This course is designed for M.Arch students to take a year before their final spring semester. The course develops an understanding of research methods and explores the formation of ideas for architecture thesis projects.
This course introduces students to contemporary methods of construction and draws attention to the materialization of architectural intent. It foregrounds the historical, technological and conceptual basis of construction systems to understand the building as a process and cultural artifact.
This graduate seminar explores architecture and adjacent creative fields – industrial design, graphic design, etc. – to understand design leadership models that fuel future-forward speculation.
This course explores the systems of economic, political, social and regulatory forces driving the production of contemporary architectural projects. It critiques these systems, examines alternatives, and tests interventions in pursuit of value propositions outside of the bottom-line driven norms of late capitalism.
This course is for graduate students participating in the prestigious national Urban Land Institute (ULI) Hines competition. This is an intensive real estate and urban design competition that will take place January 9 - January 23rd.
This studio will expand on MUD students' understanding of neighborhood-scaled urban design through the examination of urban systems and systemic processes, focusing on the infrastructures of toxicity and modes of local action against them. The studio is anchored in an ongoing collaboration with North Braddock Residents For Our Future, a grassroots organization which has led the opposition to unconventional gas drilling and environmental injustice in Braddock and North Braddock and surrounding communities.
Commoning the City is a yearlong research-based-design thesis studio focused on social justice and community-led urban transformations, positioning design as an agent of change that can support citizens claiming their Right to the City.
This course provides an introduction to a variety of synthetic approaches to design and research with multiple levels of depth as designated by the 3 unit, 6 unit, 9 unit and 12 unit options.
This seminar investigates the future of cities by focusing on three existential challenges: the escalating environmental crisis, growing social inequity, and technological dislocation. In the face of these wicked problems, we address the role and agency of designers and planners, decision makers and citizens in tackling what Jeremy Rifkin describes as the Third Industrial Revolution and how to lay the foundational infrastructure for an emerging collaborative age.
This course examines the shifting regimes of urban ecology and equips students with skills and core concepts that enable them to lead or contribute to transition through design. The course discusses the systems and the logics that create the patterns and explores how our design process may be different when dealing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of systems design.
