Design and Visualization

Brennan Buck and Mark Foster Gage, Study Area Coordinators

This study area encompasses required studios, elective advanced studios, and courses that concentrate on design logic and skills that support design thinking and representation.

For the M.Arch. I program, required courses in this study area include a core sequence of four design studios, two advanced studios, and two visualization elective courses; one of these visualization electives must be completed in the fall term of the first year. The core studio sequence begins with spatially abstract exercises and progressively engages and integrates scales, sites, and concerns of increasing complexity that integrate material, tectonic, contextual, ecological, and urban demands. Architectural Foundations (ARCH 5090) is a summer course required for entering students who have not had significant prior architectural training. A further visualization course (ARCH 5092)—in the early summer of the first year—focuses on computational tools and is required of all M.Arch. I students.

For the M.Arch. II program, required courses in this study area include two advanced studios and the design research studios (ARCH 5006 and ARCH 5006), completed in the final two terms of study.

Required Courses

ARCH 5001a, Architectural Design Studio 1Violette de la Selle, Can Bui, Michael Szivos, Nicholas McDermott, and Maria Rius Ruiz

Required of first-year M.Arch. I students. This studio is the first of four core design studios where beginning students bring to the school a wide range of experience and background. Exercises introduce the complexity of architectural design by engaging problems that are limited in scale but not in the issues they provoke. Experiential, social, and material concerns are introduced together with formal and conceptual issues.  9 Course cr
MTh 1:30pm-5:30pm

ARCH 5002b, Architectural Design Studio 2Anne Barrett, Talitha Liu, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, and Joeb Moore

(Required of first-year M.Arch. I students.) This second core studio continues to extend spatial exploration into the conception and design of a building through studies of scale, site, program, and materiality. The term is organized by a series of projects that culminate with the design of a building that engages both public and private space. Prerequisite: ARCH 5001.  6 Course cr
MTh 1:30pm-5:30pm

ARCH 5003a, Architectural Design Studio 3Abigail Chang, Caitlin Taylor, Aniket Shahane, Sharon Betts, Alan Organschi, and Sunil Bald

(Required of second-year M.Arch. I students.) This third core studio concentrates on a medium-scale public building, focusing on the integration of composition, site, program, mass, and form in relation to structure, and methods of construction. Interior spaces are studied in detail. Large-scale models and drawings are developed to explore design issues. Prerequisite: ARCH 5001 and 5002.  9 Course cr
MTh 1:30pm-5:30pm

ARCH 5004b, Architectural Design Studio 4Andrei Harwell, Nneka Sobers, Aniket Shahane, Elihu Rubin, Karolina Czeczek, and Emily Abruzzo

(Required of second-year M.Arch. I students.) This fourth and final M.Arch I core studio expands on the fundamental architectural skills introduced in the previous three terms to examine the role of architecture and the architect at the scale of the city. Extending beyond the bounds of a building, this course examines a variety of forces—architectural, urban, social, economic, ecological, political, and other—that shape and order our built environment, emphasizing and cultivating a range of architectural themes and skills. Prerequisite: ARCH 5001, ARCH 5002, and ARCH 5003.  9 Course cr
MTh 1:30pm-5:30pm

ARCH 5005a, Independent Design Research Studio IBimal Mendis and Deborah Garcia

This course is the first in a two-part culminating studio sequence of the PostProfessional curriculum. It allows students the opportunity to build on individual and group work on contemporary issues studied in the first year research seminars by proposing and developing a final design project informed by that research. Projects aim to reach substantial completion by the end of the fall term for dissemination/implementation in the spring term. The independence of each student and project in the studio grants agency to pursue individual interests and brings a wide array of content and approaches into dialogue. At the same time, the semester is not a pure thesis format: the studio is intended to provide structure and common cause. In addition to individual critiques we have group pinups and occasional shared deliverables. While each project has specific content and an area of research, the studio pedagogy is focused on the means of translating ideas into spatial, social, and political form. While projects may originate in each student’s interests, they are expected to address and impact the broader world. Students are expected to meet regularly with their individual advisers and with both studio critics per the schedule in the syllabus. While the roles of critics and advisers often overlap, the adviser typically has more expertise in the content of the project, and the critics focus somewhat more on methodology: how to develop concepts and content from the research seminars into some form of concrete manifestation through design. In some cases, shared discussions between advisers and critics may be possible, but it is up to the student to synthesize feedback from multiple sources (including colleagues). The development of each project is ultimately up to its author.  9 Course cr
MTh 1:30pm-5:30pm

