Creating Environmental Markets

There is a way out of the climate box we have created, though resistance to the necessary ecological transformation remains intense. Sunk investments in existing infrastructure, broadly accepted design and economic theory, and the lifelong operations employment it has provided make the foundation of such resistance. Creating Environmental Markets will examine alternative capital markets based in regulatory requirements but offering opportunities to use credit trades and new approaches to old systems to restore ecology while providing economic incentives and jobs.

The climate problems we once anticipated have become a connected series of current crises: intense heat, extended drought, potable water shortages, almost spontaneous fires, floods, food shortages, enormous tornadoes and hurricanes, acute cold …. The prognosis for the coming decades is that these phenomena will get worse, yet our responses remain mostly mundane. We repair, rebuild, extend, and expand essentially the same 19th Century energy and water infrastructure that put us in this climate box, evidently expecting a different outcome.

If we are to meet and overcome the climate challenges we have created, incentivizing environmental restoration over broad landscapes, from individual site designs to entire cityscapes, is essential. The law as currently interpreted will not save us, but some combination of law and regulation together with markets creating economic incentives favoring ecological restoration of natural systems could. In addition to recognizing the damage we have done, we need a clear conception of required ecological repair. Students will be introduced to that clear conception while examining a regulation-based market and profit-generating infrastructure to incentivize ecological repair at scale.
This class is intended for MLA, Planning, Architecture, and Design students. Their skills provide them the insights necessary to make such markets work. Students will investigate Providence, RI, to determine whether a developing credit market based on phosphorus trading and the introduction of a new take on wastewater treatment would help Providence meet its regulatory obligations while incentivizing the restoration of natural systems, enhancing flood control, building resilience to drought, and restoring habitat. Students will work with local advocates and city officials to produce a report on their findings and recommendations. Using Blue Cities/Stratifyx, a developing market platform, they will assess the damage existing infrastructure has caused while examining the benefits and potential for restorative change.

Climate Justice

Recent discourse around climate change—including debates about the Anthropocene, Green New Deal legislation, the dire warnings of the IPCC, to name a few—increasingly make evident that climate change is much more than a technological problem of carbon mitigation. Taking recent geological and climatic changes as symptoms of deeper structural challenges, this class will address climate change as fundamentally a problem of social and environmental injustice. The class will argue for the necessity of studying theories of justice, inequality, and structural violence along with climate science, policy, and international diplomacy. In our search for climate justice, the class will trace various forms of climate activism within the history of environmental movements, explore non-Western forms of knowledge as key critiques and logics of action, and evaluate concrete suggestions for radical reform. We will discuss how climate justice as a framework of concern is both universal and specific, and we will critically engage ideas of justice at different scales, from the local to the global, with careful attention to context. We will ultimately ask what new kinds of practices, knowledges, and collaborations are necessary to build more just and responsible relationships between people and the nonhuman world, and with each other.

Architecture’s Inscriptions

While much of architecture theory has become dominated by the shifting definitions and tensions among various media, certain contemporary architectural practices challenge notions of the uniqueness and autonomy of individual arts but, at the same time, question the fruitfulness of construing architecture simply as “one medium among others.” In China, recent architects often revived study and analysis of the ancient arts of calligraphy and landscape painting while completely bypassing the semiotics-based theory of earlier generations. In the Americas and Europe, architects have turned to material assemblies and analysis of vernaculars to underpin boldly inventive expressions. Much of this production, despite its implementation across geographic and linguistic barriers, can be categorized as “architecture’s inscriptions.”

This class will study the practices of marking and scripting as the techné of contemporary architecture by situating architectural analysis within the broader domain of artistic practices in China and poststructuralist thought in Europe and America. Methodologically, the class will conduct a comparative “materialistic historiography” (W. Benjamin) of recent architecture through the cultural techniques of inscription, investigating what precedes and often determines architectural figuration: inscription, technicity, materiality, the virtual, and the mnemonic. The concepts and categories of poststructuralist and post-semiotic thought will be used to organize the investigations.

Through formal analysis, Lacanian theory, symptomatic reading, and comparative study, we will examine a series of recent case studies by Chinese and American architects hypothesizing that these architects employ various forms of practices based in the concept of trace and the action of marking to move beyond semiotic constructions and simplistic narratives about contemporary identity forms. Like classical Suzhou gardens, their designs go beyond just text, image, or graphic ekphrasis, operating instead on the coalescence of different modes of making rooted in a longstanding tradition and the shared techné of imbricated inscriptive practices–such as calligraphy, poetry, painting, and garden-making.

