Courses
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Second Semester Architecture Core: SITUATE
Jeffry Burchard, Tomás dePaor, Sean Canty, Iman Fayyad, Yasmin Vobis, Oana Stanescu, Patrick McCafferty
The overarching pedagogical agenda for second semester is to expand upon the design methodologies developed in the first semester such that students acquire an understanding…
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Landscape Architecture II
Craig Douglas, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Paola Sturla, Sara Zewde
Second semester core studio explores research and methods in the design of complex urban conditions: sites layered with multiple and uncoordinated interventions that present issues…
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Daniel D’Oca, Stephen Gray, Brie Hensold, Kathy Spiegelman, Richard Peiser
The second semester core planning studio expands the topics and methodologies studied in the first semester core studio, GSD 1121, aiming to prepare students for…
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Fourth Semester Architecture Core: RELATE
Jon Lott, Jennifer Bonner, Michelle Chang, Jenny French, Alfredo Thiermann, Charlotte von Moos, Ron Witte
The fourth and final semester of the core sequence, this architecture studio tackles the complexity of the urban condition through the design of housing.
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Landscape Architecture IV
Jill Desimini, Rosalea Monacella, Danielle Choi, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Belinda Tato, Alex Wall
Near-Future City Urban Assemblages Encoded for Change This is the fourth and final semester for the core Landscape Architecture sequence. It questions ways in which…
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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio II
The spring studio builds upon theoretical and technical concepts already introduced in the MDE program with the emphasis on creative and critical thinking, observational and…
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The American Brick in Arcadia
‘The architect is a bricklayer who has studied Latin.’ – Adolf Loos‘Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together.’ – Ludwig Mies van…
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Intuition and the Machine
This studio combines the experience of a multi-year design research agenda with the fresh outlook of a collaborative design experiment. The purpose of the experiment…
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Midtown, Midrise, Mid-door
The studio will consider three recent and significant shifts in the design of collective housing in London: the viability and desirability of working from home;…
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BRIDGE WHERE YOU ARE: The Anamorphic Double
Uniquely called upon to embody purpose and beauty, bridges tend to be judged (more than any civic construction save the tower) on their singular object…
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Small institutions
Roger Tudó Galí, Josep Ricart Ulldemolins, Xavier Ros Majó
Inspired by Louis Kahn's passionate and enigmatic interest in institutions and their origins, the aim of this studio is to investigate the possibility of a…
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Fudo/Umwelt. Devising Transformative Environments in Japan
This studio is concerned with speculations (formal, material, social, cultural) on the future relations between architecture (design), people, and the city. The site of the…
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Temporary and Ephemeral Structures [M1]
In light of recent global turbulence generated by a series of crises – environmental, economic, political, social, and medical – architecture is once again challenged…
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Parkitecture at Pullman [M1]
The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) has struggled to tell the complex story of America and to reflect the country’s rich diversity. Despite recent progress…
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The Black New Deal [M1]
The Black New Deal Studio is a Design Justice course exploring the architecture made manifest as a result of privilege and power structures that define…
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Porches, Portals and Passageways [M2]
This studio will be the second in a series that explores the potential of a small scale municipal building to engage the urban and social…
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Cancel Architecture II [M2]
This studio continues the investigation of architectural consequences arising from the dismantlement of Confederate monuments presently under way in numerous cities across the United States.
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Underground [M2]
Instructors: Mira Henry and Matthew Au The studio will design two facades and a below level nightclub for an existing retail store along the western…
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LANDSCAPES OF THE VOID: URBAN PROJECTS ON RESIDUAL TOPOGRAPHIES.
Instructor: Danilo Martic I remember looking at buildings made of stone, and thinking, there has to be an interesting landscape somewhere out there because these stones…
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TAR CREEK REMADE
TAR CREEK REMADE: Environmental Legacy, Toxic Terrain and Re-Imagining the Future in the Tri-State Mining Area, Ottawa County, Oklahoma, USA. TAR CREEK REMADE will explore…
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Away…Offshore…Adrift… Shifting Landscapes, Unstable Futures
Nantucket, meaning "faraway land or island" or "sandy, sterile soil tempting no one” in Algonquin, is an island 30 miles off the southeastern coast of…
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SHADING SUNSET: Reimagining the Streets of Los Angeles for a Warmer Future
This studio reimagines the contemporary public realm of Los Angeles by reconceptualizing its streets as venues for social life in relation to sunlight. This work…
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SAO PAULO REACTION: TAMANDUATEÍ RIVER MOUTH
Cristiane Muniz, Fernando Viegas
The city of São Paulo grew dramatically during the 20th century. However, the transformation of the small village into the largest South American metropolis in…
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Xiamen Studio. Merging urban development and natural landscape.
