Requirements
Students who enter the program must select a domain of study and construct a trajectory to guide their coursework. A degree candidate will be recommended for the Master in Design Studies degree upon satisfactory completion of 64 units of course work, including an 8-unit directed, collaborative project in the final semester.
Cross-Registration units may not represent more than one half of the student’s total program in any one term. The Domain Head may waive requirements or make exceptions to the maximum number of units allowed through non-GSD courses, however, a total of 64 units of course work must still be completed.
Specific course requirements are subject to change or substitution each academic year. The Master in Design Studies Degree Requirements document in place at the time of matriculation serves as the official guideline for degree requirements. Specific requirements for each domain of study are available below and are also accessible from each domain’s web page. Recommended courses for each trajectory are available below.
Residence
Four terms of full-time study in residence are required for students entering the program in 2021 and later.
Students pursuing concurrent masters’ degrees may be able to complete the program in a minimum of two semesters. As a concurrent degree student, you must complete 40 more units than the longer of your two degree programs. Requirements should be discussed with the Domain Head and Program Coordinator. Please reach out to your Program Coordinator if you are considering a concurrent degree.
Please note that the Ecologies Domain and Mediums Domain are designated as STEM programs. Accordingly, international students holding F-1 visas may be eligible for a 24-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension on top of their initial OPT of 12 months, for a total of 36 months, following graduation. Each F-1 student must petition United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to approve the 24-month STEM extension, and Harvard does not represent or warrant that USCIS will grant any individual petition.
Domains and Required Courses
Ecologies
First Semester Required Course:
ADV-9674 Proseminar in Ecologies: Regenerative, Interrelated, Evolving
First and Second Semester Distributional Electives–Choose 3 from the list of Ecologies Distributional Electives, to be taken in the first or second semester.
Fourth Semester Required Course:
ADV-97XX Open Project
Mediums
First Semester Required Course:
ADV-9672 Proseminar in Mediums: On Making Culture, Technology and Art
First and Second Semester Distributional Electives–Choose 3 from the list of Mediums Distributional Electives, to be taken in the first or second semester.
Fourth Semester Required Course:
ADV-97XX Open Project
Narratives
First Semester Required Course:
ADV-9673 Proseminar in Narratives: Word and Image as Narrative Structure
First and Second Semester Distributional Electives–Choose 3 from the list of Narratives Distributional Electives, to be taken in the first or second semester.
Fourth Semester Required Course:
ADV-97XX Open Project
Publics
First Semester Required Course:
ADV-9671 Proseminar in Publics: Of the Public. In the Public. By the Public
First and Second Semester Distributional Electives–Choose 3 from the list of Publics Distributional Electives, to be taken in the first or second semester.
Fourth Semester Required Course:
ADV-97XX Open Project
Trajectories and Recommended Courses
The following lists are suggested courses which may be selected to complete a Trajectory of study. Students may combine Trajectories or construct alternate Trajectories in conversation with their Domain Heads, Research Tutors, and Program Director. Additional courses are available across the GSD, Harvard University, and at MIT.
Creative Commoning
Commoning is the practice of managing and reproducing resources for the collective good rather than for individual gain. Accomplishing such aims require a good understanding of who comprises the collective as well as an array of innovative tools, participatory methods, discursive frameworks, human or material resources, and design strategies capable of generating collaboration and/or social cohesion.
HIS 4152 Urban Planning Theory and Praxis: Comparative Historical Origins and Applications
SES 5382 Making Participation Relevant to Design
SES 5509 Spatial Design Strategies for Climate and Conflict-Induced Migration
SES 5521 Cultural Cartographies: Visualizing Cultural Narratives in the Built Environment
HAA 179V Vision and Justice (The Seminar)
SOCIOL 1263 Community Organizing and Action
TDM 183B Collective Freedom Dreaming: Engaged Pedagogy and Radical Love as Praxis
4.s69 Alternative Futures from the Sahara: Design Strategies, Reclaiming Commons
Social Equity and Space
Many manifestations of inequality and injustice have a spatial dimension, producing patterns of social advantage and disadvantage that are legible, reinforced, or challenged through the production and use of space. How spaces are designed and for whom is thus central to questions of equity. Who is invited, allowed, or assigned to inhabit what spaces — and for what social, cultural, political , or economic reasons– is central to the achievement of equitable social outcomes. The design of buildings, streets, neighborhoods, and cities is thus a social and not merely a technical project.
