Courses
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Second Semester Architecture Core: SITUATE
Jeffry Burchard, Tomás dePaor, Elizabeth Christoforetti, Jenny French, Sean Canty, 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
Silvia Benedito, Belinda Tato, Kristin Frederickson, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Eric de Broche des Combes, Nadir Abdessemed
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, Stephen Gray, Kathy Spiegelman, Frederick Merrill, 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
Jeannette Kuo, Jennifer Bonner, Andrew Holder, Grace La, Matthew Soules, 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
Pierre Bélanger, Danielle Choi, Francesca Benedetto, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Rosalea Monacella, Robert Pietrusko, Amy Whitesides
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
Chuck Hoberman, Fawwaz Habbal, Heather Boesch, Jock Herron, 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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,Tri,3,Tre,
This studio will be structured around the exploration of the liberating suspension of judgment found in an architecture born of ternary logic. A logic comprised…
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Model as Building – Building as Model
This studio explores the emergence of the phenomenon of Model as 'Building-Building as Model', whereby projects of varying size or purpose are designed and…
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After the Storm: Restructuring an Island Ecosystem
Hurricanes Irma and Maria left many islands throughout the Caribbean utterly devastated. These cataclysmic events caused by climate change deeply disrupted the lives of the…
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ROOT: Rediscovery of Jingdezhen Contemporary
Design Project: Blue and White Porcelain Museum Jingdezhen is known as the "Porcelain Capital" of the world because it has been producing pottery for…
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Parametric Semiology: The Design of Information-rich Environment
The societal function of urban and architectural design is the innovative ordering of social processes. This function depends on the communicative capacity of the designed…
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In the Details: The Space between God and the Devil
This studio is interested in developing articulated methods of assembly that allow for a dialogue to occur between scales, in both their conceptual logic and…
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Museum Island
This studio investigates ‘island’ and ‘archipelago’ organizations in architecture and their generative potential in urban design through designing a timber building for an Art Depot…
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Study Abroad Studio Option: Making London
LONDON: UNIVERSAL BUILDING CANADA WATER A Design Studio evolving through a series of chapters culminating in a final project presented in both London and Boston.
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Rotterdam Study Abroad Studio Option: Countryside II
The Spring 2018 Rotterdam Studio is part of a long-term effort to document and speculate on radical changes shaping the countryside, which will culminate in…
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Broadway Shuffle II: Performance/Space
This studio, the second in a series, speculates on the future of life in the public realm of New York City, where a paradigm shift…
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SEQUESTROPOLIS II: AVs & Afforestation In Conjunction with Harvard Forest
Martha Schwartz, David Bloniarz
Barring a drastic human response to climate change, by 2050 Boston will be dealing with heavier winter rains, droughts in the summer, a depleted aquifer,…
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KOREA REMADE: Alternate Nature, DMZ, and Hinterlands
Niall Kirkwood, Jungyoon Kim, Yoon-Jin Park
The KOREA REMADE studio will advance alternative futures for a reunified Korean Peninsula through the concerns of ecology, technology, and design. The reunification of the…
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Ecology, Culture and Identity: Revitalizing the Cultural Landscape of the Huerta of Valencia, Spain
Urban areas across the world are increasingly looking for innovative ways to tackle climate change, to preserve and enhance their cultural patrimony, and to improve…
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Quito and the Elasticity of the Spanish American Block
Using the city of Quito as a laboratory, this studio examines the urban legacy, current decline, and future opportunities of the Spanish-American colonial grid. It…
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Zhengzhou: Designing Critical Nodes for the ?Urban Grids?
The fast-growing process in the Metropolis is associated with the large expansion of buildings and infrastructure, but also to the radical transformation of previous urban…
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The Industrious City: Rethinking Urban Industry in the Digital Age
Markus Schaefer, Hiromi Hosoya
Cities have always been places where commerce and production, working and living, are physically and functionally integrated. Only with the rise of industry have zoning…
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Extreme Urbanism V: Exploring Hybrid Housing Typologies, Elphinstone Estate, Mumbai
This studio will focus on questions of housing in the city of Mumbai. Exponential real estate values coupled with a burgeoning population and lack of…
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Urban Disobedience: 99 Provocations to Disrupt Injustice in St. Louis
The legacy of discriminatory laws, urban disinvestment, the decline of the industrial economy, shifts to a knowledge-based economy, concentrated poverty, physical, social and political divides,…
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Manila: Future Habitations
Rok Oman, David Rubin, Spela Videcnik
Manila’s extraordinary history—written, erased, and rewritten—has rendered a current condition that is one of extremes and great tensions. The city of 25 million is ripe…
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Between Earth and Sky: A Building for the HafenCity, Hamburg
The setting for this studio is the HafenCity in Hamburg, which is currently one of Europe’s most ambitious urban transformations. Over twenty years to date,…
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Phantom Urbanism
Reinier de Graaf, Ricardo Solar
“We think out of the box so you don’t have to live in one.”Limitless billboard, Dubai, UAE. Once cities were designed to accommodate…
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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 I
How do we define the “ambiance” of a place? What causes specific environments to evoke different feelings? Are there consistent elements that define these ambiances,…
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Digital Media II
This class explores the design and science of logical form making, examined through geometry, parametric control, algorithms, and digital tools. The point of departure is…
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Responsive Environments: The Future of Shopping
Allen Sayegh, Stefano Andreani
The course looks into the future of the built environment from a technologically augmented point of view, with a strong focus on…
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Constructing Visual Narratives of Place
The seminar/workshop explores the representation of identity and memory in the city and its territory. The case study is Boston, in its…
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Curatorial Practice
Today everybody is a curator – we curate our meals, our social media feeds, and our outfits. What does it mean to…
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Near Drawing
The agency of drawing within the discipline has been the topic of many recent academic symposia. In its current state, sophisticated technologies…
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New Natures: Constructing a Brief for Coextensive Networks
This seminar explores the act of brief making for alternative urban landscape assemblies through artefacts generated through film and fabricated models.
