The first in a series of design studios offered to students interested in majoring in architecture, this an introductory studio to architectural design. Issues and ideas about space and form will be explored through a sequence of projects based on specific architectural representational techniques. The students will be confronted with progressively complex exercises involving spatial relations. The course will stress experimentation while providing an analytical and creative framework to develop an understanding of structure and materials as well as necessary skills in drawing and model making. Two three-hour studios with lectures included.

The course focuses on the social forces that shape design thinking. Its objective is to introduce architectural and urban design issues to build design and critical thinking skills from a multidisciplinary perspective. The studio is team-taught from faculty across disciplines to expose students to the multiple forces within which design operates.

This course sets out two goals: to examine and understand the status of architecture's relationship to geometry; and to develop techniques of architectural representation, documentation, and communication. The course is organized around through three drawing exercises. Each provides an introductory lecture, tutorial, and group discussion related to the topic at hand. Students will present work in progress at individual desk crits and in small groups for discussion and feedback. Each exercise will culminate in a course-wide review.

This course examines two places that play an outsized role in the American economy: Wall Street and Silicon Valley. They are distinct and similarly enduring locations. They embody a divide between urban and suburban, East Coast and West Coast, skyscrapers and office parks, tradition and innovation, conservative and liberal. What makes these places endure? How do their histories, architecture, economic dynamics, and distinct cultures shape them as places? Particular attention will be paid to the changes to white collar work and the challenges to the importance of place caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why do certain architectures figure prominently in historiography and criticism while others fall into obscurity? This seminar examines new ways of narrating the history of modern architecture from the perspective of protagonists, works and tendencies that have been subject to shifting receptions due to diverse ideological constructions, the dialectics of center and periphery and the politics of gender and sexuality. The reception of contemporary architecture in built projects, film, and installation art, opens our analysis to an intermedium dimension alongside more traditional historiographical conditions of narration.

This junior studio will focus on a number of specific design techniques in a highly regimented manner. We will continue to sharpen our skills in model-building, with emphasis placed on the value of accurate representation both by fostering craft and by exploring novel techniques of drawing and modeling.

A graphic skills course that focuses on the techniques, craft, and ideologies of collage as a form of architectural representation. There are in-class workshops and weekly projects involving (handmade) collages. There are also a limited number of supplementary readings to situate our work within the context of architectural history and theory.

As part of the search for solutions to climate, water and energy challenges in a rapidly urbanizing world, it is crucial to understand and reassess the environmental challenges and potential of the exurban wasteland. This interdisciplinary course aims to add theoretical, pragmatic and cultural dimensions to scientific, technological, and policy aspects of current environmental challenges, in an effort to bridge the environmental sciences, urbanism and the humanities focusing on the transformation of the Meadowlands, the large ecosystem of wetlands, into a State Park.

Part two of a two semester sequence in which fundamental design skills are taught in the context of the architect's wider responsibilities to society, culture and the environment. Students acquire a command of the techniques of design and representation through a series of specific architectural problems of increasing complexity. Both semesters are required for three-year M.Arch. students.

In this studio, architecture is conceived primarily as a technical endeavor. We approach design in consideration of ecology, environmental technology, building materials and structure, but also in respect to the integration of communications, robotics, geolocation and sensing technologies in the built environment. The studio is supported by technical experts. Students are required to investigate in depth a relevant technology and construct their projects around it. Projects are developed to a level of detail sufficient to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of the chosen technology.

Vertical Design Studios examine architecture as cultural production, taking into account its capacity to structure both physical environments and social organizations. Projects include a broad range of project types, including individual buildings, urban districts and landscapes.

Vertical Design Studios examine architectural design in the intersection of materiality, technology, sociality and politics; taking into account its capacity to rearticulate physical environments and social organizations. Projects are intended to explore the role of architectural apparatus to intervene daily urban enactments, by the development of a broad range of architectural devices: including buildings, urban districts, landscape and the interactions that bring them all into shared performances.

The Master of Architecture Thesis is an independent design project on a theme selected by the student. The student begins with a thesis statement outlining an area of study or a problem that has consequences for contemporary architectural production. Marking the transition between the academic and professional worlds, the thesis project is an opportunity for each student to define an individual position with regard to a specific aspect of architectural practice. As an integral part of the design process, it is intended that the thesis project incorporate research, programming and site definition.

The Master of Architecture Thesis is an independent design project on a theme selected by the student. The student begins with a thesis statement outlining an area of study or a problem that has consequences for contemporary architectural production. Marking the transition between the academic and professional worlds, the thesis project is an opportunity for each student to define an individual position with regard to a specific aspect of architectural practice. As an integral part of the design process, it is intended that the thesis project will incorporate research, programming and site definition.

