Coordinator: Hal Hayes
MWF • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 15 units

This studio will cultivate student architects as citizens operating at the interface of Campus and the City. The principal learning objective is to inspire students to be engaged in community and inclusive design processes as the essential basis of architecture.

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Instructor: Heather Workinger
TR • 1:25-2:45pm • In-Person • 3 units (Mini 1)

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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Instructor: Doug Cooper
R • 8:35-11:35am • In-Person • 6 units

The central learning objective of Drawing II is building a capacity for visualizing three-dimensional space through freehand drawing. It has two secondary objectives: using line, tone and color to represent architectural space and architectural proposals.

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Instructor: Matthew Huber
T • 8:35-11:35am • In-Person • 6 units

This is the second course in a two-course sequence that introduces students to a broad range of architectural drawing techniques and practices that document, communicate, and generate design possibilities. This course challenges students to establish a visual agenda by referencing and critiquing chosen strands of architectural media.

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Instructor: Diane Shaw
TR • 3:05-4:25pm • Remote Only • 9 units

This course cuts a broad swath through time, geography and cultures, surveying critical episodes in the built environment of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Americas from ancient times through the 19th century.

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Instructor: Irving Oppenheim
TR • 11:50am-1:10pm • Remote Only • 9 units

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: Kai Gutschow
MWF • 10:10-11:00am • In-Person • 9 units

This history course surveys modern architecture and theory of the 20th-century from around the world. It is the second of a two-semester global survey that serves both as a historical foundation for disciplinary specialization, and as an introduction to architectural history.

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Instructor: Eddy Man Kim
TR • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9 units

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: Jared Abraham
MWF • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

This studio proposes the use of syncopation as a technique with which to analyze, augment, and disrupt the constructed environment; syncopation as methodology.

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Instructor: Eddy Man Kim
MWF • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

This studio will research and develop processes for augmenting architectural representation and computation.

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Instructor: Tommy Yang
MWF • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

This studio explores how stories, myths, cinematography, animation, mapping, comics, and design can build an argument for an architecture for and of the people.

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Instructor: Stefani Danes
MWF • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

The primary studio project will be an International Fabric Arts Design Center dedicated to the creation, study, and exhibition of contemporary works in cloth and fiber.

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Instructor: Steve Lee
MTR • 1:25-420pm • In-Person • 18 units

In this course, students will work on an interdisciplinary, design-build project to improve the quality of life through design interventions on campus. The semester will begin with a review of design proposals developed during the Fall semester, and through a collaborative process the class will determine what can be built given budgetary and workforce constraints. Students will complete construction documents, develop project management plans, build full scale prototypes, procure materials, and construct the designs.

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Coordinator: Jeremy Ficca
MWF • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

This studio introduces integrated architectural design as the synthesis of disparate elements, demands, and desires. It situates architecture as a technological, cultural, and environmental process that is inherently contingent and entangled, yet tethered to a historical project of autonomy.

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Instructor: Tamara Dudukovich
W • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • 6 units

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: Stuart Coppedge
F • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • 6 units

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: Valentina Vavasis
M • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • 6 units

This course investigates ethics for architecture and the built environment. Students will learn about ethics as a discipline, how to identify an ethical issue, and how one might work through an ethical problem.

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Instructor: Mary-Lou Arscott
T • 9:05-9:55am • In-Person • 3 units

This 3 unit course is designed for B.Arch and M.Arch students a year before their final Spring semester. The course develops an understanding of research methods and explores the formation of ideas for architecture thesis projects.

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Instructor: Sarosh Anklesaria
TR • 12:20-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

The studio will ask how architecture might participate in “Worldmaking as praxis” through the making of living memorials at Gandhi Ashram. These will serve as an ecological critique of the present day material culture of extraction, consumption, and waste, as well as of a social critique of inequality and intolerance.

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Instructor: Heather Bizon
TR • 12:20-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

The American Midwest presents a unique setting for the issues of accelerationism. Where East meets West, in the overlooked regions, and its neighboring geographies present uniquely American scenarios – testing beds for issues of politics, social conditions, infrastructure, and identity. The primary questions that the studio will ask for this situation are: How will the aesthetics of the background reality in the Midwest be altered in the next two decades? How will the variables in the past affect future conditions: social, political, ecological?

