Courses
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First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT
Sean Canty, Carl D’Apolito-Dworkin, Iman Fayyad, Jenny French, Elisa Iturbe, Nancy Nichols
PROJECT is the first core studio of the four-semester sequence of the MArch I program. With a multiplicity of references, PROJECT may refer to fundamental…
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Landscape Architecture I: First Semester Core Studio
Gary R. Hilderbrand, Pablo Pérez-Ramos, Kira Clingen, Alistair McIntosh, Tom Sterling
What is public about a public space? STU-1111 is the first in a sequence of four core studios that, together, constitute the foundation of your…
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First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Magda Maaoui, Anne-Marie Lubenau, Paola Aguirre, Jeana Dunlap, Lourdes Germán, Carole Voulgaris, Lindsay Woodson
First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and technical skills used by urban planners to investigate, analyze, create, and implement…
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Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE
Eric Howeler, Michelle Chang, Elle Gerdeman, Jon Lott, John May, Angela Pang
Integration is the agenda for the third-semester architecture design studio. Architecture is fundamentally a part-to-whole problem, involving the complex integration of building components, systems, and…
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Landscape Architecture III: Third Semester Core Studio
Danielle Choi, Karen Lee Bar-Sinai, Francesca Benedetto, Rosalea Monacella, Amy Whitesides, Min Yeo
From Off-Shoring to Near Shore: Littoral Landscapes at Work This studio will explore the complex environmental and social interests of multiple forms of landscape labor—people…
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Elements of Urban Design
Peter Rowe, Stephen Gray, Paola Aguirre, Yun Fu, Michael Manfredi, Rahul Mehrotra
Elements of Urban Design is the required first semester advanced core studio for the post-professional Urban Design Program. Regarding learning objectives, the studio introduces critical…
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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio I (with SEAS)
Elizabeth Christoforetti, James Weaver, Andrew Witt, Siqi Zhu
The first semester studio is a project-based introduction to a range of ideas, methods, and techniques essential for the design engineer. In the studio, students…
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Architectural Representation I [Module 1]
Architectural Representation I: Origins + Originality Architectural representation as a medium blends theorizing, historization, and a unique capacity to induce a physical entity, either fictional…
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Architectural Representation II [Module 2]
Architectural Representation II: Geometries in Interaction There has never been just one geometry. In mathematics, the Euclidean, projective, algebraic, and transformational approaches to geometry each…
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Representation for Planners [Module 1]
One task of an urban planner is to grapple with and understand a series of complicated processes that directly affect the organization and experience of…
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Spatial Analysis [Module 1]
Planning decisions are often idealized as being "evidence-based" or "data-driven." Spatial data often comprise the data and evidence that support such these decisions. In this…
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Landscape Representation I
The first in a two-semester sequence, Landscape Representation I introduces students to the rich and varied discipline of landscape architecture as inextricably intertwined with the…
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Digital Media: Not Magic
According to folklore, Michelangelo fell to his knees upon seeing the Florentine fresco Annunciation, went silent, and eventually concluded that the image of the Virgin…
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Interior Residential Planning, Furnishings, and Materials
Buildings are inseparable from Interior Planning. The objective of this course is to design interior space in existing freestanding residential buildings and urban apartments. Projects…
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Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf Life in the Supermarket Landscape
We tend to assume that supermarkets are static, neutral spaces where little of significance ever happens. The supermarket shelf is actually a highly volatile, hyper-competitive…
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Drawing for Designers: Techniques of Expression, Articulation, and Representation
The course is intended as a creative drawing laboratory for designers, an expressive and playful supplement to computer-based labor. The aim of the class is…
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Atmospheric Encounters: Visualizing the Invisible
The course will explore diverse atmospheric conditions with tools, techniques, and design methods for making the invisible visible. The measuring and mapping of atmospheric conditions…
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Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
The Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices Seminar investigates art and design work in the interdisciplinary modalities of contemporary culture, the city, and the world. As…
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Theories of Landscape as Urbanism
Gareth Doherty, Charles Waldheim
This course introduces contemporary theories of landscape as a medium of urbanism and product of urbanization. The course surveys sites and subjects, texts and topics…
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The Idea of Environment
The environment is the milieu in which designers and planners operate. It is a messy world of facts, meanings, relations, and actions that calls them…
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Type and the Idea of the City: Architecture’s Search for what is Common
Open to all students, the seminars will equip students with the theoretical and historical understanding of type as a heuristic device in…
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The Fifth Plan
In this seminar, we will consider the evolution of the floor plan across five iterations: proto-modern, modern, post-modern, plan-non-chalant, and, most importantly, the present. We…
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Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Drawing Landscapes, Energy, and Matter
The structures and forms we perceive on the land are produced by forces that make order and those that upset it. Landscape architecture is one…
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Why Not Cultural Systems? Expanding Our Value System Beyond Nature and Ecology
How do cultural landscapes shape our shared public memory? How do our collective planning, design and stewardship decisions affect how we assign value and manage…
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Housing Matters
This seminar investigates the politics of housing by focusing on the relationships between spatial, material, and typological decisions architects make when designing housing and the…
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FORESTS: Histories and Future Narratives
“Forests: Histories and Future Narratives.” From a distance, all forests appear to be remarkably similar: they are ecosystems characterized by the dominance of trees, they…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Origins and Ends
