167 courses with the subject ARCH, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
ARCH 0101Making Space: Feminism and Architecture
This undergraduate seminar will consider feminist frameworks, politics, and aesthetics in relation to architecture and the built environment. How have theories on the feminine, and gender more broadly, influenced architectural thought and design aesthetics? How can we imagine a more just environment for women in communities, workplaces, homes, public spaces, and institutions? Spanning from the 1970s to the present, the seminar will engage with texts, case studies, and experimental practices, with a focus on their implications for present and future work. The course will also consider the intersections of feminist thought with broader concerns of gender, class, race, and ability, and will explore the role of feminism in global and local solidarities. Students from all disciplines are encouraged to enroll. The course will be structured around weekly discussions of readings and case studies, peer feedback sessions, and student presentations. Students will undertake a guided research project of their choosing, which may take the form of a critical or experimental essay, performance, or a visual, spatial, or graphic project.
Through a critical and historical lens, students will examine material, spatial, and ecological practices in architecture and design that perpetuate racial inequities and exacerbate climate injustices. This course will challenge students to consider the ways in which design decisions negatively impact black, indigenous, and other people of color, while also causing harm to the environment. The extraction of raw materials for production often leads to the displacement of communities, destruction of habitats and ecosystems, and the depletion of finite natural resources. Historically, urban planning and design has been used to enforce racial segregation and deny access to services and amenities to non-whites. The siting of toxic waste facilities, highways, and industrial zones in low-income communities of color has had devastating impacts on public health and quality of life. Probing the intersectional relationships between design, race, and climate change, students will engage with a range of texts, multimedia content, case studies, and hands-on projects. By the end of the semester, they will have a deeper understanding of the ways in which design impacts communities and the environment and be equipped with knowledge to advance a more just, equitable, and resilient future.
This seminar introduces students to the relevant topics, themes, and sites that help us understand the conception, production, and evolution of designed landscapes throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, with a focus on North America. We aim to build an understanding of landscapes as both physical spaces and cultural constructions at the nexus of art and science. We also explore how our understanding of landscapes contributes meaning to our relationships with nature and more-than-human species. The seminar examines the development of the designed landscape in the United States, beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) and foregrounding the entangled roles of the plantation economy, Indigenous knowledge, and colonialism. The study of Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted presents an entry point for examining the landed gentry and the laboring classes through Olmsted’s nineteenth- century journalist’s perspective in The Cotton Kingdom (1861) as well as the public health narratives that emerged with the construction of Central Park on the cusp of the Civil War. The early twentieth-century development of national parks and the narrative of the American wilderness are considered as parallel to the ongoing displacement of Indigenous peoples; the course also examines contemporary scholarship on traditional ecological knowledge and pluriverse worldviews. An expanded view of urban ecology and landscape performance will bring us to the launch of the environmental movement and the first Earth Day, held in Philadelphia at Fairmont Park in 1970. Literature, poetry, and performance art are included as part of a holistic approach to reading and exploring land practice. Meeting once a week in a three-hour block, this seminar uses the extended time to offer engaged active learning and rich discussions, as well as for a few field trips to local Philadelphia herbariu collections, archives, botanical gardens, and the Morris Arboretum.
An exploration of the design process utilizing drawing and model-making techniques. Skills of representation and fabrication are introduced in the context of the development of each student's capacity to observe, interpret, and translate design concepts into physical form. The course includes a weekly lecture and studio component. The primary purpose of this course is to introduce the fundamental concepts and basic skills necessary in the design of a work of architecture. Fundamental concepts include a basic understanding of description, projection, and fabrication – in both two and three#dimensions. Basic skills include freehand sketching and drawing, computer#aided drawing (orthographic and axonometric) and the fabrication of scale models using hand, power, and digital tools.
ARCH 1301Architectural Representation: Stories and Strategies
This course examines architectural representation as both a storytelling medium and a sociocultural practice, exploring how drawings shape design ideas, spatial narratives, and collective memory. Through readings, discussions, and drawing workshops, students study the history and theory of representation while strengthening their own drawing skills through a range of media and techniques. The course frames representation as both a creative and ethical practice, encouraging work that goes beyond technical skill to question, communicate, and advocate. m Spring 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
Select 3 course units of Electives in Architecture Practice/ Technology with: Attribute AVAP (https://catalog.upenn.edu/ attributes/avap/) Select 1 course unit of an Elective in Philosophy/Science or Art/Culture of Seeing with the following Attributes: Attribute AVAC (https://catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/ avac/) Attribute AVPS (https://catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/ avps/) Stage 4 - Capstone Course
ARCH 2101Concepts for Understanding Space in the Americas
To study the built environment of the Americas is to deal with an inherent contradiction. While our disciplines of architecture, urban design, landscape, and planning share the fundamental belief that spaces matter; an overwhelming majority of our knowledge comes from another continent. As reminded by Edward Said in the classic “Orientalism” of 1974, European culture developed narratives about all other societies on Earth and as a result established itself as the center o human knowledge. One could easily apply Said’s orientalism to a certain “occidentalism” of the American continent and we shall ask what such narrative entails. According to the Eurocentric narrative, the Americas were a vast continent empty of sophisticated cultures and ready to be conquered by superior knowledge of the self-proclaimed “old world”. This course looks into an array of spatial concepts developed by Americans (understood here of course as anyone who is rooted in the continent, from Chile to Alaska); in order to provide Penn undergraduate students with the intellectual tools to understand such spaces.
This course considers the architectural model as an Interrogatory, exploratory, documentary, and/ or revelatory device through historical and contemporary lenses. Intended for both majors and non-majors, this introduction to the role of making in architectural production will provide students with a foundational understanding of the ways in which architects interpret, understand, and develop their work through tactile engagement with the material world. A focus on three dimensional representation encourages students to consider the work of others while building individual skills in, and familiarity with, the workshop as a place of production, exploration, and possibility.
An introduction to the design of architecture in the city. Students explore the relationships between two-dimensional patterns and their corresponding three-dimensional interpretations through the orthographic drawings of plan, section, and elevation and three- dimensional digital and physical models. ARCH 3010 focuses on Architecture’s connective role as a whole comprised of parts (a building comprised of components) a contributing part of a whole (a building within an urban, suburban, or rural environment).
An introduction to the design of architecture in the landscape. Issues of mapping, placement, scale, and construction are explored through studio design projects, site visits, and discussions. Course work focuses on the preparation and presentation of design projects emphasizing analytical skills along with the development of imaginative invention and judgment.
The creation of a successful product requires the integration of design, engineering, and marketing. The purpose of this intensive studio course is to introduce basic concepts in the design of three-dimensional products. For purposes of the course, design is understood as a creative act of synthesis expressed through various modes of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional representation. The course develops basic design skills ranging from hand sketching to the use of digital modeling software and rapid prototyping. Fulfills the requirement for a design background course f in the interdisciplinary graduate program in Integrated Product Design (IPD).
Environmental Studies Requirement Select one course with AARE attribute (https:// 1 catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/aare/) Culture, Society, and the City Requirement Select one course with the AARC attribute (https:// 1 catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/aarc/)
This course will consider the architectural model as an Interrogatory, exploratory, documentary, and/ or revelatory device through historical and contemporary lenses. Intended for both majors and non-majors, this introduction to the role of making in architectural production will provide students with a foundational understanding of the ways in which architects interpret, understand, and develop their work through tactile engagement with the material world. A focus on three dimensional representation will encourage students to consider the work of others while building individual skills in, and familiarity with, the workshop as a place of production, exploration, and possibility. 1 Course Unit
The topics courses offer a timely exploration of issues of contemporary relevance within the discipline of architecture. These introductory seminars engage with a diverse range of themes that vary by semester and instructor. Open to all undergraduate students. 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1099
This course offers a timely exploration of issues of contemporary relevance within the area of landscape studies. Specific content will vary by semester and instructor. Open to all undergraduate students. 1 Course Unit
This course offers a timely exploration of issues of contemporary relevance within the area of architectural theory. Specific content will vary by semester and instructor. Open to all undergraduate students. 1 Course Unit
This course offers a timely exploration of issues of contemporary relevance within the area of architectural representation. Specific content will vary by semester and instructor. Open to all undergraduate students. 1 Course Unit
This course offers a timely exploration of issues of contemporary relevance within the area of architectural technology. Specific content will vary by semester and instructor. Open to all undergraduate students. 1 Course Unit
Advanced design course that engages contemporary contexts of architecture through historical, socio-cultural, and environmental frameworks. Students develop skills for collaboration, self-evaluation, and peer critique while learning how to effectively communicate design ideas to a public audience.
ARCH 4020Advanced Design Seminar builds on projects and student
work completed in ARCH 4010: Advanced Design, refining the studio projects in consideration of real-life constraints and opportunities. It allows students to develop in-depth research and design skills in partnership with community groups and/or industry partners. Addressing questions of design feasibility that extend beyond the scope of an architecture design studio, students will learn how issues such as economics, financing, constructability, design standards, zoning, and building codes ultimately impact the evolution of a project. Students will sharpen their communication and representation skills while creatively responding to the constraints and opportunities inherent within the practice of architecture.
Select the following course which serves as a bridge between historical analysis and theoretical inquiry, situating modern and contemporary architecture within broader cultural and conceptual debates.
Lecture course exploring the basic principles of architectural technology and building construction. The course is focused on building material, methods of on-site and off-site preparation, material assemblies, and the performance of materials. Topics discussed include load bearing masonry structures of small to medium size (typical row house constuction), heavy and light wood frame construction, sustainable construction practices, emerging + engineered materials, and integrated building practices. The course also introduces students to Building Information Modeling (BIM) via the production of construction documents.
