Courses
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Second Semester Architecture Core: SITUATE
Jeffry Burchard, Tomás dePaor, Sean Canty, Michelle Chang, Megan Panzano, Patrick McCafferty
The overarching pedagogical agenda for second semester is to expand upon the design methodologies developed in the first semester such that students acquire an understanding…
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Landscape Architecture II
Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Silvia Benedito, Craig Douglas, Paola Sturla, Teresa Gali Izard, Nadir Abdessemed, Eric de Broche des Combes, Emily Wettstein
Second semester core studio explores the research and design methods associated with interventions in complex urban conditions: sites layered with multiple interventions across a long…
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Daniel D’Oca, Brie Hensold, Jennifer Molinsky, Kathy Spiegelman, Richard Peiser
The second semester core planning studio expands the topics and methodologies studied in the first semester core studio, GSD 1121, aiming to prepare students for…
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Fourth Semester Architecture Core: RELATE
Jenny French, Jennifer Bonner, Andrew Holder, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Oana Stanescu, Elizabeth Whittaker
The fourth and final semester of the core sequence, this architecture studio tackles the complexity of the urban condition through the design of housing.
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Landscape Architecture IV
Jill Desimini, Rosalea Monacella, Danielle Choi, Pablo Pérez-Ramos, Belinda Tato, Alex Wall
Addressing the inertia of urban planning and the overexertion of civil engineering in the 20th century, this course focuses on the design of large, complex,…
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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio II
Sawako Kaijima, Jock Herron, Arianna Mazzeo, Peter Stark
The first year MDE studio provides the students the opportunity to bridge the gaps between academic fields and practical, real-world stakeholders, and fosters a design…
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Landscape Representation II
Building on the foundations of Landscape Representation I, this course investigates further the generative potential of representation as part of a productive feedback loop in…
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Digital Media: Ambiance
How do we define the “ambiance” of a place? What causes specific environments to evoke different feelings? Are there consistent elements that define these…
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Digital Media: Writing Form
This course offers an introduction to the field of design and computation through the primal pursuit of writing form. Setting aside the better?known…
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AI and Computer Simulation in Landscape Practice
The course aims to imagine and critically investigate the role of AI and computer simulation in landscape practice, considering the perceptual, intangible and context-sensitive aspects…
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Sections of Every Thing
This course aims to discuss the possibility of sections, made and used in the practice of landscape architecture, as the mean of constructing urban artifacts…
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Drawing for Designers 2: Human Presence and Appearance in Natural and Built Environment
The aim of the class is to learn how to depict and express the presence and appearance of people in natural and built environment. …
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Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
The Interdisciplinary Art Practices seminar investigates the exploratory character of art and design work in the interdisciplinary modalities of contemporary culture and the city. In…
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The Nature of Difference: Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture
Anita Berrizbeitia, Pablo Pérez-Ramos
This course explores how notions of cultural difference are embedded in the design of landscape. Social landscapes—as understood through race, class, nationality, indigeneity, disability, gender,…
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Designing the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form
The course is an interpretative look at the characteristic patterns of settlement and attitudes towards cities and urban life that are identified…
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Design Anthropology: Objects, Landscapes, Cities
In recent years, there has been a movement in anthropology toward a focus on objects, while design and planning have been moving toward the understanding…
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Urban Form: Transition as Condition
The fixed categories by which we have traditionally understood the urban no longer hold. They have been undermined by the multiplicity of…
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Advanced Seminar in City Form: Future of Streets
The Advanced Seminar in City Form invites a group of students to research and discuss themes about the form of cities in…
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Experiments in Public Freedom
As places that accept and encourage multiple representations, cities need spaces to enable unregulated, temporary, and spontaneous events. Due to their role…
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Material, Atmosphere and Ambience
This seminar introduces an understanding of atmosphere and ambience within the discourse of material practice in architecture. The materials are a contextual and cultural…
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Place-Based Design Inquiry
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that went into creating them.” Albert Einstein or is it: ‘We cannot design…
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Emergent Urbanizations: Challenges for Theory, Method, and Research
Neil Brenner, Sai Balakrishnan
This course proceeds from a simple premise: new patterns and pathways of urbanization are emerging around the world, and these transformations require a radical rethinking…
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Factory of the Sensible and the Political* (Equipping Experience)
Architects have long experimented with altering perceptions of space in order to reconfigure experience. At stake in this course are pivotal historical and theoretical transformations…
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Urban Grids: Open form for City Design-2
Framework:Within a larger research scope on “Revisiting the urban grids in the XXI century”, this seminar will focus on the investigation…
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Tokyo Study Abroad Seminar: Thinning Metropolis ? Strategies and Tools for the New Urban Condition
This Course is for students in the Toyko Study Abroad Program. The aging population and thinning have become the new premise of Tokyo’s…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts II
Any account of architecture’s history over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries is faced with the challenge of addressing…
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Histories of Landscape Architecture II: Design, Representation, and Use
This course introduces students to relevant topics, themes, and sites that help us understand the conception, production, evolution, and reception of designed and found landscapes…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts III: The Tower and the Sphere: Architecture and Modernity
Amanda Reeser Lawrence, Vittorio Lampugnani
Modernism has fundamentally to do with the emergence of new kinds of objects and events and, at the same time, new conceptualizations of their appearance,…
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Modernization in the Visual United States Environment, 1890-2035
Modernization of the United States visual environment as directed by a nobility creating new images and perceptions of such themes as wilderness,…
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Adventure and Fantasy Simulation, 1871-2036
Visual constituents of high adventure since the late Victorian era, emphasizing wandering woods, rogues, tomboys, women adventurers, faerie antecedents, halflings, crypto-cartography, Third-Path…
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Modern Architecture and Urbanism in China
Modernizing influences, largely from the hands of foreign powers, first forcefully entered China in the aftermath of the Opium War and signing…
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Making Sacred Space
This course addresses the current crisis in church design by an in depth consideration of the ideas, images, concepts, and legislation that inform the creation…
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Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies
Infrastructures play a decisive role in urban development and in the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a…
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Competing Visions of Modernity in Japan
The course will trace the parallel trajectories of two of modern Japan’s most influential schools of architectural thought, represented by Kenzo Tange…
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Bramante is better than Alberti . . .