HIS 4152 Urban Planning Theory and Praxis: Comparative Historical Origins and Applications
SES 5347 Urbanization and Development
SES 5381 Urban Design and the Color-Line
SES 5510 Local Economic Development: Turning Theory into Practice
11.S945 (Un)Dead Geographies: The Afterlife of Urban Plans
ANTHRO 1713 Disability and the Body
ANTHRO 1913 Ethnographies of Cities and the Urban
SOCIOL 3316 Politics and Social Change
Power, Place, and Publics
The social and spatial construction of the built environment is deeply embedded in power relationships, even as the design of both public and private spaces will impact the legibility, assertions, and balance of power. Whether and how these relationships can be modified through design practice requires a closer examination of history, culture, societal tensions, professional norms, and the unequal distribution of institutional and financial resources.
HIS 4152 Urban Planning Theory and Praxis: Comparative Historical Origins and Applications
HIS 4519 Contested Spaces: Architecture and Power
SES 5451 Race, Gender, and Real Estate
SES 5520 Design Strategies for Deep Civic Engagement
ANTHRO 1709 The Anthropology of Power: Sovereignty, Hegemony, Resistance
ANTHRO 1716 Neoliberalism: Empire, Extraction, + Making of the Global Social Order
EMR 170 Decolonial Healing in LatinX Literature and Visual Arts
11.S943 Bills and Billions: Policymaking and Planning in a New Era of Transformation in US Cities and States
Environmental Justice
The abuse and destruction of natural environments finds their roots in social, political, and design decisions about building typologies, land uses, settlement patterns, resource extraction priorities, and urbanization processes more generally. In addition to calling to question environmental futures, these processes highlight the unequal distribution of losses associated with the climate change and the dawn of the Anthropocene. More than requiring a deep commitment to sustainability, confronting the climate challenges with an eye to justice enables the adoption of new landscape, design, and planning practices that address social and environmental concerns simultaneously.
DES 3348 The Idea of Environment
SES 5409 Climate Justice
SES 5460 Community Informed Urban Design
SES 5517 Urban Adaptation
ESPP 160 US Environmental Policy and Policymaking: The Role of Congress, EPA, Stakeholders, and Courts
HIST 2492B Warren Center Seminar: Alternative Ecologies
11.S938 Landscape + Infrastructure for the Anthropocene
4.S66 Extinction: Architecture and Art for the Unsustainable Future
Conflict, Migration, Memory
In a world of precarity where wars, climate crisis, and struggles over the purposeful and inadvertent destruction of territory and livelihoods can drive citizens from their homes and communities, questions of memory and belonging loom large. Beyond embracing resilience in the face of risk, such conditions call for new forms of action focused on the creation or redesign of institutions, policies, and spaces where past and present are brought into dialogue.
VIS 2469 Public Space, Memory, and Social Dialogue
HIS 4528 Transition as Condition_In Time of War_Reconstruction as Strategy
SES 5509 Spatial Design Strategies for Climate and Conflict-Induced Migration
SES 5518 Climate Migration
EMR 169 War Ecologies
HIST 1945 Slavery, the Environment, and Public History
4.S32 G Monuments Matter
4.s23 Haunting, Archives, and Diasporic Senses of Place
Curatorial Practices
By name, “curation” has to do with the provision of care and the action of keeping watch. Curatorial practices tend to the moral and physical protection and valorization of people, places, and things, especially in times of need.
