Courses
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First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT
Mark Lee, Elle Gerdeman, Sean Canty, Iman Fayyad, Jenny French, Lisa Haber-Thomson, Max Kuo
PROJECT is the first core studio of the four-semester sequence of the MArch I program. With a multiplicity of references, PROJECT may refer to fundamental…
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Landscape Architecture I: First Semester Core Studio
Danielle Choi, Francesca Benedetto, Jungyoon Kim, Emily Wettstein, Alistair McIntosh
This studio course problematizes issues of orientation and experience, scale and pattern, topographic form, climatic and vegetative influences, and varied ecological processes that help define…
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First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Toni L. Griffin, Sai Balakrishnan, Kathryn Firth, Lily Song, David Gamble
The first semester core studio of the Master in Urban Planning program introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and technical skills used by urban planners…
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Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE
Jon Lott, John May, Andrew Holder, Grace La, Alfredo Thiermann, Ron Witte, Paul Kassabian
Integration is the agenda for the third-semester architecture design studio. Architecture is fundamentally a part-to-whole problem, involving the complex integration of building components, systems, and…
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Landscape Architecture III: Third Semester Core Studio
Rosetta S. Elkin, Robert Pietrusko, Dane Carlson, Rosalea Monacella, Paola Sturla, Amy Whitesides
From Episode to Adaptation: Design for a Littoral Landscape This studio explores climate change, adaptation, and risk as fundamental to the design of the built…
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Elements of Urban Design
Rahul Mehrotra, Peter Rowe, Stephen Gray, Roberto Pasini, Julia Watson, Yun Fu, Mark Heller, Michael Manfredi
“Elements of Urban Design” is the advanced core studio for the post-professional Urban Design program. The studio introduces critical concepts, strategies, and technical skills associated…
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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio I (with SEAS)
Andrew Witt, Elizabeth Christoforetti, Jock Herron, Kwanyong Seo
The first-year “Collaborative Design Engineering” studio runs for two semesters, and this year will address the theme of “waste.” The first semester focuses on concrete…
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Post-Shaker
Historic preservation breaks down into two categories. The first are projects that involve complete reconstruction and restoration with the goal to simulate the original historical…
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Habitat Kashgar
Habitat is arguably the most primitive and, at the same time, most futuristic subject for architecture. The word “habitat” provokes at once multiple architectural imaginations:…
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Type vs. Difference: The Function of a 21st-century Residential Block
The studio is concerned with the politics of architecture and its agency in everyday life. This semester, we will address the subject of housing in…
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Adapting Miami – Housing on the Transect
Miami is on the front lines of climate change. Its famous beaches and waterfront condominiums are projected to suffer significantly with sea level rise in…
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An American Section
Kersten Geers, David Van Severen
This is the second studio of American Architecture. Our aim is to investigate the simple (drawing) tools of architecture: plans, sections, details, and perspectives. These…
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Laboratory School, Stacking, Pragmatism, …
This architecture studio will be composed of three distinct and interrelated parts in working toward a design project. 1. A Laboratory SchoolThis studio will…
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Groundless
Disciplinary interests in architecture are both in flux and viewed by many as disengaged from the world’s pressing needs. This studio posits that this flux…
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Cross Rhythm (New House in New Orleans)
We can find many beautiful residential typologies in New Orleans, like the creole townhouse, shotgun house, and double-gallery house, to name a few. As each…
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Reflective Nostalgia: Alternative Futures for Shanghai’s Shikumen Heritage
Nostalgia tends to be taken dismissively or negatively in both architecture and general culture, as Charles Maier aptly states: “Nostalgia is to longing as kitsch…
