Seminar Archives

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

Jointly Offered Course: AFVS 166

Note: the instructor will offer online live course presentations on 08/26, and/or 08/27. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

Other(ed) Architecture: Coloniality, Subject, and Space

The aim of this seminar is to think critically about the authors and agents of architecture and the built environment. In examining relationships between ideological constructions of the modern “subject” and the physical constructions that shelter and house those subjects, we will ask: What counts as “architecture” and where do we find it? We will explore how architecture mediates between the project of modernity/coloniality and its silenced and invisible(ized) others. Furthermore, we will explore how space-making and othering are foundational to the project of modernity, and are intimately present in architecture’s technocratic canonization. We will question the subject of architecture: “How individuals are rendered as laborers, domestic workers, or immigrants in legal and cultural terms, and how the architecture of the camp, detention centers, plantations, and others solidify the symbolic and lived forms of these positions”. We will look at how the ideological project of modernity necessitates a colonial understanding of architectural space, and how difference and othering are built and made in/through space.

Through theoretical and historical texts, we will consider the lived-experience of subjects and discuses alternate archives of architectural knowledge production, particularly when looked at from its silenced margins. The aim is not to diversify a set of teaching materials in order to include “non-western” geographies, but rather to question the underpinnings of the discipline in the first place.

The semester is structured around 6 “frames”, each represented by two spatial typologies. Throughout, we will aim to think about these spaces and their associations with modalities of dispossession, resistance, and epistemic violence of silencing in multiple ways.
• Domestication – kitchen / gated enclave
• Circulation – infrastructure of movement / (slave) ship
• Extraction – plantation / factory and ports
• Bordering – walls and partition / street and threshold
• Detention – (refugee) camp / prison and detention center

This is a reading seminar, focused on in-class discussions of assigned texts. In addition, some weeks we will also focus on a film, fiction, or visualization project connected to the discussed theme. Assignments will be structured as short progressive writing exercises, culminating in a final research paper or annotated bibliography.

Thinking Through Soil: the earth in the herbarium

Every material process that shapes the construction of the urban environment passes through the soil at some point. In Thinking Through Soil, we will use the process of soil formation as a critical lens to trace the politics and material contingency of the urban environment.

The goal of this course is to familiarize ourselves with the fundamentals of soil science and soil theory, in order to think in new ways about the geos of design. As a material that lies at the intersection of the biological and geological sciences, this kind of thinking requires us to engage with the categorical boundaries that have historically shaped soil knowledge. By learning where these boundaries are and how to navigate them, we will become better equipped to make design decisions, and think critically about larger environmental issues such as climate change, wastewater agriculture, and local biology.

The course will begin with seminar style discussions around key texts that frame an analytical approach to the science and politics of soil knowledge. Here we will encounter recent critiques of the politics of soil by queer and feminist materialist scholars such as Vanessa Agard-Jones, Mel Chen, Elizabeth Povinelli, and Kathryn Yusoff have identified the geos as a crucial source of power distinct from the bio-political, and yet animated by the same ontological cut that distinguishes between them.

Through guest lectures by soil scientists, historians, and botanists, we will also learn more about how soil works, how it is understood empirically, and how it has been delineated as a natural historical object since the 1880’s. Through these engagements with both humanities and science scholarship on soils, we will begin to try to imagine what a different conception of soil might mean for our design practice, and for a broader commitment to decolonial geo-environmental justice.

Final projects in this course will be done in partnership with the Harvard Herbarium. In approaching this herbarium’s vast and immaculate digital collection, we will ask a simple question: where is the Earth in the Herbarium? To put the question another way, in preparing the millions of catalogued plant specimens that fill national herbariums around the world, and our own herbarium here at Harvard, what happened to the dirt? Predating the university itself, the longevity of the herbarium as a form means that it has not only accumulated plants but has also accumulated our ideas about plants, and through a strange kind of absence, our ideas about earth as well. Through a series of presentations and workshop style feedback sessions with the seminar as a whole, students will build a final research project reconnecting a plant with its missing soil. In this phase of the course, we will engage directly in the representational questions our readings have lead us to, taking seriously the old architectural maxim that drawing is thinking. Final projects will consist of student-selected projects based in the digital collection of the Harvard Herbarium, and will require us to imagine more clearly the missing earth in the herbarium.

