Global Arc

This seminar explores architecture in out-of-the-way places through the perspectives of an unlikely set of historical actors: counterinsurgency experts, guerrilla fighters, Indigenous resistance groups, government officials, religious activists. Thinking from the intellectual traditions of the global South, the course explores the ways in which architecture was employed as a narrative device in twentieth century environmentalist movements.

This course examines the relationship between architecture and politics by focusing on the role of the built environment in twentieth and twenty-first century conflicts. We will examine how settler colonialism shapes places, how sectarian conflicts divide cities and how protest movements utilize urban areas. The class will pay particular attention to the everyday practices of the people who inhabit, appropriate and transform these sites. We will look at a number of case studies from the Middle East, Africa, and North America, and embark on ethnographic investigations of specific sites in New York.

The seminar explores how cities are adapting to the threats of climate change. It introduces contemporary practices in climate adaptation planning; reviews theoretical debates related to urban hazards, vulnerability, and resilience; surveys design and planning responses to climate change in relation to historical modes of environmentally responsive design; and explores transformative and equity-focused adaptation approaches. We will discuss urban climate vulnerability and adaptation from three perspectives: pragmatic planning and public policy, design-oriented proposals, and mobilization for social transformation and equity.

Zoning has preemptively defined what is possible to build, occupy, and design in the largest cities in the United States for over one hundred years. In the 21st century, zoning also enters cities and regions as a means of interpreting and defining effects of climate change, parameters of protest, movement of water, and economic investment. This course introduces students to zoning as an urbanistic tool related to representation, classification, and design. Readings investigate zoning as a form of both ideation and technology.

Urbanism requires anticipatory and transdisciplinary thought about the future, which is uncertain by definition. Scenario planning and futures studies provide the techniques and conceptual frameworks for developing strategy in spaces of uncertainty. This seminar will provide an introduction to fundamental techniques and concepts from the practices of scenario planning and apply them to specific questions about the future of cities and metropolitan areas.

This course bridges the gap between pedagogy on Western cities, and that on cities of the so-called Global South, to compare urbanization and social movements across the Americas and South Asia. Specific course units will examine the development of informal settlements, urban segregation, enclave urbanism, privatization of public spaces, evictions, gentrification, homelessness, and the criminalization of the urban poor. Attention will also be paid to social movements focused on the right to the city. It asks how these processes and phenomena are similar, different, and / or interconnected across contexts.

Housing ideas and urban projects of architects and social scientists since the mid-19th century as a response to industrialization, the development of the welfare state, the rise of professionalism, and the dispersion of democratic culture. Material drawn from architecture, urban planning, political theory, sociology, and social psychology. One three-hour seminar.

Selected issues in relationship to the development of architectural history and theory as critical disciplines, emphasizing the historiography and methodology of these disciplines. Course focuses on particular critics through a close reading and analysis of selected texts. One three-hour seminar.

Examines architecture as cultural production, taking into account its capacity to structure both physical environments and social organizations. A specific problem or topic area will be set by each studio critic, and may include a broad range of building types, urban districts or regional landscapes, questions of sustainability, building materials, or building performance. Studio work will include research and data gathering, analysis, and program definition. Students are expected to master a full range of design media, including drawing, model-making, and computer-aided design.

Introduction to concepts of energy utilization and conservation in building. Course presents the physics of building thermal performance, including quantitative methods, and discusses conservation strategies in building design and source energy. Passive design and alternative energy sources, including wind and solar-thermal, will be covered. One three-hour seminar.