Building Simulation

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

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.

Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society II

Developing and implementing good solutions to real problems facing human society requires a broad understanding of the relationships between technology innovation, science, manufacturing, design thinking, environment, sustainability, culture, aesthetics, business, public policy, and government. Various frameworks for understanding these complex relationships within the context of real-world problems will be explored and discussed.  Coursework will be based on assigned readings, case studies, research assignments, exercises, and class discussions.

GSD PRO 7231 and 7232 and ES 236a and ES 236b are equivalent courses. They are part of a two-course sequence. This course is for students enrolled in the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) graduate program. A small number of other students may be allowed to enroll by permission of instructor.

This course is held at SEAS. This course meetings 4pm-6pm Tuesdays in Pierce Hall 100F and 4pm-6pm Thursdays in MD 119.

Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies

Infrastructures play a decisive role in urban development and in the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a historical perspective. History proves especially useful when dealing with the political dimension of urban infrastructures. From fortifications to smart technologies, infrastructures are inseparable from political intentions and consequences. This political dimension will constitute one of the threads of this lecture course. Other themes dealt with in the course will include the relation between cities and their hinterland, the progressive dematerialization of infrastructures, from walls or bridges to the invisible electronic networks that organize contemporary urban life, the rise of environmental concerns and their impact on infrastructural thoughts and practices, the need to conceive differently infrastructures when dealing with informal settlements.

Topics will include:

Evaluation will take into account participation to the class discussions. Students will be asked to produce a final paper on a topic related to the course.

Modernization in the Visual United States Environment, 1890-2035

Modernization of the United States visual environment as directed by a nobility creating new images and perceptions of such themes as wilderness, flight, privacy, clothing, photography, feminism, status symbolism, and futurist manipulation as illustrated in print-media and other advertising enterprise.

Note: This course is offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as VES 160.

Prerequisite: GSD 4105 or permission of the instructor.

Jointly Offered Course: FAS VES 160

Histories of Landscape Architecture II: Design, Representation, and Use

This course introduces students to relevant topics, themes, and sites that help us understand the conception, production, evolution, and reception of designed and found landscapes throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It aims at building an understanding of landscapes as both physical spaces and as cultural media that sit at the nexus between art and science and that contribute knowledge about humankind’s relationship with non-human nature. Landscapes are the result of social, political, artistic and intellectual endeavors. The topography, soil and climate of a site also condition their designs, use and habitation. As much as designed and found landscapes are a product of their time, they have also contributed to shaping history, both through their physical materiality and through the mental worlds they enable. Embedding found and designed landscapes into their social, political and cultural contexts, the course also pays close attention to the role of expert knowledge and the professions that have contributed to creating them. Using a variety of sources including texts, illustrations, and film the course offers insights into the development and transfer of ideas between different cultures, countries and geographical regions, and time periods. Course readings that will accompany every lecture will be made available on Canvas. Student assignments for this class will include reading response papers and one final paper.

Buildings, Texts, and Contexts II

 Any account of architecture’s history over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries is faced with the challenge of addressing the general rupture caused by the rise of modernity—that is, by the social, economic, technological and ideological transformations accompanying the political and industrial revolutions marking the end of the European Enlightenment. The transition of architecture to the modern world gave rise to a series of fundamental questions, which might be framed as follows: How did historical conditions place pressure on the time-honored foundations of architecture, on its origins, theories, and pedagogies? How did new conditions of scientific possibility actively reconfigure architecture’s relation to engineering? And finally, how did aesthetic conceptions and approaches, which followed an arc from Beaux-Arts eclecticism and historicism to Modernist avant-gardes, intersect with society and politics?

This course weaves these questions through topics and themes ranging from technology and utopia to ornament and nationalism. We begin with late Baroque polemics and the academic foundations of architecture as discipline. We then consider the multifaceted nature of 18th-century architectural expressions insuch examples as Rococo space, origin theories from Laugier to Piranesi, and the formulation of building typologies. The 19th century, which for us is inaugurated by a utopian imaginary (in Ledoux and Fourier), covers key episodes such as the Beaux-Arts system in Europe and America, architecture and national identity (in Schinkel and Wagner), and, finally, the dream of colossal structures and the infrastructural programs of the modern metropolis. Course requirements include attendance at lectures and sections, responses to readings, and several written assignments.

One hour sections will take place on Thursday afternoon.

 

 

 

The Nature of Difference: Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture

This course explores how notions of cultural difference are embedded in the design of landscape. Social landscapes—as understood through race, class, nationality, indigeneity, disability, gender, and sexuality—will be the focus of each class. By learning to “read” these landscapes and related projects of landscape architecture, we will study the ways in which landscapes shape identity, produce power and inequality, and commemorate diverse cultural meaning.

