Preliminary study in preparation for the thesis for the SMArchS degree in Computation. Topics include literature search, precedents examination, thesis structure and typologies, and short writing exercise.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

Research and project activities, which cover the range represented by the various research interests and projects in the department. Students who wish a letter grade option for their work must register for 4.URG.

Research and project activities, which cover the range represented by the various research interests and projects in the Department.

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

This seminar examines the vital role of aesthetic practices in animating struggles for justice. Drawing primarily on examples from Latin America the course analyzes how forms of aesthetic engagement respond to and shape an ethics of human rights, political justice, and environmental stewardship in the face of the ongoing effects of colonial violence, Cold War and geopolitical brutality, and climate catastrophes. The moral implications of such artistic engagements, along with the theoretical, methodological, and legal models explored, will also be applicable to other regional contexts.

Note for MArch students: Serves as a HTC Non-Restricted OR Restricted Elective

Certificate Protected Syllabus

4.322 UG | 4.323 G

Explores three-dimensional art work, including sculptures and installations, from design to model to finished piece. Addresses challenges associated with design and fabrication, process, context, and relationships between objects, the body, and physical or cultural environments. Lectures, screenings, field trips, readings, and debates supplement studio practice. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Lab fee required. Limited to 20.

MIT Certificate-Protected Syllabus
 

12/4/24 Update: class will now meet MW 10-1, room 13-1143

4.s37 UG | 4.s33 G

Introduction to basics of biomimicry and natural algorithms in computational design and artificial life. You don’t have any prior programming or modeling software experience is needed. Advanced folks will be accommodated on an individual project-based track.

Students learn about the cultural and visual implications of automation and biotechnological advancements driven by computational technology, exploring their aesthetic significance through data and algorithms.

This is a beginner’s guide to ethical solutions to design problems in computational design and data concerning nature through visualization and art. It considers the broader impact of design decisions on communities, society, and culture.

This is a low-level, beginner-friendly introduction to the basics of data visualization in processing and Python, biomimicry, agent-based systems in Grasshopper visual coding and C#, and animation in Maya.

12/16/25 Note - subject is now H3 half term and schedule change to R 9:30-12:30

Place is location, but it’s also people, relationships, and memories, the site of things forgotten, suppressed or unrecorded, terrible and ordinary ways of being. The experience of people and peoples who have migrated, been displaced or exiled add further complexity to place: perhaps, an unshakeable orientation to elsewhere or a sense of in-betweenness; or a simultaneous yet imperfect belonging to both here and there, to neither here nor there; an intermittent or constant feeling of being entirely out of place. What is a diasporic sense of place, how do we image or describe it, and how might it reimage space and place to define a territory for spatial practice?

Note for MArch students: Serves as a HTC Non-Restricted OR Restricted Elective; also serves as an Urbanism elective

1/28/26 note: class schedule change from M 9-12 to R 9-12

This course is an exploration of the later stages of architectural design that occurs in architectural detailing and construction mock-ups. To initiate this course, students will select a building threshold from a project that they have previously designed and use it as a basis to produce 5-10 new threshold variations. The threshold variations will be a detailed response and study of select architectural precedents. For the final project, students will select one threshold design to build a physical model at full (or half) scale.

Students will explore the design potential of building thresholds, passages, and openings. Every threshold is on the verge of–. Choosing and isolating a threshold allows for an in-depth study of the passage between interiors, and exteriors, and of the in between space itself. For example, in Marcel Duchamp’s door 11 rue Larrey from 1927, the threshold is an opening to, a closure of, and as such it holds the space between both conditions.

In their threshold (re)designs, students will explore multiple threshold design options–each approached through a different tectonic lens. The variations will be supported by two studies: 1. an exploration of a range of cross-cultural threshold precedents drawn from editions of GA Detail, Global Architecture, El Croquis, and when possible, detailed vernacular and classical examples to establish the tectonic lenses; 2. An exploration of material, spatial, and atmospheric properties and qualities, and the bodily performances required of the passage.

The approach to tectonic studies is informed by a range of precedents from literature, mathematics, art, music and architecture. In art and music, instructional compositions are informed by repetition, variation, and singularity (uniqueness). Examples are the chance compositions of John Cage and the wall drawings of Sol Le Witt. Other models for this exploration include Elements of Style by Raymond Queneau and 99 Variations on a Proof by Philip Ording, two works that begin with a simple premise that is reinvented one hundredfold by a new set of principles, techniques, contexts, and histories.

Queneau the cofounder of OuLiPo (workshop of potential literature) begins with a narrative, while Ording begins with a theorem, yet each uses the same method to generate new perspectives of the original through an exploration of style. The class will draw from these examples to devise constraints and rules to conceive of and structure thresholds.

Since the threshold selected by student is from an original design that was given much consideration previously, each new speculation suggests alternative design approaches and potentials for the original building design, and, for their future approach to design in general.

 In 1997, the Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Pritzker Prize in 2006, was invited to take part in an art exhibition called Sao Paulo Arte Cidade, curated by Nelson Brissac. The location of his work was a former industrial zone alongside an old railway crossing the downtown area of the city. Mendes da Rocha´s proposal was just to install a construction hoist in front of the framework of the abandoned factory as a way to highlight the mechanical dimension of the city (at the time: 50km of subway, 250km of trains and 2,500 km of lifts). That intervention, which went almost unnoticed during the event, was but a brief comment informed by the architect’s keen critical vision over the city. That vision, indeed, was forged by the dialogue between his architectural work and his experience of the city, beyond its mechanical dimension it means the intense experience of the urban everyday life. A way to think in architecture more informed by culture than by erudition. Two notions, culture and erudition, that the architect used to oppose.