Note: class meets with Architecture Design section of 4.288 for the Fall 2026 term

Studies design as an interrogative technique to examine material sciences, media arts and technology, cultural studies, computation and emerging fabrication protocols. Provides in-depth, theoretical grounding to the notion of 'design' in architecture, and to the consideration of contemporary design methodologies, while encouraging speculation on emerging design thinking. Topical focus varies with instructor. May be repeated for credit with permission of department.

Note: class meets with 4.500/4.505 for the Fall 2026 term.

Introduction to cultures of form in architectural design, representation, and production, including material cultures, geometric discourse and analysis, Western and non-Western modes of perception and representation. Through a series of acts of forming and making, provides a primer and venue to rehearse skills such as 3D modeling and the reciprocity between representation and materialization. Exercises accompanied by lectures from practitioners, who each represent a highly articulated relationship between form and material in a body of design research or built work.

Provides an introduction to visual communication, emphasizing the development of a visual and verbal vocabulary through the lens of typography. Presents the fundamentals of shape, composition, visual hierarchy, word/image relationships, and type systems as building blocks for communicating with clarity, emotion, and meaning. Students develop their ability to analyze, discuss, and critique both their work and the work of the designed world, with an emphasis on type as a visual and conceptual medium.

9/10/26 - room changed to W41-3509

Overview of design as the giving of form, order, and interactivity to the objects that define our daily life. Follows the path from project to interactive product. Covers the overall design process, preparing students for work in a hands-on studio learning environment. Emphasizes design development and constraints. Topics include the analysis of objects; interaction design and user experience; design methodologies, current dialogues in design; economies of scale vs. means; and the role of technology in design. Provides a foundation in prototyping skills such as carpentry, casting, digital fabrication, electronics, and coding.

9/10/26 - subject moved to studio W41-3219

Provides instruction in architectural design and project development within design constraints including architectural program and site. Students engage the design process through various 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional media. Working directly with representational and model making techniques, students gain experience in the conceptual, formal, spatial and material aspects of architecture. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication provided.

Introduces fundamental design principles as a way to demystify design and provide a basic introduction to all aspects of the process. Stimulates creativity, abstract thinking, representation, iteration, and design development. Equips students with skills to have more effective communication with designers, and develops their ability to apply the foundations of design to any discipline.

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.

Realize design intentions materially, by hand and by machine. Learn techniques of lasercutting, 3D printing, textiles, light electronics, 3D scanning, design software, and generative processes. Explore the Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) makerspace during this weekly one-hour playground for prototyping.

Fold DNA to create nanometer-scale art! Learn the basic theory, CAD tools, and methods for folding DNA to create designed geometric shapes. This seminar will provide participants with hands-on experience in creating art using DNA origami technology, from design to assembly. We will also explore DNA imaging techniques utilizing atomic force microscopy. Students will integrate scientific approaches with aesthetics and design, considering the cultural implications of this emerging technology.

Undergraduates welcome.

Clients, funding, consultants, contracts–architects are enmeshed in financial mechanisms that forever remind us of our direct reliance on local and global economies. Money talks and architecture follows: our work articulating the interests of those served while fluctuating with the rapidity of the market. And while this relationship may be fixed, perhaps we can find ways to resist its normative logics, which exacerbate social inequalities and consolidate power in the hands of the few and the privileged. This workshop will explore alternative economies and financial arrangements to find ways to re-code capitalism’s tendencies, desires, and outcomes. We’ll draw from a range of writing–from queer theory to post-colonial studies to literary criticism–to undo dominant financial orientations and to engineer collective values.

We will ask whether in addition to designing architecture, we can also design the market that demands architecture–to produce economic scenarios under which we might build. We will read constellations of texts that include economic anthropology (studying how economies are shaped by behavior, cultural values, and social relationships), work from other disciplines, and case-studies to invent atypical demand-chains, resist models of optimal performance, and instrumentalize culture to undercut efficiency. We will look at how we might produce clients, programs, and actor networks rather than responding to the whims of the market. We will consider how we might think of economic arrangements as tools for designers.

Each week, students are asked to produce written responses to the reading and to help guide discussion, researching and exploring examples and references to ground our work. The task is to produce a collective and cumulative body of knowledge. Together, we will read, write, and compile a compendium of research on the topic. Students are encouraged to find broad reaching examples–from the domestication of post-war military technology to the proliferation of sharing economies to recent trends in reuse and the circulation of materials and everything in between. We will focus on buildings, materials, and products, largely drawn from North America in the 20th and 21st centuries but may also look further afield. The course will focus on real examples of immaterial and material phenomena, inventing new languages and representational strategies along the way.