Instructors: Gerard Damiani, Jenna Kappelt, Andrew Moss, José Pertierra, Stephen Quick, Annie Ranttila
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • CFA 200 • In-Person & Remote

This studio will focus on how to evaluate an architectural idea through analysis and representation. The semester will start with a series of projects that introduce the timeless compositional methods that architects consider when designing a memorable piece of architecture.

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Instructor: Eddy Man Kim
T • 9:10am-12:00pm • Remote Only

The previous course, Digital Media I, covered fundamental concepts and techniques of 2D digital media as applied in architectural design. Digital Media II will build on these concepts and focus on 3D modeling and visualization.

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Instructor: Doug Cooper
R • 9:10am-12:00pm • Remote Only

“Drawing and Appearance” is a traditional course in free-hand architectural drawing. Its central learning objective is building a capacity for visualizing three-dimensional space through the making of hand-made drawings.

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Instructor: Diane Shaw
TR • 4:00-5:20pm • Remote Only

Reflecting the inseparable relation between building and human needs, this course is not only a history of architecture, but also a history through architecture. Over the semester, we will examine the history of architectural and urban design as a form of cultural expression unique to its time and place.

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Instructor: Heather Workinger
TR • 1:30-2:50pm • Remote Only

The first-year seminar (part 2) introduces students to opportunities at CMU and beyond. The goal of this course is to encourage students to pursue their interests inside and outside of the SoA by introducing a range of opportunities, including study abroad experiences, internships, academic minors/additional majors, and research opportunities.

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Instructors: Jeremy Ficca, Laura Garófalo, Kiki Goti, Eddy Man Kim, Jeff King, Manuel Rodríguez Ladrón de Guevara
MF • 12:30-4:20pm • CFA 200 • In-Person & Remote
W • 1:30-2:30pm • Remote Only

This undergraduate design studio elaborates upon design fundamentals developed thus far and draws attention to architecture’s material domain.

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Instructor: Kai Gutschow
MWF • 10:30-11:20am • Remote Only

This historical survey of modern architecture picks up where the Survey I (48-240) leaves off, with the “crisis of modernity” in late 19th-century Europe. We survey developments globally from before WWI through Postmodernism and into the 21st century.

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Instructor: Daniel Cardoso-Llach
TR • 3:00-4:20pm • Remote Only

This course takes computers outside the box and outlines a journey of discovery revealing computation as the connective tissue encompassing multiple facets of architectural practice and experience.

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Instructor: Irving Oppenheim
TR • 2:20-3:40pm • Remote Only

In this course we examine structural types, structural behavior, material behavior, and construction constraints that underlie our design of buildings, emphasizing the need for a designer to envision a complete 3-D structure.

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Instructors: Azadeh Sawyer, Erica Cochran Hameen, Stefani Danes, Lori Fitzgerald, Joshua Lee
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 312 • In-Person & Remote

The Advanced Construction Studio focuses on the detailed development and refinement of architectural design as informed by the integration of structural, enclosure, environmental, and material systems and the process of construction.

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Instructor: Valentina Vavasis
M • 10:40am-12:00pm • Remote Only

This course investigates the real estate development process, both from the point of view of the architect and the point of view of the developer. The primary objective of the course is for students to understand how financial, economic, and political issues may affect their design practices.

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Instructor: Valentina Vavasis
W • 10:40am-12:00pm • Remote Only

This course investigates ethics for architecture and the built environment. The course covers ethics as a discipline and how to identify an ethical issue and work through an ethical problem. On a global scale, the historic intertwining of architecture and capital will be discussed.

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Instructor: William Bates
F • 10:40am-12:00pm • Remote Only

This course introduces students to the realm of architectural professional practice, focusing on the overlay of design within the context of the client’s role and the architect’s responsibilities in competent architectural project and practice management. The course will introduce students to fundamental principles of business planning, risk management, and regulatory constraints and legal responsibilities.

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Instructor: Kai Gutschow
W • 9:10-10:00am • MMCH 321 • In-Person & Remote

The primary aim of this course is to hatch and develop a beginning proposal for a professional architectural design Thesis or Independent Project.

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Instructors: Heather Bizon, Sarah Rafson

MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

An architectural thesis is a proposition. A proposition that results from a critique and reexamination of the role of architecture as a critical participant in the conditioning of (public) space. A thesis demands that the student take a position and have something to say, something to contribute to the ongoing discourse in the widening sphere of architecture.

