Undergraduate Courses

The objective of this course is to provide a broad overview of the discipline of architecture: its history, theories, methodologies; its manners of thinking and working. Rather than a chronological survey, the course will be organized thematically, with examples drawn from a range of historical periods as well as contemporary practice. Through lectures, readings, and discussions every student will acquire a working knowledge of key texts, buildings and architectural concepts.

The course focuses on the social forces that shape design thinking. Its objective is to introduce architectural and urban design issues to build design and critical thinking skills from a multidisciplinary perspective. The studio is team-taught from faculty across disciplines to expose students to the multiple forces within which design operates.

What was the Renaissance? This class explores the major artistic currents that swept northern and southern Europe from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries in an attempt to answer that question. In addition to considering key themes such as the revival of antiquity, imitation and license, religious devotion, artistic style, the art market, and the encounter with foreign cultures, peoples and goods, we will survey significant works by artists and architects including Donatello, Jan van Eyck, Alberti, Raphael, Leonardo, Sofonisba Anguissola and Michelangelo.

This course offers a history of architectural theory, criticism, and historiography from the Renaissance to the present, emphasizing the texts, media and institutions that have supported architecture's claim to modernity since the late 17th Century. Architectural thought is examined in its social and cultural context as it relates both to the Western philosophical tradition and to design method and practice.

Soil is a critical resource for an increasingly urbanized planet. In this course our goal will be to familiarize ourselves with the fundamentals of soil science and soil theory in order to consider the relationship between soils and the urban environment. Through engagements with both humanistic and empirical scholarship we will develop a perspectival approach to tracing the diverse political and disciplinary contexts in which soil is made an object of knowledge. In particular, the course will feature an extended case study of Mexico City's wastewater agriculture system, and the colonial history of indigenous Latin American soil knowledge.

This interdisciplinary course explores the history, politics, and social dynamics of urban migration on the Indian subcontinent, home to and source of some of the largest migrations in human history. Through writing, discussion, and other activities, the class will also encounter broader concepts in the study of migration; its diversity, causes, challenges, as well as implications for social organization and city planning. Subtopics include the history of Asia's great migrations, partition and refugee resettlement, indentured and imported labor, gender politics, South Asian diasporas in the US, and the rural-urban divide in the global South.

The seminar will explore theories of urbanism and housing by reading canonical writers who have created distinctive and influential ideas about urbanism and housing from the nineteenth century to the present. The writers are architects, planners, and social scientists. The theories are interdisciplinary. One or two major works will be discussed each week. We will critically evaluate their relevance and significance for architecture now. Topics include: modernism, technological futurism, density, the new urbanism, the networked city, landscape urbanism, and sustainable urbanism.

The Advanced Design Studio examines architecture as cultural production, taking into account its capacity to structure both physical environments and social organizations. A specific problem or topic area will be set by each studio critic, and may include a broad range of building types, urban districts or regional landscapes, questions of sustainability, building materials or building performance. Studio work will include research and data gathering, analysis and program definition. Students are expected to master a full range of design media, including drawing, model-making and computer-aided design.