A continuation of Construction I, focusing on light and heavy steel frame construction, concrete construction, light and heavyweight cladding systems and systems building.
What makes buildings livable and buildable. After the initial concept design and massing studies are complete the next step is detailing. This seminar will examine the detail, how they can inform and enhance a building's design. The primary goals of a building is that it stands up to external forces, protects inhabitants from the elements and provides a healthy environment. This course will look at the individual components of structure, skin and systems. More importantly though, it will examine the connections between them. The class will begin with lectures examining the different systems and then progress into applying these ideas as a whole to individual studio projects. The final results of this course will be a 3D wall section with accompanying details. These details will be developed in a variety of software as chosen by the student. Recommended options are Revit, Rhino, AutoCAD.
Theory applied toward structural form. A review of one-dimensional structural elements; a study of arches, slabs and plates, curved surface structures, lateral and dynamic loads; survey of current and future structural technology. The course comprises both lectures and a weekly laboratory in which various structural elements, systems, materials and technical principles are explored.
A continuation of the equilibrium analysis of structures covered in Structures I. The study of static and hyperstatic systems and design of their elements. Flexural theory, elastic and plastic. Design for combined stresses; prestressing. The study of graphic statics and the design of trusses. The course comprises both lectures and a weekly laboratory in which various structural elements, systems, materials and technical principles are explored. Successful completion of ARCH 4350 is a pre- requisite for ARCH 4360.
The architecture senior thesis provides students with the opportunity to undertake an independent critical and speculative exploration of a chosen theme. The theme is required to connect architecture with at least one other discipline or subject in the College of Arts and Science. In addition, the questions formulated should establish a concrete link to debates that can be identified as architectural, whether belonging to the realm of individual buildings, urbanism, or product design. This means, that departing from a humanistic question, students should seek to establish clear connections to architectural discourse in the process of conducting their thesis. The thesis project initiates a set of issues and methods that students may continue to develop as they embark on their future professional and intellectual careers. Although the thesis is conceived independently, it is conducted under the supervision of faculty advisors and the thesis coordinator. For additional information, please contact the Chair of Undergraduate Architecture.
The Summer Preparatory Studio offers an intensive drawing and design experience to candidates for admission to the Graduate Program in Architecture who have not completed the necessary design studio prerequisites or who are required to have additional design experience to qualify for matriculation into the Master of Architecture Professional Degree Program in September. Enrollment in this program does not count towards the Master of Architecture degree. The intent of the drawing component of the course is to familiarize the student with primarily black and white mediums (pencil, charcoal, ink, etc). Exercises are designed to sharpen the student's ability to see selectively and to transform image to paper through both line and tonal renditions in freehand sketch form. Exercises will also familiarize the student with basic drafting skills necessary for architectural communication and provide an introduction to computer-aided design through applications of the intensive Rhino and Illustrator tutorials given in the Digital Navigation course. The design part of the course presents a rhythm of basic three-dimensional design studies and simple architectural studio investigations. These are intended to build fundamental skills and acquaint the student with the architectural issues of form/space, conceptualization, transformation of scale, simple functional and constructional problems and a sensitivity to context. Course enrollment is by permit only.
This course is the first of a four-semester long design sequence that constitutes the core studio curriculum within the Master of Architecture program at the Weitzman School of Design. This studio introduces specific modes of architectural thinking, design, and practice through a set of projects that examine the foundational topics of component order and assembly . The semester will examine part-to-whole relationships through digital design techniques, tectonic and material studies and physical fabrication. The semester will culminate with the design of a small institutional extension that allows students to apply these foundational concepts to architectural space. Successful completion of ARCH 5010 is required to move on to ARCH 5020 in the Studio Sequence.
This studio explores urban architecture as an embodiment of cultural values . Analytical techniques for representing urban conditions are explored extensively . Students are challenged to interact with large, complex programs , individually determining one large component of the assigned program. Siting, enclosure of space and dimensions of public space and commons are stressed in order to challenge students to project relevant and inventive architectural situations . Large scale site and ground plans are stressed in the development of the project. Successful completion of ARCH 5010 is a prerequisite for beginning ARCH 5020. ARCH 5020 must be successfully completed before moving on to ARCH 6010.
This overview of the history of architecture from the mid-nineteenth century through World War II places modern architecture’s evolution into global perspective, taking into account not just transformations in architectural aesthetics and building practices around the world but also the broader sociopolitical, economic, technological, environmental, and intellectual forces that influenced them . We consider changing modes of production and reception, disciplinary and institutional innovations, animating debates, and global interdependencies and interchanges . Going well beyond iconic buildings and canonical “isms,” we pose the following questions: In what ways did the new architecture of the period respond to, participate in, and mediate the unprecedented experiences of modernizing societies? How did urban and environmental crises, colonial enterprises and devastating wars, national and international agendas, social changes, and technological advances affect architects’ understanding of the spaces they were called upon to design? How, in turn, did buildings and projects reflect different societies’ self-images an aspirations to become modern? What can architecture’s manifestations over the course of this formative period tell us about the emergent modern world? In attempting to answer these questions, we take note of shifting historiographic paradigms and reflect on the genealogical relationship and relevance of this epoch to architectural thought and practice today. A passing grade in ARCH 5110 must be earned before moving on to the next course in the sequence, ARCH 5120.
ARCH 5120 continues topics introduced in ARCH 5110, in the midst of World War II, and traces the evolution of architecture culture up to the twenty-first century in the context of an increasingly complex and interconnected world. We are concerned with both material and ideological changes, with key architectural protagonists, projects, and contexts as well as the impact of external historical forces. Lectures move roughly chronologically through a varied array of issues, among them: postwar reconstruction and planning; the culture of the Cold War; the critique of interwar modernism; the emergence of new technologies and postindustrial processes; the burgeoning of suburbanization, consumer culture, and mass media; revisionist and radical approaches to form and space; the rise of new social movements; postmodernism; globalization and the advent of digital culture; and environmental, social, and geopolitical challenges at the turn of the century. As in the previous semester, the course is intended to provide students with a broad knowledge of the architectural history of the period under study and an understanding of architecture’s role and agency in a changing world. A passing grade in ARCH 5110 must be earned before proceeding to ARCH 5120.
The second course in the Visual Studies sequence emphasizes drawings as generative devices which project possibilities rather than just documenting design decisions. Assignments explore image construction through photography and rendering and the construction of a large cutaway section drawing which speculates on the development of the studio project.
ARCH 5310 is the first of two courses explaining Construction Technology. The first course introduces the student to the relationship of design and construction in the creation of buildings. The early lectures trace the evolution and innovation of construction techniques throughout history and around the globe . This is used to ground the course in the kinds of environmental, economic, and technological pressures that have influenced the use of materials and methods in construction . Next, the course presents a primer describing how design and the act of drawing establishes a vocabulary that architects use to describe the construction of buildings. The balance of the course presents the building of a “light scale” building from the ground up; examining the fundamental material and construction concepts related to construction starting with excavation and ending with interior finishes . Bi-weekly labs complement the lectures with site visits to construction sites and trade facilities as well as more focused lessons.
Lecture and Workshop course focused on light and heavy steel frame construction, concrete construction, light and heavyweight cladding systems and systems building. Construction Technology II is an advanced course in building technology and building information modeling that informs, instructs, and demonstrates the extent to which industrialized building systems and innovative building technologies impact and guide the architect’s design process. The course focuses on multistory buildings whose complexities require the adoption of varying material, constructional, and informational technologies. Students are guided by teaching assistants in the completion of a set of construction drawings that are reviewed using industry standard red-lining digital techniques.
The course is continuation of Structures I. A review of two-dimensional structural elements including slabs, plates, walls, curved surfaces, and solid structures are conducted. The sizing and selection of materials is undertaken using acceptable standards and code requirements. Additionally, prestressing and composite systems, materials, and elements are studied. Wind, seismic and flooding events are introduced through lateral stability criteria. A survey of current and future structural technology is undertaken. The course is made up of both lectures and a weekly laboratory in which various structural elements, systems, materials and technical principles are explored. Successful completion of ARCH 5350: Structures I is a pre-requisite for ARCH 5360.
ARCH 5990 is a required lab/workshop that accompanies the core technology sequence in the M.Arch program in both the Fall and Spring terms. This lab section will offer additional instruction, workshops, lab time, and other support to the first year technology courses. Enrollment in ARCH 5990 is required for all undergraduate and graduate Architecture students taking the Fall courses ARCH 4310/5310: Construction I and ARCH 4350/5350: Structures I and the Spring courses ARCH 4320/5320: Construction II and ARCH 4360/5360: Structures II. 0 Course Units
The third core studio proposes the design of a 50,000 square foot, urban sited building that positions a new urban housing project with an existing structure. Students engage architecture in its role as a cultural agent and examine the way buildings establish and organize dynamic relationships between site, program and building materials . Urban access, relationship to siting, mass-transit, and the larger city will be considered . The curricular goals of the studio include the exploration of building massing, housing unit scale and variation, and the creation of hybrid forms of housing/dwelling as they relate to adaptive reuse and public programs within the urban environment. ARCH 5020 must be successfully completed before beginning ARCH 6010. Successful completion of ARCH 6010 is a prerequisite for starting ARCH 6020.
This course builds on the previous History/Theory sequence (ARCH 5110 and ARCH 5120), moving from an emphasis on history to focus on contemporary theories of architecture. The goal is to build literacy in contemporary architectural discourse in correlation with design culture. Students will gain awareness of where the field of contemporary architectural theory currently stands, especially in terms of its societal and scientific relevance. Lectures and discussions will look at the aesthetic, political, and ethical implications of design, and will consider the global context of architecture in light of climate change and emerging building and design technologies. Successful students will gain skills in reading and discussing theoretical texts and will be able to better articulate their own critical thinking and positioning in the field. A passing grade in ARCH 5120 must be earned before enrolling in ARCH 6110.
The course prepares the students to understand the role of environmental systems in building design, and how to apply principles of building science such as the building heat balance, solar heat gain and daylighting in the early building design, through calculations and simulations. Issues of climate, health and environmental sustainability are explored as they relate to architecture in its natural context. The classes include lectures, site visits and lab sessions.
Architectural design involves the incorporation of numerous technical and creative considerations that must be weighted and synthesized, and ultimately embodied in an architectural work’s material outcome. The effectiveness of this endeavor is tightly related to a design’s alignment with design-engineering, material and production constraints and opportunities. The building industry is increasingly adopting automated methods both in design and engineering software, and robotic means of fabrication and construction to decrease material, environmental and time costs. The discipline of architecture must not only keep apace with these developments, but also develop a creative and critical approach to the increasingly automated means by which buildings are designed and realized, re-casting it as an opportunity to engage in design with greater degrees of holistic thinking, while engaging in material and production decisions.
The Professional Practice Sequence comprises two essential courses: ARCH 6710 in the Spring of the second year and ARCH 7710 in the Fall of the third year. These courses play a pivotal role in integrating the student's design, history and theory, and technical expertise into the broader framework of the regulatory, business, and cultural realms they will encounter in their professional journey. The discipline of architecture demands an inquisitive mind capable of synthesizing a multitude of technical, aesthetic, social, and conceptual elements. This essential characteristic is not limited to the mere creation of built spaces; it also extends to formulating a process of labor that is both responsible and fair, and capable of adapting to the ever-changing conditions of the world. ARCH 6710 begins by briefly outlining the overall course sequence in order to locate the first section in the context of the next course in the Fall, ARCH 7710. From there the course uses each week to describe the methods involved in acquiring, designing, and constructing a building project. Lectures will delve deep into the mechanisms for articulating a design vision visually and verbally and the systems employed to ensure successful implementation of that vision. The lectures will draw connections between the student’s studio design knowledge to date and the instructor’s experience in practice including local building examples and current events. Due to the more limited time allotted per class for ARCH 6710, the course will be predominantly in-class lectures and out of class assignments.
ARCH 6741Curricular Practical Training: Academic Year
Course Description This course provides international Architecture department students the opportunity for practical training in architecture in the United States (CPT). The course develops critical thinking about the organization, operation, and ethics of professional practice in city planning. This course will allow international M.Arch/MSD students to work in an internship in the United States during the academic year without shortening their limited OPT time. The course is offered for .20 course units. The employment must relate to the major and the experience must be part of the program of study. Course enrollment is by permit only. 0.2 Course Units
In this seminar, we will explore the green thread in America thought and letters and analyze its influence on how we shape our environments through design and planning. The course has three parts. Throughout, the influence of literature on design and planning theory will be explored. The first part will focus on three most important theorists in environmental planning and landscape architecture: Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., Charles Eliot, and Ian McHarg. The second part of the course will critically explore current theories in environmental planning and landscape architecture. The topics include: frameworks for cultural landscape studies, the future of the vernacular, ecological design and planning, sustainable and regenerative design, the languages of landscapes, and evolving views of landscape aesthetics and ethics. In the third part of the course, students will build on the readings to develop their own theory for ecological planning or, alternatively, landscape architecture. While literacy and inquiry are addressed throughout the course, critical thinking is especially important for this final section.
This course is reserved for M.Arch students in their final year participating in the semester abroad program in London, England. The program is housed at the Architectural Association (AA), located on Bedford Square in the heart of Bloomsbury. Students enroll in a special section of ARCH 7040 taught by Penn faculty in London and in elective courses offered by the faculty at the AA.
ARCH 6999 is a required lab/workshop that accompanies the core technology sequence in the M.Arch program in both the Fall and Spring terms. This non-graded lab section will offer additional instruction, workshops, lab time, and other support to the second year technology courses. Enrollment in ARCH 6999 is required for all Master of Architecture students taking ARCH 6330 and ARCH 6340. 0 Course Units
The Project Feasibility and Design studio is the final, advanced studio in the Property Development and Design program in which candidates examine the way buildings establish and organize dynamic relationships between program, material, and the city. The studio is conceived as a three-part, interrelated semester project in which candidates comprehensively engage financial and material aspects of a real estate development project. There are three (3) project modules: 1) A Zoning, Massing, and Metrics module in which candidates develop bulk approaches to an urban site and generate project inputs including height, mass, and orientation. Part-to-whole relationships between building and program components as well as the overall building within the urban context are considered. 2) A Schematic Design/Pro Forma Inputs module in which candidates undergo a schematic design process generating ideas about building program and relationship to site/context, as well as metric take-offs of floorplate, program areas, unit sizes and types, and other data required in pro forma development. 3) A Design Development/ Pro Forma Financing module in which candidates undergo a more comprehensive phase of development of both the final building proposal and the financial data and pro forma. The phase will consider specific building data including construction system, glazing area, and finishes/ materials as they relate to the building proposal and financial planning to actualize it. Students present their final design work as a series of underwriting scenarios. 2 Course Units
Students learn from industry leaders by electing their Design research Studio. The second semester design research studio focuses on large scale detail leading to a building design. 2 Course Units University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1105
The thesis program is offered to a select group of students who apply and qualify through two rounds of assessment, comprising typically 6-10 students. The summer and fall semester serve to develop research of interests individual to students, with the help of faculty advisors, who critique individually and as a group in a workshop format. Design projects are developed in the spring semester. Besides final reviews, students are expected to document their work in a book format.
The final studio course in the MSD-AAD sequence. Through this studio, students engage in the challenges and opportunities presented by changes in society, technology, and urban experience. Through design projects, they explore alternative modes and markets for practice, along with new directions and new tools for design.
Total Course Units 5 Substitutions must be approved in writing by the Director and submitted to the Weitzman School of Design Office of Student Services. ctor The degree and major requirements displayed are intended as a guide for students entering in the Fall of 2026 and later. Students should consult with their academic program regarding final certifications and requirements for graduation. Geographical Information Systems &
A chronological overview of the approaches and attitudes adopted by architects, theorists and inter-disciplinary writers from 1993- today that havehelped shape the current discourse of architecture. This course will introduce and contextualize key projects, and polemics over the last 25 years. Central themes in this course include the impact of digital technologies and methods of design, production and materiality. These are explored through texts, movements, projects and buildings that help form an overview that has shaped the contemporary condition that we live in. There have been a myriad of different approaches and through a select set of readings and lectures students will be exposed to crucial texts, projects and buildings making students versatile and knowledgeable in the important concepts that shape our current discourse. A focus will be the organization, configuration and articulation of buildings and the conceptual and cultural arguments they are associated. Formal, organizational and material characteristics of this period will be explored. This class will develop students' knowledge and provide a platform from which they can continue the discussions surrounding architectural thought and practice. The students will learn to communicate their ideas verbally and in writing. Contemporary topics in architecture theory and projects are introduced in a weekly lecture format critical to the shaping of our discipline today. A weeklyrecitation session allows students to engage with the readings critically in the subject matter. A mid-term and final paper are required to pass this class. (Topics to be covered: Seminal projects and buildings in the last 25 years, situating the architects work within a culture of debate and discourse identifying the important readings surrounding each building/project.) This course is a requirement of the MSD-AAD curriculum.
ARCH 7130Ecological Thinking in Art and Architecture
This seminar will address the diverse narratives of ecological thinking in the history of art, architecture, and urban planning during the 20th century. The course will contextualize and interrogate contemporary disciplinary discourses as well as historical assumptions related to ecological thinking in art and architectural history and environmentally- conscious practices. By mapping received trajectories of Eco Art, Ecocritical Art History, and Ecological Histories of Architecture and Urban Planning, the course will work from a subtly hidden foundation of eco- historical knowledge that connects these fields of inquiry, while also critiquing these trajectories and seeking to provide more focused and robust alternatives for knowledge production in the present. It aims to attract students from the School of Arts and Sciences and the Weitzman School of Design in a discussion on the interconnected histories of art and architecture during the 20th century. Also Offered As: ARTH 5770 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
ARCH 7140Museum as Site: Critique, Intervention and Production
In this course, we will take the museum as a site for critique, invention, and production. As architecture, cultural institution, and site of performance, the museum offers many relevant opportunities. Students will visit, analyze, and discuss a number of local exhibitions and produce their own intervention in individual or group projects. Exhibition design, design of museum, the process of curating, producing artworks ranging from paintings to installation and performance, as well as attention to conservation, installation, museum education, and the logistics and economics of exhibitions will be discussed on site and in seminar. These topics and others will be open for students to engage as part of their own creative work produced for the class and an online exhibition.
