Design Analytics: Predicting Human Spatial Experience

How do we measure human experience in space? Can we predict a design’s impact on human comfort, performance, or preference before it’s built? As environments are increasingly read by machines, through sensors, models, and predictive algorithms, designers need new ways to observe, analyze, and evaluate human spatial experience. Understanding where human and machine perceptions converge and diverge is essential to rethinking spatial experience and design.

Drawing from concepts in architecture, cognitive science, and computer vision, this course explores methods for translating subjective human experience into quantifiable insights. Through lectures, critical readings, and conceptually driven projects, students will investigate human perceptions of scale, depth, attention, and memory, alongside computational techniques such as object detection, classification, and semantic segmentation. These core methods will be complimented with scientific approaches such as eye-tracking and immersive virtual environments, that offer different ways to capture and analyze experience. We will interrogate the limits of both human and computational perspectives and examine what it means to use perception as a design input, an evaluative tool, or even a dataset. Real-world case studies ranging from feedback loops in adaptive buildings to surveillance systems in cities, will ground our discussion of bias, ethics, and the risks of relying on computational technologies to understand and shape environments.

Hands-on experimentation is central to the course. Students will work with pre-trained models and computing tools, learning to collect perceptual survey data, generate visual scores, and apply image-based analysis to explore patterns in human spatial experience. Rather than emphasizing technical development from scratch, the course treats computational systems as design frameworks and materials. Short in-class exercises and two mini take-home assignments will build progressively towards a midterm and final project. The assignments and projects equip students to work critically and creatively at the intersection of human experience, spatial thinking, and emerging technologies.

By the end of the course, students will be able to design, critique, and deploy analytical tools that bridge subjective human experience and objective spatial data, offering new ways to quantify, evaluate, and design environments at the building and urban scales.

There are no prerequisites for the course, and non-GSD students are welcome to attend. Prior programming or image processing experience is welcomed, but not required.

 

The Dream Factory

The Dream Factory explores the art and craft of the interior through the lens of contemporary opera set design. Students will engage with the dynamic interplay of architecture, performance, and storytelling– reimagining the interior for the 21st century and following in the long tradition of artists, architects, and fashion designers contributing to the subject through scenography and atmosphere in set production. Students will develop architecture from the inside out, addressing questions of effect, narrative, and materiality to create immersive, performative spaces that challenge conventional boundaries between architecture and theater.

Central to the course is the design of large-scale interior spaces–spatial environments that are often overlooked or dismissed in architectural discourse. Students will be encouraged to develop a strategy of seeing: learning how to observe, interpret, and respond to the performative and emotional dimensions of space. At large, the course will address a fundamental question in contemporary discourse: how do people inhabit space?
Students will renegotiate the relationship between contemporary architectural practice and the design arts, challenging conventional boundaries between built form and theatricality. The course as a whole will embrace indeterminacy, ultimately arguing for the impossibility of a singular “total image.”

The studio’s approach is relevant to all theatrical genres, but the primary focus will be on the example of set design for opera as it poses unique challenges, specifically how architecture and design can help to engage an audience in a performance that could be perceived as outdated or disconnected from the present. To remain relevant and engage contemporary audiences, theater–particularly opera–must evolve, embracing reinterpretation, desire, and dreaming as central to the practice of architecture. Opera can no longer be simply replicated in its original form; instead, each performance becomes an opportunity for creative reinvention. As a result, opera now offers two simultaneous experiences: the musical presentation of a classical masterpiece and a theatrical reinterpretation shaped by contemporary perspectives.

Students will design innovative large-scale interior spaces that merge traditional techniques with contemporary effects, culminating in projects that capture the emotional and visual essence of theater. The studio will not travel overseas, but rather, will visit performance spaces local to the Boston area where repeat visits are possible and welcome. For theoretical purposes, we will use the Rome Opera House as a departure point, examining how performance spaces adapt over time. Just as productions travel from stage to stage, adjusting to different venues and contexts, student proposals will be conceived as dynamic, adaptable, and responsive spatial systems for the 21st century audience.

More broadly, the course investigates a fundamental question in architectural discourse: why is architecture so often represented solely through its exterior, and what does this reveal about our understanding of interiority? Architects – long accustomed to shaping immersive environments in opera houses, theaters, and film studios- have increasingly been called upon to reimagine theater within our contemporary cultural contexts. Notable examples include Frank Gehry’s stage design for Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Walt Disney Concert Hall, as well as the collaboration between Hussein Chalayan and Zaha Hadid for Così fan tutte.

