attendance is imperative for the successful completion of this course. If you foresee not being able to attendclass, please NOTIFY me in advance through email. Every absence MUST be substantiated by a seriouspersonal reason such as illness, etc. Each unexcused absence will result in a direct deduction of your grade, atthe rate of 5% each. More than three unexcused absences can result in receiving an incomplete grade for theterm.

Design Studio Lab RequirementsEach of the studio sessions will start with a roll call and brief group meeting, so please do not be late. If there ano pin-ups scheduled, each student is expected to be working on their individual project at their assigned desk.During that time, a list of tutorial times will be passed around, and the instructor will come around and speak wieach person individually. You are required to speak with the instructor about the progress of your project at leas

once per week. You are also highly encouraged to take advantage of the available office hours for additionaldiscussion.

Periodically, a number of readings will be distributed to the studio and we will have reading discussions on themin the following session.

The students are required to be in the studio during ALL of the assigned class hours. Unexcused absences,failure to participate in group and desk discussions, ‘pin-up’ and public reviews will result in grade loss. Studenwho are absent more than three times without an acceptable excuse, or fail to present in the Midterm or Finalpublic presentations will be asked to withdraw from the class.

The studio rules are as follows: no music or cell phones during studio hours; no spray painting; no disruptivebehavior or excessive traffic, no discussions outside of the work of the studio that will become a distraction for

others; please try to make an efficient use of your time in order to complete the assigned work within the timeframe of the studio.



ARCH 302, Calendar, Spring, 2011:*

Week 1: Tue. Jan. 25 Studio Introduction

Th. Jan. 27 Phase I: Analysis

Exercise 1: Urban ManifestoCase Study Dwelling Units (2D)

Week 2: Tue. Feb. 1

Th. Feb. 3

Week 3: Tue. Feb. 8 Exercise 2: Case Study Flexibility and Aggregation (3D)Th. Feb. 10

Week 4: Tue. Feb. 8 Exercise 3: Physical ModelTh. Feb. 10

Week 5: Tue. Feb. 15 Phase II: Prototype and Manifesto

Exercise 4: Prototypical Dwelling Units, Flexibility and AggregationTh. Feb. 17Sat. Feb. 19 Can Bilsel Lecture (Attendance Highly Encouraged)

Friends of San Diego of Architecture, New School of Architecture, 9:

Week 6: Tue. Feb. 22 Exercise 5: Urban Manifesto 2.0Th. Feb. 24

Week 7: Tue. Mar. 1Th. Mar. 3

Week 8: Tue. Mar. 8

Th. Mar. 10 Mid-Term Review

Peter Tolkin Lecture, 5PM (Mandatory)

Mon. Mar. 14- Spring Break Fri. Mar. 18

Week 9: Tue. Mar. 22 Phase III: Las Palmas, Tijuana, Baja California

Exercise 6: Scaling and Deployment of Prototypical Units and theirAggregation: Building up the Urban / Parametric BlockTh. Mar. 24 Site Visit

Week 10: Tue. Mar. 29Th. Mar. 31

Week 11: Tue. Apr. 5Th. Apr. 7 Abalos & Sentkiewicz Lecture, 5PM (Mandatory)

Tue. Apr. 12 Exercise 7: Diversifying the Parametric Block

Wed. Apr. 14

Week 12: Tue. Apr. 19 Rafi Segal Lecture, 5PM (Mandatory)

Th. Apr. 21- Easter BreakMon. Apr. 25

Week 13: Tue. Apr. 26Th. Apr. 28

Week 14: Tue. May 3Thu. May 5

Tue. May 10 Final Review* Dates are subject to change



Glossary:

Fernando Maza and Neus Moyano in conversation with Yona Friedman, ‘Walden 7, City in Space, Experiencenumber 3, Ricardo Bofill, taller de Architectura’, Quaderns d’Arquitectura I Urbanisme, December, 2004, p.25

Mobile Architecture:

Mobile architecture is one that adapts to the inhabitant instead of the inhabitant having to adapt toarchitecture

Mobility: Social transformations and those of daily life are unforeseeable in the lifespan of a building. Buildings anew cities should be able to easily adapt to the will of a future society that will occupy them, they mustallow for transformation to occur without resorting to demolition

Mobile Urbanism: Mobile Urbanism is a technique that allows for different groups of inhabitants to change theirneighborhood, its massing, dimensions, etc… every time it is desired and within reasonable means.

