Color cuts through several realms of human activity, present and past. As “qualia” (an aspect of experience rather than a measurable or material entity), it has posed intriguing problems for cultural practitioners and theorists for centuries. Color is philosophically understood as living in the mind, raising the question of whether or not it “belongs” to objects in the world. Beginning from a central discipline of art history (histories of pigments, materials, minerals, and values) we will also explore color in the contexts of: chemical innovation, conventional naming systems, racialized concepts, psychophysics, trade, empire, and industry. A sometimes anxiety-provoking discourse in art and architecture, color is today a huge industry that exists to stabilize chroma, standardize color, and capitalize on the branding capacities and emotional connotations of hue. We will explore the philosophy and practice of color across the history of art and architecture, and the instructor welcomes final research projects that support your own work.

This graduate-level seminar will have an undergraduate track and can be negotiated for variable credit.

4.s67 Syllabus (MIT certificate protected)

Note: the room for this class has changed to 9-450

Modernist fantasies of infinite growth, premised on the relentless exploitation of natural environments, can be traced back in large part to the early modern period (ca. 1400–1750) in Europe. At this time, artisans, practitioners, intellectuals, and politicians gradually became convinced that humans could master nature, through art and industry, to yield endless abundance and material wealth. Often assimilated by its proponents and later historians under the rubric of “improvement,” it was an explosive and ultimately dangerous idea, and did not go unchallenged: to its detractors, in fact, we owe some our earliest notions of natural balance and sustainability.

 This class will study these debates and their manifestation in designed natures across scales, from art and decorative objects, to gardens, to engineered territories, focusing on Europe and its overseas empires. Throughout, we will explore how nature came to be seen as a resource, and examine how concepts of ingenuity, labor, value, abundance, and scarcity inflected early modern thinking across the interconnected realms of natural philosophy, political economy, and art and architecture.

4.s63 Syllabus (MIT Certificate protected)

Required for doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. Prior to candidacy, doctoral students are required to write and orally defend a proposal laying out the scope of their thesis, its significance, a survey of existing research and literature, the methods of research to be adopted, a bibliography and plan of work. Work is done in consultation with HTC Faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program guidelines.

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

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.

4.645 Syllabus (MIT certificate protected)

Note: the schedule for this class has changed from M 2-5 in room 5-216 to W 2-5 in room 9-450.

Seminar on a selected topic in critical theory. Requires original research and presentation of oral and written report.

Advanced seminar. 

Looks at architecture and planning doctrines in what has come to be known as the “development decades,” the high period of state intervention into so-called Third World economies under the aegis of the Bretton Woods exchange system (c. 1945-1971), followed by its aftermath in the dismantlement and restructuring of state power to aid so-called “privatization” and austerity doctrines. The course will take up various components that intersected with architectural and urban thinking in this era of development: land and tenure, infrastructure, housing, finance, administration, relating them to influential economic doctrines of the time as well as the ideological tendencies of governments in the Third World. Particular attention will be paid to the circuit of technocratic “experts” and modernization/transitions theory patronized by the Bretton Woods organizations as well as the neocolonial politics of foreign aid. Particular attention will be paid to how architects and related experts on questions of space responded to the bureaucratic and institutional frameworks of international and national development, and the sundry “clubs (Paris, Rome), think-tanks, consultancy mechanisms, as well as elite university-based forms of expertise that were entangled in these circuits. Also of interest is the intersection, in the course of these engagements, of the latter history of architectural modernism with the social sciences, from anthropology, econometrics to systems theory, etc. Comparisons with American and European (“Northern”) examples of space and city planning and mechanisms (instruments such as location theory, zoning, etc.) will be elicited to highlight key structures of comparison, contrast, or influence.  

4.640 Syllabus (MIT certificate protected)