Architecture Courses
ARCH 252G-01 / LAEL 252G-01
PHENOMENA
SECTION DESCRIPTION
As artists and designers our understanding of the physical universe can be a fundamental part of our engagement with our context and in production of our creative work. This course includes an introduction to selected fundamentals of physics: momentum, thermodynamics, and waves and optics - all part of the basis for Architectural Technology. These fundamental phenomena are to be considered both through their mathematical application and expression as concepts in contemporary art. Content to be examined through mathematical problem solving, critical reading, and lab sessions using both physical measurement and digital simulation in Python programming language.
Offered as ARCH-252G or LAEL-252G.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Open to non-major Graduate Students.
Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)
ARCH 253G-01
ARCHITECTURAL ANATOMY
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Introduction to technical building systems - Structure, Environmental and Enclosure - and their integration with an emphasis on quantifying performance and increasing sustainability. Content includes survey of these three system types - typical components, basis of performance, and analysis of performance - and introduction to related conventions of construction and architectural detailing to realize them.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)
ARCH 254G-01
STRUCTURAL DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Structural Design with timber, steel and concrete (allowable stress, plastic, and composite design respectively). Students will develop understanding and application of quantitative methods of structural design for conventional structural components and systems - beams, columns, trusses, frames, walls, etc. in multiple materials. Introduces the conventions of detailing structural systems in these materials. Introduces systems and requirements for building foundation, gravity superstructure, and lateral superstructure.
This course is a requirement for second-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)
ARCH 255G-01
ENCLOSURE DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Comprehensive design of building enclosures - integrated consideration of structural design, tolerance, detailing, thermal transmission, air transmission, and moisture transmission. Introduce typical and atypical systems of enclosure with emphasis on relative advantages of different systems depending on location, intended performance, and design intent.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture
ARCH 256G-01
ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course reinforces the fundamentals of environmental systems- thermal, light, ventilation, acoustics-and teaches design strategies to evaluate and optimize building concepts based on these systems. The lab component will include hands-on testing (e.g. data-loggers for thermal and HDR imaging for daylighting) and an emphasis on digital simulations (e.g. Rhino plug-ins for thermal and lighting analysis). The Simulation Game is an in-class activity where students compete to make the most energy-efficient conceptual building massing using an energy modeling program in Rhino/Grasshopper. The course will culminate in a case study project in which students apply design strategies to a specific building design problem.
This course is a requirement for first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)
ARCH 301G-01
GRADUATE SEMINAR: DISCIPLINARITY
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Anyone following contemporary debates in architecture knows that there are as many definitions of architecture's disciplinarity as there are people who attempt to define it. In the current spate of publications on this topic, Mark Jarzombek declares architecture to be a failed discipline; Jane Rendell claims that architecture is a 'subject' subsuming several disciplines; Mark Wigley ruminates upon the prosthetic nature of the discipline to the sciences; Bob Somol and Sarah Whiting attempt to recover a Foucaultian disciplinarity in which norms, principles and traditions are supplanted by performative practice; Akos Moravansky argues that the disciplinarity of architecture resists the discursive approach embodied in post-1968 theory; Keller Easterling seeks the trapdoor into another habit of mind" by eschewing narrow categories of thought for more inclusive ones; Sylvia Lavin uses the analogy of the 'kiss' between an installation and the architecture that houses it as a model of architectural inter-disciplinarity as media interaction; and Hal Foster and Michael Speaks face off on the relative merits of design intelligence and critical distance. How can a student of architecture ever gain a foothold in this complex and confusing debate? At stake in the debates over disciplinarity is the question: how can we identify architecture's categories of knowledge, and how did the categorization of knowledge become a priority? This Disciplinarity seminar will historically situate the circumstances of architecture's emerging disciplinarity, and thematize it through three seemingly disparate but operatively identical lenses: the aesthetic, the historic, and the technological. Although the debates cited above appear unruly at first blush, fundamentally they aggregate around the relative merits of defining disciplinary categories of knowledge either too narrowly or too broadly, focusing either on architecture's autonomy or its extra-disciplinary appropriations. In addition to architecture's various categories of knowledge, the seminar will consider the influence of disciplinarity on our practices, considering how various classifications of architectural knowledge affect its techniques, standards, and formats of dissemination. From its Foucaultian framing to its current incarnations, Disciplinarity will unpack the construction of architecture's disciplinarity, and shed some much-needed light on what it means for architects to be disciplinary.
Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)
ARCH 320G-01
GRADUATE THEORY SEMINAR: MAKING DISCOURSE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This is a theoretical seminar course that will be concerned with ideas and architectural knowledge that may be cultivated and tested through discourse. The course discussions will focus on an expansive role of architectural tools. While acknowledging a wealth of disciplinary conventions, histories and theories, this course recognizes that the forms of representation within the discipline of architecture have the capacity to affect the discipline of architecture and are not fixed. Students in this course will be expected to build upon their previous architectural education through a series of directed projects aimed at advancing architectural theories, ideas and methods. Some of the questions that students will be expected to address are: What are the practical, theoretical, and creative implications of a drawing that functions as architecture? How do architects change the way we make and think thanks to digital media? How do architects represent and model natural forces? How do architects express political or social agendas? What is the nature of an architectural contribution to interdisciplinary discourse? How can representation enable new kinds of artistic and research-based practices for architecture? Students will be expected to self-direct their process while framing their work intellectually in a seminar environment.
Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00
This course is limited to first-year MArch (2yr) Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (2yr)
ARCH 3850-101
UNORTHODOX NAVAL ARCHITECTURE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Architects are generalists. Any given project might require an architect to learn about a new field: healthcare, classical music, agriculture etc.. In this course we will learn about boat building through design research while simultaneously using hands-on rapid prototyping to explore the fundamental physical properties of naval architecture as a balance of function and space. These models will move from abstract to concrete. Our work will be supplemented with studies of the history of naval architecture and learning from boat builders in the greater providence area. Student’s designs will be realized through iterative scale models culminating in a model boat to be tested in a nearby body of water.
Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00
Elective
ARCH 3855-101
SEEING ARCHITECTURE: ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
SECTION DESCRIPTION
The history of photography is deeply intertwined with that of architecture. So too, is the history of architecture, and the teaching and learning of that history, inseparable from photography. How many photographs of historical architecture have we been taught from? How often has the discussion of said architecture included the understanding of said photo as a particular interpretation of a building, and not as the building itself? And in the age of social media, and the ubiquity of personal cameras and cell phones, has the role of architectural photography changed? How can we break away from the role of photography as truth in documentation, and begin to use it as a tool to generate something new?
Elective
ARCH W132-101
MID-CENTURY MAKING
SECTION DESCRIPTION
It's no coincidence that some of the most timeless pieces of furniture were designed by Architects. Iconic designs by mid-century architects like Charles Eames, Alvar Aalto, and Eero Saarinen are still in production today with originals valued well into the thousands of dollars. But what makes these pieces so timeless? This winter-session course will begin with a brief survey of American mid-century design with a focus on material, form, and construction techniques. Students will then choose one mid-century design and present their own critical analysis. Building on their exploration, students will be asked to develop their own designs through conceptual sketches, CAD, digital modeling and rapid prototyping. Students will then create shop drawings from which a full-scale piece of furniture will be created. Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00
You require instructor permission to register in this course. Junior, Senior or Graduate Students should contact the instructor for permission to register.
Elective
LAEL 1005-01
WORLD ARCHITECTURE: FROM PRE-HISTORY TO PRE-MODERN: IDEAS AND ARTIFACTS
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This history of architecture course, co-taught by an architectural historian and an architect, introduces key ideas, forces, and techniques that have shaped world architecture through the ages prior to the modern period. The course is based on critical categories, ranging from indigenous and vernacular architecture, to technology, culture, and representation. The lectures and discussions present systems of thought, practice and organization, emphasizing both historical and global interconnectedness, and critical architectural differences and anomalies. Each topic will be presented through case studies accompanied by relevant texts. The students will be expected to engage in the discussion groups, prepare material for these discussions, write about, and be examined on the topics.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Preference is given Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture, MArch: Architecture (3yr)
LAEL 1022-01
MODERN ARCHITECTURE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
The course will focus on the diverse new roles encountered by the architect in the 20th century: form maker, administrator of urban development, social theorist, cultural interpreter, ideologue. Emphasis will be placed upon the increasing interdependence of architecture and the city, and the recurrent conflicts between mind and hand, modernity and locality, expressionism and universality.
Enrollment in this course is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students and first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | BArch, MArch (3yr): Architecture
LAEL 1022-02
MODERN ARCHITECTURE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
The course will focus on the diverse new roles encountered by the architect in the 20th century: form maker, administrator of urban development, social theorist, cultural interpreter, ideologue. Emphasis will be placed upon the increasing interdependence of architecture and the city, and the recurrent conflicts between mind and hand, modernity and locality, expressionism and universality.
Enrollment in this course is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students and first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | BArch, MArch (3yr): Architecture