Urban Design Courses

This course explores how design is connected to place, the human body, and materials. Instead of treating people and environments as separate, the course examines how they constantly influence each...

This course explores how design is connected to place, the human body, and materials. Instead of treating people and environments as separate, the course examines how they constantly influence each other. By looking at these relationships, students will rethink how we understand, experience, and design the built environment. The course uses ideas from several different fields. From neuroscience, we will learn how the brain, nervous system, and senses respond to environmental stimuli. From...

This course is centered on the question of how people experience, think about, and contest urban form. Study begins with the Enlightenment, when science and reason treated physical form as something...

This course is centered on the question of how people experience, think about, and contest urban form. Study begins with the Enlightenment, when science and reason treated physical form as something that could be studied, tested, and re-engineered, leading to the alteration of streets, public space, and the idea of what a city could become. Students move between close reading of plans and streets, key texts in urban theory and philosophy, and accounts of daily life in different city fabrics....

Connecting practice and theory, this course introduces the complexities of designing public space. Lectures and readings will introduce students to the concerns and scope of urban design, from the...

Connecting practice and theory, this course introduces the complexities of designing public space. Lectures and readings will introduce students to the concerns and scope of urban design, from the morphology of cities to community engagement practices. Through precedents and case studies, students will gain an understanding of the processes and techniques employed by urban designers. Urban design concepts will be explored by investigating conditions on selected sites, discussing issues and...

Urban sites are inherently complex. This online seminar trains students to read a site through data, demography, history, and lived experience. Students then turn that understanding into a...

Urban sites are inherently complex. This online seminar trains students to read a site through data, demography, history, and lived experience. Students then turn that understanding into a persuasive narrative about the designed future with the understanding that place is not a static construct, instead evolving accounts deepen as research continues and places transform. Students are introduced to municipal GIS mapping tools, and work in a single study area across the term. Students build...

This online design media course trains students to read and construct representations of urban-scale spatial ideas. Urban representation is taught both as a craft and as a method of thinking. Modes...

This online design media course trains students to read and construct representations of urban-scale spatial ideas. Urban representation is taught both as a craft and as a method of thinking. Modes of representation include freehand drawing, diagramming, and technical drafting (conventions of plan and section) working with both analog and digital tools, and digital modeling. Students will be introduced to Photoshop, Illustrator, CADD, and SketchUp/ Rhino.

This online studio prepares students without prior design training for graduate work in urban design, introducing critical thinking, iterative making, and discussion as methods for understanding...

This online studio prepares students without prior design training for graduate work in urban design, introducing critical thinking, iterative making, and discussion as methods for understanding spatial composition and human inhabitation. Through a series of urban-scale design projects of increasing complexity, students explore the creative processes of making and representing form and space, test and analyze spatial ideas, and understand strategies to investigate place and inhabitation.

This asynchronous graduate seminar connects urban economics, strategy, and city competition to design practice. Students learn how cities compete for capital, residents, visitors, and talent, and...

This asynchronous graduate seminar connects urban economics, strategy, and city competition to design practice. Students learn how cities compete for capital, residents, visitors, and talent, and how those contests influence regional economics, transportation, districts, streets, public spaces, and development choices. Through case studies, short memos, and a term project, the seminar breaks down economic forces, real estate logic, transportation strategy, branding theory, heritage value,...