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Read More (M.Arch Thesis) →

Instructor: Azadeh Sawyer
MW • 9:20-10:30am • Remote Only

The intent of this course is to provide the tools necessary for an effective integration of light in the design process of buildings. Fundamentals of lighting design will be introduced and their relevance in effective design will be emphasized. This course provides an in-depth view of how simulation and VR technology can support the design of comfortable and high performance buildings.

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Instructors: Various
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 312 & 320 • In-Person & Remote

The Advanced Synthesis Option Studios (ASOS) are vertically-integrated advanced studios that encourage inter-disciplinary collaboration from the arts and technology, research and design, large scale urban and ecological thinking, to detailed investigations of materials, fabrication strategies, and form strategies – the heart of the CMU and SoA experience.

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Instructor: Sarosh Anklesaria
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

The goal of the studio is to unpack the analogous relationships between the futures of food systems and architecture, to situate these as counter arguments to the industrial-agricultural complex and use the context of Pittsburgh as a laboratory for these experiments.

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Instructor: Mary-Lou Arscott
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

This studio will examine the politics, economics, and sustainability of the protective layer of textiles that we place on our human bodies. The studio will look at the history of fabric manufacture in relation to colonial power and will establish principals to shape attitudes towards our bodies and to the cleaning and repair of its coverings. The studio takes on a radical analysis of attitudes to domestic life, to gender, and to capitalism.

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Instructor: Liza Cruze
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

In this studio we will consider Thoreau’s essay—so much of it about his own design/build experience—in today’s context. Collectively, we will design a cabin to meet the high standards of sustainability set by Eden Hall. After a round of prototyping, testing, and design development, the studio will create a set of construction documents and shop drawings.

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Instructor: Dana Cupkova
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

Building upon concepts of material and urban ecologies, circular waste-streams, and synthetic natures, this studio is loosely based on the competition framework announced by The American Institute of Architects (AIA), Custom Residential Architects Network (CRAN) knowledge community: HERE+NOW: A House for the 21st Century International Student Design Competition.

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Instructor: Stefan Gruber
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

This studio will explore the design of affordable cooperative housing as a means for communities to pool resources and lead a more self-determined life based on collective governance and shared ownership. The collective sum of the studio’s housing proposition aim at reimagining neighborhoods as commons.

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Instructor: Hal Hayes
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

This studio will be based in an alternative history where Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District was not bulldozed, the heart of its black community was not eviscerated, and the collapse of its industrial economy did not drive a large segment of that population away. Instead, the physical, social, and cultural fabric of the Hill District is intact and continues to thrive, partaking fully in the Pittsburgh Renaissance.

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Instructor: Trevor Patt
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

This studio argues that urban properties are intensive and can be identified at all scales, even those smaller than a building. In particular, we will work on the thickening the moment of interface between architecture and urbanism by identifying and analyzing urban forces and focusing them in concentrated moments on the threshold between interior and exterior.

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Instructor: Jonathan Kline
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

This research-based-design studio is focused on the bottom-up transformation of cities and explores how designers and planners can tap into the self-organizing behavior of cities in order to empower citizens to claim their right to the city.

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Instructors: Heather Bizon, Sarah Rafson

MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

An architectural thesis is a proposition. A proposition that results from a critique and reexamination of the role of architecture as a critical participant in the conditioning of (public) space. A thesis demands that the student take a position and have something to say, something to contribute to the ongoing discourse in the widening sphere of architecture.

Read More (B.Arch Thesis) →

Read More (M.Arch Thesis) →

Instructor: Francesca Torello
TR • 10:40am-12:00pm • Remote Only

In this seminar we will look at the history of the architecture of the last two centuries by following the thread of the history of materials. We will discuss the ways in which buildings of the past and the practice of architecture were affected by which materials were available, how they were produced, and the craft required to work them.

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Instructor: Diane Shaw
TR • 10:40am-12:00pm • Remote Only

This course examines the ways in which the interactions of people, place, and period have created distinctive regional patterns. It primarily focuses on the periods before the 20th century, when the forces of vernacular traditions were strongest, but will also make forays into more recent trends of regionalism as an aesthetic choice, a theoretical stance, and an intentional place-making device.

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Instructor: Katheryn Linduff
TR • 8:20-9:40am • Remote Only

The development of Indian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese architecture was guided by both originality and assimilation. This course serves as an introduction to the evolution of urban spaces and the function of the architecture within them. It examines the impact of indigenous philosophical principles on the organization of villages, capital cities, and religious centers.

