Design Media Electives explore advanced topics in representation, computation, visual culture, and fabrication.This is a vertical elective combining students in their fourth and fifth year of the BArch program with students from the architecture graduate programs. The content of the elective options varies from year to year, and covers advanced topics that invite innovation in the areas of design media and digital craft.Section Description:Donna Haraway explains, “Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means ‘making-with’. Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing.” How better to detangle this idea than through the architectural Mock-Up? This seminar will explore mediums and media in an effort to “mock up” recalibration with environment. Similar to the architectural Mock-Up, students will work collaboratively towards the design and creation of an ecological object at scale. This object, conceived not as a singular entity but entangled with other agencies, will seek to mock up our values within the built environment: what we care about, what we care for, and what we care with.The seminar will situate itself within a broad range of contemporary and historical environmental theories. From the 18th century picturesque, to California’s “Manifest Destiny,” to radical feminist cyborg environmental theorists such as Donna Haraway, to contemporary architectural thinkers such as Neyran Turan or Barry Wark. Students will utilize a variety of media to detangle this large and complex subject matter. Artificial Intelligence will be introduced to explore neural networks of visual representation. Grasshopper will be leveraged as computational logic to model patterns of both surface and form. 3D printing, using Potterbots, will be taught to rapidly produce parts and pieces towards full scale assembly. The Mock-Up will culminate as an environmental object to test and display the “making-with”--meaning not just reconfiguring the relation of contractor and architect, but also human and non-human. Students will have the opportunity to exhibit their work as part of the spring 2025 CCA (AEL/DCL)/ Autodesk Technology Center Academic Alliance | 5th Annual Biomaterials in Architecture and Design Symposium.

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