Courses
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Responsive Environments
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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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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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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Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle
The structures and forms we perceive on the face of the land are produced by forces that make order, and those that…
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Why Not Cultural Systems? Expanding Our Value System Beyond Nature and Ecology
This seminar will examine the planning, design and stewardship opportunities and constraints frequently encountered when dealing with cultural landscapes. In addition to…
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From Fallow: Equitable Futures for Landscapes of Injustice
Property abandonment is prevalent in places of disinvestment, where vulnerable communities bear the burden of untended land alongside structural racism, unjust policies,…
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Marvelous Architecture – The Hallucination Of Reason
The seminar "Marvelous Architecture – The Hallucination Of Reason" is about architecture theory crossbred with representation. It will explore the specificity of architectural…
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North American Seacoasts and Landscapes: Discovery Period to the Present
Selected topics in the history of the North American coastal zone, including the seashore as wilderness, as industrial site, as area of…
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Screens – Projecting Media and The Visual Arts
Giuliana Bruno, Emilio Vavarella
How do screens function as interface between us and the world? What is the role of the screen in contemporary visual arts and media culture?…
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Building Conservation and Renewal: Assessment, Analysis, Design
What are the spatial, material, and cultural values inherent in a property that must be understood to craft interventions and additions that…
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Topology and Imagination: Between Chinese Landscapes and Architecture
This course deals with landscape architecture and architecture in contemporary China. Its purpose is twofold: to articulate new perspectives on the challenges…
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Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Architecture 1960 to the Present
The concept of postmodernism finds its definitive articulation in architecture, even though postmodern thought far exceeds the use of the term postmodern…
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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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Cotton Kingdom, Now
In 1852, the New York Daily Times commissioned a 31-year-old Frederick Law Olmsted to conduct an immersive research journey through the Southern…
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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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Public health in an era of epidemics: from the camp to the building
We didn’t need a pandemic to know that we shouldn’t conceive any more architecture projects and urban planning interventions that disregard their…
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Planning for Climate Change
This seminar explores how public and private institutions and individuals, under labels of “adaptation” or “resilience,” are positioning built and natural environments to respond to…
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New Spaces of Justice
This class will take the shape of a multidisciplinary workshop in collaboration with Virgil Abloh, Nóra Al Haider and the Legal Design Lab at Stanford…
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Race, Power, and Resistance in the City
The police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans, as well as the racial health disparities highlighted by the…
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Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Developing World
This course starts from the premise that politics and governance arrangements can both enable and constrain effective urban planning action. Using a…
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Domestic Logistics
Modern domestic spaces are embedded in networks of goods, labor, media, and technology that shape their functions, capacities, and cultural role. They…
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Advanced Applications in Sustainable Architecture
This new elective seminar will provide a deeper dive into issues of evidence-based, high-performance, sustainable building design. The course is intended for…
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Re-Wilding Harvard
David Moreno Mateos, Joyce Chaplin
This is a year-long class on rewilding, returning a habitat to an earlier form. Students in this course will research historical and cultural definitions of…
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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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Landscape Practices
This seminar examines the nature of contemporary landscape architecture and public realm practices. In this context, practice is considered broadly in terms…
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Forms of Assembly
This course is an advanced two semester research and project-based seminar initiated by Art, Design, and the Public Domain MDes, in collaboration with…
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Preparation for Independent Thesis Proposal for MUP, MAUD, or MLAUD
Carole Voulgaris, David Gamble
This seminar is intended to provide the theoretical and methodological foundation for completing a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. By…
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Preparation of MLA Design Thesis
A thesis is a thematic proposition offered for discussion and debate. A thesis is typically developed through a piece of original research specific to an…
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Proseminar in Landscape Architecture
The proseminar introduces MLA II students to a range of theories and methods in landscape architecture and their implications for practice and research. The focus…
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Proseminar in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology
The Master of Design Studies Urbanism-Landscape-Ecology [U-L-E] proseminar introduces students to the range of individual and group research presently pursued by GSD faculty across the…