A seminar, in the manner of a forum, devoted to the practice of architectural critique and evaluation. Ten significant and comparable pairs…
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14 Things (A Secret History of Italian Design)
Fifteen Things explores intertwinings between design, science, technology, society, art, and culture by means of the “excavation” of fifteen objects from different periods in the…
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Palladio and Raphael: An Innovative Learning Experience
Guido Beltramini, Howard Burns
Two leading scholars of the architecture of Andrea Palladio, Guido Beltramini and Howard Burns of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza,…
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Forest, Grove, Tree: Planting Urban Landscapes
Discussions about the urban forest and tree canopy, carbon sequestration, sustainability, and tree adoption programs are becoming more prevalent by the day.
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Architecture and Landscape before and after Watergate
In one of the defining moments of the Senate Watergate Hearings, June 28, 1973, Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr., put the “central…
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Architecture’s Bodies: Agency and Biopolitics
The aim of this seminar is to think carefully about how bodies engage with architecture and the built environment. In examining the relationships between…
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Power & Place: Culture and Conflict in the Built Environment
This lecture/workshop course studies and analyzes processes and expressions of power in urban form and design in the North American built environment.
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Public and Private Development
This course explores the analytic frameworks, skills, and bodies of knowledge required to understand, evaluate, plan, and implement public and private development within cities and…
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Urban Politics and Planning (at HKS)
In the face of failures and dysfunction at the national level, there is growing excitement about the welfare- and democracy-enhancing potential of cities. Yet, not…
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Cities by Design II: Projects, Processes, and Outcomes
Cities are palimpsests. They are the spatial manifestations of a layering and re-layering of social and environmental systems over time. Through a case study…
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Advanced Real Estate Finance
This course builds on GSD 5204 and comparable introductory real estate courses offered by other schools at Harvard. This year’s course covers…
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Building and Leading Real Estate Enterprises and Entrepreneurship
This course focuses on how you conceive, build and lead successful real estate companies. By virtue of the industry in which they…
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Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities
The subject of Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities examines housing policy and planning in urban societies around the world and especially…
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U. S. Housing Markets, Problems, and Policies
This course will examine the operation of U.S. housing markets, the principal housing problems facing the nation, and the policy approaches available…
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Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation
Through the lens of climate change, this foundation course surveys the intellectual development of resilience and adaptation in the social, natural and…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings? Where are…
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Planning for Climate Change: Scarcity, Abundance, and the Idea of the Future
Climate change presents a range of complex challenges for urban planning and design. This class will explore the conditions planners face in…
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Community Development: Past, Present, and Future
Community development is a heterogeneous and contested field of planning thought and practice. The profession has generally prioritized people and places that…
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Urban Transportation Planning and Implementation
Frederick Salvucci, Ruth Bonsignore
This course reviews urban transportation planning and implementation over the past fifty years within the US with a particular focus on the Boston Metropolitan area…
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Making Participation Relevant to Design
Designing participation and participating in design. By trying to understand how participation can make design more relevant to society, we can create…
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Demographics and Population Processes
Many of the important challenges that our communities face today, from the persistent racial and ethnic disparities and human rights violations, to climate change and…
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Urban Design for Planners
Course Objectives This seminar course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the…
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International Humanitarian Response (at HSPH)
This course offers practical training in the complex issues and field skills needed to engage in humanitarian work. Students will gain familiarity with the concepts…
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Creating Real Estate Ventures: a Legal Perspective
The course will examine how a commercial real estate deal is put together to move a project from conception to completion. The…
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Affordable and Mixed-Income Housing Development, Finance, and Management
Explores issues relating to the development, financing, and management of housing affordable to low and moderate income households. Examines community-based development corporations, public housing authorities,…
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Market Analysis and Urban Economics
This course focuses on the built environment and land-use policy. The course combines readings from the real estate economics academic literature with…
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Building Simulation
This course is the third of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6125) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture and the Master…
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Materials