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Instructor: Gerard Damiani
MW • 10:40am-12:00pm • MMCH 307 • In-Person & Remote

This course examines the role of the architectural detail in the formation/thematic development of a work of architecture and how the detail reinforces the theoretical position of the architect.

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Instructor: Doug Cooper
W • 8:20-9:40am • MMCH 303 • In-Person & Remote

This course emphasizes free-hand drawing in general and free-hand perspective technique in particular. Understandings of perspective are developed first in figurative drawing exercises and then transferred to drawings of buildings and other architectonic objects.

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Instructor: Scott Smith
TR • 10:40am-12:00pm • CFA A19 (Shop) • In-Person & Remote

This course will be comprised of a series of exercises (projects) based on the ideas of surface, sandwiching, layering, exterior and interior, concealment, and reveal-ment, and strength gathered from sandwiching.

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Instructor: Daragh Byrne
TR • 4:00-5:20pm • Remote Only

The course will introduce foundational theories, methods, and techniques that range across the aesthetic, the human-centered, and the technical. Students will apply this knowledge by working in teams to collaboratively prototype a responsive environment which adapts in real-time to activities within it. In these teams, students will work across disciplines to integrate technical and aesthetic frameworks for sensing, analysis, and feedback of human activity in intelligent and augmented spaces.

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Instructor: José Pertierra
TR • 2:20-3:40pm • MMCH C4 • In-Person

This course serves as an introduction to digital fabrication methods through an applied overview of the resources available in the School of Architecture’s Design Fabrication Lab.

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Instructor: Ardavan Bidgoli
TR • 10:30am-12:20pm • Remote Only

With the recent blooming of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) came a renewed interest in how these technologies may impact architecture and other creative practices. This course introduces students to this emerging field, giving them the tools to make their own ML-based design tools by adapting state-of-the-art models, developing new models, and understanding how data shapes machine learning processes.

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Instructor: Trevor Patt
R • 12:50-4:40pm • Remote Only

This design seminar expands on the notions of data and analysis that have come to occupy a fundamental entry point of contemporary understandings of urbanism and urban design. We will discuss the ways in which cities are organized and communicated as information through quantitative data, graphic maps, and spatial models.

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Instructor: Kristen Kurland
TR • 1:30-2:50pm • Remote Only

This course includes lectures, computer labs, and a project using the leading desktop GIS software, ArcGIS Pro, from Esri, Inc.

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Instructor: Laura Garófalo
T • 2:10-4:50pm • Room TBD • In-Person & Remote

This seminar speculates that merging communication with environmental performance, a material like terra cotta can be instrumental in returning cultural expression to the building skin (Picon 2013). An exploration of the topics that define the ecological turn and how to manifest them through form, technique, and material will be the focus of the seminar which will culminate in a collective project.

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Instructor: Kiki Goti
T • 2:10-4:50pm • Room TBD • In-Person & Remote

This course explores architectural strategies that enable intuitive making in virtual environments. Students will be asked to develop speculative architectural scenarios that make advanced fabrication methods accessible, affordable, and inclusive.

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Instructor: Sarosh Anklesaria
R • 2:10-4:50pm • Room TBD • In-Person & Remote

In this course, students will develop a foundational understanding of key concepts of contemporary relevance that frame the relationships between architecture, society, and ecology.

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Instructor: Ramesh Krishnamurti
W • 4:30-5:50pm • Remote Only

Descriptive geometry deals with manually solving problems in three-dimensional geometry through working with two-dimensional planes using these basic mechanical tools. This course is mainly about the techniques of manually solving three-dimensional geometry problems.

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Instructors: Hal Hayes, Dick Block
TR • 1:30-4:20pm • Room TBD • In-Person & Remote

This seminar explores architectural design process, design specialization and project development through the typology of theaters. Students will study pre-design methodology, professional team structure, expert consultants’ roles, and design coordination. We also study the systems, occupancy, and structural issues that are theater specific.

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Instructors: Hal Hayes, Dick Block
TR • 1:30-4:20pm • Room TBD • In-Person & Remote

This seminar explores architectural design process, design specialization and project development through the typology of theaters. Students will study pre-design methodology, professional team structure, expert consultants’ roles, and design coordination. We also study the systems, occupancy, and structural issues that are theater specific.

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Instructor: Nida Rehman
R • 12:50-3:50pm • Remote Only

Architectural spaces, infrastructures, landscapes, urban environments, and national territories are deeply intertwined with experiences and understandings of epidemic disease. This advanced seminar offers critical perspectives on the spatial politics and built environments of infectious disease and public health.

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Instructors: Ramesh Krishnamurti, Pedro Veloso
TR • 3:00-4:20pm • Remote Only

This course will show how techniques inspired by natural and urban phenomena and derived from computational design and artificial intelligence can lead to novel design solutions. The goal of the course is to foster students’ capacity to computationally formulate design problems with an emphasis on the synthesis of design alternatives.

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Instructor: Valentina Vavasis
M • 10:40am-12:00pm • Remote Only

This course investigates the real estate development process, both from the point of view of the architect and the point of view of the developer. The primary objective of the course is for students to understand how financial, economic, and political issues may affect their design practices.

Read More →

Instructor: Valentina Vavasis
W • 10:40am-12:00pm • Remote Only

This course investigates ethics for architecture and the built environment. The course covers ethics as a discipline and how to identify an ethical issue and work through an ethical problem. On a global scale, the historic intertwining of architecture and capital will be discussed.

Read More →

Instructor: Irving Oppenheim
TR • 2:20-3:40pm • Remote Only

In this course we examine structural types, structural behavior, material behavior, and construction constraints that underlie our design of buildings, emphasizing the need for a designer to envision a complete 3-D structure.

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Instructor: Matthew Huber
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person (Rotation)

The Advanced Construction Studio focuses on the detailed development and refinement of architectural design as informed by the integration of structural, enclosure, environmental, and material systems and the process of construction.

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Instructor: Kai Gutschow
W • 9:10-10:00am • Room TBD • In-Person & Remote

The primary aim of this course is to hatch and develop a beginning proposal for a professional architectural design Thesis or Independent Project.

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Instructor: Valentina Vavasis
In-Person & Remote

The purpose of this competition and course is for cross-disciplinary teams of graduate students to work collaboratively to create a complex urban design and real estate proposal that addresses a real site in North America as part of the prestigious Urban Land Institute (ULI) Hines competition held January 11-25, 2021.

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Instructor: Azadeh Sawyer
MW • 9:20-10:30am • Remote Only

The intent of this course is to provide the tools necessary for an effective integration of light in the design process of buildings. Fundamentals of lighting design will be introduced and their relevance in effective design will be emphasized. This course provides an in-depth view of how simulation and VR technology can support the design of comfortable and high performance buildings.

Read More →

Instructor: Nida Rehman
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 320 • In-Person & Remote

This studio considers the built environment and environmental justice through the lens of Pittsburgh’s air. Specifically, it asks how urban design (and architecture and planning) might engage with and help mitigate the causes and effects of contaminated air, with attention to how the effects of toxic atmospheres on frontline communities have been shaped by the uneven development and systemic racism.

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Instructor: Jonathan Kline
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MMCH 312 • In-Person & Remote

This two semester research-based-design studio is focused on the bottom-up transformation of cities and explores how designers and planners can tap into the self-organizing behavior of cities in order to empower citizens to claim their right to the city.

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Instructor: Joshua Lee
MW • 10:40am-12:00pm • MMCH 321 • In-Person & Remote

This course provides an introduction to a wide range of research strategies including Experimental, Simulation, Qualitative, Correlational, Interpretive-historical, Logical Argumentation, Case Study, and Mixed Methods that can be used successfully across a wide spectrum of knowledge production.

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Instructor: Stefan Gruber
W • 8:20-9:40pm • MMCH 307 • In-Person & Remote

The seminar is an investigation into the future of cities focusing on three existential challenges of our urban age: the escalating environmental crisis, growing social inequity, and technological dislocation.

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Instructor: Christine Mondor
M • 6:30-9:20pm • MMCH 409 • In-Person & Remote

This class will examine the shifting regimes of urban ecology and equip students with skills and core concepts that enable them to lead or contribute to transition through design.

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Instructor: Daragh Byrne
W • 5:30-7:20pm • Remote Only

This seminar introduces graduate students in Computational Design to the rudiments of graduate level academic research, and offers a space to discuss inchoate research methods, questions, and projects in the field. Assignments require students to gain familiarity with past and current research in the field in order to distinguish different research traditions, practices, opportunities—and pitfalls. An emphasis is placed on the materialities and socio-technical infrastructures of computing.

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Instructor: Ray Gastil
R • 6:30-9:20pm • MMCH IW 415 • In-Person & Remote

This course focuses on the connection between urban design decisions and the challenges of urban planning and development, based on the premise that a better understanding of this relationship will contribute to critical knowledge, policy, and practice for a robust, equitable, and forward-looking urbanism responsive to the unprecedented density of urbanization, interaction, and information in the 21st century.

