ARCH 1001   Architecture Elective (First-Year) 

1000-level elective in architecture.

Credit 9 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

ARCH 1010 Drawing

Students will learn to recognize and manipulate fundamental elements of line, tone, texture, volume, and plane with relation to representational drawing. Students work in a wide variety of media and techniques (charcoal, pencil, pastels, and wet media) from the figure, still life, and the environment.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Summer

ARCH 1020 Design Studio

The heart of the program, Design Studio drives creativity and discovery to foster passion and compassion in design. You'll learn how sustainability and the built environment are shaping the practice of architecture. Over the course of the program, you'll undertake a series of short design exercises that will introduce you to the design thinking process, culminating in an architectural project for review by faculty and guest critics.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Summer

ARCH 1110 Introduction to Design Processes I

The first year of the core studio sequence examines interactions between architecture and environments through the design of a small-scale project. Key concerns include global climate change, ecological systems, and sustainability. This year emphasizes experimentation in which students search for a conceptual position relative to architecture history, theory, and culture via the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on engagement with abstraction, context, and temporality in a series of design projects that include: (1) a body device, (2) a ground, and (3) a temporary structure. Exercises explore problems of translation between 2 and 3-dimension, site and climate study and design, and narrative design. Introduction to Design Processes I is the first in the series of the five required core studios in the undergraduate architecture program. All students initially register for section 01. The studio coordinator will assign students to sections at the start of the semester and students will change their section registration at that time.

Credit 4.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 1120 Introduction to Design Processes II

The first year of the core studio sequence examines interactions between architecture and environments through the design of a small-scale project. Key concerns include global climate change, ecological systems, and sustainability. This year emphasizes experimentation in which students search for a conceptual position relative to architecture history, theory, and culture via the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on engagement with surfaces, flows, and assemblies in a series of design projects that include: (1) a tectonic surface, (2) land and waterscapes, and (3) a gathering space. Exercises explore problems of size and scale, object to field, and figure-ground. Introduction to Design Processes II is the second in the series of the five required core studios in the undergraduate architecture program.

Credit 4.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 1144 Architecture for Non-Architects

Architecture for Non-Architects introduces non-architecture students to the process through which architects think about, view and produce the built environment. This new course is meant to serve as an alternative to the traditional studio instruction in the major, thus allowing students who are curious about architecture to experience it without the demands and commitment of major courses. If a student decides to transfer into the architecture major later on, they will meet with the architecture minor lead advisor to jointly propose a planned course of study that addresses any missing credits and foundational skills required for successful completion of the architecture major. This foundational course proposes a combination of readings, class discussions and research that will be used to inform the design process. Field trips will initiate students into the act of seeing by challenging them to observe, interpret and critically engage with the built environment (the site) and those who are affected by it (the stakeholders) in specific scalar and temporal contexts.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 1210 Representation I

This course introduces students to the ever-expanding, extra-disciplinary array of tools, techniques, software, equipment, and media at play in architectural representation. Organized as a lab, the course presents a series of one to three-week-long, in-class exercises that focus on skill-building and encourage experimentation within a narrow framework. Three primary areas of focus include visualization (freehand drawing, hand-mechanical projection, digital model-making, digital projection, and photography), fabrication (hand model-making, woodworking, and CNC routing), and curation (portfolio design, display, and presentation.) Representation I is the first in the series of two required representation workshops in the undergraduate architecture program.

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 1810 Independent Study

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 185 Practices in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design

This course offers first-year students in the College of Architecture an introduction to the subjects, theories, and methodologies of the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Examples are drawn from a range of historical periods, and contemporary practice highlights distinct processes of thinking and working in each discipline and areas of intersection and overlap. Concurrent registration in A46 112C or A46 144 is recommended.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 2001 Architecture Elective (Sophomore)

2000-level elective in architecture.

Credit 9 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

ARCH 2090 Design Process

This studio course will engage students in the process of design with an emphasis on creative thinking. Course content relates directly to the interests of engineers, arts & science, business and art students who wish to problem solve about positively shaping the texture and quality of the built world. A series of 2D & 3D hands-on problem-solving projects introduce students to design concepts as they apply to site (eco-systems and outdoor places), to humanistic place making (personal and small public spaces), to structure & materials (intuitive exploration of structural principles though model building), to environmental issues (effects of climate, light, topography, context and sensible use of natural resources). No technical knowledge or special drawing/model-making skills are required. There will be informal group and individual discussions of each person's stages in inquiry. The investigations will take the form of study models made of recycled materials. Guest lecturers will participate throughout the semester. The concluding project for the semester will allow each student to work with their unique academic and personal interests, utilizing the process of lateral thinking.

Credit 3 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 2110 Architectural Design I

The second year of the core studio sequence examines interactions between architecture and technology through the design of a medium-scale project. Key concerns include transformative emerging technology, cultural and material production, and labor practices in relation to digital tools and systems. This year emphasizes choice as students are supported in clarifying their conceptual position relative to architecture history, theory, and culture via the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on engagement with materials, cladding, and interiors in a series of design projects that include: (1) modules, (2) a screen, and (3) a live/work space. Exercises explore problems of part-to-whole relationships, cladding and ornament, and public and private space. Architectural Design I is the third in the series of the five required core studios in the undergraduate architecture program. All students initially register for section 01. The studio coordinator will assign students to sections at the start of the semester and students will change their section registration at that time.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 2120 Architectural Design II

