Papers by Mitchell Joachim
Design Against Extinction
Routledge eBooks, Jun 27, 2024
SPOOL, Dec 23, 2023
This article reviews the eco-social design work of students at the Gallatin School of Individuali... more This article reviews the eco-social design work of students at the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University over the last decade. Environmental justice movements and the effects of global warming pose significant challenges to the architecture of dwellings, landscapes, and urban design communities. In response, students have placed socially and ecologically sensitive projects at the center of their design education. The justifiable moral outrage of our students has prompted us and them to rethink the methods by which we teach and imagine social environmentalism from the perspective of equity, inclusion, and the biosphere.
Growing Synthetic Puffed Rice Bales: Urban Rewilding with Edible Plant-Based Architectural Modules
Edible biotech altered compact plant-based rice units suitable to rewild urban environments with ... more Edible biotech altered compact plant-based rice units suitable to rewild urban environments with voxel-driven building components in facades, atriums, balconies, rooftops, public spaces and more.
Integrated design for urban mobility
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2006.Includes bibl... more Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 402-412).This thesis demonstrates a rethinking of urban mobility through ecological design. Human mobility and ecological accountability are inextricably linked in city design; our current world ecological crisis underscores this fundamental connection. Through original design exploration ranging in scale from automobiles to tall building clusters, this work proffers a critical vision towards green urbanism. These conceptions challenge the everyday practices of city planning and design by offering an interdisciplinary framework for design production. The work concludes with the necessity for a new design field entitled "Ecotransology". Ecotransology is still in the nascent stages. It has the potential to become a far-reaching awareness that bonds the disciplines of road ecology, urban design, transportation planning, automotive engineering, and energy...
Bio City Map and Plug-In Ecology
Ecological Design and Urbanism
Thresholds, 2003
The Fab Tree Hab concept resolutely accumulates the Inscribed nuances that influenced the America... more The Fab Tree Hab concept resolutely accumulates the Inscribed nuances that influenced the American Rustic period. Stemming form the Insurgent writings of Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, and Alcott, America defined a sensibility. These authors represent an early mode of Intention that was profoundly ecocentric. Their notion of dwelling was envisioned as retreats, poets' bowers, hermitages, and summer cottages in a Sylvan style. In 1847 that notion culminated m the self-made assembly of a crooked cedar and honeysuckle summer home by Thoreau and Alcott for their friend Emerson in the midst of a cornfield. This peculiar
PeristalCity: A Circulatory Habitat Cluster for Manhattan
Thresholds, 2006
New York City's first skyscraper, or what might be considered as such, was built in 1902 (Fla... more New York City's first skyscraper, or what might be considered as such, was built in 1902 (Flatiron building). Since then, skyscrapers have come to define the city's distinctive skyline. Despite their captivating image, skyscrapers in New York City (as well as in other cities throughout the world) have not yet overcome the limitations of their most basic function: the vertical navigation of their inhabitants.
Human-Powered River Gymnasiums for New York
Thresholds, 2006
A Century of Ecological Innovation
Architectural Design, 2015
As humanity faces its greatest disruption to date – climate change – placing the planet and its l... more As humanity faces its greatest disruption to date – climate change – placing the planet and its long-term survival in jeopardy, visionary designer Mitchell Joachim of Terreform ONE incites optimism. Rather than being defined by disruption, he predicts that the 21st century with be characterised by innovation, which ‘promises to solve the global challenges we face’.
Hackerspaces and the Act of Making
Volume, 2013
City Car: A New Design Approach Enabling Urban Mobility
City and Refuse
Building from Waste, 2014
Energy Systems, 2013
Who is the primary authority in the making of Utopia or any extraordinary future city? Urbaneerin... more Who is the primary authority in the making of Utopia or any extraordinary future city? Urbaneering is a burgeoning discipline based on urban design that can negotiate the complex mix of technology, theory and practice that embraces the re-invention of the city to exceed the needs of the planet. Today, this nascent interdisciplinary field is in a state of radical development. Sparks of utopian reflection throughout human history have been indispensable in evolved societies (More 1516). Utopias, for the most part, are a necessary paradigm. Utopias display maximal solutions to existing real world problems. They tackle upheaval with orderly retribution. In nearly all variations, Utopias are deliberately excessive. They overshoot the answer to a crisis to accentuate the problem. Society needs a psychological frame of reference (Lasswell 1930). It's helpful to depict Utopia like a personal membership to a health club. What is the perfect picture of a physique? Why do we need to exercise? Aspirations to appear like a certain idyllic athlete or supermodel sustain our work-out objectives. Many of us understand we cannot be converted into the unattainable airbrushed automatons that decorate voguish magazines. Yet these portrayals provide a common measurement to reflect on our inadequacy. And in some instances, this false imagery makes us admire the precious imperfections and confines of reality.
CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computer systems - CHI '03, 2003
In this paper we introduce Super Cilia Skin, a multi-modal interactive membrane. We conceived Sup... more In this paper we introduce Super Cilia Skin, a multi-modal interactive membrane. We conceived Super Cilia Skin as a computationally enhanced membrane coupling tactilekinesthetic input with tactile and visual output. We present the design of our prototype, an array of individual actuators (cilia) that use changes in orientation to display images or physical gestures. We discuss ongoing research to develop tactile input capabilities and we present examples of how it can enrich interpersonal communication and children's learning.
Ecotransology: integrated design for urban mobility
Rapid Re(f)use: 3-D Fabricated Positive Waste Ecologies
Architectural Design, 2010
... Terreform ONE + Terrefuge, Homeway: The Great Suburban Exodus, 2009 below: Top view along the... more ... Terreform ONE + Terrefuge, Homeway: The Great Suburban Exodus, 2009 below: Top view along the updated interstate showing the ... Maria Aiolova, Melanie Fessel, Philip Weller, Ian Slover, Emily Johnson, Landon Young, Cecil Howell, Andrea Michalski, Sofie Bamberg, Alex ...
The Heterodox Pedagogy: Hackerspaces and Collaborative Education in Design
Arts, Research, Innovation and Society, 2014
Design is frequently regarded as the act of generating something new, something that didn’t entir... more Design is frequently regarded as the act of generating something new, something that didn’t entirely exist before. Scientific research, as it’s typically defined, is for generating new knowledge based on long standing paradigms. Academic proponents of research through design maintain that the process should follow the established method of unique image and object production. This is essentially the same as the art and practice of design itself. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there is a movement to adopt the systematic research methodology that is used in science. Today, designers are still educated to be idiosyncratic and summarily reject most precedents and/or produce an obscure signal to the past. Conversely, within many scientific based endeavors, researchers work in robust collaborative environments. They incrementally build on prior experiments and publications. In science you learn to replicate preceding efforts and disrupt the limits by an order of magnitude. Designers never copy; almost everything is reset from scratch. Imagine an architect exactly replicating Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum with the modest addition of improved ramp sizes. That would be an irrefutable act of design failure or even plagiarism. Conversely, if a biologist replicates the work of another biologist in a lab and makes a reasonable measurable improvement, they are rewarded. Design is not simply a creative process; it is also another form of a focused scientific endeavor. Like science, design is experimental, but in a way that prominently recognizes invention. Our current research attempts to establish new forms of knowledge at the confluences of design and science activity.
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Papers by Mitchell Joachim