Our aim is to address the general rupture caused by the rise of modernity—that is, by the social, economic, technological, and ideological transformations accompanying the…
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Studies of the Built North American Environment: since 1580
North America as an evolving visual environment is analyzed as a systems concatenation involving such constituent elements as farms, small towns, shopping malls, highways, suburbs,…
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Histories of Landscape Architecture I: Textuality and the Practice of Landscape Architecture
This course introduces students to a number of significant topoi or loci in the histories of landscape architecture. In general terms, it takes the form of a…
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North American Seacoasts and Landscapes: Discovery Period to the Present
Selected topics in the history of the North American coastal zone, including the seashore as wilderness, as industrial site, as area of recreation, and as…
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Authority and Invention: Medieval Art and Architecture
Masterworks of art and architecture in Western Europe from the decline of Rome to the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. Explores the creative tension between…
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Structuring Urban Experience: From the Athenian Acropolis to the Boston Common
This lecture course examines selected cities between the fifth century B.C. and the seventeenth century A.D., beginning with ancient Athens and ending with the rebuilding…
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Building and Urban Conservation and Renewal – Assessment, Analysis, Design
What are the values inherent in a property, site or district that must be understood to craft conservation policy and interventions that will reveal, complement,…
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Architecture and Construction: From the Vitruvian Tradition to the Digital
The course aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between architecture and construction through the study of key historical episodes such as…
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Plants of Ritual: Creating a Spiritual Connection to the Designed Landscape
The seminar aims to investigate and catalog plants that have a spiritual/emotional value to the public and individuals in the designed landscape. The seminar’s goal…
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Making the American City: Form and Society
This course examines major episodes in the history of American urban growth, design, and planning to understand the urgent social, environmental, and development issues of…
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Urban Design Contexts and Operations
The course focusses essentially on modern, including contemporary, contexts and operations that have emerged during the past 100 or so years. Here urban design is…
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Contested Spaces: Architecture and Power
In this course we discuss space as the site in which power is mobilized, negotiated, and contested. We examine how buildings, landscapes, and their representation…
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Tactile Architectures
Architecture has often constituted itself as hard and durable, from the Vitruvian principle of firmness to the raw concrete of brutalism. This seminar draws attention…
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Translations and Negotiations: The Roman Landscape in the Modern World
This course investigates the myriad ways ancient Roman place-making, visual culture, and thought have been evoked, utilized, weaponized, and translated in North American thought, design,…
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Real Estate Finance, Development, and Management
Frank Apeseche, David Hamilton, Charles Wu
This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate for all major property types and land uses. The various stages of the development process, including site…
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Land Use and Environmental Law
As a scarce and necessary resource, land triggers competition and conflict over its possession and use. For privately owned land, the market manages much of…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Quantitative [Module 2]
This course introduces students to quantitative analysis and research methods for urban planning. The course begins with an examination of how quantitative methods fit within…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Qualitative [Module 2]
How can planners understand places in a rich, meaningful, and yet systematic way? This module examines how qualitative approaches can be used in planning practice…
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Design for Real Estate
This course provides a comprehensive understanding of the role of design and design professionals in real estate, from project conception to project delivery to post-occupancy…
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Real Estate, Society, Environment
This course examines the emerging context for real estate practice worldwide that measures success not solely by the financial bottom line but also by achievement…
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Housing and Urbanization in the United States
Jennifer Molinsky, James Stockard
This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those with an interest…
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Urbanization and Development
This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development through an historical and contemporary lens, paying close attention to the ways that the growth and…
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Urban Ethnographies
Planners’ understanding of social process and cultural values is often woefully inadequate, and their thinking is dominated by a “one-size-fits-all” approach and by excessive attention…
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The (New) Image of the City
In this course we will attempt to visualize cities as the outcomes of urban design. Through a reflexive method of visual and narrative investigation, each…
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Affordable Housing and Community Development
This course is intended for students interested in the affordable housing crisis. Can governments alone solve this problem or are public-private approaches an answer? The…
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Urban Economics and Market Analysis
This course introduces economic frameworks for understanding both the benefits and challenges of living in, working in, and managing cities and their built environments. Urban…
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Local Economic Development: Policy, Practice and Theory
Cities are complex hubs of economic and social activity, conducive to efficient means of production. They also present challenging circumstances of inequity, segregation, and political…
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Environmental Systems 1 [Module 1]
This course is the first of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture. Objectives:–…
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Environmental Systems 2 [Module 2]
Purpose: This course is the second of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture. Objective:…
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Construction Systems
This course introduces students to methods of construction: conceptually, historically, and practically. We will consider how construction techniques emerge in relation to architectural desires and…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies I