Students will work individually. The class will include activities such as visits to theaters and performances in the Boston area.
 

Visualization (at SEAS)

This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction principles, visualization tools, and applications, and introduces programming of web-based interactive visualizations. 

Prerequisites: Students are required to have basic programming experience (e.g., Computer Science 50). Web programming experience (HTML, CSS, JS) is a plus.

This course follows the FAS academic schedule. Please reference FAS to see start of term information.

This course meets in Allston at 114 Western Ave, 2111.

 

Innovation in Science and Engineering: Conference Course (at SEAS)

This class integrates perspectives from leading innovators with collaborative practice and theory of innovation to teach and inspire you to be more innovative in your life and career. Our approach is to engage with leaders and learn their perspectives and align this with innovation sprints where you learn the best tools, processes, and methods to innovate. You can see a course overview here https://youtu.be/CqfvXf33TCE.  Find out more information on Instagram @engsci139 or https://www.instagram.com/engsci139/
 
Offered jointly with SEAS as ENG-SCI 139 and ENG-SCI 239. The course will be taught in two sessions per week, each with a different focus. One session will focus on Innovation Perspective and often contain guest lectures by innovators. The second session will focus on Innovation Practice and will contain interactive group work, case studies, and other educational formats about specific innovation ideas and tools. These may be taught on different days or both days, with first-half Perspective and second-half Practice. The course will be held in person. Some classes may be held at alternative times depending on the schedule of guest speakers.

Note that this course follows the FAS academic calendar. See the FAS calendar for information on the first day of classes. 

This course meets in Science Center Hall D 

Building Equitable Cities: Policy Tools for Housing and Community Development (at HKS)

An introduction to policymaking in American cities, focusing on economic, demographic, institutional, and political settings. It examines inclusive and equitable economic development and job growth in the context of metropolitan regions and the emerging “new economy.”  Topics include: federal, state, and local government strategies for expanding community economic development and affordable housing opportunities, equitable transit-oriented development and resiliency. Of special concern is the continuing spatial and racial isolation of low-income populations, especially minority populations, in central-city neighborhoods and how suburbanization of employment, reduction in low-skilled jobs, and racial discrimination combine to limit housing and employment opportunities. Current federal policy such as Opportunity Zones and tax credit initiatives will be examined relative to policy goals of addressing communities that have historically been discriminated both by the public and private sectors.  During the semester, students will complete a brief policy memorandum, and participate in a term-long group project exploring policy options to address an urban problem or issue for a specific city.

THIS COURSE WILL INSTEAD BE OFFERED IN SPRING 2026.

HKS Course Preview Days are September 2-3. See schedule for more information. 

Global Real Estate

Through presentations, case studies and discussions, this course exposes students to key concepts in global cross border real estate investment. These concepts will be understood in the context of performing a “top down” analysis of a country’s macroeconomic and geopolitical overlay (“country risk”) as well as a “bottom up” understanding of risks associated with specific real estate transactions including local real estate industry practices, supply and demand imbalances, the depth of relevant real estate capital markets, and exit strategies.

The course exposes students to a global perspective and explores how government policies affect the interconnected global economy as well as the economies of individual countries including regulation of currency, setting of interest rates, impact of inflation, and nature of cross border capital flows which in turn affect real estate values. Understanding these macroeconomic variables helps students recognize cyclical trends and learn how to find real estate investment opportunities in discrepancies between value and price.

In addition, using the case method, students will be exposed to the process of real estate investment and development in a broad spectrum of property types, including office, residential, industrial, retail, senior housing, data centers, single family rental (SFR), and hospitality on a global basis.

Students should have fluency with real estate financial analysis.

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 9th.

The Weight of Rubble

Juan Fernández González (MArch I ’25)

The Weight of Rubble proposes a structural system to build with rubble from demolished buildings in its granular material form. The project redistributes materials within an urban site through a gravity-powered system of cables and buckets to create a new architecture. A tensile catenary structure, which reimagines the gabion wall, uses the weight of piles of rubble to anchor and stabilize itself.

The construction system takes inspiration from the mining industry’s aerial ropeways, used for transporting granular materials across landscapes. Rather than using such technologies for material extraction, the project argues that they could raise the quality of material waste in urban contexts.

