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.

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. 

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 relationship of architecture and law runs far deeper than the regulatory strictures of building codes or zoning ordinances. Both architecture and law are humanistic disciplines that shape the contours of societies in ways beyond their instrumental or professional applications. They fashion judgments and values, define jurisdictions and transgressions; they invent and maintain cultural imaginaries, sponsor and constrain techniques and practices. Seen in an expansive historical view, architecture and law have long maintained a mutual engagement in the public sphere and in disciplinary discourse.

This reading seminar will explore the myriad manifestations of legal thought, practices, and objects that occur within architectural discourse, and, reciprocally, the many appearances of architecture within law and legal discourse. Each week, the seminar will read across a specific theme to discern and evaluate the circumstances and consequences of a particular relationship of architecture and law. Themes will include property, code, jurisdiction, taxation, precedent, human rights, the rights of nature, copyright, measurement, and other topics across a range of physical and social scales.

The seminar will parallel the Temporal Commons research platform, and therefore issues of design, temporality, and change in the relationship of architecture and law will be of particular interest. The seminar is open to doctoral and masters degree students (and undergraduates with the permission of the instructor). Students may enroll either for 12 units (to take the class as a seminar with a required research paper) or for 6 units (to take the class as a workshop with one required presentation).

MIT Certificate-Protected Syllabus

This course uses the Mediterranean Sea as a framework for exploring early modern cities under Islamic and Christian rule. We look at key cities – Venice, Istanbul, Aleppo, Granada, Rabat-Salé, and others – tracing contacts between them, and discovering parallels and differences in urban form and architecture. Themes include dialogues with antiquity; religious complexes as urban design; social life and public space; trade and commerce; impacts of disasters and diasporas. We also consider wider global connections such as the intertwined histories of coffee, sugar, and slaves.

Note for MArch students: Serves as an HTC Non-Restricted OR Restricted Elective for Fall 2026

MIT Certificate-Protected Syllabus

A critical introduction to Islamic heritage in Spain, focusing on key surviving monuments and their complex, often contested afterlives. Each provides a window onto the dynasty that built it, with a range of ideological agendas, construction techniques, and mnemonic devices that track across the Mediterranean from Syria, Palestine, the Maghrib, and beyond. Along with North African exemplars, these structures represent a unique, western Islamic idiom that had a lasting impact on Spanish architecture.

Following defeat of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1492, Islam was gradually banished from the peninsula – yet these monuments survived, openly or in disguise. Their transformations tell intriguing stories about Spaniards’ evolving views of the Islamic past. In this course we supplement historical sources, studies and building/site analysis with theoretical readings on time, memory, and agency in architecture. We explore hybrid methodologies for overcoming archival silences and teasing out new narratives, using the building as the primary text.

Note for MArch students: Serves as an HTC Non-Restricted OR Restricted Elective for Fall 2026

MIT Certificate-Protected Syllabus