Global Arc

One of architecture's oddities is that its bibliography features very little biography, since most architects of the last 2,000 years have been telling us about everything except themselves. It is this omission that this course seeks to address, and is inspired by the only sustained investigation into architectural biography, Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550). Prompted by Vasari, the lectures will present a history of architecture through a series of characters, as well as images, quotations, and sound recordings, not so much as a history of their projects, but as a history of their lives.

The senior thesis (498-499) is a year-long project in which students complete a substantial piece of research and scholarship under the supervision and advisement of a Princeton faculty member. While a year-long thesis is due in the student's final semester of study, the work requires sustained investment and attention throughout the academic year.

The senior thesis (498-499) is a year-long project in which students complete a substantial piece of research and scholarship under the supervision and advisement of a Princeton faculty member. While a year-long thesis is due in the student's final semester of study, the work requires sustained investment and attention throughout the academic year.

This course examines how politico-ideological and environmental discourses have shaped cities and their architectures in colonial and postcolonial Asia. Paying close attention to select cities including Almaty, Dhaka, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Islamabad, New Delhi, Pyongyang, Phnom Penh, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, Tashkent and Tokyo, it aims to provide a preliminary answer to the increasingly urgent questions: what are the specificities of `Asian' modernity, and how was this modernity embraced and contested in urban contexts throughout Asia? For each city under study, a notable work of architecture will be singled out and subjected to close reading.

This elective studio will allow students to continue to develop and expand architectural design techniques. This course will foster a deeper understanding of how to effectively convey ideas and concepts through a series of exercises that will culminate with the design of a mid-size building on an urban site. Students will refine their craftsmanship while engaging with innovative drawing and modeling techniques.

This course addresses reparations as a matter of design. Aside from matters of economics, history, or policy, engaging with reparations requires multiple environmental epistemologies. This course pursues a transcalar and interlocking approach. While the topic of reparations has circulated broadly with the work of activists and scholars, such as Angela Y. Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates, architectural discourse has only recently begun to engage with reparations.  Literature, research, and policy related to reparations intersect the built environment, urbanism, planetary climate crisis, postcolonialism, art history, and aesthetics.

How do sources determine the histories we can tell about architecture, urban space, and the agents that enliven it? How do we reconcile seeming absences and actual acts of erasure that stare back at us from the archive? How can feminist, gender, queer and trans* theory help us chart new avenues for writing critical architectural histories that are attentive to discourses of difference but also narratives of equity? Which methods, beyond conventional modes of architectural inquiry, can we employ to uncover histories of groups and institutions that have actively resisted dominant regimes of power and their corresponding systems of knowledge?

This elective studio will allow students to expand their skillset and broaden their repertoire of design techniques. A special emphasis will be given to understanding structural systems and the relationship between systems of construction and environmental issues. Exercises will allow students to learn new drawing and modeling techniques that foreground the art of building.

This course introduces the fundamentals of robotics through the lens of creativity, exemplified through robotic painting and artistic machine creation. Students will learn robot kinematics, toolpath planning, and the basics of robot simulation and control, tailored for architecture and digital fabrication applications. Students will apply these concepts to personalized robotic drawing and painting techniques to gain an understanding of different robot control methods and investigate the potential of machine creativity.

This course introduces the fundamentals of immersive design through the interplay of audiovisual elements, emphasizing real-time interaction and spatial simulation. The course is designed to help students recognize the value of interacting with virtual elements and environments as a fundamental aspect of design practice, enhancing their understanding of spatial experience, user engagement, and immersive storytelling. Through a hands-on approach, students will gain proficiency in game engines and interactive visualization techniques tailored for architectural and digital design applications.