Materials

This course explores the science and design of materials. How do we classify materials? Why do we build with certain materials? What are the energy, health, and societal implications of materials? And what does the future of materials look like? The goal of this course is to enable students to understand the full systems ecology of materials and how to leverage this knowledge in building design.

This course is the fourth of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6126) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture.

Building Simulation

This course is the third of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6126) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture. 

Objective: The best intent does not always lead to the best performing design, as intuition and rules of thumb often fail to adequately inform decision making. Therefore, high-performance architecture increasingly utilizes simulation tools to eliminate some of the guesswork. Simulation is the process of making a simplified model of some complex system and using it to predict the behavior of the system. In this course, state-of-the-art computer simulation methods for ventilation (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and thermal/energy analysis will be introduced. 

Innovative techniques for using these models in the architectural design process will be explored.

The course will provide students with:
1. An understanding of building simulation methods and their underlying principles
2. Hands-on experience in using computer simulation models to support the design process
3. An increased understanding of high-performance environmental design strategies in architecture

Content: In this course, students will acquire skills in computerized building performance simulation for architecture while simultaneously using these skills to explore fundamental design issues such as building massing and envelope design. The course includes discussion of the benefits as well as the limitations of these methods. Topics include fundamentals such as modeling strategies, underlying physical principles, understanding simulation assumptions, and interpreting results with an emphasis on developing the ability to translate the analysis into design decisions. Through practice with the software tools, students develop a better understanding of physics in architecture and hone their own design intuition.
 

Shaping Chinese Megacity Regions: Design, Policy, and Planning

This seminar examines the upsurge of megacity regions in China since the early 21st century, with a focus on how spatial planning, policy, and urban design have shaped this phenomenal process amid evolving state-market relations and growing global integration. We will analyze the development trajectories of select regions–including the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, and the China–Vietnam Red River Development Corridor–while examining their distinctive planning approaches and design strategies.

The course situates these case studies within broader political traditions and institutional frameworks, revealing the social, economic, cultural, and environmental forces at play. Students will also be introduced to key tools and methods of spatial planning and design that apply to city-region planning worldwide.

Through guest lectures and seminar discussions, students will engage with current debates and contribute their own perspectives, drawing on their academic and professional backgrounds to enrich a critical understanding of Chinese megacity regionalization.

Comparative Planning Regulation

This course provides an overview of the institutional and legal framework for planning through comparative lenses. It will examine how institutional structures and legal rules provide the sources and limits to planning authorities in different societies, and how planning systems regulate urban and regional issues through different approaches. Four national planning prototypes will be specifically addressed in the course: American, British, German, and Chinese, but comparisons from other countries will be drawn on certain topics. Students will be encouraged to explore such comparisons in their targeted countries or city regions.

The main objective of the course is to enhance students’ understanding of the ways that planning functions in different regimes and the tensions being resolved between the requirements of public welfare provision, private property rights, sustainable growth, justice, and urban planning. At the heart of the discussion lies an acknowledgment that planning is not a single process with a universally accepted outcome, but divergence and convergence happen across different systems, and comparison is instrumental to understanding their development.

The course will begin with three fundamental factors that shape the structure of planning regulation:  a society’s attitude toward property rights, the role of national and local governments and their relationship to each other, and the different nature of legal frameworks. 

Then the course discussion will cover a series of topics with a comparison of different approaches by different countries traditionally and how they evolved:

Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Global South

This course starts from the premise that urban politics and governance arrangements shape the character, form, and function of cities as well as the planning strategies used to make them more just, equitable, and sustainable.  Using a focus on cities in the developing world, the course examines an array of governance structures (centralized versus decentralized institutions; local versus national states; participatory budgeting, etc.) and political conditions (democracy versus authoritarianism; neoliberal versus populist versus leftist party politics; social movements) that are relatively common to cities of the global south.

The course is structured around a comparative analysis of theories and cases that give us the basis for documenting the ways that politics affect urban policy and the built environment of the city more generally. The course’s critical approach to case studies and policy prescriptions will also prepare students to formulate relevant planning strategies in the future. Among a range of policy domains, special attention is paid to transportation, housing, mega-project development, land policy, and environmental sutainability, with most examples drawn from Latin America, South and East Asia, and Africa.

Do No Harm: Dilemmas in Planning for Health

Planners have long imagined themselves as physicians attending to the good health of cities and the communities living in them. Do No Harm unpacks the complex connections between environmental health, public health, and city planning. The course title, a nod to both the Hippocratic Oath and the creed of social reformer Florence Nightingale, represents a challenge to students preparing to manage the discrete, conflicting interests of that most complex of organisms–the metropolis. 

This class uses housing as a starting point for a sectional slice of inquiry that spans from the underground to the air that surrounds us. We will discuss how the design, policy, geography, ownership model, and maintenance of housing influence various public and environmental health metrics, and what levers are available to planners to influence those outcomes. We will explore and evaluate tools of assessment and intervention and identify points of leverage. Within this framework, students are expected to bring their own interests, disciplines, and experience to bear on a semester where our focus will range from affordable and simple tools at the housing-health nexus (smoke detectors, mosquito nets) to more complicated questions of ethics, objectives, and priorities. 

Together we’ll consider the nexus between health and planning as an ongoing process of experimentation, monitoring, learning, and adaptation, with the aim of constantly improving the conditions that promote health for all populations, but with a particular focus on improvements that alleviate the inequities currently experienced by segregated and disinvested communities around the world.