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Painting for Designers: Techniques, Methods and Concepts
The course objective is to advance, through painting, students' visual skills in artistic representation and creative imagination. Assigned and generated by students, projects will focus…
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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 the contemporary culture. In the present…
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The Nature of Difference: Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture
Anita Berrizbeitia, Claudia Taborda
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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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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Spaces of Solidarity
‘Spaces of Solidarity’ aims at examining community-driven spaces and spatial processes that pool and share resources to build social cohesion in times…
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Robots In + Out of Buildings
New forms of mobility are currently being developed for the transport of both people and goods. From autonomous container ships and trucks,…
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Philosophy of Technology
Zero net energy. Parametric design. Wood skyscrapers. 3-D printing of exotic structures. What marvels technology brings us! We acknowledge that we live…
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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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Rotterdam Study Abroad Seminar: World Without Work – A Rural Utopia?
This Course is for students in the Rotterdam Study Abroad Program. In the coming years, the countryside will be fundamentally altered by technology, migration and climate…
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London Study Abroad Seminar – London: Past, Present, and Emerging
London is a city with many people from different places defined by its openness (like no other Global city). Its people are united by mutual…
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London Study Abroad Seminar: Architecture after Neoliberalism
Half a century ago, it was still possible to believe that architecture was made for the greater good of all. This conviction became eroded by…
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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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Film Theory, Visual Thinking
How do moving images transform the way we think? Introduction to film theory aimed at interpreting the visual world, and developing skills to analyze films…
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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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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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Super Landscapes, Super Sports
As a form of play, sports are deeply embedded in human nature and culture. Throughout history, sports have had considerable impact on…
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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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Bavarian Rococo: Heterotopias
This is both a history / theory seminar and a course in contemporary design technique. Its point of departure is the observation…
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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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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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Andrea Palladio: Innovative Learning Experience
Howard Burns, Guido Beltramini
The two most eminent scholars of the architecture of Andrea Palladio, Guido Beltramini and Howard Burns of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea…
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Urban Tactics on the Arabian Peninsula
Celebrated as loudly as they are condemned, cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha of the Arabian Peninsula are sites for critical…
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Materiality, Visual Culture, and Media (at VES)
What is the place of materiality in our visual age of rapidly changing materials and media? How is it fashioned in the arts, architecture and…
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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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Conservation, Destruction, and Curating Impermanence
This seminar on critical conservation aims to develop concepts and strategies able to describe and curate the transitory and dynamic nature of…
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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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The Texts of the Modern: In Search of a New Narrative
This two-unit lecture course is a continuation of Professor Moneo’s spring 2017 offering, 3367: “Today's Architects' Ambitions: In Search of a New…
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Rotterdam Study Abroad Seminar: Architecture, Urbanism, and Agriculture
In order to stimulate the research on the Countryside, the course will investigate the relationship between architecture and agriculture, both in history and today. While…
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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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Urbanization and International Development
This course brings together two fields of specialization that are central to planners keen on working in international contexts: i) the field…
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Towns and Settlements in Metropolitan Regions
As cities expand into metropolitan regions they inevitably push up against, produce, otherwise engage, and sometimes engulf already established settlements on their…
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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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Energetics of Urbanization
Two significant discourses on energy and urbanization are converging, with increasingly parallel questions and concerns. First, a discourse on extended urbanization…
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Community Development: Past, Present, and Future
This course provides a critical overview of conceptual and applied approaches to community development. It examines evolving patterns and drivers of urban…
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Urban Transportation Planning and Implementation
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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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)
Stephanie Kayden, Daniel Maxwell
This course offers practical training in the complex issues and field skills needed to engage in humanitarian work. Students will gain familiarity with the…
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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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Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Developing World
This course starts from the premise that urban politics and governance arrangements shape the definition, form and practice of planning and therefore…
