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: 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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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: 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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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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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.

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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.

Instructor: Eddy Man Kim
MWF • 1:25-4:15pm • CFA 200 • In-Person

This studio will investigate the role and process of architectural design as three critical acts: to see, to empathize, and to deliver.

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Instructor: Jon Holmes
MW • 10:30-11:20am • CFA Shop • In-Person
MW • 11:30am-12:20pm • CFA Shop • In-Person
MW • 6:30-7:20pm • CFA Shop • In-Person
MW • 7:30-8:20pm • CFA Shop • In-Person

Instructor: Heather Workinger
TR • 1:25-2:45pm • CFA 214 • In-Person

Instructor: Doug Cooper
TR • 9:05-11:55am • CFA 200 • In-Person

Drawing I is an introductory course in free-hand architectural drawing for 1st year architecture students and students from other disciplines.

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Instructor: Matt Huber
TR • 9:05-11:55am • CFA 200 • In-Person

Instructors: Valentina Vavasis, Kai Gutschow
TR • 1:25-2:45pm • CFA 214 • In-Person

This course will start by defining “ethics” and “design ethics” and consider how ethics differs from morals or laws.

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Instructor: Laura Garofalo
MWF • 1:25-4:15pm • CFA 200 • In-Person

The studio will explore the topics of morphology, organization, and context in architecture.

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Instructor: Gerard Damiani
MWF • 10:10-11:00am • MM 103 • In-Person

This course introduces and examines the fundamentals between design intent and construction materials, the science of materials (performance) and their assemblies.

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Instructor: Omar Karaguzel
TR • 3:05-4:25pm • CUC McKenna • In-Person

The goal of this course is to introduce fundamental theories of building physics and simulation-aided design development skill sets in the fields of building lighting and thermal performance and room acoustics.

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Instructor: Josh Bard
TR • 1:25-2:45pm • MM A14 • In-Person

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of generative modeling using computer aided design as practiced in the field of architecture.

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Instructor: Dana Cupkova
MWF • 1:25-4:15pm • MM 312 • In-Person

“Praxis Studio I: Cultivating Infrastructure: Inhabiting Stacked Ecologies" is a core design studio centered on architecture’s response to climate change. Studio pedagogy is focused on a role of landscape in the built environment: uncovering its social, infrastructural and ecological histories, and related patterns of pollution in the effort to re-shape cultures of post industrial urbanization and discover design strategies for architecture as a vehicle for ecological and communal restoration.

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Instructor: Vivian Loftness
TR • 3:05-4:25pm • MM A14 • In-Person
T • 7:00-9:20pm • MM 103 • In-Person

This course introduces architectural design responses for energy conservation, natural conditioning, human comfort, and the site-specific dynamics of climate.

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Instructor: Stefan Gruber
TR • 10:10-11:30am • MM 103 • In-Person

This course introduces students to urbanism and explores architecture as situated and relational practice subject to broader social, political, economic, ecological and cultural forces.

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Instructor: Nina Baird
TR • 8:35-9:55am • MM 103 • In-Person

The primary goal of this course focuses on sustainability as covered by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This course will develop your understanding of how you can contribute to that future through design in the built environment.

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Instructor: Francesca Torello
TR • 10:10-11:30am • PH A19 • In-Person

Instructor: Jeremy Ficca
TR • 12:30-4:20pm • MM 312 • In-Person

This studio presumes that a viable transition to a circular economy necessitates a recalibration of how one builds and ultimately, how design can better address a broader understanding of its processes and artifacts.

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Instructor: Stefan Gruber
TR • 12:30-4:20pm • MM 312 • In-Person

This first semester of the yearlong “Commoning the City” research-based design studio provides a theoretical framing and case study research as stepping stones toward the development of an individual thesis proposal.

48-742 Urban Design Methods with Jonathan Kline is a co-requisite.

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Instructor: Gerard Damiani
TR • 12:30-4:20pm • MM 312 • In-Person

ASO will go beyond how space and time affect the role of architectural sequence in real time to a question of how a building is understood throughout time.

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Instructor: Christine Mondor
TR • 12:30-4:20pm • MM 312 • In-Person

HELIOStudio will examine how the pivot between energy technologies will reshape our use space and will test how our landscape and urban form determine how we deploy technologies.

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Instructor: Hal Hayes
TR • 12:30-4:20pm • CFA 200 • In-Person

This studio will help students develop a strong, comprehensive, holistic design process and learn to seek inspiration from the design components and socio-cultural issues involved in a large, complex building project.

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Instructor: Stephen Lee
F • 1:25-4:25pm • Room TBD • In-Person

The Cut, the Beach & Beyond will be a Fall design elective with a Spring build option studio working with Campus Design & Facility Development, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and campus constituents to improve the quality of life through design intervention(s) on campus.

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Instructor: Bill Bates
TR • 12:30-4:20pm • CFA 200 • In-Person

This studio will explore an opportunity the purpose of past structures by revisiting an abandoned state prison structure, the Pennsylvania Correctional Institution of Pittsburgh, designed almost two centuries ago.

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Instructor: Mary-Lou Arscott & Francesca Torello
TR • 12:30-4:20pm • CFA 200 • In-Person

This studio will move from a critical reconsideration of Pittsburgh’s versions of modernism to formulate novel responses by experimenting with non-linear narratives in moving image.

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Instructor: Jeremy Ficca
F • 10:45am-12:00pm • MM 303 • In-Person

This course explores architecture's digital culture to introduce contemporary topics of architectural research, design, practice, and construction.

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Instructor: TBD
MF • 1:20-5:10pm • MM 312 • In-Person

Instructors: Sarosh Anklesaria, Jonathan Kline, Emek Erdolu
MWF • 1:30-4:20pm • MM 320 • In-Person

This studio unpacks architecture’s entanglement with extraction, exploitation, and capital to explore emergent models for transformative socio-ecological praxis.

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Instructor: Kai Gutschow
TR • 11:50am-1:10pm • CFA 214 • In-Person

This graduate seminar starts with the conviction that Architecture is not only buildings, technology, form, program, environment, or space . . . but also culturally constructed discourse and ideas.

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Instructor: Vivian Loftness
TR • 3:05-4:25pm • MM A14 • In-Person
T • 7:00-9:20pm • MM 103 • In-Person

This course introduces architectural design responses for energy conservation, natural conditioning, human comfort, and the site-specific dynamics of climate.

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Instructor: Nina Baird
TR • 8:35-9:55am • MM 103 • In-Person

The primary goal of this course focuses on sustainability as covered by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This course will develop your understanding of how you can contribute to that future through design in the built environment.

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Instructor: Francesca Torello
TR • 10:10-11:30am • PH A19 • In-Person

Instructor: Stefani Danes
MWF • 1:25-4:15pm • MM 312 • In-Person

Instructor: Paul Ostegaard
W • 10:10-11:30am • MM 409 • In-Person

Instructor: Heather Bizon
F • 9:00-11:50am • CFA 206A • In-Person

Instructor: Kristen Kurland
TR • 3:00-4:20pm • Room TBD • In-Person

Instructor: Diane Shaw
TR • 3:30-4:40pm • CFA 102 • In-Person

In this course we examine various histories of the design and redesign of cities and the reasons for those interventions.

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Instructor: Ray Gastil
T • 7:00-9:50pm • WEH 6423 • In-Person

The seminar focuses on the connections between policy, planning, and the design of regions, cities, and neighborhoods, down to the scale of the individual project.

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Instructor: Jonathan Kline
F • 9:20-11:40am • CFA 317 • In-Person

This course explores core urban design methods and theories organized into three themes intended to give students a foundational understanding of urban design, examine key critiques of urbanization, and explore urban design’s agency.

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Instructor: Dana Cupkova, TA: Colleen Duong
F • 10:10am-12:00pm • MM 307 • In-Person

This graduate-level seminar offers an overview of scholarly, design-based, and research-focused approaches to bio-technological design frameworks, committed to connecting critical thinking and design methodologies towards constructed ecologies across scales: from material systems, to architecture, urban design and landscape infrastructures.

Instructor: Azadeh Sawyer
Day TBD • Time TBD • Room TBD • Modality TBD

This is a variable 12/18 unit course that ensures a delineated, focused scope, with refined timeline and deliverables for the Fall Synthesis effort. Design-research thesis projects are situated at the intersection of design, material lifecycle and computation, addressing multicultural aspects of ecological thinking, while enabling actionable expertise in sustainable design methodologies.

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Instructor: Vivian Loftness
Day TBD • Time TBD • Room TBD • Modality TBD

Instructor: Daniel Cardoso
W • 8:00-9:20am • GHC 4211 • In-Person

The subject of this course is the emergence of computation as a pivotal concept in contemporary architecture and other design fields.

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Instructor: Ramesh Krishnamurti
TR • 1:25-2:45pm • Room TBD • Modality TBD

This course aims to prepare students to model geometry through scripted development of parametric schemes for architecture applications — that is, to introduce students to basic scripting with a focus on algorithms relating to form making and to reinforce and extend basic concepts of parametric modeling.

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Instructor: Sinan Goral
TR • 7:00-8:20pm • Room TBD • In-Person

Possibilistic Design is a project-based design seminar that concentrates on how critical design theory and powerful storytelling might pave the way for a more responsible, equitable, and exciting future.

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Instructor: Daragh Byrne
TR • 1:30-3:20pm • Remote

This course will chart the emergence of the now ‘connected world’ to explore the possibilities for future products and connected spaces with the Internet of Things.

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Instructor: Daragh Byrne
TR • 1:30-3:20pm • Remote

This seminar examines the space between the smart city and smart home.

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Instructor: Daniel Cardoso
R • 5:10-6:30pm • PHA 22 • In-Person

Through assignments, discussions, and presentations, this graduate research seminar cultivates the skills to identify a research question, situate it within a wider scholarly conversation, state its relevance, and clearly formulate its methods and potential contributions.

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Instructor: Daniel Cardoso
Days TBD • Time TBD • Mill 19 • In-Person

This course interrogates the confluence of robotics and artificial intelligence methods and its potential applications to architectural design and construction.

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Instructor: Erica Cochran
MW • 10:10-11:30am • Remote

The course is an introduction to the importance of the indoor environment and human health and productivity. The course provides an overview of the metrics utilized to define IEQ and methods to identify their correlations to energy consumption, health, productivity, equitable design and design justice.

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Instructor: Joshua Lee
MWF • 1:30-2:50pm • BH 136E • In-Person

Instructor: Steve Quick
MWF • 3:05-4:25pm • MM 415 IW • In-Person

Transdisciplinary Thinking is a compendium of Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) practice, methods, and theories with an emphasis on how the AEC professions can more effectively work together by understanding each other’s roles, responsibilities, and professional perspectives.

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Instructor: Doug Cooper
W • 8:00-10:50am • MM 303 • In-Person

Color Drawing builds knowledge and provides practice in the use of color, principally with watercolor, to depict architectural surroundings.

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Instructor: Irving Oppenheim
W • 1:30-4:20pm • Remote

This course culminates in a group project involving form-finding and analysis/design of a cable net roof, based either on a prominent built example or a 3-D boundary geometry chosen by the group.

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Instructor: Ardavan Bidgoli
TR • 10:10-11:30 am • Remote

Inquiry into Machine Learning and 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: Tommy CheeMou Yang
M • 10:10am-12:00pm • CFA 211 • In-Person

The Urban Traces Seminar weaves history, ethnography, storytelling, and the delayering of the built environment through fieldwork to examine and counter-map the representation of the city.

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Instructor: Laura Garofalo
W • 9:40am-12:30pm • CFA 206A • In-Person

This course will question how we perceive, define, represent, construct and reconstruct our world in relation to evolving concepts of “nature” and their manifestation in art, architecture, and landscape architecture.

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Instructor: Jackie McFarland
W • 10:10am-12:00pm • CFA 211 • In-Person

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.

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Instructor: Diane Shaw
TR • 10:10-11:30am • CFA 102 • In-Person

This course surveys the architecture and urbanism of Mexico and Guatemala during the Mesoamerican and Spanish Colonial eras.

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Instructor: Francesca Torello
MW • 10:10-11:20am • MM 107 • In-Person

The course follows the intertwined histories of architecture and archaeology from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century, critically engaging with the outsized influence of classical antiquity on architectural theory and practice and its role of authority and model in the Western artistic and cultural debate.

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Instructor: Nina Barbuto
TR • 1:25-3:15pm • CFA 211 • In-Person

Instructor: Nina Barbuto
TR • 11:50am-1:10pm • HL 106C • In-Person

Instructor: Nida Rehman
F • 9:00-10:20am • Remote

Situating Research will introduce incoming graduate students to a range of research approaches through lectures and conversations with SoA faculty, PhD researchers, and other invited guests.

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Instructor: Eddy Man Kim
Day TBD • Time TBD • Room TBD • Modality TBD

The Design Skills Workshop (DSW) is a summer course for incoming SoA graduate students to establish a baseline of technical skills appropriate to the expectations of the design culture at the SoA.

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Instructor: Josh Bard
TR • 1:25-2:45pm • MM A14 • In-Person

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of generative modeling using computer aided design as practiced in the field of architecture.

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Instructor: Nina Baird
TR • 11:40am-1:00pm • MM 415 IW • In-Person

HVAC and Power Supply for Low-Carbon Buildings is a graduate course that focuses on heating, cooling, ventilation, and power supply systems for new and future commercial buildings.

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Instructor: Omer Karaguzel
TR • 10:10-11:30am • MM 415 IW • In-Person

The Environmental Performance Simulation (EPS) course outlines a series of environmental design principles with emphasis on evidence-based design approaches and reviews of building case studies.

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Instructor: Vivian Loftness
TR • 8:35-9:55am • IW 415 • In-Person

This course explores the relationship of quality buildings, building systems, infrastructures and land-use to productivity, health, well-being and a sustainable environment.

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Instructor: Kristen Kurland
TR • 10:10-11:30am • Remote

This course is designed to introduce a student to 3D software tools, including AutoCAD 3D, Revit Architecture, and 3D Studio MAX.

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Instructor: Valentina Vavasis
TR • 9:50-11:10am • DH 1112 • In-Person

This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate development: its process and context.

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Instructor: Joshua Lee
MW • 9:50-11:10am • MM 415 IW • In-Person

Instructor: Jeremy Ficca
MF • 9:05-10:35am • MM C4 • In-Person

The course emphasizes the reciprocity of design and prototyping, challenging students to leverage physical artifacts as tools for thinking. In this way, prototyping is a means of exploration, not merely a method of production or fabrication. More than a large model or mere three-dimensional rendering of form, the prototype is a testbed and instrument of design projection.

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Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

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(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.

Instructor(s): Various
Remote Only

This course is for Ph.D. students who are preparing their dissertation proposals.

Instructor: Nida Rehman
F • 2:30-4:00pm • Room TBD • In-Person

This course is an Ethics Mini 2 Elective. In this seminar, we will examine the histories and definitions of environmental racism, environmental injustice/justice, and environmental unfreedoms. We will read and discuss literature from a range of fields, explore case studies in the U.S. and beyond, and have conversations with activists, architects, and scholars invested in spatial justice. Through these we will critically assess architecture’s role as a mechanism of environmental inequities and injustices, and learn from social movements for radical and hopeful change.

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Instructor: Jordan Geiger
W • 1:25-4:25pm • Remote

This seminar’s collective research into collateral architectures will let students come away with ideas for new practices, new users or clients, new uses, and new experiences.

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Instructor: Ramesh Krishnamurti
TR • 3:35-4:25pm • Remote

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.

Read More →

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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