Examines innovations in urban design practice occurring through the work of leading practitioners in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. Features lectures by major national and global practitioners in urban design. Projects and topics vary based on term and speakers but may cover architectural urbanism, landscape and ecology, arts and culture, urban design regulation and planning agencies, and citywide and regional design. Focuses on analysis and synthesis of themes discussed in presentations and discussions.

Weds the theory and practice of city design and planning as a means of adaptation with the insights of ecology and other environmental disciplines. Presents ecological urbanism as critical to the future of the city and its design, as it provides a framework for addressing challenges that threaten humanity — such as climate change, rising sea level, and environmental and social justice — while fulfilling human needs for health, safety, welfare, meaning, and delight. Applies a historical and theoretical perspective to the solution of real-world challenges.

Utopias, Camps, and the Architecture of War, is proposed as a design-research workshop that examines the layered histories of Terezín as a way to think critically about how architecture participates in the making of trauma, memory, and recovery. Conceived as a fortified utopian city and later transformed into a Nazi transport camp, Terezín embodies the shifting functions of urban space and architecture as both agent and witness. Its bastions, mounds, and urban fabric are not merely remnants but active carriers of political and historical meaning. By tracing the trajectory from fortification to camp, from architecture of war to the ongoing dilemmas of inhabitation, memorialization, restoration and reconstruction, this workshop foregrounds the ethical and epistemological challenges of engaging with sites where architecture itself was complicit in violence.

The studio is offered as collaborative project together with confirmed participating architecture schools: Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic (lead by Veronika Sindlerova); TU Dresden, Germany (lead by Angela Mensing-de Jong); Technion -Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (lead by Eliyahu Keller, Aaron Sprecher). Pending on funding, students should be prepared to travel to the Czech Republic and Germany during spring break.

Beginning in the 1980s, the critique of Eurocentrism opened up an increasingly large domain for historical analysis and reassessment in both architectural and art history. We will try to make sense of this shift and its embodied critiques as well as their on-going transformations, potentials, and problematics. Since secondary literature and analysis of this phenomenon is practically non-existent, we will study the phenomenon by trying to assemble different takes and perspectives. 

Class meets in-person every spring term.

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

This hands-on studio explores the intersections of art, design, governance, and urban agriculture through the collaborative construction of two site-specific chicken coops—one for Common Good Farm and one for Eastie Farms—based on an open-source artist-designed framework. Cross listed and co-taught with Justin Blazier (Architecture) and Kate Brown (STS), the course connects critical histories of urban farming in Boston and Cambridge with practical skills in community-responsive design and fabrication. Students work directly with local farms and gardens to understand ecological, social, and political contexts, develop artistic, adaptive design proposals, and collectively build functional structures that examine how food systems, civic infrastructures, and public space shape one another.

Note: Schedule change from W 9-12 to W 2-5 in room E14-251 (11/21/25)

This hands-on studio investigates how artistic, architectural and historiological methodologies can shape ecological and civic systems through the collaborative adaptation and construction of two mobile, site-specific chicken coops. Cross listed and co-taught with Nida Sinnokrot (ACT 4.s32 and Kate Brown (STS- STS.20), the course connects critical histories of urban farming in Boston with practical skills in community-responsive design and fabrication. Students will work to develop adaptive proposals for Eastie Farms and Common Good Farm that merge form, function, and narrative, while interrogating how food systems, civic infrastructures, and public space can be reimagined through creative, operational aesthetics.

This workshop represents the second part of Resilient Urbanism, a joint commitment with a community partner to envision and reimagine architectural infrastructure to support Common Good Coop a local community owned urban farm organization in the heart of Dorchester. Previously, students explored ideas pertaining to collective ownership structures, urban agricultural histories, the history of racial segregation in Boston. The outcomes produced a colorful, accessible zine documenting how a reader would navigate municipal code and regulation to start a community garden or urban farm along with a larger design proposal for the land in which the Co-Op occupies.

Undergraduates welcome.

The Forest Made Workshop will focus on the design of experimental architecture and furniture that uses what the forest naturally provides. Rather than milling softwood for the mainstream dimensional lumber industry, the workshop will explore a diverse mix-species 
of hardwoods, undersized and low value “unmerchantable” wood that must be removed from the forest to improve resiliency and lower risks of forest fire. This class engages wood fabrication techniques and aesthetics along the uncanny ‘slider’ of natural occurence and intentional design.

Examines themes in the history of design, with emphasis on Euro-American theory and practice in their global contexts. Addresses the historical design of communications, objects, and environments as meaningful processes of decision-making, adaptation, and innovation. Critically assesses the dynamic interaction of design with politics, economics, technology, and culture in the past and at present.