The following courses are offered for fall 2020. For more information, see the UC Berkeley Online Schedule of Classes.
Please note: the following list contains undergraduate and graduate courses in Architecture. This list will be amended as the schedule develops.
ARCH 11A [Gutierrez]
Introduction to Visual Representation and Drawing
Description: Introductory studio course that concerns theories of representation and the use of several visual means, including freehand drawing and digital media, to analyze and convey ideas regarding the environment. Topics include contour, scale, perspective, color, tone, texture, and design.
ARCH 24 [Martin]
Design Thinking and Innovation
Description: Design thinking and innovation are key drivers of success for many of today’s leading industries, companies, and institutions. At the center of these activities are processes of knowledge application and skills referred to as design thinking. This type of thinking is nested in a rich history of forms of inquiry and research paradigms. This course will explore the relationship of design thinking to other forms of thinking strategies, as well as connect thinking to the actions of innovation. Much of our future progress, both today and in the years to come, will result from a culture of creative innovation more specifically as the results of Covid 19 become clearer. On of the attributes of a creative culture is the use of design thinking, but all forms of inquiry are needed to unlock the challenges and potential of our actions. Design action represents a powerful set of methods to engage everyday challenges in almost any discipline or profession. The course will focus on ways of thinking as they relate to changing our environment, our organizations, our discipline, etc. In addition, the course will illustrate some of the characteristics of career paths that are at the center of design thinking and innovation.
ARCH 98BC/198BC [Crawford]
Berkeley Connect
Description: Berkeley Connect links undergraduate students with experienced mentors in Architecture. These mentors lead small groups of 10-20 students in regular meetings; they also meet with students one-on-one to provide guidance and advice. The core of the Berkeley Connect program is a one-credit, pass-fail course that is designed to create a community of students with similar intellectual interests. There is no homework associated with Berkeley Connect: no exams, no papers, no quizzes. Instead, small group meetings focus on sharing ideas and learning new skills within the Architecture major as a way to foster friendships and provide a supportive intellectual community for Berkeley undergraduates.The only requirement for joining Berkeley Connect in Architecture is that you have an interest in the field of study. You do not have to be a major in order to participate. Undeclared freshmen and sophomores are welcome, along with entering junior transfers and juniors and seniors who have declared the major.
ARCH 100A [Faculty]
Fundamentals of Architectural Design
Description: Introduction to the conceptual design of buildings. Problems emphasize conceptual strategies of form and space, site relationships and social, technological and environmental determinants.
ARCH 100C [Faculty]
Architectural Design III
Description: This is a studio course in architectural design. Students work on individual and group design projects that build on topics from Architecture 100B with additional integration of conditions pertinent to architectural production that may include architectural precedents, context, landscape and urban issues, envelope, performance, structure, and tectonics in the design of buildings.
ARCH 102A SEC 001 [Fields]
Capstone Project Preparation Seminar
ARCH 102A SEC 002 [Covey]
Capstone Project Preparation Seminar
ARCH 102A SEC 003 [Baker]
Capstone Project Preparation Seminar
ARCH 109/209 [McKay]
This research seminar is open to undergraduate and graduate students in ARCH, LAEP and DCRP.
In a time of climate crisis and urban uncertainty, we need transformational paradigms for living with water. To discover these paradigms, this seminar begins with a research hypothesis that slow water is more environmentally productive than fast water. The paradigms we seek will assume that ways to slow w ater are unique to each geographic locale and to its residents’ ways of living. The paradigms will value harnessing water to serve multiple purposes. And ultimately, the paradigms must provide ways of living, playing, and working in cities that are increasi ngly safer and healthier.
Grey infrastructure was during the twentieth century the symbol of an accelerated economic grow, but also of an environmental decay. At the turn of the century we realized that the next century must be the one of the green infrastructures, reframing in a more radical way how the urbanized watershed can recover the abilities of the preurban state and improve life quality. Climate change, land use change and increasing population just tell us that there is no time to wait.
Our buildings and cities have evolved around water quality but not incorporating it in the design process. The systems needed to move water - from potable, to gray and black – and the built environment is now challenged by drought, floods, and sea level rise. In dense cities today, the ground is too valuable to just dump storm water into green strips. The premise and path of exploration for the seminar is that our buildings and public spaces must become decentralized water containers and treatment facilities as part of larger watersheds and built infrastructures. This seminar will explore tools for this change to happen.
How can buildings contribute to the absorption of water rather than the shedding, contributing to water management of community ecosystems? How do we build for water that is seen as benefit rather than danger? If water is no longer seen as a buildingbuilding’s nemesis, what are the opportunities in building that contain water, that allow water to seep, to permeate, to move slowly? This seminar builds on research from the previous two years. While sharing the work of previous curses this semester will focus on the neighborhood the building and the dwelling scales.