Infrastructure: Infrastructure is the technical elements of a city, necessary for daily life, not specifically used by its

inhabitants: for instance the networks of provisions, sanitation, circulation… the inhabitants use onlythose tools that are connected to these networks, in other words, toilets, electrical tools, cars, and eventhose insulating devices such as pavement, walls and floors…The principle of mobility takes into account the rigidity of infrastructure (neutral elements) and the mobof those tools connected to that infrastructure.

Spatial infrastructure: Spatial infrastructure is a three-dimensional grill, elevated on columns, placed above the level of theground. The light-weight uses (housing, offices, and community rooms) inscribe themselves in the holeof this structure and in the elevated parts. The heavy-weight uses (circulation, gathering halls, andindustry) would occupy the surface of the ground under the three-dimensional grill, and between thesupporting columns. Those columns would house circulation, and provisions which move vertically (liftsstairs, and vertical ducts)

Spatial Urbanism: Spatial urbanism is spatial infrastructure. The residential and office volumes would find themselves in tholes of this infrastructure. Their grouping and re-grouping would take place in accordance to theirinhabitants.

‘Keywords’, Total Housing: Alternatives to Urban Sprawl, Actar, 2010, p.5

Connectivity:

Mixed-use Development: Being a fundamental component of an urban fabric, a residential project has the ability to link andintegrate multiple other used: workspaces and leisure and service facilities.

Multiple Users: The city comprises a heterogeneous mixture of inhabitants, with increasingly diverse life styles and fammodels that need to be accommodated in a residential project.

Urban-suburban: Suburbanization is often encouraged by its offer of an alleged greater quality of life. Residential projectallow this quality of life to be compatible with the efficiency of urban infrastructure and the opportunitiesthis provides.



Building-landscape: The compatibility between urban and suburban conditions is also translated into the possibility ofconnecting indoor and outdoor space, the built and the unbuilt, and of understanding the residentialproject itself as the construction of a landscape.

Community Space:

The residential project links the home space with the city through communal spaces where exchange asocializing can take place.

Efficiency:

Density: This is the main feature of an urban fabric and the key to its success as a model of human settlement.Residential projects contribute to qualify density beyond the necessary optimization of land use and themultiple relations and activities they can accommodate.

Compactness: The geometry and arrangement of living spaces can contribute to optimize the relation between thedifferent programs accommodated by a residential project.

Economy of Resources: Aside from density and compactness, the choice of construction and environment comfort systemscontributes to reducing material consumption and energy use.

Individualization: Despite repeated claims indentifying multi-family residential complexes as uniform and impersonal, theprojects can respond to the growing requirement to articulate each occupant’s individuality.

Flexibility:

Adaptability: Built space can facilitate and accommodate a great number of requirements and activities, bothpredictable and unpredictable, for known and unknown users.

Openness: Space is endowed with flexibility through the removal of traditional associations between functions androoms in favor of the indetermination of fluid space.

Spaciousness: The real luxury (and the platform for the effective development of multiple activities) is space.

Unit Variety: Residential projects no longer tend to respond to a single standard program and user. The diversitypresent in society is also translated into the spatial complexity of the project.



Bibliography:

Total Housing, Alternatives to Urban Sprawl, Actar, Barcelona, 2010

Manuel Gausa, New Alternatives, New Systems, Birkhauser, Basel, Actar, Barcelona, 1998

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Moshen Mostafavi, Gareth Doherty, Ecological Urbanism, Harvard University Graduate School of Design,Lars Muller Publishers, Baden, 2010

Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, The Endless City, the Urban Age Project by the London School of EconomicsAnd Deutsche bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society, Phaidon Press, London, 2007

Andres Lepik, Small Scale, Big Change, New Architectures of Social Engagement, The Museum of Modern ArtNew York, 2010

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Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20 th

Century Architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1971

Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications, New York, 1986 (orig. 1923)

Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture, a Critical History, Third Edition, Thames and Hudson, London, 1992

Marco Vidotto, Allison and Peter Smithson, Works and Projects, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1997

‘Walden 7: taller de Arquitectura’, Quaderns d’Arquitectura I Urbanisme, December 2004

Andrea Branzi, Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at the Beginning of the 21st

Century Skira, Milan, 2006

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Teddy Cruz and Anne Boddington, ‘The Architecture of the Borderlands’, Architectural Design John Wiley and Sons, London, 1999

Fiamma Montezemolo, Rene Peralta, Heriberto Yepez, Aqui Es Tijuana!, Black Dog Publishing, London, 2006

experiments in dwelling

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