Spring Archives

Informal Robotics / New Paradigms for Design & Construction

This course teaches how to create original robotic devices made of light, compliant – informal – materials.

New fabrication techniques are transforming the field of robotics. Rather than rigid parts connected by mechanical connectors, robots can now be made of folded paper, carbon laminates or soft gels. They can be formed fully integrated from a 3D printer rather than assembled from individual components. Informal Robotics draws on cutting-edge research from leading labs, in particular, Harvard’s Micro Robotics Laboratory which has created unique designs for ambulatory and flying robots, end-effectors, medical instruments and other applications.

We will explore informal robotics from multiple perspectives, culminating with the design of original devices displaying animated intelligence in real-time. Going beyond traditional engineering approaches, we will also explore new opportunities for design at the product, architectural, and urban scales.

Techniques:
Hands-on: Working with the GSD’s Fab Lab we are creating a kit of parts that will be available to all enrolled students. With the kit, you can create a wide range of folding mechanisms controlled by on-board miniature electronics.

Software / Simulation: Software workshops will be offered on Fusion 360 and Grasshopper to simulate robotic performance within a virtual environment.

Topics:
– Kinematics: design techniques for pop-ups, origami, and soft mechanisms.
– Fabrication: methods: for composite materials, laminated assembly, self-folding, and integrated flexures – the kit of parts will allow for hands-on exploration.
– Controls: how to actuate movement and program desired behavior. Topics include servos, linear actuators, and use of Arduino actuator control.
– Applications: takes us beyond purely technological concerns, contextualizing Informal Robotics within larger trends where materials, manufacturing and computation are starting to merge.

Format, prerequisites, evaluation:

A portion of the lecture material will be pre-recorded, allowing students to view this on their own schedule. The class session will emphasize discussion and review of assignments & projects.

There will be assignments to produce test mechanisms and CAD models, followed by final group projects. Presentations and discussions of ongoing student work are integral to the course. There are no prerequisites and evaluation will be based on completion of assignments and the final project.

Projects may be virtual, physical or both. Resources for fabricating customized final projects are not fully known at this point, but I am committed to supporting physical-making to the degree possible.

Jointly Offered Course: SEAS ES256

?Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez.

Nano Micro Macro: Adaptive Material Laboratory (with SEAS)

This course is an interdisciplinary platform for designers, engineers, and scientists to interact and develop innovative new products. The course introduces ideas-to-innovation processes in a hands-on, project/product-focused manner that balances design and engineering concepts with promising, real-world opportunities. Switching back and forth between guided discovery and focused development, between bottom-up and top-down thinking, and market analyses, the course helps students establish generalizable frameworks as researchers and innovators with a focus on new and emerging technologies.

Online teaching: The two-hour meeting time will be split into two periods. One-hour will be dedicated to synchronous lectures. One-hour will be dedicated to flexible-synchronous lab sections. An additional one-hour of asynchronous pre-recorded instruction will be provided on fabrication and testing methods, finite element analysis, and other software. Students will design, fabricate, and test novel material prototypes. However, all fabrication and testing will be completed by the teaching staff at the SEAS lab.

Note: For MDE students, this course can satisfy a GSD course requirement by enrolling in SCI 6477, or a SEAS course requirement by enrolling in ES 291. However, it cannot simultaneously satisfy both requirements.

Prerequisites: None.

Structures in Landscape Architecture, Joint & Detail

This seminar/workshop explores how to design and make landscapes that are rationally constructed and expressively convincing. This search is focused through the lens of structural understanding. Members of the class will explore how structural principles are translated through techniques of three-dimensional drawing into practical and expressive made landscapes.

Topics
1. A visual understanding of structural principles.
2. Constructive drawing – haptic three-dimensional thinking.
3. How the structural diagrams of landscape elements are translated into a material/detail language.
4. Case studies of historical and contemporary structures.

Course Objectives and Outcomes
Each student will:
1. Understand structural principals.
2. Understand structurally based, three-dimensional detail design.
3. Develop a personal practice of detail design that translates structural understanding into a material, made reality.

Method of Evaluation
1. Participation in weekly discussion groups.
2. Successful completion of in class workshop assignments.
3. Successful completion of a final project assignment.

Prerequisites
No prerequisites. Class is open to all students in all departments.