Requirements include intense reading mainly from poststructuralism and recent media theory; lectures by instructors; weekly research and writing; several short projects, including graphic analysis and presentation of recent architecture; and research visits to the Fogg Museum collection.
 

Urban Fragments in América / the Americas

From Buenos Aires to New York, the cities of the New World have been sites of speculation and experimentation, as heterotopias, techno-political dreams, or revolutionary enclaves. In this seminar, we discuss the main cultural, economic, and political discourses that shaped the modernity of the Americas and the spatial configurations they prompted in urban and architectural design. By comparing these responses as a series of case studies, the course assembles a modern history of North, Central, and South American cities, public spaces, and buildings as a network of shared and reciprocal influences.

We begin by comparing the Law of Indies with the Jefferson grid, and the presence of Indigenous buildings and monuments in Cusco and Mexico City. We trace the influence of French urbanism in the National Mall in Washington DC and the Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires. The grand scale of these axes, their iconic obelisks, and relationship to state monuments speaks to the politics embedded in these projects. We shift focus to the aerial view as trope for the distant gaze of the visitor–or the modern architect– and confront the technological determinism of planning with the contingencies of urban growth. We follow the conflicted role of modern urban design as it attempts to keep pace with city growth, and think about the role of architecture and image-making in Brasilia, Caracas, and Havana. We problematize technology exchanges in housing solutions by examining Soviet panels in Havana del Este and Santiago, and the PREVI Housing project in Lima. The utopian communities of Open City in Valparaíso, Túpac Amaru in Jujuy, and Drop City in Colorado provide insights into the role of architecture in alternative lifestyles. Finally, we discuss fences and borders by comparing the proliferation of gated communities in South America, the many divisions between San Diego and Tijuana, and real and implied borders within US cities.

Themes to be discussed include the relationship between cities and oil dependency, developmentalism and governmentality, participation and pedagogy. Readings include primary sources such as Law of Indies extracts, Le Corbusier’s descriptions of South American cities, as well as recent scholarship by Greg Grandin, Fernando Luiz Lara, and Bruno Carvalho, among others. Evaluation is based on class participation, leading one class discussion, and a final paper.
 

Landscape, Architecture, and/on the Printed Page

This course goes down the proverbial rabbit hole in considering the fundamental, incidental, anecdotal, but above all the meaningful formal and structural analogies between books and other print media, and the spaces imagined and realized in and by architecture, landscape, and urban design and experience. The rabbit hole, it will be recalled, appears in the opening chapter of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and was itself a passage furnished with bookshelves. There are texts within texts, and worlds within those texts, each and all producing planned and chance encounters between signifiers and signifieds, readers and writers. Questions of page layout, punctuation!, paratexts, narrative structure, paper-making, book-binding and ecocodicology, publishing houses and reading rooms, marginalia and marbled paper, the threaded histories of reading, writing, (though not so much ‘rithmetic), illustration, illumination, and blank spaces, the vineyard of text, the mirror in parchment, a scribal world set into print–these and other topics will be addressed with regard to masterworks (major and minor) of literature (Perec, Mallarmé, Sterne, Douglass, Piranesi, Stein, et. al.) and an array of familiar and fantastical books ranging from the sexagesimo-quarto to the Audubonian double elephantine folio. We will always have in view, specifically in relation to architectural, landscape and urban culture, what Roger Chartier describes as the “space between text and object, which is precisely the space in which meaning is constructed.”

Ordinary to Icon: Case Studies in the Rehabilitation of Modern Buildings and Sites

The sustainable renewal of the legacy of 20th century Modernism and its contemporary progeny presents many challenges to conservation and adaptive reuse that continue to be debated across our industry. The concept of renewal through “modernization” is increasingly employed by commercial, institutional and government building owners fueling an exponential increase in the volume of rehabilitation activity. Organizations such as the Getty Conservation Institute, ICOMOS, Docomomo and APT have undertaken broader inquiries into addressing the questions that impact the fundamental philosophy of how to work with this large and diverse legacy. This in turn has produced new Heritage Guidelines that are meant to update and complement the existing established international charters to guide appropriate treatment for modern properties.

