Courses
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First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT
Sean Canty, Carl D’Apolito-Dworkin, Andrew Holder, Hyojin Kwon, Ian Miley, Lexi Tsien, Emmett Zeifman
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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Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE
Eric Howeler, Alex Anmahian, Elle Gerdeman, Andrew Heid, Jon Lott, Angela Pang
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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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio I (with SEAS)
Elizabeth Christoforetti, Alexandros Haridis, Andrew Witt, Siqi Zhu
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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New York New York
Kersten Geers, David Van Severen
There is a famed anecdotal evidence that designing a tower is easier than designing a chair. The boastful comparison was rather meant to aggrandize architects’…
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Baizo House – Perception Description Representation
On October 8, 1980, New York band Talking Heads released Remain in Light, their fourth album. The album's final track, "The Overload", was written in…
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Percent for Art: A New Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
In the option studio, we design a new building for the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw by re-using the structure of a large-scale shopping…
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Nexus of Ecology, Education, and Design – A new School of Design on an Island at Yangtze Estuary
This studio project touches upon two important areas relevant to our collective future— ecology and education. This is a future in which we must change…
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Parisian Knees
There is little doubt that density is reshaping our cities, at a furious pace and with vast implications for urban life. As far-reaching as these…
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Earth Curvature: Context as Material / How to Read Place
Students will craft their own architectural language, guided by personal ethics and an original vision towards a sustainable architecture that also strives to timelessly resonate…
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Forgotten Fort Kongestein
This studio will explore potential new attitudes toward historical preservation, transformation, and adaptive reuse. The location is Fort Kongestein on the Eastern Coast of Ghana,…
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Housing as a Sustainable Common
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, architects were the driving force of progress in developing housing typologies that would enable people to live more socially…
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From Within to Without [M1]
This studio will explore the notion of interiority in the public realm by reimagining an existing mid-sized commercial building. As e-commerce, shifting consumer habits, and…
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Second Opportunities in Architecture [M1]
Iñaki Abalos, Renata Sentkiewicz
In its historical context, architecture has demonstrated an extensive capacity for the adaptation of typologies or forms to different sites, programs, and circumstances. In opposition…
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Do-It-Anyway: Place, Tectonics, and Time [M1]
In this studio, students will design and fabricate a sleeping space at one-to-one scale in the period of seven weeks. Why? We are living…
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Transforming the Urban Villa with Private Garden into a Contemporary Typology [M1]
The studio will deal with the strategies for the transformation of a coveted but obsolete architectural type, the urban villa in the park, keeping its…
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Revisiting Utopia: Bio-Based Megastructures in the Texas Desert [M2]
Regine Leibinger, Stefan Sauter, Karen Stein
The social and political tumult of the 1960s prompted a resurgence of utopian architecture. Rising fuel prices, a growing dependence on technology and, in particular,…
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Exploring Collective Bonds: Creating Spaces of Solidarity [M2]
In what way can design serve as a conduit, spanning the gap between heterogeneous groups and binding them through their shared collective endeavors? How do…
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Necessary Architecture [M2]
Our cities are filled with buildings–why more? With our discipline about to split into activists and professionals, we need to find purpose for architecture. We…
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Monumental Affairs [M2]
As architecture and urbanism continues to grapple with exposure from atypical authors the need for constructive examination becomes more pressing. Global terror and dissent typically…
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Architectural Representation I [Module 1]
Architectural Representation I: Origins + Originality Architectural representation as a medium blends theorizing, historization, and a unique capacity to induce a physical entity, either fictional…
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Architectural Representation II [Module 2]
Architectural Representation II: Geometries in Interaction There has never been just one geometry. In mathematics, the Euclidean, projective, algebraic, and transformational approaches to geometry each…
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Digital Media: Errors and Omissions
errare — to move without clear direction, departing from truth, norm, or some other analog of unity omittere — fail to use or do, neglect…
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Digital Media: Power Tools
This course aims to leverage collective and DIY-knowledge-building as a representational technique and a tool of power. It begins with the premise that a site…
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Interior Residential Planning, Furnishings, and Materials
Buildings are inseparable from Interior Planning. The objective of this course is to design interior space in existing freestanding residential buildings and urban apartments. Projects…
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Exhibiting Architecture
In this seminar students will engage with curatorial studies and the specific domain of “exhibiting architecture.” Not only the “art of display,” from exhibition design…
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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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Drawing for Designers: Techniques of Expression, Articulation, and Representation
The course is intended as a creative drawing laboratory for designers, an expressive, playful supplement to computer-based labor. This course will master techniques in hand…
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Faux: Design, Performance, and Perception of Fake Materials
Martin Bechthold, Marina Sartori
Materials are everywhere. They remain central to our lives and to contemporary design, despite the omnipresence of digital information. Yet, the fact that many materials…
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Architecture on Screen
From the dystopian visions of Fritz Lang to the midcentury world of Jacques Tati and the stylized universe of Wes Anderson, this courseexamines the…