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Instructor: Omer Karaguzel
TR • 6:00-7:30pm • MMCH 410 • In-Person & Remote

Students’ theoretical knowledge on energy and environmental performance assessment methods are leveraged with the hands-on approach of the BCD course, which addresses research-grade concepts of building controls and diagnostics through actual building case studies and the application of field measurement techniques.

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Instructor: Omer Karaguzel
TR • 2:20-3:40pm • MMCH IW 415 • In-Person & Remote

The BPM course focuses on conceptual foundations and practical applications of advanced and integrated whole-building energy simulation programs with emphasis on architectural building envelope systems, mechanical electrical building systems and their controls, and building integrated solar photovoltaic power systems.

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Instructor: Azizan Aziz
TR • 10:40am-12:00pm • MMCH 409 • In-Person & Remote

This course will introduce methods and approaches that provide fundamental scientific, technological, and ecological opportunities in building design for a more sustainable future. Students will learn about innovative building systems and their integration towards an integrated and multi-disciplinary design practices.

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Instructor: Nina Baird
TR • 4:00-5:20pm • MMCH IW 415 • In-Person & Remote

This graduate level course explores the requirements and strategies for achieving successful net zero multifamily housing. We consider the design approaches, codes, policy, technology, and energy infrastructure that support net zero or carbon neutral performance.

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Instructors: Gerrod Winston, Najeeb Hameen
F • 2:10-5:00pm • MMCH 321 • In-Person & Remote

The goal of this course is to expose the class to advanced project scheduling methods and familiarize the students with the primary reporting practices as performed in the construction industry, such as change management, resource charts, and project status reports.

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Instructor: William Bates
MW • 8:20-9:40am • Room TBD • In-Person & Remote

This course will begin with an in-depth exploration of the fundamentals of project values, incentives, and motivations and the diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives of a project’s stakeholders. It will be built around the evaluation of Value Based Design (VBD) in three case study projects from the Pittsburgh area. The projects will offer examples of the influential power of a project’s design and construction team to address the needs of both public and private stakeholders.

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Instructor: Nina Baird
TR • 8:00-9:50am • MMCH IW 415 • In-Person & Remote

This graduate level mini-course uses the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and other global rating systems for communities, infrastructure, and buildings as vehicles to gain perspective about the interpretation of sustainable design around the world.

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Instructor: Nina Baird
MW • 4:00-5:20pm • Room TBD • In-Person & Remote

This graduate level mini-course uses the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and other global rating systems for communities, infrastructure, and buildings as vehicles to gain perspective about the interpretation of sustainable design around the world.

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Instructor: Kristen Kurland
TR • 1:30-2:50pm • Remote Only

This course includes lectures, computer labs, and a project using the leading desktop GIS software, ArcGIS Pro, from Esri, Inc.

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Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

The MSAECM program requires an internship, so CPT will enable an F1 student to complete the required internship. The other STEM-eligible grad programs do not require internship, therefore F1 students do not automatically qualify for CPT. To qualify for CPT, students must demonstrate that the 3-unit practicum counts toward the units required for graduation. A student may take more units than the required minimum, but the CPT must fit into the required minimum.

Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

Master’s Project allows opportunities for M.A. students to pursue a project related to their academic interests.

Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

Independent Study allows opportunities for Master’s students to pursue self-directed study with a faculty advisor pending written approval of the faculty member and the Track Chair. Students who are not on an academic action are permitted to take one independent study course up to 18 units per semester with a CMU faculty member.

Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

Classes provide both depth and breadth, while the culminating Thesis Project allows students the opportunity to narrow their research focus to a topic of personal and professional interest.

Instructor(s): Various
In-Person & Remote

M.S. Project allows opportunities for M.S. students to pursue a project related to their academic interests.

Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

Independent Study allows opportunities for PhD students to pursue self-directed study with a faculty advisor pending written approval of the faculty member and the Committee Chair.

Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

In the thesis proposal phase, the PhD student completes the preliminary research needed to plan a course of action leading to a successful dissertation on a selected topic. The thesis proposal must be publicly defended. This phase ends when the thesis proposal is accepted, whereupon the doctoral candidate is deemed to be in all but dissertation (ABD) status.

Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

In the dissertation phase, the PhD student writes a dissertation on the selected topic that represents a significant research accomplishment, makes a significant contribution to knowledge in the area of concentration, and includes material worthy of publication. The dissertation must be publicly defended. The students will be awarded the degree upon successful completion of the defense and submission of the final dissertation document.