Merging urban development and natural landscape: Searching for “spectacular or regular” projects? The Studio Option focuses on the capacity of large-scale projects to direct the…
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Building Respect on San Francisco’s Third Street
In the past decade (prior to the presence of the Coronavirus), San Francisco’s economy experienced its most substantial growth in nearly a century. Two factors…
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DIVIDING BRIDGES & BRIDGING DIVIDES. A studio on infrastructures and their consequences
Cities fail their citizens if they adapt too slowly. The pace of adaptation is, in part, dependent on the capacity of spatial practitioners to reimagine…
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FRINGE CITIES: The legacies and future of renewal in the small American city
Across the nation, small, post-industrial cities today occupy a critical boundary between our polarized metropolitan hubs and vast rural landscapes. These are the Fringe Cities.
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Quo Vadis, Addis? Manufacturing-led Urbanization in Ethiopia – Empower Design!
The studio ‘Quo Vadis, Addis?’ addresses the question of how to integrate existing manufacturing zones in the textile and garment sector within the socio-spatial fabric…
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Below and Beyond: Imagining the future of underground infrastructure at Harvard Square
This studio aims to propose a near-future scenario for the Brattle Tunnel, a piece of decommissioned train infrastructure located under Harvard Square. As the oldest…
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Landscape Representation II
Landscape Representation II examines the relationship between terrain and the dynamic landscape it supports and engenders. The course explores and challenges the representational conventions of…
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Digital Media: Design Systems
The course is an introduction to fundamental concepts, methods, and practical techniques in design computation with emphasis on a systems perspective. We…
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Digital Media: Writing Form
This course offers an introduction to the field of design and computation through the essential pursuit of writing form. Setting aside the…
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Digital Media: Not Magic
According to folklore, Michelangelo fell to his knees upon seeing the Florentine fresco Annunciation, went silent, and eventually concluded that the image…
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Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture
Current tendencies in the discipline suggest a split between two opposing architectural projects: the easy project versus the difficult project[1]. Primarily related…
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Off: On a Tangent
“An art professor once told me that in composition, elements should either overlap or there should be some space between them; that it produces discomfort…
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Views, With Rooms
Evolving theories on optics, over time and place, have created a set of objects that physically model vision. Each renders vision visible…
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Talking Architecture
What is the use of architects interviewing other architects? Of course, it is about camaraderie, sharing experiences, and providing support. But, if…
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Immersive Landscape: Representation through Gaming Technology
"Soon will come plausible alternatives to our world. You may have failed in this one but what if you had a million…
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Drawing for Designers 2: Human Presence and Appearance in Natural and Built Environment
The aim of the class is to learn how to depict and express the presence and appearance of people in natural and…
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Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
The Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices Seminar investigates art and design work in the interdisciplinary modalities of contemporary culture and the city. As artists and…
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Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture
Pablo Pérez-Ramos, Katarzyna Balug
What do you need to know in order to understand this landscape? This course explores how cultural values are embedded in the design of landscapes.
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Landscape Fieldwork: People, Politics, Practices (with FAS)
Course description: This lecture course explores landscape architecture’s ethical and political power to shape the world. It will provide students with fieldwork…
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Type and the Idea of the City: Architecture’s Search for what is Common
Open to all students, the seminars in this course will complement Option Studio 1318: Midtown, Midrise, Mid-door. It will equip students with…
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Experiments in Public Freedom
As places that accept and encourage multiple representations, cities need spaces to enable unregulated, temporary, and spontaneous events. Due to their role…
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Material Practice and its Agency
This seminar introduces an understanding of material discourse in design and architecture that affects cultural, social ,economic and political issues. In addition…
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Artificial Intelligence in Contemporary Design Practice
Unprecedented issues, such as climate change, challenge the standard hyper-specialized approach to problem-solving. Within this context, there is a need for professions…
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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…
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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…
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The Fifth Plan
In this seminar we will consider the evolution of the floor plan across five iterations: proto-modern, modern, post-modern, sequel-modern, and, most importantly,…
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The anatomy of (wild)fire, a design quest?