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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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Proximities / or Readings and Methods within Reflexive Formalism
“Making comparisons is the only good method in a world in which things take on consistency in relation to others. A comparison may be implicit…
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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 shapes how the present changes into the future. Technological innovation is all around us,…
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Housing Matters
This seminar investigates the politics of housing by focusing on the relationships between spatial, material, and typological decisions architects make when designing housing and the…
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Rational Form Making
Optimization precedes superfluous forms. In search for freedom in aesthetics, the disciplines of architecture and structural design have always worked hand in hand in expanding…
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Building, Texts, and Contexts: Architecture’s Multiple Modernisms
K. Michael Hays, Ana Maria Leon Crespo
Modernism is aligned with the emergence of new kinds of objects and events, new conceptualizations of their appearance, and changing event structures and temporalities. At…
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Michelangelo Architect: Precedents, Innovation, Influence
An exploration of Italian Renaissance architecture and urbanism through the persona of Michelangelo as witness, agent, and inspiration. We look at architecture and urbanism in…
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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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Building and Urban Conservation and Renewal – Assessment, Analysis, Design
What are the values inherent in a property, site or district that must be understood to craft conservation policy and interventions that will reveal, complement,…
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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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Atmospheric Projections: Media as Environments (at AFVS)
What is the ecology of the arts in our visual age of changing media? Can media be understood as environments? This seminar investigates a “material…
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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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Histories of Architecture Against
This course focuses on the challenges of writing histories of architecture against—against capital, against the state, or other types of power. In the first half…
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Environmental Systems 1 [Module 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 [Module 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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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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Innovation in Science and Engineering: Conference Course (at SEAS)
This class integrates perspectives from leading innovators with collaborative practice and theory of innovation to teach and inspire you to be more innovative in your…
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Advanced Introduction to Robotics (at SEAS)
Introduction to computer-controlled robotic manipulators. Topics include coordinate frames and transformations, forward and inverse kinematic solutions to open-chain manipulators, the Jacobian, dynamics and control, and…
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Computer Vision (at SEAS)
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 and scene recognition;…
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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 Design"…
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Enactive Design: Creative Applications through Concurrent Human-Machine Interaction
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
Enactive Design is an advanced research seminar on human-computer interaction. We will explore the role of real-time, bidirectional communication between human and digital agents in…
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Circuits, Circles, and Loops: Towards a Regenerative Architecture
Present assumptions indicate that the management of our material world accounts for more than half of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly fifty percent of…
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Material Systems: Digital Production
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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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
The aim of Transformable Design is to is to introduce new ways of thinking about design through real-time morphological changes. The course provides a theoretical…
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Nano Micro Macro: Adaptive Material Laboratory (with SEAS)
Joanna Aizenberg, Jonathan Grinham
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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Confronting Climate Change: A Foundation in Science, Technology and Policy (HKS)
This course will consider the challenge of climate change and what to do about it. Students will be introduced to the basic science of climate…
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Introduction to Generative Artificial Intelligence
This course provides an introduction to the rapidly advancing area of research in unsupervised machine learning with a focus on generative models. Recent advances such…
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Buildings and Urban Intelligence
Rapidly increasing urban sprawl is evolving into a scenario where about 70% of the world’s population would be living in urban areas by the year…
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Quantitative Aesthetics: Introduction to Coding for Creative AI and Digital Media Arts
This course introduces concepts and techniques from signal analysis, computer vision and machine learning that are related to the retrieval, processing, analysis and generation of…
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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
This graduate-level seminar course is part of the MDE program's first-year core curriculum, comprising a two-course sequence spanning one year. The course focuses on building…
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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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Urban Stack: Practice Methods for a Complex World
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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Entrepreneurship and the Built Environment
How do you transition from a concept and idea into a built reality? How to initiate a new venture and ensure its success in today’s…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Joan Busquets, Elizabeth Christoforetti, Peter Rowe, Andrew Witt, Alex Yuen, Thaïsa Way, Mohsen Mostafavi, Diane Davis, Daniel D’Oca, Karen Janosky, Allen Sayegh, Ewa Harabasz, Holly Samuelson, Jock Herron
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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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 Design Engineering Project I
Jock Herron, Kathleen Brandenburg
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 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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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…