The course is organized by two kinds of investigations: one that focuses on built forms and another on the ideas and conceptual frameworks that guide the production of those forms. We will attend to diverse projects and topics, including border regions, urban landscapes, colonial plantations, territories of extraction, zones of environmental risk, national parks, native lands, domestic spheres, and postcolonial gardens. Through these sites, we will critically explore the nature of difference in spatial forms of exclusion, inclusion, conflict, and cooperation.

At the end of this class, students will be able to articulate the diverse social and political dimensions of landscapes and refer to a history of landscape architecture projects oriented to related issues. Assignments will include a combination of written responses to assigned readings and hands-on exercises designed to train students in the social analysis of landscapes in and around the university.

Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems (at FAS)

This course will provide a framework (and multiple lenses) through which to think about the salient economic and social problems of the five billion people of the developing world, and to work in a team setting toward identifying entrepreneurial solutions to such problems. Case study discussions will cover challenges and solutions in fields as diverse as health, education, technology, urban planning, and arts and the humanities. The modules themselves will be team-taught by faculty from engineering, the arts, urban design, healthcare and business. The course will embrace a bias toward action by enabling students to understand the potential of individual agency in addressing these problems. All students will participate in the development of a business plan or grant proposal to tackle their chosen problem in a specific developing country/region, emphasizing the importance of contextualizing the entrepreneurial intervention. The student-team will ideally be comprised of students with diverse backgrounds from across the University.

No prerequisites. Jointly offered at Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) as SW47, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) as DEV-338, Harvard  T. H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) as GHP-568, Harvard Medical School as IND 520, Harvard Graduate School of Design (DES) as SES 5375, and Harvard Law School (HLS) as 2543.

 

Classes will be held on Harvard University Cambridge campus in Sever Hall room 113.

Offered jointly with the Business School as 1266, the School of Public Health as GHP 568, the Kennedy School as PED-338, the Law School as HLS 2543 and the Graduate School of Education as A-819.

HBS: Fall; Q1Q2; 3 credits

NO AUDITORS. The course is designed around active participation and the completion of a final group project.

LIT: A Survey and Design Research Seminar of Architectural Lighting (Module F1)

Light defines what and how we see; our bodies are intimately tied to cycles of light and dark. Light is also a multi-billion dollar industry selling countless styles of electronic technologies designed for integration into buildings, landscapes, and urban spaces. This module surveys these many shades of light: its effects, metrics, technologies, and logics. We will review vision and color, perception psychology, design with daylight and LEDs, photometric visualization and analysis, media architecture, circadian rhythms, and the expansive industry of lighting products and nefarious characters. Open to anyone interested in light, students will choose to either experiment with a lighting design project, or research a topic their choice. Each session will be split between lecture or local field trip and workshop practicum. To pursue the design project, recommended prior or current enrollment in 6122 Environmental Systems (or similar course), and/or 2223 Immersive Environments. Assessment will be based on engagement in class, efforts, and work product. 

Architectural Acoustics (Module F2)

What does jazz sound like when it is played in a cathedral? How would Gregorian chant sound in a jazz club? And why do footsteps in the apartment above so often sound from downstairs like a herd of elephants?

Architectural acoustics entails architectural design, human perception, material properties, and building systems. Sound and architecture are intrinsically linked. This class will address how buildings respond to and enhance our aural experiences, and how designers can shape the aural environment.

Topics covered:
Topics include the basics of sound and hearing, the acoustic properties of materials, room acoustics, sound transmission, and the acoustics of performance halls. Along the way we’ll touch on computer modeling and acoustics simulation, building systems noise control, the urban soundscape, and other topics.

Objectives and outcomes:
Students will develop a basic understanding of the principles of architectural acoustics: how we hear and perceive sound both indoors and outdoors, appropriate criteria for listening environments, and how architectural decisions of layout, materials, room shape, and design impact what we hear in and around a space. By the end of the module, students will develop sensitivity to the way that architecture affects what we hear, and will be able to implement fundamental design principles that profoundly affect building functionality, our auditory perception, and our sense of space.

Course format and method of evaluation:
This six-week seminar class will meet once weekly for a three-hour seminar that will also include field trips, listening exercises, and hands-on experience with acoustical measurement equipment.

Readings that supplement class discussion will be required most weeks. There will be weekly homework assignments (field reports, problem sets, or short research papers), and one major final project. Students will be graded on the weekly assignments, the final project, and their contributions to class discussions.

Prerequisites:
None.