Below are currently offered courses for the spring semester. For course meeting times and locations, see the UC Berkeley Online Schedule of Classes.

• Lower and Upper Division Courses
• Graduate Courses

Lower and Upper Division Courses

Arch 11B [Atwood]
Introduction to Design

Course Format: Three hours of lecture, six hours of studio, and two hours of laboratory per week.

Prerequisites: Arch 11A with C- or better.

Description: (Formerly Env Des 11B) Introduction to design concepts and conventions of graphic representation and model building as related to the study of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and city planning. Students draw in plan, section, elevation, axonometric, and perspective and are introduced to digital media. Design projects address concepts of order, site analysis, scale, structure, rhythm, detail, culture, and landscape.

 

ARCH 24, 001 [Martin]

Freshman Seminars

• Course Format: One hour of seminar per week.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Description: The Berkeley Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Berkeley Seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.

Extended Course Description

"Design Thinking and Future Career Paths"

This is a five week module class that meets the first five Tuesdays of the spring semester: 19 January through 16 February.

Creativity and innovation are the key drivers of success for many of today’s leading industries and companies. At the center of this activity is design thinking. Much of our future both today and in the years to come will be do to a culture of creative innovation. An important element of a creative culture is the use of design thinking as a means to unlock the challenges and potential of our actions. Designing represents a powerful set of methods to engage everyday challenges in almost any discipline or profession. This course will focus on exploring new ways of thinking to focus the nature of all of our activity that is related 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.

Course Material on bCourse
A course web site will be available on the bCourse. The course syllabus, PowerPoint presentations and other handouts, will be posted after each class session.

Course Objectives
The premises of this course are that:

1. all people are naturally creative and
2. everyone’s creative abilities can be improved through learning and practicing certain design thinking skills and techniques.

The course is intended for students who want to enhance their innovation and design thinking skills and capacities in disciplines such as architecture, business, medicine, education and all other disciplines and professions were designing is a concern. More specifically, the course is designed to help students:

1. Stimulate creativity in yourself and others.
2. Incorporate design thinking into your everyday personal and professional activities.
3. Apply creative and design thinking to a real-world situations.
4. Learn to participate and lead innovation in collaborative settings.
5. Explore career options grounded in design thinking

Suggested Reading
1. The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization, Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman, 2005.
2. The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything, Richard Farson, 2008.
3. Change By Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, Tim Brown with Barry Katz, 2009.
4. The Next Architect: A New Twist on the Future of Design, James Cramer and Scott Simpson, 2007.

 

ARCH 98BC 001, 002 [Crawford]

Berkeley Connect

• Course Format: One hour of seminar per week.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit. Enrollment is restricted; see the section on Academic Policies-Course Number Guide in the Berkeley Bulletin.
• Grading option: Must be taken on a passed/not passed basis.
• Description: Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program, offered through various academic departments, that helps students build intellectual community. Over the course of a semester, enrolled students participate in regular small-group discussions facilitated by a graduate student mentor (following a faculty-directed curriculum), meet with their graduate student mentor for one-on-one academic advising, attend lectures and panel discussions featuring department faculty and alumni, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.  

 

ARCH 100B, 001 [Creedon, et al]

Fundamentals of Architectural Design

• Course Format: Two hours of lecture, six hours of studio, and two hours of computer graphics laboratory per week.
• Prerequisites: ED 11A-11B. Must be taken in sequence.
• Description: Introductory courses in the design of buildings. Problems emphasize conceptual strategies of form and space, site relationships and social, technological and environmental determinants.
• 100A focuses on the conceptual design process.
• 100B stresses tectonics, materials, and energy considerations. Studio work is supplemented by lectures, discussions, readings and field trips.

 

ARCH 100D [multiple Sections]

Architectural Design IV

• Course Format: Eight hours of studio per week.
• Description: Students work on individual and/or group design projects that build on topics from previous studios with additional integration of conditions pertinent to architectural production that may include architectural precedents, context, landscape and urban issues, envelope, structure, and tectonics in the design of buildings. It may also include relevent and pertinent social, cultural, and technological issues facing architecture and design.

Extended Course Description

1. Enrollment into any section of 100D is done by lottery. Interested students should enroll in section 001 (CCN: 03737) and attended the studio faculty presentations.
2. Students will then rank their preferences of studio sections on the ballot sheet for review by the department chair who will place students into a studio section. Every effort is made to assign the student to their first choice but this cannot always happen, nor is it guaranteed. 
3.  It is solely the student's responsibility to add themselves to their assigned studio section; failure to do so before the add / drop deadline will result in extra fees charged to the student's CARS account.

​Arch 100D Section 002 [Davids]

Arch 100D Section 003 Choksombatchai]

Arch 100D Section 004 [Steinfeld]

Arch 100D Section 005 [Atwood]

Arch 100D Section 006 [de Monchauxf]

Arch 100D Section 007 [Cranz / Duffy]

“Building The Giant Eye”

This design-build studio will design, fabricate, and install an interactive learning play structure.  The Giant Eye is a model of the human visual pathway all the way to the brain that children (and adults) can move through in order to experience anatomy three-dimensionally. As a small building, it is also a sculpture, a contribution to the playground landscape, and at any scale it is a playful, engaging learning experience. 