ARCH 110AC [Chiesi]
The Social and Cultural Processes in Architecture and Urban Design
Class Notes
Please note that this class will run for 10 weeks from September 15th to November 19th. The first class meeting takes place at 2pm in Wurster 112 on Tuesday, September 15th.
Description: This course focuses on the significance of the physical environment for citizens and future design professionals. This course is an introduction to the field of human-environment studies, taught from an American Cultures perspective. Its objectives include: 1) use the concepts in person-environment relations, 2) understand how these concepts vary by subculture, primarily Anglo, Hispanic, and Chinese-American, 3) learn to use the methodological skills necessary to conduct architectural programming and evaluation research, and 4) think critically about the values embedded in design and the consequences for people, their behavior, and feelings.
ARCH 130 [Crysler]
Introduction to Architectural Design Theory and Criticism
Description: This class introduces students to the history and practice of design theory from the late 19th century to the present, with emphasis on developments of the last four decades. Readings and lectures explore specific constellations of theory and practice in relation to changing social and historical conditions. The course follows the rise of modernist design thinking, with particular emphasis on the growing influence of technical rationality across multiple fields in the post World War II period. Systematic approaches based in cybernetics and operations research (among others) are examined in the context of wider attempts to develop a science of design. Challenges to modernist design thinking, through advocacy planning and community-based design, the influence of social movements and countercultures, and parallel developments in postmodernism within and beyond architecture, provide the critical background for consideration of recent approaches to design theory, including those informed by developments in digital media and technology, environmental and ecological concerns, questions surrounding the globalization of architectural production, and the development of new materials.
ARCH 142/242 [Brager]
Sustainability Colloquium
Description: Presentations on a variety of topics related to sustainability by leading practioners: architectural designers, city planners, consultants, engineers, and researchers. Students can enroll for one or two units (with additional writing assignments).
ARCH 149/249 [Caldas]
Daylighting in Architecture
Description: Daylighting is a cornerstone of architecture design, a fundamental aspect of space making. This course will focus on design approaches to natural light, resorting to the study of precedents in contemporary architecture, daylighting vocabularies and grammars, rules of thumb and quantitative studies. Other topics include health and comfort, energy conservation, and current metrics and standards. Weekly sessions will comprise both lectures and labs. Final projects will be developed in groups and will use large-scale physical models or computer simulations as qualitative and quantitative methods to assess design solutions.
ARCH 150 [Black]
Introduction to Structures
Description: Study of forces, materials, and structural significance in the design of buildings. Emphasis on understanding the structural behavior of real building systems.
ARCH 170A [Shanken]
An Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism
Description: This course provides an interdisciplinary overview of the history of the built environment from its beginnings to about 1500CE. The scope is broad in geographical, cultural, and architectural terms, combining architectural and urban history with anthropology, and geography. It is also an introduction to historical methods in architectural history. Students will learn a variety of ways to look at the history of buildings and cities while they learn both canonical monuments and less celebrated examples. Although the prime emphasis is on the Mediterranean basin, a substantial number of lectures will be devoted to architecture in Asia, Africa, and Meso-America. Students interested in history, art history, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, sociology, planning, material culture, cities, and urbanism will find it an excellent introduction to the subject, as well as to the humanities in general. Students from all departments and at all levels are welcome! This course satisfies the general breadth requirement for Historical Studies and Arts and Literature.
ARCH 179/279 [Cenzatti]
Public Spaces
Description: At first sight public space may seem an innocuous subject. Public spaces are places that are, or should be, accessible to everybody and where social encounters and public activities could take place. As the debates among social scientists, political theorists, planners, and architects over the last 30 years have shown, though, what public means and who the public(s) is (are) have become difficult questions, rather than certainties.
ARCH 179/279 [Crawford]
Contemporary Urban Dynamics
Description: This class is an introduction to the broad range of different polemical positions that currently exist in the field of urbanism. In order to survey this extensive intellectual landscape, the class will begin with a brief survey of traditional, modernist and post-modern urban design models. The second section will move to the current day to examine alternative models for urban designers and urban design projects. Finally, we will engage with the plethora of competing “urbanism” that co-exist in urban design discourse. Articles in an extensive reading list emphasize each of these positions as propositions to be analyzed and debated, not as guides to be followed. The final section will consist of readings, discussion and student presentations summarizing each of these approaches, describing their advantages and disadvantages. This will allow students to compare, contrast and critique these positions as a step toward formulating their own urban design approach.
ARCH 179/279 [Crawford]
A title and description are forthcoming
ARCH 200A [Buresh/Choksombatchai/Pakravan]
Introduction to Architecture Studio 1
Description: Introductory course in architectural design and theories for graduate students. Problems emphasize the major format, spatial, material, tectonic, social, technological, and environmental determinants of building form. Studio work is supplemented by lectures, discussions, readings, and field trips.