This course recognizes plants as one of the most expressive materials of the artform — a living medium that distinguishes the discipline from the other…
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Structural Design II
This course is a continuation of GSD 6227 and completes the introduction to the analysis and design of building structures. Both 6227 and 6229 are…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies III: Ecology and the Design World
Christopher Matthews, Matthew Girard
Ecology and the Design World (Estefania Fernandez Barrancos): Landscape architecture incorporates an additional layer of complexity to design that is less present in other design…
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Climate by Design
The climate crisis is here now and for the foreseeable future. For designers who shape the built environment, there is an urgent need to respond…
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Water, Land-Water Linkages, and Aquatic Ecology
Timothy Dekker, Nicholas Nelson
GSD 6333 covers water across the globe in relation to (1) land-water interactions, emphasizing hydrology and water quality, (2) aquatic ecology, and (3) human activities,…
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Introduction to Computational Design
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
#GSD6338 is an introductory course on Computational Design, with a particular focus on architecture, landscape and urbanism. In this course, we will understand "Computational Design"…
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Enactive Design: Creative Applications through Concurrent Human-Machine Interaction
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
Enactive Design is an advanced research seminar on human-computer interaction. We will explore the role of real-time, bidirectional communication between human and digital agents in…
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Circuits, Circles, and Loops: Towards a Regenerative Architecture
Present assumptions indicate that the management of our material world accounts for more than half of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly fifty percent of…
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Advanced Applications in Sustainable Architecture
This elective seminar will provide a deeper dive into issues of evidence-based, high-performance, ecological building design. The course is intended for MArch students, MDes students,…
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Working Landscapes: Natural Resiliency And Redesign
Ecological principles and their application to design and planning will be emphasized. Topics will include understanding human impacts on natural systems through engineering and design,…
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Power||Energy: Mapping the Thickened Ground of Labor
The definition of energy is dominated by a western logic of energy as a resource. This understanding was focused on the primary objective of putting…
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Transformable Design Methods
The aim of Transformable Design is to is to introduce new ways of thinking about design through real-time morphological changes. The course provides a theoretical…
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Quantitative Aesthetics: Introduction to Coding for Creative AI and Digital Media Arts
This course introduces concepts and techniques from signal analysis, computer vision and machine learning that are related to the retrieval, processing, analysis and generation of…
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Foundations of Practice
Jeffry Burchard, Gregg Garmisa
For students in the fifth semester of the MArch I degree program, this course examines models and issues that define contemporary professional practice. Requiring students…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society I
This graduate-level seminar course is part of the MDE program's first-year core curriculum, comprising a two-course sequence spanning one year. The course focuses on building…
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Practices of Landscape Architecture
This course presents the application of landscape ideas as a process of engagement and building amidst financial, legal, cultural, political, and professional contexts. The course…
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Frameworks of Practice
How should we practice today? The discipline, the profession, and the practice of architecture are invented and designed things. And the roles, relationships, protocols, and…
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Urban Stack: Practice Methods for a Complex World
The Urban Stack is a pedagogical framework for understanding the infrastructures of power that operate in relationship to practice. These constructs shape the design and…
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Origins and Contemporary Practices of Asian Landscape Architecture: Korean Perspectives and More
The term “Asian” can be misleading; it conjures images of one identity that can be applied to all 51 countries in Asia. Scholars and practitioners,…
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Real Estate and City Making in China
Real estate has increasingly become a compelling force in the process of city making, one uniquely capable of leading and guiding multiple steps in the…
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Preparation for Independent Thesis Proposal for MUP, MAUD, or MLAUD
What does it take to complete a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design? The seminar introduces different types of theses that…
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Independent Design Engineering Project I
Jock Herron, Kathleen Brandenburg, Mark Coughlin
The Independent Design Engineering Project (IDEP) is a two-semester project during which students in the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program work on understanding a…
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MArch II Proseminar
This course provides a forum for critical discussion of contemporary design practices that is exploratory and speculative in nature. The course emphasizes collaborative thinking and…
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Proseminar in Landscape Architecture
How do we understand a landscape? This proseminar explores epistemologies that constitute the field of landscape architecture. The proseminar will introduce MLA II students to…
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Proseminar in PUBLICS: Of the Public. In the Public. By the Public
Public, as a noun or adjective, is not confined to a single discipline, practice, narrative or theory. It is instead, a complicated construct that can…
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Proseminar in MEDIUMS: On Making Culture, Technology, and Art
In this proseminar, we will take a critical look at the current and emerging landscape of design technologies and technologically driven design. We will examine…
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Proseminar in NARRATIVES: Word and Image as Narrative Structure
In our Proseminar, we will grapple with a selection of critical discussions on word and image as these have been formulated in aesthetic philosophy, literary…
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Proseminar in ECOLOGIES: Interrelated, In-between, Dynamic
Our aim in the proseminar is to explore the inherent inventedness of ecology as a field of inquiry, its distinctly relational nature, and the potential…
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Master in Real Estate Practicum Prep
Frank Apeseche, Matthew Kiefer, Weijia Song
This 0-unit seminar is part of the 12-unit Master in Real Estate Practicum. Participation is limited to students in the Master in Real Estate program…