Courses
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Construction Systems
This course introduces students to methods of construction: conceptually, historically, and practically. We will consider how construction techniques emerge in relation to architectural desires and…
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Structural Design II
Martin Bechthold, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
This course is a continuation of GSD 6227 and completes the introduction to the analysis and design of building structures. Both 6227 and 6229 are…
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Introduction to Computational Design
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
#GSD6338 is an introductory course on Computational Design, with particular focus on architecture, landscape and urbanism. In this course, we will understand…
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Advanced Topics on Embodied Carbon in Buildings
Present assumptions indicate that the management of our material world accounts for more than half of all global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
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Confronting Climate Change: A Foundation in Science, Technology and Policy (at FAS)
This course will consider the challenge of climate change and what to do about it. Students will be introduced to the basic science of…
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Foundations of Practice
Jeffry Burchard, Gregg Garmisa, Timothy R. Twomey
For students in the fifth semester of the MArch I degree program, this course examines models and issues that define contemporary professional practice. Requiring students…
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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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Frameworks of Practice
How should we practice today? The discipline, the profession, and the practice of architecture are invented and designed things. And the roles,…
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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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Elements of the Urban Stack
Paul Nakazawa, Elizabeth Christoforetti
The Urban Stack is a pedagogical framework for understanding the infrastructures of power that operate in relationship to practice. These elements shape…
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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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Digital Media: Ambiance in Non-places
How do we define the “ambiance” of a place? What causes specific environments to evoke different feelings? Are there consistent elements that define these ambiances,…
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Digital Media: Writing Form
This course offers an introduction to the field of design and computation through the primal pursuit of writing form. Setting aside the…
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Factory of the Sensible and the Political* (Equipping Experience)
Architects have long experimented with altering perceptions of space and structures in order to reconfigure experience. At stake in this course are…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts II
Any account of architecture’s history over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries is faced with the…
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Film Theory, Visual Thinking (at AFVS)
How do moving images transform the way we think? Introduction to film theory aimed at interpreting the visual world, and developing skills to analyze films…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts III: MODERNISM AND ITS COUNTER-NARRATIVES
Lisa Haber-Thomson, K. Michael Hays
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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Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies
Infrastructures play a decisive role in urban development and the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a historical…
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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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Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation
Through the lens of climate change, this foundation course surveys the intellectual development of resilience and adaptation in the social, natural, and applied sciences. Through…
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Building Simulation
This course is the third of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6125) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture…
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Materials
This course explores the science of stuff. How do we classify stuff? How do we build with stuff? What are the energy, health, and societal…
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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…
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Building Human Interaction
This course investigates the interactions between humans and buildings with a focus on environmental sustainability and health. The exploration will fall into…
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Integrative Frameworks for Technology, Environment, and Society II
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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Architectural Representation I
Architectural Representation I: Origins + Originality Architectural representation is an ideology—a source of ideas and visionary theorizing that has a set of origins and qualities.
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Architectural Representation II
Architectural Representation II: Projective Disciplines This course examines the history, theory, and practice of projective and descriptive geometry. Invented as techniques to draw form, these…
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Digital Media: Manipulations
This course is an introduction to fundamental concepts, techniques, and methods in digital design with a focus on reciprocal processes of translation…
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Digital Media: Composition
This course proposes a conceptual opposition between “filter” and “fill” to investigate the ways image analysis techniques augment topics in architectural composition.
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Domestic Architecture: (Groups of Residences)
The categories listed below do not imply any particular order. I tend to teach everything every time. Theories in GeneralTheories with AdjectivesResidential versus…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts I
Erika Naginski, K. Michael Hays
This course is structured as a dialogue between the historical and theoretical frameworks that have shaped the formulation of architectural principles—what the architectural historian Rudolf Wittkower called…
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Authority and Invention: Medieval Art and Architecture
This course covers masterworks of art and architecture in Western Europe from the decline of Rome to the dawn of the Italian…
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Structuring Urban Experience: From the Athenian Acropolis to the Boston Common
This lecture course examines selected cities between the 5th century BC and the 17th century AD, beginning with ancient Athens and ending…
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One Century of Modernization in Latin America: 1880-1980
This course focuses on how the processes of modernization in Latin America affected the fields of architecture and landscape design as well…
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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: –…
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Environmental Systems 2
Purpose: This course is the second of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture. Objective:…
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Construction Systems
This course introduces students to construction systems with the ambition to shape the perception of a designer’s agency in relationship to them. An overview…
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Structural Design II
Martin Bechthold, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
This course is a continuation of GSD 6227 and completes the introduction to the analysis and design of building structures. Both 6227 and 6229 are…
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Computer Vision (at SEAS)
This course explores 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…
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Introduction to Computational Design
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez
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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Foundations of Practice
Jeffry Burchard, Gregg Garmisa, Timothy R. Twomey
For students in the fifth semester of the MArch I degree program, this course examines models and issues that define contemporary professional practice. Requiring students…
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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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Frameworks of Practice
How should we practice today? Since World War II, a series of paradigm shifts have significantly altered the relationships that had been…
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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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Elements of the Urban Stack
Paul Nakazawa, Elizabeth Christoforetti
Where does our agency as designers of the built environment lie in current practice? As urban projects grow in complexity, swelling and…
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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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Digital Media: Ambiance
How do we define the “ambiance” of a place? What causes specific environments to evoke different feelings? Are there consistent elements that define these…
-
Digital Media: Writing Form
This course offers an introduction to the field of design and computation through the primal pursuit of writing form. Setting aside the…
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Factory of the Sensible and the Political* (Equipping Experience)
Architects have long experimented with altering perceptions of space in order to reconfigure experience. At stake in this course are pivotal historical and theoretical transformations…