ARCH 5006b, Independent Design Research Studio IIBimal Mendis and Deborah Garcia

(Required of and limited to second-year M.Arch. II students.) This course is the culmination of the post-professional curriculum and allows students the opportunity to build on individual and group work around contemporary issues by proposing a final design thesis project.  9 Course cr
MTh 1:30pm-5:30pm

[ ARCH 5090, Architectural Foundations ]

(Required of incoming M.Arch. I students with little or no academic background in architecture.) This summer course is an intensive, five-week immersion into the language of architectural representation and visualization, offering a shared inventory and basic framework upon which to build subsequent studies. Students are introduced to techniques and conventions for describing the space and substance of buildings and urban environments, including orthographic drawing, axonometric projection, perspective, architectural diagramming, vignette sketching, and physical modeling. Students work in freehand, hard-line, and digital formats. In parallel to the visualization portion of this course, an introduction to architectural history and theory focuses on principal turning points of thought and practice through to the eighteenth century.  0 Course cr

[ ARCH 5091, Fundamentals of Modeling and Fabrication ]

The course functions as a critical safety and skill baseline. It ensures all students understand fabrication lab logistics, safe use of analog tools, traditional wooden architectural model making, and an introduction to the software/safety workflows required for the advanced assortment of CNC equipment. Successful completion of class provides the key to accessing the Yale school of architectures fabrication lab. Class is mandatory and cannot be waived. Failure to complete the class means denial of access to the fabrication labs.  0 Course cr

[ ARCH 5092, Visualization and Computation ]

This six-week intensive course covers the fundamentals and implications of specific digital software and skills: building information modeling (BIM); virtual realities; imagemaking; artificial intelligence, and geo-spatial modeling. Each section is taught by a different instructor who brings specific experience to both tutorials and discussions on the broader impact of computation on the field. (One Revit section and one elective section are required of first-year M.Arch. I students, early summer. Students who waive out of Revit must substitute the course with an elective section.)   1½ Course cr

[ ARCH 5093, Resources for Design Research ]

This course is intended to introduce students to the academic, digital, and fabrication resources at the School and University. Through a handful of exercises, the course provides an in-depth orientation to the Yale University Library system, the latest software and digital solutions employed at the School, and the rich fabrication facilities available to students. Teaching fellows lead workshops and orientation sessions, as well as assist the various instructors throughout the three-week period.  0 Course cr

Advanced Design Studios (Fall)

Advanced studios are limited in enrollment. Selection for studios is determined by lottery.

ARCH 5007, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Janet Marie Smith and Alan Plattus.

ARCH 5008, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Michael Young.

ARCH 5009, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Amin Taha.

ARCH 5010, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse.

ARCH 5011, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Marlon Blackwell.

ARCH 5012, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Caitlin Taylor.

ARCH 5013, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Patrick Bellew and Henry Squire.

Advanced Design Studios (Spring)

Advanced studios are limited in enrollment. Selection for studios is determined by lottery.