For a preview of last years final projects, see: https://thinkingthroughsoil.studio/

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.

Altered Rural and Urban Landscape Restoration

Highly altered and often engineered rural, coastal, and urban landscapes are difficult and expensive to adapt to the realities of climate change. Food production systems in rural America characterized by drainage infrastructure (tiles, ditches, dams, pipelines, irrigation units) are old and/or inefficient. Urban centralized utility and transportation infrastructure is old and failing, vulnerable to climate change, and antithetical to restoring natural function. Coastal areas suffer from upstream pollutants from tributary rivers and as border lands are increasingly impacted by sea level rise and catastrophic storms. Repairing, rebuilding, and extending existing infrastructure in these landscapes is not an option if we are to sustain ourselves, anticipate and mitigate climate change, and support and restore nature. As a later-sequence ecology course on natural processes and built environment issues in the coastal zone/nearshore environment and rural landscapes, this course complements existing GSD emphasis on introductory ecology, terrestrial systems, and freshwater wetlands. The course focus on ecological design and management of rural and urban landscapes is highly relevant to current/future climate concerns with sea level rise, stormwater management and flooding, drought, energy infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, and food supply.

Apfelbaum brings expertise in ecological applications to achieve restoration objectives, stormwater management, and risk assessment. Zimmerman brings expertise in assessment of and solutions to the ecological impacts of urban development from CSOs and stormwater to energy demand, groundwater, and equity issues. Parsons brings expertise in estuarine ecosystems and biodiversity, toxics and sediment management in urban ports (including New York City, Boston, Philadelphia/Wilmington, Baltimore), ecologically-based engineered solutions to habitat loss including islands, coastal wetlands, barrier beaches, and peninsulas.

Learning Goals:
The course takes advantage of the instructors knowledge as practitioners. From people issues and conflict to dealing with conventional approaches to engineering and design, regulation, and anticipating the consequences of climate, the course will give students a real world look at how to assess existing rural and urban infrastructure and how it impacts natural systems. They will understand the principles and methods of evaluating altered systems practiced by the instructors, learn to apply them in their own work, develop natural restoration alternatives based on their evaluations, and become familiar with the issues, regulations, and obstacles to their implementation.

Course structure:
– Fixed Synchronous meeting: Thursdays 10:00am-12:00pm (120 minutes). Entire class meets online
– Flexible Synchronous meeting: Either Wednesday mornings 9:00am-10:00am or afternoons 3:00pm-4:00pm (60 minutes). Focus groups, case study work, Student presentations, additional lecture material
– Asynchronous Content (as necessary based on availability – 60 minutes). Team projects, lab sections, small groups
– Preparation Time: 6 hours. Reading, writing, case studies, research

?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.

History of the Art Museum

This seminar explores the development of the modern art museum as an architectural type, measured against the evolving nature of display objects, audience, urbanity, technology, and curatorial practices. We focus on the spatial relationship between the gallery space and the material on view and discover moments of co-amplification. This course occupies a space in between architectural history, art history, curatorial practice, and exhibition design.

From the consolidation of the type in early 19th-century Europe to more contemporary critiques of the White Cube, the art museum has been the primary site where symbiotic trajectories between artistic and architectural development have played out. Architecture often makes aggressive commentaries on objects it is designed to display, and works of art acquire new significance in the physical environments they occupy. The reverse is also true, especially as museums learn to be flexible and adapt over time.

The course will pay particular attention to how cultural artifacts from beyond the Western canon are dealt with and look at the importation of the art museum as a program into non-Western countries, which sometimes responded with their own canons and classifications of fine art. The evolving public is similarity a major concern, as we explore and update the concept of Museums without Walls and the ideas of participatory, non-hierarchical, and open-ended museum experiences.

