Courses
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Second Semester Architecture Core: SITUATE
Jeffry Burchard, Tomás dePaor, Sean Canty, Michelle Chang, Megan Panzano, 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
Emily Wettstein, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Craig Douglas, Paola Sturla, Nadir Abdessemed, Silvia Benedito, Eric de Broche des Combes, Teresa Gali Izard
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, Brie Hensold, Jennifer Molinsky, 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
Jenny French, Jennifer Bonner, Andrew Holder, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Oana Stanescu, Elizabeth Whittaker
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, Pablo Pérez-Ramos, 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
Sawako Kaijima, Jock Herron, Arianna Mazzeo, Peter Stark
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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FAMILY
Plant a radish.Get a radish.Never any doubt.That's why I love vegetables;You know what you're about!Plant a turnip.Get a turnip.
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Model as Building – Building as Model 2
This is the second -and final- instalment of a critical exploration of the phenomenon known as 'model as building – building as model', whereby buildings of…
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Recasting the Outcasts
At a time when it is more essential than ever to conserve resources and prevent carbon pollution, we find that buildings are frequently discarded…
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Setouchi (Seto Inland Sea) Studio
The Seto Inland Sea in western Japan has historically been an active location for trade, marine activities, fishing industries and tourism. The bay, which boasts…
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The New Generic
This studio will investigate new forms of ephemerality and adaptability in spaces for living and working through the design of a tall building in Miami,…
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Zero Energy Residential High-Rise
As urbanization and internal migration to existing cities has been on the increase, residential high-rise typology became the norm in many countries. Although this typology…
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A Novel Museum
Johannes Kuehn, Wilfried Kuehn, Simona Malvezzi
The objective of this studio is to advance design proposals for the museum of the 21st century. Taking into account the historical precursors and…
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HOW TO LIVE TOGETHER?
Is there an alternative to the suburbs capable of satisfying contemporary needs and aspirations? Can we attend to our societies and their unexpected transformations through…
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American Gothic, Monuments for Small-Town Life
“American Gothic” is a painting of 1930 by Grant Wood, showing a white, middle-aged couple in front of a farm. The man wears jeans overalls…
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The Anamorphic Double: A Bridge for DC
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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Tokyo Study Abroad Studio: New Topologies of Our Living Environment
The Tokyo Study Abroad Option Studio, New Topologies of Our Living Environment: Beyond the Division of Architecture, City and Landscape, explores the typology of…
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SUPERBLOOM: Shelter, Drought, and Sculpture in the California Desert
This studio will focus on the Yucca Valley, CA, and its adjacent desert settlements. Students will consider the desert as a physical and metaphysical void,…
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Field Work: Brexit, Borders, and Imagining a New City-Region for the Irish Northwest
Niall Kirkwood, Gareth Doherty
The FIELD WORK sponsored studio will advance alternative futures for the Irish Northwest through the collaborative disciplines of landscape architecture, ecology and anthropology. Focused on…
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The Monochrome No-image
The earth is no longer the background of human action. Now, more than ever, we can only speak of space in relation to the mobile,…
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Landscape of Trans-Nationality: Trans Siberian Railway (TSR) and Alternative Nature
This is the second studio in a row for Kim/ Park at the GSD that project the role of landscape architecture within the anticipated physical…
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Build with Life: Transformation + Formation: Landscape and Islamic Culture
The uprisings of the North African Arab Spring exposed the fragility of countries whose citizens were eager to revisit and adapt their identities in the…
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Extreme Urbanism 6: Designing Sanitation Infrastructure
This studio examines the issue of sanitation infrastructure in Mumbai, with a special focus on community toilets in the city’s informal settlements. The site…
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Large Scale Projects to Create New Centralities in Shanghai. Potentials for the Regular City
The studio focuses on a study of capacity of big urbanistic projects to direct the growth and transformation of large metropolises. It takes the example…
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Designing Atmospheres and Technologies for Social Interaction
The knowledge economy has become the main engine of economic prosperity in urban areas. High-tech talent and industry have moved back to many cities, raising…
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Future of Streets in Los Angeles
The Future of Streets studio in Los Angeles will investigate the impact of new mobility technologies on the built environment of LA, seeking solutions that…
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Patterned Justice: Design Languages for a Just Pittsburgh
Christopher Alexander’s seminal 1977 book “A Pattern Language” describes that people designing their environments rely on certain "languages” that allow them to articulate and communicate…
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Re-thinking a Humanist Skyscraper City
As the birthplace of the modern Skyscraper, the city of Chicago holds a place in history as one of great architectural innovation. From the first…
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Landscape Representation II
Building on the foundations of Landscape Representation I, this course investigates further the generative potential of representation as part of a productive feedback loop in…
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Digital Media: Ambiance
How do we define the “ambiance” of a place? What causes specific environments to evoke different feelings? Are there consistent elements that define these…
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Digital Media: Writing Form
This course offers an introduction to the field of design and computation through the primal pursuit of writing form. Setting aside the…
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Responsive Environments:Episodes in Experiential Futures