ARCH 5020, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Faculty

ARCH 5021, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Faculty

ARCH 5022, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Faculty

ARCH 5023, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Faculty

ARCH 5024, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Faculty

ARCH 5025, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Faculty

ARCH 5026, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Faculty

ARCH 5027, Advanced Design Studio 9 credits. Faculty

Elective Courses

[ ARCH 5100, Animal Houses ]

Animal Houses is a research-based visualization seminar. The class studies the nature of animal occupation on earth and then focus into close study of a method or system of occupation by a single species. Species selection and methods of representation are governed by individual interests based on an introductory series of exercises focused on the primary categories of land, sea, and air. Work is realized in the form of visualizations that collect and re-present discoveries. Given the nature of the research, visualizations push the boundaries of traditional and contemporary architectural drawings and imagery by incorporating process, time, and change into the presentation of spatial language. The seminar allows for in-depth individual research, practice in the transformation of ideas into form, and informed understanding of the material nature of occupied space through the study of animal space. Students have access to both specialists in animal life as well as specialists in representation technologies and processes to strengthen and facilitate representational ambitions. The research further allows for an expanded understanding of alternate building practice and methodologies.  3 Course cr

ARCH 5101b, Beauty, Wonder, and AweMark Gage

This seminar explores the role of beauty, wonder, and awe in the design and experience of our world. For most of the twentieh century, these subjects were either entirely ignored in academia, or worse, cast exclusively as nefarious mechanisms of control used only by those in power. And yet who among us has not been uplifted by a scene in a film, a piece of music, an object, a work of art or architecture—or perhaps even something as unassuming as a beautifully cascading pile of laundry? This course works under the assumption that such positive human experiences are needed more now than ever in a world increasingly defined by pessimism, criticism, and division. As such we work under the assumption that beauty, wonder, and awe exist, and that they are worthy of a contemporary re-assessment, especially in the context of creative practices that are interested in producing a more equitable, beautiful, and just human future. Through both philosophical and popular readings, the study of physical objects, and engaged discussion and lively debate, we examine beauty, awe, and wonder from all possible angles—what they mean today, their history, why they are desired, how they might be produced, the motivations of those that promote them, and how they are being reconsidered not as the nefarious enemies of function or equality, but rather essential and ethically significant aspects of human experience. In order to address these subjects beyond an abstract academic setting, we have visitors from various creative industries come to class to discuss these subjects relative to their own work and disciplines, including Jessica Diehl, the former creative director of Vanity Fair magazine, and Michael Young, a practicing architect deeply engaged with the subjects of aesthetics and representation. Students in the course also (pending confirmation) visit New York City to explore and discuss these subjects at multiple scales, live and in-person with the instructor, by viewing everything from architectural facades and urban monuments to medieval armor and Faberge eggs. This course resists the inherited lore of academia that casts beauty, wonder, and awe only elitist or oppressive, in favor of asking how they can be better understood and incorporated into the design of a more humane world. In doing so we explore the work of contemporary thinkers who offer nourishment to this endeavor including but not limited to Elaine Scarry, Jane Bennett, Timothy Morton, bell hooks, Nick Zangwill, Dacher Keltner, Georgio Agamben, Susan Magsamen, and others, including recent writings on aesthetics by the course instructor. Limited enrollment.  3 Course cr
Th 9:20am-11:15am

[ ARCH 5102, Books and Architecture ]

For architects, the book has been a necessary (if not essential) tool for clarifying, extending, and promoting their ideas and projects. This seminar examines the phenomenon of the book in architecture as both an array of organizational techniques (what it is) and as a mediator (what it does). Arguably, outside of the artifice and material fact of the building itself, the book has been the preferred mode of discourse that architects have chosen to express their intellectual project. This seminar is part lecture, part workshop where the experience of making a series of books helps to inform the development of ideas about the projective capacity of the book. Through case studies, this seminar examines the relationship book production has with a selection of contemporary and historical practices, including each project’s physical and conceptual composition as well as how each project acts as an agent of the architect within a larger world of communication. The second part of the seminar asks students to apply ideas in a series of three book projects that emphasize the book as an instrument of architectural thinking. Most projects are individual efforts, but work in pairs or groups is also explored. Limited enrollment.  3 Course cr

