Courses
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First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT
Sean Canty, Jenny French, Helen Han, Hyojin Kwon, Angela Pang, Ritchie Yao, Paul Kassabian, Brett Schneider
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
Pablo Pérez-Ramos, Gary R. Hilderbrand, Tomas Folch, Matthew Girard, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Alistair McIntosh
WHAT IS PUBLIC ABOUT A PUBLIC SPACE? STU-1111 is the first in a sequence of four core studios that, together, constitute the foundation of your…
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First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Ann Forsyth, Leigh Graham, Anne-Marie Lubeneau, Jeana Dunlap, Lourdes Germán, Carole Voulgaris, Lindsay Woodson, Dana McKinney
First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and technical skills used by urban planners to investigate, analyze, create, and implement…
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Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE
Michelle Chang, Eric Howeler, Ajay Manthripragada, Grace La, Emmett Zeifman, Ellie Jungmin Han, Paul Kassabian, Nat Oppenheimer
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
Danielle Choi, Claire Fellman, Francesca Benedetto, Craig Douglas, Mark Heller, Rosalea Monacella, Alex Wall, Amy Whitesides
From Off-Shoring to Near Shore: Littoral Landscapes at Work This studio will explore the complex environmental and social interests of multiple forms of landscape labor—people…
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Elements of Urban Design
Peter Rowe, Yun Fu, Dana McKinney, Alex Yuen, Mark Heller, Michael Manfredi, Rahul Mehrotra
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)
Elizabeth Christoforetti, Andrew Witt
The first semester studio is a project-based introduction to a range of ideas, methods, and techniques essential for the design engineer. In the studio, students…
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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 Course Summary This course examines systems of projection as constructs that mediate between our spatial imagination and built form. Projective…
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Representation for Planners
One task of an urban planner is to grapple with and understand a series of complicated processes that directly affect the organization and experience of…
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Spatial Analysis
Planning decisions are often idealized as being "evidence-based" or "data-driven." Spatial data often comprise the data and evidence that support such these decisions. In this…
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Landscape Representation I
Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Kira Clingen
The first in a two-semester sequence, Landscape Representation I introduces students to the rich and varied discipline of landscape architecture as inextricably intertwined with the…
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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 large surrounding area,…
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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 highly volatile, hyper-competitive…
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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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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…
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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 early modernism. These…
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The Fifth Plan
In this seminar, we will consider the evolution of the floor plan across five iterations: proto-modern, modern, post-modern, plan-non-chalant, and, most importantly, the present. We…
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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 stability and permanence.
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Philosophy of Technology: From Marx and Heidegger to AI, Genome Editing, and Geoengineering (HKS)
Technology shapes how power is exercised in society, and thereby also changes how the present changes into the future. Technological innovation is all around us,…
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Housing Matters (Arles, France Seminar Abroad)
The housing crisis today is not just a question of a shortage of affordable homes but also about increasing people's quality of life. This seminar…
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How to Live Together. Fourier and the Future of Collective Housing (Arles Seminar Abroad)
This elective seminar will investigate the history and theory of collective housing in Europe. Seminal texts will enable students to theorize concepts of domesticity, private…
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Studies of the Built North American Environment: since 1580
North America as an evolving visual environment is analyzed as a systems concatenation involving such constituent elements as farms, small towns, shopping malls, highways, suburbs,…
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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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Modernism and Its Counter-Narratives
Modernism has fundamentally to do with the emergence of new kinds of objects and events and, at the same time, new conceptualizations of their appearance,…
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North American Seacoasts and Landscapes: Discovery Period to the Present
Selected topics in the history of the North American coastal zone, including the seashore as wilderness, as industrial site, as area of recreation, and as…
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Authority and Invention: Medieval Art and Architecture
Masterworks of art and architecture in Western Europe from the decline of Rome to the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. Explores the creative tension between…
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Structuring Urban Experience: From the Athenian Acropolis to the Boston Common
This lecture course examines selected cities between the fifth century B.C. and the seventeenth century A.D., beginning with ancient Athens and ending with the rebuilding…
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Architecture and Construction: From the Vitruvian Tradition to the Digital
The course aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between architecture and construction through the study of key historical episodes such as…
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The Project and the Territory: Japan Story
What is the future of urbanization?What role can design play in shaping that future? What will happen to the conflicting tensions between urban and…
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Cotton Kingdom, Now
In 1852, the New York Daily Times commissioned a 31-year-old Frederick Law Olmsted to conduct an immersive research journey through the Southern slave states. The…
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Inscriptions: Recent Experimental Architecture
One has heard the characterization of the work of the recent generation of architects as neo-postmodern. The assumption behind this label is twofold: first, that…
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On Architecture and Property
Most generously, property can be understood as a relational term. A property defines that which is characteristic, or unique, to a given thing vis-à-vis another.
