Courses
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Second Semester Architecture Core: SITUATE
Jeffry Burchard, Michelle Chang, Elle Gerdeman, Oana Stanescu, Liang Wang, Emmett Zeifman
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, Gary R. Hilderbrand, Amy Whitesides, Sara Zewde, Min Yeo
The studio will explore how we might reimagine cemetery landscapes of the future in response to the challenges of the climate crisis, and the clear…
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Daniel D’Oca, Stephen Gray, Brie Hensold, Mitchell Silver
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, Sean Canty, Andrew Holder, Grace La, Jon Lott, 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
Lorena Bello Gómez, Tomas Folch, Danielle Choi, Mark Heller, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Rosalea Monacella, 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
Kipp Bradford, Jonathan Grinham, Karen Reuther
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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Ruinophilia & Pentimenti ? Chinatown Milan Case Study
Arguably the conception of ruins has long shaped western architecture historians’ origins narrative dating back to antiquity. Largely shaped by a distinct visual culture and…
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Rotterdam Studio Abroad: Bookmaking
From 2012 to 2014, the Rotterdam studio abroad focused on Elements of Architecture, from 2016 to 2018 on the Countryside. The studios culminated in exhibitions…
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Planning for Architecture and Urban Conservation in Mumbai?s Historic Fort District
Mumbai’s urban identity has been in flux since its founding as a colonial port city. Its economy in the post-colonial phase of its history has…
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Landscape Representation II
The Landscape Representation II course will examine the relationship between terrain and the dynamic landscape it supports and engenders. The course explores and challenges the…
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Digital Media: Neural Bodies
This course considers the building as body from a computational and critical perspective. The friction between the building as a quasi-biological organism…
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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 better-known paradigms of…
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Responsive Environments: Poetics of Space
The course introduces students to the tools and design methods for creating responsive environments and technologically driven experiences in the built environment. By putting the…
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Offsite/Onsite: Curating Contemporary Art
Today, everybody is a curator—we supposedly curate our meals, our social media feeds, and our outfits. But what does it mean to curate exhibitions of…
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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
The tangential inherently implicates the expression of how two things touch. In a moment where touching has become complicated, a formal exploration…
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Talking Architecture
This seminar is intended to contribute to the Public Events Program at Harvard GSD. During this third version of the course, students will team up…
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Public Drawing
This course seeks to open a discussion around the thought and design of public space, seeking to provide students with tools for thinking, design and…
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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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Mapping Urbanization
Urbanization is often framed in terms of human agglomeration. The opening line of the most recent United Nations population dynamics report states that 60% of…
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Rotterdam Studio Abroad Seminar: Bookmaking & Story Telling
Part I: The history of bookmaking and book storageThe first part of the seminar will explore earlier bookmaking typologies and test their relevance for…
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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, the city, and the planet. As…
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Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture
What do you need to know in order to understand this landscape? How do design culture and design thinking transform over time? How are cultural…
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Experiments in Public Freedom
Cities are spatial accumulations of capital and culture that can host and must cater to a vast array of different and often…
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Thinking Landscape – Making Cities: Designing Regenerative Futures
In this design seminar you will respond to three propositions to create a new settlement pattern for a city of your choice.
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Migration in Latin-America: Imagining Flux, Rapid Response and Reversibility
Today’s fast-paced, global flow of people and goods is challenging the idea that the city should be an entity that aspires to…
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The History of Heritage and the Heritage of History
This is a seminar course designed for both urban planning and urban design students who are interested in heritage theories, conservation practices, and related socio-cultural…
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Agropolitan Futures
This seminar examines the unsustainable relationship between urbanisation and agriculture. It will focus on Monsoon Asia where urbanisation rates are extreme and where most of…
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Urban Grids-3:Grid Plan versus Big Project
Within a larger research scope of exploring open forms for city design, this seminar will focus on a clear discussion of two paradigms:1) Large…
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Appearance
This seminar will focus on architecture’s appearance, on how architecture is rendered both legible and actionable to its audience. The many labels applied to architecture’s…
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The Aperture Analyzed: The Form and Space of Openings
This seminar will focus on an essential component of architecture, the aperture, which has broad implications for our understanding of space. An…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Origins and Ends
Our aim is to address the general rupture caused by the rise of modernity—that is, by the social, economic, technological, and ideological transformations accompanying the…
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Histories of Landscape Architecture II
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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Histories and Theories of Urban Form and Design
This course provides an introduction to the critical histories and theories of urban intervention and formation, and to the disciplinary practices of urban design in…
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Urban Planning Theory and Praxis: Comparative-Historical Origins and Applications
This course takes as its point of departure the historical origins of planning as a discipline, assesses its evolution over time and across developmental contexts,…
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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. Design remembered…
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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…
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Chinese Modern Architecture and Urbanism
This course concentrates on four periods of modern architecture and planning in China. The first spans from the 19th century 'treaty ports'…
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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
Infrastructure plays a decisive role in urban development and in the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a historical perspective. History…
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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 Tange Kenz? (1913–2005) on the…
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Environmentalisms II: How to Have a Politics?
