Courses
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First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT
Sean Canty, Michelle Chang, Iman Fayyad, Elle Gerdeman, Lisa Haber-Thomson, Alfredo Thiermann
PROJECT is the first core studio of the four-semester sequence of the MArch I program. With a multiplicity of references, PROJECT may refer to fundamental…
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Landscape Architecture I: First Semester Core Studio
Jungyoon Kim, Pablo Pérez-Ramos, Emily Wettstein, Alistair McIntosh
GSD 1111 is the first in a sequence of four core studios that, together, constitute the foundation of your time at the GSD. The school’s…
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First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Toni L. Griffin, Kathryn Firth, Daniel Hernandez, Lily Song, Ann Forsyth, David Gamble
The first semester core studio of the Master in Urban Planning program introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and technical skills used by urban planners…
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Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE
Jeannette Kuo, Jennifer Bonner, Eric Howeler, Grace La, Jon Lott, John May, Ron Witte, Paul Kassabian
Integration is the agenda for the third-semester architecture design studio. Architecture is fundamentally a part-to-whole problem, involving the complex integration of building components, systems, and…
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Landscape Architecture III: Third Semester Core Studio
Danielle Choi, Craig Douglas, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Rosalea Monacella, Paola Sturla, Amy Whitesides
From Off-Shoring to Near Shore: Littoral Landscapes at Work This studio will imagine alternative futures for socially productive landscapes sited in areas of chronic climate…
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Elements of Urban Design
Peter Rowe, Rahul Mehrotra, Yun Fu, Stephen Gray, Michael Manfredi
Elements of Urban Design is the mandatory advanced core studio for the post-professional Urban Design program. The studio introduces critical concepts, strategies, and technical skills…
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Collaborative Design Engineering Studio I (with SEAS)
Andrew Witt, Joanna Aizenberg, Elizabeth Christoforetti, Cesar Hidalgo
The first semester studio is a project-based introduction to a range of ideas, methods, and techniques essential for the design engineer. In the studio, students…
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ONIONS
Can there be an architecture that provokes the innate generosity of the human spirit? We think the answer is yes, but only if it’s creator…
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Dual-Use: The function of a 21st century urban residential block
The studio is concerned with politics that is latent in architecture- which is carried out through making aesthetic decisions regarding everyday spaces- as it can…
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Spatial Infrastructures
This semester we will be addressing the idea of the productive city through the design of a single building: an urban machine. Since the…
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Form As Knowledge – What Can a School of Architecture Be?
The studio “Form As Knowledge – What Can Be A School Of Architecture?“ is a follower to last year’s studio, “Places Of Knowledges”, that started…
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An American Perspective [M1]
Kersten Geers, David Van Severen
This is the third studio of American Architecture. After studios contemplating the plan and the section respectively, this time we will focus on the perspective.
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Can Parkitecture Heal? A Green New Deal Superstudio [M1]
This studio proposes to translate and spatialize the core goals of the Green New Deal into a new park architecture for Great Smoky Mountains National…
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House of Our Time [M1]
We live in a time in which previously-social activities such as teaching, learning, and working have been confined to the privacy of the home. This…
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After Property [M1]
“Is love a synonym for abolition?” Saidiya Hartman How can we disentangle architecture from property? How can we use this moment of global lockdown and…
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Spaces of Isolation – Bridges between home and health care [M1]
Modular units are an emerging and strategic development in triage within public health systems. The new reality brought about by the current pandemic exposed weak…
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AFTER THE PARTY – A New Open Fair [M2]
Simon Hartmann, Simon Frommenwiler, Tilo Herlach
How can the empty spaces left over by a globally receding exhibition industry be converted and opened to the surrounding city without blocking new models…
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A House for Almost Everything [M2]
The studio will focus on fundamental elements that comprise a building as a premise for making architecture. We will examine the ecology of a building,…
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GROUNDSCRAPERS [M2]
Nowadays, demands for other ways of social spatial organizations are needed, – for sanitary and social reasons – a new type is required to fill…
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Washington Common – Martin Luther King, Jr., Upended [M1]
While the 1902 Senate Park Commission set forth a vision for the National Mall and the Monumental Core that is known to the world, its…
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The Right to the Sewage
Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Seth Denizen
The Mezquital Valley is the world’s longest running experiment with wastewater agriculture, having received all of Mexico City’s untreated sewage continuously since 1901. What started…
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Seeking Abundance – Designing Engagement and Experience for All
The landscape, is where inequity has always, and continues to express itself. Access to health, wealth, safety and education are embedded in the timeless wheeling and…
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In Search of Geographical Re-enchantment [M1]
In Search of Geographical Re-enchantment: landscape interventions between atmosphere, function + experience Both a Swiss and global phenomena, landscapes today are increasingly regarded as a…
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This Land Is Your Land [M1]
In the US, there are over 300 federal Indian reservations, covering over 50 million acres of land in 36 states. However, a majority of Native…
