Course title: Visual Programming: From Parametric Modeling to Algorithmic Assessment (ARC 617)
Instructor: Anahita Khodadadi
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: COMPUTATION
Method: VISUALIZING
Curricular Mode: Technical Methods
Course Description:
This course introduces computational design methodologies that support informed decision-making during the early stages of architectural design. In the conceptual phase, designers must navigate complex and often competing requirements, synthesize diverse objectives, and iteratively generate and evaluate design alternatives.
Recent advances in computational tools—including multi-objective optimization algorithms, machine learning, and generative AI—have expanded the designer’s capacity to explore large solution spaces, assess performance criteria in real time, and construct more rigorous design arguments. This course situates these technologies within a designer-centered workflow, emphasizing their role in augmenting, rather than replacing, critical design thinking.
Students will develop foundational skills in parametric modeling and visual programming, and will learn to integrate computational simulation tools for performance evaluation (e.g., structural, environmental, or material-based analyses). The course also introduces design exploration methodologies and algorithmic strategies for generating, analyzing, and selecting design alternatives.
Depending on the progress of the class, additional topics may include the fundamentals of machine learning, large language models (LLMs), diffusion models, and the integration of generative AI in design workflows.
The course is structured as a combination of lectures, hands-on tutorials, in-class exercises, discussions, and project-based assignments, fostering both technical proficiency and critical reflection on the role of computation and AI in architectural design.
Course title: LOGGING (ARC 629)
Instructor: Chris Romano
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: Materials
Method: Sensing
Curricular Mode: Technical Method
Course Description:
This course will examine material origins and the ethics of material consumption as it pertains to wood construction. Wood has been one of the most popular building materials, alongside clay and stone, for thousands of years. As a natural material, it is the perfect expression of our intimate connection with the world in which we live. In fact, no other plant species is as dear to humanity as the tree. To that end, students will manually enact the process of how a tree, a perennial plant with an elongated stem, becomes a log, a part of the trunk of a tree that has fallen, and finally becomes timber, wood prepared for use in building or carpentry. Throughout this material transformation, we will examine and interrogate the three-fold definition of logger:
Utilizing this multi-faceted definition of logger, we will directly engage with the material culture of the forest industry, which most, if not all of the technological innovations surrounding this industry have been attempts to standardize and homogeneous the material. That is, to kill the plant so it will behave and perform in a predictable and consistent manner – to strip it of its ‘wood-ness’. As a counterpoint to this historical trend, the course will aim to embrace the living, unpredictable, and irregular features inherent to all trees and graphic experiments will attempt to capitalize on these bizarre and eccentric qualities. Through deep experiential and hands-on learning, this course will attempt to rekindle the omnipresent relationship between people and wood.
Course contact hours will occur both on-campus (20%) and-off campus (80%) throughout the semester. Weekly discussions, field visits, material harvesting, and student presentations will involve spending time outdoors in parks, preserves, conservation zones, and state forests while interacting with ecologists, conservationists, loggers, foresters, and industry professionals. Hands-on exercises in our Fabrication Workshop(s) exploring log milling will supplement weekly readings, short-story writings, and graphic production.
Course title: The Perfect Wall (ARC 620)
Instructor: Laura Lubniewski
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: Ecology
Method: Visualizing
Curricular Mode: Technical Method
Course Description:
“The perfect wall is an environmental separator—it has to keep the outside out and the inside in. In order to do this the wall assembly has to control rain, air, vapor and heat.”
These are the opening statements in Building Scientist Joseph Lstiburek’s article, The Perfect Wall , published by the Building Science Corporation in 2010.
Based on the concepts of this article, the course will allow students to build their vocabulary and confidence communicating about building envelope assemblies.
Course content may cover assemblies that are considered vernacular, historic, current best practices, and/or non-conventional assemblies.
Methods to engage in this topic may include hand sketching, computer drafting/modeling, visual and verbal communication, constructing mock-up models at 1:1 scale, and/or performance testing of physical or digital models.
The approach will encourage depth of learning over breadth of learning.
Topics and concepts within building envelope assemblies explored may include energy efficiency, durability, low or no foam, low or no concrete, low embodied carbon, passive house certification, “pretty good house” construction, residential construction, cold climates, and control layers (rain, air, vapor, heat).
Course title: Co/Lab: Iterative Robotics (ARC 538)
Instructor: Julia Hunt
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: Computation
Method: Making
Curricular Mode: Technical Method
Course Description:
In this lab-based course, students will develop technical skills in programming and operating Doosan robotic arms while exploring the feedback loop of human–robot collaboration through simulation, testing, and iteration. Together, we integrate computational design, recycled/reclaimed materials, human intuition and robotic production across a series of iterative, exploratory fabrication studies.