An introduction to building systems and the methods of construction used to realize design in built form. First half of the course is an overview of the primary systems, materials and principles used in construction of buildings and the fabrication of elements, through lectures and accompanying lab sessions. The second half allows students to design, detail and fabricate a custom fabrication utilizing principals explored in the lectures.

Introduction to the design of building structures of steel, timber and reinforced concrete.

The course introduces the students to the main themes of performance oriented technical design of the building enclosure while reinforcing the generally understood idea of the facade as the primary language for communication of the architectural idea, developed in harmony with material, its techniques and several other forces of the industry. The students develop a historical, theoretical and practical understanding of the contemporary building enclosure and the architect's role within the process of its design and execution.

Design and analysis of a 100,000sf net-zero energy building (or equivalent) using techniques, tools and information from ARC 514 (a full set of course materials are provided to students not taking 514). Selection, design and evaluation of environmental systems including air-conditioning, ventilation, lighting, power and renewable energy systems with an emphasis on design integration with architecture and structure. Selection of building envelope components and materials for optimum thermal performance. Sustainable design concepts and energy conservation are stressed throughout.

This course on cartographic cinema explores the digital film archive as a trove of images that can be re-appropriated, re-mixed, re-assembled into new ways of thinking about and imagining cities. Cutting a horizontal trajectory across cities --- New York, Tokyo, Vienna, Paris, Hong Kong, Lagos, Calcutta --- the cinema has captured the dynamic force of urban mutations and disruptions. It has also imposed a vertical axis of memories, allowing time to pile up and overlap, confounding meaning and points of view, especially in cities of trauma.

This course supports students in the development of a broad range of thesis topics optimized to the faculty of the SoA. A series of exercises guide students to identify the primary questions that currently structure the discipline and those extra-disciplinary concerns which architecture must engage today. Throughout the work, analyses of these issues are linked to contemporary architectural production. All work is conducted by small teams and harnesses the dynamic feedback between specifically architectural problematics and the general logic of contemporary culture in preparation for future thesis work.

The seminar explores the implications of technologically networked cities for architectural programming and the design of spaces and places. Key issues examined: information technology reshaping the nature of architectural programming and our ideas of spaces, places and communities; programs for spaces, buildings, and the city being transformed by increasing mobility, fluidity and "blurring" of activities in space; and, the history of ideas that shape how we understand technology and urbanism, programming and architecture, including sentient and smart cities, big data, hybrid places.

This seminar focuses on identifying and articulating key concepts and themes concerning the interplay of race and the built environment. Proceeding initially from theories of subjectivity articulated by W.E.B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault, and Stuart Hall, the course analyzes culturations of the self via a theory of reflexive spatial practices that can help explain encounters between racialized forms of identity and the material conditions of architecture and cities.

The seminar explores philosophical intersections of race and architecture, revealing Blackness as a negative aesthetic formation in historical and theoretical discourses. The transfiguration of Blackness from "inferior" historical racial sign to compelling architectonic language parallels John Dewey's formulations on rhetoric and "becoming." The result is a new spatial rhetoric founded on Blackness. Blackness is discussed as an aesthetic principle rather than a strictly socio-political condition. The distinction allows us to understand how race and architecture coexist.

The built environment is an ambiguous and messy site shaped by many contributions -- from codes and regulations to unauthorized remodels, slap-dash handiwork, and DIY projects. This design seminar examines the creative and ingenious work that might not yet be regarded as such, with a view towards the forms of knowledge and access to resources thought to separate the expert from the non-expert. Outcomes include a visual collection of the charming, provocative, or otherwise idiosyncratic manifestations of the curious and quirky relationships between people and buildings.

The climate crisis requires a radical shift in how buildings are built to significantly decrease their embodied carbon. This design seminar explores the tectonics of plant-based building materials (wood, straw, hemp, cork, bamboo, etc.), invents new assemblies and tests how different material assemblies can be catalysts for new forms of buildings. As a design intensive course, the visible aesthetics of these materials are combined with the invisible attributes made legible through other means such as life cycle analysis, thermal imaging, and carbon calculations.

The term "model behavior" is commonly used to describe good social skills. This seminar turns that concept on its head to investigate how models themselves behave. Conceptual models, study models, section models, and presentation models are givens in architecture, but their role in projecting or inducing social behavior is seldom considered. When models in other disciplines - such as climate change and Covid models - are clearly affecting social behavior, how do architectural models change social behaviors? This course explores the potentials of the architectural model and its relationships to the myriad models that shape culture today.