This weekly lecture course examines the field of aesthetics and its relationship to architecture in the broader context of contemporary social and cultural conditions. Aesthetics are often sidelined in architectural discussions as dealing with mere surface, style, or subjective notions of beauty. By contrast, this course will center aesthetics as a discourse that is deeply enmeshed in material, political, and cultural histories. The course will present a number of critical approaches to aesthetics, and will explore different contemporary ideas around the transformative potentials of aesthetics as a form of sensorial and cultural practice. In discussions on readings and visual case studies, students will explore aesthetics in relation to contemporary issues that include digital representation, artificial intelligence, the Anthropocene, the nonhuman, class, gender, and race, and the post-colonial. 1 Course Unit
ARCH 7160The Architecture of Re-imagination: The History and Theory
of Reuse This class will place the acts of renovating, restoring, rehabilitating, and re-imagining exiting structures in a historical and theoretical context. Proceeding through a series of case studies in which students will be asked to research, document, analyze, and present notable instances of the re-imagination of existing buildings and other structures, the class will provide students with the ability to understand the social, economic, and aesthetic issues that determine current modes of renovation. While the class will not provide technical information, it will give students access to the sources and history of the codes, regulations, and methodologies that govern renovation practices. 1 Course Unit
ARCH 7161Design Research, Writing, and Critical Methodologies
This course is an introduction to critical discourse and experimental modes of criticism for designers and non-designers alike. It will use contemporary examples from art, technology, and design to demonstrate how architects and designers can incorporate a theoretical or critical project into their work, as well as how to use these skills to excel in a work environment. Theoretical and practical workshops will explore topics in media, exhibitions, book making, and film as narrative. The class will be structured around discussions with contemporary leaders in critical and discursive thought. Students will develop an experimental critical project through an intensive writing seminar and will use case studies (readings) to demonstrate clear, concise, effective writing that can communicate complex ideas and positions. Rigorous in-class exercises are used to quickly give students tools for good critical thinking and writing. The result will be a book and group exhibition that relates to their personal interests (a theme). These writing and critical skills can be translated to any written material—from dissertations to client emails. Tying together journalistic methods with critical and conceptual practices will prepare students for writing for publications as well as for their own work, from RFP’s to their portfolio website. One-on-one mentoring helps students understand their own goals, needs, and areas of improvement. Alternative ways of thinking are foregrounded, and five specific techniques are examined: Narrative, Evidence, History, Outside Examples, Metaphor. 1 Course Unit
“New York is the perfect model of a city,” stated Lewis Mumford, “not the model of a perfect city.” This seminar counterposes the urban and architectural ideas of four thinkers who possessed radically different perspectives on the modern city and brought them to bear on the emblematic twentieth-century metropolis, New York City. Our protagonists are Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), Robert Moses (1888– 1981), Jane Jacobs (1916–2006), and Rem Koolhaas (1944–). We discuss the issues that variously engaged them—and at times pitted them against each other—as they strove to envision and reshape New York’s built future over the course of a century of constant urban changes, social and economic challenges, and cultural transformations. From Mumford’s prophetic environmentalism and “sidewalk criticism” to Moses’s “expressway world,” from Jacobs’s neighborhood activism and battles against urban renewal to Koolhaas’s “delirious” architectural imaginary, the course places their ideas into historical context and reassesses their legacies to the twenty-first century. More generally, by revisiting New York City’s modern development we aim to reflect on its evolution today. What “usable past” (to quote Mumford again) can we discover in a city once celebrated as the capital of the twentieth century? Is New York still a testing ground for new urban experiences and ideas? What sort of city has it become? Concerned equally with the material history of New York’s built environment and with its theoretical discourse, class sessions revolve around discussions of key texts by and about Mumford, Moses, Jacobs, and Koolhaas, supplemented by slide lectures, films, and case-study presentations. Students are encouraged to undertake original research, including in the Mumford archives at the Kislak Center in Van Pelt Library, and to make trips into New York to inform their presentations and term paper. 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1107
ARCH 7163Spatial Justice Collective: Study and Praxis in Philadelphia
Through a critical spatial lens, this course will advance discourse in social justice activism as it informs transformative design practices. Addressing various themes of study around forms of institutional violence and liberatory activism, we will engage in intersectional study of geography, sociology, urban planning, and the arts. We will examine topics such as anti-racism; decoloniality and land; civil resistance; housing justice; indigenous practices; solidarity economics; critical ecology and climate justice; food sovereignty; and healing justice. The course is conceived in solidarity and collaboration with the Philadelphia Peace Park and the Peacetown Community Land Trust and is structured in relation to their organizing principles as an open and community-operated campus. Weekly sessions will include public events, discussions of relevant theory, and the fabrication of a designed artifact to be installed at the park. Held in a community cultural center in West Philadelphia on several Monday evenings during the term, the public events will convene local and international justice organizers and scholars in diverse formats. Other activities will be held on Penn's campus. These collective endeavors will deepen our understanding of the complexities of systems of oppression while actively contributing to the development of radical spatial justice discourse. 1 Course Unit
Filmmaking enables us to observe, notice, listen to, and see environments and buildings in new ways, bridging the gap between the real and the imagined through a combination of theory, history, and real footage. Using visual storytelling formats, students will learn to engage discursively with architecture and the city via narrative and a short film. This course is a survey of contemporary film, with a focus on New York and Philadelphia. It will offer students a look at different ways to portray architecture and urbanism through the medium of the moving image. Particular attention is paid on the genres of: low-budget, high-concept fiction; avant-garde documentaries, digital media and worldbuilding, and the ways in which architects portray their own work using film. The structure of the course is based on connecting written texts with film screenings in order to illuminate these strategies. The goal is to instill in students the confidence to make their own movies, as well as to understand some of the ways that others have done so in the context of New York, Philadelphia and beyond. The class culminates in a short film project that blends the different approaches listed above into a 2-3 minute film. We also consider contemporary digital broadcasting including media theory about networks such as Instagram, Twitch, Letterboxd, Discord, and Vimeo. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
This course will provide an overview of the debate surrounding the term Baroque and its contemporary implications. The term Baroque is the subject of many debates ranging from its etymological origin to disputes on the emergence of an aesthetic “style” post-Council of Trent in the seventeenth century by historians such as Heinrich Wölfflin and the more current and most broad application of the term as a recursive philosophical concept suggested by Gilles Deleuze to “Fold” through time. Although elusive and as dynamic as the work itself, students will become familiar with how the term Baroque has been associated with specific characteristics, attitudes, and effects or, more specifically, the architectural consequences it has produced. In addition, students will be introduced to the techniques of 3D laser scanning (no prior experience required). The seminar works with an unprecedented collection of scanned baroque churches from the Baroque Topologies research by Andrew Saunders. The scanned point clouds offer precise and fully articulated digital surveys of the work of Francesco Borromini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Pietro Da Cortona, Carlo Rainaldi, Guarino Guarini, and Bernardo Vittone. In parallel to formal analysis of specific Baroque works, the course will study analytic drawings and modeling techniques exercised by architects and historians including Sebastiano Serlio, Guarino Guarini, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, August Choisy, J.N.L. Durand, Rudolf Wittkower, Colin Rowe, Peter Eisenman, Robin Evans and Scott Cohen to understand how the bias of different analytical reconstructions compliment the discursive motivation of their authors (and their instruments of representation). Continuing this lineage, students will develop innovative representational techniques to reassess the Baroque through the lens of contemporary design discourse. 1 Course Unit
ARCH 7166Against Abstraction: Relational Knowledges in Design
It is quite difficult to conceptualize architecture without abstraction. Abstraction is so rooted in our history of manipulating objects that it predates our species. Our ancestral Homo Erectus probably deserves the credit for separating the idea of fire from accidental bush burns, sparking (pun intended) the technological revolution. And yet abstraction is also about reduction, selecting a few ideas out of the messy experience of the world in order to operate more efficiently. Abstraction, as the definition goes, is the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events, or something that exists only as ideas. The key question here is which facts have been elevated to the realm of ideas and which facts have been discarded. In this course I depart from the provocation that abstraction - and more specifically spatial abstraction - is a root cause of both modernization and colonization (Escobar 1995) and that we experience today an overdose of spatial abstraction. The first four weeks of this course will examine the rise of spatial abstraction and the path that brought us here. The following 10 weeks will be devoted to relational knowledges: emotions, affects, phenomena, embodiment, and participatory processes that should vaccinate us against this overwhelming hegemony of spatial abstraction. Organized in seminars with weekly non-abstract workshops, this course will sensitize designers of all scales of the built environment to relational processes that enrich our understanding of the world and reconnect us with all others, humans and non-humans, that share our spaces. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
ARCH 7167Amazonian Landscapes and Forest Histories of Architecture
This course highlights the agencies that have shaped and are shaped by Amazonia. Threatened by deforestation, erosion, fire, and drought, the Amazon rainforest, which spans nine countries, is home to more than thirty million people. It is the ancestral homeland of more than one million indigenous peoples and supports the greatest concentration of biodiversity on Earth. The course seeks to promote interdisciplinarity by considering different approaches to the relationship between nature and culture for contemporary definitions of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, biodesign, and the notion of the built environment itself, guided by the socio-ecological and agricultural practices, thought and activism that discussions of the Amazon Rainforest can foster. Indigenous peoples, along with the archaeologists, anthropologists, botanists, planners, and designers who work critically with them, emphasize that the Amazon is a cultural landscape that has been manipulated, gardened, designed, and even urbanized for centuries. “Forest Histories” refers to the collection of case studies that the class examines through primary and secondary sources, drawing on different disciplinary perspectives, colonial and postcolonial narratives that connect the local and the global, the past and the present. Combining methods from architectural and landscape history and theory with plant studies, archaeology, ethnobotany, industrial history, and postcolonial studies, the course focuses on the lessons that the study of the Amazon can teach us about the enhancement of ecological diversity through human and more-than-human construction and vernacular environments, including the phenomenon of the flying river and the construction of soil (the terra preta), as well as lessons in cosmology, mythology, and coexistence. Focusing on global and local histories of architecture and the built environment, urbanization, infrastructure, land “development” and resource extraction (gold, rubber, manganese, iron ore, and timber), the course examines projects at scales that relate the largest tropical rainforest on the planet to other geographies and territories, particularly Pennsylvania and the so-called Rust Belt, formerly the Steel Belt. 1 Course Unit
This seminar will consider feminist frameworks, aesthetics, and politics in relation to architecture and the built environment. How might theories on the feminine, and gender more broadly, transform architectural thought and design? What are the implications for materiality, space, and construction? Is there potential in a “minor architecture,” as described by theorist Jennifer Bloomer, to challenge dominant architectural narratives and ways of building? The seminar will address these inquiries by focusing on a select number of key practices from the 1970s to the present, and will emphasize deep engagement with historical and theoretical texts, archival objects, and material practices. Among other topics we will discuss the relationships between the personal and the political, feminist approaches to history, questions of labor, aesthetics, and craft, alternative models of pedagogy and practice, sexuality and the body, and the social constellations of family, friendship, collaboration, activism, and community. 1 Course Unit
The digital turn in the creative fields resulted in profound transformations of techniques, aesthetics and underlying concepts in the development of contemporary visual culture. The dissemination and consumption of information through images through all types of media platforms influence and re-define (for better or worse) all aspects of our culture and reality. It is vital to develop a deep knowledge of the current visual concepts and techniques in arts, photography, cinema, product design and architecture to claim a critical stance through which we can positively contribute to the evolution of contemporary culture. The discipline of architecture has been deeply influenced by the digital shift in modes of design and visualization which yielded a wide array of directions within the architectural discourse, especially with questions and problems regarding representation. One clear outcome of this transformational period is the diversity of new representational strategies to seek alternative modes of visualization. It is clear that no one representational medium can be defined as the locus of architectural thought and architecture, as a cultural practice, can no longer be defined through the output of a single medium. The reality of our discipline is that we work through collective mediums and conventions of drawings, models, images, simulations, texts, prototypes and buildings to visualize architectural concepts. These mediums all require degrees of expertise in techniques that are necessary for their execution: they all involve conceptual depth that define their disciplinary positions; they all require translations across each other to enable subjective work-flows; they all require aesthetic attitudes to influence the development of visual culture in architecture. This course will introduce the AAD majors to contemporary topics of visualization in arts, photography, cinema and architecture. They will explore multiple mediums of representation to help them gain the vital visual literacy to excel in the program. Students will be introduced to discursive background and contemporary concepts of line drawing, fabricated object and constructed image as they work through 3 distinct projects during the semester. Each exercise will be initiated by a topical lecture and be followed by weekly pin ups to advance student projects. (Topics to be covered: Discourse of Contemporary Line Drawing, Multi-part 3D Printing, Vacuform/CNC Milling, Digital/Analog Surface Articulation, Rendering, Abstraction and Realism, Montage/Collage/
ARCH 7210Designing Smart Objects for Play and Learning
Today's children enjoy a wide array of play experiences, with stories, learning, characters and games that exist as physical stand-alone objects or toys enhanced with electronics or software. In this course, students will explore the domain of play and learning in order to develop original proposals for new product experiences that are at once tangible, immersive and dynamic. They will conduct research into education and psychology while also gaining hands-on exposure to new product manifestations in a variety of forms, both physical and digital. Students will be challenged to work in teams to explore concepts, share research and build prototypes of their experiences in the form of static objects that may have accompanying electronic devices or software. Final design proposals will consider future distribution models for product experiences such as 3D printing, virtual reality and software- hardware integration. Instruction will be part seminar and part workshop, providing research guidance and encouraging connections will subject matter experts throughout the Penn campus.
As we move into an age of environmental consciousness and the nature- architecture dichotomy dissolves in favor of emerging ideologies of interconnectedness, it may no longer be appropriate to perpetuate the notion that our buildings are impervious and separate to the environments in which they are sited. Through the design of prototypical details cumulating in a spatial object, students will speculate on conditions of permissible weathering, degradation and inhabitation of our artifacts by non-human entities. In support of this task, students will learn the surrounding theoretical context by studying key texts from Ruskin, Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, Kallipoliti, Morton and Bennet that focus on the topics of weathering, ruination and contemporary ecological ideas; where and why these various effects occur in the built environment at present; and procedural design, modelling workflows in Houdini FX that integrate computational intelligence through weather simulation and geometric analysis. 1 Course Unit
The aim of this course is to understand the new medium of architecture within the format of a research seminar. The subject matter of new media is to be examined and placed in a disciplinary trajectory of building design and construction technology that adapts to material and digital discoveries. We will also build prototype with the new media, and establish a disciplinary knowledge for ourselves. The seminar is interested in testing the architecture-machine relationship, moving away from architecture that looks like machines into architecture that behaves like machines: An intelligence (based on the conceptual premise of a project and in the design of a system), as part of a process (related to the generative realm of architecture) and as the object itself and its embedded intelligence.
Creating new product concepts was once a specialized pursuit exclusively performed by design professionals in isolation from the rest of an organization. Today's products are developed in a holistic process involving a collaboration amount many disciplines. Design thinking - incorporating processes, approaches, and working methods from traditional designers' toolkits - has become a way of generating innovative ideas to challenging problems and refining those ideas. Rapid prototyping techniques, affordable and accessible prototyping platforms, and an iterative mindset have enabled people to more reliably translate those ideas into implementable solutions. In this course, students will be exposed to these techniques and learn how to engage in a human- centered design process.
Like architecture, furniture exists at the intersection of idea and physical form. Due to the specific scale that furniture occupies, however, this physical form relates not only to the environment in which the furniture is set, but also intimately to the physical bodies that interact with and around it. Additionally, as a manufactured product, often specified in large quantities, furniture must also address not only poetic considerations, but practical and economic ones as well. Instead of being seen as one- off objects, the furniture created in this seminar focuses on furniture development as a strategic design process where the designer's role is to understand the various responsibilities to each stakeholder (client/ manufacturer, market/customer, environment) and the additional considerations (materials, processes, manufacturability, etc.), and ultimately translate these points into a potentially successful product. In order to approach furniture in this manner, the course will be structured around specific design briefs and clustered into three distinct but continuous stages. First, through focused research into stakeholder needs and potential market opportunities, students will craft tailored design proposals and development concepts accordingly. Next, students will work toward visualizing a concept, complete with sketches, small mock-ups, scale- model prototypes, technical drawings, connections and other pertinent details in order to refine their proposals and secure a real world understanding of the manufacturing processes and the potential obstacles created by their decisions. From insights gained and feedback from these steps, students will ultimately develop a final design proposal for a piece, collection, or system of furniture that successfully leverages their understanding of a thoughtful and deliberate design strategy.
The course will focus on design, morphology detailing, and the construction of a pavilion on a chosen site. The course will develop through hands-on workshops and will focus on acquiring knowledge through making, (Techne), understanding the morphological transformation of a given geometric packing, and building using readily available materials. The process consists of building and testing physical models that simulate the actual pavilion in order to ultimately realize the desired design. The second half of the semester will focus on using lightweight construction materials to fabricate the pavilion's actual components, including structural elements, molded components, and joints, which are required for the pavilion's final assembly. Additionally, students will learn to organize design and fabrication teams, control design and production schedules, and work with a set budget, which requires keeping track of construction costs and forecasting required procurements, including material quantities takeoff, ordering materials and scheduling deliveries.
This course studies the relationships between geometric space and those structural systems that amplify tension. Experiments using the hand (touch and force) in coordination with the eye (sight and geometry) will be done during the construction and observation of physical models. Verbal, mathematical and computer models are secondary to the reality of the physical model. However these models will be used to give dimension and document the experiments. Team reports will serve as interim and final examinations. In typology, masonry structures in compression (e.g., vault and dome) correlate with "Classical" space, and steel or reinforced concrete structures in flexure (e.g., frame, slab and column) with "Modernist" space. We seek the spatial correlates to tensile systems of both textiles (woven or braided fabrics where both warp and weft are tensile), and baskets (where the warp is tensile and the weft is compressive). In addition to the experiments, we will examine Le Ricolais' structural models held by the Architectural Archives.
There is today a renewed interest in materiality and materialization in architecture that is fueled by rapidly advancing fields in materials engineering combined with newly available cutting-edge digital design and fabrication environments. This MSD AAD required course helps students formulate a robust research proposal for their culminating design studio in large-scale robotic manufacturing using new materials. The course provides a forum for critical discussion of contemporary design practices that is exploratory and speculative in nature. In addition to collaborative thinking and debate, student groups will develop their own research interests to formulate contemporary positions through the research of materials, fabrication methods, and their application in experimental architectural design projects.
Architecture is an inherently exploitive act - we take resources from the earth and produce waste and pollution when we construct and operate buildings. As global citizens, we have an ethical responsibility to minimize these negative impacts. As creative professionals, however, we have a unique ability to go farther than simply being "less bad." We are learning to design in ways that can help heal the damage and regenerate our environment. This course explores these evolving approaches to design - from neo-indigenous to eco-tech to LEED to biomimicry to living buildings. Taught by a practicing architect with many years of experience designing green buildings, the course also features guest lecturers from complementary fields - landscape architects, hydrologists, recycling contractors and materials specialists. Coursework includes in-class discussion, short essays and longer research projects.
