Courses
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First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT
Cameron Wu, Sean Canty, Jenny French, Zeina Koreitem, Andrew Plumb
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
Silvia Benedito, Danielle Choi, Francesca Benedetto, Gareth Doherty, Emily Wettstein, Alistair McIntosh
This studio course problematizes issues of orientation and experience, scale and pattern, topographic form, climatic and vegetative influences, and varied ecological processes that help define…
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First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Sai Balakrishnan, David Gamble, Ana Gelabert-Sanchez, Lily Song
The first semester core studio of the Master in Urban Planning program introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and technical skills used by urban planners…
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Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE
Eric Howeler, Jon Lott, John May, Kiel Moe, Oana Stanescu, Belinda Tato
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…
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Landscape Architecture III: Third Semester Core Studio
Jill Desimini, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Craig Douglas, Rosalea Monacella, Pablo Perez-Ramos
This studio aims to conceptualize and articulate the adaptive city, the city in a state of flux as it responds to changing environmental, programmatic, market,…
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Elements of Urban Design
Felipe Correa, Anita Berrizbeitia, Stephen Gray, Clayton Strange, Robert Pietrusko, Michael Manfredi, Richard Sennett
Elements of Urban Design is an advanced core studio for the post professional programs in urban design. This studio introduces critical concepts, strategies and technical…
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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio I (with SEAS)
Fawwaz Habbal, Andrew Witt, Jock Herron
The aim of the inaugural, two-semester Collaborative Design Engineering studio is to apply multi-disciplinary design thinking to a complex system that matters. Opaque, omnipresent, reflexive,…
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Rotterdam Study Abroad Studio Option
This studio is taking place in Rotterdam in the fall term. Student enrollment is determined by early lottery.
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Tokyo Study Abroad Studio Option
This studio is taking place in Tokyo in the fall term. Student enrollment is determined by early lottery.
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Visual Studies: Architectural Representation – Origins + Originality
The course objective is to develop and improve students’ skills in freehand drawing based on direct observation, and to encourage them to incorporate drawing into…
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Projective Representation in Architecture
This course examines the history, theory and practice of parallel (orthographic) and central (perspective) projection. The objective is to provide the tools to imagine and…
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Spatial Analysis and the Built Environment
Urban planners engage in many complex processes that defy easy representation. This course provides first-semester urban planning students with the graphic and technical skills needed…
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Landscape Representation I
This course introduces students to the history, techniques, and conventions of representation used in the field of landscape architecture. The primary objective of the course…
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Landscape Representation III: Landform and Ecological Process
Landscape Representation III examines the fundamental relationship between terrain and the landscapes it supports and engenders. This examination will be developed through methods of associative…
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Communication for Designers
“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings. In the end the communicator will be confronted…
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Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf-life in the Supermarket Landscape
The supermarket shelf is a highly volatile, hyper-competitive space. On this shelf products struggle to maximize every possible advantage, all in a…
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Drawing for Designers: Technics of Expression, Articulation and Representation
The course objective is to advance students' visual skills in artistic representation and creative imagination through drawing. Drawing projects will focus on…
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Immersive Landscape: Representation through Gaming Technology
The course is aimed at investigating new ways to interpret, conceive and describe landscape. While traditional methods of representation will prevail for some time, they…
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Public Projection: Projection as a Tool for Expression and Communication in Public Space
The class will focus on development of original projection projects that can inspire and facilitate individual and group expression and cultural communication…
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Art, Design and the Public Domain Proseminar
This seminar is intended to serve as an important research, discussion and presentation forum, information resource and a critical laboratory for further development of GSD’s…
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Theories of Landscape as Urbanism, Landscape as Infrastructure: Paradigms, Practices, Prospects
Responding to contemporary urban patterns, ecological pressures and decaying infrastructures, this course brings together a series of influential thinkers and researchers from the design commons…
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Teaching Techniques
The course examines foundations for contemporary architectural design pedagogy according to several broad themes — spatial, programmatic, material, structural, technological – defined in dialectical terms…
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Conservation of Older Buildings: Techniques and Technics
This course will teach the understanding of existing building form and fabric and how to conserve them. Where does one even start…
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Culture, Conservation and Design
This proseminar addresses issues of Critical Conservation, an evolving discipline that illuminates the bridge between Cultural Meaning, Identity and Context as part…
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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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Field Methods and Living Collections
Confronting the reality of environmental degradation requires more than remote sensing, statistical analysis or institutional restructuring. As images of the changing planet…
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An Unsentimental Look at Architecture and Social Craft
Designers of the built environment have had an on-again/off-again relationship with social agency. Progressive design and social outcomes were closely linked in early modernism. However,…
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Material, Atmosphere and Ambience