Embodied energy (EE) may soon exceed operational energy as a contributor to atmospheric carbon. However, EE is by far the harder of the two to measure. This seminar is devoted to understanding, and critiquing, existing methods of measuring EE. Students undertake an independent research project centered on an EE measurement (calculation) that a) accepts/addresses real world complications and b) is meant to have real world implications.

Review and analysis of the dynamics and process inherent in starting, developing, managing and operating your own architectural practice, including marketing, finance, human resources, project process, liability, insurance, and general management. Areas of particular emphasis include project accounting, public presentations, and the development of a business plan.

This course explores the experimental intersection of robotics and architecture. Through guest workshops, conference papers, theoretical readings, lectures, and simulations, students are introduced to this experimental realm of contemporary architectural practice and research. Students gain hands-on experience with industrial-scale robots, including programming for ABB arms with a 3D design software workflow (primarily Rhino with Grasshopper). In addition to reading responses, students develop a semester-long project, designing an end-effector for a robot arm and applying the end effector in a programmed fabrication sequence.

This advanced pro-seminar investigates research methodologies in architectural discourse and practice. Each year the pro-seminar focuses on a specific theme addressing the history of the discipline from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students engage as a group in an in-depth reading of theoretical and historiographic sources on architecture and related fields.

The seminar examines the main orientations in Russia's architectural avant-garde, with a particular emphasis on the Constructivists, whose theories and designs are dissected. Their interaction with the Western radicals, from Berlin to the Netherlands, is considered, as well as their infatuation with America. Attention is devoted to the demise of Constructivism and its protracted survival under Stalinism through the analysis of specific designs. The echoes of Russian creativity in the West and the contribution of German, Swiss and American architects to the modernization of the country are mapped, from the early 1920s to the 1970s.

This seminar investigates the consistent presence of utopian thought in architecture. The seminar provides an introduction to the traditional narratives of utopia in Plato, More, Bacon, Ledoux, Fourier, Saint-Simon, and the emergence of utopianism as a critical practice in the 1950s and 1960s including Lettrism, Situationism, Archizoom, Superstudio, Archigram, Utopie, and Metabolism. Readings include historical and contemporary theories of utopia, and complementary texts in political, psychoanalytical, social and cybernetic theory. Participants select one example for research and documentation.

A survey of architectural history in the west, from ancient Egypt to 20th-century America, that includes comparative material from around the world. This course stresses a critical approach to architecture through the analysis of context, expressive content, function, structure, style, building technology, and theory. Discussion will focus on key monuments and readings that have shaped the history of architecture.

In the Western world and since the 18th century, mental asylums and prisons are linked not only by their architectural features - security, isolation, restriction of movements - but also by their common history and the goals of their builders: reforming minds and bodies through isolation and architectural coercion. In this community-engaged course, conceived in partnership with the New Jersey Prison Watch, students will learn the architectural history of Western mental hospitals and correctional facilities, while applying this knowledge to the critical assessment of contemporary facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

This course examines the role of the senses in art and architecture to move beyond conceptions of art history that prioritize vision. While the experience of art is often framed in terms of seeing, the other senses were crucially involved in the creation of buildings and objects. Textiles and ceramic vessels invite touch, gardens involve the smell of flowers, sacred spaces were built to amplify the sound of prayers and chants. The focus will be on the medieval and early modern Mediterranean. Readings will range from medieval poetry and multisensory art histories to contemporary discussions of the senses in design and anthropology.

This course examines the architectural framework for public social life in the ancient Aegean. A range of case studies tackles issues from the engineering of some of the Mediterranean world's largest structures to modern uses of ancient theaters.

Known as "Bridges", this course focuses on structural engineering as a new art form begun during the Industrial Revolution and flourishing today in long-span bridges, thin shell concrete vaults, and tall buildings. Through laboratory experiments students study the scientific basis for structural performance and thereby connect external forms to the internal forces in the major works of structural engineers. Illustrations are taken from various cities and countries thus demonstrating the influence of culture on our built environment.

An introductory course on materials used civil and environmental engineering. Lectures on structure and properties of construction materials including concrete, steel, glass and timber; fracture mechanics; strength testing; mechanisms of deterioration; impact of material manufacturing on the environment. Labs on brittle fracture, heat treatment of steel, strength of concrete, mechanical properties of wood.

The course looks at the most inventive structures and technologies, demonstrating their use of form finding techniques in creating complex curved surfaces. The first part introduces the topic of structural surfaces, tracing the ancient relationship between innovative design and construction technology and the evolution of surface structures. The second part familiarizes the student with membranes(systems, form finding techniques,materials and construction techniques.) The third part focuses on rigid surfaces. The fourth part provides a deeper understanding of numerical form finding techniques.

