Fundamental research methodologies and ongoing investigations in building tehnology to support the development of student research projects. Topics drawn from low energy building design and thermal comfort, building systems analysis and control, daylighting, structural design and analysis, novel building materials and construction techniques and resource dynamics. Organized as a series of two- and three-week sessions that consider topics through readings, discussions, design and analysis projects, and student presentations.

Addresses advanced structures, exterior envelopes, and contemporary production technologies. Continues the exploration of structural elements and systems, expanding to include more complex determinate, indeterminate, long-span, and high-rise systems. Topics include reinforced concrete, steel and engineered-wood design, and an introduction to tensile systems. The contemporary exterior envelope is discussed with an emphasis on the classification of systems, performance attributes, and analysis techniques, material specifications and novel construction technologies.

Explores the theory and criticism of intersections between art, culture, and technology in relation to contemporary artistic practice, critical design, and media. Students consider methods of investigation, documentation, and display and explore modes of communication. Students develop projects in which they organize research goals, engage in production, cultivate a context for practice, and explore how to communicate, display, and document work, with artistic practice as a method of critical inquiry/ knowledge dissemination. Regular presentation and peer-critiques, reviews with ACT faculty and fellows, and external guest reviewers provide feedback as projects develop. Simultaneously, students prepare for thesis through both foundational texts in contemporary theory and criticism and artist writings alongside presentations and discussions on methodological perspectives required of interdisciplinary approaches.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

4.401 U (GIR REST) / 4.464J, 1.564J G

Introduction to the study of the thermal and luminous behavior of buildings. Examines the basic scientific principles underlying these phenomena and introduces students to a range of technologies and analysis techniques for designing comfortable indoor environments. Challenges students to apply these techniques and explore the role energy and light can play in shaping architecture.

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

Focused on the practices of varied practitioners — film directors, artists, musicians, composers, architects, designers — whose writings relay a process of thinking and feeling integral to their forms of material production. Testing various ways aesthetic forms and their shifts — historic and contemporary — have relations to still emerging contemporary subjectivities (felt emotion in a human body), the class studies productions created by participants and case studies of varied producers, and generates new work individually and/or collaboratively via diverse media explorations. Includes reading, writing, drawing, and publishing, as well as photographic, cinematic, spatial, and audio operations and productions. Activities include screenings, listening assignments, and guest visits, in addition to readings, discussions, and presentations. 

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

UG: 4.328 | G: 4.329

This course focuses on the production of artistic experiments catalyzed by research in art and climate, and eco-sociality of the locale. The workshop will engage the Herter community garden in Boston as a site where utopias for the future forms of environmental citizenship and new climate commons will be prototyped.

In conversation with local stakeholders the participants will develop hybrid projects of art and design suggesting an artistic instrumentarium for ecological repair, envisioning a future of cohabitation with more-than-humans, and probing alternative perspectives that catalyze a different climate for the future.

Inspired by counterculture experiments and emerging environmentalist design of the 60’s and 70’s, the course will discuss concepts such as anthropocene aesthetics, compossibility, critical zones, eco-activism, feminist fabulation, interspecies assemblies, permacomputing, and archipelagic thinking.

Readings will include those by Jane Bennet, Georges Canguilhem, TJ Demos, Eduardo Viveiro de Castro, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Astrida Neimanis, Andrew Pickering, Elizabeth Povinelli, Isabelle Stengers, Anna Tsing, and others.

Visits to the class and the field trips may include Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Tue Greenfort, Diane Borsato, Fernando García-Dory, Pelin Tan, Julie Kepes, D-Lab experts, FutureFarmers, Critical Art Ensemble, Platform London, The Center for Land Use Interpretation.

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. 

U: 4.324 | G: 4.325

This seminar connects the arts and sciences by exploring methodological similarities and differences across disciplines between the arts and architecture, the humanities and the social sciences, engineering, natural and material sciences, alongside exploring emerging technologies such as AR/XR, AI and ML. Aimed at fostering student collaborations across research interests, students develop their ideas for projects through targeted analysis of their disciplinary and interdisciplinary interests. Each student will either enter with a project in mind or develop their project ideas within the class. Students can choose to work individually or in groups. 

This seminar’s goal is to provide a blueprint for developing interdisciplinary projects. The final project is a written and visual presentation of a workable plan whose goals/outcomes will form the basis for a collaborative interdisciplinary project. Visitors to the class may include Caroline A. Jones, Paul Vanouse, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, Candice Hooper, Jens Hauser, Pierre Huyghe, Po-Hao Chi among others.

Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

Notes: 

• Schedule change from T 2-5 to M 9-12
• 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.

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.

This is a fantastic course for those of you that are interested in investigating the breadth of positions, systems, and values that constitute the contemporary urban condition and its spatial manifestations. Not only is the course designed to help students both understand and represent—through drawing—the forces at play that shape our cities and the planet at large, but it also provides space for you to speculate on alternatives for what it might mean to inhabit our planet more responsibly. In short, the class is a great chance to conduct research and advocate for an urban/territorial/planetary concern of yours in conversation with an array of theories and real-world practices that reflect the complexity, nuance, and often obscured realities of urban production. 

While the course is requisite for incoming SMArchS Urbanism students, it is open to all MArchs, MCPs, and urbanists alike—past iterations of the class have benefitted greatly from the variety of perspectives and backgrounds that each student brings to the table. It is also a great chance for students that are thinking about their thesis, or other research projects, to enrich their work through explorations in theory and representation. This course also fulfills the seminar requirement for the Urban Design certificate (see the architecture website for more detail) and can be used for the M.Arch urbanism elective.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus