Miku Dixit

This studio introduces students to architectural design with a focus on supply chains, material flows, embodied energy, and lifecycles of building materials. Alternative materials, whether heavy and earthen or lightweight and ephemeral, will serve as avenues for design research. Our design investigations will operate from a basis of energy and resource scarcity by doing as much as possible with as little as possible. Rather than an approach characterized by austerity, however, we will rethink the design of the built environment from the ground up by questioning basic assumptions that undergird the carbon economy. The studio will encourage students to operate with the resourcefulness, efficiencies, flexibilities, and informal systems seen in parts of Asia, Africa, and South America as precedents for design and construction. Could these methods from the Global South allow us to reimagine the territory and lifecycles of an architectural project? In addition, we will explore design opportunities presented to us by phased construction and strategies of disassembly and reusability. Creative work will be advanced through successive assignments and design briefs that increase in scale and complexity over the semester. Prior experience with hand drafting, digital drawing, and physical and digital modeling is beneficial but not a requirement.