The research seminar examines the anatomy of (wild)fires in the context of climatic disintegration and the dismantling of agro-cultural practices of collectively…
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Regarding an Archive
This will be the last course I will teach before retirement at the end of this academic year. Personally, it is an…
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Thinking Landscape – Making Cities
Deploying a landscape and ecology framework for resilient citymaking This design seminar aims to build citymaking skills for landscape architects. To imagine…
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Material World
“Who is it that the Earth belongs to?” Bangstad, Sindre, and Nilsen Torbjørn Tumyr. "Thoughts on the Planetary:…
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Urban Grids: Open form for City Design-2
The historic evolution of the city can be tied to “regular systems” that have allowed for rational forms of development, which can…
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Philosophy of Technology: From Marx and Heidegger to AI, Genome Editing, and Geoengineering (HKS)
Technology shapes how power is exercised in society, and thereby also changes how the present changes into the future. Technological innovation is all around us,…
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Histories and Theories of Urban Interventions
This course provides an introduction to the critical histories and theories of urban intervention and formation, and to the disciplinary practices of urban planning and…
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Histories of Landscape Architecture II: Topical Questions
Designed gardens and landscapes are cultural artifacts that encompass three main expectations: pragmatic needs, cultural significance, and aesthetic order. Although some landscape narratives often ignore…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Modernism and its Counter-Narratives
Lisa Haber-Thomson, K. Michael Hays
Modernism has fundamentally to do with the emergence of new kinds of objects and events and, at the same time, new conceptualizations of their appearance,…
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Modernization in the Visual United States Environment, 1890-2035
Here find an ecology of changes, a course on the ecosystem of change so rapid most thoughtful Americans know it as modernization.
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Adventure and Fantasy Simulation
Fantasy opens portals to new life forms. It prepares us for supranatural humans, genetic adjustment, non-electronic novelty. It forms the core of…
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Rome
A seminar on the art, architecture, and urbanism of Rome where the layering of material artifacts from successive historical periods provides an…
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Modern Architecture and Urbanism in China
Contrary to many interpretations, by the early Qing Dynasty some modern traits, in the accepted Western sense of modernity, had entered China…
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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…
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Case Studies in Conservation and Adaptive Reuse
Traditional conservation practice is increasingly proving inadequate to address the cultural, economic, social and environmental challenges facing the diverse array of buildings…
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The Ruin Aesthetic: Episodes in the History of an Architectural Idea
One of the arresting images in Michel Serres's Rome: The Book of Foundations is the idea that history is "a knot of different times" —…
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Rules for the Electronic Zoo: A Mediatechnics of the Neoliberal Present
Expanding outwards from a lecture bearing the same title, delivered in the spring of 2020, this course explores the technical and political composition of the…
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Architecture: Histories of the Present
“Poets and prophets, like magicians, learn their craft from predecessors. And just as magicians will invoke the real or supposed source of…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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Power & Place: Culture and Conflict in the Built Environment
This course studies and analyzes processes and expressions of power in urban form and design in the North American built environment. Focusing…
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Public and Private Development
Cities are developed by a complex blend of public and private actors and actions. This course employs a combination of lectures, discussions, readings, case studies,…
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Urban Politics, Planning, and Development (at HKS)
In the face of failures and dysfunction at the national level, the welfare- and democracy-enhancing potential of cities has come into focus in recent years.