In the fall 2017 a preparatory seminar with Galen Cranz developed a proposal for the Giant Eye that captured the interest of the School of Optometry where the Giant Eye will be installed May 2018.

Arch 100D Section 008 [Tate]

Arch 100D Section 009 [Boudier]

 

ARCH 102B, 001 [Fields]

Architecture Capstone Project

• Course Format: Four hours of seminar and four hours of studio per week.
• Prerequisites: Architecture 102A
• Description: Through individual and collective efforts, students will address topics selected in the previous semester under the guidance of faculty mentors. Topics in the field which may serve as a basis for capstone projects include: the history and theory of architecture; structures; the materials and methods of construction; building performance; energy and the environment; and social factors and human behavior. This course is aimed at students who wish to strengthen their understanding of the research methods used by the discipline of architecture and related disciplines (e.g., engineering or history), and is not solely design oriented.

 

ARCH 109, 001 [Cesal]

Special Topics in Architectural Design

• Course Format: One to four hours of lecture per week.
• Prerequisites: Arch 11B, Arch 100A recommended
• Description: Topics deal with major problems and current issues in architectural design. For current offerings, see departmental webs

Extended Course Description

"Contradictions in Disaster & Resilience"

This research seminar will examine cutting edge practices in the field of disaster recovery and resilience across the globe as we seek to understand the designer’s role in a future of climate change, mass migration, water shortages and other forms of social disruption.  The course will work in parallel with the podcast Social Design Insights, and students will be asked to develop show content in conversation with leading practitioners of humanitarian and socially-minded design.  The course will move beyond cliched ideas of universal disaster shelters and Utopian cities, with the ambition to find the next generation of resilience designers.  Students from all disciplines are encouraged – urban resilience is necessary a confluence of architecture, art, politics, economics, engineering and other fields.  Field work will be conducted in and around the Bay Area.  Enrollment by  instructor’s permission only.

 

ARCH 109, 001 [Haddock]

Special Topics in Architectural Design

• Course Format: Six hours of studio per week
• Prerequisites: Arch 11B, Arch 100A recommended
• Description: Topics deal with major problems and current issues in architectural design. For current offerings, see departmental webs

Extended Course Description

"Interdisciplinary Design:

The studio will be an exploration through scales of design, from architecture and landscape architecture to urban planning. As an introduction to design concepts and approaches, with a focus on site specific research and documentation, the course will include point of interest tours around the bay area analyzing contextual forces, from the influence on one person to an entire city. With both individual and collective efforts, students will be designing through plan, section, elevation, and axonometric drawings, as well as making perspective images, mixed media collage, and physical models to develop and express design concepts.

 

ARCH 109, 002 [Davids]

Special Topics in Architectural Design

• Course Format: One to four hours of lecture per week.
• Prerequisites: Arch 11B, Arch 100A recommended
• Description: Topics deal with major problems and current issues in architectural design. For current offerings, see departmental webs

Extended Course Description

"Cities, Landscape & Technology"

The Cities, Landscape, and Technology Seminar will formulate a theoretical basis for design interventions which anticipate change, include indeterminate and open-ended working methods, and enable gradual remediation in specific environments. Students will read and discuss essays related to current issues in architectural, urban and landscape design while producing built work, individually or in groups, for cities in the East Bay such as Oakland and Albany, which have identified several sites with small structures in disrepair; their replacements, if approved by the City, could be designed, built, and installed by CLT Seminar students. The construction process will provide a critical link between design thinking and building, enabling students to adapt their methodologies to local conditions. Students in the final year of their programs may also choose to produce built work or models related to thesis projects if they are compatible with the subject matter of the seminar. 

 

ARCH 129, 001 [Steinfeld]

Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods

• Course Format: Fifteen hours of lecture/seminar per unit per semester.
• Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Description: Topics cover contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism. For current offerings, see department website.

Extended Course Description

"Geometric Computation"

This course aims to demystify design computation, and prepare students to better engage with computational tools and techniques as practicing designers. Whether novice digital designers looking for an entry point into techniques (such as parametric modeling and generative design), or more advanced students looking to dive deeper into the structures that govern commonly-used software, this course will provide a solid foundation for future independent exploration. To this end, this course presents the foundations of computational geometry laid bare, and delineated through the articulation of a set of geometric classes in Python. From the basic elements of vectors, points, and coordinate systems, and from an understanding of the basic syntax used to describe and manipulate these elements, we will assemble a computational design library through the articulation of successively higher-level geometries and more elaborate forms of computation. A full syllabus can be found here.

