ATMOSPHERE
08 VOLUME 04 I 2020-21
S.AURD Faculty: all 2019 – Spring 2020 effrey Raven ichael Schwarting eyhan Karahan eland Johnson ali Cantor ichael Esposito hanmuga Jayakumar mon Willet
MS.AURD Program Our contemporary cities exist in perpetual urgency: metropolitan territories demonstrate tremendous diversity and complexity in growth and decline. By 2050, 70 percent or so of the world will live in cities. What does it mean for us to live together? The goal of the curriculum is to explore integrated, urban design and planning strategies for creating sustainable and resilient communities that can adapt and thrive in the changing global conditions, meet carbon-reduction goals, and sustain urban populations in more compact settings by providing amenities that people need and want. Students explore how these compact communities can mitigate climate change by reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions through spatial efficiencies, pedestrian access to public transportation and preservation of open space and habitat. NYC districts are offered as a research platform to introduce the ideas, representations, and techniques of contemporary urban design and discourse through the lens of a resilient built environment. These districts are home to a diverse population of residents and workers. Students are asked to the hypothesis that re-configuring urban form according to climate-resilient principles will strengthen community adaptability to climate change, reduce energy consumption in the built environment and enhance the quality of the public realm. Students will develop user-friendly regional qualitative design guidelines backed by cost-benefit performance indicators at the urban design scale. Building massing, urban ventilation, solar impacts, green infrastructure and anthropogenic factors will shape the outcomes. Outcomes in Energy, Transportation, Waste, Water, Green Infrastructure/Natural Systems, and other urban infrastructure systems will be evaluated by students for their technical, social and ecological consequences, including flood mitigation.
Faculty_ Fa19-Sp20 Jeffrey Raven Michael Schwarting Beyhan Karahan Leland Johnson 450
The exponential growth of cities globally in conjunction with expanding social and ecological challenges and the increasing impact of systemic 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 crisis, we have the responsibility to open up to new paths that rely more on being aware of the codependency 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 inherently privilege transdisciplinary forms of inquiry and embrace the ability to work across scale, time, narratives, and agencies. The MS.AURD 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 four main areas to project scenarios for future visions and urban innovation: interscalar forms of urbanization, climate resilience, urban technology, 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. Urban Design as a discipline is inherently multi-disciplinary, and the MS.AURD 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 to 21st-century challenges and opportunities.
Jeffrey Raven
Marcella Del Signore
Director of MS.AURD, SoAD at NYIT (2019-20)
Director of MS.AURD, SoAD at NYIT (2020-21)
Tali Cantor Michael Esposito Shanmuga Jayakumar Simon Willet
