MS.AUD

05 HISTORY and THEORY

The exponential growth of cities globally, in conjunction with expanding social and ecological challenges and the increasing impact of applied technologies, demands a renewed understanding of the expanded territory of intervention in close relationship to the multi-layered urban conditions. With the current set of crises, we have the responsibility to open to new paths that rely more on being aware of the co-dependency of systems to establish a more holistic vision of how we inhabit spaces, cities, and the whole planet. By investigating the micro-to-macro continuum, agencies can be explored to uncover latent and potential relationships to foster design scenarios that embrace interscalar processes to rethink the built environment. These privilege transdisciplinary forms of inquiry and embrace the ability to work across scale, time, narratives, and agencies.

The MS.AUD is a program at the forefront of urban design research focused on issues of urbanization through the exploration of social, cultural, technological, and environmental domains. The program focuses on three main areas to project scenarios for future visions: Technology + Digital Practices, Climate Resilience + Ecology, and Socio + Cultural aspects of Cities. Students critically respond to pressing issues through interdisciplinary pedagogical platforms, collaborative projects, and direct engagement with stakeholders and communities.

The MS.AUD program offers a set of horizontally integrated courses with a focus on advanced design studios that are at the core of urban design research and applied knowledge. Three types of seminars support and expand the critical work developed through the curriculum: applied methods, history/ theory courses, and elective seminars. The innovative and critical perspective is offered through design opportunities where students are asked to respond to critical urban issues through the integration of interscalar forms of urbanization: urban, metropolitan, regional, and global.

The program aims to connect students with communities, organizations, institutions, and stakeholders both locally and globally and develop a global perspective on urbanism through international travel and project work. The MS.AUD offers a platform for students and faculty research through the curriculum and outreach initiatives. Design and research-driven studios are the catalysts to foster innovative applied research. The research is also connected to faculty engagement with a set of initiatives proposed within the program that aim to connect the students with critical topics in urbanism and with a network of international researchers and institutions.

Urban Design as a discipline is inherently multi-disciplinary, and the MS.AUD program is committed to providing advanced knowledge and applied design methods to reflect on the future of cities by reshaping the ecological, technological, and socio-cultural domains to explore critically 21st-century challenges and opportunities.

Marcella Del Signore Director of MS.AUD, SoAD at NYIT

MS.AHD

The Master of Science program, Architecture - Health and Design at the School of Architecture and Design, NYIT, is a transdisciplinary platform for students and experts to collaborate in research on inclusive design and purpose driven projects that investigate the impact of design on health and healthcare.

The program invites students to imagine how we can move from a traditionally narrow definition of healthcare to a broader understanding of the factors that determine an individual’s health. Approaching health as an ecosystem, we explore new research territories for health and design by questioning disciplinary practices, un-learning processes and overcoming stuck mindsets. We discover modes that build a student’s future agency in creating healthy environments, which are becoming preventive and therapeutic. We want to empower people to improve their lived experiences through design.

Health is understood as an expanding cross disciplinary field. We encourage collaborations with scholars and industry experts from engineering, health sciences, materials science, business, and natural and social sciences. We believe that only as a diverse and inclusive team we can address health from both a systemic and an embodied perspective, targeting aspects ranging from the global environmental crisis to mental and physical disabilities. Creative material and technological solutions span urban to social strategies, transformative spaces, health-tech wearables and product designs.

The MS.AHD courses and seminars, intended as a supportive framework around two linked design studios, develop knowledge and build skills in emerging technologies, contextual inquiry, building performance modeling, digital fabrication with biomaterials, adaptive and programmable materials, sensors and interaction, digital and analog computation, customized 3d printing methods, robotic automation, VR/AR, UX/ UI, medical SIM lab experiences, history, theory and explore methods of data collection and analysis,.

The first design studio engages students, faculty and professionals in creative research exploring the health ecosystem. The second design studio integrates prior learning and insights on health triggers and turns them into design prototypes and spaces of various scales.

Both core design studios are based on an open design platform that serves to integrate broader human experiences from social or cultural data, behavioral insights, environmental data, or sensor data with the goal to improve the health of specific groups in need.

With global underserved communities in mind and using New York or Arkansas Campuses as its main laboratory, a human centered design approach, guided by principles of design thinking, resolves most pressing issues impacting communities today.