This seminar proposes to identify and evaluate some of the key challenges facing the preservation of modern buildings and sites through a critical analysis of selected case studies exhibiting possible means of addressing these issues while seeking to minimize other perceived programmatic or technical failings. It is hoped that the seminar will foster more detailed investigation of some of the more persistent and complex challenges and how they interface with a general drive to create sensitive design interventions that conserve carbon and increase the sustainability quota of many of these resources.

Among numerous topics we will address will be the following:

1. Should the evaluative criteria that we develop for modern properties differ from those applied to earlier and/or more traditional forms of construction. Should there be different criteria applied to landmark quality structures versus the Ordinary Everyday Modern (OEM) vernacular?

2. Modern structures in many cases use a lot of operational carbon because of thin construction and lack of insulation. How do we devise and vet strategies to enhance energy performance that are appropriately balanced with maintenance of historic character?  

3. Design of Interventions: Conservation is increasingly being acknowledged as being an integral, creative part of any renovation and adaptive re-use project, particularly with modern structures, many of which are unloved, leading property owners to increasingly embrace modernization as a strategy to enhance what may be perceived as tired or outdated structures. What is the right balance of new design and conservation, and what is the role of the preservation professional in developing criteria and making judgments as to what constitutes appropriate alteration?

The course is open to all GSD students, though knowledge of and interest in the history of 20th century modernism is encouraged. The seminar structure will consist of lectures by the instructor and distinguished guests, student-led discussion of themed readings, and local case study site visits. The final deliverable will be student chosen case studies of an existing building or site that raise critical questions about conservation, interpretation, and the design of interventions. The goal will be to understand how the interventions have used or rejected attributes of the host structure, and the degree to which the result still embodies the design intent and quality of each building campaign.
 

Redefining Urban Design-3

The field of urban design is undergoing a process of major transformation. Josep Lluís Sert’s initial definition as the space between planning and architecture, emphasizing the culture of cities as “civic culture” and proposing pedestrian interaction as the “underlying coherence” of the work developed at different scales, followed his reinterpretation of the CIAM. This began at the GSD in 1956 with the Urban Design Program and has evolved continuously for seven decades. This seminar sets out to contribute to redefining urban design by enhancing theoretical principles and exploring innovative practices in the field. Industrialization and progress guided development throughout the 20th century, resulting in financial globalization, and the advancement of forms of communication and digital development. The emergence of new forms of economy that impact the conception and design of the city allows us to consider more creative alternatives to those of the prevailing globalization process. This is the framework in which we wish to situate discussion in the seminar. Defining this new urban field calls for a more in-depth study of projects that represent the roles or issues that urban design can address. It also requires us to produce design actions and strategies within the urbanistic discipline through research and practice. The design of the present-day city must consider environmental and climate challenges, digital impact, a knowledge-based economy, multiple and changing modes of mobility, as well as the more demanding aspirations of an older and more educated population. The seminar method is based on facing today’s challenges by considering ongoing projects or research that allow us to understand that development is not linear and univocal; rather there are open and varied solutions centering on housing, energy, transport, etc. The process is a plural one, and the solutions in each case depend largely on the context, including aspirations, limitations, and available technologies.

The seminar is based on research into sixteen topics that define current thinking and practice of urban design and projecting them into the future. We are selecting certain topics and case studies to advance the discussion of theoretical background, design tools, development process, and the conditions of agency and governance. Topics are structured within a theoretical framework, using relevant case studies and key projects to show the scope and conditions for the development of each chapter.

Research is organized in four blocks corresponding to different scales and approaches, and an introduction. These four main blocks are:
– Long-term strategies operating at different scales.
– Systematic forms of transition from the present-day city.
– Infilling and upgrading.
– Experimenting with new design issues.

Above all, we will be interested in the way this discipline develops plans, projects, and strategies, within the extraordinary complexity of today’s urban design field. Because, to quote Lesley Lokko at the 2023 Venice Biennale, “it is impossible to build a better world if we cannot first imagine it”.
 

Translations and Negotiations: The Roman Landscape in the Modern World

This course investigates the myriad ways ancient Roman place-making, visual culture, and thought have been evoked, utilized, and translated in North American thought, design, and visual history. At the heart of our investigation is the concept of counter histories and concepts such as agency, ownership, and power, i.e. who shapes the land and who owns the classical forms?

