Courses
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Visual Studies
The course objective is to develop and improve students’ skills in freehand drawing based on direct observation, and to encourage them to incorporate drawing into…
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Projective Representation in Architecture
This course examines the history, theory and practice of parallel (orthographic) and central (perspective) projection. The objective is to provide the tools to imagine and…
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Spatial Analysis and the Built Environment
Urban planners engage in many complex processes that defy easy representation. This course provides first-semester urban planning students with the graphic and technical skills needed…
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Digital Media II
This class explores the design and science of logical form making, examined through geometry, parametric control, algorithms, and digital tools. The point of departure is…
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Landscape Representation III: Landform and Ecological Process
Landscape Representation III examines the fundamental relationship between terrain and the landscapes it supports and engenders. This examination will be developed through methods of associative…
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Theories of Landscape as Urbanism, Landscape as Infrastructure: Paradigms, Practices, Prospects
Responding to contemporary urban patterns, ecological pressures and decaying infrastructures, this course brings together a series of influential thinkers and researchers from the design commons…
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Teaching Techniques
The course examines foundations for contemporary architectural design pedagogy according to several broad themes — spatial, programmatic, material, structural, technological – defined in dialectical terms…
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Studies of the Built North American Environment: 1580 to the Present
North America as an evolving visual environment is analyzed as a systems concatenation involving such constituent elements as farms, small towns, shopping…
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History and Theory of Urban Interventions
This class provides a high-intensity introduction the history and theory of urban planning practice under modern capitalism. Building upon an interdisciplinary literature drawn from planning…
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Histories of Landscape Architecture I: Textuality and the Practice of Landscape Architecture
Note, the first meeting on Wednesday, August 31, will take place in Stubbins, room 112, rather than Piper Auditorium. This course introduces students to a…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts III: The Tower and the Sphere: Architecture and Modernity
K. Michael Hays, Bryan Norwood
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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Urbanization in the East Asian Region
This course meets for the first time on Monday, September 12th. The purpose of this lecture course is to provide an…
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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 fifth century B.C. and the seventeenth century A.D., beginning with ancient Athens and ending…
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Architecture, Urbanism and National Identity in Muslim Geographies
Commonly (and carelessly) used terms like “Islamic architecture” or “Islamic city” remain highly contentious because they designate monolithic, faith-based conceptualizations that fall…
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The Shapes of Utopia
Utopia's fall from grace in the modern period is tied to architecture's failure in giving shape to dreams of a new society wrought from social…
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Forest, Grove, Tree: Planting Urban Landscapes
“Discussions about the urban forest and tree canopy, carbon sequestration, sustainability, and tree adoption programs are becoming more prevalent by the day.
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Real Estate Finance and Development
Richard Peiser, David Hamilton
This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate finance and development. Lectures and case studies introduce students to the full range of…
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Land Use and Environmental Law
As a scarce and necessary resource, land triggers competition and conflict over possession, use, development, and preservation. For privately owned land, the market manages much…
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Cities by Design I
Cities by Design I is concerned with in-depth longitudinal examination of urban conditions in and among selected cities in the world. The…
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Field Studies in Real Estate, Planning, and Urban Design: Miami Beach and Boston
Saving Miami Beach from Climate-Change and Redeveloping Boston’s Columbia Point The Field Study course is designed to provide students an understanding of the dynamics and…
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Policy Making in Urban Settings (at HKS)
An introduction to policymaking in American cities, focusing on economic, demographic, institutional, and political settings. It examines economic development and job growth in the context…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Quantitative
This course introduces students to quantitative analysis and research methods. The course begins with a discussion of how quantitative methods fit within the broader research…
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Analytic Methods: Qualitative
How can planners understand places in a rich, meaningful, and yet systematic way? This module examines how qualitative approaches can be used…
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Transportation Policy and Planning (at HKS)
Provides an overview of the issues involved in transportation policy and planning, as well as an introduction to the skills necessary for solving the various…
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Housing and Urbanization in the United States
James Stockard, Jennifer Molinsky
This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those…
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Prosperity, Civic Values and Diversity in a Gentrifying City: The Case of Central Square, Cambridge
In Cambridge, as in other rapidly gentrifying cities, change is constant. Brought on by the city’s burgeoning innovation economy, and its deeply…
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Sustainable Real Estate
This introductory course surveys the historical foundations, economic logics and underlying physics that underscore the design, development and operations of sustainable buildings.
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Form+Finance: the Design of Real Estate
This course exposes students to tools, instruments and strategies for design thinking and the mechanisms of finance and market forces that shape and impact built…
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Real Estate Finance and Development Fundamentals for Public and Private Participants (at HKS)
Classroom is at HKS, Littauer 28 Class meeting time is Mon, Wed from 4:45 to 6:00 PM. However the first class will be on…
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Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Developing World
This course starts from the premise that urban politics and governance arrangements shape the definition, form and practice of planning and therefore its outcomes. Using…
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Construction Lab
Why do we build with certain types of materials, and not others? How do the properties and qualities of materials constrain the ways in which…
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Energy in Architecture
This lecture course introduces students to energy and environmental issues, particularly those that must be faced by the discipline of architecture. An overview of the…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies I
Matthew Urbanski, Rosetta S. Elkin
Recognizing that plants are one of the essential mediums of landscape architecture, this class seeks to introduce the student to two basic relationships; the relationship…
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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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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies III: Ecology and the Design World
Steven Handel, Christopher Matthews
Fall term, four units, required for both MLA 1 and MLA AP students taking the third LA core-studio. Ecological Principles for Design (Steven Handel). The…
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Water Engineering (at SEAS)
Introduces the fundamentals of water biology, chemistry, physics and transport processes needed to understand water quality and water purification technologies. Practical instruction in basic water…
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Introduction to Computational Design
This is an introductory course to computational design and the prerequisite for a spring course that deals with more advanced topics in…
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Energy Simulation
The best intent does not always lead to the best performing design, as intuition and rules of thumb often fail to adequately…
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Natural Ventilation
Topics to be covered:1. Climate analysis, thermal comfort and natural ventilation potential.2. Basics of wind-driven and buoyancy-driven ventilation.3. Thermal…
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Daylighting
Picture a space, one that feels vibrant, comfortable, warm, and healthy. Now visualize someplace cheerless, depressing, and dull. What changed in your…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society I
Developing and implementing good solutions to real problems facing human society requires a broad understanding of the relationships between technology innovation, science, manufacturing, design thinking,…
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Practices of Landscape Architecture
This course examines critical aspects of landscape architecture practice through the consideration of historical and contemporary frameworks for professional services, the legal and financial contexts…
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Innovation in Project Delivery
Project delivery—the organizational, legal and economic arrangements by which society produces its built environment—has undergone a radical transformation over the past half…
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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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Urban Design Proseminar
The proseminar is a forum for conversation on contemporary urban design. It is structured around three overlapping discussions: the formation of the discipline,…