“Nada es inventado, pues está escrito en la naturaleza primero” - Antoni Gaudí 
("Nothing is invented, for it is written in nature first.") 

“La arquitectura es la expresión de una época, de un lugar y de un momento, pero debe aspirar a la atemporalidad” - Rafael Moneo 
(Architecture is the expression of an era, of a place, and of a moment, but it must aspire to timelessness.)  

Architecture of the Earth explores a philosophy that treats the building not as an object placed upon the landscape, but as an extension of the earth itself. The course will challenge students to design a new structure near a site of historical and geological significance, where they will explore how architecture can emerge from the raw materials and ancient memory of the land. 

The project is a deep dive into an approach where natural landforms are the primary sources of architectural language. Students will investigate how the built form can blur its boundaries with the natural environment, creating a new layer in the timeless dialogue between human creation and the earth. The goal is to create a space that respects its past while embodying a future where culture and nature are inseparably linked. 

Research Methodology: 
This course employs an immersive, research-driven methodology to explore a new architectural language. The process begins with a departure from sensitive design, encouraging the generation of spatial ideas and innovative techniques that are unconventional and 
context-specific. A key part of this approach is a deep engagement with the local environment, investigating indigenous materials and production methods to create a symbiotic relationship between the building and the landscape. 

The design process is iterative, moving fluidly between digital and physical realms. Students will develop prototypes and physical models to test their concepts, using digital scanning and other audiovisual tools to document their evolution. This blend of hands-on and digital methods is formalized through the creation of instruction manuals, which document the process and provide a framework for future application. A central concern throughout is the project's environmental impact, with a focus on sustainable, low-impact construction that honors the site's natural and historical integrity. 

Castillo de San Felipe, Menorca, Spain (St. Philip’s Castle / Fort) 
Architecture of the Earth is a development of the On/Off hybrid studio, situated between Hands-On models sessions and online classes, in which students will integrate research, fabrication, and design. This studio will focus on imagining and designing a Theater Space in Castillo de San Felipe, Menorca, Spain.  Site Location Link 

The Castillo de San Felipe, situated at the entrance of Mahón's natural port in Menorca, stands as a formidable testament to centuries of strategic importance and turbulent history. Originally conceived in the mid-16th century following a devastating Ottoman raid in 1558, its construction and subsequent expansions transformed it into one of the Mediterranean's most significant defensive fortresses. 

Its strategic location made it a coveted prize for various European powers, particularly the British and French, leading to multiple sieges and changes of control throughout the 18th century. Each conflict further underscored the port's critical role in naval dominance. Ultimately, its demolition by the Spanish in the early 19th century symbolized an end to an era of intense foreign intervention. Today, its extensive underground ruins offer a poignant glimpse into Menorca's past, embodying the island's enduring resilience and the perpetual interplay between human ambition and the powerful forces of its landscape. 

Student Learning Outcome Objectives: 
This course is structured around a hands-on-line studio that emphasizes collaboration and shared learning. Students will work together to challenge preconceived notions and explore the unknown through a research-driven, iterative process. The primary goal is to empower students to generate original spatial ideas and techniques that diverge from conventional standards. True innovation lies in the ability to break free from established norms and find new ways of understanding and engaging with the built environment. 

The learning journey integrates theoretical understanding with practical application. Students will engage in in-depth research through a series of case studies, analyzing the models, drawings, engineering, and construction of exemplary projects. This research will inform a series of iterative model studies and prototypes, which will form the core of the design process. The hands-on exploration of materials and form is central to our methodology. 

To support this workflow, the course will introduce students to advanced 3D scan techniques, including the relevant hardware and software. They will learn to apply these skills through post-processing of the data, enabling them to create 3D printed models, test structural reinforcements, and experiment with concrete casting. This blend of digital and physical methods is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of how concepts can be translated into tangible form. 

The entire process will be meticulously documented using the Google Suite platform, which will serve as a class diary to track the evolution of each project. This shared digital space will foster an environment of continuous feedback and shared knowledge. Additionally, students will participate in seminars designed to expand their technical skills and prepare them for the hands-on fabrication and prototyping phases. The final deliverable will be a comprehensive portfolio of models, drawings, and digital documentation that demonstrates a deep understanding of the course's principles, from initial research to final fabrication. This holistic approach ensures students are well-equipped to not only design but also realize their architectural visions. 

Mandatory lottery process.

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.

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?

Designed for students writing a thesis in Urban Studies and Planning or Architecture. Develop research topics, review relevant research and scholarship, frame research questions and arguments, choose an appropriate methodology for analysis, and draft introductory and methodology sections.

Zoning has become the city’s hidden operating system—the invisible code that dictates how urban life unfolds.

It determines where and how people live, work, shop, learn, and move. It shapes the supply and cost of housing, the character of neighborhoods, access to everyday amenities, and the prospects of local businesses.

But today’s cities confront overlapping crises: climate risk, housing scarcity, infrastructure strain, demographic shifts, and the reconfiguration of work, retail, learning, and healthcare that is upending traditional urban anchors. The zoning frameworks inherited from the 20th century—built for stability and uniformity—are increasingly misaligned with the volatility and urgency of the 21st. What cities need now is not incremental reform, but a new, responsive operating system for urban life.

Course Focus: Students will investigate a radical alternative to static zoning—a dynamic, incentive-based, pro-social framework that treats the city as a living system. This model channels market forces through feedback loops, much like a natural ecosystem, to cultivate what we call civic homeostasis: a state of balance that adapts as conditions change.

San Francisco is now undergoing radical zoning reform, and the City Science group is collaborating with city leaders to help communities understand its impact, and to explore what comes beyond zoning. Students in the class will have the opportunity to contribute directly by:

• Analyzing urban data—from mobility flows and land use to demographic shifts—to decode the hidden patterns shaping communities today.
• Building simulations—both top-down statistical models and bottom-up agent-based systems—to test how interventions ripple through the social, economic, and environmental fabric of the city.
• Designing dynamic incentive structures to balance housing, workplaces, and daily amenities, while exploring how an AI Urban Advisor could provide city supervisors with continuous feedback—an early form of augmented intelligence for urban governance.
• Prototyping a CityScope platform to foster transparent, participatory community engagement.
• Experimenting with parametric design and generative AI tools as engines for reimagining urban rules and forms.

Deliverables: Weekly assignments, mid-term, and final project.

Teaching Collaborators: Maitane Iruretagoyena (Technical Associate), Yasushi Sakai, (Research Scientist), Markus Elkatsha (Research Scientist)
Website: https://www.media.mit.edu/courses/mas-552-city-science-beyond-zoning/

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.

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.

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.