Courses
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Responsive Environments: Bergamo eMotion
This course looks into the future of the built environment from a technologically augmented point of view, with a strong focus on sustainability and…
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The Poetics of Place: Critical Writing for Designers
The seminar will explore the relationship between the written word and visual culture. Students will be expected to visit specific sites in the Cambridge/Boston…
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Fieldwork in Conservation Design
Architects practicing in the 21st century can no longer assume that most of their design projects will begin with an empty site. Several factors –…
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Landscape as Urbanism in Latin America
Schedule updated to 8:30-11:30 on Tuesdays. The discourse and practices of landscape as urbanism as developed over the past two decades can be found…
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Type and the Idea of the City
Open to all students, the seminars in this course will compliment Option Studio 1508: The Factory and the City. It will provide the theoretical…
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Socio-Environmental Responsive Design
Jose Luis Vallejo, Belinda Tato
This seminar considers the complexity of the human ecosystem and the interpenetration of natural and artificial elements that are embedded within it. People, nature,…
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The Architecture of Health: Power, Technology, and the Hospital
This seminar traces the form of the hospital from the beginning of modern medicine through to the present, across Europe, the United States, and…
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Philosophy of Technology
“In addition to man’s ageless obligation to meet the threat of things, he bears for the first time the responsibility of prime agent in…
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Urban Grids: Open form for City Design
Framework: Within a larger research scope on “Revisiting the urban grids in the XXI century”, this seminar will focus on the…
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Potential Architecture
The work of the architect, the urban designer and designers at large is conditioned by a number of factors that delimit and demarcate the…
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Political Landscapes
This course is offered for students enrolled in the Rotterdam Study Abroad Program. This seminar invites students to analyze the political iconography of the countryside,…
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Adventure and Fantasy Simulation, 1871-2036
Visual constituents of high adventure since the late Victorian era, emphasizing wandering woods, rogues, tomboys, women adventurers, faerie antecedents, halflings, crypto-cartography, Third-Path turning, martial arts,…
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Modern Architecture and Urbanism in China
Modernizing influences, largely from the hands of foreign powers, first forcefully entered China in the aftermath of the Opium War and signing of the…
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Screens: Media Archaeology and the Visual Arts Seminar
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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Super Landscapes, Super Sports
As a form of play, sports are deeply embedded in human nature and culture. Throughout history, sports have had considerable impact on how we…
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The Ruin Aesthetic: Episodes in the History of an Architectural Idea
One of the arresting images in Michel Serres’s Rome: The Book of Foundations is the idea that history is “a knot of different times”…
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Shifting Terrains 1930-1970: Cambridge Modern Architecture and Landscape (Cancelled)
This interdisciplinary research seminar affords students an opportunity to engage in independent research on a theme of their choice; this might be directed toward…
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Le Corbusier: Themes/Discourse/Figures
Antoine Picon, K. Michael Hays
Half a century after his death, Le Corbusier remains the most emblematic architect of the twentieth century and a major reference for the architectural discipline.
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Countryside versus Cityside: A Seminar in Environmental History
This Course is for students in the Rotterdam Study Abroad Program. Investigating the countryside, as architects, requires a zooming out of the city and the…
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Cities by Design II: Projects, Processes, and Outcomes
Cities evolve through a complex layering and re-layering of projects, processes, and outcomes. Cities by Design II introduces students to a range of contexts that…
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Urbanization and International Development
This course interrogates the relationship between urbanization and development. One of the main objectives of the course is to move beyond seeing cities in…
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Design for the Just City
In “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger”, Dr. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett present a compelling set of data illustrating that material…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings? Where are the opportunities…
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Creating Real Estate Ventures: a Legal Perspective
The course will examine how a commercial real estate deal is put together to move a project from conception to completion. The course will…
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Cyborg Coasts: Responsive Hydrologies
The interface between the constructed environment and ecological systems is slowly blurring strategies in urbanism, biological engineering, and technological interface. These strategies encourage the application…
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The Thermal Allometry of Massive, Breathing Buildings
By form and ‘massing’ alone, termite mounds balance the baritone beat of thermal mass with the soprano shrill of surface convection and the tenor pulse…
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Structural Surfaces
This course is about maximum effect with minimum means. Complex surfaces present a wide variety of construction and structural challenges, as well as a…
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Structures in Landscape Architecture
Topics Covered · How to think about structure as an aspect of landscape architectural design thought. · The structural implications of site…
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Poetics of Planting Design II
Danielle Choi, Kimberly Mercurio
Note regarding new course offering: Course SCI-6456 will be changed to SCI-06460 AFTER THE LIMITED ENROLLMENT LOTTERY IS DONE. Students interested in this course…
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Visualization (at SEAS)
SEAS Computer Science 171 Catalog Number: 8877 Tu., Th., 2:30-4, and a weekly section to be arranged. Please check the…
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Life-Cycle Design
The design of sustainable buildings has long focused on reducing energy needs during the operational phase, largely disregarding energy and material consumption as well…
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Urban Theory Lab Research Practicum: ‘Operational Landscapes’ of Planetary Urbanization
This research practicum is part of an ongoing series of courses which develops the research agenda of the Urban Theory Lab-GSD (UTL-GSD)—namely, to investigate the…
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Living in the Kinetic City: Mapping Housing in a Landscape of Flux, Mumbai
Increasing concentrations of global flows have exacerbated the inequalities and spatial divisions of social classes in Mumbai. In this context, the creation of an…
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Vegetal City 2: Plane Tree Mania
In this seminar/workshop we will explore an under-studied but crucially important urban realm—the designed, adapted vegetative canopy—through descriptive, analytical, and projective methods. We will…
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SURPLUS HOUSING: Models of Collective Living in South America.
Housing as typology is one of the richest representations of a city’s history and evolution of culture. The gradual collection of dwellings in multiple…
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Genome of the Built Environment: Measuring the Unseen
The built environment is one of the most fascinating yet enigmatic artifact of the human being. We perceive it as a complex entity resulting…
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Research Methods in Landscape Architecture
This seminar offers an overview of various types and practices of research methodology in contemporary landscape architecture. Central to the ambitions of the course is…
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What is a Thesis? Conversations on Means and Methods of the Thesis Project
Mohsen Mostafavi, John May, Jon Lott
The course is organized around a series of in-depth discussions with leading figures in the design fields. Weekly meetings provide a forum for exploring…
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Art, Design and the Public Domain Pre-Final Project Workshop
Frida Escobedo, James Voorhies
The seminar will serve as a space for artistic and design experimentation, and discussion intended to foreground students’ emergent interests, concepts, and methodologies toward their…
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Discourse and Methods II
This is one of two seminars fulfilling a requirement for successful completion of the PHD curriculum. The seminar is designed as an introduction to canonical…