Detail is tricky. Despite its ubiquity, it remains underappreciated as a site of political, historical, and aesthetic meaning. It is elusive, often strange, and strung between opposites. It can be necessary or excessive, graphic or tectonic, honest or dishonest —often both. This course investigates various lineages of architectural detail, encouraging students to appreciate the 1:1 as an important scale of intention and invention in our discipline. Lectures and assignments will equip students in noticing the attitudes and sensibilities which emanate from the steps, sills, corners and eaves around them, and developing their own. Drawing on this cultivated awareness, the final project will allow students to experiment with a way of designing buildings that begins at the scale of the hand.

Undergraduates welcome.

Description posted here close to start of term.

Mandatory lottery process.

Description posted here close to start of term.

Mandatory lottery process.

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.

Description posted here close to start of term.

Mandatory lottery process.

Explores photography as a disciplined way of seeing, and as a medium of inquiry and of expressing ideas. Readings, observations, and photographs form the basis of discussions on landscape, light, significant detail, place, poetics, narrative, and how photography can inform research, design and planning, among other issues. Recommended for students who want to employ visual methods in their theses. 

Introduces methods for observing, interpreting, and representing the urban environment. Students draw on their senses and develop their ability to deduce, question, and test conclusions about how the built environment is designed, used, and valued. The interrelationship of built form, circulation networks, open space, and natural systems are a key focus. Supplements existing classes that cover theory and history of city design and urban planning and prepares students without design backgrounds with the fundamentals of physical planning. Intended as a foundation for 11.329.

Students investigate how landscapes and cities shape them — and vice versa — by examining the literature of walking and the environments in which they move. Through extensive walking, students explore the city to analyze its design and varied histories, drawing on cartography, art, sociology, and memory to create fresh narratives. Students write architecture and city criticism, design "story maps," and are invited to walk as an art practice. Emphasis is on the relationship between the human body and freedom, or a lack thereof, and between pathways and the complex emotions that emerge from traversing them.