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Course 4: Architecture |
 | | | Architecture Design | | | Architecture Studies | | | Art, Culture and Technology | | | Building Technology | | | Computation | | | History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art | | | Thesis and UROP | | |  |
History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art4.601 Introduction to Art History
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Prereq: None Units: 4-0-8 URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes Lecture: TR2-3.30 (3-133) +final 
Introduction to the history and interpretation of western art in a global context that explores painting, graphic arts and sculpture from the 15th century to the present. Engages diverse methodological perspectives to examine changing conceptions of art and the artist, and to investigate the plural meaning of artworks within the larger contexts of culture and history. Consult K. Smentek No textbook information available 4.602 Modern Art and Mass Culture
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(Subject meets with 4.652) Prereq: None Units: 4-0-8
Introduction to theories of modernism and postmodernism and their related forms (roughly 18th century to present) in art and design. Focuses on how artists use the tension between fine art and mass culture to critique both. Examines visual art in a range of genres, from painting to design objects and "relational aesthetics." Works of art are viewed in their interaction with advertising, caricature, comics, graffiti, television, fashion, "primitive" art, propaganda, and networks on the internet. Additional work required of students taking graduate version. R. Greeley 4.603 Understanding Modern Architecture
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(Subject meets with 4.604) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes Lecture: TR11-12.30 (1-150)
Examines modern architecture, art, and design in the context of the political, economic, aesthetic, and cultural changes that occurred in the twentieth century. Presents foundational debates about social and technological aspects of modern architecture and the continuation of those debates into contemporary architecture. Incorporates varied techniques of historical and theoretical analysis to interpret exemplary objects, buildings, and cities of modernity. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Preference to Course 4 majors and minors. J. Graham No textbook information available 4.604 Understanding Modern Architecture
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(Subject meets with 4.603) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units arranged URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes Lecture: TR11-12.30 (1-150)
Examines modern architecture, art, and design in the context of the political, economic, aesthetic, and cultural changes that occurred in the twentieth century. Presents foundational debates about social and technological aspects of modern architecture and the continuation of those debates into contemporary architecture. Incorporates varied techniques of historical and theoretical analysis to interpret exemplary objects, buildings, and cities of modernity. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Preference to Course 4 majors. J. Graham No textbook information available 4.605 A Global History of Architecture
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(Subject meets with 4.650) Prereq: None Units: 4-0-8
Provides an outline of the history of architecture and urbanism from ancient times to the early modern period. Analyzes buildings as the products of culture and in relation to the special problems of architectural design. Stresses the geopolitical context of buildings and in the process familiarizes students with buildings, sites and cities from around the world. Additional work required of graduate students. Consult M. Jarzombek 4.606 Environmental Histories of Architecture
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(Subject meets with 4.656) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Drawing on case studies from the ancient world to the present day, considers how the creation of architecture has involved the modification of natural environments and climates and the exploitation of resources across the globe. Investigates the metabolic processes of raw material extraction, transportation, and manipulation that make the creation of buildings, infrastructures, and designed landscapes possible. Explores how material and climatic considerations have played into the design and aesthetics of buildings at various points in time and promotes an awareness of the largely invisible, increasingly far-flung networks of environmental management and labor that underpin our built environment. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 25 for versions meeting together; preference to undergraduates. H. Gupta, C. Murphy 4.607 Thinking About Architecture: In History and At Present
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Prereq: 4.645 or permission of instructor Units arranged
Studies the interrelationship of theory, history, and practice. Looks at theory not as specialized discourse relating only to architecture, but as touching on many issues, whether they be cultural, aesthetic, philosophical, or professional. Topics and examples are chosen from a wide range of materials, from classical antiquity to today. Staff 4.608 Seminar in the History of Art, Architecture, and Design
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(Subject meets with 4.609) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units arranged
Examination of historical method in art, design, and/or architecture, focusing on periods and problems determined by the research interest of the faculty member leading the seminar. Emphasizes critical reading and viewing and direct tutorial guidance. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Limited to 15. K. Smentek 4.609 Seminar in the History of Art, Architecture, and Design
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(Subject meets with 4.608) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 3-0-9