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As of Right: First Nations Reclaim the City [M2]
Ninety-five percent of British Columbia is “unceded,” meaning it was never given up by indigenous communities in treaties. As a result, today, many First Nations…
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Extreme Urbanism (7), Imagining an Urban Future for Ishkashim, Afghanistan
Rahul Mehrotra, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
Bordering Tajikistan and within the province of Badakhshan, one of the most natural disasterprone area in Afghanistan, lies Ishkashem. The name, Ishkashim stands both for…
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The CANARY IN THE MINE, Wildfires and rural communities in the Mediterranean hinterland
“Fire is a phenomenon that derives from its circumstances… It synthesizes its surroundings.”¹Stephen J. Pyne 1. WhyWildfires rage throughout the rural and peri-urban…
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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 systems of projection as constructs that mediate between our spatial imagination and built form. Projective systems have…
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Spatial Analysis and the Built Environment
Urban planners engage in many complex processes that defy easy representation. This course provides first-semester urban planning students with the graphic and technical skills needed…
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Landscape Representation I
The rich and varied discipline of landscape architecture is inextricably intertwined with the concept of representation. The first in a three-semester sequence, this course introduces…
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Digital Media: Telepresence, Empathy, and Spatial Immersion
Telepresence refers to a set of technologies that provide stimuli to a user’s senses, so that the person feels as if they are present or…
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Digital Media: Artifacts
This course is an introduction to fundamental concepts, techniques, and methods related to digital media in architecture and design, with a focus…
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Responsive Environments
The course introduces students to the tools and design methods for creating responsive environments and technologically driven experiences in the built environment. By putting the…
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Mini MOOCs
INTRO. Distance learning tools are here to stay. The course will introduce students to make their own mini MOOCs (Massive Open Online…
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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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Public Projection: Projection as a Tool for Expression and Communication in Public Space
The class will focus on the development of original projection projects that can inspire and facilitate artistic expression and cultural communication in public space. In…
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Art, Design and the Public Domain Proseminar
“What do I want history to do to me?,” asks Zadie Smith. “I might want history to reduce my historical antagonist—and increase me. I might…
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Theories of Landscape as Urbanism
This course introduces contemporary theories of landscape as a medium of urbanism and product of urbanization. The course surveys sites and subjects, texts and topics…
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Culture, Conservation and Design
This proseminar addresses issues of critical conservation, an evolving discipline that illuminates the bridge between cultural meaning, identity, and context as part…
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The Idea of Environment
The environment is the milieu in which designers and planners operate. It is a messy world of facts, meanings, relations, and actions that calls them…
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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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Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle
The structures and forms we perceive on the face of the land are produced by forces that make order, and those that…
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Why Not Cultural Systems? Expanding Our Value System Beyond Nature and Ecology
This seminar will examine the planning, design and stewardship opportunities and constraints frequently encountered when dealing with cultural landscapes. In addition to…
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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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Marvelous Architecture – The Hallucination Of Reason
The seminar "Marvelous Architecture – The Hallucination Of Reason" is about architecture theory crossbred with representation. It will explore the specificity of architectural rationality, i.e. the…
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Studies of the Built North American Environment: 1580 to the Present
North America as an evolving visual environment is analyzed as a systems concatenation involving such constituent elements as farms, small towns, shopping…
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Building, Texts, and Contexts: Between Origins and Modernity: 18th- and 19th-Century Architecture
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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Histories of Landscape Architecture I: Textuality and the Practice of Landscape Architecture
This course introduces students to a number of significant topoi or loci in the histories of landscape architecture. In general terms, it takes the form of a…
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North American Seacoasts and Landscapes: Discovery Period to the Present
Selected topics in the history of the North American coastal zone, including the seashore as wilderness, as industrial site, as area of…
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Screens – Projecting Media and The Visual Arts
Giuliana Bruno, Emilio Vavarella
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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Building Conservation and Renewal: Assessment, Analysis, Design
What are the spatial, material, and cultural values inherent in a property that must be understood to craft interventions and additions that…
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Topology and Imagination: Between Chinese Landscapes and Architecture
This course deals with landscape architecture and architecture in contemporary China. Its purpose is twofold: to articulate new perspectives on the challenges…
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Environmentalisms II: How to Have a Politics?
Today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: at the very moment that the idea of “environment” is being placed at the center of our…
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Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Architecture 1960 to the Present
The concept of postmodernism finds its definitive articulation in architecture, even though postmodern thought far exceeds the use of the term postmodern in architectural discourse.
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Architecture and Construction: From the Vitruvian Tradition to the Digital
The course aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between architecture and construction through the study of key historical…
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The project and the Territory: Japan Story
What is the future of urbanization?What role can design play in shaping that future? What will happen to the conflicting tensions…
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Cotton Kingdom, Now
In 1852, the New York Daily Times commissioned a 31-year-old Frederick Law Olmsted to conduct an immersive research journey through the Southern…
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Real Estate Finance and Development
Richard Peiser, David Hamilton
This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate finance and development. Lectures and case studies introduce students to the full range of…
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Land Use and Environmental Law
As a scarce and necessary resource, land triggers competition and conflict over its possession and use. For privately owned land, the market manages much of…
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Cities by Design I
Rahul Mehrotra, Peter Rowe, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets, Alex Krieger, Yun Fu, Antoine Picon, Farès el-Dahdah
“Cities by Design I” is concerned with in-depth longitudinal examination of urban conditions in and among selected cities in the world. The broad aims are:…
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Field Studies in Real Estate, Urban Planning and Design
This field study course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the dynamics and complexities of real-world development challenges that…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Quantitative
This course introduces students to quantitative analysis and research methods for urban planning. The course begins with an examination of how quantitative methods fit within…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Qualitative
How can planners understand places in a rich, meaningful, and yet systematic way? This module examines how qualitative approaches can be used…
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Housing and Urbanization in the United States
James Stockard, Jennifer Molinsky
This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those…
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Healthy Places: COVID-19 and Cities
The connections between health, well-being, and place are complex. This class uses COVID-19 as a starting point for examining how to make…
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Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems (at FAS)
What problems do developing countries face, and how can individuals contribute to solutions rather than awaiting the largesse of the state or other actors? Intractable…
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Urban Ethnographies
Planners’ understanding of social process and cultural values is often woefully inadequate, and their thinking is dominated by a “one-size-fits-all” approach and…
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Public health in an era of epidemics: from the camp to the building
We didn’t need a pandemic to know that we shouldn’t conceive any more architecture projects and urban planning interventions that disregard their…
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Planning for Climate Change
This seminar explores how public and private institutions and individuals, under labels of “adaptation” or “resilience,” are positioning built and natural environments to respond to…
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Mapping the Political Economy of Space
“The ability to think critically involves three things: (1) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems…
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New Spaces of Justice
"When I grow up, I want to be a Supreme Court judge.”George Floyd On 31st of May 2020, less then a week after George…
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Race, Power, and Resistance in the City
The police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans, as well as the racial health disparities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, have…
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Urban Design for Planners
Course ObjectivesThis seminar course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the spatial…
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Justice: Ethics in an Age of Pandemic and Racial Reckoning (at FAS)
What is a just society? What do we owe one another as citizens? What is a good life? These questions, long debated by philosophers, arise…
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Market Analysis and Urban Economics
This is a master’s level course intended to introduce students to urban economics and real estate market analysis. It covers urban market…
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Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Developing World
This course starts from the premise that politics and governance arrangements can both enable and constrain effective urban planning action. Using a…
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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 methods of construction: conceptually, historically, and practically. We will consider how construction techniques emerge in relation to architectural desires and…
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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies I
This course is an introduction to understanding plants, from unmanaged plant communities to managed living structures. Through field visits, observation, lectures, short…
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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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Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies III: Ecology and the Design World
David Moreno Mateos, Christopher Matthews
