Classes

The relationship of architecture and law runs far deeper than the regulatory strictures of building codes or zoning ordinances. Both architecture and law are humanistic disciplines that shape the contours of societies in ways beyond their instrumental or professional applications. They fashion judgments and values, define jurisdictions and transgressions; they invent and maintain cultural imaginaries, sponsor and constrain techniques and practices. Seen in an expansive historical view, architecture and law have long maintained a mutual engagement in the public sphere and in disciplinary discourse.

This reading seminar will explore the myriad manifestations of legal thought, practices, and objects that occur within architectural discourse, and, reciprocally, the many appearances of architecture within law and legal discourse. Each week, the seminar will read across a specific theme to discern and evaluate the circumstances and consequences of a particular relationship of architecture and law. Themes will include property, code, jurisdiction, taxation, precedent, human rights, the rights of nature, copyright, measurement, and other topics across a range of physical and social scales.

The seminar will parallel the Temporal Commons research platform, and therefore issues of design, temporality, and change in the relationship of architecture and law will be of particular interest. The seminar is open to doctoral and masters degree students (and undergraduates with the permission of the instructor). Students may enroll either for 12 units (to take the class as a seminar with a required research paper) or for 6 units (to take the class as a workshop with one required presentation).

MIT Certificate-Protected Syllabus

UG register for 4.651 | Grad register for 4.s62

Critical examination of major developments in European, Asian, and American art from 1940 to the present. Surveys the mainstream of art production but also examines marginal phenomena (feminism, identity politics, AIDS activism, net art) that come to change the terms of art's engagements with civic culture. Visits to area art museums and writing assignments develop skills for visual analysis and critical writing.

MIT Certificate-Protected Syllabus

Studies theoretical and historiographical works pertaining to the fields of art and architectural history. Members of seminar pursue work designed to examine their own presuppositions and methods.

MIT Certificate-Protected Syllabus

This research-intensive graduate seminar will pair engagement with the most recent scholarship on seventeenth-century Dutch art in its economic, environmental, and global contexts with hands-on experience in curatorial practice, ranging from training in provenance research to exhibition development to writing for museum audiences.
A primary focus of the class will be our collective investigation of the MIT Museum's significant, but little-known holdings of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and works on paper. Together we will conceptualize a framework for how best to present these works and our findings to a 21st-century audience. The format for our public-facing work will take the form of a digital and pop-up exhibition of selected artworks combined with a public workshop or a public study day.  

The class will strike a balance between investigations of the MIT Museum’s collection at the museum’s offsite storage facility and discussions of recent interpretations of Dutch art: its visual theorizations of nature and artifice, the anxieties and pleasures of consumption in a capitalist economy, and the role of sight in ordering the world in an era of global commerce, enslavement, and colonial empire. 

The seminar will meet periodically at the MFA Boston’s Center for Netherlandish Art (CNA) together with the seminar “A World Art: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art in Global and Material Perspectives” co-taught by Professor Michael Zell, Boston University, and Dr. Christopher Atkins, the CNA’s director, where we will have further opportunities for direct exchanges with curators and the close examination of works of art.

Because of our work in the MIT Museum’s offsite storage facility and visits to study rooms and conservation labs at the MFA Boston and the Harvard Art Museums, enrollment is strictly limited to 10. 

MIT Certificate-Protected Syllabus

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Major Exam covers a historically broad area of interest and includes components of history, historiography, and theory. Preparation for the exam will focus on four or five themes agreed upon in advance by the student and the examiner, and are defined by their area of teaching interest. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Minor Exam focuses on a specific area of specialization through which the student might develop their particular zone of expertise. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Required for doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. Prior to candidacy, doctoral students are required to write and orally defend a proposal laying out the scope of their thesis, its significance, a survey of existing research and literature, the methods of research to be adopted, a bibliography and plan of work. Work is done in consultation with HTC Faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program guidelines.

This seminar introduces students to environmental challenges in the US and across the globe. We will do this by meeting and talking with amazing professors and researchers across MIT who are working on the science, technology, design, and policy related to many of the major issues of the planet. In visiting these professors and researchers in their labs and workplaces we will discuss the principles of sustainability and explore diverse topics including the science and policy of climate change, material and energy needs of the modern world, the prospects for meaningful circular economies, biodiversity and the bioeconomy and more. Prof. Fernandez, as co-founder of MIT Environmental Research + Action, will guide the seminar through various departments, research groups, and labs to engage MIT faculty and researchers on the pressing environmental questions of our time. The goal of this seminar is to introduce first year students to the rich mosaic of work at MIT oriented toward the environment and the prospect of improving human life and all life on Earth. The sessions will also be an ideal way in which to learn more about the many opportunities for exploring the range of expertise at MIT and directing your studies as an undergraduate toward improving the state of the planet.

John E. Fernandez is professor of architecture, urbanism, and building technology in the Department of Architecture. His research and teaching centers on sustainability, climate change, and biodiversity as co-founder of MIT Environmental Research +Action (ERA), a new model for environmental research and action at MIT uniting cities, the biosphere, and artificial intelligence asco-evolving systems. Fernandez also serves as Head of House at Baker House, supports student-athletes, mentors UROPs, and is a member of the MIT class of 1985.

Investigates the interaction between pedestrian activity, urban form, and land-use patterns in built environments.. Informed by recent literature on pedestrian behavior, subject takes a practical approach, using software tools and analysis methods to operationalize and model pedestrian activity over spatial networks. Uses simplified yet powerful and scalable network analysis methods that focus uniquely on pedestrians, rather than engaging in comprehensive travel demand modeling across all modes. Emphasizes not only modeling or predicting pedestrian activity in given built settings, but also analyzing and understanding how changes in the built environment — land use changes, density changes, and street design changes — can affect pedestrian activity.