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A Typology of Knowledges
This studio will reconsider the types and spaces of institutions that are dedicated to the classification and transmission of knowledge—schools of architecture, libraries, and museums—and…
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Domestic Orbits
Brief: In December 2018, the Mexican Supreme Court recognized the right of domestic workers to be affiliated to social security putting an end to…
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Adrift and Indeterminate: Designing for Perpetual Migration on Virginia’s Eastern Shore
Virginia’s Eastern Shore, which together with its northern Maryland counterpart forms and protects the massive Chesapeake Bay estuary, is confronting sea level rise at a…
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Geographical Reenchantment: Swiss Landscape Interventions between Atmosphere, Function + Experience
In tiny Switzerland, landscape is regarded as a resource that serves lobbies from agriculture and speculation, to infrastructure, ecology, tourism, and recreation, each with a…
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Manifestos for Building the Utopia
Loreta Castro, Gabriela Carrillo
The continuous ground movements that happen in Mexico City, specifically those that have occurred during the last 40 years, demonstrate the territory’s frailty due to…
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Social Operative Infrastructure: Sustainable Water Models in Chile
Eugenio Simonetti, Tomas Folch
According to the World Bank, countries need to invest 4.5 percent of their GDP in infrastructure to reach the Sustainable Development Goals…
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The Immeasurable Enclosure
This option studio explores the ability of a single enclosed space to be the spatial expression of that which is immeasurable. The garden and the…
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FALLOWSCAPES, Territorial Reconfiguration Strategies for Arles, France
Anita Berrizbeitia, Marc Armengaud, Matthias Armengaud
On a promontory on the left bank of the lower Rhone River, just before it reaches the Mediterranean Sea, the city of Arles presides over…
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Housing & Infrastructure in Yucatan: Beyond the Mayan Train
The Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico has been described as “one big flat slab of limestone gently slanting into the sea.” It is a place…
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Affordability Now!
The United States is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. Over the last two decades, rents have risen far faster than renters’ incomes, resulting in…
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Newness and Synchronicity: Visions for Novi Sad 2050
The main objective in this studio is to critically explore Novi Sad, Serbia, the European Capital of Culture 2021. In Novi Sad, we will research…
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Feeding Boston
The development of postindustrial food supply systems parallels the explosion of the modern city. This studio will deal with an ordinary matter whose future impacts…
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Architectural Representation I
Architectural Representation I: Origins + Originality Architectural representation is an ideology—a source of ideas and visionary theorizing that has a set of origins and qualities.
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Architectural Representation II
Architectural Representation II: Projective Disciplines This course examines the history, theory, and practice of projective and descriptive geometry. Invented as techniques to draw form, these…
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Spatial Analysis and the Built Environment
David Gamble, Carole Voulgaris
Urban planners engage in many complex processes that defy easy representation. This course provides first-semester urban planning students with the graphic and technical skills needed…
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Landscape Representation I
The rich and varied discipline of landscape architecture is inextricably intertwined with the concept of representation. The first in a three-semester sequence, this course introduces…
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Digital Media: Manipulations
This course is an introduction to fundamental concepts, techniques, and methods in digital design with a focus on reciprocal processes of translation…
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Digital Media: Composition
This course proposes a conceptual opposition between “filter” and “fill” to investigate the ways image analysis techniques augment topics in architectural composition.