VIS 2472 Curatorial Practices in the Public Realm: Working Outside the Box
VIS 2474 Curatorial Practices in the Museum: From Art to Audience
VIS 2484 Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
DES 2532 The Art Museum: Typological Trajectories
HAA 178V Art of the Black World
ANTHRO 3080 Museum Practicum in Curatorial Research
21T.221 Lighting Design
4.323 G Introduction to Three-D Art: Textiles, Fashion, and Performative Art
Critical Conservation
The trajectory of critical conservation aims to develop concepts and strategies to describe, analyze, and curate the archives, programs, and material supports of architectures and landscapes. It combines studies of history, memory, interpretation, and representation with research in comparative cases of conservation and reuse.
DES 3392 Why Not Cultural Systems? Expanding Our Value System Beyond Nature
HIS 4384 Building and Urban Conservation and Renewal: Assessment, Analysis, Design
HIS 4524 Ordinary to Icon: Case Studies in the Rehabilitation of Modern Buildings and Sites
SCI 6497 Ecological Restoration
4.S32 G Special Subject: Monuments Matter
STS.456 Waste, Discard, Remainder, Trace
HAA 42P Architecture through the Ages: Notre-Dame-de-Paris
11.s938 Trash to Treasure: Landscape, Planning, Design @ Bordo Poniente Mexico
Landscapes Literal and Literary
Deeply planted in “landscape” is the meaning and situation of topos, which refers to a familiar subject of discourse and/or a physical setting. This trajectory encourages migrations between real and imagined places of mind, whether experienced out-of-doors or while in a reading-chair.
HIS 4305 Adventure and Fantasy Simulation, 1871-2036
HIS 4420 The Ruin Aesthetic: Episodes in the History of an Architectural Idea
HIS 4455 Cotton Kingdom, Now
HIS 4526 Landscape, Architecture, and/on the Printed Page
HIST 1973 Re-Wilding Harvard
HAA 177M Art and Science of the Moon
4.215 Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry
ITAL 138 The Cosmos of the Divine Comedy
Art, Objecthood, and Illusion
What we see depends on how we look; and how we look is shaped by what we look at; and we look at depends on what we expect to see. These and other illusory certainties frame the questions of perception and meaning addressed by the study of the study of art.
VIS 2473 Drawing Space / Marking Sensation
VIS 2474 Curatorial Practices in the Museum: From Art to Audience
VIS 2484 Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
HIS 4497 The Architect as Producer: Theory as Liberatory Practice
HAA 279P The Object in the Art Museum
HAA 278K On Line: Drawing Then and Now
HAA 310B Works of Art: Materials, Forms, Histories
4.609 Material Histories of Art and Design
Communication and Media Studies
The very terms communication and media share a commitment to the forming of community through and by forms and channels of meaningful exchange. Communication and Media Studies takes the intermediate step of examining how these exchanges happen and what they mean.
VIS 2415 Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf Life in the Supermarket Landscape
DES 3533 Discourse Practices
HIS 4397 Archived Landscapes
HIS 4525 Design Fundamentals, the Postdigital, and the Anthropocene
HISTSCI 2912 Collaborative Scientific Knowledge
COMPLIT 201X The Material Text and the History of the Book
4.229[J] Collectives: New Forms of Sharing
MAS.S61 Constructive Communication Systems
Energy and Environment
Explores the intersection of energy systems, environmental sustainability, and the built environment, focusing on innovative design strategies that address the challenges of climate change and resource management. This trajectory investigates topics such as renewable energy integration, environmental health, advanced simulation techniques, and the application of artificial intelligence to create sustainable solutions. Students examine theoretical frameworks and the application of new technologies to reimagine how energy and environmental systems interact with architectural and urban contexts.
