Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:

1101: First Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT, 8 Credits

Course Description:
The first core studio of the four-semester sequence of the MArch I program addresses fundamental modes of
architectural representation and the mapping of the subject in objective contexts. A series of focused design
exercises requires students to investigate fundamental disciplinary issues of architectural thought, practice, and
representation.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• Exposure to central disciplinary architectural design issues (typology, the role of architectural representation,
architectural mediation between perception and reality, etc).
• Application of varied expertise in the sciences, humanities, and other disciplines incoming MArch I students to
design exercises in pursuit of provocative and perhaps unexpected motivations of architectural form.
• Exploration of techniques of techniques of representation and iterative development across various mediums

Topical Outline:
Architectural Design: 60%
Representation: 20%
Precedent Analysis: 10%
Programming: 5%
Presentation: 5%

Prerequisites:
Enrollment in MArch I program

Textbooks/Learning Resources:
-Required reading includes key essays in relation to each design exercise
-GSD Digital Media workshops (run throughout the term) provide technical software and hardware instruction

1
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
1102: Second Semester Architecture Core: PROJECT, 8 Credits

Course Description:
The second core architecture design studio expands the domain of architecture to include site and program, two
constantly entangled themes of motivation and consequence.

Course Goals and Objectives:

• Students will Develop: Graphic technique, architectural drawing convention, 3-dimensional design ability,
physical modeling technique, analytical thinking and presentation skill.
• Students will Engage: Issues of Program and Site as motivators for and consequences of architecture’s form
and disposition. This semester proposes the potency of site— its physical, conceptual, contextual,
environmental, historical and morphological state-- as a generative, inspiring and limiting condition. Equally,
the semester proposes a critical engagement with program—its investment in purpose, social frameworks,
relational capacities, and function—as an inescapable, but highly malleable, constraint of form-making and
organization at multiple scales.
• Students will Study: Architectural precedents from antiquity to the present, focusing on the relationship
between site, program and inherently architectural elements such as windows and spanning structures.
These precedents, and their corresponding analyses, will be used to directly inform the student’s project.
Students will also study techniques of representation that provide the self-evidence of precise architectural
concepts.
• Students will Situate: Over the course of two design projects students should begin to situate themselves in
the broader discourses of architecture, by researching and employing architectural precedents and the
corresponding techniques that mediate the inconsistent demands of site and program.

Topical Outline:
|Architectural Design: 55%
Representation: 15%
Precedent Analysis: 8%
Site Analysis: 10%
Programming: 7%
Presentation: 5%

Prerequisites:
1101

Textbooks/Learning Resources:
None

2
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
1201: Third Semester Architecture Core: INTEGRATE, 8 credits

Course Description:
Integration is the agenda for third semester core studio. Program, structural systems, envelope design, environmental
issues, and life-safety codes will be systematically addressed in the development of a single urban building over the
course of the whole semester.

Course Goals & Objectives:

Architecture is fundamentally a part-to-whole problem, involving the complex integration of building programs,
components, codes, and systems into a synthetic whole. The project will be the design of a large scale multi-program
urban building, requiring careful consideration of access and exchanges (circulatory, visual and tectonic), between
programs. Primary objectives include:
• Integration of Program and Site
• Integration of Circulation Systems
• Integration of Building systems, environmental and structural
• Integration of ADA and Life Safety Codes
• Integration of building envelope

Topical Outline:
Building Research: 15%
Site/Program: 20%
Circulation, Systems, and Structures: 20%
Codes: 20%
Envelope: 20%

Prerequisites:
1101 and 1102, or advanced standing in the MArch I program.


Textbooks/Learning Resources:
The GSD Guide to Building Code: http://l87r32c95dp1hz05tig4px11.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/GSD_BC.11.11.2012.pdf

Time Saver Standards for Building Types, Joseph De Chiara

Perspecta 35 “Building Codes”
Heino Engel, Tragsystemme, Structure Systems, (Hatje Cantz).
Deplazes, Andrea. Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures. (Birkhäuser, 2008).
Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp 1-27 (MIT Press, Cambridge 2001).
Nader Tehrani, “Aggregation,” in Material Design, pp 48-61 (Birkhauser 2011).
Scott Murray, Contemporary Curtain Wall Architecture, (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2009)

3
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
1202: Fourth Semester Architecture Core: RELATE, 8 Credits

Course Description: The fourth and final semester of the architecture core sequence, this studio tackles the
complexity of the urban condition through the design of housing.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• Students will study the topic of housing by not only confronting the multiple scales of design but also exposing
the values and ideals of its society: from individual to collective and from spatial to infrastructural.
• Students will research and analysis historical precedents to further formulate their own narrative or hypothesis
on urban living.
• A goal for this core studio would be to question housing beyond problem-solving, towards the elaboration of
an urban project with objectives of understanding of design as a series of relativities: between building and
the city, between collective and individual, between civic and domestic.
• Students will work in teams throughout the semester. Pedagogically, group work will be a central component
of the studio, demanding dialogue, understanding, and the negotiation of different points of view around topics
of housing and the city.