Allen Sayegh, Stefano Andreani
This course introduces to the students the tools and necessary thinking framework to create technologically driven speculative environments in the near future…
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AI and Computer Simulation in Landscape Practice
The course aims to imagine and critically investigate the role of AI and computer simulation in landscape practice, considering the perceptual, intangible…
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Sections of Every Thing
This course aims to discuss the possibility of sections, made and used in the practice of landscape architecture, as the mean of…
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The Landscape We Eat
“A recipe is more than the food it is made of: the geography of our dinner spills off of the plate.” “The…
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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 built environments. This…
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Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
The Interdisciplinary Art Practices seminar investigates the exploratory character of art and design work in the interdisciplinary modalities of contemporary culture and the city. In…
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The Nature of Difference: Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture
Anita Berrizbeitia, Pablo Pérez-Ramos
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,…
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Designing the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form
The course is an interpretative look at the characteristic patterns of settlement and attitudes towards cities and urban life that are identified…
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Design Anthropology: Objects, Landscapes, Cities
In recent years, there has been a movement in anthropology toward a focus on objects, while design and planning have been moving…
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Urban Form: Transition as Condition
The fixed categories by which we have traditionally understood the urban no longer hold. They have been undermined by the multiplicity of…
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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, Atmosphere and Ambience
This seminar introduces an understanding of atmosphere and ambience within the discourse of material practice in architecture. The materials are a contextual and cultural manifestation…
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Place-Based Design Inquiry
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that went into creating them.” Albert Einstein or is it: ‘We cannot design…
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Emergent Urbanizations: Challenges for Theory, Method, and Research
Neil Brenner, Sai Balakrishnan
This course proceeds from a simple premise: new patterns and pathways of urbanization are emerging around the world, and these transformations require a radical rethinking…
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Factory of the Sensible and the Political* (Equipping Experience)
Architects have long experimented with altering perceptions of space in order to reconfigure experience. At stake in this course are pivotal historical and theoretical transformations…
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Urban Grids: Open form for City Design-2
Framework: Within a larger research scope on “Revisiting the urban grids in the XXI century”, this seminar will focus on the investigation…
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Tokyo Study Abroad Seminar: Thinning Metropolis: Strategies and Tools for the New Urban Condition
This Course is for students in the Toyko Study Abroad Program. The aging, thinning population has become the new premise of Tokyo’s urbanism. After a…
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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…
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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…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts III
Amanda Reeser Lawrence, Vittorio Lampugnani
This semester, Buildings, Texts, and Contexts III is structured as a special two-part course, taught by two different instructors. Section I: Modernism. The Canon and…
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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,…
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Adventure and Fantasy Simulation, 1871-2036
Visual constituents of high adventure since the late Victorian era, emphasizing wandering woods, rogues, tomboys, women adventurers, faerie antecedents, halflings, crypto-cartography, Third-Path…
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Modern Architecture and Urbanism in China
Modernizing influences, largely from the hands of foreign powers, first forcefully entered China in the aftermath of the Opium War and signing…
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Making Sacred Space
This course addresses the current crisis in church design by an in depth consideration of the ideas, images, concepts, and legislation that inform the creation…
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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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Competing Visions of Modernity in Japan
The course will trace the parallel trajectories of two of modern Japan’s most influential schools of architectural thought, represented by Kenzo Tange…
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14 Things (A Secret History of Italian Design)
Fourteen Things explores intertwinings between design, science, technology, society, art, and culture by means of the “excavation” of fourteen objects from different periods in the…
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Palladio and Raphael: An Innovative Learning Experience
Guido Beltramini, Howard Burns
Two leading scholars of the architecture of Andrea Palladio, Guido Beltramini and Howard Burns of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza,…
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Forest, Grove, Tree: Planting Urban Landscapes
Discussions about the urban forest and tree canopy, carbon sequestration, sustainability, and tree adoption programs are becoming more prevalent by the day.
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Architecture and Landscape before and after Watergate
In one of the defining moments of the Senate Watergate Hearings, June 28, 1973, Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr., put the “central…
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Architecture’s Bodies: Agency and Biopolitics
The aim of this seminar is to think carefully about how bodies engage with architecture and the built environment. In examining the relationships between ideological…
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Power & Place: Culture and Conflict in the Built Environment
This lecture/workshop course studies and analyzes processes and expressions of power in urban form and design in the North American built environment.
