40 572 Subject Matter: Judicious Concrete (L.A.) (Autumn 2025)

The Subject Matter series studies the impact that material choices have on the design process. Working from a holistic perspective that examines the origins of materials, their environmental impact and their influence on architectural design, the studio seeks to provide a broad, research-based approach to the design process.

In the early months of 2025, fires raged across Los Angeles, scorching over 485 square kilometers, destroying more than 3,400 structures, and forcing the evacuation of nearly 200,000 residents. The city, long acquainted with fire—from the Bel Air blaze of 1961 to the Griffith Park fire of 2007—once again found itself engulfed. As Joan Didion noted in her 1968 Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself.” (Footnote 1). In the wake of the rebuilding after the 2025 fires, the city is considering how to rebuild, and what materials to use. Many voices are calling for a rebuilding in concrete to stop the spread that devastated swaths of the city’s most desirable real estate.

Concrete is one of the most revolutionary materials to enter architecture and infrastructure in human history. It allows a formal freedom unparalleled in any other material, and has a durability and performance that no other material can match. But its production is the very image of carbon pollution, since the firing of limestone to produce cement releases a great deal of CO₂ into the environment, by some estimates about 8% of total global emissions.

But despite this, concrete is an extremely relevant material, and should be studied in a school of architecture. Some 80% of the volume of buildings in construction globally today is concrete. As a result, the industry is invested in finding solutions to the problem of carbon emissions, whether through carbon capture or geopolymers. It remains a default material that any architect should understand. This course seeks to delve into the questions that concrete raises, and provide some data and answers about its use.

Building on the great history of the Case Study project in Southern California, which from 1945 to 1966 produced 36 experimental houses, designed by leading modernist architects such as Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Richard Neutra, Eero Saarinen, and Craig Ellwood, this semester each student will be tasked with designing a case study house in concrete (Footnote 2).

1. Joan Didion. Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), 324

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Study_Houses

Knowledge:

• Knowledge of how concrete is produced and its environmental impact
• Knowledge of the historical uses of concrete
• Knowledge of the Case Study program

Skills:

• Ability to conduct research for design
• Ability to design with and specify concrete

General competence:

• Competence in presenting ideas in word, image and artifact

The course is organized as collaborative studio in which student participation is essential. The weekly schedule includes a Monday forum, in which we discuss architecture and attend lectures, and a Thursday plenum, in which we discuss the ongoing design work.

Excursion:

We believe that the study trip is an essential part of architectural education and see it as integral to the development of spatial and material awareness. We would like to arrange a trip to Los Angeles, and are researching possible sources of funding for that. Should this prove to be too expensive, an alternative is Switzerland.

Compulsory attendance requirements:

Attendance is expected and it is mandatory to attend the final reviews.

Form of assessment: Project assignment

Grouping: Individual

Grading scale: Pass/fail