Topical Outline:
Design: 20%
Precedent Analysis: 20%
Site Analysis: 20%
Programming: 20%
Representation/Presentation: 20%

Prerequisites:
1101, 1102, 1201

Textbooks/Learning Resources:
URBAN THINKING
D’Hooghe, Alexander. The Liberal Monument. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.
Ecological Urbanism. eds. Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty. Zurich: Lars Müller, 2010.
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House: 1961.
Lehnerer, Alex. Grand Urban Rules. Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2014.
Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960.
Mapping Boston. Eds. Alex Krieger and David Cobb. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984.
Rowe, Colin & Fred Koetter. Collage City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979.
Ungers, O.M. and Stefan Vieths. The Dialectic City. Milan: Skira, 1997.
HOUSING
Ebner, Peter. Typologie+. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2009.
Leupen, Bernard & Harald Mooij. Housing Design: A Manual. Rotterdam: nai 010 Publishers, 2012.
Schneider, Friederike & Oliver Heckman. Floor Plan Manual Housing. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2011.
THEORY
Harvey, David. “The political economy of public space.” The Politics of Public Space. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Moneo, Rafael. “On Typology.” Oppositions 13, Spring 1978: p23-45.
Sennet, Richard. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. New York: WWNorton: 1996.
Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977.

4
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
2121: Architectural Representation – Origins + Originality, 2 Credits (as of fall 2017)

Course Description:
This course examines the origins of conventional techniques of architectural representation and critically assesses
what each convention offers in the contemporary context. Paradigms of current and original representational
techniques are closely studied for their relationship to the forms of architecture they describe.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• To study the origins of traditional techniques of architectural representation in regard to the intention of each
and the specific cultural and technological contexts that conditioned their development
• To critically examine what conventional forms of representation offer for the present
• To investigate the relationship between architectural representation and the associated architectural forms
imaged; specifically: can representation generate new forms of architecture and can representation convey
both quantitative information and qualitative characteristics of embodiment in space?

Topical Outline:
Representation: 40%
Precedent Analysis: 60%

Prerequisites:
Enrollment in MArch I program

Textbooks/Learning Resources:
• Required reading includes essays on course topics discussed each week
• GSD Digital Media workshops (run throughout the term) provide technical software and hardware instruction

Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:

2121: Visual Studies, 2 Credits (pre-fall 2017)

Course Description:
In this course priority is given to line drawing and learning its various forms, methods, techniques and materials. The
projects include drawing the human body in action and in space.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• Students will learn to draw natural forms and human made objects and to visually articulate their structure.
• Students will develop and improve their skills in freehand drawing based on direct observation.
• Students will be encouraged to incorporate drawing into their design process.

Topical Outline:

Prerequisites:
Enrollment in MArch I program

Textbooks/Learning Resources:
None

5
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
VIS-2122 Projective Representation in Architecture, 2 Credits

Course Description:
This course examines the history, theory and practice of parallel (orthographic) and central (perspective) projection,
and their relevance in the digital age.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• to provide a framework for students to understand the relationship between three-dimensional architectural
form and flatness (historically for representation and more currently for fabrication)
• to trace key historical developments of projection and representation in architecture from the Renaissance
through the Enlightenment, 20th century, and into the digital age.
• to explain the codification of descriptive geometry and the means by which it is practiced
• to explain and practice projective techniques still instrumental in the age of digital representation and
fabrication.

Topical Outline:
Historical, theoretical, and case-study lectures: 50%
Drawing and Model-making workshop: 50%

 2D projective drawing
 3D surface classification and design
 3D surface discretization and fabrication

Prerequisites: none

Textbooks/Learning Resources:

• Evans, Robin, “Translations From Drawing to Building”

• Evans, Robin, “Seeing Through Paper”
• Booker, Peter J., A History of Engineering Drawing
• Alberti, Leon Battista, On Painting
• Pottman, Helmutt. Architectural Geometry
• Louis Kauffman, On Knots

• Heirich W. Guggenheimer, Differential Geometry
• Michael Henle, A Combinatorial Introduction to Topology

6
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
VIS-2223 Digital Media I: Unseen Harvard: Elements of Ambience, 4 Credits

Course Description:
Explores the question of ambience by measuring different aspects of the environment at Harvard and representing
and translating this data into responsive outdoor installations at Harvard.

