2024 Spring Courses
For more information, view the UC Berkeley Online Schedule of Classes.
- REQUIRED UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
- REQUIRED GRADUATE COURSES
- ELECTIVES AND SEMINARS
Arch 11B – Introduction to Design [Rudabeh Pakravan]
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 100B – Fundamentals of Architectural Design [Various Instructors]
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 – Architectural Design IV [Various Instructors]
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 – Architecture Capstone Project [Catherine Covey]
nd 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 140 – Energy and Environment [Stefano Schiavon]
The first part of this sequence studies the ancient and medieval periods; the second part studies the period since 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 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 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.
Arch 160 – Introduction to Construction [David Jaehning]
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 170B – An Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism [Margaret Crawford]
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 200B – Introduction to Architecture Studio [Various Instructors]
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 200D – Representational Practice in Architectural Design II [Andrew Atwood, Kyle Seinfeld]
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 202 – Graduate Option Studio [Various Instructors]
Focused design and research for graduate students.
Arch 204B – Thesis Studio [Various Instructors]
Focused design research as the capstone project for graduate students.
Arch 205B – Studio One [Paz Gutierrez]
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 207D – The Cultures of Practice [Robert Bracamonte]
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 230 – Advanced Architectural Design Theory and Criticism [Neyran Turan]
Seminar in the analysis and discussion of contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism.
Arch 240 – Advanced Study of Energy and Environment [Luisa Caldas]
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 250 – Introduction to Structure [Simon Schleicher]
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 list contains both graduate and undergraduate courses. Varying courses are cross-listed at the graduate level with a limited number of undergraduate seats available.
ARCH 98BC & 198BC – Berkeley Connect (Margaret Crawford)
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 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 alums, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.
ARCH 139/239 – Special Topics in Design Theory and Criticism (Greig Crysler)
Spaces of Queer Theory
This course examines the relationship between queer space, power, and identity. 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. This course will challenge such assumptions, by reflecting on the relationship between the physical and imagined spaces and how diverse forms of queer embodied identity are enacted within, and transformed by them. Course readings and discussions will move across a sequence of differently scaled spaces, exploring layers of interdependence as the course proceeds: sites of analysis and creative practice range from (un)gendered bathrooms, domestic spaces, and neighborhoods to those of urban/rural landscapes and transnational territories.
This is a cross-listed course with limited undergraduate seats available.
ARCH 169/269 – Special Topics in Construction and Materials (Mark Anderson)
Timber Frame and Mass Timber Construction
The objective of the course and our drawing/modeling project is to help develop understandings of heavy timber/mass timber construction methods and sequences of assembly, with a particular focus on recent technological innovations and environmental impact issues. As our research process we will work to develop drawing, modeling, technical and conceptual skills enabling personalized design insights drawing upon structural and material detailing logic. To this end, we will discuss timber construction and fabrication processes, materials and building techniques, tools and orders of assembly, as well as recent precedent projects and design details. We will consider construction issues in timber as creative considerations within the design drawing process. Students may work in teams or individually, and are encouraged to combine studio, thesis, competition, or other projects into the work of this seminar. Students will select a particular case study and/or building system to research, and will apply this research to a current studio project or competition project or other personal design project as applicable. The research and design process will be explored and presented in the production of a digital and/or physical model, or sequence of models, and a sequence of details exploring specific construction research and creative insight into the systems deployed. About half the seminar will involve presentations by the instructor, and half will focus on review of student design drawings. Many past students have used this opportunity to develop competition projects, including a number of projects that have won international competition honors.
ARCH 209 – Special Topics in Architectural Design (Chris Calott)
Architect Developer: Small-Scale Real Estate Development Design Seminar
This course is offered for “designers” (architects and landscape architects) interested in an entrepreneurial design practice focused on creating transformative incremental change in urban neighborhoods. The class will investigate topics related to real estate development fundamentals, residential typologies, city morphology, community equities and urbanism to investigate how small-scale interventions can make big, vibrant impacts in urban communities throughout the US. Conducted in a lecture/seminar format, students in this class will also engage in two speculative design exercises with the instructor and classmates to produce their own small-scale development project proposals. This course will develop an understanding of how small-scale, infill real estate development can create positive change in urban community contexts through the agency of good architecture, urbanism, and design.
ARCH 229 – Special Topics in Design and Methods (Georgios Eftaxiopoulos)
Flexibility and its Discontents
This seminar will cast light on the notion of flexibility in architecture. As a positive, widely-adopted concept used to describe architectural projects and design solutions to today’s ever-changing environment, this course will challenge flexibility’s taken-for-granted reading by investigating the term beyond spatiality. The sessions—organized around talks, texts and drawing assignments—will discuss a number of paradigmatic case studies and construct a genealogy of flexibility, ultimately unveiling its hidden complexities, issues and links to other disciplines.
ARCH 249 – Special Topics in The Physical Environment in Buildings (Gail Brager)
Sensory Space
This course is about how to create rich multisensory experiences in buildings as means to bridge people to nature and and embrace the value of environmental variability and delight. It advocates for design to promote a broader view of experiential aesthetics, choreographing visual, thermal, acoustic and olfactory elements of the sensescape to contribute to the beauty and memorability of space. Students will learn about the science of sensory experience and how this can be the basis for experiential design: a people-based approach where subtle variations alleviate experiential monotony and bring inhabitants back to the center of design intentions, all in support of simultaneously minimizing energy use, enhancing occupant well-being and supporting environmental stewardship.
ARCH 258 – Robotic Fabrication and Construction (Simon Schleicher)
The emergence of robotics in creative sectors such as architecture and design 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.
ARCH 279 SEC 001 – Special Topics in the History of Architecture (Andrew Shanken)
Off the Map: Diagrams in Architecture and Planning
20th-century planners, architects, and landscape architects deployed a changing array of visual techniques to represent, analyze, promote, and forecast the American city. Maps and diagrams, in particular, have been central tools interjected into every stage and scale of planning and design. But they are also images, with all of the complicated and rich implications of that term. Every plan is an act of persuasion, an argument for an alternative way of life that attempts to convince an audience of a potential future based on data culled from the present. This course is a selective tour through diagramming and mapping in architecture and urban planning, in particular at the scale of the city in the 20th century and with an emphasis on American planners. Literature drawn primarily from planning and urban design, geography and cartography, art history, the history of science, and architecture will guide original student research culminating in a seminar paper. There will be a mixture of primary and secondary literature. Topics may include classic texts by Camillo Sitte, Kevin Lynch, Edmund Bacon, Colin Rowe, Venturi and Scott Brown. The seminar will also prioritize looking at images both in class and as assignments in lieu of textual readings.
Arch 279 SEC 003 – Special Topics in the History of Architecture (Greig Crysler)
Critical Epistemologies of Method in the History and Theory of Architecture, Urbanism and the Built Environment
This advanced reading course focuses on a selection of cutting-edge books of two decades from the fields of architectural and urban history and theory. Through a combination of instructor presentations, close reading, student reports and directed critical discussion, the course will examine each book’s theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches within broader disciplinary, institutional and cultural contexts. Particular attention will be placed on books that provide historical understanding of social and spatial conditions of inequality. To this end, three sessions on activist epistemologies of method in the realms of racial capitalism, decolonial ecologies, and more will be incorporated into the course.