Today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: at the very moment that the idea of “environment” is being placed at the center of our…
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Environmental Histories, Archived Landscapes
The course explores design methodologies for evaluating archives as evidence of material, spatial, and cultural change in constructed landscapes. Because archives seek comprehensiveness (distinct from…
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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 an illusion as…
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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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Urban Design Contexts and Operations
The course focusses essentially on modern including contemporary contexts and operations that have emerged during the past 100 years or so. Here urban design is…
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The Architect as Producer
In 2020, the interconnected crisis of racist violence, environmental collapse, and the global pandemic prompted profound changes in how we understand what architecture is and…
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Resilience Under New Water Regimes: The Case of Monterrey, [MX] Day-Zero
Globally, the world is experiencing a period of unprecedented drought, the worst in 1200 years according to NASA. With rising global average temperatures, water is…
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How To Be a Critic
This workshop seminar will focus the student’s ability to think and write critically about buildings, the city, and the urban landscape, and in the process…
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Rotterdam Studio Abroad: The Current Political Context and its Impact on the Future of Globalization
This conference course will explore current issues raised by an apparent reversal in globalization and the outbreak of hostilities reminiscent of the Cold War… Possible…
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Yeah, they were all Yellow: Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities
Intervention and reflection have been made in the primarily male-dominated architectural field with its phallogocentric Western metaphysics foundation, particularly since the 1980s. Yet much effort…
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Authenticity and Historical Dimension – Conditions for Landscape Projects
The reference to existing or lost traces of a site in general or to specific elements and artefacts in particular have been of eminent importance…
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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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Equitable Development and Housing Policy in Urban Settings (at HKS)
An introduction to policymaking in American cities, focusing on economic, demographic, institutional, and political settings. It examines inclusive and equitable economic development and job growth…
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Advanced Real Estate Development and Finance
This course builds on GSD 5204 and comparable introductory real estate courses offered by other schools at Harvard. It is an essential course for anyone…
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U. S. Housing Markets, Problems, and Policies
This course examines the operation of U.S. housing markets, the principal housing problems facing the nation, and policy approaches to address them within the existing…
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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
We cannot talk about physical infrastructures in the United States without also talking about race. In this seminar/workshop, students will examine the…
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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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Travel Behavior and Forecasting
All planning is based on planners’ beliefs about the future. In many cases, the most important (and most uncertain) aspects of the future relate to…
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Cities and the Informal Economy : Rethinking Urban Planning and Design
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 dire warnings of the IPCC, to name a few—increasingly make evident…
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Urban Design for Planners
Urban design is a complex and interdisciplinary process that indelibly shapes the economic, social, and physical character of places and communities, large and small. This…
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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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Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases and Comparisons
This seminar course deals with 'modern housing' covering a period primarily from the 1900s to the present. It engages with 'urban districts'…
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Designer Developer
Design and finance can both be understood as universal languages. Although architects, landscape architects, and planners are trained to produce and interpret design, it is…
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Land Loss, Reclamation, and Stewardship in Contemporary Native America
Daniel D’Oca, Eric Henson, Philip Deloria
This course will explore critical dimensions in American Indian land issues: historical land loss, contemporary tribal governmental efforts at land reclamation, stewardship, and co-management. We…
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Public Finance for Planners: Creating Equitable & Sustainable Communities
Infrastructure challenges are significant and rising. To meet these challenges, urban planners will need to acquire foundational knowledge and skills in the public finance discipline…
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New Towns and Affordable Housing Development in Africa
This course is a research seminar delving into new town development and affordable housing production in Africa. The course provides an overview…
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The (New) Image of the City
The rest of the 21st century is being drawn right now. More than ever before, organizations and individuals rely on projective images that indicate their…
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Creating Environmental Markets
Climate change has morphed from anticipated future problems to a growing series of connected current crises: intense heat, extended drought, potable water shortages, almost spontaneous…
