ARC 560R/696
Advanced Architectural Design
Dr. Steven Moore, AIA

CRP 387C
Infrastructure Planning
Dr. Kent Butler

The Advanced Architectural Design Studio, taught by Steven Moore, and the CRP infrastructure planning course, taught by Kent Butler, will collaborate on the design of Colombia, Nuevo Leon‹a new border city to be built on the south-side of the Rio Grande.

The history of North American cities suggests that infrastructure was, at least in the 19th C, conceived as the heroic, technological glue that enabled the democracy itself. In the 20th C, however, infrastructure became the realm of instrumental engineering‹a degraded quantitative field whose sole interest was to maximize the flow of storm water, electricity, or automobiles on their way to the mall. In contrast, this course will investigate how infrastructure might again be the means through which new visions of urban life might be conceived and realized.

Architecture students will engage themselves in the design of those life-enhancing technological systems that are generally relegated to poché‹the space hidden in the walls of buildings and beneath the streets of cities. Conversely, planning students will engage themselves in the design of habitable space and the implications of techné‹or, poetic building. Together, architecture and planning students will propose designs for this new city that reflects the geo-political reality of NAFTA and the ecological reality of life in a semi-arid landscape.

Architecture and planning students will meet together on Monday and Wednesday from 1:00-2:30 in a mixed lecture/studio format. Architecture students will meet in the studio on Monday/Wednesday from 2:30-6:00 and Friday from 1:00-6:00. The joint studio/lecture course will produce a document intended to influence the actual planning and construction of Colombia.