The following list shows currently offered courses for spring 2020. For more information, see the UC Berkeley Online Schedule of Classes.
Please note: this list will be amended as the schedule develops.
ARCH 11B [Pakravan]
Introduction to Design
Format: 3 hours of lecture, 2 hours of lab, and 6 hours of studio per week
Description: 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 [Martin]
Freshman Seminar
Format: 2 hours of seminar per week
Description: The Berkeley Seminar Program is designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting.
ARCH 98BC/198BC [Crawford]
Berkeley Connect
Format: 1 hour of seminar per week
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 100B [Staff]
Fundamentals of Architectural Design
Format: 2 hours of lecture, 2 hours of lab, and 6 hours of studio per week
Description: Introductory course in the design of buildings. Problems emphasize conceptual strategies of form and space, site relationships and social, technological and environmental determinants. 100B stresses tectonics, materials, and energy considerations. Studio work is supplemented by lectures, discussions, readings and field trips.
ARCH 100D [Staff]
Architectural Design IV
Format: 8 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 relevant and pertinent social, cultural, and technological issues facing architecture and design.
ARCH 102B SEC 001 [Fields]
Capstone Project Preparation Seminar: Architecture Design Research Track
Format: 4 hours of seminar and 4 hours of studio per week
Description: This class provides students an opportunity to reassess and recalibrate their design interests and potential. A substantive portion of the class is devoted to analytical reading, representation, and methodology. These investigations assist in initiating projects normally viewed outside architectural design. Within this framework, students construct and execute a design thesis. The design thesis is not predetermined. Based on a student’s individual research, it may appear in a form other than architecture. The class’s analytical method, however, remains true to creative rituals associated with drawing and modeling. A broad design topic range is encouraged, including drawing/representation, identity/social constructions, visual arts, product design, and architecture (symbolic).
ARCH 102B SEC 002 [Covey]
Capstone Project Preparation Seminar: History, Theory, and Society: Intersections of Past, Present, and Future
Format: 3 hours of seminar and 2 hours of writing studio per week
Description: As one of the design research options, this capstone experience is intended for students who are interested in exploring architecture and urbanism in time and place through broad intellectual frameworks. This is a research and writing-based seminar, emphasizing contemporary social theory, historical and cultural analyses, and a variety of methods that range from ethnography to archival research. Students are encouraged to enroll in electives that support the historical and cultural background or socio-political context of their research interests.
ARCH 102B SEC 003 [Vasconcellos]
Capstone Project Preparation Seminar: Building Science, Technology, and Sustainability: Environmental Performance and Architecture
Format: 4 hours of seminar and 4 hours of studio per week
Description: This capstone project targets students interested in studying the relationship between architecture, energy, and the environment. The class will discuss the relevance that environmental performance has in current architectural design practice. It will introduce different research methods to assess the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) of buildings and other built spaces, including on-site measurements and surveys, analog simulations based on physical experiments, and computer-based simulations. It will also contextualize such methods either in terms of their application or their use in current building standards or building rating systems (e.g. LEED).
ARCH 129/229 SEC 001 [Buresh]
Models
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
A description is forthcoming
ARCH 129/229 SEC 002 [Choksombatchai]
Drawing Cities
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: Designed and structured as an experimental drawing workshop, the class will explore techniques and methods of analyzing and investigating contemporary urban forms. Emphasizing close observations into particularities and latent potentials of specific urban environments, these drawings are capable of revealing not only the tangible but also shedding light on the intangibles, rendering the invisible visible. These drawings augment and alter 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 excerpt of writings about city and 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 139/239 [Crysler]
Design and Difference: Spaces of Queer Theory
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: Our embodied identities shape how we create, occupy and use cities, landscapes and built environments; these spaces also shape us and our understandings of the world, and our place within it. Design education typically assumes a universal, transparent, ungendered body as the “occupant” or “user” of built form. In this interdisciplinary seminar, readings, discussions and student presentations will challenge such assumptions by reflecting on the relationship between physical and imagined spaces and how diverse forms of queer identity are enacted within, and transformed by them. Readings, lectures and discussions will relate recent debates in queer theory operating at the intersection of transgender, race, class, and ecological politics to a range of differently scaled case studies in order to reveal the politics, practices and creative potential of cultural difference in the built environment.
Class requirements include weekly reading responses, discussion leadership and a research or creative project connected to class themes. This class is open to all graduate students and upper division undergraduates from the CED and the wider campus community.
ARCH 140 [Brager]
Energy and Environment
Format: 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of discussion per week
Description: This course provides students 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 recognizing 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 course also provides a survey of broader building science topics including mechanical system design, microclimate, and current developments in energy-efficient design.