Successful real estate projects are driven by a combination of market conditions and economics, legal and environmental due diligence, marketing, and finance. Finance for Designers examines the intersection of architectural design and financial decision-making, equipping students with the analytical tools needed to evaluate, justify, and refine design proposals within real-world economic constraints. Through the study of financial modeling and developing pro formas, students learn how design decisions influence project feasibility, risk, and long-term value. This course provides practical, analytical, and experiential insights on cash flow, valuation and return optimization, and the underwriting of income- producing commercial real estate from an acquisition perspective. 1 Course Unit
Technology Designated Electives enable students to deepen their understanding of architectural issues, and M.Arch students must complete 1 CU of any ARCH 732x and/or ARCH 736x course(s). But these courses are not limited to students in the department of architecture any graduate student at Weitzman is invited to register for a Technology Designated Elective of interest, space permitting. Topics vary between semesters, and specific details can be found in the “Section Details” area in course search.
This course will introduce students to workflows for authoring Augmented Reality (AR) content in the Unity 3D Video Game Engine, teach them skills in developing custom interactions with the C# coding language, and challenge them to create speculative mixed reality scenarios. Students will explore several forms of mixed reality in a series of exercises leading up to a final narrative-based AR experience built for the Meta Quest 3 headset. We will speculate on the occupation of physical/digital hybrids by using a calibration routine to align digital geometry to physical spaces in AR; create volumetric documentary experiences using reality capture techniques to record existing spaces and objects; and develop rich AR experiences using remixed volumetrically captured geometry, digital geometry, and physical spaces. 1 Course Unit
With the rapid advancements in large language models and multimodal AI—such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can now see, hear, and speak— we are entering a new phase of radical design possibilities and dynamic human-machine interaction. This course introduces the evolving field of generative artificial intelligence in creative design practices, with a particular focus on its applications in architecture and spatial design. Through a series of hands-on technical workshops, students will prototype responsive interfaces and context-specific designs using the latest open-source machine learning models, tools, and datasets. The course will be grounded in theoretical discussions on AI ethics, authorship, and agency, explored through lectures, readings, and group discussions. The first part of the class will emphasize AI tool-building, including physical computing (with sensors and microcontrollers), introductory coding workshops (in Google Colab), and an overview of state-of-the-art generative and machine learning models such as GPT-4o, Sora, FLUX, and Grounding DINO. The main course project will involve designing an AI-augmented system or interface that reimagines or enhances traditional architectural workflows. Projects may range from body-centric designs—using sensors and perception-hacking techniques —to urban-scale interventions—leveraging datasets and augmented environments. Throughout the course, students will critically engage with key questions: • How do we maintain agency as designers while integrating these technologies? • What feedback loops should we embed in AI-driven systems and future user interfaces? • How might these tools offer new ways to engage with the built environment? The course encourages a design thinking approach and incorporates entrepreneurial perspectives, prompting students to explore how AI-driven workflows can generate new opportunities for innovation in design practice. Open to all backgrounds — coding skills are not a prerequisite, but a willingness to experiment with code is encouraged. The course will also feature guest lectures by leading industry experts. 1 Course Unit
This course aims to introduce fundamental daylighting concepts and tools to analyze daylighting design. Each session will be composed of a lecture and a workshop. The lecture will cover fundamental knowledge and case studies that are focused on effective daylighting design. The workshop will cover essential daylight analysis tools currently used in the industry, and students will have opportunities to explore them to work on assignments and the final project. 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1113
Traditional building materials like concrete, steel, brick, or glass are environmentally and economically expensive to extract, process, transport, and recycle, their damage is non-trivial to repair and have limited ability to respond to changes in their immediate surroundings. Biological materials like bark, coral, mycelium, silk, shell, or bone outperform man-made materials in that they can be grown where needed, self-repair when damaged, decay without toxicity, and adapt to their surroundings. Their reverse-engineering and inclusion in architectural practice could have great benefits in human and environmental wellbeing defining new tools and strategies towards the future of sustainable construction. Crucial projects describing future biomaterial architectures are emerging in the field. In this seminar, students will review their potential through invited international expert lectures followed by cutting- edge case studies. Then, during the second half of the seminar and using DumoLab Research (DLR) fabrication facilities at Addams Hall, teams will experiment with defining and manufacturing new bio-composites in real-scale systems of shingles, bricks, panels etc. through a hands-on guided research project with special attention to functional, industrial, environmental, and aesthetic dimensions. One selected team will have the unique opportunity to partner with the BioDesignChallenge (BDC) and discuss their design journey with teams from other schools worldwide at NYC's MoMA and Parsons in the following June to access opportunities of project growth and mentorship beyond the semester. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
The objective of this course is to introduce the rapidly growing field of deployable structures through hands on experiments conducted in workshop environments. Students develop skills in making deployable structures. The course provides an introduction to the history, theory and application of deployable structures, the course is divided into two parts. The first part is a series of workshops that examine the following: 1) Geometric studies of Platonic and Archimedean solids and space filling geometries, 2) Topology and morphological transformations, 3) Studies of different mechanical joints, 4) Computer visual analysis of the structural behavior of deployable structures, 5) Computer simulation of the deployment using Solid Works, 6) Build basic deployable structures with link, skeletal, and continuous members. The second part of the semester will focus on the research and development of student’s individual or group projects. Each student or group will develop and examine a deployable structure to build architectural application. The final assignment will be a to-scale physical working model. 1 Course Unit
ARCH 7380The Modern House: Technology Then and Now
In the current age of new fabrication methodologies, methods are emerging for the conception and design of the contemporary house which have radical potential for enclosure, habitation and practices of daily life. This course begins by examining the canonical houses of the original avant-garde -Adolf Loos, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto -on the premise that their houses were working manifestos for rethinking space, form and indeed ideas of life itself -all of which were prompted by new concepts of construction. From this spectrum of issues, contemporary houses and contemporary methods and materials will be studied extensively to develop equally new ideas between matter and quotidian life. As the primary task of the course, students will work in teams to develop highly detailed constructional proposals for a portion of a speculative home.
Digital fabrication is no longer novel—its tools and methods, first explored in the late 20th century, have shifted from emerging practice to everyday instruments of design. The contemporary challenge, therefore, is not only to understand its principles, but also and more importantly, to understand how we use these powerful tools to shape ideas and drive design. 1 Course Unit
Heavy Architecture is a seminar that will examine buildings that, through their tectonics or formal expression, connote a feeling of weight, permanence, or “heaviness”. Analysis of these buildings and methods of construction stand in relation to the proliferation of thin, formally exuberant, and, by virtue of their use or commodified nature, transient buildings. The course is not a rejection or formal critique of “thin” architecture, but instead an analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of the “heavy” building type in terms of a building’s financial, environmental, symbolic or conceptual, and functional goals. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
Architecture and design have a vital role to play in addressing the climate crisis. Today, the built environment contributes nearly 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions. For decades, designers have focused primarily on energy efficiency and operational emissions but have spent very little time thinking about embodied emissions – those emissions associated with building materials, construction, demolition, and reuse. This course looks deeply at the topic of embodied carbon, equipping students to research material supply chains and to quantify the environmental impacts of materials, assemblies, and buildings using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Students will explore how building materials like concrete, steel, plastics, and engineered wood are made; the impact their production has on landscapes, communities, and the climate; and design strategies for reducing these impacts. 1 Course Unit
Through the almost seamless ability to output digital designs to physical objects, digital fabrication has transformed the way designers work. At this point, many of the tools and techniques of digital fabrication are well established and almost taken for granted within the design professions. To begin this course we will review these ‘traditional’ digital fabrication techniques in order to establish a baseline skill set to work from. We will then utilize a series of exercises in order to explore a hybrid approaches to digital fabrication in which multiple techniques are utilized within the same work. With the advent of 3D printing technology in the late 1980s and the current wave of widespread adoption as a design tool— found in design schools and offices across the world—the immediate testing of complex digital models has never been quicker, clearer, or more immediate. Despite this formal freedom to test and print, the installations and buildings generated from these complex digital models rely on much more traditional building techniques for their construction. By combining various digital fabrication approaches, we seek to challenge and reframe the often reductive geometries that currently supports much of this work and bring with it a new way of approaching aesthetics, structure, and construction based on the possibilities inherent in these digital techniques. 1 Course Unit
Unlike standardized mass-production methods, robotic fabrication enables an unprecedented world of possibilities for highly specific and customized architectural responses. Along with emerging material and manufacturing technologies, architects can leverage robotic manufacturing to explore alternative approaches to material organization, formal expression, and part-to-whole relationships within architecture that embody ethical, environmental, performative, and aesthetic impact. Today, large-format additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is disrupting aspects of the construction industry both on-site and off-site by enabling one-off designs to be rapidly manufactured on demand. Off-site, fused granulate fabrication (FGF) additive manufacturing is being used to produce large thermoplastic components that are crafted from materials already utilized for building facades, roofing and interiors, or in precast concrete mold applications. While FGF offers exciting possibilities, it is presently under-explored within architectural research and practice. Robotic Approaches to Spatial 3D Printing, explores non-standard approaches to Industrial Robot FGF. While 3D prints are typically manufactured in horizontal layers, this seminar utilizes six-axis industrial robots to transcend this limitation. By 3D printing in diverse orientations and configurations, free-form material deposition and scalable, hybrid fabrication techniques become possible. Exploring these exciting capabilities, participants will master cutting-edge manufacturing and 3D workflows for industrial robot FGF. Lectures, tutorials, and hands- on sessions support students working in teams on the development of an experimental, robotically fabricated prototype. Operating primarily from the Weitzman School of Design’s ARI Robotics Lab, students will gain state-of-the-art knowledge in robotic fabrication techniques that are currently expanding and recalibrating contemporary architectural design and manufacturing possibilities. 1 Course Unit
Architecture and Design for Health: Creating places, products, and experiences for people: In this course, you will examine how design and architecture shape everyday environments by grounding inquiry in our shared human experience of the built world. Emphasizing design as an active and non-neutral practice, you will explore how spaces, objects, and systems impact bodies, influence behavior, and shape well-being. The course draws on readings, conversation, collaborative activities, and guest speakers to engage contemporary perspectives, with an emphasis on learning through application rather than discussion alone. You will apply these ideas through in-class exercises and more developed design investigations that explore how design choices shape everyday life. You will also have the opportunity to develop project work in ways that align with your learning interests and professional goals. This course foregrounds interdisciplinary exchange. Past students have come from Architecture, Integrated Product Design, Landscape Architecture, Business, Nursing, and more. Students from a wide range of disciplines are encouraged to enroll.
