Undergraduate Design Courses
The following list comprises track-specific design course offerings created specifically for undergraduates of Harvard College.
HAA 92r Design Speculations
This senior design seminar is a support of independent thesis and/or independent project research, extending methodological inquiry of the project topic to design where students may convene to collectively discuss and experiment with design speculations –representational tests that explore research through the visual and spatial language of architecture.
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HAA 96A Transformations
Architecture is not a single monolithic thing, rather it is comprised of disparate parts and organizational systems operating at different scales. Design is the considered assembly of these elements. This course is an introductory architectural design studio focused on building foundational architectural concepts and design methodologies studied through a process of making. A series of physical modeling assignments explore spatial and organizational transformations as a consequence of the changing interactions among material, fabrication technique, and form. Resultant expressions of space, scale, and perceptual effects are discussed in relation to architectural theory and history discourse.
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HAA 96B Connections
The practice of architecture fundamentally asks us to continuously engage with, and re-conceptualize, the world for which we are designing. This studio takes on the challenge through a series of design exercises focused on understanding, engaging with, and reimaging the urban condition. Students will produce architectural projects that address existing site conditions, and will develop designs in response to a determined program. Throughout the course, we will approach architectural design as both a method of producing urban environments, and also as an avenue through which to understand our cities.
HAA 177X - Nano Micro Macro Adaptive Materials Lab
This course is an interdisciplinary platform for designers, engineers, and scientists to interact and develop innovative new material products. The course introduces ideas-to-innovation processes in a hands-on, project/product-focused manner that balances design and engineering concepts with promising, real-world opportunities. Switching back and forth between guided discovery and focused development, between bottom-up and top-down thinking, and market analyses, the course helps students establish generalizable frameworks as researchers and innovators with a focus on new and emerging technologies. This course introduces students to issues of climate change through the lens of the built environment. The course will study climate data, issues of material use and waste in built practices. The aim is to mobilize this studied material to experiment with a series of physical assemblies made by collaborative teams of students in order to directly study design's capacity to influence applicable positive change in the interaction between building and environmental conditions.
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Complementary GSD Design Courses
The list linked here serves as a guide for optional design courses that may be used to fulfill Distributional Requirements in Design Studies. The courses listed here are composed of course available through the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, History of Art and Architecture Department as complements to the track-specific design courses listed above. These course offerings vary each academic term and year. The linked document is an edited collection of courses for each respective academic year and term.
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