Course Goals & Objectives:

The class will learn various ways of measuring and understanding the Harvard spaces that will include:
• spatial sensing
• mapping
• creating installations

Topical Outline:

Prerequisites:
None

Textbooks/Learning Resources:

• Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, 1994.

• Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: architecture and the senses, Wiley-Academy, 2005.
• Madeline Schwartzman, See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception, Black Dog Pub., 2011
• Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, University of Chicago Press, 2000.
• Gehl, Jan. Cities for People. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010.
• Grammar of Fantasy; Gianni Rodari 1996 Einaudi
• Bettencourt, Luis M.A., Lobo, Jose, Helbing Dirk, Kuhnert, Christian, and West, Geoffrey B. "Growth,
Innovation, Scaling, and the pace of Life in Cities." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States 104, no. 17 (2007): 7301.
• Lobo, José, Luís M A Bettencourt, Deborah Strumsky, and Geoffrey B West. "Urban Scaling and the
Production Function for Cities." PloS One 8, no. 3 (2013): E58407.
• Batty, Michael. The New Science of Cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.
• Ellard, Colin. Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life. New York: Bellevue Literary
Press, 2015.
• O'Shea, Michael. The Brain: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Al-Chalabi, A., M.R. Turner, and R.S. Delamont, The Brain: A Beginner’s Guide. 2008, Oxford: Oneworld.
• Kandel, Eric R. The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain: From
Vienna 1900 to the Present. New York: Random House, 2012.
• Aspinall, Peter, Panagiotis Mavros, Richard Coyne, and Jenny Roe. 2013. “The urban brain: analysing
outdoor physical activity with mobile EEG. British Journal of Sports Medicine
• Greenfield, S., The Private Life of the Brain. 2000, London: Penguin.
• Ellen Langer, Mindfulness, Addison-Wesley, 1989
• Mavros, P., R. Coyne, J. Roe and P. Aspinall, “Engaging the brain: Implications of mobile EEG for spatial
representation,” in H. Achten, J. Pavlicek, J. Hulin and D. Matejdan (eds), Digital Physicality Proceedings of
the 30th eCAADe Conference, Czech Technical University in Prague: Molab, 2012, 657-665.
• Neil Gershenfeld, When Things Start to Think, Henry Holt, 1999
• Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, 1996
• Michael Fox and Miles Kemp, Interactive Architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009
• Joshua Nobel, Programming Interactivity: A Designer’s Guide to Processing, Arduino, and Openframeworks,
2009.
• Creativity and Innovation
• Kleon, Austin. Steal like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative. New York: Workman
Pub., 2012.
• Kyna Leski, The Storm of Creativity, MIT Press, 2015.
• Jobs, Steve, and Alan Ken. Thomas. The Business Wisdom of Steve Jobs: 250 Quotes from the Innovator
Who Changed the World. New York: Skyhorse Pub., 2011.

7
• Robert W. Rycroft & Don E. Kash, “Path Dependence in the Innovation of Complex
Technologies,” Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 14:1, 2002, pp. 21-35,
DOI: 10.1080/09537320220125865

8
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
2224: Digital Media II, 4 Credits

Course Description:
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 a cumulative sequence of fundamental topics and problems in
design geometry which have recurring impact on the history of form. These problems will provide a context and
pretext for a rigorous introduction to parametric modeling, algorithmic automation, and the mathematical principles
underpinning them.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• Become familiar with geometric concepts and techniques essential to advanced design such as meshes,
minimal and subdivision surfaces, isosurfaces, curve classifications, 2d and 3d space-filling patterns,
developability and shape optimization
• Become familiar with digital collaborative processes and legal frameworks which impact the practice of
design, including BIM, data-driven design, shared models, and Integrated Project Delivery. This included
several case practice case-studies.
• Develop skills in the quantitative analysis of architectural and urban form, including techniques such as isovist
and network-based circulation analysis
• Develop skills with algorithmic design tools including Rhino, Grasshopper, Kangaroo, Weaverbird, Galapagos
Be introduced to programming tools such as C# scripting
• Develop skills in reality capture, 3d scanning, and rapid prototyping
• Use mathematical optimization and optioneering tools to converge toward design goals

Topical Outline:
Mathematical and computational principles of curves, surfaces, space structures, complex volumes: 15% -
Spatial and Volumetric Analytics: urban and plan circulation optimization, isovist view analysis, voxelization, space
partitions and packings, etc.: 20%
Rapid prototyping: 10%
Surface geometry, topology, discretization and material deformation: 10%
Generative detailing for fabrication and assembly: 10%
BIM, Data driven design, optimization, optioneering: 10%
Construction automation systems: 5%
Historical case studies: Delorme, vaulting, stereotomic constructions: 5%
Case studies from contemporary practice on BIM, integrated project delivery: 15%

Prerequisites:
None

Textbooks/Learning Resources:
Content developed by instructor

9
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
4121: Buildings, Texts, and Contexts I, 4 Credits

Course Description:
Selected case studies from the European Renaissance and Baroque period highlighting themes including perspective,
ideology, the ideal city, Baroque totalities, and the concept of diagram.