DES 3348 The Idea of Environment
SES 5447 Creating Environmental Markets
SCI 6374 Advanced Applications in Sustainable Architecture
SCI 6489 Climate Positive Design Lab
4.227 Landscapes of Energy
EH 213 Climate Change, Health, and Environmental Justice-Focusing on Solutions
ESPP 90S The Technology, Economics, and Public Policy of Renewable Energy
ESPP 90P Climate Responsibility and Climate Action
Responsive Environments
Provides an interdisciplinary discourse for exploring design solutions at the intersection of technology, human experience and the environment. This trajectory emphasizes the integration of human-centered interfaces, sensing technologies, and computational methods to create immersive and innovative environments. Students explore the role of responsive design in addressing social, cultural, and ecological challenges, focusing on applications that range from body-scale interactive installations to large-scale urban systems.
VIS 2314 Responsive Environments
VIS 2470 Atmospheric Encounters: Visualizing the Invisible
SCI 6476 Transformable Design Methods
SCI 6478 Informal Robotics
MAS.836 Sensor Technology for Interactive Environments
MAS.552 City Science
MAS.838 Prototyping our Sci-Fi Space Future
MAS.834 Tangible Interfaces
Intelligent Design Systems
The trajectory delves into the development and deployment of AI-driven systems to come up with new ways of thinking about the design process, leveraging data and machine learning to enhance creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration. Students explore generative design, decision-support tools, and algorithmic workflows that augment human and complement expertise in addressing complex, design challenges. This trajectory emphasizes the potential of intelligent systems to transform design practices across scales, fostering innovation in the built environment.
VIS 2234 Digital Media: Algorithmic Problems: Grasshopper as Medium
SCI 6483 Procedural Fields: Functional Design of Discrete Hyperdimensional Spaces
SCI 6487 Machine Aesthetics: Transcoding Space Time
SCI 6492 Quantitative Aesthetics: Introduction to Machine Learning
COMPSCI 50 Introduction to Computer Science
MAS.664 AI for Impact: Solving Societal-Scale Problems
MAS.S60 How to AI (Almost) Anything
MAS.S63 Recreating the Past -> Creative Coding Course
Computational Fabrication
Investigates the transformative potential of computational methods in fabrication and manufacturing, emphasizing the integration of digital tools, materials science, and production techniques. Students explore how emerging technologies, such as 3D printing, robotics, and generative algorithms, can address complex design challenges at the intersection of aesthetics, technology, and policy. This trajectory encourages critical engagement with the ethical and environmental implications of fabrication processes, fostering innovation that aligns with societal and ecological needs.
VIS 2232 Digital Media: Experiments in Formwork
SCI 6317 Digital Material Systems: Ceramics
SCI 6486 BioFabrication
SCI 6387 Digital Production at Scale
PS 70 Introduction to Digital Fabrication
MIT 4.117 Creative Computation
MAS.863 How to Make (Almost) Anything
MAS.885 How to Grow (Almost) Anything
Human Machine Relations
Explores the evolving relationships between humans and machines, focusing on the cognitive, emotional, and social dimensions of interaction. Students engage with topics such as motivation, attention, and memory enhancement through the development of intuitive and fluid interfaces. This trajectory examines the integration of robotics, artificial intelligence, and human-centered design principles, enabling the creation of systems that amplify human potential while addressing ethical considerations and the broader societal impact of these technologies.
VIS 2314 Responsive Environments
SCI 6275 Computer Vision
SCI 6365 Enactive Design: Creative Applications through Human-Machine Interaction
SCI 6384 Towards a New Science of Design?
COMPSCI 2790R Research Topics in Human-Computer Interaction
MAS.630 Advanced Seminar: Affective Computing and Ethics
MAS.S61 What is a Better Future?
MAS.750 Human-Robot Interaction
Emergent Urbanisms
Emergent Urbanisms comprise the urban structures and spaces arising from the actions of multiple actors (von Hayek, 1973).It studies the complexity of emerging infrastructures and patterns that are self-sustaining, growing, and evolving. Emergent Urbanisms studies the potential reciprocity and co-evolution between the needs of urban development and local and regional ecosystems. Courses in Emergent Urbanisms seek to expand the canon of architecture and urbanism including the regenerative role of landscape in future cities, the nature of sub-tropical urbanism, and exploring a new ‘image of the city’.
