Survey of Energy Technology (at SEAS)
Principles governing energy generation and interconversion. Current and projected world energy use. Selected important current and anticipated future technologies for energy generation, interconversion, storage, and end usage.
Recommended Prep: Calculus of a single variable, one semester of college-level physics, and familiarity with chemistry at the high school advanced placement level.
Adventure and Fantasy Simulation, 1871-2036: Seminar
Fantasy opens portals to new life forms. It prepares us for supranatural humans, genetic adjustment, non-electronic novelty. It forms the core of natural-world reverence, maybe worship, the religion of the green future. It cherishes solitary, low-tech adventure in natural and neo-natural environments, typically northern forests and fashion-magazine imagery. It is a genre, a haphazard collection, a force as amorphous as blowing leaves, a western-European device born about 1900 and now global, but always quasi-imperialist, always of the north. It scares public-school teachers who loathe Hogwarts, the Old Religion, the never-ending ancient tradition so deeply rooted in the European cultural past that it shapes contemporary propriety. Holly and other evergreens bedeck churches at Christmas, but not mistletoe, the evergreen that killed the Norse sun god, Balder, the sky-tree Druids brought west from the Danube and grafted onto oaks, the Yule sovereign that permits kisses forbidden at all other seasons, part of the merry (not happy) in Christmas. Quality fantasy teaches that every tree species once had individual character (willows walk, sometimes assault: the Whomping Willow behaves naturally) and that the most powerful (mistletoe included) once named the letters of the alphabet, that the year had thirteen lunar months marking the earth-mother menstrual cycle, that the seasons proved weird to those in the know, witches especially. Out of the great northern arc from Finland to Ireland (stabbed by the westward-moving Celts and the Albion wraiths) originates quality contemporary fantasy, much of it written by British writers schooled in Latin from childhood. It comprises a grimoire of irresistible power. As climate change melts Arctic ice and opens new sea lanes, as Canada hurriedly builds a large navy, the north becomes more important politically, economically, and militarily – but its emerging conceptual importance orders this course this term. Cold, discomfort, swimming in the winter ocean, trusting to quality attire, knives, and open boats, seeing sideways in the winter dark, finding what one must find in the arboreal forests, all fuses into the meaning of north. Already fantasy slides past materialist and leftist ideology. It prepares children for authentic change.
Note: This course is offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as AFVS 167.
Advanced Introduction to Robotics (at SEAS)
Introduction to computer-controlled robotic manipulators. Topics include coordinate frames and transformations, forward and inverse kinematic solutions to open-chain manipulators, the Jacobian, dynamics and control, and motion planning. In addition, special topics will be introduced such as computer vision, soft robotics, surgical robots, MEMS and microrobotics, and biomimetic systems. Laboratory exercises will provide experience with industrial robot programming and robot simulation and control.
Prerequisite: Either PHYSCI 12a, or both Physics 15a and CS 50. Linear algebra (e.g., Mathematics 21a,b, Mathematics 22a,b, Mathematics 25a,b, Applied Mathematics 22a,b); introductory mechanics (e.g., Physics 15a, Physics 16, Physical Sciences 12a, Applied Physics 50a,b); programming experience (e.g., CS 50; Python or MATLAB recommended).
GSD SCI 6274 is jointly listed with SEAS as Eng-Sci 159 and Eng-Sci 259. Students may not more than one for credit. Graduate students must enroll in 259. The material in 259 is the same as in 159, but with additional problems on the problem sets and a final project.
Visualization (at SEAS)
This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction principles, visualization tools, and applications, and introduces programming of web-based interactive visualizations.
Prerequisites: Students are required to have basic programming experience (e.g., Computer Science 50). Web programming experience (HTML, CSS, JS) is a plus.
North American Seacoasts and Landscapes: Discovery Period to the Present
Selected topics in the history of the North American coastal zone, including the seashore as wilderness, as industrial site, as area of recreation, and as artistic subject; the shape of coastal landscape for conflicting uses over time; and the perception of the seashore as marginal zone in literature, photography, painting, film, television, and advertising.
Note: Offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as VES 166.
Prerequisites: GSD 4105 and GSD 4303, or permission of the instructor
This course will meet in a temporary location for the first three weeks of the semester. The intial location is Memorial Hall, room 029.
Survey of Energy Technology (at SEAS)
Principles governing energy generation and interconversion. Current and projected world energy use. Selected important current and anticipated future technologies for energy generation, interconversion, storage, and end usage.
Recommended Prep: Calculus of a single variable, one semester of college-level physics, and familiarity with chemistry at the high school advanced placement level.
This SEAS course will be held in person from the start of the term.
