Courses
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Visual Studies: Architectural Representation: Origins + Originality
Architectural representation is an ideology – a source of ideas and visionary theorizing that has an accompanying set of origins and natures. As such, it’s…
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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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Landscape Representation III: Landform and Ecological Process
Craig Douglas, Rosalea Monacella
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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Immersive Landscape: Representation through Gaming Technology
The course is aimed at investigating new ways to interpret, conceive and describe landscape. While traditional methods of representation will prevail for…
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Experiments in Computer Graphics
Over the past three decades the architectural process has been drastically reorganized by what historian Jonathan Crary calls “a transformation in the…
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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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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts I
Erika Naginski, K. Michael Hays, Andrew Holder
This course is structured as a dialogue between the historical and theoretical frameworks that have shaped the formulation of architectural principles – what the architectural…
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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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Urbanization in the East Asian Region
The purpose of this lecture course is to provide an overall account of the urbanization in selected cities within the rapidly developing…
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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…
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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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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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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 its possession and use. For privately owned land, the market manages much of…
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Cities by Design I
Rahul Mehrotra, Peter Rowe, Jerold S. Kayden, Alex Krieger, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets, Felipe Correa
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: Seattle, WA and Boston
The Field Study course is designed to provide students an understanding of the dynamics and complexities of reality that create contemporary urban…
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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 for urban planning. The course begins with an examination of how quantitative methods fit within…
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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)
The course is intended to develop in students an understanding of the management, policy and planning problems that are peculiar to transportation and other types…
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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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Urban Economic Concepts for Real Economic Development
The course begins with a thorough review of the principles of urban economics and the economic issues effecting cities and their regions. …
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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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Environment, Politics, and Action
What is the relationship between the natural environment and the design of successful places? How do we know? And how can we…
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Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems (at HBS)
Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social and Economic Problems COURSE OBJECTIVES• To provide a framework through which to think about the salient…
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Global Leadership in Real Estate and Design: Barcelona, Spain and Seaport District, Boston, MA
In today’s increasingly connected urban centers, shifts in cultural preferences, design thinking, and spatial significations often reflect and parallel transitions in capital forces and economic…
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Real Estate Finance and Development Fundamentals for Public and Private Participants (at HKS)
Provides an analytical framework for understanding real estate finance and development fundamentals from both public and private perspectives. Topics addressed include: establishing investment/development objectives; structuring…
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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:To…
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Environmental Systems 2
This course is the second of a two-module sequence in Building Technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture. The objective…
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Construction Systems
This course introduces a framework to know the instantiation of architecture through construction systems. Construction systems will be discovered through the methods of dissection, drawing,…
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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 II
This course is a continuation of GSD 6227 and, after an overview/reminder introduction, furthers understanding of more developed structural systems and materials in architectural design.
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies III: Ecology and the Design World
Steven Handel, Christopher Matthews
Required for both MLA 1 and MLA AP students taking the third LA core-studio. Ecological Principles for Design (Steven Handel). The fundamentals of ecological science…
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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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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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Introduction to Computational Design
Panagiotis Michalatos, Sawako Kaijima
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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Forms of Energy: Nonmodern
Offered for the final time at the GSD, the fall 2017 Forms of Energy course focuses on Nonmodern Forms of Energy and…
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Foundations of Practice
Jeffry Burchard, Jesse M. Keenan
For students in the fifth semester of the M.Arch I degree program, this four (4) credit hour course examines models and…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society I
Woodward Yang, Diane Davis, Martin Bechthold, Chuck Hoberman, Robert Silman
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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Innovation in Project Delivery
Project delivery – the organizational, legal and economic arrangements by which society produces its built environment – has undergone a radical transformation…
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MArch II Proseminar
Jorge Silvetti, Jennifer Bonner
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,…