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Race and Gender: Landscape Architecture as Practice, Profession, and Discipline
This seminar interrogates Landscape Architecture, both the production of a discipline and a profession, by exploring what it would mean to place women and people…
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Displaced Becomings –The Many Faces of Modern Architecture in Sinophone Asia
The idea was that in [a] society, one that's incompletely modernized… the temporal dynamics of that society, and of the modernism that it produces, will…
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Real Estate Finance and Development
This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate finance and development. Lectures and case studies introduce students to the full range of financial analysis skills…
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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
Yun Fu, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets, Farès el-Dahdah, Alex Krieger, Rahul Mehrotra, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe
Cities by Design is concerned with the 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
Social Impact Investing and ESG in downtown Bellevue, WA and a Park-centric redevelopment of demolished Dallas shopping mall and adjoining properties This field study course…
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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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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 in planning practice…
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Housing and Urbanization in the United States
Jennifer Molinsky, James Stockard
This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those with an interest…
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Urbanization and Development
This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development through an historical and contemporary lens, paying close attention to the ways that the growth and…
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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 by excessive attention…
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Transportation Economics and Finance
We can define transportation infrastructure to comprise all the physical objects that provide mobility: including everything from trains, highways, and ports to sneakers, trails, and…
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Inclusive Cities in the Global South: From Development Narratives to Urban Forms
This seminar examines the notions of social inclusion and exclusion in cities according to different categories, including households’ income (wealthy and poor), identity (gender, race,…
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Urban Economics for Planners and Policymakers
This course introduces economic frameworks for understanding both the benefits and challenges of living in, working in and managing cities. Urban economics incorporates the concept…
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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 methods of construction: conceptually, historically, and practically. We will consider how construction techniques emerge in relation to architectural desires and…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies I
This course recognizes plants as one of the most expressive materials of the artform — a living medium that distinguishes the discipline from the other…
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Structural Design II
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
David Moreno Mateos, Christopher Matthews
Ecology and the Design World (David Moreno-Mateos): Landscape architecture incorporates an additional layer of complexity to design that is less present in other design disciplines:…
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Climate by Design
David Moreno Mateos, Kira Clingen, Amy Whitesides
Through a series of case studies, this course will explore paradigmatic design responses to the climate crisis including adaptation (both for communities to remain and…
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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 realization is mediated…
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Introduction to Computational Design
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
#GSD6338 is an introductory course on Computational Design, with a particular focus on architecture, landscape and urbanism. In this course, we will understand "Computational…
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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 years due to…
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Working Landscapes: Natural Resiliency And Redesign
Steven Apfelbaum, Katharine Parsons, Robert Zimmerman
Ecological principles and their application to design and planning will be emphasized. Topics will include understanding human impacts on natural systems through engineering and design,…
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Power||Energy: mapping the thickened ground of labor
The definition of energy is dominated by a western logic of energy as a resource. This understanding was focused on the primary objective of putting…
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Transformable Design Methods
This course is intended for students interested in how to create products, buildings, and environments that utilize physical transformation to realize enhanced performance and engagement.
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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 processes in a…
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EMBODIED CARBON- Material Cycles and Circularity (Arles Seminar Abroad)
To grasp the role that designers play in the race to DE-carbonising the built environment, the course must touch on how we got here in…
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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
In the spirit of Herbert Simon, Frameworks engages diverse but complementary perspectives and techniques to identify, diagnose and constructively address consequential social challenges, sometimes referred…
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Practices of Landscape Architecture
This course presents the application of landscape ideas as a process of engagement and building amidst financial, legal, cultural, political, and professional contexts. The course…
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Frameworks of Practice
How should we practice today? The discipline, the profession, and the practice of architecture are invented and designed things. And the roles, relationships, protocols, and…
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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 century. From a…
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Elements of the Urban Stack
The Urban Stack is a pedagogical framework for understanding the infrastructures of power that operate in relationship to practice. These constructs shape the design and…
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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
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
What does it take to complete a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design? The seminar introduces different types of theses that…
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Preparation of MLA Design Thesis
“The natural sciences are concerned with how things are . . . Design, on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be.”…
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Independent Design Engineering Project I
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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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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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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Proseminar in Landscape Architecture
How do we understand a landscape? This proseminar explores epistemologies that constitute the field of landscape architecture. The proseminar will introduce MLA II students to…
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Proseminar in PUBLICS: Of the Public. In the Public. By the Public
Public, as a noun or adjective, is not confined to a single discipline, practice, narrative or theory. It is instead, a complicated construct that can…
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Proseminar in MEDIUMS: On Making Culture, Technology, and Art
In this proseminar, we will take a critical look at the current and emerging landscape of design technologies and technologically driven design. We will examine…
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Proseminar in NARRATIVES: Word and Image as Narrative Structure
In our Proseminar, we will grapple with a selection of critical discussions on word and image as these have been formulated in aesthetic philosophy, literary…
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Proseminar in ECOLOGIES: Interrelated, In-between, Dynamic
Our aim in the proseminar is to explore the inherent inventedness of ecology as a field of inquiry, its distinctly relational nature, and the potential…