Courses
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Second Semester Architecture Core: SITUATE
Jeffry Burchard, Yasmin Vobis, Michelle Chang, Iman Fayyad, Sawako Kaijima, Oana Stanescu, Emmett Zeifman, Angela Pang
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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Fourth Semester Architecture Core: RELATE
Jon Lott, Sean Canty, Jenny French, Phu Hoang, John May, Ajay Manthripragada, Alfredo Thiermann
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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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio II
Allen Sayegh, Julia Lee, Jonathan Grinham, Kipp Bradford
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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Borderline(s) investigation #1 – Lightness
Stephanie Bru, Alexandre Theriot
Studio topic: Economy & excessWe aim to seize economic requirements to transform constraints into levers, producers of qualities. These may well be tangible or…
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Adaptive Quality
Jeanne Gang, Anika Schwarzwald
At a time when it is more essential than ever to conserve resources and prevent carbon pollution—which critically includes limiting the demolition of existing buildings…
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Unterbau City
Sharon Johnston, Hanif Kara, David Fixler
The studio will challenge the supposed opposition between heritage and progress in a mixed-use development within the Regent Quarter, a 6.2 acres site in London.
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The House: A Machine, Queer and Simple
Andrew Holder, Brennan Gerard, Ryan Kelly
What is a house? Who lives in one? And how? These are queer things to ask, insofar as the naivete of the questions implies an…
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A Paradoxical Paradox
Our writing system was devised by people who couldn’t read. Paradox:A statement or proposition that, despite sound reasoning from acceptable premises, leads…
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Eco Folly – Design
Our design research studio takes the folly as a typological springboard for coalescing formal creativity and sustainable imperatives. Whether at the scale of the structure,…
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Tall, Lean, In-between
The studio will consider three recent challenges facing the design of tall residential buildings in London: the stringent requirements for their careful placement and contextual…
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Kit House
The studio will explore the potential convergence of the American twentieth century tradition of the Kit House (exemplified by the Sears Modern Homes of 1908-1940)…
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Tokyo: Artifice and the Social World
The architectural and urban projects of this studio are focused on the potentials of the declining, yet evocative area of Tokyo known as Bakuroch? Yokoyamach?.
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Utopia: Forms of Community
Oliver Lütjens, Thomas Padmanabhan
We need new forms of housing for a more sustainable and more just way of life. Architecture is a language of form. Only by radically…
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The Shape of Things to Come
‘The Shape of Things to Come’ was the title of the 1971 Newsweek article which explored the role of the architect to help shape the…
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Quo Vadis, Addis?
The design studio Quo Vadis, Addis? addresses the question of how to integrate manufacturing in the textile and garment sector within the socio-spatial fabric of…
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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: Design Systems
The course is an introduction to fundamental concepts, methods, and practical techniques in design computation with emphasis on a systems perspective. We take a view…
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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…
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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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Off: On a Tangent
This course uses the tangential as a formal, rhetorical, and mathematical framework to interrogate the relationship between the part and the whole,…
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Talking Architecture
This seminar is intended to contribute to the Public Events Program at Harvard GSD. Students will team up to produce questions for…
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Discourse and Advocacy in the Spaces of Curation
Curation, the intentional act of selection and display of content, is often categorized in one of two ways: as an institutionalized type exemplified by the…
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Drawing for Designers 2: Human Presence and Appearance in Natural and Built Environment
The aim of the class is to learn how to depict and express the presence and appearance of people in natural and…
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Interrogative Design: Cultural Prosthetics
The course is open to students interested in pursuing artistic, design and research projects that critically interrogate and proactively respond to the…
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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 and the city. As artists and…
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Type and the Idea of the City: Architecture’s Search for what is Common
Open to all students, the seminars will equip students with the theoretical and historical understanding of type as a heuristic device in…
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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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Acoustic Space: A Media Archaeology of Building Types
This is a seminar on the past and present relationship between architecture, information technologies, and mass media. More than ever before, we live in acoustic…
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Extracanonical Buildings
analysis, "a breaking-up" or "an untying;" from ana– "up, throughout" and lysis "a loosening" [1] This project-based seminar is concerned with the formal analysis of…
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Investigating Normal: Assistive and Adaptive Design for Interdependent Futures
Part seminar in disability studies and part design laboratory, this course introduces students to design by, with, and for people with atypical bodies and minds.
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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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Institutions & Impact: Mental Health – Could Hybrid Institutions have more impact?
The world is rapidly changing around us, and to many, conventional institutions – from libraries to museums and from healthcare to schools – are failing.
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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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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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Rome
A seminar on the art, architecture, and urbanism of Rome where the layering of material artifacts from successive historical periods provides an…
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Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies
Infrastructures play a decisive role in urban development and in the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a…
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Building and Urban Conservation – 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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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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The Spectacle Factory
The Spectacle Factory examines the modern history of immersive theater, entertainment, and media spaces from the standpoint of the history of architecture and design. It…
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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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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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Power & Place: Culture and Conflict in the Built Environment
This course addresses processes and expressions of power in the North American built environment. Focusing on topics of identity and differentiation that…
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Eco Folly- History and Technology
Whether at the scale of the structure, garden, or machine, the folly has emerged as an object of excess—a playful moniker in…
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Late-modern Japan and the Wild Samurai Generation
This course examines the development of architectural discourse and production in Japan from the 1970s to the very recent past, focusing on the radical polemics…
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Otherness and Canon: Episodes of a Dialogic Reading of the History of Architecture.
In contrast to the debate in other areas such as art or literature – for the explanation of which capitalist expansion is a crucial factor…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
This course focuses on the intersection between environmental and social opportunities in the built environment and the economic impact they have on…
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Developing for Social Impact
This course explores a question with great currency but no methodology: how can real estate development both advance social purpose and account…
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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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Typologies of Liberation
Building codes and policies have always been a civil rights issue. Essential forms of land use control, zoning, federal and municipal codes, as well as…
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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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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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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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Pre- and Post-
Pre- and Post- is an introduction to fundamental concepts, techniques, and methods in digital design, with a focus on the processes of…
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Domestic Logistics
Modern domestic spaces are embedded in networks of goods, labor, media, and technology that shape their functions, capacities, and cultural role. They…
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Data Analysis and Data Physicalization
Data Analysis and Data Physicalization is a research seminar that explores the analysis and communication of data through statistical analysis and physical…
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Towards a new Science of Design?
Martin Bechthold, Juan Pablo Ugarte
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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Informal Robotics / New Paradigms for Design & Construction
This course teaches how to create original robotic devices made of light, compliant – informal – materials. New fabrication techniques are transforming…
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LIT: A Survey and Design Research Seminar of Light and Lighting (Module 1)
What makes for a good luminous environment? What distinguishes a good luminous environment from a bad one? This course surveys the many shades of light…
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Artifacts as Media: Signals, Data, Information and Technology
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 Building Performance Simulation and Architectural Design Optimization (Module 2)
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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Introduction to 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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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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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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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Students may take a maximum of 8 units with different GSD instructors in this course series. 9201 must be taken for either 2, or 4…
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Thesis project / Project Thesis
Andrew Holder, Eric Howeler, Jon Lott
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 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 Design Engineering Project II
Mary Tolikas, Martin Bechthold
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
Ann Forsyth, Peter Rowe, Ali Malkawi
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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Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Thesis extension in satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Discourse and 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…
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Discourse and Methods II
The objective of the seminar is to examine and discuss in depth some of the main methodological issues that students enrolled in the PhD program…