 

ARCH 129, 002 [Choksombatchai]

Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods

• Course Format: Fifteen hours of lecture/seminar per unit per semester.
• Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Description: Topics cover contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism. For current offerings, see department website.

Extended Course Description

"Drawing Cities"

Designed and structured as an experimental drawing workshop, the course will explore techniques or methods of analyzing and investigating contemporary urban forms. Emphasizing close observations into particularities and latent potentials of specific urban environments, these drawings are capable to reveal not only the tangible but they also shed lights to the intangibles, rendering the invisible visible. These drawings augmented and altered realities; they straddle between real and fiction. They are allegorical and abstract on one hand, yet act as a practical re-investigation of the contemporary urban paradigm on the other.

Each week, we will read a short exerpt of writings about city & urbanity that will situate us in a specific theoretical framework. Each reading will help guide our observations, reveal hidden traces and posit new insights into the complex makeup of a postmodern metropolis.

 

ARCH 129, 003 [Gutierrez]

Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods

• Course Format: Fifteen hours of lecture/seminar per unit per semester.
• Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Description: Topics cover contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism. For current offerings, see department website.

Extended Course Description

“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 critical impact of Durer’s mathematical study of conic sections on orthographic projection to Leonardo da Vinci’s sectional anatomy role for advances in the natural sciences, the pendulum of exerted influence has swung from science to the arts, and back again and again. This seminar will discuss if are we at a moment in which scientific progress will influence radical shifts in the future of the architectural section or not? And how can the study of sectional methodologies in the arts and sciences through history inform design 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 nano scale imaging to analyze, construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct the section of a selected past or ongoing studio section. 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.

 

ARCH 140, 001 [Brager, Schiavon]

Energy and Environment

• Course Format: Three hours of lecture and three hours of discussion/laboratory per week.
• Prerequisites: Physics or equivalent, or consent of instructor.
• Description: This course provides undergraduates and graduates with an introduction to issues of physical building performance including building thermodynamics, daylighting, and solar control. The course presents the fundamentals of building science while recongnizing the evolving nature of building technologies, energy efficiency, ecology, and responsible design. The course begins with a detailed explication of the thermal properties of materials, heat transfer through building assemblies, balance point temperature, solar geometry, and shading analysis. Students apply these principles later in the course to a design project. The latter part of the course also provides a survey of broader building science topics including mechanical system design, microclimate, and current developments in energy-efficient design.

Extended Course Description

The course presents the fundamentals of building science while recognizing the evolving nature of building technologies, energy efficiency, ecology, and responsible design. The course covers a wide range of topics, including fundamental principles of thermal comfort, energy flows in buildings, thermal properties of building materials, heat transfer through building assemblies, solar geometry, passive solar design, passive cooling, daylighting, indoor air quality, acoustics, and mechanical and electrical lighting.   In the final project for the course, students work in teams of 3-4 to redesign the façade of an existing building to balance solar control and daylighting.  The exercise requires students to assimilate many of the concepts and design tools covered during the course of the semester, and to integrate technical performance issues with formal design concerns.

 

Arch 149, 001 [Sanborn]

Special Topics in the Physical Environment in Buildings

• Course format: fifteen hours of lecture per unit per semester.
• Credit Option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Prerequisite: Arch 140 or consent of instructor

Extended Description

"Designing the Future of ZNE"

This class will trace the performance of Net Zero Energy buildings from construction detail through to connection to the utility grid with special attention to selection and design considerations for building systems.  They way that we construct buildings has an enormous impact on the ability of those buildings to use both passive systems and advanced low-energy systems.  Combining both high performance building enclosures with advanced building systems, including: radiant systems, displacement ventilation, chilled beams, Variable Refrigerant Flow Systems, and advanced heat recovery systems, will allow the next generation of ZNE building to both perform individually, but also adapt to the rapidly changing needs of the utility grid. 

The course will include site visits to Zero Net Energy buildings, guest speakers, as well as small team exercises. Evaluation will be based on several homework exercises and a final project.  Prerequisites: Arch 140 or equivalent or consent of the instructor.

 

ARCH 154, 001 [Black]

Special Topics in Building Structures

• Course Format: Fifteen hours of lecture.
• Prerequisite: Arch 150

Extended Course Description

"Computer Analysis of Structures"

 

ARCH 159, 001 [Black]

Special Topics in Building Structures

• Course Format: Fifteen hours of lecture.
• Prerequisite: Arch 150

Extended Course Description

"Structure in Studio"

 

ARCH 160, 001 [Buntrock]

Introduction to Construction

• Course Format: Three hours of lecture and three hours of laboratory per week.
• Description: This introduction to the materials and processes of construction takes architecture from design to realization. The course will cover four material groups commonly used in two areas of the building assembly (structure and envelope): wood, concrete, steel, and glass. You will understand choices available and how materials are conventionally used. By observing construction, you'll see how our decisions affect the size of materials, connections, and where they are assembled. Architects must understand not only conventions, but also the potential in materials, so we will also study unusual and new developments.

