4.s14

Special Subject: Architecture Design — Architecture of Longevity: Designs for the Third Age

If Maria Montessori designed the tools and environment to meet the cognitive and physical stages of children, how might we similarly design our environment to meet the needs of the "Young Old"?

If Maria Montessori designed the tools and environment to meet the cognitive and physical stages of children, how might we similarly design our environment to meet the needs of the "Young Old"?

This workshop involves collecting, analyzing and drawing examples of designs for older adults from around the world across three ‘scales’: the body, the room, the street. Students in this course will help build an architectural index useful to help navigate the unprecedented "Silver Tsunami" that the United States and other industrialized countries have never before encountered, students will develop a variety of new designs on that can aid in alleviating the double housing and care crises that financially cripples 90% of older adults. Unless redressed, these financial burdens will in turn, fall on the shoulders of younger generations. How can we use architecture to reframe this opportunity and redesign our environments to fully embrace the cognitive, perceptual, and physical changes of humans across all ages — and thrive at each stage?

Fall
2025
2-2-5
G
Schedule
T 10-12
Location
3-329
Enrollment
Limited to 8
Preference Given To
MArch, SMArchS
Can Be Repeated for Credit
Yes
4.250
11.001

Introduction to Urban Design and Development

Examines the evolving structure of cities and the way that cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas can be designed and developed. Surveys the ideas of a wide range of people who have addressed urban problems. Stresses the connection between values and design. Demonstrates how physical, social, political and economic forces interact to shape and reshape cities over time.

Larry Vale
Fall
2025
3-0-9
U
Schedule
MW 11-12:30
Location
2-105
HASS
E/H
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No
4.248
11.329

Advanced Urban Design Skills: Observing, Interpreting, and Planning the City

Through a studio-based course in planning and urban design, builds on the foundation acquired in 11.328 to engage in creative exploration of how design contributes to resilient, just, and vibrant urban places. Through the planning and design of two projects, students creatively explore spatial ideas and utilize various digital techniques to communicate their design concepts, giving form to strategic thinking. Develops approaches and techniques to evaluate the plural structure of the built environment and offer propositions that address policies and regulations as well as the values, behaviors, and wishes of the different users.

Eran Ben-Joseph
Mary Anne Ocampo
Fall
2025
5-3-4
G
Schedule
Lecture: W 5-7:30
Lab/Recitation: F 9-1
Location
10-485
Prerequisites
4.240/11.328
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No
4.240
11.328

Urban Design Skills: Observing, Interpreting, and Representing the City

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.

Eran Ben-Joseph
Mary Anne Ocampo
Fall
2025
4-2-2
G
Schedule
Lecture: W 5-7:30
Lab/Recitation: F 9-1
Location
10-485
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No
4.242
11.240

Walking the City

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. 

Fall
2025
2-0-10
G
Schedule
W 3-5
Location
9-450
Prerequisites
Permission of instructor
Enrollment
Limited to 12; not open to 1st-year students
Preference Given To
Course 4 and 11 graduate students who have completed at least two semesters.
Can Be Repeated for Credit
Yes
4.182

Architectural Design Workshop — Techniques of Resistance

Techniques of Resistance aims to create an archive of communal construction practices located across the heterogeneous territory of South America through the research and documentation of paradigmatic indigenous, vernacular, and popular buildings. This research will form the basis for the design proposal of a contemporary radical project that will emerge from these ancestral techniques and the cases studied in the course.

Architecture, when built, mobilizes a huge—and often invisible—network of resources, knowledge, beliefs, and people involved in the construction of a building. Techniques of Resistance will focus on the study of buildings that are strongly rooted in the environment and ecologies where they are located, with a sensitive understanding of communal cooperation and material cyclability. From the Uros Islands in Lake Titicaca and the Putucos in the Peruvian plateau, to the Shabonos and Churuatas’ large structures in the Amazon, the buildings that we will study offer a collection of construction techniques that serve as a resistance to the homogenization of architecture and the destruction of collective forms of construction.

The creation of an inventory of Techniques of Resistance presents the opportunity to broaden the definition of what a building could be in terms of its material technology and its role in a community, and will serve as the launching point for the development of a project that could redefine these techniques in a contemporary way through an understanding of material behavior, structural details, and geometry.