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Landscape Representation III: Landform and Ecological Process
Craig Douglas, Seth Denizen, Rosalea Monacella
“Landscape Representation III” examines the relationship between terrain and the landscape it supports and engenders. It aspires to explore and challenge the representational conventions of…
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Communication for Designers
"The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings. In the end the communicator…
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Constructing Visual Narratives of Place
The seminar explores the representation of identity and memory in the city and its territory. The case study is Boston in its…
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Curatorial Practice: 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…
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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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Exhibit: Designing for Decentralization
“Exhibit: Designing for Decentralization” is an advanced research- and project-based course initiated by the Art, Design, and the Public Domain (ADPD) MDes…
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Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf Life in the Supermarket Landscape
We tend to assume that supermarkets are static, neutral spaces where little of significance ever happens. The supermarket shelf is actually a…
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Drawing for Designers: Techniques of Expression, Articulation, and Representation
The course is intended as a creative drawing laboratory for designers and an expressive, playful supplement to computer-based labor. This course will…
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Public Projection: Projection as a Tool for Expression and Communication in Public Space
The class will focus on the development of original projection projects that can inspire and facilitate artistic expression and cultural communication in public space. In…
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Art, Design and the Public Domain Proseminar
This seminar is intended to serve as a theoretical and practical laboratory for the development of student ideas and concepts toward their artistic, design, and…
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Theories of Landscape as Urbanism
This course introduces contemporary theories of landscape as a medium of urbanism and product of urbanization. The course surveys sites and subjects, texts and topics…
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Culture, Conservation and Design
This proseminar addresses issues of critical conservation, an evolving discipline that illuminates the bridge between cultural meaning, identity, and context as part…
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The Idea of Environment
The environment is the milieu in which designers and planners operate. It is a messy world of facts, meanings, relations, and actions that calls them to…
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An Unsentimental Look at Architecture and Social Craft
Designers of the built environment have had an on-again, off-again relationship with social agency. Progressive design and social outcomes were closely linked in…
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Domestic Architecture: (Groups of Residences)
The categories listed below do not imply any particular order. I tend to teach everything every time. Theories in GeneralTheories with AdjectivesResidential versus…
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Erasing the Line While Drawing
. . . la «chora» platonicienne est à la fois matrice et empreinte, notre milieu est à notre égard dans un état de mouvance passive et active: il est le domaine dans lequel nous agissons, et qui porte les marques de cette action, mais il est aussi le domaine qui nous affecte, et auquel nous appartenons de quelque manière . . . —Augustin Berque Ecoumene This seminar will explore the…
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History and Theory of Urban Interventions
Susan Fainstein, Norman Fainstein
This course uses historical and analytical readings and case studies to address several major theoretical questions concerning the aims and outcomes of urban interventions. The…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts I
Erika Naginski, K. Michael Hays
This course is structured as a dialogue between the historical and theoretical frameworks that have shaped the formulation of architectural principles—what the architectural historian Rudolf Wittkower called…
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Histories of Landscape Architecture I: Textuality and the Practice of Landscape Architecture
This course introduces students to a number of significant topoi or loci in the histories of landscape architecture. In general terms, it takes the form of a…
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Authority and Invention: Medieval Art and Architecture
This course covers masterworks of art and architecture in Western Europe from the decline of Rome to the dawn of the Italian…
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Structuring Urban Experience: From the Athenian Acropolis to the Boston Common
This lecture course examines selected cities between the 5th century BC and the 17th century AD, beginning with ancient Athens and ending…
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Building Conservation and Renewal: Assessment, Analysis, Design
What are the spatial, material, and broad cultural values inherent in a building or site that must be understood to craft interventions…
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Topology and Imagination: Between Chinese Landscapes and Architecture
This course deals with landscape architecture and architecture in contemporary China. Its purpose is twofold: to articulate new perspectives on the challenges…
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One Century of Modernization in Latin America: 1880-1980
This course focuses on how the processes of modernization in Latin America affected the fields of architecture and landscape design as well…
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Environmentalisms
Today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: at the very moment that the idea of “environment” has been placed at the center of our…
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Visionary Architecture
This seminar will take a selective approach to French Visionary Architecture in the late 18th century. We will focus on some of…
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Materiality, Visual Culture, and Media (at AFVS)
What is the place of materiality in our visual age of rapidly changing materials and media? How is it fashioned in the arts, architecture, and…
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Manfredo Tafuri and The Historiography And Criticism of Architecture 1960-1990
The seminar focuses on the markedly complex intellectual biography of Manfredo Tafuri, whose work touched upon many fields of knowledge including theories…
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Real Estate Finance and Development