Weekly Course Format
1.  One hour of asynchronous class time: pre-recorded lecture (30 min), case study (30 min). These talks will be available on the course canvas site at the beginning of the semester. Prior to each weekly synchronous class students will review the appropriate talks in their own time.
2.  One hour of synchronous class time: breakout room lecture discussion (30 min), case study (30 min).
3.  One hour of synchronous class time: workshop practice in breakout rooms.

The asynchronous lectures address the core concepts of this course. Prior familiarity with this material via asynchronous study will prepare the participants for the synchronous discussion about the topic. The case studies describe the application of these core concepts to landscape making.

As an elective seminar/workshop the class will pursue mastery of the making of landscapes.

The workshop sessions are synchronous applications of the practice of landscape design informed by an understanding of structural principles. The focus is how to make landscapes that embody ideas.

Re-Wilding Harvard

This is a year-long class on rewilding, returning a habitat to an earlier form. Students in this course will research historical and cultural definitions of wilderness and landscape, identify what precolonialist habitats were like in New England, survey how such places have been and might be restored, and then we will rewild part of Harvard. The class is open to both graduate students and undergraduates in a broad and relevant range of disciplines. The course will be co-taught by faculty from the GSD and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at FAS.

Note: GSD students enrolling in this year-long course must complete both terms of this course (parts A and B) within the same academic year in order to receive credit and a grade in the spring term.

Enactive Design: Creative Applications through Concurrent Human-Machine Interaction

Enactive Design is an advanced research seminar on human-computer interaction. We will explore the role of real-time, bidirectional communication between human and digital agents in a design context, and leverage the potentials of this interactive relationship to establish new creative domains.

Digital interfaces provide computational frameworks for creative exploration in disciplines such as architecture, design and art. However, in many instances, such as traditional computer-aided design (CAD) software or numerically-controlled (CNC) machines, the computer is subservient to the orders of its human counterpart. While this model might be a convenient human-machine relationship for production-oriented scenarios, in the case of design environments, a higher degree of machine agency could be desired, as it may generate new models of creative exploration and design through human-computer collaboration.

Our investigation is inspired by the concept of Enactivism, a philosophy which argues that cognition arises from the interactions of an agent and its context. Rather than an abstract intangible, knowledge and learning on an agent are created from purposeful, situated and embodied interaction with its context. Translated to design environments, what would it mean to create with tools that have a certain degree of agency of their own? How would that inform and expand our creativity? What kind of opportunities may arise from designing as a conversation rather than an imposition? Can design be conceived as the human curation of the suggestions of an artificial intelligence? How can the power and precision of fabrication machines be amplified by the decision-making capacity of humans-on-the-loop? Are these new forms of collaborative art?

We will address these questions, and many others, through the design of concurrent human-machine interactive platforms, with a particular focus on the computational aspects of the system. The course will be conducted through a series of lectures, readings, discussions and hands-on workshops. Participants will learn techniques such as applied machine learning, robotic control, physical sensing, network communication, interactive fabrication and asynchronous programming. Exercises will experiment with real-time communication between human and digital agents, leading to a semester-long personal project.

The course will be taught fully online, with two weekly 1.5h sessions. One of them will focus on theory and discussion, and it is recommended to be attended synchronously, while the other will be more hands-on based and async-friendly. All meetings will be recorded and made available offline. Participants should anticipate spending around $200 in prototyping material and digital subscriptions.

Prerequisites: Demonstrated experience in computer programming via GSD6338, CS50 or similar. Students should also have reasonable proficiency with Rhinoceros/Grasshopper. If you are not sure if you satisfy these requirements, please contact the instructor directly.

Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation

Maps both represent reality and create it. It is in the context of this contention that this course presents the fundamentals of mapping, spatial analysis, and visualization. In a design process, the act of mapping selectively narrates site conditions. By choosing what features, forces, and flows to highlight—and which to exclude—the designer creates the reality in which their intervention will be situated. This is only becoming more true, as urban space and populations are ever-more pervasively measured, monitored, and categorized by innumerable institutions. Such representations are often a designer’s primary means of responding to a site. Designers are in the difficult position of approaching spatial datasets critically and as sites of contestation while also employing them in their work.

Over the course of a semester, students will work extensively with techniques of spatial analysis. Using desktop GIS software, we will explore data sources, data models, overlays, map algebra, spatial statistics, terrain analysis, and suitability modeling, among other techniques of spatial representation. Students will learn to embed these techniques, recursively, within larger design workflows. Lastly, a portion of the semester will be devoted to visualizing spatial data, programmatically, using the Processing language.

