3:00 PM, Tuesday, May 21

230 College Street, Room 103

Achieving urban sustainability necessitates an integrated sociotechnical approach addressing the middle scale, such as the district and the campus. In this sense, seemingly contradictory trends toward engaging with ever increasing scales from within an eroded and compartmentalized purview, simultaneously present openings and obstacles for the practice of architecture. The seminar will feature theoretical and design speculations toward constructing a renewed and expanded understanding of the concept of urban equipment as a means to address this extended scale. It will also delve into the implications of such an approach in terms of architectural research, pedagogy and practice.

Erkin Özay is a registered architect and principal of the independent design practice, the Özay Office. He is currently a lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Aga Khan Visiting Fellow with a research focus on Istanbul's recent urban transformation. As a research associate at the New Educational Environments, he coordinates education research at the GSD's Design Labs. Prior to the GSD, he taught building technology courses and design studios at Northeastern University. Most recently, he was a visiting critic and lecturer at University of Toronto, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, where he taught a graduate urban design studio as well as the seminar, Forms of the Collective: Architectural Provocations of the Golden Age.