ARCH 5103a, Cartographies of Climate ChangeJoyce Hsiang

Climate change disproportionately affects the people and places with the least power and resources. As our sea levels have risen, so too has the extreme socioeconomic disparity of specific communities and countries, creating a drowning class of climate refugees. Entire countries on the front lines of sea-level rise face the specter of nationhood without territory, despite the undeniable fact that their contribution to this global problem is negligible. And if climate change is in fact “the result of human activity since the mid-20th century,” it is in actuality a largely male-made phenomenon, if we unpack the gender dynamics and underlying power structures of the proto-G8 nations, the self-proclaimed leaders of industrialization. These power dynamics become even further exacerbated as we consider the implications of the particularly American interest in doubling down on investing in the heaviest piece of infrastructure ever—climate engineering. The architectural community appears to be in agreement. Climate change is a fundamental design problem. And yet calls to action have been ineffectual, responses underwhelming in the face of this overwhelming challenge. As the architectural community is eagerly poised to jump on the design bandwagon, this course seeks to reveal, foreground, empower, and give physical form to the spatial dimensions and power dynamics of the people and places most impacted by climate change. More broadly, the course aspires to help students develop their own critical stance on climate change and the role architects play.  3 Course cr
T 9:20am-11:15am

ARCH 5104a, Composition and FormEmily Abruzzo

Develop skill and intuition in architectural composition through close study, analytical drawing, and iterative experimentation across two- and three-dimensional media. The course moves between precedent and projection, using plan, section, elevation, and massing as active tools rather than static conventions. Students test proportion, figure and ground, thickness, depth, and assembly through multiple representational methods, building fluency in how form is constructed, read, and transformed. Fulfills first-year required visualization course. Assigned by lottery.  3 Course cr
Th 9:20am-11:15am

ARCH 5105a, Drawing and Architectural FormVictor Agran

With the development of increasingly sophisticated digital technologies and processes, the practice of architecture has been undergoing a comprehensive transformation. Drawing, historically the primary means of generation, presentation, and interrogation of design ideas, has in recent years, been ill-defined and under stress. This course works to embrace the conceptual potential of drawing in all its forms—from hand to digital practice. Early assignments examine the historical and theoretical development of descriptive geometry and perspective through the practice of rigorous constructed architectural drawings. As the course progresses, we move from drawing by hand to digital/hybrid drawings. The methods and concepts studied serve as a foundation for the development of drawings that explore the relationship between a drawing’s production and its conceptual objectives. Readings, discussions, and drawing exercises are structured to facilitate experimentation and foster dialogue about the practice of drawing and different methods of spatial inquiry. The class also includes visits to the YUAG, YCBA and MSSA study rooms to review and discuss the work of renowned artists and architects in detail. Limited enrollment. Fulfills first-year required visualization course. Assigned by lottery.  3 Course cr
F 9:20am-11:15am

ARCH 5106a, Geometric TranslationsSunil Bald

This course investigates drawing as a generative instrument of formal, spatial, and tectonic discovery. Principles of two- and three-dimensional geometry are studied through a series of exercises that foreground seeing, thinking, and translation. In short, students “draw from drawing,” working fluidly between manual drawing, computer drawing, and material construction to investigate a range of interrelated topics including tiling, lattices, compound surfaces, orthographic translation, symmetry operations, and stereotomy. All exercises are designed to enhance the ability to conceptualize and visualize architectural form and space, understand its structural foundations, and provide tools that reinforce and inform the design process. Fulfills first-term M.Arch. I Visualization requirement. Assigned by lottery.  3 Course cr
Th 9:20am-11:15am

[ ARCH 5107, Inclusive Design for the Built Environment I ]

Also counts as Viz elective.  3 Course cr

[ ARCH 5108, Inclusive Design for the Built Environment II: Design Clinic ]

