The following courses are offered for Fall 2021. 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 [Orkand]

Introduction to Visual Representation and Drawing

Introductory studio course that centers on the development of critical thinking and skills on the architectural representation of space. Topics include surveying, measure, scalar juxtaposition, surface development, patterning in 2D-3D translation, and the section.

ARCH 24 [Martin]

Design Thinking and Innovation

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 84 [CHOW + CHASTAIN]

Sophomore Seminar

Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. 

This Fall the seminar is titled "Making and Seeing." Making and seeing are two sides of the same coin. The mind that reads is the same mind that writes. For a designer, the inevitable dilemma of sitting down to a blank piece of paper is eased by the act of observation of the world. But, this is a learned skill, a cognitive ability, and fun. This seminar will see places as our laboratory, explored through drawing as our instrument. There will be occasional readings.

ARCH 98BC/198BC [Crawford] 

Berkeley Connect

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

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

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 [Rael]  

Capstone Project Preparation Seminar

ARCH 102A SEC 002 [Covey]  

Capstone Project Preparation Seminar

ARCH 112 [Yeros]

The Social Life of Building

How do buildings form and inform the ways in which we live — as individuals and as part of different communities? This course explores the multiple ways in which people and buildings interact. Our cultural and economic practices shape the form of our environment which in turn shapes social constructions of gender, race and class. At the same time, as individuals, we are always making choices about how we use our spaces. Intended as a gateway to advanced architectural humanities classes, the course is organized around themes that highlight ways of thinking about individual actions, social constructions of gender, race and class, and cultural associations of the built environment. The course approaches these themes from transnational perspectives to highlight the multiple, culturally specific ways in which architecture intersects with the daily lives of people.

ARCH 129/229 [Choksombatchai]

Drawing Water

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 130 [Crysler]

Introduction to Architectural Design Theory and Criticism

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 139/239 [Crysler]

Spaces of Queer Theory

This seminar will provide students with an introduction to the genealogy of queer theory and its relationship to architecture, urbanism and the built environment. The course will be divided into four major segments, roughly chronological in outline. In part one, we will examine scholarship that charts the changing relationship between sexuality and space from the 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century. This section of the course will provide students with an understanding of the interconnection between cities, sexuality the rise of the liberal nation-state, while also setting the stage for the subsequent sections of the class. 

In part two, we will examine the international emergence of gay and lesbian rights in the post WW2-period, tracing their development as liberation movements together with their spatial articulations at architectural and urban scales, into the post-Stonewall period. In part three, we will examine the urban transformation of sexual politics during the AIDS crisis and its aftermath, and consider the subsequent impact of post-9/11 geopolitical[1]  forces on spaces of sexuality and citizenship within and beyond the US[2] [3] [4] [5] . In the fourth part of the class, we will examine diverse forms of queer futurity: creative spaces of open-ended invention and change that move beyond the prior politics of identity and recognition to explore new intersections of space, embodiment and activist politics in the global present.

ARCH 142/242 [Brager]

Sustainability Colloquium

Presentations by professionals on a variety of topics related to sustainability, offering perspectives from diverse disciplines of design, engineering, planning, and research.  Speakers change every semester and the full list will be posted prior to the start of the semester.  As examples, past presentations covered topics related climate change, environmental justice, energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality, health and well-being, water infrastructure, materials, innovation, and more! Students who enroll for 1 unit (S/U or P/NP required) will be expected to attend all lectures, submit a brief weekly response, and be part of a more involved “engagement cohort” for one of the weeks.  Conditions permitting, there might be an additional poster exhibition at the end of the semester. Students who enroll for 2 units will be expected to complete 3 additional assignments during the course of the semester (details still TBD, but based on last year these might include 2 powerpoints, and one 5-min video about a sustainability-related topic important to you).  

This class is open to both undergraduates and graduates and has no prerequisites.

ARCH 144/249 [Salter]

Introduction to Acoustics

This course focuses on what architects need to know about acoustics. The first part deals with the fundamentals of acoustics including how sound levels are described and measured, and human response to sound. The course then covers building acoustics, mechanical equipment noise and vibration control, office acoustics, design of sound amplification systems, and environmental acoustics. This course will be offered during the first five weeks of the semester.

ARCH 150 [Rastetter] 

Introduction to Structures  

Study of forces, materials, and structural significance in the design of buildings. Emphasis on understanding the structural behavior of real building systems.

ARCH 169 [Buntrock]

Fire and Water

Fire and water are at the heart of architectural poetics but also simultaneously our field’s greatest enemies. Sometimes the destruction they wield is imperceptibly slow, as fungi nibble away at wood or corroding steel slowly shatters concrete. But in an instant, that glacial action can turn to devastation. Architects and builders put a remarkable amount of effort into preventing damage from arson, forest wildfires or the spreading of a small kitchen fire; unseen layers surround a building’s skin to divert water and water vapor.

This class will have three phases. We will begin by looking closely at the dramatic destruction fire and water can cause to buildings. Next we will discuss how buildings are designed to prevent this destruction, in large-scale massing choices and in the minute ways we layer construction materials. In the final third of the class, we will look at how we can welcome fire and water into our buildings.

Prerequisite: ARCH 160 

ARCH 170A [Shanken] 

An Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism

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 177/277 [Crawford]

California Architecture

Many California architects came from other places: Maybeck from New York via the Ecole des Beaux Arts; Schindler and Neutra from Vienna; Frank Gehry from Chicago. But, once they arrived, their encounters with the Golden State produced new and original forms of architecture. This seminar will examine the qualities of the state’s environment, culture, economy, and population that have produced unique buildings and landscapes during the 20th century. It will look at both Northern and Southern California architecture, starting with canonical designers then moving beyond them to consider lesser-known regional architects whose work embodies local characteristics.

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 200A [Faculty] 

Introduction to Architecture Studio 1

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 

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 

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

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

Focused design research as the capstone project for graduate students.

ARCH 205A [Gutierrez]

Studio One, Fall

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 [Rael] 

Architecture Lectures Colloquium

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 one-unit colloquia, scheduled in the fall for each year of the M.Arch program..

ARCH 207B [Chow]

Architecture Research Colloquium

This course accompanies ARCH 201- Architecture and Urbanism in the M.Arch program. It is the second in a series of one-unit colloquia, scheduled in the fall for each year of the M.Arch program. There are weekly guests and faculty who will discuss their research on topics that will introduce you to contextual, relational and translational  issues that architects consider as they design. .

ARCH 207C [Spiegel]

Professional Practice Colloquium

This class accompanies ARCH 203, the required integrated design studio in the three-year option of the Master of Architecture program.  It is the third in a series of one-unit colloquia, scheduled in the fall for each year of the M.Arch program.

ARCH 209 [Davids]

Housing as Design Generator

The subject of housing - once the focus of architectural invention and creativity in Architecture schools –perhaps because it was seen as less amenable to the formal exploration and manipulation of surfaces that dominated studios i from the 1980’s-2010 sidelined during that time, but the recent movement away from digital exuberance toward more sober forms of expression, the housing crisis in the Bay Area and other American cities generating displacement and homelessness together with a renewed interest in the plight of low income and minority residents, and the spatial migrations that has occurred because of COVID have  all contributed to a reinvigorated interest in the housing discourse and design.

The coronavirus pandemic has given new relevance to debate about densities, the relationship of housing to the landscape and healthy environments and the understanding that it must once again be defined as generator rather than infill, engaging larger metropolitan and regional systems  Only if integrated with transportation, urban ecologies, and public space can housing become a viable initiator of new ways of life in the contemporary city. 

The Housing as Design Generator seminar will focus on readings from texts with opposing points 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 sketchy housing design proposal on sites of their choosing or provided by the instructor, 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.

Students in this course will be expected to actively participate in class discussions.

ARCH 229 [Gutierrez]

Across Sections

Sectional imaging has recently advanced into the previously unchartered scalar territory of the micro  and the nano scales. 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 have 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?

ARCH 246 [Schiavon]

Building Energy Simulations 

Energy saving in buildings is among the most cost-effective and environmentally sustainable measures to reduce greenhouse gasses emissions and energy consumption. 40% of the primary energy use and 75% of total U.S. electricity consumption is used in buildings. Computer-based energy analysis tools are important for architects, building designers, engineers, and sustainability consultants to use for evidence-based design, sustainability ratings, energy code compliance, building control and optimization, policy development, and assessment.  The central objective of this course is for you to develop fundamental and practical knowledge about building performance and energy simulations. By the end of the semester you will be able to specify, design, run, analyze, compare and assess building energy simulations.

ARCH 249 [Caldas]

The Architecture of Light

ARCH 252 [Schleicher]

Form and Structure

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

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 264 [Buntrock]

Off-Site Fabrication

This seminar looks at the implications of off-site fabrication in architecture: consistent, protected environments; worker efficiency and safety; coordination of trades; cheaper, semi-skilled labor; construction periods shortened; and completion dates more predictable. Off-site fabrication can allow for increased refinement and trial assemblies. However, it may also create monotonous sameness when the processes and results are not considered with care.

Prerequisites: 160/ 260 Introduction to Construction or consent of instructor. 

ARCH 270 [Castillo]

History of Modern Architecture 

This survey course examines developments in design, theory, graphic representation, construction technology, and interior programming through case studies of buildings spanning from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Each lecture will delve deeply into structures to examine spatial organization, critical building details, and the relationship of the case study building to contemporary works and the architect's overall output. Course learning objectives focus on developing critical reading skills and environmental literacy, understanding the construction and uses of architectural canons, an ability to mobilize writing and the manifesto as design tools, and the comprehending the architecture profession’s role in translating social conditions into material and spatial form.

ARCH 279 [Shanken/Hoffman]

Yesterday’s Tomorrows. Past Visions of the Future

The future ain’t what it used to be. In the two centuries after the French Revolution, the future was everything—the promise of a radical break with the past and present, the possible dreamland of utopia or apocalypse. All aspects of modern society, from architecture and planning, industry and infrastructure, law and labor, technology and mass culture were “temporalized” sucked into the vortex of an envisioned future. In contrast, our experience seems to be dominated by stasis and presentism, an unending now. This course explores how the future was imagined at different moments of crisis from the Enlightenment’s invention of the “future” to the late twentieth century’s turn to presentism and nostalgia. Using a variety of case studies drawn from different sources (historiography, film, architecture and so on) and periods (around 1789, post-WWI, Depression, post-WWII, 1960s) it provides a sampling of possibilities and models for a final student project, an in-depth, original research paper. Several themes thread their way through the course, including the role of the “unbuilt” in architectural history and practice, the uses of the future in the construction of social and political communities, memorials and mythologies, the anticipation of urban ruin and the perplexing synchronicity of competing conceptions of past, present and future. We will explore how the future was embedded in concrete practices and experiences but also how the concept of the “future” itself was completely transformed. Readings are drawn from different disciplines, times and places but the course’s “home” positions are European/North American history and architecture. Student projects from other geographies and disciplines are welcome.

Also listed as: HIST 280U/HIST 285U

ARCH 281 [HTS Faculty]

Methods of Inquiry in Architectural Research

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.