Extended Course Description

This course addresses the methods and materials of construction, focusing on 4 major territories:

•  The performance and use of the most common structural materials with some discussion of alternative approaches to these materials;
• The materials that make up the skin, or envelope, of the building (interior and exterior finishes in the walls and roof, internal materials that enhance building performance, windows and doors);
• Insertions such as stairs and cabinets, and how these relate to comfort, accessibility concerns, and legal norms;
• The relationships between architects and other members of the construction community.

In the first half of the semester, we look at the norms of construction in single-family detached housing (heavy timber, wood studs and light gauge steel framing, simple concrete construction for foundations, and the use of steel beams or columns in conjunction with a wood frame). The second half of the term is directed at the use of materials common in small commercial and institutional structures, steel frame and concrete systems, and will look at more advanced building skins and roofing systems. Labs will be used to visit buildings completed and under construction and for presentations.

The textbook is FUNDAMENTALS OF BUILDING CONSTRUCTION (5th edition). It can be purchased used for a reasonable price before the semester begins.  You do not need the workbook.

 

ARCH 169, 001 [Anderson]

Special Topics in Construction and Materials

• Course Format: one hour of lecture / seminar per unit per week
• Description: Selected topics in construction & materials
• Prerequisites: Open to undergraduates with permission of the instructor

Extended Course Description

"Drawing Air"
Air has become increasingly important in architecture, and yet we as architects have never been especially good at figuring out how to draw and model air within our design processes. As we design for building performance, and for human experience, the behavior and shaping of air becomes a driving design issue. Analytical environmental software has become increasingly powerful, and offers either quantitative data or really cool, rainbow-hued diagnostic and predictive images. Most often these advanced quantitative visualization analyses become applicable well-into the design process or are engaged only in the construction phase, and are not easily accessible tools for designing potential, intent and desire as design concepts are initiated and broadly imagined as fundamental issues in the architecture. 

Architects most often draw the material constructions that may shape the air and its experience, but we are less able to draw and convey our thoughts about shaping air and shaping the intended experience, and of conveying these ideas to the mechanical engineers and contractors who might implement these ideas. As a result, the fascinating frontier of designing architectural air is most often relegated to other professions and trades acting upon our buildings too late in the process. Arrows are often used by engineers, contractors and “sustainability consultants” to quickly convey ideas about direction and flow, yet arrows are at best weak descriptors of the rich design potentials for the architecture of air. Most often arrows are graphically incompatible or even deemed ugly within the surrounding graphic context of architectural drawing. Arrows are often forbidden in design studios and in “serious" drawings by "serious architects.” 

In this course we will take on a fundamental architectural question: how can we draw air? We will experiment toward new potential for architects to engage in designing air and the experience of air, as architecture itself. We will consider arrows and see what new ideas may be applied to these. We will look far beyond arrows as well, examining various precedent possibilities from history and from diverse disciplines in art and science. We will work through a series of drawing and digital modeling exercises exploring a variety of potential new approaches to drawing air. Each student will work both in precedent research, and in weekly drawing experiments to be presented to the class for discussion. We will search for new insights and original possibilities, working experimentally and enjoying an open-ended process. Each research and drawing exercise will work on shared themes across the seminar group, but each student will be free to apply their research and drawing within the context of other design work if this of interest to them. For example, thesis students may apply this research and drawing to their thesis project, and other students may apply this work within the context of their other studios or seminars, according to their interests. In this way, we can be broadly productive and integrative across the range of interests and projects of each student, and see what issues of drawing air may become integral within diverse types of work.

 

ARCH 170B, 001 [Crawford]

An Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism

• Course Format: Forty-five hours of lecture and 15 hours of seminar/discussion per semester.
• Description: The first part of this sequence studies the ancient and medieval periods; the second part studies the period since 1400; the aim is to look at architecture and urbanism in their social and historical context.

 

ARCH 179, 003 [Shanken]

Special Topics in the History of Architecture

• Course Format: One to four hours of lecture per week.
• Prerequisites: 170A-170B and consent of instructor.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.
• Description: Special topics in Architectural History. 

Extended Course Description

"Themescapes"

From Disney to Las Vegas, Americans frequently encounter environments that are self-consciously themed, rather than unconsciously developed. These buildings and spaces have been dismissed as fake, artificial, evidence of postmodern alienation and the homogenizing effects of the global economy. This course proposes to expand the repertoire of themed environments in an effort to reevaluate their meaning in American life. Close attention will be paid to obvious sites of theming: world’s fairs, consumer environments, and suburbs, but also to how theming has penetrated into film, advertising, “nature,” leisure, historic preservation, and museums. While emphasis will be on American themescapes, the course will consider a range of themed sites from around the world. Students from all departments are welcome.