ARCH 200C [Steinfeld]
Representational Practice in Architectural Design
Description: This course addresses three distinct levels of representational practice in architectural design: 1) cultivate an understanding of the foundational discourse and diversity of approaches to architectural representation; 2) develop a fluency in the canonical methods found in architectural practice; 3) encourage the development of a personal relationship to forms of modeling and formats of drawing.
ARCH 201 [Faculty]
Architecture and Urbanism Design Studio
Description: The design of buildings or communities of advanced complexity. Each section deals with a specific topic such as housing, public and institutional buildings, and local or international community development. Studio work is supplemented by lectures, discussions, readings, and field trips.
ARCH 203 [Faculty]
Integrated Design Studio
Description: The Integrated Design Studio is the penultimate studio where students incorporate their accumulated knowledge into architectural solutions. The students demonstrate the integrative thinking that shapes complex architectural design and technical solutions. Students will possess an understanding to classify, compare, summarize, explain and/or interpret information. The students will also become proficient in using specific information to accomplish a task, correctly selecting the appropriate information and accurately applying it to the solution of a specific problem while also distinguishing the effects of its implementation.
ARCH 204A [Faculty]
Thesis Seminar
Description: Focused design research as the capstone project for graduate students.
ARCH 205A [Rael]
Studio One, Fall
Description: The first semester of a one-year, post-professional design studio intended for those students who have a professional architecture degree and wish to explore current design issues in a stimulating, rigorous, and highly experimental studio setting.
ARCH 207A [Faculty]
Architecture Lectures Colloquium
Description: This course accompanies the required introductory design studio in the three-year option of the Master of Architecture program. It is the first in a series of three one-unit colloquia, scheduled consecutively for the first three semesters of the program.
ARCH 207B [Chow]
Architecture Research Colloquium
Description: This course accompanies the second semester of the required introductory design studio in the three-year option of the Master of Architecture program. It is the second in a series of three one-unit colloquia, scheduled consecutively for the first three semesters of the program. For a one-hour session each week, faculty in the Department of Architecture and other departments of the College of Environmental Design will present lectures on their research and design practice.
ARCH 207C [Creedon]
Professional Practice Colloquium
Description: This class accompanies the required comprehensive design studio in the three-year option of the Master of Architecture program. It is the third in a series of three one-unit colloquia, scheduled consecutively for the first three semesters of the program.
ARCH 209 [Davids]
Housing as Design Generator
109 for Undergraduates with permission from instructor
Since the early 1970s, the subject of housing - once the focus of architectural invention and creativity - has been marginalized, perhaps because it was seen as less amenable to the formal exploration and manipulation of surfaces that have dominated studios in architecture schools, but the recent movement away from digital exuberance toward more sober forms of expression has also reinvigorated interest in residential design.
The coronavirus pandemic has given new relevance to debate about building types and densities conducive to healthy environments and the understanding that housing must once again be defined as generator rather than infill, with new forms emerging from contemporary living patterns engaging larger metropolitan and regional systems. Housing can become a viable initiator of new ways of life in the contemporary city only if integrated with transportation, urban ecologies, and public space.
The Housing as Design Generator seminar will focus on readings from texts with opposing point of view, surveying, and exploration of a broad range of housing design, including the 20th century to current examples from around the world. Students will conduct directed research on housing and make a preliminary housing design proposal, individually or in groups as large as three; as an alternative to a design proposal, individuals may submit a ten-page paper with the approval of the instructor.
ARCH 209 [Calott]
A title and description are forthcoming
ARCH 229/129 [Choksombatchai]
3 units.
This is a course, first and foremost, about representation, specifically how we represent water. Water is one of the basic elements most essential to sustaining life. It is vital to all known life sources. It covers about 71% of the surface of the earth. We thought we know water, we live with it and consume it everyday, but we hardly know how water works. What are its properties? How it is performed in various circumstances? And at different scale. We only know and recognized how important it is to manage it…
We learned that chemically, water is a compound, containing one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. We also know that water is a liquid state at standard ambient temperature and pressure, but it often coexists on Earth as a solid state (ice),and gaseous state (steam and vapor). From an environmental design perspective, do we actually know it? Most importantly, how do we (as designers) incorporate and represent water during design processes, which in turn, integrate it in the design of physical space.
Each culture has developed its own understanding and representation of water in its own unique interpretation. It reveals how significant water plays its role in building our societies and cities. The course will be divided into three assignments; each will challenge our understanding of water, learning the phenomena that we may not be able to describe simply through verbal language. Through visual representation, we will make an attempt to unpack our understanding of water both physically and conceptually.