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Experimental Housing: Density and Incrementality
Generations of architects and urban designers have been searching for alternatives for standard apartment typologies. Many experiments have been designed and built to achieve a…
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Planning Sustainable Built Environments
Idealized, “modern” infrastructure is often held up as a norm, yet in reality it often fails, or fails to exist, depending on where it is…
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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 very low, low, and moderate income households. Examines community-based development corporations, public…
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Public Space
In a digital age, does physical public space matter? Tahrir Square, the streets of Hong Kong, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Zuccotti Park, Madrid Rio, and other…
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Building Simulation
This course is the third of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6126) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture. Objective: The best…
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Materials
This course explores the science of materials. How do we classify materials? How do we build with materials? What are the energy, health, and societal…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies II
Karen Janosky, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Kirt Rieder
Topography is one of the primary and most powerful elements of landscape architecture, forming a foundation 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 buildings…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies IV
GSD 6242 is the fourth and final course in the Ecologies, Techniques and Technologies landscape core sequence. It is a required course for all MLA…
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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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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 mapping, spatial analysis,…
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Advanced Applications in Sustainable Architecture
This elective seminar will provide a deeper dive into issues of evidence-based, high-performance, ecological building design. The course is intended for MArch students, MDes students,…
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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 within a backdrop of myriad inequalities—the power…
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Towards a new Science of Design?
This project- and discussion-based seminar offers a deep, critical inspection of contemporary design practices, research methods and discourses informed by Neuroscience, Behavioral Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction…
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Automation in Practice: Building the future of Architecture(s), Engineering, and Construction
Population is estimated to exceed 10 billion people by the year 2050 requiring an immediate doubling of productivity in the AEC industry which includes Architecture…
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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 lens of structural…
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Informal Robotics
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 ecosystems is one of the greatest challenges humankind…
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Artifacts as Media: Signals, Data, Information and Design
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
Media is the way we understand the world. Our consciousness is technologically extended, connecting us to the entirety of humankind through media interfaces. Content, information…
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Data Science for Performance-Driven Design
The modeling of energy-efficient buildings and sustainable urban development is an increasing concern in both the building design and sustainability consulting industries. Early adoption of…
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Unsupervised Machine Learning for Designers
This course will provide an introduction to the rapidly advancing area of research in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Designers will come away with a…
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Nano, Micro, Macro: BioFabrication
Rapid global climate change has lent new urgency to our a longstanding interest of growing materials to break the unstainable reality of material extraction, use…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society II
In the spirit of Herbert Simon, Frameworks engages diverse but complementary disciplines, perspectives and techniques to help identify, diagnose and constructively address consequential social challenges,…
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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 some day we'll…
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Products of Practice: From code to plan to code
A research seminar that critically mines historic systems of representation, instrumentation, and the product (or media) of the architect in relationship to…
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Design Teaching Lab (DTL)
This course teaches design teaching for those interested in pursuing parallel paths in design and education. Starting from an understanding of design as a culture…
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International Real Estate and Urban Developments
Real estate, in the international realm, is anchored at the intersection of economic activities, capital flows, and the spatial transformation of the environment. While different…
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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
Lisa Haber-Thomson, Eric Howeler
As the culminating effort for the Master of Architecture degree, a “Thesis” entails multiple expectations. It is a demonstration, not only of competency and expertise…
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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 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
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
Martin Bechthold, Gareth Doherty, Ann Forsyth, K. Michael Hays, Jerold S. Kayden, Niall Kirkwood, Ali Malkawi, Erika Naginski, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe, Charles Waldheim
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
This course is mandatory for first year doctoral students and its aim is to expose them to faculty and various modes of thought and application…