Examination of historical method in art, design, and/or architecture, focusing on periods and problems determined by the research interest of the faculty member leading the seminar. Emphasizes critical reading and viewing and direct tutorial guidance. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Limited to 15. Smentek 4.612 Islamic Architecture and the Environment
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Prereq: Permission of instructor Units arranged
Studies how Islamic architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning reflect and transform environmental processes in various regions and climates of the Islamic world, from Andalusia to Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Using systematic approaches to environmental data collection and analysis, examines strategies behind the design of selected architectural elements and landscape design types, ranging in scale from the fountain to the garden, courtyard, city, and agrarian region. Critically explores cultural interpretations of Islamic environmental design (e.g., paradise gardens), as they developed over time in ways that enrich, modify, or obscure their historical significance. Consult H. Gupta 4.613 Designing Nature
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Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Explores ideas about the design of nature in the early modern period (ca. 1450–1800), primarily in Europe and its global contact zones. Studies efforts from this period to categorize, analyze, and transform environments to meet the demands of scientific inquiry and political economy, through historical case studies in environmental, landscape, engineering, and architectural history. Traces the origins of modern notions of growth, development, improvement, and capitalism, and their legacies in contemporary landscapes and economic systems. N. Rabbat 4.614 Introduction to Islamic Architecture
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Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes Lecture: TR11-12.30 (5-216)
Examines the history of Islamic architecture spanning fifteen centuries on three continents – Asia, Africa, Europe. Students study representative examples from the 7th century House of the Prophet to the current high-rises of Dubai, in conjunction with their religious, urban, social, political, and intellectual environments. Crosscultural exchanges are highlighted from late Antique Arabia down to the interaction with the West in the age of colonialism and the consequent revival of Islamic architecture today. Consult N. Rabbat No textbook information available 4.615 The Architectures of Water
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Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Explores how human-water interactions have given shape to the built environment in the era before industrialization, focusing on architectures, infrastructures, and landscapes of water supply, irrigation, transport, energy, ritual, health, sanitation, and flood mitigation, among other functions. Introduces examples from across the globe, with an emphasis on the Mediterranean world and Europe during the Middle Ages and early modern period (ca. 1000–1750). Considers continuity and change in historical water management over the <em>longue durée</em> and its effects on contemporary cities, landscapes, and political and economic systems. N. Rabbat 4.616 Culture and Architecture
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Prereq: Permission of instructor Units arranged
Seminar on the complex relation between architecture and culture. Analyzes architecture as a conveyor of messages that transcend stylistic, formal, and iconographic concerns to include an assessment of historiographical, political, ideological, social, and cultural factors. Critically reviews methodologies and theoretical premises of studies on culture and meaning. Focuses on examples from Islamic history and establishes historical and theoretical frameworks for investigation. Limited to 16. Consult N. Rabbat 4.617 Advanced Study in Islamic Urban History
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Prereq: Permission of instructor Units arranged
Seminar on selected topics from the history of Islamic urbanism. Examines patterns of settlement, urbanization, and architectural production in various places and periods, ranging from the formative period in the 7th century to the new cities emerging today in Asia and Africa. Discusses the leading factors in shaping and transforming urban forms, design imperatives, cultural and economic structures, and social and civic attitudes. Critically analyzes the body of literature on Islamic urbanism. Research paper required. Limited to 12. Consult N. Rabbat 4.619 Historiography of Islamic Art and Architecture
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Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 3-0-9
Critical review of literature on Islamic art and architecture in the last two centuries. Analyzes the cultural, disciplinary, and theoretical contours of the field and highlights the major figures that have influenced its evolution. Challenges the tacit assumptions and biases of standard studies of Islamic art and architecture and addresses historiographic and critical questions concerning how knowledge of a field is defined, produced, and reproduced. Limited to 12. Consult N. Rabbat 4.621 Orientalism, Colonialism, and Representation
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Prereq: Permission of instructor Units arranged URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes Lecture: W2-5 (5-216)
Seminar on the politics of representation with special focus on Orientalist traditions in architecture, art, literature, and scholarship. Critically analyzes pivotal texts, projects, and artworks that reflect the encounters between the West and the Orient from Antiquity to the present. Discusses how political, ideological, and religious attitudes inform the construction and reproduction of Western knowledge about the Islamic world. Research paper required. Open to qualified undergraduates. Limited to 16. Consult N. Rabbat No textbook information available 4.622 Archive Fever: Theory and Method
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Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes Lecture: F9-12 (5-216)
