4.s28

Special Subject: Architecture Studies — X-Machine: AI and Design Innovation

In an AI-enhanced future, humans will become better at everything. The machine targets real-world artificial intelligence challenges designed to help address issues related to climate change, and urbanization in cities. X Machine is a mini accelerator workshop course designed to unite computer science and design/architecture together to design and create innovative and impactful technological solutions to problems in the built and human environment. This half-semester course promotes the development of strategic thinking and technical exploration in the realm of AI, focusing on problem framing and early-stage ideation.

The course will allow students to develop a foundational knowledge of AI within an interdisciplinary context. Students will learn how to design and create a prototype, learn how to maximize their engagement with their users/customers, and learn how to determine the value proposition that will make an AI-empowered startup successful. By the end of this class, students will be able to develop a conceptual business plan for an AI-based technology solution and apply to other programs at MIT such as DesignX, Sandbox, Delta V, The Engine, and more. 

Norhan Bayomi
Norbert Chang
Fall
2025
2-0-6
G
Schedule
T 9-11
Location
1-246
Prerequisites
Permission of Instructor
Can Be Repeated for Credit
Yes
4.s24

Special Subject: Architecture Studies — Creative Careers (H1 half-term)

How can you build your own creative practice in today’s international landscape—one that is sustainable, leverages innovation, and contributes meaningfully to the future of the cultural and creative sectors?

This half-semester course offers you, as a student in the arts, cultural, and creative fields, fundamental tools and strategies for designing your career as an independent professional or studio founder.

You will:

A) Develop an understanding of the international framework of institutions, relationships, and policies that support professionals aiming to create impact through their creative practice—and learn how this knowledge can help you shape offerings that stand out and create a competitive advantage.
B) Learn concepts and mechanisms commonly found in the economics of art and culture, and explore how critical issues can be transformed into strategic opportunities.
C) Examine the diverse types of value generated by cultural production, discover how to combine them into distinctive offerings, and effectively communicate and market your work. You’ll also study business models within the creative industries and develop the adaptability to navigate evolving markets.
D) Acquire practical skills in branding, legal business structures, and intellectual property—enabling you to protect and leverage your creative output while building a sustainable professional practice.
 

Giuliano Picchi
Fall
2025
3-0-3
G
Schedule
T 9-12
Location
4-144
Prerequisites
Permission of instructor
Can Be Repeated for Credit
Yes
4.s22

Special Subject: Architecture Studies — System Change

How do you go from a moment of obligation to starting or accelerating a movement?

This course explores the difference between innovation, social innovation, and systems change for social impact. Students interested in navigating complex environmental and social problems will explore frameworks and case studies from real systems change innovators to develop a more comprehensive view of complex problems and the systems they are part of —systems that often keep those problems in place.

In the course, you will apply experiential tools and methods to interrogate your own call to action, strengths, and gaps to address complex problems or needs. You will gain an understanding of the importance of understanding problems from the impact target’s perspective and explore innovative ways to create a scalable movement that ultimately can change a system. The final deliverable from the course is writing a case study on system change based on detailed actor mapping and interviews where you share your deeper understanding of a system you care about.

Yscaira Jimenez
Fall
2025
2-0-7
G
Schedule
T 9-11
Location
1-132
Prerequisites
Permission of Instructor
Can Be Repeated for Credit
Yes
4.154

Architecture Design Option Studio (Crosetto-Brizzio)

Individual listings for each section of 4.154 will be posted once closer to the start of the Fall 2025 term.

Mandatory lottery process.

Fall
2025
0-10-11
G
Schedule
TRF 1-5
Location
studio
Prerequisites
4.153
Required Of
MArch
Enrollment
mandatory lottery process
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No
4.154

Architecture Design Option Studio (Garcia-Abril)

Individual listings for each section of 4.154 will be posted once closer to the start of the Fall 2025 term.

Mandatory lottery process.

Fall
2025
0-10-11
G
Schedule
TRF 1-5
Location
studio
Prerequisites
4.153
Required Of
MArch
Enrollment
mandatory lottery process
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No
4.181

Architectural Design Workshop — The Fluvial Amazonian City: Manaus 2025

Note: This class has some travel in Summer 2025 but will meet as a class in the Fall 2025 term. Limited enrollment by application only.

The global imagination of the Amazon river basin, covering around seven million square kilometers, is dominated by the tropical forest. However, cities and towns within this basin represent some of the fastest growing urban settlements on earth. Over the past decade, nearly one hundred Amazonian cities and towns have seen population growth rates of over 20 percent–far above the under-two percent average across Latin America. Manaus represents one of the cities seeing the most rapid change. With roughly 2.5 million inhabitants, it is today the largest city in the Amazon, located at what is popularly referred to as the “Encontro das Águas” or meeting of the rivers, namely the Negro River (one of the main tributaries and start of the Amazon River) and its confluence with the Solimões River. The city’s fluvial character has long situated it as a central meeting point for ancestral peoples as well as for foreigners who arrived in different migratory cycles. Critically, the Negro River’s annual variation (typically up to 14 meters) has translated into a unique—but also typical for the Amazon—landscape of the built and natural environment. Stilt housing (palafitas), flooded swamp-like forests (igapós), and long river channels (igarapés) traditionally define this landscape and speak to the fluvial culture of Manaus, as well as other urban agglomerations for which the city is a major reference.

Today, however, accelerating unplanned and ill-equipped urban growth in Manaus represents a major challenge to its resilience. Continued deforestation and environmental degradation of surrounding towns and villages, coupled by varied water-related risks from draught, flooding, and contamination, have translated into the displacement of Indigenous populations from traditional lands in the Amazon and migration into cities like Manaus. Adequate, resilient housing and infrastructure systems have not been able to keep pace with the demands of this growth. Irregular or informal housing represents more than half the housing stock in Manaus. The city’s waterways, the defining feature of its urban landscape, have become neglected and abused, evidenced in its treatment as the de facto sanitation “solution” for both untreated wastewater dilution and the accumulation of solid waste in igarapés. The waste clogging igarapés in turn represent immense vulnerabilities for the built environment during the rainy season, as Manaus discovered during the unprecedented floods the city experienced in 2021. Further, efforts to “upgrade” housing, most recently with major international funding, resettled communities living in palafitas into social housing that physically and culturally repress the city’s canals instead of incorporating them into improvements in the physical and socio-economic life of the city—creating further problems with flooding and heat within ill-designed buildings. This class aims to provide an alternative vision of housing and sanitation in this fluvial landscape, recognizing and leveraging the central character of water in Manaus to envision a more resilient Amazonian fluvial city. The products of this practicum/studio will be featured in a a major exhibit hosted by our client, the Inter-American Development Bank’s Cities Lab, at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 30) in Belém, Brazil in November 2025. In addition, the class instructors will host a symposium, ideally with the support of the Charles Correa (1955) Lecture on Housing and Urbanization lecture, featuring a lecture by instructors and panels featuring presentations by student participants on the arc of the class’s pedagogical journey from Manaus to Belém, featuring the Amazonian Fluvial City of the future.

Gabriella Carolini
Fall
2025
3-0-9
G
Schedule
1st meeting F 9/5, 9-12
Location
1st mtg: 3-329
Enrollment
Limited to 8
Can Be Repeated for Credit
Yes
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