Courses
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First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT
Sean Canty, Marina Correia, Iman Fayyad, Jenny French, Elle Gerdeman, Helen Han, 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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Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE
Jeannette Kuo, Jennifer Bonner, Michelle Chang, Eric Howeler, Paul Kassabian, Jon Lott, Yasmin Vobis, Angela Pang, Brett Schneider, 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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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio I (with SEAS)
Elizabeth Christoforetti, Andrew Witt, James Weaver, 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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Between Wilderness and Civilization: Monson, Maine
The town of Monson is the gateway to the Hundred-Mile Wilderness, the northernmost hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail which stretches from Springer Mountain in…
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Beauty Of Knowledge – American (ir)regularity
The studio Beauty Of Knowledge – American (ir)regularity is a follower to last year’s studio Places Of Knowledges, and previous year Form As Knowledge –…
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Architecture for Statehood
If Washington, DC were to be granted statehood, what would the introduction of its new governing institutions and agencies do to the city and the…
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De/constructing Cultural Tourism – Ke Zhan (Traveler’s Rest Stop) Case Study
The studio will take on the topic of cultural tourism in the context of China’s westward expansion related to its Belt and Road project, as…
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The Primitive Hut
Emanuel Christ, Christoph Gantenbein
Consisting of a roof and its supports, the Primitive Hut is the essence of architecture, and has always been an obsession and a fixed topos…
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Well-being: The function of a 21st century multi-story residential building
Over the past seventeen months, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to feelings of loneliness, anxiety, boredom, incarceration, and indolence for many living in cities around…
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Miami Remix
Elizabeth Whittaker, Corey Zehngebot
Miami Remix will expand on emerging housing typologies as part of a larger urban design agenda as we take on Miami’s most urgent crises: equitable…
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The Third Space [M1]
This studio will explore community development, cultural complexity and displacement, place, and identity through the programming and design of a Third Space which will engage…
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WINDOW WALL [M1]
Mauricio Pezo, Sofia von Ellrichshausen
Architecture is not that simple. The moment you enclose a space with solid walls and a roof you need to open it (for access, light…
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Designing for the DNA of a Place [M2]
As a planet, we have over the past two years been in a collective state of reckoning. This has been true when it comes to…
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Specific Ambiguity: The Well-Tempered grid [M2]
The grid is an elusive system, for some architects and artists it is a distinctive code for framing, understanding and producing space, a model. For…
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Planning a Piece of a City, The Architectural Form of the Neighborhood
Contemporary cities generally grow in an amorphous and often mono functional way, generating peripheries that do not contribute to social life and identity. The latter…
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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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Digital Media: Models
This course is an introduction to fundamental concepts, techniques, and methods related to digital media in architecture and design, with a focus…
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Digital Media: Not Magic
According to folklore, Michelangelo fell to his knees upon seeing the Florentine fresco Annunciation, went silent, and eventually concluded that the image…
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Offsite/Onsite: Curating Contemporary Art
Today, everybody is a curator—we supposedly curate our meals, our social media feeds, and our outfits. But what does it mean to curate exhibitions of…
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Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture
Current tendencies in the discipline suggest a split between two opposing architectural projects: the easy project versus the difficult project[1]. Primarily related…
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BISCUITS, JERKY, JELLY
The intersections between film and architecture have been heavily discussed since the turn of the twentieth century. “Of all the arts,” wrote architectural historian and…
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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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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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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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Material Practice and its Agency
This seminar introduces an understanding of material discourse in design and architecture that affects cultural, social ,economic and political issues. In addition…
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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, sequel-modern, and, most importantly,…
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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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THICKER
For the last half century, the image of an office building has been synonymous with the curtain wall. Pioneered as early as Mies’ proposal for…
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Original Misunderstandings: Latin American Architecture and Some Genealogies
Tropicália was a Brazilian movement founded in the 1960s by musicians, poets, and other artists. Immersed in the Latin American polarized discussions about the meaning…
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Interpreting an Archive
Jorge Silvetti, Mark Lee, Ines Zalduendo
A seminar/workshop addressing current issues on the practices of architectural archiving and the curation of architectural exhibitions. A series of lectures from the instructors and…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Origins and Ends
In the first semester of the Buildings, Texts, and Contexts sequence, our goal is to address architecture in the context of the general rupture caused…
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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…
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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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Competing Visions of Modernity in Japan
The course will trace the parallel trajectories of two of modern Japan’s most influential schools of architectural thought, represented by Kenzo Tange…
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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…
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Materiality and Atmosphere: Media and Environments (at AFVS)
What is the place of materiality in our visual age of changing materials and media? How do media mediate material relations? Can media be understood…
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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…
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Rules for the Electronic Zoo: A Mediatechnics of Architecture’s Present
“I know well enough what time is, provided that nobody asks me; but if am asked what it is, and try to explain, I am baffled.” …
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Architectural Strategies against Consumerism
Consumerism, the artificially accelerated cycle of production and consumption, leads to a generation of waste that is both economically and ecologically unacceptable; moreover, consumerism erodes…
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Inscriptions: Recent Experimental Architecture
Andrew Holder, K. Michael Hays
This course is appropriate for students who can devote time to reading advanced theoretical material and do close formal and material studies of experimental projects.
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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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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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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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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)
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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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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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…
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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…
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Health and Buildings
Former course title: “Building [/] Human Interaction”. This course investigates the interactions between humans and buildings with a focus on health. Students…
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Indiscrete Structures
What happens when we consider the design of structures starting with ideas not limited to the predefined conventions of engineering mechanics and materials? Or said another…
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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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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
This course is intended for students interested in how to create products, buildings, and environments that utilize physical transformation to realize enhanced…
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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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Confronting Climate Change: A Foundation in Science, Technology and Policy
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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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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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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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…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Andrew Witt, Oana Stanescu, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Diane Davis, Martin Bechthold, Sharon Johnston, Iman Fayyad, Malkit Shoshan, Krzysztof Wodiczko
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
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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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
Martin Bechthold, Anita Berrizbeitia, Gareth Doherty, Ann Forsyth, Ali Malkawi, Richard Peiser, Peter Rowe, Holly Samuelson, Carole Voulgaris
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
Martin Bechthold, Charles Waldheim, Diane Davis, Anita Berrizbeitia, Neil Brenner, Ann Forsyth, Alex Krieger, Ali Malkawi, Erika Naginski, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe
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…