This course asks how selected educational theories can inform tangible media design to support informed action on environmental challenges. We will ask how to use such approaches to support creativity, engagement, and education on issues such as pollution, waste, and recycling. The goal is to combine physical computing and material design as applied educational technologies to educate and activate response to specific environmental challenges. We will focus on challenges on the Georgia Tech campus and problems we face every day as students or staff.
Storytelling and Social Change: Russian Literature, Film, and Ethnography
This course investigates the form and contexts of Russian prose, film, and documentary storytelling that challenges norms and seeks social change. Authors will include Tolstoy, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Tokareva, and Ulitskaya among others. We will also work with Soviet and contemporary films, and ethnographic media, considering through these various forms why storytelling endures as a medium for transforming people and environments.
What new cultures of computing are needed for the Anthropocene? How can we re-design the invention, consumption, and use of computing amid climate change? What are responsible futures of computing in times of environmental upheaval? In this project studio course, we will draw on methods and theories from design, art, the humanities and social sciences to critically re-imagine computing in the Anthropocene.
In our time of climate change, this course brings together people and discourses from many disciplines in pursuit of more resilient social-ecological systems within our built environments through dialogue, interdisciplinary research, design, and action. The course provides introductions to design research methodologies, critical theories and practices of ecological science and thinking, and those of sustainability through readings and dialogue with distinguished researchers working in these areas.
Key to the course is the incorporation of high performance active and passive energy systems into very well-conceived and executed building and site design propositions. The key metric for the studio is “prove it.” The studio is structured around the topics of Component Development and Transformation, Body, Enclosure and Site Ideation, and Building Type and Systems Development / Customization.
Clinical Observation Design Experience provides students with an opportunity to identify and solve problems in active area emergency departments. In this course students will spend approximately eight hours per week in area emergency departments including those at Emory Healthcare sites and at Grady Memorial Hospital. Students will learn and practice observation and interviewing skills and dive into relevant medical literature to develop a deep understanding of problems they discover.
This course introduces the challenges of sustainability as applied to the built environment and the built environment's interconnectivity with the natural environment. It addresses a range of specific sustainability-related issues such as sprawl and smart growth, climate change, motorized and non-motorized transportation, social equity and environmental justice, green architecture, food systems, and community engagement. Students will do substantial background reading, engage in class discussion, and apply their skills to a small-group, real-world project.
BC6025 Construction Management is a required course for all Building Construction master students in the Program management and construction management track, and also one of the required electives for students in the facility management track. It is an introductory course on construction management principles for building construction projects. Though called "construction management", this class introduces the life cycle of a building project: Elements of planning and financing; Project delivery methods; Managing construction resource, and facility management, etc.
Vertically Integrated Project: 21st Century Global Atlanta
This VIP course brings together students of diverse backgrounds and disciplines to tell the story of Atlanta as a global city, and to increase access to global citizenship at Georgia Tech and nationally. We document and connect with the individuals and communities that are transforming Atlanta into a global metropolis, such as heritage and immigrant communities, foreign-born residents in a variety of professional fields, and thought leaders engaged in the global community.
Vertically Integrated Project: Living Building Science
You don't have to be Matt Damon on Mars to realize that now is the time to science the sh** out of this planet. In order for the almost 8 billion on earth to lead comfortable lives without ruining the Earth forever, we are going to have to start living sustainably. Georgia Tech just opened the Kendeda building, which seeks to satisfy the Living Building Challenge which includes being net energy positive, net water positive, and zero waste. What is the impact of this building on the external environment? What is the quality of the air and water inside the building?