Richard Peiser, David Hamilton
This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate finance and development. Lectures and case studies introduce students to the full range of…
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Land Use and Environmental Law
As a scarce and necessary resource, land triggers competition and conflict over its possession and use. For privately owned land, the market manages much of…
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Cities by Design I
Rahul Mehrotra, Peter Rowe, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets, Alex Krieger, Fares El-Dahdah
“Cities by Design I” is concerned with in-depth longitudinal examination of urban conditions in and among selected cities in the world. The broad aims are:…
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Field Studies in Real Estate, Urban Planning and Design
Minneapolis Riverfront & Medford Urban Mixed-Use Redevelopment This field study course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the dynamics and complexities of…
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Policy Making in Urban Settings (at HKS)
This course is an introduction to policymaking in American cities, focusing on economic, demographic, institutional, and political settings. It examines economic development and job growth…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Quantitative
This course introduces students to quantitative analysis and research methods for urban planning. The course begins with an examination of how quantitative methods fit within…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Qualitative
How can planners understand places in a rich, meaningful, and yet systematic way? This module examines how qualitative approaches can be used…
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Transportation Policy and Planning (at HKS)
This course provides an overview of the issues involved in transportation policy and planning as well as an introduction to the skills necessary for solving the…
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Housing and Urbanization in the United States
James Stockard, Jennifer Molinsky
This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those…
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Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems (at FAS)
This course will provide a framework (and multiple lenses) through which to think about the salient economic and social problems of the five billion people…
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Economic Development Planning
This course will look at the theory and practice of economic development at the local and regional level, mostly in the context…
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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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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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Action Research for Open Public Realms
"The best way to understand something is to try and change it."—Kurt Lewin Action researchers work with partner communities to define…
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Urban Ethnographies
Planners’ understanding of social process and cultural values is often woefully inadequate, and their thinking is dominated by a “one-size-fits-all” approach and…
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Green Cities: Health and Environmental Planning
How are health and environmental planning actually done? Solution-oriented, this class focuses on key areas where physical planning and associated programs and policies…
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Integrated Design & Planning for Climate Change
This advanced research seminar in Miami-Dade County, Florida, is thematically focused within the integrated practices associated with designing and planning for climate change at an…
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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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Principles of Collective Learning (at SEAS)
How do teams, cities, and nation learn? How do they acquire the knowledge they need to improve their capacities, or enter new activities? This course…
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Built Environment, Human Energy Expenditure and Public Health (at HSPH)
At the completion of this course, students will have an understanding of different built environments and human energy expenditure in those environments. As two examples,…
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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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The Spatial Politics of Land: A Comparative Perspective
This course focuses on the deeply contested and political nature of land-use planning. Some would argue that land-use planning is the bread…
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Market Analysis and Urban Economics
This course examines contemporary real estate trends and cycles. It introduces students to the concepts, models, and methods used to analyze how…
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Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Developing World
This course starts from the premise that urban politics and governance arrangements shape the definition, form, and practice of planning, and therefore…
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Environmental Systems 1
This course is the first of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture. Objectives: –…
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Environmental Systems 2
Purpose: This course is the second of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture. Objective:…
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Construction Systems
This course introduces students to construction systems with the ambition to shape the perception of a designer’s agency in relationship to them. An overview…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies I
Teresa Gali Izard, Matthew Cunningham, Doug Reed
This course is an introduction to understanding plants, from unmanaged plant communities to managed living structures. Through field visits, observation, lectures, short…
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Structural Design II
Martin Bechthold, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
This course is a continuation of GSD 6227 and completes the introduction to the analysis and design of building structures. Both 6227 and 6229 are…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies III: Ecology and the Design World
Steven Handel, Christopher Matthews
Required for both MLA 1 and MLA AP students taking the third LA core-studio. Ecological Principles for Design (Steven Handel): The fundamentals of ecological science…
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Innovation in Science and Engineering: Conference Course (at SEAS)
The course explores factors and conditions contributing to innovation in science and engineering; how important problems are found, defined, and solved; roles of teamwork and…
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Computer Vision (at SEAS)
