Global Architecture
The Global Architecture option offers students in the graduate programs the opportunity to study abroad within a design and research-oriented summer program. Courses are taught by Daniels faculty members, as well as leading architects and faculty from abroad. GA identifies and studies areas in flux, where the relations between local conditions and global modernizing strategies need to be negotiated. In each venue, the program seeks to identify the distinctive features of the architectural and urban culture of the place and how these features are formed and transformed by design, planning, and historical forces. GA programs have been held in Buenos Aires, Havana, Barcelona, the Netherlands, and China.
Global Architecture 2009 - Buenos Aires
Global Architecture Buenos Aires, 2009 was taught by Professor Maria Denegri in collaboration with local architect Diego Petrate. 26 students from MArch and MLA traveled to Argentina with Professor Denegri to take part in the six week program. While in Buenos Aires, they investigated the formative fissures, currents and pressures that are at play in the city. The curriculum combined historic and cultural investigation with urban design and architectural hypothesis via two parallel courses. The first, conducted as a seminar, included a series of short trips to regions outside of the capital. Sites visited included La Plata, Rosario and La Pampa, and the wine region of Mendoza. The second course was a design studio where Daniels students worked in collaboration with the students and faculty from La Universidad de Palermo, Buenos Aires.
Global Architecture 2008 – Buenos Aires
Global Architecture Buenos Aires 08 was a six week program of study co-taught by Adjunct Assistant Professor Maria Denegri and Argentine architect Diego Petrate. Two distinct courses were developed to combine historic and cultural investigation and research with urban design and architectural hypothesis in an attempt to position this city within a contemporary urban framework.
The first was a three week seminar organized around six (6) themes/ modules of research to structure our analysis of the contemporary city. These modules were introduced and discussed through a series of visits to sites, buildings and architectural design offices throughout the city of Buenos Aires. Many of the visits were conducted by local professionals allowing students to engage in discussions with key influential figures in the architectural/cultural community including historian Graciela Pronsato, architects Clorindo Testa , Alberto Varas, Landscape Architect Carlos Thays and Bellas Artes director Alberto Bellucci.
The second course was run as an intensive two week design charrette, entitled Abasto: Social Urbanism, in collaboration with La Facultad de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Palermo. Daniels students were teamed with U. Palermo students to generate schemes for the culturally and politically charged area around El Mercado Abasto in central Buenos Aires. An introductory lecture by local faculty identified the defining issues of the precinct, calling for a ‘bottom-up’ evolution of existing patterns of use and of dominant morphologies in the area through design speculation. The students found diverse and creative ways of meeting the challenge posed by the problem. The charrette concluded with a public review of the projects. The Universidad de Palermo is currently producing a publication of the work.
A one-week class trip to regions outside of the capital was also conducted. The tour included a visit to the coastal city of Mar del Plata as well as travel inland to explore the architecture of La Pampa. Students had an opportunity to reside in a traditional country estate and feast on a typical Argentine azado. Other cultural ventures included tango lessons and a soccer game escorted by local Argentine fans.
Global Architecture 2008 - China
This year’s China Global Architecture was based in hutong fabric of the central city, just steps from Ghost Street, Beijing’s food street, and on the newly opened line 5 of the subway. Classes and workspace were located across the street from our hotel at Beilab, the artist in residency space of Theatre in Motion, a Beijing experimental dance and theatre company.
The curriculum consisted of two courses. The first Hungry Urbanization: Eating Beijing was a research course focused on an understanding of contemporary urban issues in China as well as a detailed study of the food systems in the capital, through a series of lenses from production, consumption and distribution, from both its social / cultural to its environmental / physiological dimensions. The course was taught by Adrian Blackwell and Xu Jian, from the Sichuan Polytechnic University and was structured as a collaboration with professor Meng Yue of Tsing Hua / UofT and her literature students from Tsing Hua University.
The second course was divided into two charrettes: the first, 13th line Superlinearity, was a collaboration between Daniels’ Adrian Blackwell and Moving Cities, an urban research platform based in Beijing, directed by Bert de Muynck and Monica Carrico. This charrette examined the commuter rail line on the northern periphery of Beijing through the lens of three primary systems: circulation, productive landscapes and new forms of work. The second charrette,Yangzi Delta 2020 urban sponge, was taught by Adrian Blackwell in collaboration with Xu Jian and Tong Lam of the University of Toronto’s History department. It consisted of remaking the famous Song Dynasty scroll painting: “Along the river during Qingming Festival” for the year 2020. The project functioned as an investigation of the Chinese in-between city region for the southern trip to Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai.