Introduction to technical building systems - Structure, Environmental and Enclosure - and their integration with an emphasis on quantifying performance and increasing sustainability. Content includes survey of these three system types - typical components, basis of performance, and analysis of performance - and introduction to related conventions of construction and architectural detailing to realize them.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

Structural Design with timber, steel and concrete (allowable stress, plastic, and composite design respectively). Students will develop understanding and application of quantitative methods of structural design for conventional structural components and systems - beams, columns, trusses, frames, walls, etc. in multiple materials. Introduces the conventions of detailing structural systems in these materials. Introduces systems and requirements for building foundation, gravity superstructure, and lateral superstructure.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for second-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

Comprehensive design of building enclosures - integrated consideration of structural design, tolerance, detailing, thermal transmission, air transmission, and moisture transmission. Introduce typical and atypical systems of enclosure with emphasis on relative advantages of different systems depending on location, intended performance, and design intent.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

Capstone architectural technology design class focusing on the integration of Structural, Environmental, Enclosure, and Circulation systems. Course to be semester long group design project with labs/workshops using related quantitative analysis and design tools to design systems for a complete building in detail. Special consideration for egress, accessibility, life safety, general code requirements (construction type and zoning), and documentation standards.

This course is a requirement for second-year MArch (2yr) and third-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

Capstone architectural technology design class focusing on the integration of Structural, Environmental, Enclosure, and Circulation systems. Course to be semester long group design project with labs/workshops using related quantitative analysis and design tools to design systems for a complete building in detail. Special consideration for egress, accessibility, life safety, general code requirements (construction type and zoning), and documentation standards.

This course is a requirement for second-year MArch (2yr) and third-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

Anyone following contemporary debates in architecture knows that there are as many definitions of architecture's disciplinarity as there are people who attempt to define it. In the current spate of publications on this topic, Mark Jarzombek declares architecture to be a failed discipline; Jane Rendell claims that architecture is a 'subject' subsuming several disciplines; Mark Wigley ruminates upon the prosthetic nature of the discipline to the sciences; Bob Somol and Sarah Whiting attempt to recover a Foucaultian disciplinarity in which norms, principles and traditions are supplanted by performative practice; Akos Moravansky argues that the disciplinarity of architecture resists the discursive approach embodied in post-1968 theory; Keller Easterling seeks the trapdoor into another habit of mind" by eschewing narrow categories of thought for more inclusive ones; Sylvia Lavin uses the analogy of the 'kiss' between an installation and the architecture that houses it as a model of architectural inter-disciplinarity as media interaction; and Hal Foster and Michael Speaks face off on the relative merits of design intelligence and critical distance. How can a student of architecture ever gain a foothold in this complex and confusing debate? At stake in the debates over disciplinarity is the question: how can we identify architecture's categories of knowledge, and how did the categorization of knowledge become a priority? This Disciplinarity seminar will historically situate the circumstances of architecture's emerging disciplinarity, and thematize it through three seemingly disparate but operatively identical lenses: the aesthetic, the historic, and the technological. Although the debates cited above appear unruly at first blush, fundamentally they aggregate around the relative merits of defining disciplinary categories of knowledge either too narrowly or too broadly, focusing either on architecture's autonomy or its extra-disciplinary appropriations. In addition to architecture's various categories of knowledge, the seminar will consider the influence of disciplinarity on our practices, considering how various classifications of architectural knowledge affect its techniques, standards, and formats of dissemination. From its Foucaultian framing to its current incarnations, Disciplinarity will unpack the construction of architecture's disciplinarity, and shed some much-needed light on what it means for architects to be disciplinary.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

This is a theoretical seminar course that will be concerned with ideas and architectural knowledge that may be cultivated and tested through discourse. The course discussions will focus on an expansive role of architectural tools. While acknowledging a wealth of disciplinary conventions, histories and theories, this course recognizes that the forms of representation within the discipline of architecture have the capacity to affect the discipline of architecture and are not fixed. Students in this course will be expected to build upon their previous architectural education through a series of directed projects aimed at advancing architectural theories, ideas and methods. Some of the questions that students will be expected to address are: What are the practical, theoretical, and creative implications of a drawing that functions as architecture? How do architects change the way we make and think thanks to digital media? How do architects represent and model natural forces? How do architects express political or social agendas? What is the nature of an architectural contribution to interdisciplinary discourse? How can representation enable new kinds of artistic and research-based practices for architecture? Students will be expected to self-direct their process while framing their work intellectually in a seminar environment.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

This course is limited to first-year MArch (2yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (2yr)

In the first semester, graduate students begin their investigation and produce clay works that allow the faculty to assess their approach and capabilities. Students are available and pursue active contact with the faculty. Students also attend supplemental department presentations.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Ceramics Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

The second semester is a development of the ideas and work begun in the first. Students are available and pursue active contact with the faculty. Students also attend supplemental department presentations.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Ceramics Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

Continued exploration begun during the first year leads to the presentation of a thesis project. Students work during class hours to ensure daily contact with faculty.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Ceramics Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

This course helps the Ceramics Graduate Student develop a vocabulary of concepts concerning their works in clay. A slide presentation is made by each student concerning the relationship between an artist's resources, historical precedent and works in clay for class discussion.

Offered as CER-413G and GRAD-413G.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Ceramics Students.
 

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

Continued exploration begun during the first year leads to the presentation of a thesis project. Students work during class hours to ensure daily contact with faculty.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Ceramics Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

A seminar exploring ceramic method and expression from technical perspectives. A study of raw materials including clay, clay bodies, and glaze calculation. The focus is the connection between technical development, and aesthetic expression. In-depth independent research required. A materials diary kept.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Ceramics Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

As Graduate Design students we will consider how ceramics processes could inform your design work. Through demonstrations, discussions, projects, critiques, and much hands-on work, you should arrive at a fundamental understanding of ceramic hand building as a means to make art. You'll begin to understand what clay can and cannot do in its various stages. Unlike wood or metal - ceramics does not have an inherent structure - it must be built into the form and be made to withhold the stress of shrinkage and crack-age during the drying and firing stages. Hand building is the first step to understanding ceramics and the tools, materials and equipment in ceramic production used by designers. Along with hand building students will be introduced to mold-making, digital ceramics, simple clay and glaze chemistry and the various firing processes.

Elective

The purpose of this course is to prepare a written thesis. You will be required to develop an outline, bibliography, and first and second drafts. Completion and presentation will be during the following spring semester. Schedule individually arranged with instructor.

Enrollment is limited to second-year Graduate Ceramics Students.

This intensive studio course investigates computational approaches to generating sound and image in real time. Precedents from experimental film and video, as well as sound installation and performance art will be examined in relationship both to human perception and the, students' artistic practice. The course will include discussion of key historical works and texts, hands-on demonstrations and in-class projects, as well as critical engagement with new works by class members. Students will use programming environments such as Max and its object libraries for sound and video, MSP and Jitter to explore the creative and expressive potentials of an intermedia production practice culminating in the development of a larger work that incorporates knowledge gained throughout the course.

Estimated Materials Cost: $100.00

Elective

This course explores the relationships between new media languages and physical space. Building from the history and aesthetics of installation art and relational theater and based on conceptualizations such as "Relational Architecture" by Lozano-Hemmer and the "Poetics of Augmented Space" by Lev Manovich, we will learn to leverage interactive and audiovisual elements in order to design spatial experiences that are media-rich, relational, and responsive. We will use software, video-projectors, sensors and VR equipment, and explore emergent techniques including video-mapping, computer vision and augmented reality. We will learn to deploy not only vision, but also hearing and haptics to create immersive and multi-sensory environments. Class is comprised of lectures, hands-on workshops and individual projects. Students will gain a deep understanding of topics of spatial thinking and user-generated experiences related to space, as well as a theoretical and critical understanding of the history of installation and interactive arts. Although not a prerequisite, basic coding or scripting knowledge (Processing, javascript, or MAX, Touch Designer, etc.) is recommended.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Elective

This seminar focuses on exploring technological textile practices to challenge and disrupt the hegemonic conceptions on art and technology, specifically on e-textile field. This seminar seeks to question the hegemonic technological tools, and the paradigms they involve, in order to create e-textile projects from a radical, critical, situated, and anticolonial perspective. Articulating textile techniques (embroidery, patchwork and sewing in general) with simple and low tech analogical electronic mechanisms (LED lights, motors, DIY loudspeakers, etc.), each student will create a e-textile piece. Electronics then will become part of the tissue: threads that conductive threads, batteries, LEDs, motors and speakers will invade the fabrics like a thread, a buttonhole or a button. The interactive and haptic aspect of the textiles, based on tactile stimuli, sonic devices, and light, will make visible political thoughts, actions and feelings. Going beyond the dominant and non-neutral narratives implies seeking into other forms of art practices to question the epistemological foundation itself. The goal of this seminar is to work from scratch in order to develop DIY, e-textile poetics, activism, techno-feminism, craftivism and social practices rooted in the territories themselves, interweaving with their own traditions, cultures and idiosyncrasies, in order to nurture resistant forms of conceiving digital and e-textile projects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution" - Paul Gauguin. This studio course explores how AI’s rapid progress is challenging artists today. As we work with these exciting, terrifying new tools, we’ll discuss how artists have responded to transformative media of the past like the camera, the television, and the internet. How can we comment on the ethical concerns of AI technology? Should we change how we think about creativity? And who will the machines replace? 

Students will experiment with new tools as they are released throughout the semester, as well as interview machine learning researchers and digital artists. Authors include: Walter Benjamin, Ray Kurzweil, Harold Cohen, N. Katherine Hayles, and Ted Chiang. No coding experience is required. 

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

‘Camouflage as Praxis: Now You See Me Now You’ is a course exploring the forms, uses, and potentials of camouflage (or invisibility) as a strategy deployed by marginalized communities in the face of dominant hegemonies that seek to detect and disempower us. Grappling with the nuanced politics of representation and carefully unpacking the potential pitfalls and advantages of visibility, this course asks students to confront their own relationships with being in/visible, and create work from this place of definition/obscurity. 

The course considers various figures such as the undercommons (Fred Moten & Stefano Harney), Ditto (the formless pokémon), Banksy (the anonymous artist), and cuttlefish (camouflaging cephalopods), among others, to uncover what it means to cover and make visible what it means to be invisible. Readings include excerpts from Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, For Opacity by Edouard Glissant, and Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

While course content will focus on film/video, animation, photography, and installation works, this course is interdisciplinary, and invites creative practitioners and scholars from all backgrounds and disciplines to consider how concepts of il/legibility apply to their chosen disciplines.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective