This is one in a series of seminars sponsored by the Construction Process Innovation Laboratory studying and conducting research on curent topics in construction technology, building process, and documentation. Students will work as a team developing a significant body of work in both drawn, 3-dimensional, and written media. The course is open to graduate students from any department, as well as to undergraduates in the architecture program. Students will draw upon research from previous seminars to become significant participants in an ongoing professional research project.

The topic this spring will be "Agro-Urban Ecology: Architecture, Nature, and Economics in the Sustainable Tropical City."

The seminar will be an important contributor to an interdisciplinary workshop that willbe taking place March 4,5,6 at the University of Hawaii, involving architects, scientists, and diverse specialists from other departments and other cities and universities.

The objective of the seminar will be the exploration of complex interrelationships between economic development, architecture, urban design, and preservation of natural landscapes and eco-systems within the context of advancing technology. Current issues in Honolulu and the local economy will be studied in relation to important issues in the development of cities and natural resources in tropical cities. The emphasis will be on proposing imaginative, creative, nuts and bolts solutions to some of the world's most difficult and complex questions.

As a seminar group, we will particpate in planning the Eco-Agro Urbanism Workshop to be held March 4,5,6. Participation in the planning, documentation and presentation of this workshop wil be a central responsibility of this seminar project. Please examine the current website for this workshop.

T h e  B i g  P r o j e c t

The first big question is what is the big project of this seminar going to be? And the answer to that is that we are going to design and then build a prototype of the answer to the first good question that we can invent. Finding good answers is usually not nearly so difficult as finding a good question. Finding a big, general, good question is an important starting point, but it will not lead us immediately to good answers. The question itself must first be developed through a serial refining of a big question down through descending scales of specificity until we identify a question that is so sharp and irreducible that we can reasonably expect that by some effort of imagination we can produce a specific, worthwhile answer. And then probably we could expect to develop that little answer back up through the scales -answering all the intermediate questions along the way- until we can actually take a stab at answering the big, general question with the cumulative results of our ascending scale of answers.

For example:

We could start with a simple observation leading to a reasonably important question:

Observation: The world is screwed up.

Big Question: How can we make the world better.

Middle Question (based on a series of increasingly specific observations and questions): Since poor city building eats up farmland and poor agricultural development eats up wilderness, and since a sustainable balance of productive cities and good food production and the preservation of natural life systems are all essential ellements of human existence and human enjoyment of existence, is it possible for architects to imagine building cities and pieces of cities in such a way that we accommodate housing and economic production and co-existence with nature in some new, less destructive and more enjoyable and spiritually enriching construction?

Little question: Could we invent some very practical rack that could be attached to buildings with multiple functions such as solar shading, and solar generation of electricity, and solar heating of water, and catchment of rain water, and filtration of polluted air, and cultivation of edible plants, and nesting of wildlife, and masking of traffic noise with birdsong and rustling leaves, and protection of building elements from ultra-violet degredation, and providing of visual and olafactory enjoyment all for a very affordable $1.99 per square foot?

A s s i g n m e n t  O n e :

1. Present 3 important observations of the world related to the seminar topic.
2. Invent 3 large questions related to your observations.
3. Invent 3 very sharply focused little questions related to these big questions.
4. Invent 3 potential plans of attack for answering one of the little questions that most intrigues you. This plan of attack should outline a clear design approach and process for experimentation.
5. Sketch a minimum of three, annotated, sectional views exploring an inventive solution to the problem you have posed.
6. Prepare a clear presentation of your ideas and process, which can be discussed by the class.

From these initial ideas that you present, we will decide a group to select one or more for further development throughout the semester. Remember: we are looking for very practical machines or building parts involving live materials that we can fabricate and cultivate at full scale as a hands-on experiment. Your thoughts should be practical, functional, and highly creative. Do not confuse practicality and functionality with conventionality.

L a b  N o t e b o o k :

Document the above project, and all subsequent projects, class meetings and discussions in a lab notebook. Everyone will maintain a personal lab notebook as a primary documentation of the semester's work. This will be similar to a sketchbook, but must include reduced drawings, writing, model photographs, and complete documentation of all components of your research and design process. This may be in any effective format, but should be loose-leaf to facilitate continual updating. It must be practical and effective as a daily design tool, but also must be an aesthetically pleasing, and well-designed document. You must have this with you for all seminar events, and will always be the central document for discussion and project grading. These lab notebooks will be important documents at the workshop. Everyone will have a condensed and edited on-line version of this lab notebook on the seminar website.

A s s i g n m e n t  T w o :

1. Research the selected ideaDocument the above project, and all subsequent projects, class meetings and discussions in a lab notebook. Everyone will maintain a personal lab notebook as a primary documentation

A s s i g n m e n t  T h r e e :

Design, build, and document your invention.

A s s i g n m e n t  F o u r :

Work in teams to prepare for and present the upcoming workshop.

A s s i g n m e n t  F i v e :

Compile, document, and publish the results of the research, inventions, seminar and workshops.

CPI Laboratory:  http://sundial.arch.hawaii.edu/cpi
Other related project links at: http://www.evergreen.edu/walkway