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. 

4.606 Undergraduate | 4.656 Graduate

Note 2/24/26: room change to 5-216

Drawing on case studies from the ancient world to the present day, considers how the creation of architecture has involved the modification of natural environments and climates and the exploitation of resources across the globe. Investigates the metabolic processes of raw material extraction, transportation, and manipulation that make the creation of buildings, infrastructures, and designed landscapes possible. Explores how material and climatic considerations have played into the design and aesthetics of buildings at various points in time and promotes an awareness of the largely invisible, increasingly far-flung networks of environmental management and labor that underpin our built environment. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 25 for versions meeting together; preference to undergraduates.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

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. 

EPHEMERAL HISTORIES (ARCHITECTURE & THE CONSTRUCTION SITE)

What is the history of the construction site? The paradox of the construction site lies in the fact that, although the construction site is inescapably essential to the realization of architecture, it must be ephemeral, superseded by the durable forms of the completed building. Such traces that remain, in documents, photographs, or physical marks upon the building, have been of passing interest to architectural history for the information they reveal about the realized object, but the construction site itself—as a place, as an event, as a design—has largely been ignored by an architectural history and theory not inclined toward ephemerality.

This seminar will address the construction site with rigorous historical interpretation and methodological experimentation. Readings and discussions will develop a knowledge of the construction site as a point of organization, material transformation, and intellectual and physical work. These approaches will pursue questions such as the valuation of tools and techniques, the legal armature of contracts and regulations, the social conventions of race, class, and gender, and the cultural appraisal of work and craft. The goal of the seminar will be to develop prototypical approaches to the history of the construction site that explore the possibilities of ephemeral history. Students will carry out detailed and speculative research into selected construction sites; and will use that research in digital mediums of text, sound, and image to model ephemeral histories that expand the historical accounting of a construction site to include information extending from wages to weather reports.

The class is open to doctoral and masters degree students. Enrollment will be limited to 12.

General study of modern architecture as a response to important technological, cultural, environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical challenges after the European Enlightenment. Focus on the theoretical, historiographic, and design approaches to architectural problems encountered in the age of industrial and post-industrial expansion across the globe, with specific attention to the dominance of European modernism in setting the agenda for the discourse of a global modernity at large. Explores modern architectural history through thematic exposition rather than as simple chronological succession of ideas.

The 1970s were the decade when the world fell out of that infantile affliction called modernity and grew into the recognition that it wouldn’t end well.

Bitches’ Brew (the uncool Miles),  real estate barons, Brian Eno, Apocalypse Now, Charles Jencks, Rem Koolhaas, postmodernism, feminism, cyborgs, global consultancies, reflexivity, intertextuality, Carlos the Jackal, Badal Sircar and Third Theatre, Talking Heads, Deng Xiaoping, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), class action suits, Jesus Christ Superstar, Francis Ford Coppola, Jacques Derrida, trees with standing, Khomeini, Maggie Thatcher, Steve Biko, dollarization, Watergate, queer rights, OPEC crisis, Blade Runner, Earth Day, Weather Report, Yom Kippur War, Pink Floyd, Cultural Revolution, Minimoogs, environment, Vietnam,  Ebola, Apple, Third Cinema, Brian Eno, Pruitt-Igoe, R. D. Burman, Giorno Poetry Systems, Amitabh Bachchan, Punk, Pruitt-Igoe, New Waves (Western pop, Indian film), Cindy Sherman, Transfer of Development Rights (TDRs), Disco, Ant Farm, Star Wars, Sholay, Bruce Lee, Wim Wenders, A Pattern Language,  Milos Forman, Deep Throat, Taxi Driver, the Indian Emergency, Fela Kuti and Africa ’70, Shakti, ethnic studies, The Rumble in the Jungle, Whole Earth Catalog, Transnational Corporations, The School of London, Special Economic Zones, CBDs, Gay Sweatshop, Black Arts Movement, Led Zeppelin, Theatre of the Oppressed, Peter Brooke, the Latin American Boom, Salvador Allende, Angela Davis, Artificial Intelligence, supercomputers, World Trade Center, Apple, regionalism, appropriate technologies, “community”, Small is Beautiful, mega-projects, Foucault and Power, the “modes of production” debates, gritty realism, Blaxploitation, Ritwik Ghatak, Groupe Dziga Vertov, you tell me…  

We will watch, listen, read, analyze, and try to see if it all made sense. or not. (accompanied by film series, and vinyl records.)

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

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

4.605 Undergraduate | 4.650 Graduate

Provides an outline of the history of architecture and urbanism from ancient times to the early modern period. Analyzes buildings as the products of culture and in relation to the special problems of architectural design. Stresses the geopolitical context of buildings and in the process familiarizes students with buildings, sites and cities from around the world.

Additional work required of graduate students.

MIT Certificate Protected Syllabus

UG: 4.550 G: 4.570

Class website

Provides students with an opportunity to explore projects that engage real world problems concerning spatial design, technology, media, and society. In collaboration with industry partners and public institutions, students identify topical issues and problems, and also explore and propose solutions through the development of new ideas, theories, tools, and prototypes. Industry and academic collaborators act as a source of expertise, and as clients and critics of projects developed during the term. General theme of workshop varies by semester or year. Open to students from diverse backgrounds in architecture and other design-related areas.

Additional work required of students taking graduate version.

4.542: An advanced examination of the shape grammar formalism and its relationship to some key issues in a variety of other fields, including art and design, philosophy, history and philosophy of science, linguistics and psychology, literature and literary studies, logic and mathematics, and artificial intelligence. Student presentations and discussion of selected readings are encouraged. Topics vary from year to year.

4.582: In-depth presentations of current research in design and computation.

An in-depth introduction to shape grammars and their applications in architecture and related areas of design. Shapes in the algebras Ui j, in the algebras Vi j and Wi j incorporating labels and weights, and in algebras formed as composites of these. Rules and computations. Shape and structure. Designs.

Topics vary from year to year. Can be repeated with permission of instructor.