 

ARCH 198BC, 001, 002 [Crawford]

Berkeley Connect

• Course Format: One hour of seminar per week.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit. Enrollment is restricted; see the section on Academic Policies-Course Number Guide in the Berkeley Bulletin.
• Grading option: Must be taken on a passed/not passed basis.
• Description: Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program, offered through various academic departments, that helps students build intellectual community. Over the course of a semester, enrolled students participate in regular small-group discussions facilitated by a graduate student mentor (following a faculty-directed curriculum), meet with their graduate student mentor for one-on-one academic advising, attend lectures and panel discussions featuring department faculty and alumni, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.

 

Graduate Level Classes

 

ARCH 200B, 001 [Guthrie, Pakravan, Spiegel]

Introduction to Architecture Studio 2

• Course Format: Eight hours of studio per week.
• 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 202 [Multiple Sections]

Graduate Option Studio

• Course Format: Eight hours of studio per week.
• Description: Focused design and research as the capstone project for graduate students.

Extended Course Description

1. Enrollment into any section of 202 is done by lottery. Interested students should enroll in section 001 (CCN: 04026) and attended the studio faculty presentations.
2. Students will then rank their preferences of studio sections on the ballot sheet for review by the department chair who will place students into a studio section. Every effort is made to assign the student to their first choice but this cannot always happen, nor is it guaranteed.
3. It is solely the student's responsibility to add themselves to their assigned studio section; failure to do so before the add / drop deadline will result in extra fees charged to the student's CARS account.

Section 001 [Staff]

Section 002 [Staff]

Section 003 [Staff]

Section 004 [Staff]

Section 005 [Staff]

Section 006 [Staff]

 

ARCH 204B [Gutierrez, Rael, Turan]

Thesis Studio

• Course Format: Eight hours of studio per week.
• Formerly 204
• Description: Focused design research as the capstone project for graduate students.

 

ARCH 205B, 001 [Schleicher]

Studio One, Spring

• Course Format: Eight hours of studio per week.
• Prerequisites: Consent of chair or graduate advisors.
• Formerly 205
• Description: This course is the second semester of a one-year, post-professional 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 207B [Pakravan]

Architecture Research Colloquium

• Course Format: One hour of lecture per week.
• Prerequisites: Co-requisite with Architecture 200B.
• Grading option: Must be taken on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.
• 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 207D, 001 [Martin]

The Cultures of Practice

• Course Format: Six hours of seminar per week for eight weeks.
• Prerequisites: Arch 201
• Grading Option: Letter grade
• Description: The nature of architectural practice, how it has evolved and how is it changing in today’s world is the theme of the class. The course considers how diverse cultures—both anthropological and professional-- contribute to practice, and how the culture of practice evolves. The class is devoted to the following themes: Research in the Culture of the Profession, Traditions of Practice, and Innovations in Practice.

Extended Course Description

This course provides an opportunity for students to evaluate professional practice in a seminar setting, and contributes significantly to fulfilling departmental requirements for accreditation with the National Architecture Accreditation Board (NAAB).

Course Objectives:

• To require students in a professional program to understand and be able to engage the principles of architectural practice as a historical discipline and a contemporary profession.
• To provide an overview of professional practice, as well as specific examples of the variety of practice types in place today.
• To define the role and function of the practicing architect in today’s environment and speculate and plan about tomorrow’s profession and society.
• To introduce the student to the business and practices of architecture through the management principles of both office and project.
• Introduce how diverse cultures impact the nature of professional practice Illustrating how knowledge production and research are changing the nature of work in professional practice and the outcome artifacts.

Course Structure:

There will be fifteen sessions that will integrate the six objectives noted above. Twelve sessions of the fifteen total sessions will focus on the traditions and innovations in practice covering the following themes:

• Collaboration: Ability to work in collaboration with others and in multi-disciplinary teams.
• Client Role in Architecture: Understanding of the responsibility of the architect to elicit, understand, and reconcile the needs of the client, owner, user groups, and the public and community domains. 
• Project Management: Understanding of the methods for competing for commissions, selecting consultants and assembling teams, and recommending project delivery methods. 
• Practice Management: Understanding of the basic principles of architectural practice management such as financial management including costing and value engineering, and business planning and practices, time management, risk management, mediation and arbitration, and recognizing trends that affect practice.
• Leadership: Understanding of the techniques and skills architects use to work collaboratively in the building design and construction process and on environmental, social, and aesthetic issues in their communities.
• Legal Responsibilities: Understanding of the architect’s responsibility to the public and the client as determined by registration law, building codes and regulations, professional service contracts, zoning and subdivision ordinances, environmental regulation, and historic preservation and accessibility laws.
• Ethics and Professional Judgment: Understanding of the ethical issues involved in the formation of professional judgment regarding social, political and cultural issues in architectural design and practice.

Three additional sessions will focus on research in the culture of the profession, covering an understanding of the cultures different from one’s own and using social science research (ethnography for programming and user-based assessment for post-occupancy evaluation) as part of the culture of practice in order to fulfill the following NAAB requirements:

• Cultural Diversity: Understanding of the diverse needs, values, behavioral norms, physical abilities, and social and spatial patterns that characterize different cultures and individuals and the implication of this diversity on the societal roles and responsibilities of architects.
• Applied Research: Understanding the role of applied research in determining function, form, and systems

 

ARCH 209, 003 [Cesal]
Special Topics in Architectural Design

• Course Format: One to four hours of lecture per week
• Prerequisites: Second- or third-year graduate standing.>
• Formerly 209x
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Description: Topics deal with major problems and current issues in architectural design.

Extended Course Description

"Contradictions in Disaster & Resilience"

This research seminar will examine cutting edge practices in the field of disaster recovery and resilience across the globe as we seek to understand the designer’s role in a future of climate change, mass migration, water shortages and other forms of social disruption.  The course will work in parallel with the podcast Social Design Insights, and students will be asked to develop show content in conversation with leading practitioners of humanitarian and socially-minded design.  The course will move beyond cliched ideas of universal disaster shelters and Utopian cities, with the ambition to find the next generation of resilience designers.  Students from all disciplines are encouraged – urban resilience is necessary a confluence of architecture, art, politics, economics, engineering and other fields.  Field work will be conducted in and around the Bay Area.  Enrollment by  instructor’s permission only.

 

ARCH 212, 001 [Cranz]

Body Conscious Design: Shoes, Chairs, Rooms and Beyond

• Course Format: three hours of seminar per week
• Description: This seminar prepares students to evaluate and design environments from the point of view of how they interact with the human body. Tools and clothing modify that interaction. Semi-fixed features of the near environment, especially furniture, may have greater impact on physical well being and social-psychological comfort than fixed features like walls, openings, and volume. Today, designers can help redefine and legitimize new attitudes toward supporting the human body by, for example, designing for a wide range of postural alternatives and possibly designing new kinds of furniture. At the urban design scale, the senses of proprioception and kinesthetics can be used to shape architecture and landscape architecture. This course covers these topics with special emphasis on chair design and evaluation. The public health implications of a new attitude toward posture and back support are explored. The course heightens students' consciousness of their own and others' physical perceptions through weekly experiential exercises. Students produce three design exercises: shoe, chair, and a room interior.

Extended Course Description

This seminar empowers students to evaluate and design environments from the point of view of how they interact with the human body.  It does this through three mutually supportive activities:  experiential learning, reading about how culture especially material culture shapes the body, and designing.

1. Each week students experience a new somatic techniques for heightening consciousness of their own and others' physical perceptions experiential exercises in sensory awareness.
2. The required text is Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design (WW Norton, New York: 2000 paperback); a reader of articles and chapters, available at Copy Central on Bancroft, completes the theoretical component of the course.
3. The three design exercises are a shoe that is not anatomically harmful but nevertheless fashionable, a chair, and a room interior that supports the body in six different ways.  (This year the room challenge will be how to design auditoria/lecture halls that allow the audience to move while listening and learning.)

 

ARCH 229, 001 [Steinfeld]

Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods

• Course Format: Fifteen hours of lecture/seminar per unit per semester.
• Prerequisites: Graduate standing
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Description: Topics cover contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism. For current offerings, see department website.

Extended Course Description

Extended Course Description

"Geometric Computation"

This course aims to demystify design computation, and prepare students to better engage with computational tools and techniques as practicing designers. Whether novice digital designers looking for an entry point into techniques (such as parametric modeling and generative design), or more advanced students looking to dive deeper into the structures that govern commonly-used software, this course will provide a solid foundation for future independent exploration. To this end, this course presents the foundations of computational geometry laid bare, and delineated through the articulation of a set of geometric classes in Python. From the basic elements of vectors, points, and coordinate systems, and from an understanding of the basic syntax used to describe and manipulate these elements, we will assemble a computational design library through the articulation of successively higher-level geometries and more elaborate forms of computation. A full syllabus can be found here

 

ARCH 229, 002 [Choksombatchai]

Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods

• Course Format: Fifteen hours of lecture/seminar per unit per semester.
• Prerequisites: Graduate standing
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Description: Topics cover contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism. For current offerings, see department website.

Extended Course Description

"Drawing Cities"

Designed and structured as an experimental drawing workshop, the course will explore techniques or methods of analyzing and investigating contemporary urban forms. Emphasizing close observations into particularities and latent potentials of specific urban environments, these drawings are capable to reveal not only the tangible but they also shed lights to the intangibles, rendering the invisible visible. These drawings augmented and altered realities; they straddle between real and fiction. They are allegorical and abstract on one hand, yet act as a practical re-investigation of the contemporary urban paradigm on the other.

Each week, we will read a short exerpt of writings about city & urbanity that will situate us in a specific theoretical framework. Each reading will help guide our observations, reveal hidden traces and posit new insights into the complex makeup of a postmodern metropolis.

 

ARCH 230, 001 [Turan]

Advanced Architectural Design Theory and Criticism

• Course Format: Forty-five hours of lecture/seminar per semester.
• Prerequisites: 130A or consent of instructor.
• Description: Seminar in the analysis and discussion of contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism.

