Courses
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Constructing Visual Narratives of Place
The seminar explores the representation of identity and memory in the city and its territory. The case study is Boston, in its…
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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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The Desert We Eat
Explorations on Otomi Diet at Valle del Mezquital In the landscape imaginary of modern agriculture the farm is a water-intensive operation, which according to the…
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BISCUITS, JERKY, JELLY
The intersections between film and architecture have been heavily discussed since the turn of the twentieth century. “Of all the arts,” wrote architectural historian and…
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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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Drawing for Designers: Techniques of Expression, Articulation, and Representation
The course is intended as a creative drawing laboratory for designers and an expressive, playful supplement to computer-based labor. This course will…
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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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Material Practice and its Agency
This seminar introduces an understanding of material discourse in design and architecture that affects cultural, social ,economic and political issues. In addition…
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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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Migration in Latin-America: Imagining Flux, Rapid Response and Reversibility
Today’s fast-paced, global flow of people and goods is challenging the idea that the city should be an entity that aspires to…
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Dynamic Digital Landforms
The course will explore nascent digital techniques of modelling, simulation, analysis, and visualisation of the landscape as a dynamic system, and speculate on the role…
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Original Misunderstandings: Latin American Architecture and Some Genealogies
Tropicália was a Brazilian movement founded in the 1960s by musicians, poets, and other artists. Immersed in the Latin American polarized discussions about the meaning…
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Architectural Strategies against Consumerism
Consumerism, the artificially accelerated cycle of production and consumption, leads to a generation of waste that is both economically and ecologically unacceptable; moreover, consumerism erodes…
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Field Studies in Real Estate, Urban Planning and Design
Social Impact Investing and ESG in downtown Bellevue, WA and a Park-centric redevelopment of demolished Dallas shopping mall and adjoining properties This…
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Reimagining social infrastructure and collective futures
Design tools and spatial approaches can play a vital role in reimagining a twenty-first century social infrastructure—the underlying structures that sustain social life, including spaces…
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The Theory and Practice of Sustainable Urban Development: SDG #11 and Beyond
This project-based course seeks a critical yet constructive approach to the emerging urban agenda formulated within the UN’s 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The inclusion…
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Material Systems: Digital Design and Fabrication
Digital design and fabrication technologies have become integral to the discourse surrounding contemporary design and architectural practice. The translation from design to…
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Working Landscapes: Natural Resiliency And Redesign
Steven Apfelbaum, Katharine Parsons, Robert Zimmerman
Ecological principles and their application to design and planning will be emphasized. Topics will include coastal wetland development, sediment movement in estuaries and long-shore, natural…
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Power||Energy: mapping the thickened ground of labor
The definition of energy is dominated by a western logic of energy as a resource. This understanding was focused on the primary objective of putting…
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Designing with/for Micro-climates
Designing with/for Micro-climates is a hands-on seminar dedicated to the making of thermal environments through multiple techniques at different scales of design – from the…
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Indiscrete Structures
What happens when we consider the design of structures starting with ideas not limited to the predefined conventions of engineering mechanics and materials? Or said another…
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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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Transformable Design Methods
This course is intended for students interested in how to create products, buildings, and environments that utilize physical transformation to realize enhanced…
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Nano Micro Macro: Adaptive Material Laboratory (with SEAS)
Jonathan Grinham, Joanna Aizenberg
This course is an interdisciplinary platform for designers, engineers, and scientists to interact and develop innovative new products. The course introduces ideas-to-innovation processes in a…
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Real Estate and City Making in China
Real estate has increasingly become a compelling force in the process of city making, one uniquely capable of leading and guiding multiple steps in the…
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Preparation of MLA Design Thesis
“The natural sciences are concerned with how things are . . . Design, on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be.”…