Course Goals & Objectives (list):

• Understanding the historical depth and theoretical parameers of architecture as a discipline
• Capacity to describe architectural representation
• Conceptualizing the relation of buildings, texts, and contexts
• Proficiency with a foundational literature
• Proficiency with writing in three ways: ekphrasis, explication, declaration

Topical Outline (include percentage of time in course spent in each subject area):
50% on Renaissance case studies
50% on Baroque case studies

Prerequisites:
No prerequisites, but recommended to be taken with 4121 and 4223 if possible

Textbooks/Learning Resources (taken from most recent syllabus):

• Rudolf Wittkower, “Alberti’s Approach to Antiquity in Architecture,” Architectural Principles in the Age of
Humanism, 41-59
• Michel Foucault, “The Prose of the World,” The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
(New York: Vintage Books 1994), 17-45
• Rudolf Wittkower, “The Centrally-Planned Church and the Renaissance,” Architectural Principles in the Age of
Humanism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 1-32
• Giulio Carlo Argan, “The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins of Perspective Theory in the Fifteenth
Century,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946): 96-121
• Erwin Panofsky, excerpt from Perspective as Symbolic Form (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 27-45
• Jacques Lacan, “Anamorphosis,” “The Line and Light,” and “What Is a Picture?” The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (Seminar XI), trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1978), 79-119.
• James Ackerman, “Introduction: The Conventions and Rhetoric of Architectural Drawing,” Origins, Imitation,
Conventions (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002), 293-317
• Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, “A Città Felice for Architects and Philosophers,” Utopian Thought in
the Western World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 150-180
• Bruno Latour, “Why has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical
Inquiry Vol. 30 (2004), 225-248
• Erwin Panofsky, “What is Baroque?” Three Essays on Style (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 17-90.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “The Monadology,” Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology (New York:
Prometheus Books, 1992), 67-88
• Heinrich Wölfflin, Excerpts from Principles of Art History (Mineola: Dover, 1950), 62-72, 115-123, 149-154
• Gilles Deleuze, “The Fold,” Yale French Studies 80 (1991): 227-247
• Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City,” The Practice of Everyday Life
• Manfredo Tafuri, “Jugum Meum Suave Est: Architecture and Myth in the Era of Leo X,” Interpreting the
Renaissance, 99-156
• Louis Marin, “Classical, Baroque: Versailles, or the Architecture of the Prince,” Yale French Studies 80
(1991): 167-182
• Gilles Deleuze, “A New Cartographer,” Foucault (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 23-44
• Fredric Jameson, ”Symptoms of Theory or Symptoms for Theory?” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter
2004): 403-408

10
• Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998), 148-172.
• Karsten Harries, “Theatrum Sacrum” in The Bavarian Rococo Church: Between Faith and Aestheticism (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 120-150.

11
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
4122: Buildings, Texts, and Contexts II, 4 Credits

Course Description (needs to be edited to 25 words):

Assessment of architecture and the forces of modernity (the social, economic, and technological transformations
accompanying the political and industrial revolutions following the Enlightenment).

Course Goals & Objectives:

• Understanding the historical transformations marking 18th- and 19th c. architecture

• Exposure to crucial themes marking modernity such as nationalism, colonialism, race, and domesticity
• Capacity to describe architectural representation
• Conceptualizing the relation of buildings, texts, and contexts
• Proficiency with a foundational literature
• Proficiency with writing in three ways: ekphrasis, explication, declaration

Topical Outline
50% on 18th century
50% on 19th century

Prerequisites:
No prerequisite, but recommended to be taken with 4121 and 4223

Textbooks/Learning Resources:

• Christy Anderson, “Conversations with the Dead,” Inigo Jones and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 88-113
• Claude Perrault, Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients, trans. Indra
Kagis McEwen (Santa Monica: GRC, 1993), 47–63
• Katie Scott, “A World of Distinctions,” The Rococo Interior (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 101-
117
• Anthony Gerbino, “François Blondel and the ‘Résolution des quatre principaux problèmes d'architecture’
(1673),” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 64/4 (Dec. 2005): 498-521
• Antoine Picon, “The Engineers’ ‘System’,” French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 99-120
• Daniel L. Purdy, “Science or Art? Architecture’s Place Within the Disciplines,” On the Ruins of Babel:
Architectural Metaphor in Germanic Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 29-52
• Erika Naginski, “Historical Pyrrhonism and Architectural Truth,” Journal of Visual Culture 9/3 (Dec. 2010):
329-343
• Kristoffer Neville, “The Early Reception of Fischer Von Erlach's Entwurff Einer Historischen Architectur,”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 66/2 (2007): 160–175
• Rudolf Wittkower, “Piranesi’s Architectural Creed,” Studies in the Italian Baroque (London: Westview Press,
1975), 235-246
• Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture (Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 2009), 1–38
• Neil Levine, “The Appearance of Truth and the Truth of Representation in Laugier’s Primitive Hut,” Modern
Architecture: Representations and Reality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 45–74
• Anthony Vidler, “The Theatre of Production: Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and the Architecture of Social Reform,”
AA Files 1(1981): 54–63
• Frank E. Manuel, Fritzie P. Manuel, “Fourier: The Burgeoning of Instinct,” Utopian Thought in the Western
World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 641-675
• Martin Bressani, “Étienne-Louis Boullée: Empiricism and the Cenotaph to Newton,” Architectura 23/1 (1993):
37-57

• Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Précis of the Lectures on Architecture with Graphic Portion of the Lectures on
Architecture (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2000), 73-88


12
• Barry Bergdoll, “The French Academy in Rome, 1826-1832: Laboratory of Romantic Historicism,” Léon
Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry (New York, Cambridge, Mass.: The Architectural History
Foundation, The M.I.T. Press, 1994), 75-108
• Anthony Vidler, “Rebuilding the Primitive Hut: The Return to Origins from Lafiteau to Laugier,” The Writing of
the Walls (Princeton: Princeton Archi
• Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2010), 1-38
• Craig E. Barton, “Duality and Invisibility: Race and Memory in the Urbanism of the American South,” in Craig
E. Barton, ed., Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2001), 1-12
• Heinrich Hübsch, In What Style Should We Build? (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 1992), 63-10

• Alex Potts, “Schinkel’s Architectural Theory,” in Michael Snodin, ed., Karl Friedrich Schinkel: A Universal Man
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 47-55

• Beat Wyss, “Ragnarok of Illusion: Richard Wagner’s ‘Mystical Abyss’ at Bayreuth,” October 54 (Autumn
2990): 57-78
• Ken Bloomer, “Ornament and Modern Technology,” The Nature of Ornament: Rhythm and Metamorphosis in
Architecture (New York: Norton, 2000), 137-171

• Jimena Canales, Andrew Herscher, “Criminal Skins: Tattoos and Modern Architecture in the Work of Adolf
Loos,” Architectural History 48 (2005): 235-256

• Nicholas Penny, “Ruskin’s Ideas on Growth in Architecture and Ornament,” British Journal of Aesthetics 13/3
(Summer 1973): 276-286
• Martin Bressani, “The Gothic Put To Use,”, Architecture and the Historical Imagination (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2014), 222-266
• Michael Camille, “Monsters of Race: The Gargoyles of Science,” The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame: Medievalism
and the Monsters of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 115-155
• Gottfried Semper, “Science, Industry, and Art: Proposals for the Development of a National Taste in Art at the
Closing of the London Industrial Exhibition (1852),” in Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture
and Other Writings, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave, Wolfgang Hermann (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 130-167

• Thomas A. Markus, “Ephemeral Knowledge,” Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of
Modern Building Types (London: Routledge, 1993), 213-228

• Robert Thorne, “Paxton and Prefabrication,” in Derek Walker, ed., The Great Engineers: The Art of British
Engineers 1837-1987 (London: Academy Editions,
New York, St. Martins Press, 1987), 52-69

• Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 3-
18
• Paul Venable Turner, “The University as City Beautiful,” Campus: An American Planning Tradition
(Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1984), 163-213

13
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
4223: Buildings, Texts, and Contexts III: The Tower and the Sphere: Architecture and Modernity, 4 Credits

Course Description:
Architectural modernism and modernity, the rise and fall of avant gardes, and the changing relationships between
objects, producers, audiences, and consumers in the age of global capitalism.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• Understanding modernism, postmodernism, and modernity

• Capacity to describe architectural representation
• Conceptualizing the relation of buildings, texts, and contexts
• Proficiency with a foundational literature
• Proficiency with writing in three ways: ekphrasis, explication, declaration

Topical Outline:
33% on history of early 20th-c. avant-gardes
33% on postwar and contemporary architecture
33% focus on contemporary theory

Prerequisites:
4121, 4122

Textbooks/Learning Resources:

• Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Free Press: New York,
1950), 409-424

• Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” The Question Concerning Technology and other
Essays (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977), 3-35
• Pierre Nora, “Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7-24

• Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations (Shocken: New
York, 1969), 217-251
• Henri Lefebvre, excerpt from The Production of Space (1974), in K. Michael Hays (ed.), Architecture Theory
since 1968 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 178-188.
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Introduction: Rhizome,” A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987), 3-25
• Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” (1967), Diacritics (Spring 1986): 22-27
• Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Archizoom: The Autonomy of Theory versus the Ideology of the Metropolis,” The Project
of Autonomy (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 69- 78
• Ernst Bloch, “Building in Empty Spaces,” The Utopian Function of Art and Literature (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1989), 186-199

• Antonio Gramsci, “The Formation of the Intellectuals,” Prison Notebooks (1926-37)
• Dalibor Vesely, “Modernity, Freedom, and Destiny,” Architecture in the Age of Divided
• Representation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 11-40
Cornel West, “Race and Architecture,” The Cornel
West Reader (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 456-463

• Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New Left Review (1984): 53-92

• Manfredo Tafuri, “L’Architecture dans le Boudoir: The Language of Criticism and the Criticism of Language,”
in K. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 146-173
• Reyner Banham, “Black Box: The Secret Profession of Architecture,” in A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner
Banham (Berkeley: UC Press, 1996), 292-299.
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-313


14
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
6121: Construction Lab, 2 Credits (pre-fall 2017)

Course Description:
An introduction to materials in Architecture and Science. Explains why certain materials prevail in Construction and
how their properties constrain what we build, and how.

Course goals and objectives:

• Develop an intuition about the physical properties of materials and the kinds of things they can be made to do
• Learn how to classify and identify different kinds of materials using technical concepts from science and
engineering.
• Outline a history of materials science explaining how new materials develop and diffuse into different
industries.
• Understand the dynamics of the construction supply chain and why some new materials get taken up while
others do not.
• Introduce methods of materials design from engineering and science (with the advent of digital fabrication,
these methods are increasingly relevant for architects)

Topical Outline:

• A history of materials development (10%)

• A history of materials use in construction (10%)
• A survey of recent trends in materials science and materials manufacture. (10%)
• An overview of material properties, with special attention to structural and thermal properties (20%)
• Materials selection for architectural settings (20%)
• Materials design for architectural settings (20%)
• Environmental impacts of materials in construction and the lifecycle of materials in economic and ecological
cycles. (10%)

Prerequisites:
None

Textbooks/Learning Resources:

• https://www.pubpub.org/pub/designandscience
• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-
geological-congress-human-impact-earth?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=fb_a-science_b-
gdnscience#link_time=1472476025
• “The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time?” Jan Salasiewiczi, Mark Willians, Alan Haywood,
Michael Ellis
• “The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene” Colin N. Waters, Jan
Zalasiewicz, Colin Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Clément Poirier, Agnieszka Gałuszka, Alejandro
Cearreta, Matt Edgeworth, Erle C. Ellis, Michael Ellis, Catherine Jeandel, Reinhold Leinfelder, J. R. McNeill,
Daniel deB. Richter, Will Steffen, James Syvitski, Davor Vidas, Michael Wagreich, Mark Williams, An
Zhisheng, Jacques Grinevald, Eric Odada, Naomi Oreskes, Alexander P. Wolfe
• “Planet Hard Drive,” Cesar A. Hidalgo, Scientific American (August 2015)
• The Material World, Rodney Cotterill
• The Birth of the Anthropocene, Jeremy Davies, Chapter 2
• “The Kilogram’s Makeover is Almost Complete,” Knvul Sheikh, Scientific American (September 2016)
• Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials that Shape our Man-Made World, Mark Miodownik, “
• “How Converting between Addition and Multiplication Makes Math Easier,” Evelyn Lamb, Scientific American
(August 2016)

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• Nanomaterials, Nanotechnologies, and Design: An Introduction for Engineers and Architects, Michael F.
Ashby, Paulo J. Ferreeira, Daniel L. Schodek
• Building: 3000 Years of Design Engineering and Construction, Bill Addis
• The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, W. Brian Arthur
• “Designing architectured materials,” Mike Ashby
• “Bioinspired structural materials,” Ulrike G. K. Wegst, Hao Bai, Eduardo Saiz, Antoni P. Tomsia and Robert O.
Ritchie, Nature Materials (Vol 14, January 2015)
• “On the Forces that Shape Trees,” Salmaan Craig for Moe & Kwinter, What is Energy, and How Else Can We Think
About It?
• Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made, Gaia Vince
• The Birth of the Anthropocene, Jeremy Davies
• Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Professions, Antoine Picon
• Builders of the Vision: Software and the Imagination of Design, Daniel Cardoso Llach
• The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture, Mark C. Taylor
• The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries, Robin Evans
• “Software Comes to Matter: Toward a Material History of Computational Design,” Daniel Cardoso Llach,
Design Issues 31, no. 3 (July 2015)

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Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
6122: Energy in Architecture, 2 credits (pre-fall 2017)

Course Description:
Introducing students to the energy and environmental issues that face architecture as a discipline, the course provides
an overview of the basic principles of energy generation and use and discusses fundamental climatic precursors and
patterns.