Course title: Collective Housing, Climate, and the Envelope (ARC 543)
Instructor: Jason Sowell
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: Materials
Method: Building
Curricular Mode: Technical Method
Course Description:
In the face of climate change, the building envelope has emerged as one of the most consequential sites of architectural action. It is at this interface—between interior and exterior, body and environment—that climate is made spatial, shaping energy use, thermal comfort, and health. Drawing on research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Department of Energy, this seminar examines how collective housing amplifies the stakes of envelope design, particularly within aging U.S. social housing stock that is increasingly unlivable under conditions of environmental stress. Through case studies ranging from New York City’s reinvestment in public housing under the NYCHA Permanent Affordability Commitment Together to European precedents by Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, students will investigate how expanded thresholds—winter gardens, balconies, and adaptive facades—can reconfigure the relationship between housing and climate. The seminar positions the envelope as an inhabited zone and the ground as a site for grafting public landscapes, asking how collective housing can be retrofitted and redesigned to support more resilient, livable urban futures.
Course title: (ARC 627)
Instructor: Hadas Steiner
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: Materials
Method: Theorizing
Curricular Mode: Intellectual Domain
Course Description:
Course Title: Understanding Good City Form: An Interdisciplinary Seminar (ARC 547)
Instructor: Hiro Hata
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: Cities
Method: Theorizing and Visualizing
Curricular Mode: Technical Method
Course Description:
Intended as an introduction to the field of urban design, this is an interdisciplinary seminar open to MARC, MUP, MSRED, and dual-MARC/MUP students who are interested in urban design: its origin, its current best practices tied to making existing cities and towns great. Fusing theorizing and visualizing modes of inquiry, the seminar will focus on a range of visualization and technical methods to make cities and towns more robust, more inclusive and accessible, more sustainable, healthier, and more beautiful places to live, work, play, and celebrate.
The intent of the seminar course is to provide students with a perspective on current roles and best practices of urban design. These include looking at great precedents of visualizing and mapping the city and exploring principles of making the public realm robust, legible, and rich in human experience.
Preliminary schedule (subject to change):
Course title: American Public Housing (ARC 545)
Instructor: Kristine Stiphany
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: Ecology
Method: Sensing
Curricular Mode: Intellectual Domain
Course Description:
This project-based seminar examines American public housing as a central site where architecture, urban landscape, and political economy converge. Today, approximately 9.5 million Americans rely on some form of public or assisted housing, with cities like New York City—where 1 in 14 residents lives in public housing—and Buffalo—which has one of the highest concentrations in the state—revealing both the scale and uneven geography of this system. While many developments occupy valuable central urban land, much of the stock is aging and physically distressed, as documented by the American Housing Survey, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Urban Institute. Case studies such as the Queensbridge Houses—the largest public housing development in North America—and Orchard Gardens, a HOPE VI redevelopment integrating mixed-income housing, schools, and landscape, will anchor the seminar’s analysis of typological variation in American public housing, from mid-century tower-in-the-park models to contemporary hybrid and post-demolition forms.
Through comparative study across cities including Buffalo, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston, the seminar develops a typological and spatial framework for understanding the architectural evolution of public housing—and how it might be reimagined in the face of 21st-century challenges. Students will design a field guide to collective strategies that position public housing as critical infrastructure for more equitable and resilient urban futures. The seminar includes a field visit to New York City and guest speakers directly involved in public housing design, development, and governance.
Course title: Designing Inclusive Environments
Instructor: Jordana L. Maisel
Semester: 26 Fall
Theme: Justice
Method: Theorizing
Curricular Mode: Intellectual Domain
Course Description:
This course provides an overview of inclusive design. Inclusive design empowers the people who use products, buildings and communities by taking their perspective and making it the central focus of the design process. Rooted in a critique of designer-centric practice and embracing an ethic of social responsibility, this paradigm focuses on developing form from function to increase the usefulness and responsiveness of our physical world for a wider and more diverse range of people. The course provides a working knowledge of the Inclusive Design paradigm. It introduces related principles and knowledge bases, the concept of evidence-based practice, methods of criticism and evaluation, and best practice examples. Methods include required readings and lectures, quizzes, discussions, and a research and design project.
Electives
For more specific information on courses including scheduled times, days, modality and restrictions, please see the class schedule.