Course format: The course will combine workshops showcasing techniques, and lectures that place these in conversation with design and other forms of spatial inquiry. Students will complete short exercises and reading assignments, as well as two larger projects in which students will deploy mapping techniques to further their own research.

Each week, the two course sessions – in many weeks, a lab and a lecture – will be held synchronously, and students will be encouraged to attend when possible. However, recordings of all sessions will be made available for students who are unable to join synchronously. Furthermore, the instructor, the student TAs and the course TF will be scheduling office hours intentionally to ensure that even those who cannot join class sessions have ample opportunities for face-to-face virtual instruction

Prerequisites: None. No previous experience with GIS is assumed. Familiarity with standard modeling and visual design software is preferred.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez.

Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies IV

This lecture/workshop class addresses the relationships between landscape design conceptualization, material properties and technologies of making. The class introduces the practices of design development and construction documentation. These practices enable students to “work out” the materiality and making of their conceptual landscape speculations and document them for construction.

Topics
1. Using the diagnostic section and isometric as instruments of analysis, and design development.
2. Learning from examples of the existing made landscape using reverse engineering.
3. The nature of materials and means of construction.
4. Weathering and durability and the meaning of landscapes.
5. Construction documentation and specification.

Course Objectives and Outcomes
Each student will:
1. Understand practices of design development and detail design and how these practices shape the meaning of a landscape.
2. Be able to develop a schematic concept into a constructed material proposal in their studio work and later in professional practice.
3. Understand and practice how a developed design proposal is documented for construction.

Method of Evaluation
1. Weekly class participation in discussion groups.
2. Successful completion of workshop assignments.
3. Successful completion of the final project assignment.

Prerequisites
Required course for MLA 1 – 4 & MLA 1 – AP

Weekly Course Format
1.  One hour of asynchronous class time: pre-recorded lecture (20 min), case study or virtual field trip (20 min) and landscape detail primer topic (20min). These talks will be available on the course canvas site at the beginning of the semester. Prior to each weekly synchronous class students will review the appropriate talks in their own time.
2.  One hour of synchronous class time: breakout room discussions of weekly lecture (20 min), case study or virtual field trip (20 min) and detail primer topic (20min).
3.  One hour of synchronous class time: detail design workshop practice in breakout rooms.

The workshop sessions are synchronous applications of the practice of detail design and documentation in collaboration with the instructor.

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 first. The course continues with the analysis and design of cables, columns, beams, and trusses. The structural design of steel follows, culminating in the consideration of building systems design. The quantitative understanding of interior forces, bending moments, stresses, and deformations are an integral part of the learning process throughout the course. Students are expected to have completed all prerequisites in math and physics.

Objectives:

– Provide an understanding of the behavior of structural systems
– Introduce basic structural engineering concepts and simple calculations applicable in the early stages of the design process in order to select and size the most appropriate structural systems
– Teach the engineering language in an effort to improve communication with design colleagues

Topics:

– Statics (equilibrium of loads and force reactions)
– Load Modeling (load types, flow of force, and load calculations)
– Interior Forces (axial, shear, and bending moment diagrams)
– Mechanics of Materials (stress, strain, elasticity, thermal considerations)
– Analysis and Design of Columns (slender v. compact column design)
– Analysis and Design of Hanging Cables
– Analysis and Design of Arches (funicularity)
– Analysis and Design of 2D Trusses (method of joints, method of sections)
– Analysis and Design of Beams (flexural stress, cross-sectional properties)
– Steel Design (allowable stress design, ultimate limit state design, yield stress)
– Building System Design

We will be placing a copy of “Structures” (7th Edition): Daniel Schodek, Martin Bechthold on reserve in the Loeb Library. This text is NOT a course requirement but will be on reserve as a reference for those seeking additional background information on course topics.

Course structure: The course will be delivered through a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning. Tuesday lectures will run 60 minutes and will be recorded. Thursday sessions will run as two-no. 60 minute sessions separated by a 15-minute break. Both of the Thursday sessions will be individually recorded as two separate sessions. Students are expected to attend, and actively participate in, the Tuesday lectures and the first of the two Thursday sessions. Students are welcomed to also attend the second Thursday session, but this is not mandatory. Students will have access to the Tuesday lecture recordings, and to both of the Thursday problem session recordings, for their reference in their own time as they work through the homework assignments and prepare for the quizzes and exams. Attendance is mandatory during all Tuesday lectures and the first of the two sessions each Thursday.

