Courses
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Digital Media I
This course seeks to posit the role of digital media within the broader context of digital practice and to examine the generative capacities of the…
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Digital Media II
This class explores the design and science of logical form making, examined through geometry, parametric control, algorithms, and digital tools. The point of departure is…
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A Science of the Environment
The science of ecology purports to study life as the sum of interactions between organisms and their natural environment. The term ‘natural’ has in recent…
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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…
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Imagining the City: Literature, Film, and the Arts
How do visual representation and narrative figuration contribute to construct urban identity? Explores the urban imagination in different artforms: architecture, cinema, literature, photography, and painting.
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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 with proposals…
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Istanbul: From Imperial Capital to Global City
In the summer of 2013, popular discontent with the authoritarian neo-liberal urban policies of the Turkish government exploded in Istanbul, revealing the political nature…
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Modernity and Crisis
Is it even possible to offer a description of our contemporary moment that is not fundamentally defined by the experience of crisis? Financial crisis,…
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Construction Lab
Mark Mulligan, Danielle Etzler
This course will meet for the first time on Friday, August 30th, at 9 am in Room 111. This module introduces students to…
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Energy in Architecture
This lecture course introduces students to energy and environmental issues, particularly those that must be faced by the discipline of architecture. An overview of the…
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Structural Design 1
The course introduces the discipline of structural engineering as a means of unlocking hidden architectural design potential. Students develop the skills necessary to make informed…
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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 buildings…
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Water Engineering (at SEAS)
SEAS Engineering Sciences 165. Catalog Number: 4274 EXAM GROUP: 13, 14 Please check the FAS schedule for room information. Introduces the fundamentals…
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Computer Vision (at SEAS)
SEAS Computer Science 283. Catalog Number: 4475 Please check the FAS schedule for room information. Vision as an ill-posed inverse problem: image formation, two-dimensional…
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Introduction to Computational Design
This is an introductory course to computational design and the prerequisite for a spring course that deals with more advanced topics in the field.
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Energy Simulation in Design
The best intent does not always lead to the best performing design, as intuition and rules of thumb sometimes fail to adequately inform decision…
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Daylighting
Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. -Le Corbusier Course Description Picture a space, one that…
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The Architect in History: The Evolution of Practice from the Renaissance to the Present
This course examines the history of architectural practice, focusing on the changing role and definition of the architect, with the goal of providing new…
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Library Test Kitchen III: Library Machines
Jeffrey Schnapp, Jeff Goldenson, Ann Whiteside
The Library, up there with the US Postal Service, represents one of the most exciting institutional design opportunities out there. Library Test Kitchen is…
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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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Responsive Environments
Advances in current embedded sensing and actuating technologies combined with media is creating an unprecedented opportunities in blurring the boundaries between the digital and…
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Masters at the beginning of the XXI Century
The lecture course serves to emphasize my belief that a critical reflection on contemporary architecture is always helpful to allow students to reflect on why…
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Architecture and Art: From Minimalism to Neuro-phenomenology
Since the first pronouncements of the \’death\’ of painting in the post-Abstract Expressionist era, art consistently sought to radicalize its practice by overturning the traditional…
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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 challenge of addressing the general rupture caused…
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Frames of Mind: Approaches to Film Theory
Introduction to the language of film theory aimed at developing analytic skills to interpret films. Historical survey of classical and contemporary theory beginning with turn-of-the-century…
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Rome and St. Peters
The art and architecture of Rome from Antiquity to Modernity with particular attention to the Vatican, where the layering of material artifacts from successive…
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Michelangelo: Precedents, Innovations, Influence
An exploration of Italian Renaissance architecture and urbanism through the persona of Michelangelo as witness, agent, and inspiration. We look at architecture and urbanism…
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Architecture, Science and Technology, XVIIIth Century-Present
Since the first industrial revolution, science and technology have constantly challenged architecture. Technology in particular has represented a powerful source of change for architecture.
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Baroque Architecture
Lecture-based survey in a traditional historical vein of European architecture from 1600 to 1750, with the work of Michelangelo as prelude and Piranesi as closure.
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Case Studies in Critical Conservation: Architecture and Cities
This course analyzes international case studies in the conservation of buildings and urban environments as a means for developing projective strategies for interpreting and…
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Materials, Constructions, Processes
The course introduces a conceptual framework for the design of building assemblies, as informed by a clear understanding of construction technologies and of the properties…
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Environmental Technologies in Buildings
The primary focus of this course is the study of the thermal, luminous and acoustic behavior of buildings in an architectural context. The course examines…
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Analysis and Design of Building Structures II
A continuation of GSD 6227, this course provides students with an enhanced understanding of structural analysis and engineering design concepts. Students learn the fundamentals of…
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In Search of Design through Engineers
Hanif Kara, Andreas Georgoulias
This course aims to teach, stimulate and demonstrate \”design led\” opportunities that exist in the zone between Architecture and Engineering, through the paradigm of…
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Optimizations: Material Distributions
This course explores the role of structural optimization methods in design and fabrication problems. In a series of experiments, students will try to materialize and…
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What is energy and how (else) might we think about it?
Designers today require radically different intellectual frameworks within which to think energy, environment, and ecology. The need to rethink applies not only to the positivist…
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Real-Time Cities: an Introduction to Urban Cybernetics
In real-time cities, urbanity merges with digital information so that the built environment is dynamically sensed and synchronously actuated to perform more efficiently, intelligently, and…
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Issues in Architectural Practice and Ethics
Maryann Thompson, Jay Wickersham
This course, for students in the fourth semester of the M.Arch I program, examines basic issues arising in contemporary architectural practice. The course challenges the students to examine critically…
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Real Estate Development, Design, and Construction
John Macomber, A. Eugene Kohn, Christopher Gordon
This course is a module. It lasts the second half of the semester only. Jointly Listed at Harvard Business School as HBS 1465 This…
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Project Delivery
Major changes are underway in the design and construction industry. Advances in technology, increased owner-user expectations, and new approaches to project delivery are affecting every…
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Leading the Design Firm
This course introduces students to the business side of the design industry. It highlights the ways in which a design firm is a business…
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Visual Studies
The course objective is to develop and improve students’ skills in freehand drawing based on direct observation, and to encourage them to incorporate drawing into…
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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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Digital Media I
This course seeks to posit the role of digital media within the broader context of digital practice and to examine the generative capacities of the…
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Digital Media II
This class explores the design and science of logical form making, examined through geometry, parametric control, algorithms, and digital tools. The point of departure is…
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A Science of the Environment
The science of ecology purports to study life as the sum of interactions between organisms and their natural environment. The term ‘natural’ has in recent…
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Buildings, Texts, and Contexts III? Fourth Factory: The Material Imagination and the Materialism of Architecture
Tatlin’s Tower “is made of iron, glass, and revolution,” wrote the Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky. At once a real and symbolic mode of production,…
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Imagining the City: Literature, Film, and the Arts
How do visual representation and narrative figuration contribute to construct urban identity? Explores the urban imagination in different artforms: architecture, cinema, literature, photography, and painting.
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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 Renaissance, and explores…
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Situating the Modern: Modern Architecture and Vernacular Traditions
From National Romanticism in the late 19th century to Critical Regionalism debates in the 1980s, architecture’s ability to evoke a sense of place, locality or…