 

ARCH 240, 001 [Caldas]

Advanced Study of Energy and Environment

• Course Format: !.5 hours of lecture and 4 hours of lab per week
• Prerequisites: Graduate standing
• Description: Minimizing energy use is a cornerstone of designing and operating sustainable buildings, and attention to energy issues can often lead to greatly improved indoor environmental quality. For designers, using computer-based energy analysis tools are important not only to qualify for sustainability ratings and meet energy codes, but also to develop intuition about what makes buildings perform well. This course will present quantitative and qualitative methods for assessing energy performance during design of both residential and commercial buildings. Students will get hands-on experience with state-of-the-art software -- ranging from simple to complex -- to assess the performance of building components and whole-building designs.

 

Arch 249, 001 [Sanborn]

Special Topics in the Physical Environment in Buildings

• Course format: fifteen hours of lecture per unit per semester.
• Credit Option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Three units

Extended Description

"Designing the Future of ZNE"

This class will trace the performance of Net Zero Energy buildings from construction detail through to connection to the utility grid with special attention to selection and design considerations for building systems.  They way that we construct buildings has an enormous impact on the ability of those buildings to use both passive systems and advanced low-energy systems.  Combining both high performance building enclosures with advanced building systems, including: radiant systems, displacement ventilation, chilled beams, Variable Refrigerant Flow Systems, and advanced heat recovery systems, will allow the next generation of ZNE building to both perform individually, but also adapt to the rapidly changing needs of the utility grid. 

The course will include site visits to Zero Net Energy buildings, guest speakers, as well as small team exercises. Evaluation will be based on several homework exercises and a final project.  Prerequisites: Arch 140 or equivalent or consent of the instructor.

 

Arch 249, 002 [Caldas]

Special Topics in the Physical Environment in Buildings

• Course format: fifteen hours of lecture per unit per semester.
• Credit Option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Three units

Extended Description

Physical | Digital | Virtual

Virtual and Augmented Reality are the next platforms where we will work, communicate and entertain, after the computer and the smartphone. Current headsets will be replaced by interfaces yet to be imagined, much like the mouse and keyboard were being invented at Xerox Park in the 70’s. As designers of three-dimensional environments, architects will play a decisive role in defining this virtual world, contrarily to graphic designers who dominated the visual characterization of a 2-Dimensional web. VR and AR may also in the future fundamentally disrupt the way that we design and conceptualize architecture. 

The first part of this course will explore the use of virtual reality for daylighting design.  Light, a fundamental part of architecture, remains difficult to master despite all advances in computational design due to its constantly changing nature, varying across days, seasons, climates and geographies. VR is a particularly adequate medium to capture this complex and dynamic aspect of architecture creation. Its user-centric point of view, instantly placing designers inside spaces, offers a more intuitive and immediate understanding of design decisions. Students will do group design projects driven by light exploration. We will compare traditional methods of daylighting design, such as DIVA for Rhino, with new methods developed at UC Berkeley, where students will be able to run Radiance daylighting simulations inside VR, and combine well-established quantitative metrics with the unique experiential and spatial explorations provided by Virtual Reality. In the second part of the course, students will develop group projects in Unity, addressing theoretical approaches as well as technical implementations. VR may also represent a radical departure from the digital as a model of the physical, and promote fundamentally rethinking key spatial concepts. In a dimension where the laws of physics may no longer be applicable, but where the body is still the vehicle of perception, mediated by the visual system, what remains of the physical spatial experience, and what may be substantially altered? Departing from a user experience perspective, students will explore conceptual issues in Virtual Reality that reflect core dimensions of architecture creation.

 

ARCH 259, 001 [Schleicher]

Special Topics in Building Structures

• Course Format: Fifteen hours of lecture per unit per semester.
• Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies.
• Description: Selected topics include a general introduction to material folding, advanced simulation, and digital fabrication of bending and folding structures. Hands-on physical experimentations and digital simulations will be conducted to further explore the limitations and potentials of flexible structures and test their potential feasibility and practical implementation.

Extended Course Description

"Flexible Hybrid Structures II"

This follow-up course continues exploring the formal, structural, and functional possibilities of flexible hybrid structures. Once again, we will study systems that take advantage of bending and buckling behaviors as potential form-generating and self-stabilizing strategies for the design of new compliant mechanisms and deployable structures. Based on the knowledge gained during the previous semester, we want to push our ideas to the next level by transferring our designs to a larger scale and fine-tuning novel fabrication processes. This time, the class will focus on bending-active structures that consist of strip and plate assemblies as well as on developing customized joints, connectors, and sandwich cores that can increase the structures’ stability or adaptability. Working in larger teams, students will conceptualize a project together and envision a practical and use for their innovative structures. upported by software tutorials on form-finding and analysis of elastic structures as well as on advanced 3D printing, we will gain the necessary insight to holistically design new types of lightweight structures and to build functional prototypes and demonstrators in larger scale.