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Advanced Real Estate Finance
This course builds on GSD 5204 and comparable introductory real estate courses offered by other schools at Harvard. This year’s course covers…
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Building and Leading Real Estate Enterprises and Entrepreneurship
This course focuses on how you conceive, build and lead successful real estate companies. By virtue of the industry in which they…
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Theories for Practice in Conflict, Crisis, and Recovery
Course topics and objectives:How do we understand the relationship between crisis, recovery and the built environment at the beginning of the 21st century? Conflicts…
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Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities
Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities examines housing policy and planning in urban societies around the world and especially in the Global…
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Urbanization and Development
This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development, paying close attention to the ways that public and private sector priorities, legal frameworks, land use…
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U. S. Housing Markets, Problems, and Policies
This course will examine the operation of U.S. housing markets, the principal housing problems facing the nation, and the policy approaches available…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
This course blends two shades of green: sustainability and money. It focuses on the intersection between environmental and social opportunities in the…
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Community Development: History, Theory, and Imaginative Practice
Community development is a heterogeneous and contested field of planning thought and practice. The profession has generally prioritized people and places that…
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Experimental Infrastructures
Infrastructure is an encompassing term that can refer to anything from railroad ties to social media to ecosystems, and one which has…
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Urban Design and the Color-Line
“History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend…
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Making Participation Relevant to Design
By trying to understand how participation can make design more relevant to society, we can create more socially just cities. This course…
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Developing for Social Impact
How can real estate development advance social purpose while accounting for development feasibility? With increasing purposefulness, those involved in shaping the…
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CoDesign Field Lab Black Belt Study for the Green New Deal
Biden’s historic win in Georgia, along with the disproportionate impacts of COVID and heightening vulnerability to climate change, bring into clear relief…
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Local Government Solutions to America’s Affordable Rental Housing Challenge
Christopher Herbert, James Stockard, Bennett Hecht
There are more than 10 million renters who are severely housing cost burdened – spending more than 50% of their income on…
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Cities and the Urban Informal Economy: Rethinking Development, Urban Design and Planning
Rahul Mehrotra, Martha Chen, Bishwapriya Sanyal
Since the emergence of the concept of the ‘urban informal economy’ in the early 1970s, there have been multiple interpretations as well as applications of…
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Climate Justice
Recent discourse around climate change—including debates about the Anthropocene, Green New Deal legislation, the plight of climate refugees, the dire warnings of…
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Hidden Figures: The City, Architecture and the Construction of Race and Gender
What hidden figures do our buildings and urban environment conceal? There exists systematic erasure of the contributions of Women of Color…
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Architectures of the New Silk Road
Sino-African Infrastructure-led Urbanization – Deficits and Potentials China’s Belt and Road Initiative can be considered one of the largest and possibly most…
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Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building II (at HKS)
This community based research course focuses on some of the major issues Native American Indian tribes and nations face in the 21st century. It provides…
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The United States and China
The United States and China are global economic and military powers. They have a rich history of commerce, friendship, alliance, and antagonism. Both countries have…
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Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases and Comparisons
This seminar course will deal with “modern housing” covering a period primarily from 1990 to the present. It will engage with “urban…
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Creating Real Estate Ventures: a Legal Perspective
This course will examine, through the lens of the legal documentation involved at each step, how a complex commercial real estate deal is put together,…
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The Gentrification Debates: Perceptions and Realities of Neighborhood Change
Gentrification and the real and perceived impacts that neighborhood change has on longtime local residents as well as new dwellers, is complicated…
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Affordable and Mixed-Income Housing Development, Finance, and Management
Explores issues relating to the development, financing, and management of housing affordable to low and moderate income households. Examines community-based development corporations, public housing authorities,…
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Building Simulation
This course is the third of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6125) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture…
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Materials
This course explores the science of stuff. How do we classify stuff? How do we build with stuff? What are the energy, health, and societal…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies II
Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Karen Janosky, Kirt Rieder
Topography is one of the primary and most powerful elements of landscape architecture, forming a founda-tion for plant growth, habitat, the flow of water and…
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Structural Design 1
This course introduces students to the analysis and design of structural systems. The fundamental principles of statics, structural loads, and rigid body equilibrium are considered…
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Cases in Contemporary Construction
As the final component in the required sequence of technology courses, this professionally-oriented course develops an integral understanding of the design and construction of…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies IV
This lecture/workshop class addresses the relationships between landscape design conceptualization, material properties and technologies of making. The class introduces the practices of design development and…