The course will consist of a combination of theoretical lectures, discussions, research, and design. During the first half of the semester, students will develop drawings and graphic essays as methods of research and documentation of the case studies. These deliverables will be compiled to create the archive of Techniques of Resistance, which will take the form of a publication.

In the second half of the semester, students will work on a conceptual design project for a communal building, structure, or infrastructure, proposing a critical revision of the cases and techniques previously documented. Considerable time will be given for the design process, working together to develop a conceptually and technologically strong project. Classes will take the form of workshop sessions, with design desk critiques and pin-ups. The projects will be communicated through large-scale, delicate, and well-developed drawings and, if possible, a small model.

The materials produced during the course—both the archive and the design projects—will be presented in an exhibition at the end of the fall semester. The course will value commitment, technical precision, detailed representation, and a radical and critical approach to design. Techniques of Resistance will also include contributions from guest speakers whose practices and built projects engage with the technologies and materials discussed during the semester.

Undergraduates welcome.

Fall
2025
3-0-9
Schedule
W 2-5
Location
4-144
Prerequisites
permission of instructor
Enrollment
Limited to 12
Can Be Repeated for Credit
Yes
4.A02

First-Year Advising Seminar: — DesignPlus: Exploring Design

Design+ is a first-year undergraduate advising seminar made up of approximately 30 first-year undergraduate students, 4 faculty advisors, and 4 or more undergraduate associate advisors.

The academic program is flexible to account for diverse student interests within the field of design, and students work with advisors to select a mix of academic and experiential opportunities.

Design+ assists incoming first-year students in their exploration of possibilities in design across MIT. 

Design+ includes a dedicated study space, kitchen, lounge, and a variety of maker spaces which offer Design+ students a second campus home for making and braking.

Design+ introduces first year undergraduate students to opportunities 
Design+ around design such as internships, international travel, and 
Design+ UROPs with some of the most exciting design labs at MIT

For registration and other administrative questions contact The Office of the First Year.

Fall
2025
2-0-1
U
Schedule
R 11-1
Location
N52-337
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No
4.288

Preparation for SMArchS Thesis

Note: Computation students now register for 4.588 instead of 4.288

Students select thesis topic, define method of approach, and prepare thesis proposal for SMArchS degree. Faculty supervision on an individual or group basis. Intended for SMArchS program students prior to registration for 4.THG.

TBA
Fall
2025
3-0-6
G
Schedule
T 2-5 (Design & Urbanism)
Location
1-277
Prerequisites
permission of instructor
Required Of
SMArchS
Open Only To
SMArchS
Can Be Repeated for Credit
Yes
4.275
11.912

Advanced Urbanism Colloquium

Introduces critical theories and contemporary practices in the field of urbanism that challenge its paradigms and advance its future. Includes theoretical linkages between ideas about the cultures of urbanization, social and political processes of development, environmental tradeoffs of city making, and the potential of design disciplines to intervene to change the future of built forms. Events and lecture series co-organized by faculty and doctoral students further engage and inform research.

TBA
Fall
2025
1-1-1
G
Schedule
M 12:30-1:30
Location
E14-140L
Prerequisites
permission of instructor
Required Of
PhD Adv Urb
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No
4.228
11.348

Contemporary Urbanism Proseminar: Theory and Representation

Critical introduction to key contemporary positions in urbanism to the ends of researching, representing, and designing territories that respond to the challenges of the 21st century. Provides an overview of contemporary urban issues, situates them in relation to a genealogy of urban precedents, and constructs a theoretical framework that engages the allied fields of architecture, landscape architecture, political ecology, geography, territorial planning, and environmental humanities. Comprised of three sections, first section articulates a framework on the urban as both process and form, shifting the emphasis from city to territory. Second section engages a series of related urban debates, such as density/sprawl, growth/shrinkage, and codes/exception. Third section calls upon urban agency in the age of environment through the object of infrastructures of trash, water, oil, and food.

Fall
2025
3-0-6
G
3-0-9
G
Schedule
W 2-5
Location
10-401
Required Of
SMArchS Urbanism, PhD Adv Urbanism
Enrollment
Limited to 25
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No