ARCH 154/259 SEC 002 [Black]
Design and Computer Analysis of Structure
Format: 1 hour of lecture and 2 hours of lab per week
Description: This class consists of a general discussion of structural theory and techniques for integrating structure and architecture, as well as time for students to work on assigned projects with instructor and GSI help. Students will be assigned two projects for the semester. The first project will be a case study of a structurally interesting building from any time period. Students will use a structural analysis program (SAP) to help them understand the structural and architectural basis of the building, gaining structural intuition along the way. The second project will be for a two-person team to design a building or bridge with the explicit goal of designing a structure which supports and helps create the architecture.
Recommended for any student who wants to elevate their structural skills or is considering entering the engineering minor program at the undergraduate level or the joint master’s engineering degree at the graduate level.
This class satisfies the ARCH 250 requirement for graduate students who are qualified to take the class. Prerequisite ARCH 150 or equivalent background.
ARCH 159/259 SEC 001 [Black]
Structures in the Studio
Format: 2 hours of seminar per week
Description: This class is a two-hour seminar that brings structural concepts and protocols into a studio setting. It is advised for graduate and undergraduate students who are taking a studio concurrently. Students are asked to bring their studio projects to class for review, discussion and personal assistance regarding structural systems and protocols that apply to their projects.
The first 30 minutes of class will be devoted to discussing a structural topic which will include framing plans, column layout, generally accepted rules of thumb to determine approximate sizing, and spacing of columns, beams, and girders. The remaining 1.5 hours will be devoted to meeting with students one on one or in small groups to critique their structural concepts and assist them in understanding basic structural theories and deficiencies.
ARCH 160 [Buntrock]
Introduction to Construction
Format: 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of lab 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.
ARCH 169/269 SEC 002 [Gutierrez]
Plant Fibers and Design: Origins and Future
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: This seminar explores the convergence of emerging and traditional techniques of fabrication in building enclosures by exploring plant fibers for natural material design innovation. From 3D knitting and printing to manual weaving, students will explore alternative enclosure processes tested from the nano to the macroscale. The class encompasses weekly lectures on material properties, processes, and design, including new software for material merit/selection and lab imaging and testing processes (nano to the macro scale). The class will culminate in a full-scale permanent installation of a digitally fabricated enclosure made exclusively of vegetal material.
ARCH 169/269 SEC 003 [Anderson]
Timber Frame and Mass Timber Construction
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
A description is forthcoming
ARCH 170B [Crawford]
An Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism
Format: 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
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 179/279 SEC 001 [Uyttenhove]
Views and Visions: Representing Flanders’ Landscape and Built Environment
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: Contemporary architecture and urban design in Flanders are internationally acknowledged as refined, reflective and authentic. Diverse and omnipresent, its built environment is a showcase of European history. Today, its nebulous city is part of urban sprawl. This class offers a comprehensive presentation of Flanders’ architecture and urbanism, its urbanized landscapes, and how they were imagined by architects, planners, designers, geographers, photographers, and painters. Questions will be discussed about how this built environment has developed in history and what its challenges are for tomorrow. In particular, the class will look at how it has been represented and planned in views and visions and how these images are composed and utilized.
ARCH 179/279 SEC 002 [Castillo]
Publishing Architecture
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: Publishing performs multiple roles in contemporary architecture. It can consolidate new movements, advance scholarship, promote public awareness of design culture, publicize an individual or corporate practice, or support alternative modes of practice like architectural exhibitions and installations. This class will survey modern architectural publishing, from avant-garde journals to e-publications and social media, while imparting practical knowledge and skills through guest lectures, site visits, and an (optional) hands-on engagement with the current issue of Room 1000, the Architecture Department’s student journal.
ARCH 200B [Atwood/Spiegel]
Introduction to Architecture Studio 2
Format: 8 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 [Staff]
Graduate Option Studio
Format: 8 hours of studio per week
Description: Focused design and research for graduate students.
ARCH 204B [Buresh, Iwamoto, Turan, Orkand, Ray]
Thesis Studio
Format: 8 hours of studio per week
Description: Focused design research as the capstone project for graduate students.
ARCH 205B [Rael]
Studio One, Spring
Format: 8 hours of studio per week
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 207C [Iwamoto]
Professional Practice Colloquium
Format: 1 hour of lecture per week
Description: This course 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 207D [Muntean]
The Cultures of Practice
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: The nature of architectural practice, how it has evolved and how it is 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 has three five-week modules devoted to the following themes: traditions of practice, research in the culture of the profession, and innovations in practice.
ARCH 209 / HISTART 290 [Shanken, Kroiz]
Berlin: The Guilt Environment
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: Since the city’s reunification in 1989, Berlin has intertwined its urban renewal with landscapes of reconciliation and commemoration. The “New Berlin” that politicians and city authorities imagined in the 1990s, after the Wende (or Fall of the Berlin Wall), was to be forged by international investment, materialized in high-profile commissions to “starchitects,” alongside preservation and memorialization of the city’s past, often seen through the seemingly inevitable lens of the Holocaust, and more recently colonialism. Yet the relationship between developing a European metropolis and preserving sites of memory is troubled: projects throughout the city reveal how these ideas are reshuffled under the pressures of tourism, apology, foreign investment, and local activism. This makes Berlin the archetype of the contemporary guilt environment. This studio invites students to analyze, criticize, represent, and reimagine the form that memory and commemoration take in Berlin by asking how existing landscapes work and what new commemorative interventions might be necessary?