The mastery of techniques, whether in design, production or both, does not necessarily yield great architecture. As we all know, the most advanced techniques can still yield average designs. Architects are becoming increasingly adept at producing complexity & integrating digital design and fabrication techniques into their design process - yet there are few truly elegant projects. Only certain projects that are sophisticated at the level of technique achieve elegance. This seminar explores some of the instances in which designers are able to move beyond technique, by commanding them to such a degree as to achieve elegant aesthetics within the formal development of projects.
The Function of Fashion in Architecture will survey the history of fashion and the architectural parallels starting from Ancient Civilization to Present. The focus will be on the relevance of garment design, methods and techniques and their potential to redefine current architecture elements such as envelope, structure, seams, tectonics and details. The functional, tectonic and structural properties of garment design will be explored as generative platforms to conceptualize very specific architectural elements. One of the challenges in the course is the re- invention of a means of assessment, the development of notations and techniques that will document the forces and the production of difference in the spatial manifestations of the generative systems.
The critical parameter will be to develop the potential beyond finite forms of explicit and parametric modeling towards non-linear algorithmic processes. We will seek novel patterns of organization, structure, and articulation as architectural expressions within the emergent properties of feedback loops and rule-based systems. This seminar will accommodate both introductory and advanced levels. No previous scripting experience is necessary. It will consist of a series of introductory sessions, obligatory intensive workshops, lectures followed by suggested readings, and will gradually focus on individual projects. Students will be encouraged to investigate the limits of algorithmic design both theoretically and in practice through a scripting environment.
Cinema and Architecture in Translation is a seminar that will survey key cinematic moments and techniques within the history of film and find new intersections between architecture and narratives. The focus will be on the relevance of mise-en-scene, the background and building figures of architecture and future speculations of the city, yet in relation to narrative dynamics. One of the challenges is to consider techniques that will affect both conceptualization and the production of spatial manifestations using potent visual platforms. Current pre and post- production techniques in film making methods are converging with architectural digital representation. This is an opportunity that provides fertile ground for architects to re-examine the 'digital' in a variety of scales in relation to impactful narratives and visualizations. These tools, specifically the technique of "matte-painting" will be explored in this course. There is a rich history in constructing images, speculative worlds and scenes for the film industry. We will explore the parallels between the tools and strategies of cinematic visualization as it relates to advanced architectural image making. Students will have the opportunity to analyze filmic scene making, learn advanced representation and techniques in matte painting and zbrush. Above all this course will engage students in the conceptual as well as practical complementarities of architecture and cinema, while watching some of the best films ever made and the most provocative and insightful books to help process them. An important aspect of this course will be to explore the differences between "real" architecture and the cinematic architecture. The expansive Space and Time in which cinematic architecture is located, creates an incubator where true innovated speculation can occur. This is an advanced representation course that produces 2D images and narrative texts.
Select 2 CU with Attribute FMAA (https://catalog.upenn.edu/ 2 attributes/fmaa/) Total Course Units 14 Electives with the FMAA attribute are pre-approved to meet the degree requirements. Other electives may be approved by the MSD- AAD program director but require advance permission. (Contact the Architecture Department for details on petitioning for an exception.) ARCH courses that are core requirements for the M.Arch degree are generally ineligible to fulfill an AAD elective, unless the student can demonstrate that a comparable course was not taken during prior studies. A minimum GPA of 3.00 is required for graduation.
This design seminar will define and elaborate on the following topics for the digital discourse - the contemporary diagram, technique, structural thinking, systemic thinking and aesthetic projections. Technological innovations establish new status quos and updated platforms from which to operate and launch further innovations. Design research practices continually reinvent themselves and the techniques they use to stay ahead of such developments. Reinvention can come through techniques that have already been set in motion. Mastery of techniques remains important and underpins the use of digital technologies in the design and manufacturing of elegant buildings. But, ultimately, a highly sophisticated formal language propels aesthetics. The repositioning of design intent and the complex order generated by the behavioral techniques of multi- agent systems has implications for the affects which are generated as well as the nature of hierarchy within architecture. The distributed non-linear operation of swarm systems intrinsically resists the discrete articulation of hierarchies within Modern architecture and contemporary parametric component logic. The bottom-up nature of swarm systems refocuses tectonic concerns on the assemblage at the micro scale rather than the sequential subdivision of program or form. The seminar will explore strategies for high population agent models through the use of lightweight algorithmic environments, in particular the Java-based platform Processing.
Architecture has always been closely entangled with modes of vision. Devices ranging from Durer's perspective machine to the photographic eye have strongly shaped the way we think and design the built environment of our cities. A strange loop is in place here: our world- views provide the development of specific modes of representation, of engagement with the world, and in turn they begin to have an impact in that same world, becoming an active element in the way we understand it. Put more simply, it is the technologies through which we see and experience the built environment that define the way we construct it. In this class, we will focus on visual and physical points as anchors to tie modes of vision with modes of construction. Points play an important role in the history of visuality: if during Impressionism and Pointillism they were devised to delineate the contrast and alignments between what we see and how we see it in an attempt to investigate the mechanics of vision, it was during the post war period that Max Wertheimer's work at the Berlin School of Gesalt Psychology leveraged them as graphic elements to understand part to whole relationships central to Bauhaus' design pedagogy. Today, imaging technologies are once again placing points as central elements in the construction of our contemporary visual language, transforming ever-growing datasets of partial images in three dimensional machine readable survey models: it is with points and aggregated clouds that we are constructing the figure of our cities. As such, they become a necessary site of design investigation to move beyond monolithic views of the world. This class leverages the bi-product of scanning technologies - point clouds and image making - to explore inclusive modes of delineations: a visual sensibility to engage with the multifaceted nature of the built environment.
This representation/design seminar explores the aesthetics of estrangement in realism through various mediums. The reality of the discipline is that architecture is a post-medium effort. Drawings, Renderings, Models, Prototypes, Computations, Simulations, Texts, and Buildings are all put forward by architects as a speculative proposal for the reality of the future. Students will explore the reconfiguration of a "found object" in multiple mediums and represent parafictional scenarios in various techniques of realism. At a time when rendering engines enable the production of hyper-realistic images within the discipline without any critical representational agenda, it has become ever more imperative to rigorously speculate on realism.
This course will examine the ecological nature of design at a range of scales, from the most intimate aspects of product design to the largest infrastructures, from the use of water in bathroom to the flow of traffic on the highway. It is a first principle of ecological design that everythin is connected, and that activities at one scale can have quite different effects at other scales, so the immediate goal of the course will be to identify useful and characteristic modes of analyzing the systematic, ecological nature of design work, from the concept of the ecological footprint to market share. The course will also draw on the history of and philosophy of technology to understand the particular intensity of contemporary society, which is now charachterized by the powerful concept of the complex, self-regulating system. The system has become both the dominant mode of explanation and the first principle of design and organization. The course will also draw on the history and philosophy of technology to understand the particular intensity of contemporary society, which is now characterized by the powerful concept of the complex, self-regulating system. The system has become both the dominant mode of explanation and the first principle of design and organization.
The course provides students with an understanding of building design simulation methods, hands-on experience in using computer simulation models, and exploration of the technologies, underlying principles, and potential applications of simulation tools in architecture. Classroom lecturers are given each week, with a series of analysis projects to provide students with hands-on experience using computer models. This course is required and reserved for MSD-EBD students.
3 Designated Electives (with attribute FMEB) (https:// 3 catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/fmeb/) Total Course Units 10 A minimum GPA of 3.00 is required for graduation. ed Plan of Study
ARCH 7550Environmental Building Design Research Methods
This course serves as preparation for a research project by students in the MSD-EBD or PhD programs. The students will learn how to develop, plan, and conduct experiments and will develop the tools to write research papers based on these experiments. During the semester, topical lectures and case-studies of novel work in architectural technology will be presented to the students by the instructor and guest lecturers. The research proposal developed during the course will be used as a basis for hands-on exercises in the lab portion.
4 Designated Electives (with FMEB attribute) (https:// 4 catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/fmeb/) Total Course Units 16 A minimum GPA of 3.00 is required for graduation
This seminar explores a broad range of topics around the subject of Resilience and Sustainability. We will use a green infrastructure property development currently under construction in real time as our focus, Project Energos, a massive green field site in Nevada by Los Angeles developer TerraScale. This research seminar will support a subsequent 700-level studio offering in Fall. Students are welcome to enroll in this seminar with or without taking the studio. The subject is relevant to all students interested in understanding how action is currently being taken in the United States through a global lens advancing a resilient agenda.
This course is an introduction to techniques and tools of managing the design and construction of large, and small, construction projects. Topics include project delivery systems, management tools, cost-control and budgeting systems, professional roles - particularly with respect to developer/clients and general contractors. Case studies serve to illustrate applications. Cost and schedule control systems are described. Case studies illustrate the application of project management techniques in the field.