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Public and Private Development
This course explores the analytic frameworks, skills, and bodies of knowledge required to understand, evaluate, plan, and implement public and private development within cities and…
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Urban Politics and Planning (at HKS)
In the face of failures and dysfunction at the national level, there is growing excitement about the welfare- and democracy-enhancing potential of…
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Cities by Design II: Projects, Processes, and Outcomes
Cities are palimpsests. They are the spatial manifestations of a layering and re-layering of social and environmental systems over time. Cities by Design II is…
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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
The subject of Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities examines housing policy and planning in urban societies around the world and especially…
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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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Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation
Through the lens of climate change, this foundation course surveys the intellectual development of resilience and adaptation in the social, natural and…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings? Where are…
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Planning for Climate Change: Scarcity, Abundance, and the Idea of the Future
Climate change presents a range of complex challenges for urban planning and design. This class will explore the conditions planners face in…
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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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Urban Transportation Planning and Implementation
Frederick Salvucci, Ruth Bonsignore
This course examines the policy, politics, planning, and implementation of transportation systems in urban areas. We will explore a broad range of…
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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 otherwise, we…
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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
This field studies course will use a combination of readings, lectures, class discussion and a focused development exercise for a Boston site to explore…
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Demographics and Population Processes
Many of the important challenges that our communities face today, from the persistent racial and ethnic disparities and human rights violations, to…
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Urban Design for Planners
Course ObjectivesThis seminar course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the spatial…
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International Humanitarian Response (at HSPH)
This course offers practical training in the complex issues and field skills needed to engage in humanitarian work. Students will gain familiarity with the concepts…
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Creating Real Estate Ventures: a Legal Perspective
The course will examine how a commercial real estate deal is put together to move a project from conception to completion. The…
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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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Market Analysis and Urban Economics
This course focuses on the built environment and land-use policy. The course combines readings from the real estate economics academic literature with…
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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
Module 1Topography—the land—is a basic medium and tool of landscape architecture. Grading is both precise and conceptual; the core mission of this module is…
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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
Niall Kirkwood, Alistair McIntosh
The fourth and final course in the Ecologies, Techniques and Technologies core sequence, GSD 6242 continues to develop an understanding of, and promote…
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Design Survivor: Experiential Lessons in Designing for Desirability (at SEAS)
Multi-disciplinary course for students interested in designing products and services that are simple, irresistible, delightful, cool, covetable, viral, and, increasingly these days, much more likely…
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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…
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Urban and Town Ecology
Wildlife, vegetation, soil, air, water, and aquatic ecosystems, together with their human uses, are related to the distinctive, especially spatial, attributes…
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Urban Restoration Ecology
We will explore principles of modern ecology that relate to restoring ecological structure and function to previously degraded lands. These are often…
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Interface Design: Integrating Material Perceptions
The course explores the interface between architecture and engineering by examining our perceptions towards materials. Interdisciplinary research has gained interest in recent…
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Building Human Interaction
This course investigates the interactions between humans and buildings with a focus on environmental sustainability and health. The exploration will fall into three categories: How…
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Beyond Adaptation and Resiliency: GeoEngineering and Why We Will Need It
“Combating climate change is the race of our lifetime.” Wagner & Weitzman, Climate Shock. On October 7, 2018, the New York…
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Computational Design 2: Time/Design as Signal
In “computational design 1” we focused on space, its structure and representation within the realm of digital media. In this course we…
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Structures in Landscape Architecture, Joint & Detail
Summary This class explores how to design and make physical landscapes that are both rationally constructed and expressively convincing. This…
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Mechatronic Optics
The drawing as a certain transcription of vision into operational, communicative, and instructional notation is at the very core of design. Deeply…
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Informal Robotics / New Paradigms for Design & Construction
Today new materials and fabrication techniques are transforming the field of robotics. Rather than rigid metal parts connected by mechanical components, robots…
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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
The course aims to study unconventional modes of architectural practice and their underlying implications. It is based on a workshop format,…
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Designing with the Urban Stack: A Practice Course for Designers of the Built Environment
The seminar will investigate critical issues of the Urban Stack for the Kendall Square District, Cambridge, MA. The first half of…
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Miami Resilience: Housing & Infrastructure
This advanced research seminar in Miami, Florida (USA) is thematically focused at the intersection of community resilience, infrastructure design, housing studies, building science and zoning.
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Entanglement of Movement and Meaning: The Architect, Spatial Perception and the Technological Body
One century ago, Schlemmer conducted a sequence of seminal experiments merging the body/design, movement/architecture, emotion/technology to break the relationships between body and…
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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, John McMorrough
As the culminating requirement of the Master in Architecture degree, “Thesis” entails multiple expectations. It is a demonstration, not only of competency and expertise but…
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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 for the Degree Master in Design Studies
(Previously "Open Projects”) Prerequisites: Filing of signed "Declaration of Advisor" form with MDes office, and approval signature of the program director. A student who selects…
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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
Martin Bechthold, Mary Tolikas, Peter Stark
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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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Thesis extension in satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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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…