Topics explored include:
• Examination of how artists, thinkers, and designers from a variety of backgrounds have interpreted and adapted classical visual traditions and concepts, with case studies including figures such as Edmonia Lewis.
• Analysis of Neoclassicism in public spaces, considering questions of the ownership and presentation of the classical past, including the representation of figures such as Robert E. Lee and Marcus Aurelius in civic monuments and parks.
• Comparative study of historical agricultural labor systems, with attention to similarities and differences between contexts such as Roman and early American practices.
• Exploration of the influence of Roman landscape design and horticulture on the development of American landscapes and gardens.
• Investigation of the legacy of Roman surveying methods and land division (centuriation) in the history of mapping and land organization in the United States.
• Consideration of imperial themes and the representation of cultural difference, as reflected in Neoclassical portrayals of historical figures and groups in civic art and public spaces.
• Study of the adaptation of ancient Mediterranean and Roman visual motifs in American cemeteries, including a site visit to Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Class visits: Mount Auburn Cemetery (reached via public transportation), the Harvard Art Museum, and the Harvard Map Collection.

Architecture and its Texts (1650-1800)

This seminar focuses on a selection of architectural treatises from the late 17th to early 19th centuries, with the aim of exploring the connections between architecture, discourse, and subsequent interpretations. We will proceed in two-week segments by pairing the close reading of given treatise with the theme that gives it shape as follows: Perrault and the status of theory; Fischer von Erlach and the concept of history; Laugier and the myth of origins; Piranesi and the emergence of the avant-garde; Pugin and the question of revivalism. This bifold structure will help us to explore the multifaceted historiographic dimensions of architectural treatises. Coursework includes weekly readings, discussion, a short oral presentation, and a final paper.

Prerequisites: Advanced knowledge of architectural history and theory is highly recommended. This course is intended primarily for students in the PhD, DDes, and MDes programs. MArch students focusing on relevant topics for their thesis are also welcome to enroll. 

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.

Housing Matters

In the twentieth century, modern architects approached housing as a project centered on affordability, standardization, and efficiency. In the postwar period, there was an urgent need to provide basic hygiene and shelter quickly, and industrialization offered the tools to build at scale. These priorities brought important gains but often came at the cost of social diversity, ecological awareness, and long-term adaptability. Standardization was closely tied to zoning, a mode of planning that separated living, working, and leisure into distinct areas, as if these aspects of life had no influence on one another. This way of thinking pushed industry to the margins and treated it as separate from domestic life, ignoring the social and environmental consequences of such separation. Given that housing occupies a large portion of our cities, it must be understood as more than a commodity. Today, we are living with the outcomes: industrial activity has contributed to ecological degradation, while social fragmentation continues to deepen.

In response to these challenges, the course is premised on the idea that many contemporary problems are fundamentally matters of care. Since housing forms such a significant part of urban life, it is central to addressing these issues. Architectural decisions at the scale of the unit, the building, and the city shape both social relations and environmental outcomes. Through lectures, case studies, and critical discussions, the course explores housing as a space of interdependence among people, systems, and the planet, asking: How can housing support diverse forms of life and foster long-term care for one another, our cities, and the planet? These questions will be examined through five matters of concern:

Community: Housing cooperatives, mutual aid, and shared infrastructure
Difference: Designing for plural identities, cultures, and bodies
Live and Work: Hybrid domestic models in the aftermath of the pandemic
Flexibility and Appropriation: Forms that adapt over time and support collective stewardship
Well-being: Material, emotional, and planetary health in relation to housing

Each of these concerns will begin with a lecture by Farshid Moussavi, followed by a guest speaker presentation, and expanded through student-led presentations and discussions. Guests include Cristina Gamboa (Lacol), Phillip Denny, and Jonathan Kischkel (Gesewo), with additional speakers to be confirmed before the start of classes.

This course is structured as a research seminar to provide students with historical, theoretical, and practical insight into the design of collective housing. Weekly sessions combine lectures, guest talks, and student-led presentations to explore how housing intersects with care, community, ecology, and spatial justice. Each class engages a specific housing concern through conceptual frameworks and case studies, supporting both studio work and independent research.

Offered in parallel with the design studio Housing as an Ecology of Care, students are encouraged to enroll in both courses. The seminar is intended to provide research and critical grounding for design exploration.

The class will meet every Friday. Farshid Moussavi meets weekly with students either in person or remotely. Phillip Denny will be present on the days that Farshid teaches remotely. See the course syllabus for details.