Acoustic Space: A Media Archaeology of Building Types
This is a seminar on the past and present relationship between architecture, information technologies, and mass media. More than ever before, we live in acoustic space. We live constantly plugged-in, travelling in our personal sonic bubbles bounded by headphones and other devices. We listen because we like it, but also to disconnect and avoid other noises. Our times are defined by an unprecedented and simultaneous coexistence of sounds and images disseminated at the speed of light, and yet there is little understanding of the architectural implications of this phenomenon. However, the construction of the media-saturated environments we inhabit began more than 100 years ago, when radio started to populate the ether, when television entered the domestic space, until the present day, when the internet seems to cover every single aspect of our daily lives. This seemingly invisible and immaterial phenomenon has been producing—and has been produced by—new building types throughout the past century, which have been widely overlooked by our discipline.
If media technologies such as radio, telephony, television, and the internet presume the construction of “space” without any material implications, this seminar proposes to look closely at select case studies that evidence the consequences of media in built space. We will focus on the intersection of buildings and electronic media technologies, with specific interest in sonicity, aiming to understand the material questions these media-populated spaces raise for architects. In this context, the seminar will trace the genealogy of Broadcasting Houses, Television Studios, Cinemas, Acoustic Laboratories, Telephone Exchange Buildings, Educational Spaces, and Data Centers, among others.
The seminar is a multidisciplinary course intersecting the history and theory of architecture with media history and theory. It is dedicated to architecture students and to other students enrolled in programs and intellectual disciplines with interests in media and/or sound studies. The seminar will be structured along thematic readings each week. In addition to reading discussions from diverse fields and disciplines, each student will lead a 30-minute discussion based on the presentation of a built case study.
Assignments
Participants in the seminar are expected to work throughout the semester on one case study of their choice selected in conversation with the instructor. Students will work on an illustrated paper in which drawings and writing will have equal relevance. In addition, participants in the seminar will submit a 1-minute-long sound or video composition made of found footage or sounds related to their case study.
Grading Rubric
30% Class Presentation / 40% In-class Participation / 30% Final Presentation
Up to five seats will be held for MDes students.
This course will be taught online through Friday, February 4th.
Adventure and Fantasy Simulation, 1871-2036: Seminar
Fantasy opens portals to new life forms. It prepares us for supranatural humans, genetic adjustment, non-electronic novelty. It forms the core of natural-world reverence, maybe worship, the religion of the green future. It cherishes solitary, low-tech adventure in natural and neo-natural environments, typically northern forests and fashion-magazine imagery. It is a genre, a haphazard collection, a force as amorphous as blowing leaves, a western-European device born about 1900 and now global, but always quasi-imperialist, always of the north. It scares public-school teachers who loathe Hogwarts, the Old Religion, the never-ending ancient tradition so deeply rooted in the European cultural past that it shapes contemporary propriety. Holly and other evergreens bedeck churches at Christmas, but not mistletoe, the evergreen that killed the Norse sun god, Balder, the sky-tree Druids brought west from the Danube and grafted onto oaks, the Yule sovereign that permits kisses forbidden at all other seasons, part of the merry (not happy) in Christmas. Quality fantasy teaches that every tree species once had individual character (willows walk, sometimes assault: the Whomping Willow behaves naturally) and that the most powerful (mistletoe included) once named the letters of the alphabet, that the year had thirteen lunar months marking the earth-mother menstrual cycle, that the seasons proved weird to those in the know, witches especially. Out of the great northern arc from Finland to Ireland (stabbed by the westward-moving Celts and the Albion wraiths) originates quality contemporary fantasy, much of it written by British writers schooled in Latin from childhood. It comprises a grimoire of irresistible power. As climate change melts Arctic ice and opens new sea lanes, as Canada hurriedly builds a large navy, the north becomes more important politically, economically, and militarily—but its emerging conceptual importance orders this course this term. Cold, discomfort, swimming in the winter ocean, trusting to quality attire, knives, and open boats, seeing sideways in the winter dark, finding what one must find in the arboreal forests, all fuses into the meaning of north. Already fantasy slides past materialist and leftist ideology. It prepares children for authentic change.
Note: This course is offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as AFVS 167.
Jointly Offered Course: FAS VES 167. This course will be held in person from the start of term.
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Visualization (at SEAS)
This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction principles, visualization tools, and applications, and introduces programming of web-based interactive visualizations.
Prerequisites: Students are required to have basic programming experience (e.g., Computer Science 50). Web programming experience (HTML, CSS, JS) is a plus.
Materiality and Atmosphere: Media and Environments (at AFVS)
What is the place of materiality in our visual age of changing materials and media? How do media mediate material relations? Can media be understood as environments? This seminar investigates a “material and environmental turn” in philosophy and visual culture, focusing on the atmosphere of visual arts, architecture and media. Topics include: the life of objects, the haptic and ambiance, vibrant materialisms, plant thinking, elemental philosophy and screen media, light and projection, and the immateriality of atmosphere.
Pre-requisite: A course in film or visual studies, art history, architecture studies or the equivalent course in cultural history or theory. This is an advanced seminar with pre-requisites. Preference for admission will be given to doctoral students in Film and Visual Studies. Students will be selected on the basis of an application posted on canvas and, if necessary, short interviews.
Jointly offered course: This course is jointly offered as AFVS 279. GSD students should enroll in the course via the GSD.