Why do we build with certain types of materials and not others? How do the properties and qualities of materials constrain and enable the ways…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies II
Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Karen Janosky, Kirt Rieder
Module 1Topography—the land—is a basic medium and tool of landscape architecture. Grading is both precise and conceptual; the core mission of this module is…
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Structural Design 1
This course introduces students to the analysis and design of structural systems. The fundamental principles of statics, structural loads, and rigid body equilibrium are considered…
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Cases in Contemporary Construction
As the final component in the required sequence of technology courses, this professionally-oriented course develops an integral understanding of the design and construction of buildings…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies IV
Niall Kirkwood, Alistair McIntosh
GSD 6242 develops an understanding of and promotes skill in landscape architecture through soft engineering as it relates to landscape design and site…
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Design Survivor: Experiential Lessons in Designing for Desirability (at SEAS)
Multi-disciplinary course for students interested in designing products and services that are simple, irresistible, delightful, cool, covetable, viral, and, increasingly these days, much more likely…
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Urban and Town Ecology
Wildlife, vegetation, soil, air, water, and aquatic ecosystems, together with their human uses, are related to the distinctive, especially spatial, attributes…
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Urban Restoration Ecology
We will explore principles of modern ecology that relate to restoring ecological structure and function to previously degraded lands. These are often…
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Interface Design: Integrating Material Perceptions
The course explores the interface between architecture and engineering by examining our perceptions towards materials. Interdisciplinary research has gained interest in recent…
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Building Human Interaction
This course investigates the interactions between humans and buildings with a focus on environmental sustainability and…
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Beyond Adaptation and Resiliency: GeoEngineering and Why We Will Need It
“Combating climate change is the race of our lifetime.” Wagner & Weitzman. Climate Shock. The Challenge: On October 7, 2018, the New York Times…
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Quantitative Aesthetics: Design as Signal
This course is looking at computational approaches to digital media that allow us to analyse and reinterpret our environment as a signal,…
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Structures in Landscape Architecture, Joint & Detail
Topics Covered: The conceptual, expressive and practical roles of structure and structural understanding in the design and making of works of landscape architecture at the…
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Mechatronic Optics
The drawing as a certain transcription of vision into operational, communicative, and instructional notation is at the very core of design. Deeply…
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Planted Form and Re-Formation: Past Futures and Antecedent Inventions
Planted Form and Re-Formation is a seminar that investigates how and why vegetation (as a living design medium) changes over time, and…
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Informal Robotics / New Paradigms for Design & Construction
Today new materials and fabrication techniques are transforming the field of robotics. Rather than rigid metal parts connected by mechanical components, robots…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society II
Developing and implementing good solutions to real problems facing human society requires a broad understanding of the relationships between technology innovation, science, manufacturing, design thinking,…
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Non-Professional Practice
The course aims to study unconventional modes of architectural practice and their underlying implications. It is based on a workshop format,…
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Designing with the Urban Stack: A Practice Course for Designers of the Built Environment
The seminar will investigate critical issues of the Urban Stack for the Kendall Square District, Cambridge, MA. The first half of the term entails…
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Miami Resilience: Infrastructure
This advanced research seminar in Miami, Florida (USA) is thematically focused at the intersection of community resilience, public health and housing studies. With a particular…
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Thesis project / Project Thesis
Andrew Holder, Jon Lott, John McMorrough
As the culminating requirement of the Master in Architecture degree, “Thesis” entails multiple expectations. It is a demonstration, not only of competency and expertise but…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of the Degree MAUD, MLAUD, or MUP
Following participation in the department’s fall thesis preparation seminar (GSD 9204), the spring term of the second year sees students complete, defend and submit their…
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Independent Thesis for the Degree Master in Design Studies
(Previously "Open Projects”) Prerequisites: Filing of signed "Declaration of Advisor" form with MDes office, and approval signature of the program director. A student who selects…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of the Degree Master in Landscape Architecture
Following preparation in GSD 9341, each student pursues a topic of relevance to landscape architecture, which must include academic inquiry and design exploration.
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Independent Design Engineering Project II
Martin Bechthold, Mary Tolikas, Peter Stark
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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Methods of Research in Art and Design: A Workshop-tutorial
This workshop focuses on the exploration, elaboration, and development of students’ research and experimentation in projects that intersect the fields of art…
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Discourse and Methods I
This course is open only to Ph.D. students in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design (Ph.D. students from other departments may participate with…