The class will be divided into two streams–input and action. In the input part of the class students will study famous and infamous stories about how our decisions can harm or heal communities, such as Haussmannian hygienist efforts in France, the rise of air-conditioning in Global South cities, or slum clearance in the United States. In the action component groups of students will develop an approach to addressing a real problem in a real place, using housing as a lever for better health. These may be speculative or tailored for a client who works at this nexus between planning and health (the Parisian Roofscapes). These outputs may take the form of written reports, graphic visualizations, or creative endeavors which students will refine and pitch at midterm and final presentations.  

We’ll ask: What are the key health issues that should concern those in planning and related fields? Can physical design and planning alone improve health? In a world of finite resources, how do we weigh competing priorities and evaluate the costs and benefits of our interventions? Do we need values systems to guide or restrain technocratic evidence-based approaches? Where are the limits of our responsibility for health outcomes in our jurisdictions? 

This course will equip you with the understanding, vocabulary, and tools you need to make health a part of your future practice, whether you become a housing advocate, a land use planner, a developer, an urban designer, a transportation planner, or some other role entirely. For those who come from the world of public health and environmental policy, you will gain new insight into the powers and politics that enable and constrain planners, architects, and other practitioners in the city.

Real Estate Private Equity and Capital Markets [Module 2]

Through lectures, case studies, and expert panel discussions, this module will explore the evolution of institutional real estate capital markets with a particular focus on market activity over the past seven years. Capital markets embody a complex ecosystem of public and private equity and debt funding for real estate companies, property acquisitions, transformations, and new developments. The business model and investment objectives of capital purveyors depend on a variety of factors. Case studies will be used to highlight key real estate investment concepts such as identifying opportunities, public/private valuations, distressed investing, risk management, asymmetric investments, and alignment of interests.  Industry experts will discuss the current macro environment, key market concerns, capital availability, cost of capital, acquisition and development economics, and opportunistic and thematic investment strategies. By the end of the module, students will have gained a functional framework and understanding of how real estate private equity and capital markets work under current and future circumstances.

MRE students who want to take this course should enter the Limited Enrollment Course Lottery and will be automatically enrolled.

Public Finance for Planners: Creating Equitable & Sustainable Communities

Infrastructure challenges are significant and rising. To meet these challenges, urban planners will need to acquire foundational knowledge and skills in the public finance discipline and gain a basic awareness of how such tools and levers are used by city leaders to raise money to fund infrastructure, neighborhood redevelopment plans, and other new capital projects. This course will introduce students to the spectrum of public finance strategies and approaches that are available to cities, states and localities and will elevate how each strategy can be considered in the development of urban planning strategies to enhance an urban planners work and position projects to achieve strong equity, sustainability, and other place-based outcomes. The goal of the course will be to educate students on tactical ways that public finance principles can be integrated into the urban planning process. To that end, students will learn how to make choices that position an urban planning project for stronger funding, for stronger economic development outcomes and to achieve growth that is inclusive.  The course will combine various pedagogical methods that include lecture, discussion, and exercises that challenge students to consider their role as advisors to leaders in a city. Throughout the semester, students will learn how to evaluate the impact of alternative resource mobilization and public finance avenues that an urban planner may encounter by examining real projects. No prior course work or experience in public finance or economic development is necessary for students to succeed in the course, as the course will provide students with the necessary foundation to understand core concepts in the domains of public finance and economic development that will be covered.

Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases, and Comparisons

This course deals with ‘modern housing’ covering a period primarily from the 1900s to the present. It engages with ‘urban districts’ in so far as the housing projects under discussion contribute to the making of these districts and are in turn shaped by the districts in which they are placed. Cases draw from an international survey with emphasis on Europe, North America, and East Asia, although also including examples from the Americas, South and Southeast Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania. The course introduces approximately 240 cases along with frameworks for managing and thinking with this corpus.

It begins with two broad surveys of concepts germane to the discussion and design of contemporary housing, including 1) ideas of community and what constitutes a neighborhood across historical contexts and cultural milieu, and 2) territories, types, interiors, and other landscapes dealing with the constraints and dimensions of the external context and internal life. These are followed by cases, organized by key characteristics of the building or dimensions of the external context they engage. In each, contemporary examples provide the primary focus, while precedents within and adjacent to architecture are introduced to contextualize historical circumstances and trace the evolution of ideas. In Spring 2025, the categories include 1) urban block shapers, 2) superblock configurations, 3) tall towers, 4) big buildings, 5) mat buildings, 6) housing and landscapes, 7) infrastructural engagements, 8) infill and puntal interventions, 9) housing special populations, and 10) temporary and incremental housing.

Each class is organized around: i) a lecture on the weekly topic, ii) the student presentation, and iii) a class discussion. Beyond weekly participation and contribution to in-class discussions, the main deliverable of the course is the research, analysis, and presentation of case study projects. Students will be paired and assigned the cases at the beginning of the semester. The presenting students will meet with the instructor one and two weeks before the presentation. Short readings may also be assigned to augment weekly discussions. 
 

Project Management, Construction Management, New Technologies

This course focuses on three crucial aspects of real estate practice: project management, construction management, and new technologies.

The project management portion will cover the skills needed to manage the many disciplines and concurrent tasks that take place from start of a development project to finish. The class will explore multiple project management styles that can each produce successful or less successful outcomes.  Examples will be drawn from industry.  

The construction management portion will address how owners, developers, owner’s representatives and/or property managers can best manage the construction process. A visit to a major development project will serve as a live case study.  

New technologies will explore recent technologies being utilized in the real estate environment including prop tech, smart buildings, artificial intelligence, construction management software, robotics. The course will ask the fundamental question: when and how is it better to use new technologies and what are the risks associated with such use. How can real estate catch-up to other industries that use AI and other software to support better outcomes?

 

Enrollment in this course is limited to students in the GSD Master in Real Estate program. The course meets January 5 through January 23 from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. daily in Gund 111. There is no class on January 19, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.