This class, Inclusive Design for the Built Environment II: Design Clinic (IDBE 2) is the second part of a two-semester practicum that teaches students an Inclusive Design approach by working with a client on an actual project. This year we’re partnering with Columbus House, a non-profit that runs homeless shelters in Connecticut, and Gray Organschi Architecture on the renovation and expansion of a shelter in New Haven which provides beds, meals, and case management for 81 adult men and women. The course builds on the work produced during, Inclusive Design for the Built Environment I: Participatory Design (Fall 2024), where students used engagement tools (surveys, interviews, and workshops) to identify the spatial barriers and solutions faced by Columbus House staff and residents using their existing facility. The outcome was the Inclusive Design Brief (I.D. Brief), a report that included project objectives, design recommendations and a detailed space program. In this second class, IDBE 2, students visualize the recommendations outlined in the I.D. Brief through a two-step process. During weekly Desk Crits, students working in Cohorts present and receive feedback about their developing designs from professors and students. Over the course of the term there will be Milestone Presentations where students present their work to a group of Columbus house staff and residents to ensure their design proposals fulfill the aspirations outlined in the I.D. Brief. The outcome is a Final Report that collects material gathered over the two semesters, including architectural drawings that document design recommendations which the Client and Gray Organschi Architecture will incorporate into the final design. Students are not required to have taken IDBE 1 to take this class. Instructor permission is required based on the submission of an Expression of Interest with the following info: Name, Class year, Major/Concentration, Email and a paragraph describing relevant experiences that would allow you to make a meaningful contribution to the class.   3 Course cr

ARCH 5109a, InkMichelle Fornabai

This course proposes a creative and critical inquiry into ink’s instrumentality in architecture to delineate a subtle story—a latent history of architecture in ink—placing ink in our world with the purpose of gaining knowledge within and for the architectural discipline. A close consideration of the varied conceptual and material aspects of ink acts as a medium to reflect upon the means by which architectural knowledge is generated, articulated, and applied. The course is structured by the abecedary, ink or “V is for Vermilion as described by Vitruvius” An A to Z of Ink in Architecture. Composed from various material forms of ink found in studio, an alphabet in twenty-six images was created and sent as an invitation to more than twenty-six architects, artists, historians, theorists, scholars, inventors and poets to write a brief entry on a discrete ink object. On the first day of class, thirteen of the twenty-six letters are selected at random and a single letter assigned to each week of the course. Each week, the class closely examines the ink objects described by diverse voices in the entries written under the assigned letter— conceptually and materially—by reading, in discussion and in drawings. Reading: Each entry describing a discrete ink object is typically brief—generally 500 to 1000 words; the twenty-six letters contain between one to five entries each on average. Weekly reading is assigned by letter to be discussed in class. Discussion: Each week the class discusses the ink entries under a single letter to create collective word images. Drawing (in-class/in-studio): Students spend time each class period using drawing to explore material and conceptual aspects of the ink objects. These drawings may provide material for the weekly out-of-class assignments. Students keep a folio of A3 loose-leaf sheets that can be pinned up and compiled for reference and review. In addition, there may be collective in-class drawings, done on larger paper that will be in response to discussion in class. They are due at the end of the class period. Supplemental ink materials may be provided by the instructor. Drawing (out-of-class assignments): Students construct an architectural drawing(s) each week for the letter discussed in class, due at the beginning of the next class (for pin-up/discussion). Students determine four parameters for each architectural drawing: scale (ie. measured drawing), view (ie. projection: parallel, oblique, orthographic, isometric, perspective), set (format), and sequence. These architectural drawings may be manual and/or digital. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, a container formed of ink that contains ink, forms the basis of these drawings. Pin-ups: Weekly drawing assignments are reviewed weekly. Before each week’s discussion, students should pin-up with the rest of your studio group to facilitate an efficient discussion. Reviews: For Mid review, architectural drawing of a single entry from ink by the student’s choice (not covered in the thirteen assigned letters) are constructed. For Final review, students may delineate a new entry for the abecedary, ink. Mid and Final reviews include outside critics. Evaluation: Each drawing assignment is evaluated for technique and completion. After each pin-up and during the in-class exercise the professor gives an evaluation that is then be recorded by the TF. If a drawing needs improvement to satisfactorily meet the requirements of the assignment, the student is asked to make these improvements for re-evaluation. All assignments must meet this standard to successfully pass the course. Course Requirements: Attendance at all class sessions is mandatory, in accordance with YSoA policy. More than two unexcused absences constitute failure of the class. Out-of-class drawing assignments must be completed by 6 p.m. on the Thursday before the date they are reviewed. Drawings are to be saved for comprehensive review at the end of the term and submitted digitally as directed by the teaching fellow. Fulfills first-year required visualization course. Assigned by lottery.  3 Course cr
F 1:30pm-3:25pm