Focuses on how artists, archivists, architects, and historians have dealt with the archival turn — from archives being used as "source" to becoming a "subject" of critical inquiry. Addresses the philosophical underpinnings of writing history and its changing relationships with the archive across millennia, from Mesopotamian "archive rooms" filled with cuneiform inscriptions to the post-revolutionary foundation of the French national archives. Instruction provided in interpreting and triangulating primary sources such as documents, maps, photographs, drawings, correspondence, and archive-based artworks. Through firsthand archival research, students develop a reflexive methodology for their own research and practice. Consult H. Gupta No required or recommended textbooks 4.624 Dwelling & Building: Cities in the Global South
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Prereq: None Units arranged
Examines the contemporary challenges and history of city planning on three continents - Africa, Asia, and South America. Students study a number of city plans, from the 'informal' settlements of Delhi and Nairobi, the modernist master plans of Brasilia and Baghdad, to climate action plans in various cities. Explores the relationship between dwelling and building in the design of cities, in conjunction with the environmental, social, political, and intellectual environments at the time of their planning. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students. MArch students can register for 9 credits. Consult H. Gupta 4.634 Early Modern Architecture and Art
()Not offered regularly; consult department (Subject meets with 4.635) Prereq: None Units arranged
Presents a history, from the 14th through the early 17th century, of architectural practice and design, as well as visual culture in Europe with an emphasis on Italy. Topics include the production and reception of buildings and artworks; the significance of a reinvigorated interest in antiquity; and representation of the individual, the state, and other institutions.Examines a variety of interpretive methods. Graduate students are expected to complete additional assignments. Staff 4.635 Early Modern Architecture and Art
() Not offered regularly; consult department (Subject meets with 4.634) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Presents a history, from the 14th through the early 17th century, of architectural practice and design, as well as visual culture in Europe with an emphasis on Italy. Topics include the production and reception of buildings and artworks; the significance of a reinvigorated interest in antiquity; and representation of the individual, the state, and other institutions.Examines a variety of interpretive methods. Graduate students are expected to complete additional assignments. Staff 4.636 Topics in European Medieval Architecture and Art
() Not offered regularly; consult department (Subject meets with 4.637) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Investigates architecture and art in medieval Europe, including significant monuments, art objects, themes, and developments from late antiquity through the rise of European cities in the 13th century. Considers a variety of media, ranging from stone- and metalwork to parchment and glass. Topics include sacred places and spaces; pilgrimage; relics and souvenirs; iconoclasm; questions of materiality, agency, and the power associated with objects; nature and magic; visions; medieval conceptions of temporality; and the construct of feudalism. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Staff 4.637 Topics in European Medieval Architecture and Art
()Not offered regularly; consult department (Subject meets with 4.636) Prereq: None Units arranged
Investigates architecture and art in medieval Europe, including significant monuments, art objects, themes, and developments from late antiquity through the rise of European cities in the 13th century. Considers a variety of media, ranging from stone- and metalwork to parchment and glass. Topics include sacred places and spaces; pilgrimage; relics and souvenirs; iconoclasm; questions of materiality, agency, and the power associated with objects; nature and magic; visions; medieval conceptions of temporality; and the construct of feudalism. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Staff 4.640 Advanced Study in Critical Theory of Architecture
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Prereq: Permission of instructor Units arranged Lecture: M1.30-4.30 (5-216)
Seminar on a selected topic in critical theory. Requires original research and presentation of oral and written report. Fall: A. Dutta Spring: Consult A. Dutta No textbook information available 4.641 19th-Century Art: Painting in the Age of Steam
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(Subject meets with 4.644) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes Lecture: F2-5 (5-216) +final
Investigation of visual culture in the nineteenth century with an emphasis on Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. Topics include art and industry, artists and urban experience, empire and its image, and artistic responses to new technologies from the telegraph to the steam engine to the great refractor telescope. Strikes a balance between historical and contemporary critical perspectives to assess art's engagement with the social and political experience of modernity. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Limited to 15. K. Smentek No textbook information available 4.644 19th-Century Art: Painting in the Age of Steam
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(Subject meets with 4.641) Prereq: None Units arranged URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes Lecture: F2-5 (5-216) +final
Investigation of visual culture in the nineteenth century with an emphasis on Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. Topics include art and industry, artists and urban experience, empire and its image, and artistic responses to new technologies from the telegraph to the steam engine to the great refractor telescope. Strikes a balance between historical and contemporary critical perspectives to assess art's engagement with the social and political experience of modernity. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Limited to 15. K. Smentek No textbook information available 4.645 Selected Topics in Architecture: 1750 to the Present