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Product and Experience Design for Desirability (at SEAS)
Multi-disciplinary, project-based course for students interested in designing products, services, or ambitious art or educational works that are meaningful, beautiful, useful, as simple as possible,…
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Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation
Maps both represent reality and create it. It is in the context of this contention that this course presents the fundamentals of…
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Enactive Design: Creative Applications through Concurrent Human-Machine Interaction
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
Enactive Design is an advanced research seminar on human-computer interaction. We will explore the role of real-time, bidirectional communication between human and…
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Pre- and Post-
Pre- and Post– is an introduction to fundamental concepts, techniques, and methods in digital design, with a focus on the processes of…
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Re-Wilding Harvard
David Moreno Mateos, Joyce Chaplin
This is a year-long class on rewilding, returning a habitat to an earlier form. Students in this course will research historical and cultural definitions of…
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Re-Wilding Harvard
David Moreno Mateos, Joyce Chaplin
This is a year-long class on rewilding, returning a habitat to an earlier form. Students in this course will research historical and cultural definitions of…
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Constructing Heterogeneity
Contemporary buildings are inherently heterogeneous; more often than not they are assemblages of different materials, programs, and subjects. Although homogenous finish layers…
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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…
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Plants and Placemaking – New Ecologies for a Rapidly Changing World
In the face of crises spanning pandemics, political turmoil, and the rapid degradation of the planet’s natural systems—all with a backdrop of human inequality—the…
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Altered Rural and Urban Landscape Restoration
Steven Apfelbaum, Katharine Parsons, Robert Zimmerman
Highly altered and often engineered rural, coastal, and urban landscapes are difficult and expensive to adapt to the realities of climate change. Food…
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Structures in Landscape Architecture, Joint & Detail
This seminar/workshop explores how to design and make landscapes that are rationally constructed and expressively convincing. This search is focused through the…
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Nano Micro Macro: Adaptive Material Laboratory (with SEAS)
Jonathan Grinham, Joanna Aizenberg
This course is an interdisciplinary platform for designers, engineers, and scientists to interact and develop innovative new products. The course introduces ideas-to-innovation…
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Informal Robotics / New Paradigms for Design & Construction
This course teaches how to create original robotic devices made of light, compliant – informal – materials. New fabrication techniques are transforming…
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Ecosystem restoration
Given the current speed of habitat and species loss caused by human development, the restoration of degraded ecosystem is one of the…
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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,…
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Non-Professional Practice
"I've never worked for a living. I consider working for a living slightly imbecilic from an economic point of view. I hope…
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Products of Practice: From code to plan to code
A seminar that critically mines historic systems of representation and the product (or media) of the architect in relationship to the evolving…
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Forms of Assembly (semester two)
"Forms of Assembly" is an advanced two semester research and project-based seminar initiated by Art, Design, and the Public Domain MDes, in…
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Geaugraphy
This one-unit course will consist of three lectures over the course of the term. Dates to be confirmed. …
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Students may take a maximum of 8 units with different GSD instructors in this course series. 9201 must be taken for either 2, or 4…
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Thesis project / Project Thesis
Andrew Holder, Jon Lott, Eric Howeler
As the culminating effort for the Master of Architecture degree, a “Thesis” entails multiple expectations. It is a demonstration, not only of…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree MArch
The Thesis Program encourages students to take advantage of the wide range of resources and research initiatives of the Graduate School of Design and its…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of the Degree MAUD, MLAUD, or MUP
Following participation in the department’s fall thesis preparation seminar (GSD 9204), the spring term of the second year sees students complete, defend, and submit…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of the Degree Master in Landscape Architecture
Following preparation in GSD 9341, each student pursues a topic of relevance to landscape architecture, which must include academic inquiry and design exploration.
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Independent Design Engineering Project II
Mary Tolikas, Martin Bechthold
The Independent Design Engineering Project (IDEP) is a two-semester project during which students in the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program work on understanding a…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Doctoral Degrees
9502 must be taken for either 2 or 4 units. Under faculty guidance, the student conducts an independent reading program and formulates a thesis proposal.
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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Martin Bechthold, Ann Forsyth, Niall Kirkwood, Ali Malkawi, Erika Naginski, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Martin Bechthold, Anita Berrizbeitia, Neil Brenner, Joan Busquets, Diane Davis, K. Michael Hays, Alex Krieger, Ali Malkawi, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe, Charles Waldheim
Thesis extension in satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Methods of Research in Art and Design: A Workshop-tutorial
Methods of Research is a workshop for the development of individual projects in art and design. There is no preset syllabus. Our…
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Discourse and Methods I
This course is open only to Ph.D. students in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design (Ph.D. students from other departments may participate with…
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Discourse and Research Methods
Research conducted in the Doctor of Design Program (DDes) at the GSD spans a broad range of topics and areas of investigation that not only…