ARCH 5110a / PHYS 5810, Small ObjectsTimothy Newton, Nathan Burnell, and Alyse Guild

This course is offered to graduate and undergraduate students who wish to pursue their own special talents, follow their passions, and expand possibilities and creative impulses to create a small object of their own design. The course is cross listed with Neuroscience and intentionally brings together students with different backgrounds and experiences. The course explores the ideation, design processes, and fabrication of a functioning prototype. A “small object” is defined as something that can fit comfortably through a standard doorway. Potential areas of exploration include, but are not limited to; jewelry, furniture, experimental scientific instruments, electronic devices, architectural objects, lighting, cutlery, packaging, and musical instruments. Student selection is competitive and through application only. Proposal submissions are due by May 14 (midnight), with preference given to graduate students in Architecture and Neuroscience. Previous experience building your small object is not required. The students’ passion for their object—and for building it —are critical for a successful proposal and for success in the course. Each student is able to follow their own path as they acquire professional-level competencies in designing and creating their small object, with an understanding that design disciplines are increasingly expanding and converging. As such, students are encouraged to explore as many university resources as possible to achieve the desired outcome. The methodology used to complete tasks in this course gives students an understanding of a typical industrial design process while equipping them with skills, concepts, and tools used to create scientific-grade instrumentation. The course encourages creative and scientific exploration, while fostering an interdisciplinary nexus for fabrication technology, design pedagogy, and problem-solving. While each student pursues an individual project, true innovation often results from cross-pollination between disciplines. To facilitate interdisciplinary interaction and expand possibility, students from different disciplines work together as they explore the development and fabrication of their small object. Weekly reviews are coupled with training and seminars. Students also have access to multiple state-of-the-art design and fabrication facilities that include manual and computer-controlled manufacturing machines, electronic equipment, rapid prototyping tools, and computer aided drafting (CAD) and rendering programs. Students are exposed to design drawing techniques, physical modeling methods, and the concept of designing for manufacture. Students acquire professional-level competence in two- and three-dimensional design—using aesthetic sensibility, digital/analog tools, and critical thinking—combined with a working knowledge of materials and methods in an environmentally responsible context. The course is structured around teaching modules, studio time, and critique periods. During class sessions, students are encouraged to actively engage in critiquing their fellow students’ work. Technique workshops covering different project-related types of fabrication are held during the second half of the semester.  3 Course cr
TF 9:20am-11:15am

ARCH 5112a, Space-Time-FormEeva-Liisa Pelkonen

This seminar explores key concepts, techniques, and media that have affected the design, discussion, and representation of architecture in the twentieth century. The seminar aims to develop a particular type of disciplinary knowledge by crossing experience and act with historical and theoretical engagement. The class foregrounds reciprocity of practice and context, believing the exchange provides an invaluable tool for understanding the origin of ideas and thereby capitalizing on their full potential. Each class is organized around a single concept (form, structure, space, time); technique (drawing, material, color); or media (typography, photography, weaving). Sessions require both a visual/material exercise and close reading of seminal texts. Particular attention is paid to working with different tools and techniques, registering, observing, and analyzing formal and material techniques and effects. Limited enrollment. Fulfills first-year required visualization course. Assigned by lottery.  3 Course cr
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

ARCH 5113b, The ChairTimothy Newton, Alyse Guild, and Nathan Burnell

The chair has been a crucible for architectural ideas and their design throughout the trajectory of modern architecture. The chair is both a model for understanding architecture and a laboratory for the concise expression of idea, material, fabrication, and form. As individual as its authors, the chair provides a medium that is a controllable minimum structure, ripe for material and conceptual experiments. In this seminar, students develop their design and fabrication skills through exploration of the conceptual, aesthetic, and structural issues involved in the design and construction of a full-scale prototype chair. Limited enrollment.  3 Course cr
T 9:20am-11:15am, Th 11:30am-12:30pm