Building on the course’s interdisciplinary premise, we will be involving curators and exhibition designers to discuss their disciplinary concerns and strategies.

Local Government Solutions to America’s Affordable Rental Housing Challenge

There are more than 10 million renters who are severely housing cost burdened – spending more than 50% of their income on shelter. The solutions to this national crisis are varied and involve all levels of government, but local governments are closest to the particular housing challenges in their communities and arguably have the widest range of levers to apply to the problem. This course will challenge students to create new and innovative approaches to the affordable housing problem that can be implemented at the local level. These approaches will include a mix of strategies to raise additional funds for subsidies, reduce regulatory constraints, and encourage new forms of housing and new methods of housing construction. Students will be offering advice and solutions directly to mayors and housing professionals of four cities from different regions of the nation that have volunteered to serve as laboratories for the course: Pittsburgh, PA, Memphis, TN, Kansas City, MO, and West Jordan, UT.

Students will receive a package of information about their cities in the first session of the class and will meet virtually with representatives of each of the cities early in the semester. Students will also have access to important local actors as the class proceeds. Students will present final reports to the city representatives providing a comprehensive strategy for the cities to adopt that will substantially resolve the cities’ current need for housing affordable to severely cost-burdened residents.

The course will be limited to 20 students who will be divided into teams that will serve as “consultants” to the mayors and housing professionals of the participating cities. While there are not explicit prerequisites, this course will work best for students with some experience, either academic or professional in the housing sector.

The class will meet virtually each week. Each class session will include a mix of mini lectures, presentations and discussions with invited guest experts, breakout sessions with city teams, and will often include presentations and discussions led by students. Grading will include class participation, periodic presentations, and the final comprehensive strategy.

Course structure: The class will meet synchronously on Wednesdays from 2-4 ET. A total of one hour of asynchronous class time will be assigned each week generally consisting of meetings of each team separately. While it may be ideal for the teams to meet in the 4-5 hour on Wednesday, each team will be free to select their own time to meet during the week. Each faculty member will also schedule office hours at different times during the week and students may use that hour for team meetings with faculty.

How Houses Build People (at FAS)

People build houses, but how do houses build people? This course will explore the house in both form and concept throughout pre-industrial Western history, with a focus on the ancient Mediterranean world (ca. 1300 BCE–1000 CE). Drawing on modern theories of space and sociology, we will examine how the spatial configurations and broader settings of houses actively shaped the way people acted, interacted, and thought—as both individuals and members of a collective society—within a variety of historical and cultural contexts.

Also offered by the Faculty of Arts and Science as CLASARCH 128.

Talking Architecture

What is the use of architects interviewing other architects? Of course, it is about camaraderie, sharing experiences, and providing support. But, if the conversation is well framed, edited, and published, then it can also contribute to the oral history of architecture and the discipline at large. That is no small feat.

This seminar is intended to contribute to the Public Events Program at Harvard GSD.

During this interactive course, students will team up to produce questions for two live-video interviews with visible and emerging figures in the field. These interviews will be spin-offs of three Architecture Department sponsored public lectures held during the semester. Their intent is to extend the conversations between these guests and the GSD community.

An important objective of the course is for students to find a position – literally, a voice – that is strong, yet flexible enough to be consistent throughout the three live interviews. They will test this position in public with respected colleagues and extend it to their practice as architects.

Students will work individually or in groups to craft one question for each of the two live conversations. A third private interview will be developed at the beginning of the term in order to practice before going live, with roughly one interview at the end of every month thereafter. Students will publicly ask questions at each event, with the opening and closing remarks conducted by the instructor.

The course will meet once a week for 1.5 hours to discuss the strategy for each event. Upon request, class can also meet any other morning. Asynchronous time will focus on question formulation and interviewee background research, done through formal (Frances Loeb Library) and informal sources (the Internet).

Grading Rubric (self-assessment):
40% Questions Review – for sessions in-between live events.
40% Interview performance – during the three events (including private interview).
20% Final Presentation – last session (course recap).

