Funding for Faculty

This course investigates the interactions between humans and buildings with a focus on environmental sustainability and health. The exploration will fall into three categories:

• How do humans interact with buildings, especially how does occupant behavior impact building performance, such as energy efficiency?
• How do buildings impact humans, in terms of wellness and health?
• Considering 1 and 2, how can we how can we design better buildings?

Too many architecture projects that are “green” on paper, fail to live up to their predicted performance once occupied by real people. A better understanding of how occupants interact with buildings could help reduce the uncertainty associated with building performance upgrades, and remove this barrier preventing investment in better building design. 

In this course, students will also explore how architects can influence occupant behavior. This is an elusive yet weighty goal in terms of mitigating climate change and improving public health. Finally, students will investigate design concepts that encourage physical activity, improve indoor air quality, and impact other aspects of health, such as sleep quality and circadian rhythms. In short, students will seek to answer the question: how can we build positive human interactions with the spaces we design?

This studio examines the issue of sanitation infrastructure in Mumbai, with a special focus on community toilets in the city’s informal settlements. The site is an informal settlement with an organized community group that will serve as the constituency or client group for the studio. The studio will work towards evolving a broader strategy for upgrading the entire settlement in situ. Sanitation infrastructure will serve as the instrument that guides the reorganization of the urban fabric relating to water supply, sewage and sanitation, as well as its relationship and integration with community spaces more broadly.

The studio engages with modes of governance, as well as implementation and financial models, which have the potential to make sanitation infrastructure viable and sustainable, and enable transformative effects in the larger landscape of informal settlements in Mumbai. Students will develop prototype projects, which may be implemented in the future. To this end, the studio will work collaboratively with the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) in Mumbai. The UDRI will host the students for the week in Mumbai and coordinate the research and investigations of the chosen site. The project is also supported by the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute (LMSAI), who will facilitate inputs from experts in other disciplines across the University.