ARCH 5114a, The PlanBrennan Buck

The architectural plan is an index of architectural values. It expresses the underlying ethics and ideologies of the architecture; evinces the background environment of building technologies, rules, regulations, conventions, and customs; and traces the power relations that buildings enact. This course sketches the history of plan-making during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Beaux Arts composition to modern “non -composition,” before focusing on the scattershot discourse about the plan today. Rather than positing a single grand thesis about the contemporary plan, the course foregrounds the countless threads of plan making evident today and asks students to identify the underlying ideas, histories, and implications of specific plans.   3 Course cr
Th 9:20am-11:15am

[ ARCH 5115, Virtual Futures ]

Virtual Futures is an investigation into how new spatial computing technologies, which now mediate data through space, have altered our relationship with the built environment and to examine the architect’s role in the development of these new digital horizons. This interdisciplinary seminar challenges students to critically examine the pervasive influence of technology and media culture in contemporary architectural practice through the lens of Mixed Reality (XR) and spatial computing. Rather than celebrating these tools solely for their immersive and representational potential, the course interrogates their role in shaping architectural perception, design processes, and the broader cultural narratives that surround space and the public sphere.3 Course cr

ARCH 5116a, Ruins, Ruination, and ReuseMark Gage

Architectural ruination indexes not only the failure of individual buildings but also of technologies, economies, communities, or, at times, entire civilizations. And yet architecture is rarely discussed in these terms—as a framework of human reality that itself can be damaged or destroyed, thereby producing significant effects on individuals, communities, and nations. This course engages in the study of various forms of ruination from not only the past and present but also the future, through research into the speculative territories of online “ruin porn,” new genres of art practice, and in particular dystopian television and film projects that reveal an intense contemporary interest in apocalyptic themes. The concept of ruination also be used as a philosophical tool to study architecture at its most essential qualities through speculating on where it can be made to fail—and yet still maintain its identity. For instance, would Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoy remain iconic had its piloti been replaced with thin bronze metal Doric columns? Or giant garden gnomes? Students, accordingly, “ruin” architectural icons through visual design interventions. Tutorials are offered on professional matte-painting Photoshop techniques that allow students to produce such visual arguments. The goal of the course is not to convey to the students an existing body of architectural knowledge but to unearth a new architectural discourse that considers architecture in reverse—emphasizing its destruction and decay rather than its creation in an effort to reveal new territories of architectural impact.  3 Course cr
F 9:20am-11:15am

[ ARCH 5190, Continuity and Change: Rome ]

(Open only to M.Arch. I second-year and M.Arch. II first-year students. Enrollment subject to the permission of the instructors and satisfactory completion of all required preparatory course work.) This intensive five-week summer workshop takes place in Rome and is designed to provide a broad overview of that city’s major architectural sites, topography, and systems of urban organization. Examples from antiquity to the present day are studied as part of the context of an ever-changing city with its sequence of layered accretions. The seminar examines historical continuity and change as well as the ways in which and the reasons why some elements and approaches were maintained over time and others abandoned. Hand drawing is used as a primary tool of discovery during explorations of buildings, landscapes, and gardens, both within and outside the city. Students devote the final week to an intensive independent analysis of a building or place. M.Arch. I students are eligible to enroll in this course after completing at least three terms. This course does not fulfill either the History and Theory or the Urbanism and Landscape elective requirements. All program travel plans will be made in accordance with University and national travel policies. Limited enrollment.  3 Course cr

[ ARCH 5999, Independent Coursework ]

Program to be determined with a faculty adviser of the student’s choice and submitted, with the endorsement of the study area coordinator, to the Rules Committee for confirmation of the student’s eligibility under the rules. (See the school’s academic rules and regulations.)  3 Course cr

Electives Outside of the School of Architecture

Courses offered elsewhere in the university may be taken for credit with permission of the instructor. Unless otherwise indicated, at the School of Architecture full-term courses are typically assigned 3 credits; half-term courses are assigned 1.5 credits. Students must have the permission of the design and visualization study area coordinators in order for a course to count as a visualization elective.