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Instructor: Laura Garófalo
TR • 12:20-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

Coupling architectural terra cotta, a medium with cradle-to-cradle potential, and the restoration of existing building stock, students will have the opportunity to delve deeply into the more responsive and responsible building strategies that a livable future world demands.

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Instructor: Stefan Gruber
TR • 12:20-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

In a participatory design process the studio will support Community Forge with developing ideas for a multifunctional performance space and translate these into a coherent design. We will then identify a strategic design-build component that promises to act as catalyst in the incremental transformation of the space.

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Instructor: Steve Lee
TR • 12:20-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

Carnegie Mellon is a diverse community that is learning to deal with the exigencies of university education in a world complicated by the Covid-19 pandemic, rising social inequality and alarming levels of polarization. The premise of this studio is that the quality of life on campus would be improved by creating a “third space” – a place between home and classroom to relax, socialize and be human again.

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Instructor: Jackie McFarland
TR • 12:20-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

World making is a violent and dangerous undertaking, just ask the indigenous people of the Americas, Africa, or India. To build you must destroy. Pulling raw material from the earth, cutting down trees, or clearing the land. And we cannot forget cheap labor. So before we go and become world makers shouldn’t we have an understanding of how systems that have built the constructs we must navigate?

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Instructor: Jonathan Kline
TR • 12:30-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

Commoning the City is a yearlong research-based-design studio focused on social justice and community-led urban transformations, positioning design as an agent of change that can support citizens claiming their Right to the City. The second semester, taught by Jonathan Kline, supports students in rigorously exploring their hypothesis through design and writing.

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Instructor: Sarah Rafson
TR • 12:20-4:20pm • In-Person • Variable units

An architectural thesis is a proposition that results from a critical reexamination of the role of architecture in the conditioning of (public) space. After a semester of critical thinking, analytical writing and reflective design production, the thesis culminates with a public presentation and exhibition of a holistically-researched architectural proposition.

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Instructors: Azadeh Sawyer, Matthew Huber
MWF • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

Architecture transforms and shapes relations between individuals, communities, objects and environments. Praxis 2 will continue to understand architecture as a modulator of complex cultural and historical flows, but will aim to do so by intensively exploring, evaluating, and expanding the role that tectonic cultures and their associated modes of architectural expression play in shaping our world.

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Instructor: Jeremy Ficca
TR • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9 units

This course introduces students to contemporary methods of construction and draws attention to the materialization of architectural intent. It foregrounds the historical, technological, and conceptual basis of construction systems to understand building as process and cultural artifact.

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Instructor: Irving Oppenheim
TR • 11:50am-1:10pm • Remote Only • 9 units

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.

Read More →

Instructor: Tamara Dudukovich
W • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • 6 units

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: Kai Gutschow
MWF • 10:10-11:00am • In-Person • 9 units

This history course surveys modern architecture and theory of the 20th-century from around the world. It is the second of a two-semester global survey that serves both as a historical foundation for disciplinary specialization, and as an introduction to architectural history.

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Instructor: Mary-Lou Arscott
T • 9:05-9:55am • In-Person • 3 units

This 3 unit course is designed for B.Arch and M.Arch students a year before their final Spring semester. The course develops an understanding of research methods and explores the formation of ideas for architecture thesis projects.

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Instructor: Valentina Vavasis
M • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • 6 units

This course investigates ethics for architecture and the built environment. Students will learn about ethics as a discipline, how to identify an ethical issue, and how one might work through an ethical problem.

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Instructor: Stuart Coppedge
F • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • 6 units

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: Nida Rehman
MWF • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 18 units

This studio will expand on MUD students’ understanding of neighborhood-scaled urban design gained in their first semester, and introduce urban systems and systemic processes. The studio will focus on the infrastructures and ecologies of toxic systems, and the modes of local action and stewardship to fight them.

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Instructor: Nicolas Azel
TR • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • 9 units

This course deploys computation as a foundational instrument in design analysis and development, exploring procedure as a medium for design.