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 and their related technologies: structural, constructional, and environmental. Building on fundamentals covered in GSD 6123: Construction Systems, the course looks in detail at examples of innovative construction techniques in wood, steel, and concrete structures. Building design and construction will be evaluated within the context in which technological innovation takes place by exploring the relationship of the principal project participants, such as designers, contractors, building product manufacturers, and the owner(s). On this, the course will introduce the fundamentals of managing design and construction projects as well as the principal project delivery methods and scheduling techniques. Aspects such as risk management and environmental and social impacts on projects will be introduced, as well as topics related to facilitating innovation and developing talent.

Class meetings concentrate on case studies of recent buildings, which students are expected to study prior to class meetings. Each main course theme will be introduced by a lecture, and certain cases may have participants from the project team as guest speakers. Detail drawings as well as issues of project and construction management are introduced for discussion. Computer applications on structures, construction, environmental control systems, and techniques and decision-making frameworks on managing projects and teams are an integral part of the course.

Prerequisites: GSD 6123, 6125, and 6229, or equivalent.

Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies II

Topography is one of the primary and most powerful elements of landscape architecture, forming a founda-tion for plant growth, habitat, the flow of water and energy, and human experience. This course is dedicat-ed to developing students’ facility in reading the land and manipulating topography and water flow through a variety of representational tools with a focus on plan drawings of contours, slopes and spot elevations, mod-els, and section drawings. Students will learn techniques that cumulatively build toward an ability to resolve difficult grading problems with many layers of complexity.

The course begins with reading the land, geomorphology, and the act of grading and contour manipulation, and then introduces the conventions of grading representation, terminology and communication in the con-struction industry, as well as accessibility codes. The flow of water is inherent in all grading activity, thus we will include techniques used to calculate the amount of water flowing over a site and the various ways that the topography can be manipulated in order to convey, filter, collect or disperse water in order to help im-prove its quality and control water flow emanating from a range of storm events. The case studies and prec-edents presented throughout the course help to illustrate a broad range of approaches to problem solving and the act of sculpting the land.

Learning Objectives
This course focuses on the agency of landform and water flow in the creation and design of landscape. At the end of the course, students will be able to manipulate contours toward a given intention and will under-stand the factors that contribute to stormwater volumes and flows and ways to embrace and incorporate those factors toward a desired design intent.

Pedagogical Structure
Asynchronous, flipped, with in-class workshops: The course is taught as a series of lectures and individual, in-class short-term exercises that focus on core competencies. Most lectures will be recorded in advance and available for asynchronous learning. The course will use a “flipped” classroom approach in which stu-dents will review lectures independently in many cases, and use class time for questions and assistance on the assigned exercises. Select lectures will be live and recorded, or played live, with instructors available to answer questions during the lecture.

2 class sessions per week: Each week will include two class sessions: one dual session attended by both MLA I and MLA I AP students, and one session dedicated to a smaller group of students, per the schedule de-scribed at the beginning of this syllabus. The smaller group sessions will be primarily work sessions on the short-term “techniques” exercises, during which students can request assistance from the instructors. The exercises will require additional out-of-class time in order to complete them.

Digital and hand work: Early core competency exercises are completed by hand, and grading in AutoCAD is introduced during the second week, in order to help provide students with few shifts in media types during the pandemic.

Tools
The following tools should be brought to each class: engineering scale, architect’s scale, calculator, trace, drawing implements, computer. Computer programs incorporated into this course will include: AutoCAD, Excel, Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, InDesign and other graphic programs.

Grade Evaluations
Grades will be based on submitted exercises and participation in class as follows:

In-Class Exercises: 85%
Participation: 15%

Work submitted late will be marked down accordingly. Attendance will be taken in class and absences will be noted.

Course schedule:

– Tuesdays from 9.30 to 10.30 am – all students (MLA1 + MLA1AP)
– Thursdays from 9.30 to 10.30 am – MLA 1 students only
– Friday from 8.30 to 9.30 am – MLA 1AP students only

Application Deadlines

Loeb Fellowship Announces Class of 2026

Malkit Shoshan on Design as an Agent of Change

2025 Graduating Student Profiles

Grafting the Aquarium

The Art in Architecture

Lauren Stimson and Stephen Stimson “restraint + wildness”

Urban Design as a Development Strategy: The Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture Campus
by MASS

Public Programs

Honoring the GSD’s 2025 Unsung Heroes

Financial Aid Deadlines

Application Deadlines