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Prereq: 4.210 or permission of instructor Units: 3-0-6
General study of modern architecture as a response to important technological, cultural, environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical challenges after the European Enlightenment. Focus on the theoretical, historiographic, and design approaches to architectural problems encountered in the age of industrial and post-industrial expansion across the globe, with specific attention to the dominance of European modernism in setting the agenda for the discourse of a global modernity at large. Explores modern architectural history through thematic exposition rather than as simple chronological succession of ideas. A. Dutta 4.646 Advanced Study in the History of Modern Architecture and Urbanism
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Prereq: Permission of instructor Units arranged
Seminar in a selected topic in the history of modern architecture and urbanism. Oral presentations and research paper required. T. Hyde 4.647 Technopolitics, Culture, Intervention
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Prereq: 4.645 or permission of instructor Units arranged
Examines the manner in which key theories of technology have influenced architectural and art production in terms of their "humanizing" claims. Students test theories of technology on the grounds of whether technology is good or bad for humans. Limited to 15; preference to MArch students. Staff 4.648[J] Resonance: Sonic Experience, Science, and Art
(, )
(Same subject as 21A.507[J]) (Subject meets with 4.649[J], 21A.519[J]) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes
Examines the sonic phenomena and experiences that motivate scientific, humanistic, and artistic practices. Explores the aesthetic and technical aspects of how we hear; measure or describe vibrations; record, compress, and distribute resonating materials; and how we ascertain what we know about the world through sound. Although the focus is on sound as an aesthetic, social, and scientific object, the subject also investigates how resonance is used in the analysis of acoustics, architecture, and music theory. Students make a sonic artifact and written report reflecting research as a final requirement. Students taking graduate version complete assignments aligned with their graduate research. Fall: Consult C. Jones Spring: Consult C. Jones 4.649[J] Resonance: Sonic Experience, Science, and Art
(, )
(Same subject as 21A.519[J]) (Subject meets with 4.648[J], 21A.507[J]) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes
Examines the sonic phenomena and experiences that motivate scientific, humanistic, and artistic practices. Explores the aesthetic and technical aspects of how we hear; measure or describe vibrations; record, compress, and distribute resonating materials; and how we ascertain what we know about the world through sound. Although the focus is on sound as an aesthetic, social, and scientific object, the subject also investigates how resonance is used in the analysis of acoustics, architecture, and music theory. Students make a sonic artifact and written report reflecting research as a final requirement. Students taking graduate version complete assignments aligned with their graduate research. Fall: Consult C. Jones Spring: Consult C. Jones 4.650 A Global History of Architecture
()
(Subject meets with 4.605) Prereq: None Units: 4-0-8
Provides an outline of the history of architecture and urbanism from ancient times to the early modern period. Analyzes buildings as the products of culture and in relation to the special problems of architectural design. Stresses the geopolitical context of buildings and in the process familiarizes students with buildings, sites and cities from around the world. Additional work required of graduate students. M. Jarzombek 4.651 Art Since 1940
() Not offered regularly; consult department Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Critical examination of major developments in European, Asian, and American art from 1940 to the present. Surveys the mainstream of art production but also examines marginal phenomena (feminism, identity politics, AIDS activism, net art) that come to change the terms of art's engagements with civic culture. Visits to area art museums and writing assignments develop skills for visual analysis and critical writing. Consult C. Jones 4.652 Modern Art and Mass Culture
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(Subject meets with 4.602) Prereq: None Units arranged
Introduction to theories of modernism and postmodernism and their related forms (roughly 18th century to present) in art and design. Focuses on how artists use the tension between fine art and mass culture to critique both. Examines visual art in a range of genres, from painting to design objects and "relational aesthetics." Works of art are viewed in their interaction with advertising, caricature, comics, graffiti, television, fashion, "primitive" art, propaganda, and networks on the internet. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Robin Greeley 4.654 Media Theory
()Not offered regularly; consult department Prereq: None Units arranged
Examines historical positions in what has been known as "media theory," engaging the tensions that vex current modes of production. Explores the broad panoply of bottom-up media content generation in its confrontation with proprietary media platforms, and measures contemporary digital narrative forms against the expanded cinematic theories of the past. Discussions focus on how the rich literature of media theory might accommodate gaming, XR, interactive immersive installations, and other contemporary phantasmagoria. Consult C. Jones, E. Brinkema 4.656 Environmental Histories of Architecture
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| | | Architecture Design | | | Architecture Studies | | | Art, Culture and Technology | | | Building Technology | | | Computation | | | History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art | | | Thesis and UROP | | | |
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