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. 

Program of thesis research leading to the writing of an SB thesis. Intended for seniors. Twelve units recommended.

Program of research and writing of thesis; to be arranged by the student with supervising committee. 

Decolonial Ecologies examines the relationship between political ecology, architecture, and processes of (de)colonization. Students critically interrogate histories and futures of (de)colonization and evaluate theories of political ecology and architecture. Following Stefanie K. Dunning's invocation "May our egos die so that the world may live," this seminar asks, how can we continually transform our praxis on a personal and structural level to create the possibility and space for decolonial ecologies? And most importantly, whose imaginations are presently shaping our collective futures?

Weekly themes include architecture in the avant-apocalypse, origin myths of the state, the allure of abstraction, evolutionary materialism, epistemology and political ecologies of production, homo economicus v. homo reciprocans, growth and the trophic structure of the economy, accelerationism, the 'dark enlightenment,' and the cult of intelligence. For their final projects, students will be asked to produce original interdisciplinary scholarship or creative work. 

Open for cross-registration. And open to undergraduates with instructor’s permission.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

The course deals with how archivists, architects, and historians have faced the myriad archive fevers and archival turns of the 20th and 21st centuries. This period has seen a marked shift between archives being used as 'source' to becoming a 'subject' of critical inquiry. However, these questions are not limited to the past few centuries. Rather, the philosophical questions of history and its relationship with the archive span millennia from Assyrian clay tablets and Shang dynasty oracle bones to the post-revolutionary foundation of the French national archives. This seminar examines how "the architect and the archive are inseparable" and how the archivist and the historian are entangled to attend to the contested memories and denied histories embodied within buildings, cultural institutions, and architectures (Wigley, 1995). 

Through visits and hands-on research in archives in Boston and New York City, students will develop a critical methodology that can be applied to their own research and practice. Students will learn to interpret and triangulate primary sources, such as texts, films, maps, drawings, manuscripts, correspondence, government documents, newspapers, photographs, and architectural models.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

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.

Required for doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. Prior to candidacy, doctoral students are required to write and orally defend a proposal laying out the scope of their thesis, its significance, a survey of existing research and literature, the methods of research to be adopted, a bibliography and plan of work. Work is done in consultation with HTC Faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program guidelines.

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Minor Exam focuses on a specific area of specialization through which the student might develop their particular zone of expertise. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.

Required of doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. The Major Exam covers a historically broad area of interest and includes components of history, historiography, and theory. Preparation for the exam will focus on four or five themes agreed upon in advance by the student and the examiner, and are defined by their area of teaching interest. Work is done in consultation with HTC faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program Guidelines.