Global Arc

The course focuses on the social forces that shape design thinking. Its objective is to introduce architectural and urban design issues to build design and critical thinking skills from a multidisciplinary perspective. The studio is team-taught from faculty across disciplines to expose students to the multiple forces within which design operates.

This course sets out two goals: the first is to understand the theories and techniques of geometry in architectural representation; the second is to develop the student's drawing sensibilities through 5 thematic drawing projects engaging both digital and manual techniques. Each new theme will be introduced through a lecture, tutorial, and discussion including a number of specific readings related to the topic at hand. The second class will be an individual desk crit to discuss the development of each drawing project. The third class will consist of a group pin-up review of each drawing experiment.

This course examines two places that play an outsized role in the American economy: Wall Street and Silicon Valley. They are distinct and similarly enduring locations. They embody a divide between urban and suburban, East Coast and West Coast, skyscrapers and office parks, tradition and innovation, conservative and liberal. Despite the ubiquity of electronic trading, firms still congregate in Lower Manhattan. Tech workers fight traffic to maintain a presence in Mountain View. What makes these places endure? How do their histories, architecture, economic dynamics, and distinct cultures shape them as places?

Architectural theory, criticism, and historiography from the Renaissance to the present, emphasizing the transformations of the classical Vitruvian tradition and theories of modern architecture from the end of the 17th century to the 1930s. Architectural thought in its institutional and cultural context and as it relates to design method and practice. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An introduction to the nature of building. Emphasis will be placed on understanding construction methods, materials, and evaluating the processes by which architects formulate strategies to execute their design ideas. A continuing theme will be to evaluate the relationship between architectural design and building systems and technology. Two lectures, one two-hour laboratory.

Focusing on the mutual reception of Italian and American architecture 1920-2018, we take into account divergences of urban form and architectural tradition that separate the two cultures alongside convergences of theory and practice. Starting with the impact of Wright on Mollino and Moretti, we move to the critical fortune of Organic Architecture in the postwar work of Scarpa and to the diverse roles of Ponti and BBPR in the USA, culminating with the dialogue between the New York Five and Italy in the 1970s. The course ends with an overview of contemporary dialogues between Italian and American architects, theoreticians and critics.

This course will focus on a number of specific design techniques in a highly regimented manner. The theme of this semester will be the relationship between geometry and matter in the development of a piece of furniture. We will explore the nature of these complex surfaces and the effects of a limited but continuous enclosed environment on human functions. We will elaborate our skills in model-building, with particular emphasis placed on the value of accurate representation both by fostering craft and by exploring novel techniques of fashioning and representing precise geometries. Note: ARC 204 is a prerequisite to ARC 350.

This junior studio will focus on a number of specific design techniques in a highly regimented manner. We will continue to sharpen our skills in model-building, with emphasis placed on the value of accurate representation both by fostering craft and by exploring novel techniques of fashioning and representing precise geometries.

This design seminar explores sustainable design/analysis methods and methodologies through the lens of computation. Today, the general use of digital design technologies has moved away from the initial focus on representation of information and digital form towards the act of processing/computing, and thus it's integration into the design process. This seminar will focus on this advanced state and explore the design integration of computation for sustainable means.

This course will examine the possibilities of representation and information in the virtual realm. Through a series of modeling/rendering/compositing exercises, presentations, and in-class discussions, students will investigate the evolving relationship between architecture and its means of representation, as well as broader issues of technology and culture. The course will provide a firm understanding of current computer software. One three-hour seminar.