DES 3396 Thinking Landscape-Making Cities-Designing Regenerative Futures
HIS 4518 Expanding the Canon: Architecture and Urbanism
SES 5347 Urbanization and Development
SES 5443 The (New) Image of the City
11.016 The Once and Future City
11.123 Big Plans and Mega-Urban Landscapes
11.334 Advanced Seminar in Landscape and Urbanism
4.241 The Making of Cities
Risk & Resilience
Risk and Resilience addresses the root causes of crises and threats to strengthen the capacities and resilience of social, ecological, and mechanical systems. It engages the challenges of risk to redefine resilience as not merely recovery but creative engagement. Courses in Risk and Resilience support novel approaches to socio-spatial planning to address social and economic vulnerability. They study scenario planning to engage the climate emergency, designing with and for the climate, and policies and forms of governance that will support resilient communities.
VIS 2466 Place-Based Scenario Planning for the Climate Emergency
SES 5456 Climate Change, Real Estate, and Public Policy
SES 5459 Building Resilient Communities
SCI 6244 Climate by Design
HLS 2921 Climate Solutions Living Lab
11.170 Cities and Climate Change: Mitigation and Adaptation
11.365 Sustainable Urbanization Practicum
EC.789 D-Lab: Climate Change and Planetary Health
Material Ecologies
Material Ecologies is an emerging field in design denoting informal relationships between products, buildings, systems and their environment (Oxman). It encompasses the study and design of environmentally aware processes that integrate computational form generation and digital fabrication. Material Ecologies lies at the intersection of computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology. Courses in Material Ecologies study new and experimental materials, biofabrication, and edible materials, and materials whose resilience may be based performance that is imitative and transformative.
VIS 2463 Faux: Design, Performance, and Perception of Material Imitations
SCI 6126 Materials
SCI 6486 BioFabrication
SCI 6498 Material Resilience: Edible Entanglements between Food, Nature & Design.
4.110 Design Across Scales and Disciplines
4.123 Architectural Assemblies
4.453 Creative Machine Learning for Design
2.83 Energy, Materials and Manufacturing
Post-Human Ecologies
Post-Human Ecologies studies the nature of human influence in complex interactional systems (Deleuze). It explores the de-centering and ungrounding of traditional Western humanities. Post-Human Ecologies reclaim human agency and moral responsibility as resistance to social and ecological collapse in the Anthropocene (Braidotti and Bignall). Courses in Post-Human Ecologies consider new hybrid forms of agriculture, the critical importance of water and the aquatic world, ecological restoration, and biofabrication. They point towards new developmental syntheses between the human and natural world.
VIS 2477 Forests and Fields: A Collective Guide to Scaling Agroforestry
SCI 6333 Water, Land-Water Linkages, and Aquatic Ecology
SCI 6486 BioFabrication
SCI 6497 Ecological Restoration
EMR 169 War Ecologies
GERMAN 260 Posthumanism
AFVS 173F Design and Ecology
11.271 Indigenous Environmental Planning
Carbon Economies
Carbon Economies deploy market-based policies and mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions. Initially based on trading systems in which carbon credits were bought and sold, it seeks No or Low emission output systems that absorb as much greenhouse gases as they emit. A circular carbon economy develops new modes of carbon capture, integration, and storage. Courses in Carbon Economies explore the transition from the ‘carbon modernity’ of the last 100 years to climate positive design, regenerative architecture, and concepts of ‘reverse design’ of embodied carbon.
DES 3529 Architecture & the Death of Carbon Modernity
SCI 6489 Climate Positive Design Lab
SCI 6372 Circuits, Circles, and Loops: Towards a Regenerative Architecture
SCI 6502 Advanced Reverse Design and Embodied Carbon
GENED 1137 The Challenge of Human Induced Climate Change
4.227 Landscapes of Energy
11.449 Decarbonizing Urban Mobility
4.421 Space-Conditioning Systems for Low-Carbon Buildings