This 6-credit advanced elective studio centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to the New England region, this hands-on research studio asks students to question current attitudes towards exploitative land uses and material cultures and push the boundaries of material use and techniques in professional architecture and landscape architecture design practices.

This studio focuses on New England's material cultures' environmental, geological, and socio-cultural influences and the impact of current land use and manufacturing practices on the professional design industry. This studio will explore one selected material each year through three main components. First, students will study the histories and stories of the selected material and land use and how they have shaped different regions of New England and become entangled in power relations, value systems, and wider networks of material exchange. Second, they will explore the selected material’s behavior, its unique property dynamics, and how they have influenced its different uses. Finally, using both digital and analog fabrication, students will develop iterative creative processes that explore sustainable ways of drawing and making with the selected materials as modular and in-situ techniques.  

This is a co-requisite course. Students must register for LDAR/INTAR-500G and LDAR/INTAR-501G.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture Graduate Students.

Elective

This 6-credit advanced elective studio centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to the New England region, this hands-on research studio asks students to question current attitudes towards exploitative land uses and material cultures and push the boundaries of material use and techniques in professional architecture and landscape architecture design practices.

This studio focuses on New England's material cultures' environmental, geological, and socio-cultural influences and the impact of current land use and manufacturing practices on the professional design industry. This studio will explore one selected material each year through three main components. First, students will study the histories and stories of the selected material and land use and how they have shaped different regions of New England and become entangled in power relations, value systems, and wider networks of material exchange. Second, they will explore the selected material’s behavior, its unique property dynamics, and how they have influenced its different uses. Finally, using both digital and analog fabrication, students will develop iterative creative processes that explore sustainable ways of drawing and making with the selected materials as modular and in-situ techniques.  

This is a co-requisite course. Students must register for LDAR/INTAR-500G and LDAR/INTAR-501G.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture Graduate Students.

Elective

This 6-credit Thesis Studio centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to the New England region, this hands-on research studio asks students to question current attitudes towards exploitative land uses and material cultures and push the boundaries of material use and techniques in professional architecture and landscape architecture design practices. Students enrolled in this course are required to register for the co-requisite seminar INTAR / LDAR 503G - Sustainability Lab: Material Tectonics + Fabrication.

The Sustainability Lab Thesis studio builds on the work developed in the Fall semester and the progress students have made in articulating a material inquiry for their thesis direction and a theoretical and methodological framework for their research. In this course, each student will continue the development of their design research project in discussion with their primary faculty advisor and secondary and tertiary advisor.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture Graduate Students.

Elective

This 6-credit Thesis Studio centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to the New England region, this hands-on research studio asks students to question current attitudes towards exploitative land uses and material cultures and push the boundaries of material use and techniques in professional architecture and landscape architecture design practices. Students enrolled in this course are required to register for the co-requisite seminar INTAR / LDAR 503G - Sustainability Lab: Material Tectonics + Fabrication.

The Sustainability Lab Thesis studio builds on the work developed in the Fall semester and the progress students have made in articulating a material inquiry for their thesis direction and a theoretical and methodological framework for their research. In this course, each student will continue the development of their design research project in discussion with their primary faculty advisor and secondary and tertiary advisor.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture Graduate Students.

Elective