Course Structure for Remote Learning: We plan to have one session of 1.5 hours of synchronous meeting time on the last morning of every week (Friday, 10:30AM-11:59 AM) in order to check progress together will all students. The instructor will be available to meet with students upon request every Tuesday, Wednesday, and/or Thursday morning (10:30AM-11:29AM) if a student or a group may need further advice on their course work. In addition, for asynchronous review, students can email the instructor and TA at all hours for commentary on the progress of their course work. The response will come 24 hours from Monday to Friday during office hours (8:00AM-5:00PM, EST). Emails incoming during weekends (Saturdays and or Sundays) will be replied the Monday after during office hours.

Data Analysis and Data Physicalization through ‘Wagashi’ Expressions

Data Analysis and Data Physicalization is a research seminar that explores the analysis and communication of data. We use python as a programming language for data analysis and Wagashi, Japanese pastry, as a data physicalization medium.

Data can bring clarity and insights into otherwise chaotic problems and phenomena around us yet at the same time, can be deceiving or blinding without the knowledge to handle them skilfully. This skill is often referred to as data literacy that is the ability for one to carry out statistical analysis and to appreciate and critique information made available by others based on statistics. Along with data literacy, the aptitude for communication with data is becoming ever more important. The data visualization community, for instance, studies graphical representation of data. Successful data visualization using graphs, charts, timelines, and diagrams are extremely helpful in prompting visceral comprehension of data, nevertheless, many of the graphs and numbers are difficult to be felt and digested. How can designers participate in and contribute to addressing the issue above? In this class, we use python, commonly used in the data science community to understand the fundamentals of data analysis. Though advanced data analysis methods are beyond the scope of the class, we will cover basic concepts and techniques through a series of exercises and assignments. Simultaneously, we introduce techniques from Wagashi, a Japanese pastry art, as a way of making information drawn from data analysis literally tangible and digestible. Wagashi is art with intricate three-dimensional expressions that can communicate abstract messages and stories. A Wagashi artist, Hiroko Aoyama, will run a workshop for the class, and an art historian, Shinya Maezaki from Kyoto Women's University, will give a lecture on the history of Wagashi. Students will work on a final design project combining data analysis and Wagashi techniques introduced in the class.

Prerequisites: Some experience in object-oriented programming and reasonableproficiency in Rhinoceros/Grasshopper are required for the class.

Natural Histories for Troubled Times, or, Revisiting the ‘Entangled Bank’

This seminar looks at our (troubled) times, its toxic landscapes and eco-unfriendly townscapes, through the lens of natural history. By “lens” we can think immediately about optical instruments that bring the world into view, from the first microscopes that revealed legions of minute beasties and beauties, to scanning electron microscopes, which create their own phantasms of visual mastery. What makes this materiality of vision so inviting is that intrinsic to the craft, practice, and indeed the science of natural history are the techniques of observing, representing, writing, drawing, modeling, collecting, sorting, naming, and knowing that are consistent with our own work as architects and landscape architects. The natural history tradition—which at one point in its own history shifted from a descriptive to a historical art—long promoted the notion of the kingdoms of nature: mineral, vegetable, animal. Living amidst their ruins, we will attend to the ways in which the social, political, and especially economic (i.e. ecological) ideas and ideals that supported these kingdoms fell apart, producing far more curious and complicated affiliations and entanglements. For the sake of focus (see the discussion of lenses above), the narrators and objects of this seminar will be drawn mainly from two large phyla: Arthropoda (insects, arachnids, crustaceans) and Annelida (segmented worms). That said, some other sorts of creatures will inevitably crawl, wing, or wiggle their way into our discourse. These relatively small beings, all of them “spineless,” play a tremendous role in our lived and inhabited world, which we will examine through the art, language, craft, and literature of natural history. In these troubled times we need natural history more than ever to explain to ourselves, while looking out for, peering back from, or projecting onto our environment, what nature has become and/or where it has gone.

Application Deadlines

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2025 Graduating Student Profiles

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by MASS

Public Programs

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Financial Aid Deadlines

Application Deadlines