Required for both MLA 1 and MLA AP students taking the third LA core-studio. Ecological Principles for Design (David Moreno-Mateos): Landscape design incorporates an additional…
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Climate by Design
Jill Desimini, David Moreno Mateos, Martha Schwartz, Emily Wettstein
Through a series of case studies, this course will explore paradigmatic design responses to the climate crisis including adaptation (both for communities to remain and…
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Innovation in Science and Engineering: Conference Course (at SEAS)
The course explores factors and conditions contributing to innovation in science and engineering; how important problems are found, defined, and solved; roles of teamwork and…
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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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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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Interface Design: Integrating Material Perceptions
The course explores the interface between architecture and engineering by examining our perceptions towards materials. Interdisciplinary research has gained interest in recent…
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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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Domestic Logistics
Modern domestic spaces are embedded in networks of goods, labor, media, and technology that shape their functions, capacities, and cultural role. They…
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Advanced Applications in Sustainable Architecture
This new elective seminar will provide a deeper dive into issues of evidence-based, high-performance, sustainable building design. The course is intended for first and second…
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Re-Wilding Harvard
David Moreno Mateos, Joyce Chaplin
This is a year-long class on rewilding, returning a habitat to an earlier form. Students in this course will research historical and cultural definitions of…
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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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Visualization (at SEAS)
This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction…
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Transformable Design Methods
Architects have long imagined a built environment that is fundamentally dynamic. Portable buildings, retractable coverings, kinetic facades, and spaces that morph: these…
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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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Practices of Landscape Architecture
This course presents the application of landscape ideas as a process of engagement and building amidst financial, legal, cultural, political, and professional contexts. The course…
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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, relationships, protocols, and…
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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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Landscape Practices
This seminar examines the nature of contemporary landscape architecture and public realm practices. In this context, practice is considered broadly in terms…
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Real Estate Private Equity [M1]
Real Estate Private Equity explores, in depth, the analysis, decision-making and challenges private equity investors face when: 1. making and structuring highly…
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Real Estate Private Equity [M2]
Real Estate Private Equity explores, in depth, the analysis, decision-making and challenges private equity investors face when: 1. making and structuring highly…
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Forms of Assembly
"Forms of Assembly" is an advanced two semester research and project-based seminar initiated by Art, Design, and the Public Domain MDes,…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Students may take a maximum of 8 units with different GSD instructors in this course series. 9201 must be taken for either 2, or 4…
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Preparation for Independent Thesis Proposal for MUP, MAUD, or MLAUD
Carole Voulgaris, David Gamble
This seminar is intended to provide the theoretical and methodological foundation for completing a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. By…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree MArch
The Thesis Program encourages students to take advantage of the wide range of resources and research initiatives of the Graduate School of Design and its…
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Preparation of MLA Design Thesis
A thesis is a thematic proposition offered for discussion and debate. A thesis is typically developed through a piece of original research specific to an…
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Independent Design Engineering Project I
Martin Bechthold, Mary Tolikas, Julia Lee
The Independent Design Engineering Project (IDEP) is a two-semester project during which students in the Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program work on understanding a…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Doctoral Degrees
9502 must be taken for either 2 or 4 units. Under faculty guidance, the student conducts an independent reading program and formulates a thesis proposal.
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Preparation of Doctoral Thesis Proposal
Independent study with doctoral advisor to produce a preliminary literature review. Prerequisite: Enrollment in GSD DDes program. …
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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Thesis Extension in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Thesis extension in satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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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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Proseminar in Landscape Architecture
The proseminar introduces MLA II students to a range of theories and methods in landscape architecture and their implications for practice and research. The focus…
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Proseminar in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology
The Master of Design Studies Urbanism-Landscape-Ecology [U-L-E] proseminar introduces students to the range of individual and group research presently pursued by GSD faculty across the…