Spring 2023 Courses

ARCH 574, Aneesha Dharwadker (Chicago Studio)

An examination of Chicago’s literary history, and design for a new literacy center downtown. This course meets in the Chicago Studio space in the South Loop and includes guest lecturers, critics, and visits to literacy organizations in Chicago.

This course is open to graduate and upper-level undergraduate students.

ARCH 401, Isabella Hillman

This course will feature an introduction on different representation graphics and mediums that can be instruments to convey an architectural project’s purpose, story, and concept.

ARCH 401, David Ellis

Can humans build and inhabit communities on Mars? And what are the implications for sustainable living on Earth? This course is structured as a “science seminar” consisting of lectures, presentations, and discussions to investigate the Martian climate and material constructibility. Students will discuss science fiction films and books in addition to design ideas.

ARCH 403, Thomas Leslie

This course examines the history of human construction over the last 4500 years. By focusing on materials, processes, and techniques, Construction History offers an alternative to traditional architectural narratives, making productive connections to histories of economics, industry, and labor, and to related disciplines such as structural and civil engineering.

ARCH 407, Heather Grossman

Rome, the so-called Eternal City, has also been dubbed “the city of visible history.” This course considers the city of Rome from its foundation until today, using critical strategies for understanding urban environments as well as study of individual monuments. While perhaps primarily associated in popular imagination with antiquity, Rome has always been a vital, changing, and challenging urban center from the time of the Roman Republic to the present. Medieval and Renaissance Rome saw the city’s form and architecture develop in new ways, following the social, political, and spiritual needs of its inhabitants. Reunification of the Italian state declared Rome the capital of the new nation in the nineteenth century, and Italians from around the country swelled Italy’s capital in the following decades, changing its urban topography and building typologies. In the early twentieth century, Fascism remade Rome and following its defeat, post-war Rome became synonymous world-wide with glamorous Italian design and cosmopolitan living. Recently, diverse immigrant communities have made their homes in the city, and Rome has seen both starchitects’ monuments and grass-roots projects, as well as significant efforts to protect and renew the city’s layered heritage within the contemporary cityscape. Rome’s many layers allow for the study of multiple historical periods and styles of architecture (and how these intersect) within a single urban fabric, and the effects of politics, economics, religion, culture, and societal change upon architecture and vice versa.

ARCH 416, Tait Johnson

This course surveys North American architecture and urbanism, focusing on the architecture of the United States from 1650 to the present. Topics include Native American urban centers before Columbus; the ongoing significance of vernacular forms; the diverse national origins of colonial architecture; the search for an architecture of democracy; urbanization and industrialization; the rise of a formal architectural profession; patterns of racial segregation in the built environment; architecture, real estate, and the forces of capital investment.

ARCH 490, Nmadili Okwumabua

This course is designed as an introduction to the architecture and urban design of Africa. By tracing the development of urban design from antiquity to post modern times, students will gain the knowledge required to recognize, define and critique the art of modern African architecture and urban design. This course challenges the romantic notion of the “hut” as the only true icon of African urban design and development and replaces it with the full breadth of Africa’s historical and contemporary contribution to the discourse.

ARCH 576 AC, Kathryn Anthony

How are architecture, architects, and designers portrayed in cinema? How have film directors depicted relationships between environment and behavior? In what ways do built environments portrayed in cinema influence characters’ behaviors and reflect their personalities? What can we learn from the relationships among spaces, places, and people shown in cinema? Which Hollywood stars and film directors were once aspiring architects? Which architects and designers have made their careers in the film industry and how did they navigate their careers? This seminar addresses these issues and more.

ARCH 576, Aneesha Dharwadker (Chicago Seminar)

A survey of contemporary design practice on six continents. This course meets in the Chicago Studio space in the South Loop and includes lectures, weekly assignments, and in-person visits to offices in Chicago.

For the final project, students propose their own hypothetical firms, reinterpreting what it means to practice in design today. This course is open to graduate and upper-level undergraduate students.

ARCH 594 BLCC, Mohamed Boubekri

Students learn the mechanics of making a full life cycle cost analysis of a given design, as well as how to estimate the return on a building investment solution.

ARCH 594 SIM, Rick Strand

This course will focus on learning one energy simulation program and how to use it effectively to model building energy performance. Final projects will involve modeling a studio project or an existing building.