The seminar introduces understanding of atmosphere and ambience in the discourse of material practice in architecture. The materials are contextual and cultural…
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Countryside Futurism: Rotterdam Study Abroad Seminar
The crisis of the city and the return of rural Utopias: Metropolitan centers have become ruralized. It is the militant spirit of the inner city…
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Studies of the Built North American Environment: 1580 to the Present
North America as an evolving visual environment is analyzed as a systems concatenation involving such constituent elements as farms, small towns, shopping…
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History and Theory of Urban Interventions
This class provides a high-intensity introduction the history and theory of urban planning practice under modern capitalism. Building upon an interdisciplinary literature drawn from planning…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts I
This course is structured as a dialogue between the historical and theoretical frameworks that have shaped the formulation of architectural principles – what the architectural…
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Histories of Landscape Architecture I: Textuality and the Practice of Landscape Architecture
Note, the first meeting on Wednesday, August 31, will take place in Stubbins, room 112, rather than Piper Auditorium. This course introduces students to 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…
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Urbanization in the East Asian Region
This course meets for the first time on Monday, September 12th. The purpose of this lecture course is to provide an…
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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…
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Signal, Image, Architecture. Design After Orthography
We labor over surfaces. We expend our energy pushing things across surfaces, and those surfaces constitute for us a kind of substrate…
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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 Kenz? Tange (1913–2005) on the…
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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 its Texts (1650-1800)
This seminar focuses on a selection of important architectural writings from the late 17th and 18th centuries, with the aim of exploring the connections between…
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Countryside versus Cityside: A Seminar in Environmental History (Rotterdam Study Abroad Seminar)
This Course is for students in the Rotterdam Study Abroad Program. Investigating the countryside, as architects, requires a zooming out of the city…
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Real Estate Finance and Development
Richard Peiser, David Hamilton
This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate finance and development. Lectures and case studies introduce students to the full range of…
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Land Use and Environmental Law
As a scarce and necessary resource, land triggers competition and conflict over possession, use, development, and preservation. For privately owned land, the market manages much…
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Cities by Design I
Rahul Mehrotra, Peter Rowe, Jerold Kayden, Alex Krieger, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
Cities by Design I is concerned with in-depth longitudinal examination of urban conditions in and among selected cities in the world. The…
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Field Studies in Real Estate, Planning, and Urban Design: Seattle, WA and Boston
The Field Study course is designed to provide students an understanding of the dynamics and complexities of reality that create contemporary urban physical environments. The…
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Policy Making in Urban Settings (at HKS)
An introduction to policymaking in American cities, focusing on economic, demographic, institutional, and political settings. It examines economic development and job growth in the context…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Quantitative
This course introduces students to quantitative analysis and research methods. The course begins with a discussion of how quantitative methods fit within the broader research…
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Analytic Methods: Qualitative
How can planners understand places in a rich, meaningful, and yet systematic way? This module examines how qualitative approaches can be used…
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Transportation Policy and Planning (at HKS)
Provides an overview of the issues involved in transportation policy and planning, as well as an introduction to the skills necessary for solving the various…
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Housing and Urbanization in the United States
James Stockard, Jennifer Molinsky
This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those…
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Healthy Places
The connections between health, well-being, and place are a complex. This class focuses on four topics that will be important in coming…
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Economic Development in Urban Planning
Course Objectives and Outcomes This course introduces students to the theories, analytic frameworks and financial tools used to encourage local economic development in the…
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Sustainable Real Estate
This introductory course surveys the historical foundations, economic logics and underlying physics that underscore the design, development and operations of sustainable buildings.
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Environment, Politics, and Action
What is the relationship between the natural environment and the design of successful places? How do we know? And how can we mobilize these ideas…
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Global Leadership in Real Estate and Design
In today’s increasingly connected urban centers, shifts in cultural preferences, design thinking, and spatial significations often reflect and parallel transitions in capital forces and economic…
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The Spatial Politics of Land: A Comparative Perspective
This course focuses on the deeply contested and political processes of land-use planning, i.e. of allocating land amongst different, often competing uses,…
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There Goes the Neighborhood: Perceptions and Realities of Neighborhoods and Neighborhood Change
Gentrification and the real and perceived impacts this form of neighborhood change has on longtime local residents (typically black folks) as well as new dwellers,…
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Real Estate Finance and Development Fundamentals for Public and Private Participants (at HKS)
Provides an analytical framework for understanding real estate finance and development fundamentals from both public and private perspectives. Topics addressed include: establishing investment/development objectives; structuring…
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Public Space
In an age of digital empire, people will reflect on 2011 as the year in which physical public space reclaimed its lofty status in the public sphere.
