What is sustainable design? How do you do it? And how do you know when you have succeeded? With the mainstream acceptance of the green building movement, an increasing number of buildings are promoted as examples of green or sustainable design. However, many “green” buildings do not live up to even basic expectations for resource efficiency, are expensive and accessible to only a small fraction of the population, create environments that are unhealthy, have life-spans that are short-lived due to their inability to adapt to changing end-user needs, and fail to create a meaningful sense of place or community. Defining sustainability requires accounting for the complex interaction of cultural, political, economic and ecological issues encompassing each project. And, it requires understanding how intervention at the scale of a single project can work to support outcomes at the scale of the street, neighborhood, district and beyond. This course begins by setting the context of the present crisis and the complex interconnections that exist. We will then attempt to dismantle the preconceived, incorrect understandings of “green” design and develop appropriate, fundamental principles for a sustainable built environment through a critical examination of existing sustainability metrics and rating systems. Throughout the semester, the course will establish knowledge of sustainable design principles through exploration of central concepts (e.g. resource efficiency, environmental responsiveness, adaptability, life-cycle assessment, place / placelessness), case studies of innovative projects, software tools, and self-directed research. In addition to Los Angeles, a range of urban (and urbanizing) locations across the world will serve as laboratories for investigation. The final third of the semester will be spent examining how specific sustainability performance objectives and strategies can be applied to develop innovative and holistic architectural proposals.

The course is intended to give the students both a fundamental and practical knowledge of building environmental control systems and strategies in thermal, air quality, lighting, and acoustic conditions in large and small buildings. It also provides a working knowledge of many of the interrelated building systems necessary to support human physiological benefits: environmental comfort and health effects. Much of the material covered in this course will help to prepare the student in direct way for the professional building environmental design.

This course is a seminar and workshop exploring physical interaction with computational media in real time. The widespread diffusion of sensing, computational, and communicative media into the physical realm presents an opportunity for exploring and constructing intelligent objects understood through dynamic and complex relationships of adaptation and improvisation to the environment, the site, and the human body. The course will chart and explore a range of approaches for integrating computation into the physical realm through a series of projects using physical computing prototyping tools. This course is focused on self-directed, project-based learning within and experimental and collaborative setting. Students will design and develop projects that use sensors and microcontrollers to translate sensory input to control electro-mechanical devices such as motors, servos, lighting or other hardware in real time. There are no prerequisites for the class. This is an interdisciplinary course and students from outside the School of Architecture are welcomed and encouraged to register