Mexico City’s Plaza Condesa, a performance space damaged by the 2017 earthquake, is transformed into the Theater of Rubble. A light structure aims to create beauty from the remnants of a demolished building, honoring the city’s collective memory. Piles of rubble form the stages’ backdrop, and the first performance is the construction of the theater itself.

Geometric studies, carried out both digitally and physically, explore the properties of granular materials. These materials exhibit self-organized criticality, a property in which stability is continuously restored. Since many buildings begin and end their lives as piles of rubble, The Weight of Rubble questions how architecture could embrace granular materials and their formal language.

Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design

Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.

Digital Production: Design, Materials, Fabrication

Digital design and fabrication technologies have become integral to contemporary design and architectural practice discourse. The translation from design to realization is mediated by a range of tools and processes whose development is informed over time by material properties, skill, technology, and culture. As a whole, these systems are the vehicle by which design teams, manufacturers, installers, and, ultimately, users engage the materiality of architecture and design. Parallel technological developments relating to the way in which things are designed (digital modeling, simulation, generative design, AI, etc.) and the way things are made (automation, computer-controlled equipment including robotics, advanced materials, etc.) have afforded new opportunities and challenges related to the realization of new forms in architecture, part customization, user-centered design, and enhanced building performance.

Within this context, this course will explore the materialization of design as both a technical and a creative endeavor. Special attention will be given to the interplay between digital information and physical artifacts, the opportunities and shortcomings of those translations, and the impact these technologies and outcomes may have on society. Beyond technology for the sake of technology, the course will explore how climate change, destabilized supply chains, and material life cycle considerations have begun to challenge our reliance on singular global material flows in favor of increasingly distributed systems. Further, the class will explore the resonance between particular modes of making and geometrical expression, and how computational design paradigms can further enhance this relationship.

Through lectures, hands-on workshops, and making-centric assignments, students will engage with a range of methods and materials that underpin a foundation in digital fabrication. Guest lectures will highlight how digital technologies are impacting the construction and manufacturing industries across scales and contexts. Through early assignments and a term project, the course is designed to provide hands-on experience with the digital fabrication equipment available in the GSD Fabrication Lab — including CNC mills, 3D printers, 3D scanners, and industrial robotic arms — and is suited for novices and experts across all disciplines. No prerequisites are required, but students are assumed to have a basic competency in 3D modeling (Rhino 3D).

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 2nd. 

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 energy to effective use that was then translated into power objectives and governance schemes for putting the planet to work in service of fossil-fuel empires. Subsequently this defined concepts of labour, society, and the environment through power struggles for vast territories of natural resources, land claims, the growth of economies, and development of urbanised areas.

The now outmoded and failing US electrical network of energy production, distribution, and consumption have shaped the patterns and territorial infrastructure of our urbanized landscapes. This vast infrastructure network describes a complex, dynamic exchange between human beings and the landscape over an extensive period of time. Emerging from these tensions is a thickened ground of multiple heterogeneous parts and networks intertwined with less tangible metabolic and material processes that describe the ‘natures’ of the urbanised landscape through its indeterminable characteristics.

The ubiquitous and relentless exploitation of the earth as a resource for energy production to be plundered and commodified continues to disrupt the deep complex processes of nature leading to major environmental and health ramifications. Consequently racial, social, and economic disparities that are imminently present and inherently linked to the environment are further exacerbated. The climate crisis is symptomatic of this prejudice where the power of a select few humans rises above others and their non-human counterparts, corralled into disciplinary regimes of work valued through distinct economic imperatives.

The seminar reckons with the immediate need to upgrade and expand the US electrical power grid system to meet the demands of growing urban communities and recognizes the obligation to engage with the climate crisis. In it, we envision energy systems that inherently hold a capacity for adaptation and simultaneously serve as the formative catalyst of the urban landscape.

The seminar introduces and explores new value systems for the environment and alternative definitions of power, work, and energy to tackle this complex systemic suite of crises. This project-based seminar is structured around two phases; Phase One: Energy and Power and Phase Two: Energy and Ecology, . The teaching and learning schedule includes a series of guest lectures focused on articulating the relationship between the different positions and definitions of energy and the implications of their territorial and spatial formations.  A range of critical mapping and representation techniques will be explored in order to generate an understanding and future speculations of a thickened ground of energy. The aim is to question who are the actors and agencies involved, what are the forms of governance, their territorial demarcations and land use,  ecosystems, historical events and material flows and processes that determine the shape of the ever evolving form of ground and its planetary effects.