Courses
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Second Semester Architecture Core: SITUATE
Jeffry Burchard, Michelle Chang, Elle Gerdeman, Oana Stanescu, Liang Wang, Emmett Zeifman
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
Jenny French, Jennifer Bonner, Sean Canty, Andrew Holder, Grace La, Jon Lott, Elizabeth Whittaker
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
Kipp Bradford, Jonathan Grinham, Karen Reuther
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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Ruinophilia & Pentimenti ? Chinatown Milan Case Study
Arguably the conception of ruins has long shaped western architecture historians’ origins narrative dating back to antiquity. Largely shaped by a distinct visual culture and…
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Rotterdam Studio Abroad: Bookmaking
From 2012 to 2014, the Rotterdam studio abroad focused on Elements of Architecture, from 2016 to 2018 on the Countryside. The studios culminated in exhibitions…
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Planning for Architecture and Urban Conservation in Mumbai?s Historic Fort District
Mumbai’s urban identity has been in flux since its founding as a colonial port city. Its economy in the post-colonial phase of its history has…
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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: Writing Form
This course offers an introduction to the field of design and computation through the essential pursuit of writing form. Setting aside the better-known paradigms of…
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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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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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Off: On a Tangent
The tangential inherently implicates the expression of how two things touch. In a moment where touching has become complicated, a formal exploration…
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Talking Architecture
This seminar is intended to contribute to the Public Events Program at Harvard GSD. During this third version of the course, students will team up…
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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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Rotterdam Studio Abroad Seminar: Bookmaking & Story Telling
Part I: The history of bookmaking and book storageThe first part of the seminar will explore earlier bookmaking typologies and test their relevance for…
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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, the city, and the planet. As…
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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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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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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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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Origins and Ends
Our aim is to address the general rupture caused by the rise of modernity—that is, by the social, economic, technological, and ideological transformations accompanying the…
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Making Sacred Space
This course addresses the current crisis in church design by an in depth consideration of the ideas, images, concepts, and legislation that inform the creation…
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Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies
Infrastructure plays a decisive role in urban development and in the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a historical perspective. History…
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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 Tange Kenz? (1913–2005) on the…
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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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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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The Architect as Producer
In 2020, the interconnected crisis of racist violence, environmental collapse, and the global pandemic prompted profound changes in how we understand what architecture is and…
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How To Be a Critic
This workshop seminar will focus the student’s ability to think and write critically about buildings, the city, and the urban landscape, and in the process…
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Rotterdam Studio Abroad: The Current Political Context and its Impact on the Future of Globalization
This conference course will explore current issues raised by an apparent reversal in globalization and the outbreak of hostilities reminiscent of the Cold War… Possible…
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Yeah, they were all Yellow: Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities
Intervention and reflection have been made in the primarily male-dominated architectural field with its phallogocentric Western metaphysics foundation, particularly since the 1980s. Yet much effort…
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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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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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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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Advanced Applications in Sustainable Architecture
This elective seminar will provide a deeper dive into issues of evidence-based, high-performance, ecological building design. The course is intended for MArch students, MDes students,…
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Towards a new Science of Design?
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
This course teaches how to create original robotic devices made of light, compliant – informal – materials. New fabrication techniques are transforming…
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Artifacts as Media: Signals, Data, Information and Design
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 Performance-Driven Design
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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Unsupervised 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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Nano, Micro, Macro: BioFabrication
Rapid global climate change has lent new urgency to our a longstanding interest of growing materials to break the unstainable reality of material extraction, use…
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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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Non-Professional Practice
"I've never worked for a living. I consider working for a living slightly imbecilic from an economic point of view. I hope some day we'll…
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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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Design Teaching Lab (DTL)
This course teaches design teaching for those interested in pursuing parallel paths in design and education. Starting from an understanding of design as a culture…
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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
Lisa Haber-Thomson, Eric Howeler
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
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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Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Martin Bechthold, Gareth Doherty, Ann Forsyth, K. Michael Hays, Jerold S. Kayden, Niall Kirkwood, Ali Malkawi, Erika Naginski, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe, Charles Waldheim
Thesis extension in satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Discourse and Methods I
This course is open only to Ph.D. students in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design (Ph.D. students from other departments may participate with…
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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…