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.

Utopias, Camps, and the Architecture of War, is proposed as a research- design workshop that examines the layered histories of Terezín as a way to think critically about how architecture participates in the making of trauma, memory, and recovery. Conceived as a fortified utopian city and later transformed into a Nazi transport camp, Terezín embodies the shifting functions of urban space and architecture as both agent and witness. Its bastions, mounds, and urban fabric are not merely remnants but active carriers of political and historical meaning. By tracing the trajectory from fortification to camp, from architecture of war to the ongoing dilemmas of inhabitation, memorialization, restoration and reconstruction, this workshop foregrounds the ethical and epistemological challenges of engaging with sites where architecture itself was complicit in violence.

This workshop class is offered as collaborative project together with: Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic (lead by Veronika Sindlerova); TU Liberec, Czech Republic (lead by Radek Kolarik,  Iva Dvorakova) TU Dresden, Germany (lead by Angela Mensing-de Jong); Technion -Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (lead by Eliyahu Keller, Aaron Sprecher).

The class will sponsor (flights & accommodation) a trip to the Czech Republic to take place between October 7/8 – 14, 2026 (exact dates tbc), including participation in a conference and exhibition in Terezin during Oct. 12-13,  of ongoing studies undertaken on this subject by our collaborating universities. During this trip the MIT class will interact with students from all the collaborating schools mentioned above and work together with the students & researchers from the Technion in conducting field research, developing narratives, and learning first-hand the physical and historical conditions that have shaped the town of Terezin.