Instructor: Christine Mondor
T • 6:30-9:30pm • In-Person • 9 units

Urban ecology describes the complex relationships between humans and our environment and is bound by an understanding of system dynamics. 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: Stefan Gruber
W • 7:00-8:20pm • In-Person • Variable units

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

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Instructor: Valentina Vavasis
In-Person & Remote • 3 units

This course is for graduate students participating in the prestigious national Urban Land Institute (ULI) Hines Competition, an intensive real estate and urban design competition that takes place January 10-24, 2022. The purpose of the competition and companion course is for cross-disciplinary teams of graduate students to work collaboratively to create a complex urban design and real estate proposal on a real site in North America.

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Instructor: Wei Liang
TR • 1:25-2:45pm • In-Person • 12 units

The building performance modeling 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: Dana Cupkova
Day TBD • Time TBD • In-Person • Variable units

Instructor: Azadeh Sawyer
MW • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9 units

In this course, we will explore the quantities and qualities of light. We will study how we can design with and for light while understanding the paradox of lighting design—that it is both science and art.

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Instructor: Kristen Kurland
TR • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9-12 units

The course includes in-person and asynchronous video lectures to learn important GIS concepts. Software tutorials and in-person/remote technical sessions cover leading GIS software from Esri Inc. Applications include ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Map Viewer, ArcGIS Story Maps, and Dashboards. CAFM/IWMS software will be reviewed.

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Instructor: Tiancheng Zhao
TR • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 12 units

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: Nina Baird
M • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 6 units (Mini 1)

This graduate level mini-course uses global building rating systems to gain perspective about sustainable design around the world. The course is organized within the framework of the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Rating Systems.

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Instructor: Nina Baird
M • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 6 units (Mini 2)

This graduate level mini-course uses global community and infrastructure rating systems to gain perspective about sustainability in context. The course is organized within the framework of the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Cities & Communities Rating System and the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) Envision Rating System.

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Instructor: Daragh Byrne
F • 10:10am-12:00pm • In-Person • 6 units

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.

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Instructor: William Bates
MW • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • Variable units

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.

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Instructors: Najeeb Hameen, Gerrod Winston
F • 1:25-4:15pm • In-Person • 12 units

The goal of this course is to expose students to advanced project scheduling methods and familiarize them 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: Graduate Programs Faculty
Variable units

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: Vivian Loftness
In-Person & Remote • 18 units

The culminating Thesis Project allows students the opportunity to focus their research on topic of personal and professional interest in the area of Building Performance & Diagnostics, including the development of design innovations and design tools for sustainability and indoor environmental quality as well as data analytics across the building and urban spectrum.

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Instructors: Graduate Programs PhD Advisors
Variable units

This course is for Ph.D. students who have successfully completed their qualifying exams and are working on their dissertation work. 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: Vivian Loftness
In-Person & Remote • 18 units

The culminating Thesis Project for the PhD and Doctor of Building Performance & Diagnostics delivers cutting edge and tested design innovations for sustainability, design tools for sustainability, and/or data analytics and policies for significantly advancing sustainable buildings and communities.

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Instructor: Doug Cooper
R • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 9 units

This freehand drawing course considers perspective from three understandings of perceptual psychology. It considers perspective as discovered truth, absolute truth of the visual field, and as an imposed schema.

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Instructor: Ramesh Krishnamurti
MW • 3:05-4:25pm • Remote Only • 9 units

Descriptive geometry deals with solving problems in three-dimensional geometry through working with two-dimensional planes using basic mechanical tools. This course specifically revolves around the historical techniques for manually solving three-dimensional geometry problems.

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Instructor: Gerard Damiani
TR • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9 units

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: Josh Bard
MW • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9 units

Digital Fabrication is a project-based seminar exploring the application of Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) in architecture. The course focuses on Transdimensional Fabrication, a manufacturing framework that forefronts design thinking across space and time.

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Instructors: Steve Lee, Sarah Christian
M (IPE w/SL & SC), W (IPE w/SC, Virtual w/SL) • 3:00-4:20pm • In-Person • 9 units

In this course, students will work on an interdisciplinary, design-build project to improve the quality of life through design interventions on campus. The semester will begin with a review of design proposals developed during the Fall semester, and through a collaborative process the class will determine what can be built given budgetary and workforce constraints. Students will complete construction documents, develop project management plans, build full scale prototypes, procure materials, and construct the designs.