The second course in the project management sequence positions the designer as a critical team member on the project site. Utilizing an understanding of contractual relationships between the architect and owner, and the owner and general contractor, the course introduces concepts of building permitting, project scheduling, basic construction estimation based on various construction systems, subcontractor responsibilities, and project payments based on construction funding. Virtual design and delivery tools will be utilized, and candidates will learn to track construction progress utilizing building and financial models, understanding the relationship between the two. Aspects of the project delivery cycle will be explored in depth, including concepts of lean construction, design-build, and new construction technologies including offsite assembly and modular systems. A global view of construction projects and construction management roles will be established. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
A four to six week program of study in various locations. For program details: www.design.upenn.edu/architecture/graduate/graduate- architecture-study-abroad 0-1 Course Unit
Architecture Topics courses vary with each semester. Topics courses can feature current events relevant to the semester in which the course is offered, be taught by a visiting lecturer, or have another reason for being offered only once or twice. Detailed descriptions of topics courses, when offered, are included in “Section Details” on Path. 1 Course Unit
This is a non-credit course for entering Master of Architecture students. The course will cover digital modeling and workflow and will prepare students for techniques used in the Architecture program's 5000 and 6000 level design studios. Course enrollment is by permit only.
This is a non-credit course for entering Master of Science in Design: Advanced Architectural Design students. The Digital Methods workshop provides a comprehensive introduction to four elements critical to the workflow of the graduate studios at the Weitzman School of Design: 3D modeling, scripting, visualization and fabrication. Short daily lectures situating digital technologies in contemporary design practice are followed by hands-on tutorials in Maya and Rhinoceros. The first half of the workshop provides an operative knowledge of the many geometry types, modeling techniques, scripting languages and simulation tools available for studio work. Visualization techniques are also introduced, and students will learn to efficiently produce presentation-quality renderings, animations and technical line drawings from digital models. Students also learn protocols for transferring data between various design software packages and how to create data compatible with Weitzman's digital fabrication equipment. Course enrollment is by permit only.
ARCH 7930ARCH Summer Institute: History of Architecture
This is a non-credit course for entering Master of Architecture students. The course will cover western architecture from ancient Egypt to the modern age and will satisfy the history pre-requisite condition for matriculation in the fall. Course enrollment is by permit only.
ARCH 7940ARCH Summer Institute: Physics for Architects
This is a non-credit course for entering Master of Architecture students. The course will cover the following: mechanics, heat, light, sound and electricity. The course will satisfy the physics pre-requisite condition fo matriculation in the fall. Course enrollment is by permit only.
Directly supports ARCH 8010 Material Agencies I: Section 2. This seminar will teach participants to design and assemble electronic circuits using sensors/actuators and micro-controllers, and to program digital and analogue means of data exchange. Students will develop a closed or open loop reactive system that consists of embedded sensor systems that will operate within the Design Studio project prototype, and utilizes feedback from sensors to drive designed affects (E.g. kinetic, lighting, variations in porosity.). The course will consider degrees of control, feedback, energy and force in relation to interactions of matter, space and active bodies (human and non-human). Participants will learn how to design electric circuits, solder and weld these and to integrate circuits with micro-processors, sensors and actuators. Exact equipment and methods will vary over time as these technologies evolve rapidly. At present possible micro-controllers utilized include Arduino, Raspberri Pi, Odroid, Intel Nuc, Atom and others. Sensors such as flex, pressure and proximity sensors will be utilized. Possible forms of actuation include servo and stepper motors, linear actuators, NiTinol muscle wire, pneumatic actuators. A Programming Language will be utilized to for the writing of simple control algorithms that clarify how input and output data is processed and acted upon, with a particular focus on leveraging physical world actions within a designed control loop where possible. 0.5 Course Units
Elective: any graduate level course with Attribute FMRA 1 (https://catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/fmra/) Total Course Units 10 A minimum GPA of 3.00 is required for graduation.
This is an independent study course for first year Ph.D. and M.S. students, supervised by a member of the Graduate Group in Architecture. A course of readings and advisor sessions throughout the semester will result in an independent study paper, which will also be used as the student's qualifying paper for the Qualifying Examination. This research paper will be prepared as if for scholarly publication.
No historian of architecture has written as intensely about the contradictions of architecture in late-modern society or reflected as deeply on the resulting problems and tasks of architectural historiography as Manfredo Tafuri (1935-1994). For many, the Italian historian's dismissal of "hopes in design" under conditions of advanced capitalism produced a disciplinary impasse. This in turn led to a call to outlier Tafuri - to move beyond his pessimistic and lacerating stance. The seminar will undertake a close reading of one of Tafuri's most complexly conceived and richly elaborated books, The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s. Initially published in Italian in 1980 and translated into English in 1987, the book represents the first effort to define and historicize the concept of an avant-garde specifically in architecture. Its content centers on the radical formal and urban experiments of the first three decades of the twentieth century. Yet Tafuri surprisingly begins his account with the eighteenth- century inventions of Piranesi, and he concludes with an examination of the "neo-avant-garde" of his own day. In addition to traversing The Sphere and the Labyrinth chapter by chapter - starting with the extraordinary methodological introduction, "The Historical 'Project'"-we shall also read a number of primary and secondary sources on the historical contexts under discussion and consider a number of important intertexts that shed light on Tafuri's position. The objectives of the course are at once historical and historiographic: we shall be concerned both with actual events and with how they have been written into history. Finally, we shall reassess the role of an avant-garde in architecture and compare Tafuri's conception to that advanced in other disciplines. Is the concept of an avant-garde still viable today? Or should it be consigned to the dustbin of twentieth-century ideas?
The candidate for the M.S. in Architecture degree shall prepare a research report in his or her subject of study. The topic of this report must be approved by an advisor. This report will be developed in the independent study courses, undertaken after the eight units of course work has been completed, normally in the summer semester. The purpose of these courses is to give the student an opportunity to synthesize their previous coursework at Penn. Course enrollment is by permit only. Please contact Sarah Lam (ARCH Dept.) at sarahlam@design.upenn.edu.
ARCH 8160Advanced Topics in Architecture Culture from World War II
through 2001 This directed reading, research, and writing seminar will explore historical developments in architecture related to the same time frame as ARCH 5120 but in greater depth and at a more advanced level. In- class conversations will be focused around specific case studies, some determined by the instructor, others selected by the members of the seminar. Problems of historiography—including periodization, reception, archives, canon and counter-canon, and other methodological and theoretical issues—will also be discussed. This is an opportunity for students to develop a substantial research paper on a topic of their own choosing over the course of a semester. The class is open by permission to students with a solid background and strong interest in the architectural history of the last three quarters of a century.
This seminar introduces first year PhD students in Architecture to the larger academic context of doctoral programs. Students are introduced to questions of academic scholarship and freedom, types of research trajectories and technologies, the art of publication, and career trajectories made possible by the PhD process. Course methods include required attendance at weekly seminars offered by returning students, graduate group faculty, graduates of the program, and invited guests. Students are tasked with preparing weekly readings in order to lead the question and discussion session that follows each seminar presentation. In maintaining the tradition of the program’s PhD Talks, while some of the seminar sessions are open to the larger doctoral community that includes its students and faculty, others are dedicated exclusively to registered students. An important goal of the seminar is to introduce all students to each other and to create a vertical community of scholars across both sub-areas of history/theory and technology. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
The second half of the two part PRO -SEMINAR is aimed at first year PhD students in Architecture and continues the work of integrating students to the PhD community of scholarship. Students further interrogate questions of academic scholarship and freedom, types of research trajectories and technologies, the role of publications, and career trajectories. Course methods are similar to the first semester including attendance at weekly seminars offered by returning students, graduate group faculty, graduates of the program, and invited guests. Students are tasked with preparing weekly readings in order to lead the question and discussion session and written pieces of scholarship. In maintaining the tradition of the program’s PhD Talks, while some of the seminar sessions are open to the larger doctoral community that includes its students and faculty, others are dedicated exclusively to registered students. An important goal of the seminar is to introduce all students to each other and to create a vertical community of scholars across both sub-areas of history/theory and technology.
This course is essentially an independent study, undertaken by doctoral students in preparation for the Candidacy Examination. This course should be taken in conjunction with ARCH 8520 after all other courses have been completed. Normally a member of the student's Dissertation Committee supervises this course. Two Term Class, Student may enter either term; credit given for either 1 Course Unit
This course is essentially an independent study, undertaken by doctoral students in order to write the Proposal for the Dissertation. The Proposal is prepared before and defended during the Candidacy Examination. This course should be taken in conjunction with ARCH 8510 after all other courses have been completed. Normally a member of the student's Dissertation Committee supervises this course. Two Term Class, Student may enter either term; credit given for either 1 Course Unit
While abroad, writing and submitting a dissertation are among the final steps leading to the award of the PhD degree. At the University of Pennsylvania, a student presents and defends the dissertation publicly, and then, with the approval of the dissertation committee and graduate group chair, submits the final manuscript for publication. Finally, the PhD degree is awarded to the candidate upon the recommendation of the Graduate Council of the Faculties.--PennLibraries Two Term Class, Student may enter either term; credit given for either 3 Course Units
This course enables students to undertake self-directed study on a topic in Architecture, under the supervision of a faculty member. Students are required to make a proposal for the study to the Department Chair, outlining the subject and method of investigation, and confirming the course supervisor at least two weeks prior to the beginning of the semester.