This course is open to graduate students of all academic disciplines. Previous participation in “Flexible Hybrid Structures I” is no pre-requisite. Prior experience in software programs like Rhinoceros and Grasshopper and/or 3D printing, however, would be beneficial.

 

ARCH 269, 001 [Anderson]

Special Topics in Construction and Materials

• Course Format: one hour of lecture / seminar per unit per week
• Description: Selected topics in construction & materials
• Prerequisites: Graduate standing

Extended Course Description

"Drawing Air"
Air has become increasingly important in architecture, and yet we as architects have never been especially good at figuring out how to draw and model air within our design processes. As we design for building performance, and for human experience, the behavior and shaping of air becomes a driving design issue. Analytical environmental software has become increasingly powerful, and offers either quantitative data or really cool, rainbow-hued diagnostic and predictive images. Most often these advanced quantitative visualization analyses become applicable well-into the design process or are engaged only in the construction phase, and are not easily accessible tools for designing potential, intent and desire as design concepts are initiated and broadly imagined as fundamental issues in the architecture. 

Architects most often draw the material constructions that may shape the air and its experience, but we are less able to draw and convey our thoughts about shaping air and shaping the intended experience, and of conveying these ideas to the mechanical engineers and contractors who might implement these ideas. As a result, the fascinating frontier of designing architectural air is most often relegated to other professions and trades acting upon our buildings too late in the process. Arrows are often used by engineers, contractors and “sustainability consultants” to quickly convey ideas about direction and flow, yet arrows are at best weak descriptors of the rich design potentials for the architecture of air. Most often arrows are graphically incompatible or even deemed ugly within the surrounding graphic context of architectural drawing. Arrows are often forbidden in design studios and in “serious" drawings by "serious architects.” 

In this course we will take on a fundamental architectural question: how can we draw air? We will experiment toward new potential for architects to engage in designing air and the experience of air, as architecture itself. We will consider arrows and see what new ideas may be applied to these. We will look far beyond arrows as well, examining various precedent possibilities from history and from diverse disciplines in art and science. We will work through a series of drawing and digital modeling exercises exploring a variety of potential new approaches to drawing air. Each student will work both in precedent research, and in weekly drawing experiments to be presented to the class for discussion. We will search for new insights and original possibilities, working experimentally and enjoying an open-ended process. Each research and drawing exercise will work on shared themes across the seminar group, but each student will be free to apply their research and drawing within the context of other design work if this of interest to them. For example, thesis students may apply this research and drawing to their thesis project, and other students may apply this work within the context of their other studios or seminars, according to their interests. In this way, we can be broadly productive and integrative across the range of interests and projects of each student, and see what issues of drawing air may become integral within diverse types of work.

 

ARCH 279, 003  [Shanken]

Special Topics in the History of Architecture

• Course Format: One to four hours of lecture per week.
• Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.
• Description: Special topics in Architectural History. For current section offerings, see departmental announcement.

Extended Course Description

"Themescapes"

From Disney to Las Vegas, Americans frequently encounter environments that are self-consciously themed, rather than unconsciously developed. These buildings and spaces have been dismissed as fake, artificial, evidence of postmodern alienation and the homogenizing effects of the global economy. This course proposes to expand the repertoire of themed environments in an effort to reevaluate their meaning in American life. Close attention will be paid to obvious sites of theming: world’s fairs, consumer environments, and suburbs, but also to how theming has penetrated into film, advertising, “nature,” leisure, historic preservation, and museums. While emphasis will be on American themescapes, the course will consider a range of themed sites from around the world. Students from all departments are welcome

 

ARCH 298, 002 [Schiavon] 

Special Group Study

•   Course Format: 90 minutes of lecture / seminar per week
•   Credit option: May be repeated for credit up to unit limitation.
•   Description: Special group studies on topics to be introduced by instructor or students.

Extended Course Description

"Faculty Research Colloquium"

One hour and half of seminar per week. Prerequisite: NoneThis research colloquium course has the objective to expose students to the research interests of the architectural faculty, with a particular focus on the ones involved in advising MS and PhD students. The class is shaped around the presentations and the discussions with the guest speakers. The list of potential presenters for this semester can be found under Syllabus. The main areas that will be covered are architecture, building science, design, history, society, sustainability, technology, theory. The class is open to MArch students as a 1-unit class and to the MS/PhD students as a 2-unit class. Speakers will give an article to read before class and MS/PhD students will need to write 3-5 questions and opinion statements (~300-500 words) based on the article one week before the lecture with the objective of stimulating the discussion after the presentation. Speakers will cover, for roughly an hour, their research objectives, framework, and methods, they will also briefly describe their career trajectory and experiences in academia. Half an hour will be dedicated to discussion. During the semester other MS/PhD students in the program who are close to the completion of their degree will present their research and will give advice on how to successfully pass through the program.