Course Goals & Objectives:

• Gain a nimble and comprehensive first‐principles definition of energy in architecture alongside materials in
architecture (GSD 6121) 

• Develop and apply an understanding of the thermodynamic, physiological, and ecological principles that
presuppose buildings 

• Develop a theory of energy, technology, and systems in architecture 

• Gain operative knowledge of the role of energy in the formation of architecture as a formal proposition 

• Gain the ability to develop a coherent climate and energy strategy that is integral to the formation and 

construction of a building 

• Develop a non‐trivial understanding of energy, energy hierarchies, and energy system boundaries in

architecture 


Topical Outline (include percentage of time in course spent in each subject area):
Energy and Lifecycle Thinking: 15%)
Energy Terminology and Concepts: 25%)
Bodies, buildings, systems and heat transfer: 30%)
Energy and Environmental Impact modeling: 30%)

Prerequisites:
6121

Textbooks/Learning Resources:
• Addington, Michelle. “Energy, Body, Building.” Harvard Design Magazine 18 (2003): 1 – 6. Print.
• Addington, Michelle. "Contingent Behaviours." Architectural Design 200 (2009): 12-17. Web.
• Allen, Timothy F.H. “Applying the principles of ecological emergence to building design and construction.” In
Kibert, Charles J., Sendzimir, Jan, and Guy, G. Bradley. Construction Ecology: Nature as the Basis for Green
Buildings. London; New York: Spon, 2002. Print.
• American Society of Heating, Refrigerating Air-Conditioning Engineers. “Thermal Comfort” in ASHRAE
Handbook. Fundamentals. (1985). Print.
• Banham, Reyner. The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment. London: Architectural P., 1969. Print.
• Banham, Reyner, and François Dallegret. "A Home Is Not a House." Art in America 53.2 (1965): 70. Web.
• Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy 1 Consumption. - 1988. - 197 S. New
York: Zone. The Accursed Share 1. The Meaning of General Economy
• Berge, Bjorn. The Ecology of Building Materials, 2nd Ed. Oxon: Routledge Architectural Press, 2009.
• Braham, William W. “The Temptations of Survivalism,” Places Journal, October 2010. Accessed 05 Sep 2016.
<https://placesjournal.org/article/the-temptations-of-survivalism/>
• Fernández-Galiano, Luis. Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2000. Print.
Writing Architecture.
• Fitch, James Marston, and Daniel P. Branch. "Primitive Architecture and Climate." Scientific American 203.6
(1960): 134. Web.
• Fitch, James Marston. American Building: 2, the Environmental Forces That Shape It. 2d Ed., Rev. and Enl.
ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. Print.
• Hughes, Thomas. “Technological Momentum.” In Smith, Merritt Roe, and Marx, Leo. Does Technology Drive
History? : The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1994. Print.
• International Building Performance Simulation Association. History of Building Energy Modeling. Accessed 15
Oct 2016. http://www.bembook.ibpsa.us/index.php?title=History_of_Building_Energy_Modeling

17
• Klingner, Richter, and Schmolz. "Strategies of Social Wasps for Thermal Homeostasis in Light Paper Nests."
Journal of Thermal Biology 31.8 (2006): 599-604. Web.
• Lenhard, and Winsberg. "Holism, Entrenchment, and the Future of Climate Model Pluralism." Studies in
History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 41.3 (2010): 253-62. Web.
• Liedl, Petra et al. Building to Suit the Climate. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2012.
• Moe, Kiel. "Insulating North America." Construction History 27 (2012): 87-106. Web.
• Odum, Howard T. “Material circulation, energy hierarchy and building construction.” In Kibert, Charles J.,
Sendzimir, Jan, and Guy, G. Bradley eds. Construction Ecology: Nature as the Basis for Green Buildings.
London; New York: Spon, 2002. Print.
• Odum, Howard T. "Self-Organization, Transformity, and Information." Science 242.4882 (1988): 1132-139.
• Olgyay, Victor, and Olgyay, Aladar. Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism.
Princeton, N. J.: Princeton UP, 2015. Print.
• Schneider, E.D, Kay, J.J., 1995, "Order from Disorder: The Thermodynamics of Complexity in Biology", in
Michael P. Murphy, Luke A.J. O'Neill (ed), What is Life: The Next Fifty Years. Reflections on the Future of
Biology, Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-172
• Simonen, Kathrina. Life Cycle Assessment. First ed. 2014. Print. PocketArchitecture: Technical Design Ser.
• Srinivasan, Ravi, and Moe, Kiel. The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture: Emergy Analysis. 2015. Print.
PocketArchitecture : Technical Design Ser.
• Stein, Richard G. Architecture and Energy. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1977. Print.