An interdisciplinary investigation of the status of the human body in the modern reinvention of space within the overlapping frames of art, architecture, and the performing arts from the 1890s to the present. Works by artists, architects, theater designers, and filmmakers will be supplemented by readings on architectural theory, intellectual and cultural history, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and aesthetics.

This course invites students to study Teotihuacan, Mexico, the largest urban development of American antiquity. It considers this city's art history and archaeology over six weeks, to culminate in a 1-week fieldtrip to view the city's ruins, if possible. We will then examine those major pre-Hispanic polities with which Teotihuacan interacted, including Tikal, Guatemala, or upon which it exerted historical influence, such as Tenochtitlan, Mexico City. The final two weeks will consider comparative settlement and architectural data from the Mississippian, Puebloan, and Inka cultures of Indigenous North and South America.

VR/AR can enable engineers, scientists, and architects to plan and conduct their work in fundamentally new ways, visualize and communicate their findings more effectively, and work in environments that are otherwise difficult, impossible, or too costly to experience in person. This course explores the basic concepts of effective VR/AR experiences, builds skills needed to develop and support innovative science, engineering, or architecture projects. In the second half of the semester, working in small teams, students develop, implement VR/AR projects of their choice.

VR/AR can enable engineers, scientists, and architects to plan and conduct their work in fundamentally new ways, visualize and communicate their findings more effectively, and work in environments that are otherwise difficult, impossible, or too costly to experience in person. This course explores the basic concepts of effective VR/AR experiences and builds the skills needed to develop and support innovative science, engineering, or architecture projects. In the second half of the semester, working in small teams, students develop and implement VR/AR projects of their choice.

An introduction to the influence of materials in artistic, architectural, and product design. Primarily focused on the artist, architect, and designer who want to know more about materials and the principles of materials science and characterization. This class is also for the engineer who wants to study more about design. Focus will be on how technical properties, aesthetics, sustainability, manufacturability, and ergonomics relate to material properties and selection.

What kind of public architecture is appropriate for a democracy? Should public spaces and buildings reflect democratic values - such as transparency and accessibility - or is the crucial requirement for democratic architecture that the process of arriving at decisions about the built environment is as participatory as possible? Is gentrification somehow un-democratic? The course will introduce students to different theories of democracy, to different approaches to architecture, and to many examples of architecture and urban planning from around the world, via images and films. Might include a field trip to New York City.

Co-taught by design collective dots, the course aims to explore the world of visual storytelling, with an emphasis on collaboration as an essential part of the process of designing 3-dimensional space for narratives. The course will present narrative design processes as adaptable to many media including theater, film, installation and architecture and hopes to empower students with the ability to recognize their role as the designer of their own stories. Through individual research and a group project, we aim to encourage students to develop unique points of view within the context of a design that is worth more than the sum of its parts.

This course will examine different crises confronting cities in the 21st century. Topics will range from informal settlements, to immigration, terrorism, shrinking population, sprawl, rising seas, affordable housing, gentrification, smart cities. The range of cities will include Los Angles, New Orleans, Paris, Logos, Caracas, Havana, New York, Hong Kong, Dubai among others.

The great thing about drawing is you can do it anywhere! This course approaches drawing as a way of thinking and seeing. We'll introduce basic techniques while also encouraging experimentation, with a focus on both drawing from life and drawing as an expressive act. Students will be introduced to the basics of line, shading, proportion, composition, texture and gesture. You'll also maintain a drawing journal, and use it as a regular space for observation and personal expression. Through exposure to a variety of mediums and techniques, you'll gain the skills and confidence necessary to develop an individual final project of your choosing.

The great thing about drawing is you can do it anywhere! This course approaches drawing as a way of thinking and seeing. We'll introduce basic techniques while also encouraging experimentation, with a focus on both drawing from life and drawing as an expressive act. Students will be introduced to the basics of line, shading, proportion, composition, texture and gesture. You'll also maintain a drawing journal, and use it as a regular space for observation and personal expression. Through exposure to a variety of mediums and techniques, you'll gain the skills and confidence necessary to develop an individual final project of your choosing.

An introduction to the materials and methods of painting, addressing form and light, color and its interaction, composition, scale, texture and gesture. Students will experiment with subject matter including still life, landscape, architecture, self-portraiture and abstraction, while painting from a variety of sources: life, sketches, maquettes, collages, photographs and imagination. Students will progressively develop personal imagery that will inform an individual final project. Princeton will provide all materials for the painting class.