20.111 Sustainable Design Option Studio 1
Option Studio 1 builds upon the foundational principles established in Core Studio 3 on urban design, extending the scope of architectural inquiry into the international realm. This studio invites students to critically engage with urbanism beyond the local context, fostering a comparative and experiential understanding of sustainable design across diverse cultural and spatial settings.
The studio encourages students to compare and contrast these international urban environments with the Singaporean context. Using methods such as mapping, overlay analysis, and diagrammatic studies, students will extract insights that inform new design propositions. These proposals aim to generate innovative spatial-temporal interventions that respond to contemporary challenges in urban sustainability, while reflecting the nuanced interplay between global precedents and local conditions.
By synthesising cross-cultural urban experiences, Option Studio 1 cultivates a critical design approach that is both globally informed and locally responsive, preparing students to contribute meaningfully to the evolving discourse on sustainable architecture and urbanism.
Learning objectives
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Identify issues of sustainable design in relation to socioeconomic, demographic and cultural trends, through the analysis of literature and review of architectural precedents
- Perform rigorous site analysis and map the site conditions
- Critique a project brief and develop strong, generative sustainable design concepts
- Translate design concepts into meaningful architectural and/or urban propositions at appropriate scales and levels of granularity
- Create convincing arguments for the design propositions and persuasive visual and tangible evidence
Measurable outcomes
- Interpret the sustainable parameters and other issues of relevance to the project using drawings and diagrams
- Respond to a specific project brief and specific context with a meaningful design concept
- Produce coherent architectural representations and models at sufficient levels of detail
- Communicate convincingly sustainable design propositions in the form of renderings, drawings, simulations, models
Prerequisites
- 20.101 Architectural Core Studio 1
- 20.102 Architectural Core Studio 2
- 20.103 Architectural Core Studio 3
Course instructor
Number of credits: 18
Workload: 8-0-10*
*The first number represents the number of hours per week assigned for lectures, recitations and cohort classroom study. The second number represents the number of hours per week assigned for labs, design, or field work. The third number represents the number of hours per week assigned for independent study.
2025 topics
- From Tea House to AI Design (Erwin Viray)
- Vienna’s Anschluss: Exclusionary Urbanism (Timothy Matthew Collins)
- Sanya: Rendering the Erased Neighbourhood (Jason Lim)