Instructor: Jet Townsend
TR • 7:00-8:20pm • In-Person • 12 units

Making Things Interactive (MTI) is a project-based course where physical computing and interaction design are used to create new forms of technology-mediated interaction. Completion of 60-223 Intro to Physical Computing or a demonstration of similar experience is a requirement for this class.

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Instructor: Francesca Torello
TR • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9 units • Qualifies for the Architectural History Requirement

An introduction to the architecture of the lands where Islam spread over the centuries, this course aims to provide a basic understanding of major epochs and regional variations. The students will learn the function and meaning of the most important building types, examine how these types changed over time to adapt to the needs of changing societies and consider influences and exchanges with other traditions.

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Instructor: Diane Shaw
TR • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9 units • Qualifies for the Architectural History Requirement

This course examines the architectural history of modern Mexico and Guatemala, with an emphasis on the 20th century, but drawing on the 19th and 21st centuries as well. Throughout the course we will look at the countries’ urban and rural architectural evolution as explicit and implicit expressions of identity (Mexicanidad or Guatemalidad).

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Instructor: Katheryn Linduff
MW • 10:10-11:20am • In-Person • 9 units • Qualifies for the Architectural History Requirement

This course is intended to serve as an introduction to the evolution of urban spaces and the function of the architecture in South Asia, China, Korea and Japan. It is organized chronologically and will examine the impact of indigenous philosophical principles on the organization of villages, capital cities, and religious centers.

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Instructor: Sarosh Anklesaria
W • 7:00-10:00pm • In-Person • 9 units

This course will consider the agency of architecture simultaneously through historical and contemporary forms of praxis as well as theories that inform them.

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Instructor: Jackie McFarland
WF • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 9 units

The intent of this course is the explore how Afrofuturism allows one to sift perspectives out of a Eurocentric, white, patriarchal, heteronormative perspective to give agency to those who see and experience the world through different eyes. In this seminar we will explore different ways the black imagination has been used to create a world where African-Americans render themselves visible in the past, present, and future.

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Instructor: Nida Rehman
F • 10:10-11:30am • In-Person • 3 units (Mini 2)

This course will offer critical perspectives on the relationships and spatial politics of health, ecology, and architecture — conceiving architecture as cultural imaginations and grounded inhabitations of space, rather than expert prescriptions or techno-fixes.

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Instructor: Ray Gastil
R • 4:40-7:30pm • In-Person • Variable units

Through presentations, case studies, and the semester project, students will develop strategies to respond to the challenges of density, information, equity, and climate change.

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Instructor: Joshua Lee
MW • 8:35-9:55am • In-Person • Variable units

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: Jordan Geiger
W • 1:25-4:20pm • Remote Only • 9 units

This seminar focuses on relations between architecture, information and computing technologies, and society as they are conditioned by speed: rates of transfer, response, exchange, movement, cognition, and more.

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Instructor: Heather Bizon
F • 1:25-4:20pm • In-Person • 9 units

This seminar focuses on the formless as an operation relative to social constructs, parametrics and aesthetics. We will investigate the means and methods of representation relative to the formless and the built environment.

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Instructors: Ramesh Krishnamurti, Jinmo Rhee
TR • 1:25-2:45pm • Remote Only • 12 units

This course gives an overview of the main topics in generative systems, with historical notes and technical specifications addressing topics such as variational modeling, rule-based modeling, directed and dynamic simulation, optimization, and learning.

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Instructor: Daragh Byrne
TR • 10:10am-12:00pm • In-Person • 9-12 units

As part of this project-based course, we’ll get hands-on with emerging technologies, concepts and applications in the Internet of Things through a critical lens.

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Instructor: Ardavan Bidgoli
TR • 8:00-9:50am • Remote Only • 9 units

Introduction to machine learning in design introduces students to this emerging field, giving them the tools to make their own machine-learning-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: Nina Baird
MW • 1:25-2:45pm • In-Person • 9 units

This graduate level course explores the requirements and strategies for achieving successful net zero multifamily housing. Through lectures, research, discussion, and a final applied project, we consider the design approaches, codes, policy, technology, and energy infrastructure that support net zero or carbon neutral performance.

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