About the studio
Extending from Boston, Massachusetts through New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to Washington D.C. the continuous urbanity of the Northeastern U.S. seaboard is expected to contain a population of up 60 million people by 2025. The drawing of these distinct – historic, financial, industrial trading and political - urban centers into a seemingly interminable concrete expanse poses a unique set of challenges for planners, designers, bureaucracies and frankly anyone living, working or passing through this megalopolis. The recent blizzard, past electrical blackouts and other moments of crisis manifest the systemic dependency and possible vulnerability of this uber-metropolitan condition and concurrently reveal moments at which layered, dimensional intersections occur. This agglomeration of cities also bears the residues of competitional swings of construction, capital and population through cycles of prosperity and poverty, urban decay and renewal, industrialization to abandoned EPA brownfields; a series of migrations rendered more expedient and exacerbated by the very nature of a megalopolis’ tendency to advance along corridors of emerging infrastructure and modes of transport.
Individual cities have undertaken varying degrees of urban design approaches - from top down planning authorities to grass-roots community organizations - in order to remediate prior urban design efforts or mitigate effects of an increasingly fluid market. With a critical lens, this studio will engage the multifarious geography of the Northeast Megalopolis with the intent to ultimately propose a built insertion into this overly-urbanized territory. Our purpose in this studio is to first create sustainable resilient urban models which will operate as frameworks for architectural-scale designs. Students will be divided into two sections looking at opposite ends of the megalopolis before focusing on sites in two cities: Baltimore, Maryland and Boston, Massachusetts. These two cities stand on opposite sides of the primary metropole of New York and both present specific concerns and opportunities in addressing their own local urban design issues and their connection the the larger megalopolis of which they are an integral part.
This studio requires students to demonstrate advanced architectural design skills ‘with emphasis on the design of single or multiple buildings in urban environments’. Students will be expected to undertake intensive regional-scale urban analysis while composing a specific programmatic response to their particular site. Attitudes towards the program response will emerge from the larger urbanistic research and students will be asked to formulate a critical position with respect to urban design and the role of architecture within the built environment of the megalopolis.
Individual cities have undertaken varying degrees of urban design approaches - from top down planning authorities to grass-roots community organizations - in order to remediate prior urban design efforts or mitigate effects of an increasingly fluid market. With a critical lens, this studio will engage the multifarious geography of the Northeast Megalopolis with the intent to ultimately propose a built insertion into this overly-urbanized territory. Our purpose in this studio is to first create sustainable resilient urban models which will operate as frameworks for architectural-scale designs. Students will be divided into two sections looking at opposite ends of the megalopolis before focusing on sites in two cities: Baltimore, Maryland and Boston, Massachusetts. These two cities stand on opposite sides of the primary metropole of New York and both present specific concerns and opportunities in addressing their own local urban design issues and their connection the the larger megalopolis of which they are an integral part.
This studio requires students to demonstrate advanced architectural design skills ‘with emphasis on the design of single or multiple buildings in urban environments’. Students will be expected to undertake intensive regional-scale urban analysis while composing a specific programmatic response to their particular site. Attitudes towards the program response will emerge from the larger urbanistic research and students will be asked to formulate a critical position with respect to urban design and the role of architecture within the built environment of the megalopolis.
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