This course explores vision as an ill-posed inverse problem: image formation, two-dimensional signal processing; feature analysis; image segmentation; color, texture, and shading; multiple-view geometry; object…
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Material Systems: Digital Design and Fabrication
Digital design and fabrication technologies have become integral to the discourse surrounding contemporary design and architectural practice. The translation from design to…
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Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation
Maps do not represent reality, they create it. As a fundamental part of the design process, the act of mapping results in highly authored views…
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Water, Land-Water Linkages, and Aquatic Ecology
Timothy Dekker, Nicholas Nelson
This course will provide students with an understanding of water that will inform their professional approaches to landscape architecture, architecture, and planning,…
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Introduction to Computational Design
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
This is an introductory course to computational design and the prerequisite for a spring course that deals with more advanced topics in…
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Design from Within: How New Immersive Technologies Create Value
For centuries, designers have hovered over physical models, paper blueprints, and digital screens, looking at the design challenges from “the outside.” New immersive technologies have…
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Optimizing Facade Performance: A Deep Dive on Design Decisions
Building envelopes are at the intersection of design, performance, and occupant experience in architectural design. Facades influence many aspects of building performance,…
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Mud Works! Hands-on Workshop on Earthen Structures (Summer 2019)
Contemporary innovations in the design and construction of buildings and environments predominantly follow a specific pattern: industrialized and imported materials are utilized to make high-tech…
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Visualization (at SEAS)
This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction…
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Transformable Design Methods
Architects have long imagined a built environment that is fundamentally dynamic. Portable buildings, retractable coverings, kinetic facades, and spaces that morph: these…
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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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Foundations of Practice
Jeffry Burchard, Gregg Garmisa, Timothy R. Twomey
For students in the fifth semester of the MArch I degree program, this course examines models and issues that define contemporary professional practice. Requiring students…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society I
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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Practices of Landscape Architecture
This course examines landscape architecture practice through the consideration of contemporary frameworks for professional services, the legal and financial contexts in which they operate, and…
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Frameworks of Practice
How should we practice today? Since World War II, a series of paradigm shifts have significantly altered the relationships that had been…
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Innovation in Project Delivery
Project delivery—the organizational, legal, and economic arrangements by which society produces its built environment—has undergone a radical transformation over the past half…
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Elements of the Urban Stack
Paul Nakazawa, Elizabeth Christoforetti
Where does our agency as designers of the built environment lie in current practice? As urban projects grow in complexity, swelling and…
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Thing Power in the Arles Region: from Assemblages to Alchemy in the Camargue
Jane Bennett borrows Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of assemblages to argue that humans are not the sole actors in shaping…
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Real Estate and City Making in China
Real estate has increasingly become a compelling force in the process of city making, one uniquely capable of leading and guiding multiple steps in the…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Jesse M. Keenan, Rahul Mehrotra, Joan Busquets, Eve Blau, Michelle Chang, Ann Forsyth, Jeffrey Schnapp, Lily Song, Oana Stanescu, K. Michael Hays, Niall Kirkwood, Gary R. Hilderbrand, Jorge Silvetti, Abby Spinak, Preston Scott Cohen, Robin Winogrond, Jeffry Burchard, Elizabeth Christoforetti, Carole Voulgaris, Andrew Witt, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez, Tomás dePaor
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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Preparation for Independent Thesis Proposal for MUP, MAUD, or MLAUD
This seminar is intended to provide the theoretical and methodological foundation for completing a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. By…
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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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Preparation of MLA Design Thesis
A thesis is a thematic proposition offered for discussion and debate. A thesis is typically developed through a piece of original research specific to an…
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Independent Design Engineering Project I
Martin Bechthold, Luba Greenwood
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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Preparation of Doctoral Thesis Proposal
Independent study with doctoral advisor to produce a preliminary literature review. Prerequisite: Enrollment in GSD DDes program. …
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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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MArch II Proseminar
This course provides a forum for critical discussion of contemporary design practices that is exploratory and speculative in nature. The course emphasizes collaborative thinking and…
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Urban Design Proseminar
The proseminar is a forum for conversation on contemporary urban design. It is structured around three overlapping discussions: the formation of the discipline, critiques of…
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Proseminar in Landscape Architecture
The proseminar introduces MLA II students to a range of theories and methods in landscape architecture and their implications for practice and research. The focus…
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Proseminar in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology
This required seminar introduces candidates in the MDes Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology (ULE) concentration to the range of individual and group research on urbanism, landscape, and…