Spring Archives

Public and Private Development

Cities are developed by a complex blend of public and private actors and actions. This course employs a combination of lectures, discussions, readings, case studies, and individual and group exercises to help students understand, evaluate, and implement public and private development. The course commences with instruction about core analytic methods, emphasizing real estate financial analysis while also addressing modified cost-benefit, economic impact, and fiscal impact analyses. Early classes also explore legal, institutional, administrative, political, and ethical contextual frameworks. Together, the analytic methods and contextual frameworks allow for elaboration of decision rules about thoughtful balances in the deployment of public and private resources. The remainder of the course covers specific implementation tools including, among others, public subsidies, public land disposition through sale or lease, public land acquisition through eminent domain, value capture mechanisms, community benefits agreements, and business improvement districts. The goal of the course is to foster reflective practitioners, whether planners, designers, developers, public policymakers, or advocates, who think critically and pragmatically as they navigate the trade-offs inherent in public-private city building. Note that most of the implementation tools and examples explored in the course are drawn from United States practice, but international tools and examples are introduced from time to time to demonstrate the range of variation.

Jointly Offered Course: HKS SUP-668

This course is limited enrollment. MDes REBE students who select the course first in the limited enrollment course lottery will receive priority in the lottery.

Ecosystem restoration

Given the current speed of habitat and species loss caused by human development, the restoration of degraded ecosystem is one of the greatest challenges humankind is facing. For this reason, the United Nations declared the current decade (2021-2030) as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. This global effort will need from experts on ecosystem science, management and design to have a deep understanding of how ecosystems recover from human disturbance and how we can use this knowledge to increase the currently limited performance of restoration practice. This course is particularly suited for students with interests in nature conservation, the natural component of landscape architecture, or ecosystem management in a broad sense. This course is cross-listed with the Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology, which will allow students from both disciplines to exchange their knowledge in a multidirectional learning environment where we all will address real world restoration cases. In this year’s edition, we will focus on the restoration of New England’s ecosystems. We will work in parallel to an ongoing research project to understand the recovery of New England’s ecosystem over the last 300 years since the abandonment of most of the farms created by the original settlers. Through research, we will learn how forests and other ecosystems have changed during this time to apply that knowledge to a real restoration project that students will develop. We will have key inputs from guest lectures coming from restoration companies with many years of experience restoring ecosystems worldwide. They will help us find targeted tools to support and design ecosystems both in urban and natural environments in the New England context. We will increase our understanding of what nature is for humans and the Earth system and will increase our connection to it through self-guided field trips. At least, one previous course in ecology or a similar topic is required. This course will arm you with one of the most important tools to work with and for nature in the coming decades.

Course structure: We will meet once a week on Friday at 8 am for two hours. The main structure of the course is divided into two main parts. The first part will be a discussion about the readings that will be assigned, which will focus on gaining a scientific and practical understanding of restoration. The second part will focus on case study analysis and a restoration project developed by students’ teams. Additionally, we will have guest lecturers from restoration companies and the academia and self-guided field trips to local restoration efforts in students’ residence areas.

?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.

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

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.

Application Deadlines

Inaugural Experimental Postdoctoral Fellows at the GSD Research Health, Wellness, and Sustainable Materials

GSD Faculty Appointed to Emma Bloomberg Chairs

Harvard Faculty and Alumni Among Winners of 40 Under 40 North America

Practicing Growth in a Finite World: An Ethics Of Patience and Pragmatism

GSD Students Curate Archives on Black Designers and Landscapes

Designers of Mountain and Water: Alternative Landscapes for a Changing Climate

Public Programs

GSD Alumni Council 2025 Newsletter

Financial Aid Deadlines