Courses
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First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT
Sean Canty, Carl D’Apolito-Dworkin, Iman Fayyad, Jenny French, Elisa Iturbe, Nancy Nichols
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, Michelle Chang, Elle Gerdeman, Jon Lott, John May, 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, James Weaver, 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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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: Not Magic
According to folklore, Michelangelo fell to his knees upon seeing the Florentine fresco Annunciation, went silent, and eventually concluded that the image of the Virgin…
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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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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 and playful supplement to computer-based labor. The aim of the class is…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Contested Spaces: Architecture and Power
In this course we discuss space as the site in which power is mobilized, negotiated, and contested. We examine how buildings, landscapes, and their representation…
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Tactile Architectures
Architecture has often constituted itself as hard and durable, from the Vitruvian principle of firmness to the raw concrete of brutalism. This seminar draws attention…
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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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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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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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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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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
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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Independent Design Engineering Project I
Jock Herron, Kathleen Brandenburg, Mark Coughlin
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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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…