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Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
SCI-6125 Environmental Systems in Architecture, 4 Credits

Course Description:
Focuses on the study of ecological considerations in architectural design, including thermal, luminous, and acoustic
behavior of buildings. Examines basic scientific principles underlying these phenomena and introduces students to
range of technologies and analysis techniques for designing comfortable indoor environments.

Course Goals & Objectives:

In this course students will:
-Learn the basic principles and applications of thermodynamics, daylighting, energy fundamentals, and occupant
comfort.
-Perform basic heat flow calculations for building envelopes and whole buildings.
-Gain a better understanding of global sustainability issues and the role of buildings within this context.
-Develop analytical and creative thinking regarding sustainability and energy issues in building design.

Topical Outline:

Prerequisites:
6121, 6122

Textbooks/Learning Resources:

• Lechner, Norbert.Heating Cooling, Lighting: Design Methods for Architects 2nd John Wiley & Sons, 2001
• Brown, G.Z. and DeKay, M.Sun, Wind & Light: Architectural Design Strategies 2nd John Wiley & Sons, 2001
• Vassigh, S., Ozer, E., Spiegelhalter, T.Best Practices in Sustainable Building Design. J. Ross Publishing, 2012
• Stein, B., Reynolds, J., Grondzik, W.T., and Kwok, A.G.Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for
Buildings 10th John Wiley & Sons, 2006
• Hegger, M., Fuchs, M., Stark, T. and Zeumer, M.Energy Manual: Sustainable Architecture Construction Manuals,
Birkhauser, 2008
• Szokolay, S.Introduction to Architectural Science, Elsevier, 2004
• Lam, W.Sunlighting as Formgiver for Architecture. New York: Van Nostran Reinhold, 1986

19
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
6227 Structural Design 1, 4 Credits

Course Description:
Introduction to analysis and design of structural systems, considering: fundamental principles of statics, structural
loads, and rigid body equilibrium; analysis and design of cables, columns, beams, and trusses; design of steel;
building systems design.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• Provide an understanding of the behavior of structural systems

• Introduce basic structural engineering concepts and simple calculations necessary to select and size the most
appropriate structural systems
• Teach the engineering language in an effort to improve communication with design colleagues

Topical Outline:
Statics (equilibrium of loads and force reactions): 10%
Load Modeling (load types, flow of force, and load calculations): 10%
Interior Forces (axial, shear, and bending moment diagrams): 10%
Mechanics of Materials (stress, strain, elasticity, thermal considerations): 10%
Analysis and Design of the following: 35%
Columns (slender v. compact column design)
Hanging Cables
Arches (funicularity)
2D Trusses (method of joints, method of sections)
Design of Beams (flexural stress, cross sectional properties)
Steel Design (allowable stress design, ultimate limit state design, yield stress): 10%
Building System Design: 15%

Prerequisites:
None

Textbooks/Learning Resources:
Reserved text: Schodek, D., Bechthold, M. Structures (Prentice Hall, Latest Edition)


20
Course Number, Course Title, Total Credits Awarded:
6230 Cases in Contemporary Construction, 4 Credits
Course Description:
Develops and integral understanding of: buildings & constituent structural, constructional, environmental technologies.
Construction details investigated: how aesthetic expression & problem-solving logic achieve synthesis in design.

Course Goals & Objectives:

• Build understanding of construction techniques

• Interpret series of case studies focusing on innovative detail design.
• Provide students the opportunity to test their conceptual understanding of broader construction issues while
dealing with the specific conditions of each case study building under scrutiny.
• Hone presentation and argumentation skills related to technological decision-making.

Topical Outline:
Introduction & Design Development: 15%
Foundation Systems: 10%
Innovations in Wood Construction: 15%
Contemporary Cladding Systems: 15%
Interior Construction and Codes: 15%
Innovations in Glass Technology: 15%
Green and Light-Transmitting Roof Systems: 15%

Prerequisites:
6123, 6125, and 6229, or equivalent.

Textbooks/Learning Resources:

• Case studies written by the instructor.

• Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow: On Weathering (MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 1995)
• Edward Allen's Fundamentals of Building Construction (Wiley & Sons: New York, 2004 = 4th edition)
• Edward Ford's The Details of Modern Architecture, Vols. I and II, (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990 and 1996)

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