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Tokyo Study Abroad Seminar: Tokyo on a Crossroads
Factors driving Tokyo’s urban mutation are beginning to change and becoming complex after the long period of economic growth. While it’s busy trying to fulfill…
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Construction Systems
This course introduces a framework to know the instantiation of architecture through construction systems. Construction systems will be discovered through the methods of dissection, drawing,…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies I
Matthew Urbanski, Rosetta S. Elkin
Recognizing that plants are one of the essential mediums of landscape architecture, this class seeks to introduce the student to two basic relationships; the relationship…
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Structural Design 2
This course is a continuation of GSD 6227 and, after an overview/reminder introduction, furthers understanding of more developed structural systems and materials in architectural design.
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies III: Ecology and the Design World
Fall term, four units, required for both MLA 1 and MLA AP students taking the third LA core-studio. Ecological Principles for Design (Steven Handel). The…
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Material Systems: Digital Design and Fabrication
Note, this course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 6th. It will not meet on Thursday, August…
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Changing Natural and Built Coastal Environments
Steven Apfelbaum, Katharine Parsons
This course will examine natural and anthropogenic processes affecting the coastal zone and nearshore environment. Ecological principles and their application to design…
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Introduction to Computational Design
Panagiotis Michalatos, Sawako Kaijima
This is an introductory course to computational design and the prerequisite for a spring course that deals with more advanced topics in…
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Mapping II: Geosimulation
This advanced lecture course is a continuation of GSD6322 Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation. In Mapping II, students will learn the theories…
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Forms of Energy: Nonmodern
The fall 2017 Forms of Energy focuses on Nonmodern Forms of Energy and Design. Nonmodern refers to those forms and formations of energy that are…
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Hybrid Formations: Interdisciplinary Design
“How much does your building weigh?” This question was posed to Lord Norman Foster by Buckminster Fuller after he visited the Sainsbury…
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Nano Micro Macro: Adaptive Material Laboratory (with SEAS)
Salmaan Craig, Joanna Aizenberg
Recent developments in material science embrace ever smaller scales of investigation, moving the frontier of innovation into the nano-scale with its novel…
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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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Tokyo Study Abroad Seminar on Structure and Material in Japan
This seminar consists of lectures, site visits, and hands on experience on materials of traditional Japanese crafts in relation to architecture and built environment. Lectures…
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Foundations of Practice
Jeffry Burchard, Jesse M. Keenan
This course, for students in the M.Arch I program, examines basic issues arising in contemporary architectural practice. The course…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society I
Woodward Yang, Diane Davis, Martin Bechthold, Toshiko Mori, Robert Silman
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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Frameworks of Contemporary Practice
Purpose of the course: 1. Examine architecture through the optics of the Discipline, Profession and Practice — the issues of knowledge domains,…
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Innovation in Project Delivery
Project delivery – the organizational, legal and economic arrangements by which society produces its built environment – has undergone a radical transformation…
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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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Ecology, Infrastructure, Power
Extraction redefines our understanding of urbanism in the 21st century. If everything we build comes from the ground, then extraction is the process and practice…
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Ecological Urbanism Field Research Seminar in China (summer course)
This summer field research seminar will offer an overview of ecological urbanism within a Chinese context. Integrating theory with practice and speculation, students will build…
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Emergent Urbanism: Design Visions for the city of Hermosillo, Mexico (Project Based Class)
This project-based class focuses on the planning and design of sustainable strategies for cities in the developing world, using the city of Hermosillo in northern…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
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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Preparation for Independent Thesis Proposal for MUP, MAUD, or MLAUD
This seminar is intended to provide the theoretical and methodological foundation for completing a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. By…
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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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MDes Open Project 1
“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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Preparation of Design Thesis Proposal for Master in Landscape Architecture
This weekly seminar is required for MLA candidates electing to pursue a design thesis. The intent is to define the parameters of the design thesis…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Doctoral Degrees
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, Anita Berrizbeitia, Neil Brenner, Joan Busquets, Ali Malkawi, Peter Rowe, Charles Waldheim
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, Jerold Kayden, Ali Malkawi, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe, A. Hashim Sarkis, Charles Waldheim
Thesis extension in satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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MArch II Proseminar
Jorge Silvetti, Jennifer Bonner
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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Urban Design Proseminar
The proseminar is a forum for conversation on contemporary urban design. It is structured around three overlapping discussions: the formation of the discipline,…
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Proseminar in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology
This proseminar introduces MLA II and MDes Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology (ULE) students to a range of disciplinary theories and methods. As design becomes ever more…
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Doctoral Program Proseminar
This pro-seminar is one way of fulfilling a requirement for successful completion of the Doctor of Design program. Primarily, it will focus on various thematic…