ARCH 229/129 [Gutierrez]
Sectional imaging has recently advanced into the previously unchartered scalar territory of the micro and the nanoscales. Visualization at these novel scales has enabled extensive scientific advances by revealing material and geometric organizations but has yet to influence the architectural section. Arguably, this is likely to change, since representation in the arts and sciences has, through history impacted one another. From the influence of Durer’s mathematical study of conic sections on orthographic projection to that of Leonardo da Vinci’s sectional anatomy on the natural sciences, the pendulum of exerted influence has swung from science to the arts, and back. This seminar will ask, are we at a moment in which scientific progress will influence radical shifts in the architectural section? How can the study of sectional methodologies in the arts and sciences through history inform our inquiry in the next decades? Fueled by these interrogations, students will explore the theoretical implications of representational tools from the 15th century to the future micro and nanoscale imaging to analyze, construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct the section of an architectural case study. The course comprises lectures and seven iterative representations of the same section across seven milestones in sectional drawing. Through an analytic, critical, and constructive study of the history of the section, the seminar will conjecture on the future of The Section in architecture and expose students to various imaging techniques and frameworks including CT Tomography labs.
ARCH 241 [Schiavon]
Research Methods in Building Sciences
Description: Research Methods in Building Science. Three hours of lecture/seminar per week. Prerequisites: Building Science MS/PhD, MArch, BA in Architecture and MS/PhD in Engineering students or consent of instructor.
This interactive class provides training in research skills and critical thinking in the field of Building Science, Technology and Sustainability, with a focus on energy use, indoor environmental quality, and human well-being, comfort, and productivity. Readings will cover both building science theory and research methods, and classes will be organized around a series of individual and group homework. Topics will include literature review, design of both lab-based and field experiments, physical measurements, post-occupancy evaluation, statistical analysis and interpretation of data, data visualization and methods of enhancing the spread and impact of scientific results (Wikipedia editing and public presentations). Throughout, we will discuss ways in which research can influence the design and operation of buildings, including building standards and codes. Depending on the status of students’ thesis work or research interest, there will be opportunities to develop your research plans with a specific focus on building science methodology. All graduate students with some knowledge of building science and an interest in related methods of inquiry are warmly welcomed. The main aim of this course is to provide students with knowledge and abilities to 1) plan, develop, execute, interpret, and spread research in the building science/energy field; and 2) develop fact/data-based answers to design questions concerning the impact of the built environment on humans, energy consumption, and sustainability.
ARCH 252 [Schleicher]
Form and Structure
Description: This class is conceptualized to bring graduate students in architecture and structural engineering closer together and to initiate a new trajectory of interdisciplinary collaboration. With this objective in mind, the class investigates the interplay between geometry and structural behavior of different structural systems categorized with respect to their load-bearing mechanism. Special focus is placed on form-active and surface-active structures like cable nets, membranes, gridshells, and continuous shells. The class will begin by providing a holistic overview of ancient and cutting-edge form-finding approaches and analysis methods. Using playful physical experiments, students will gain hands-on understanding of how different structural states can affect the shape of a structure and how this interrelation could be used creatively to drive the design process. Followed by a series of software tutorials and small assignments, students will deepen their knowledge by learning more about the latest numerical form-finding methods that use advanced digital modeling and scripting tools. In this context, an overview of the mathematical background is provided to enable class participants to understand and evaluate the applicability and limits of each method. The state-of-the-art form-finding methods are then put to use on practical examples where form and structural states are investigated and manipulated simultaneously.
This class is open to graduate students who have already taken ARCH 150 or an equivalent introduction to structures class. Prior experience in software programs like Rhinoceros and Grasshopper would be beneficial. Enrollment by instructor permission only; please add your name to the waitlist.
ARCH 260 [Jaehning]
Introduction to Construction
Description: This course introduces the materials, components, and processes of construction. Students will become familiar with each of these elements, understand the role of both labor and available skilled trades, the location of on- and off-site work, and the impact of codes and regulations on design professionals. Lectures will be accompanied by construction site visits and group projects. By observing construction, you’ll see how architects’ decisions affect the size of materials and connections as well as where and how they are assembled. Group projects will explore tectonics through various precedents, and how projects are developed from concept to construct.
ARCH 270 [Castillo]
History of Modern Architecture
Description: This course examines developments in design, theory, graphic representation, construction technology, and interior programming through case studies of individual buildings. Each lecture will delve deeply into one or sometimes two buildings to examine program, spatial organization, critical building details, and the relationship of the case study building with regard to other parallel works and the architect's overall body of work.
ARCH 281 [HTS Faculty]
Methods of Inquiry in Architectural Research
Description: This is the introductory course in methods of inquiry in architecture research to be required of all entering Ph.D. students in all areas of the program. The purpose is to train students in predissertation and prethesis research strategies and expose them to the variety of inquiry methods, including: the value of scholarly research, the nature of evidence, critical reading as content analysis, and writing, presenting and illustrating scholarship in the various disciplines of architecture.