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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
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
Jill Desimini, Alistair McIntosh
Landscape Technology as Design: Materials, Tectonics and Time The course topics are: The enduring concepts of design development in landscape architecture that…
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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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Survey of Energy Technology (at SEAS)
Principles governing energy generation and interconversion. Current and projected world energy use. Selected important current and anticipated future technologies for energy generation, interconversion, storage, and…
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Innovative Construction in Japan
Modern Japanese architecture has been much admired in the West for its attention to materials, its refined construction details, and its ability…
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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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Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation
Maps do not represent reality, they create it. As a fundamental part of the design process, the act of mapping results in highly authored views…
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Water, Land-Water Linkages, and Aquatic Ecology
Timothy Dekker, Nicholas Nelson
This course will provide students with an understanding of water that will inform their professional approaches to landscape architecture, architecture, and planning,…
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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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Analytic Geometries, Descriptive Geometries: Thinking and Making
George L. Legendre, Cameron Wu
At a time when design software and numerically-controlled fabrication are becoming ubiquitous and commonplace, this lecture-workshop lays the technical and conceptual…
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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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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
Topics Covered: The conceptual, expressive and practical roles of structure and structural understanding in the design and making of works of landscape…
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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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Optimizing Facade Performance: A Deep Dive on Design Decisions
Building envelopes are at the intersection of design, performance, and occupant experience in architectural design. Façades influence many aspects of building performance…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society II
Woodward Yang, Antoine Picon, Sai Balakrishnan, Diane Davis, Ali Malkawi
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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Practices of Landscape Architecture
Niall Kirkwood, Karen Janosky, Thomas Ryan
This course examines landscape architecture practice through the consideration of contemporary frameworks for professional services, the legal and financial contexts in which they operate, and…
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Scenes of Design, Development, and Disaster
The architect’s arrival on the scene – like that of the hero, the movie star, and the forensic technician – is an…
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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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Housing Tropes* and the Role of Design
This course will focus on conceptualizing the role of design and the agency of architecture and planning in the process of housing…
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Beyond Reconstruction: Mexico and the 2017 Earthquakes
In September of 2017 Mexico experienced a serious of devastating earthquakes affecting not only Mexico City but also several states in the…
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Miami Resilience: Affordability and Health
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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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Sai Balakrishnan, Martin Bechthold, Daniel D’Oca, Craig Douglas, Kiel Moe, Charles Waldheim, Ewa Harabasz, Allen Sayegh, Christopher Herbert, Michael Hooper, Alistair McIntosh, Joan Busquets, Diane Davis, Sonja Dümpelmann, Stephen Gray, Jock Herron, Oana Stanescu, Megan Panzano, Peter Rowe, John Peterson, Andres Sevtsuk, Christine Smith, Andrew Holder, Jennifer Bonner, Abby Spinak, Andrew Witt, Chris Reed, Tomás dePaor, Jesse M. Keenan, Rafael Moneo, Susan Snyder, Edward Eigen, Jon Lott, Jonathan Grinham, Preston Scott Cohen, Bing Wang, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Ray Torto
Students may take a maximum of 8 units with different GSD instructors in this course series. 9201 must be taken for either 2, or 4…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree MArch
The Thesis Program encourages students to take advantage of the wide range of resources and research initiatives of the Graduate School of Design and its…
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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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MDES Open Project II
“Open Projects” is a two-semester course sequence for second year MDes students. As the graduating requirement for students enrolled in the 4-Semester Track of the…
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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, Woodward Yang, 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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Independent Study by Candidates for Doctoral Degrees
Diane Davis, Peter Rowe, K. Michael Hays, Eve Blau, Alex Krieger, Jock Herron
9502 must be taken for either 2, or 4 units. Under faculty guidance, the student conducts an independent reading program and formulates a thesis proposal.
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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Martin Bechthold, Mohsen Mostafavi, Neil Brenner, Richard Peiser, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Iñaki Abalos, Martin Bechthold, Anita Berrizbeitia, Neil Brenner, Diane Davis, Ali Malkawi, Richard Peiser, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe, Charles Waldheim
Thesis extension in satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Research Methods in Landscape Architecture
This seminar offers an overview of various types and practices of research methodology in contemporary landscape architecture. Central to the ambitions of the course is…
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What is a Thesis? Conversations on Means and Methods of the Thesis Project
How does one frame the architectural problem? How does one begin the thesis project? This proseminar provides a platform for students to workshop and develop…
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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 II
K. Michael Hays, Catherine Ingraham
This seminar is designed as an introduction to some of the major critical approaches and methodologies that have shaped the history and theory of the…