Fulfills the studio requirement for the Graduate Certificate in Global Urban Humanities. Priority enrollment to students pursuing the Certificate.
APPLICATION DEADLINE HAS PASSED. GUH IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR THIS CLASS.
ARCH 209 SEC 002 [Atwood]
Representational Practice in Architectural Design II
Format: Two hours of lecture per week
Description: This class is the second part in a two-part sequence of classes that introduces students to techniques of architectural representation as well as the concepts and precedents that surround them. Building on the concepts and techniques introduced in ARCH 200C, this class will expand students’ technical knowledge to include rendering, notation, and graphic design. Each topic will be broken into a separate module and be supported with lectures, discussions, tutorials, workshops and presentations. Additionally, the class is closely linked with ARCH 200B, Introduction to Architecture Studio 2 and will provide much of the technical skill-building for that class.
ARCH 230 [Turan]
Advanced Architectural Design Theory and Criticism
Format: 3 hours of lecture per week
Description: Seminar in the analysis and discussion of contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism.
ARCH 238 [Ubbelohde]
The Dialectic of Poetics and Technology
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: This seminar examines the relationship between technology and design philosophy in the work of architects through analysis of individual buildings within the context of the complete oeuvre and an examination of the architect's writings and lectures. The seminar poses questions such as: What is the role of technology in the design philosophy of the architect and how is this theoretical position established in the architect's writings, lectures, and interviews? A series of lectures explores these questions in relation to the architect and a set of required readings introduces the work of the architect and explores the relationship between technology and design philosophy.
ARCH 240 [Caldas]
Advanced Study of Energy and Environment
Format: 1.5 hours of lecture and 3 hours of lab per week
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 to assess the performance of building components and whole-building designs.
ARCH 250 [Schleicher]
Introduction to Structures
Format: 1.5 hours of lecture and 1.5 hours of laboratory per week
Description: This class focuses on the fundamental principles that affect the structural behavior of buildings. Through digital and hands-on exercises, students will learn analytical techniques for measuring and evaluating the flow of forces through structural systems. Students will also learn to consider the structural behavior of buildings as a fundamental factor in the design of architectural proposals. The goal of the class is to gain a fundamental understanding of the forces, moments, and stresses in typical building elements such as columns, beams, frames and walls and to make better informed decisions when designing resource- and environmentally-friendly buildings with lightweight and material-efficient structural systems.
This class is currently open to M.Arch students only
ARCH 259 SEC 003 [Schleicher]
Robotic Fabrication
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: The emergence of robotics in creative sectors has sparked an entirely new movement of collective making that is inextricably open and future-oriented. Challenged by increasingly complex technological and environmental problems, architects, designers, and engineers are seeking novel practices of collaboration that go far beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. This collective approach to working with robots is not only revolutionizing how things are designed and made, but is fundamentally transforming the culture, politics, and economics of the creative industries as a whole. Unlike most other CNC devices, today’s robotic arms are not restricted to any particular application but can readily be customized and programmed to suit a wide range of specific intentions, both at the material and conceptual level. This versatility has shifted the perception of robots as mechanistic, utilitarian devices suited to standard serial production, toward understanding them as creative tools for exploring, designing, and realizing physical objects and the built environment. The goal of this class is to investigate the unique possibilities of robotic manufacturing and combining it with emerging technologies such as AR/VR, 3D scanning, and data-driven 3D printing for the development of new and creative building processes. Working together as one team, the students in the class are given the task to envision a novel workflow for smart fabrication and human-robot interaction that could fundamentally change how we are going to produce, assemble, and operate our built environment in the future.
This class is open to graduate students from the fields of architecture, electrical engineering, and computer science. Prior experience in robot programming, AR/VR, 3D printing, 3D scanning, and design programs such as Rhinoceros and Grasshopper would be beneficial.
ARCH 264 [Buntrock]
Off-Site Fabrication: Opportunities and Evils
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: 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.
ARCH 269 [Buntrock]
Introduction to Construction for MRED+D
Format: 3 hours of lecture per week; no lab; 2 units
A description is forthcoming
ARCH 375 [Staff]
Seminar in the Teaching of Architecture
Format: 2 hours of seminar per week
Description: This class is intended for first-time graduate student instructors, especially those working in studio and lab settings. The class covers a range of issues that normally come up when teaching, offers suggestions regarding how to work well with other graduate student instructors and faculty, and how to manage a graduate student instructor's role as both student and teacher. The greatest benefit of this class comes from the opportunity to explore important topics together. Using a relatively light but provocative set of readings, the seminar will explore the issues raised each week. There will be one assignment intended to help students explore their own expectations as educators.