The second year of the core studio sequence examines interactions between architecture and technology through the design of a medium-scale project. Key concerns include transformative emerging technology, 8 cultural and material production, and labor practices in relation to digital tools and systems. This year emphasizes choice as students are supported in clarifying their conceptual position relative to architecture history, theory, and culture via the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on engagement with representation, technology, and circulation in a series of design projects that include: (1) a drawing device, (2) a fabrication analysis, and (3) a production and display space. Exercises explore problems of representation and mediation, architectural labor and automation, and mass and volume. Architectural Design II is the fourth in the series of the five required core studios in the undergraduate architecture program.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 2210 Architectural History I: Antiquity to Baroque

This lecture course will introduce major historical narratives, themes, sites, and architects from ancient Greece to the end of the Baroque period. We will take an extended look at the dawn of the modern period during the 15th and 16th centuries through a global perspective, turning eastward from Renaissance Europe to the Ottoman, Mughal, Chinese, and Japanese empires. The great chronological and geographic span of this course will be pulled together around the themes of classicism and its subsequent reinterpretations as well as the pursuit of the tectonic ideal. Our aim is to recognize how these ideological pursuits of modern architecture evolved out of longer historical processes. We will also pay close attention to major sites of landscape and urban-scale work. Requirements will include a mid-term exam, a final exam, and a series of short papers.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 2220 Architectural History II: Architecture Since 1880

An introductory survey of the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in the context of the rapidly changing technological and social circumstances of the last one hundred and twenty years. In addition to tracing the usual history of modern architecture, this course also emphasizes understanding of the formal, philosophical, social, technical, and economic background of other important architectural directions in a global context. Topics range from architects' responses to new conditions in the rapidly developing cities of the later nineteenth century, through early twentieth-century theories of perception and social engagement, to recent efforts to find new bases for architectural interventions in the contemporary metropolis.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 2810 Independent Study

Prerequisite: Sponsorship by an instructor and permission of the Dean of the School of Architecture. Sophomores may register for 1 unit.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 2811 Independent Study

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3001 Architecture Elective (Junior)

3000-level elective in architecture.

Credit 9 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

ARCH 3031 Innovative Bamboo

In this seminar we will explore bamboo as a sustainable material for innovative structures. Bamboo is a natural composite with high tensile and compression strength and grows in a cylindrical form that is optimal for carrying longitudinal forces. Furthermore, it is fast growing, sequesters more carbon than timber, produces more oxygen than a boreal forest, and even absorbs heavy metals from soil. Students will look at historic and contemporary precedence of bamboo as engineered products and as structural construction using simple poles. We will play with ways to connect, assemble, and build with this natural material. Finally, we will build large-scale models and prototypes of structural designs. The goal is to explore the wide range of design and engineering potential of this natural, often overlooked, structural grass.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3110 Architectural Design III

The third year of the core studio sequence examines interactions between architecture and society through the design of a large-scale project. Key concerns include architectural agency, community activism, and socioeconomic justice. This year emphasizes voice as students adopt their own conceptual position relative to architecture history, theory, and culture via the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on engagement with tectonic assemblies, public space, and programming in a series of design projects that include: (1) a precedent analysis, (2) a detailed study of the project's urban context, and (3) a mixed-use vertical structure. Exercises explore problems of grids and frames, urban and architectural space, and programmatic interrelationships. Architectural Design III is the fifth in the five required core studios in the undergraduate architecture program. All students initially register for section 01. The studio coordinator will assign students to sections at the start of the semester and students will change their section registration at that time.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3120 Architectural Design IV

The third and fourth years introduce a selection of option studios to students. This year emphasizes voice as students adopt their own conceptual position relative to architecture history, theory, and culture through the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on advanced architectural design and an in-depth study of a specific topic through rigorous design development.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3121 Architectural Design IV (Urban Design + Landscape Systems)

The third and fourth years introduce a selection of option studios to students. This year emphasizes voice as students adopt their own conceptual position relative to architecture history, theory, and culture through the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on advanced architectural design and an in-depth study of a specific topic through rigorous design development.

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3310 Environmental Systems I

Environmental Systems I is the foundation course in the architectural technology sequence. This course addresses the relationship between buildings and an expanded idea of context, including ideas of environment, landform, energy, material and space. The class places an emphasis on each student developing his or her own attitude toward architectural sustainability, its role within the design process, and its relationship to architectural form. The class is organized around the themes of climate, site and energy. The theme of climate addresses macro- and micro-climates, and the roles they have in developing architectural form through 'passive' strategies. The theme of site expands the idea of the architectural project to examine landform, position, access and region. The theme of energy looks at architecture as both embodied energy and a consumer of energy, to understand how the architect helps to control and direct these flows at macro and micro levels. Two goals for the class are to provide students with ways of thinking about and of working with issues of sustainability, which can inform their design practice, and to equip them with the basic knowledge needed to continue within the technology sequence.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3340 Building Systems

Building Systems will examine the performance and properties of building materials, both traditional and new, through an analysis of assemblies and related systems. Investigations of wood, masonry, steel and concrete and the integration of relevant building systems will provide the fundamental structure for the course. All systems will be investigated relative to their architectural purpose, impact on the environment, relationship to culture/context, technical principles and will also consider manufacturing, construction, our profession and the society in which we practice. Moreover, the course will also examine the performance characteristics of contemporary enclosure technology and explore the impact these technologies are having on design thinking. Although we will focus primarily on the aforementioned topics, we will also identify and consider the impact of other parameters on design and performance such as building codes, role of the profession, health and life safety, systems integration, sustainability and industry standards. The course strives to provide students with a sound familiarity and understanding of traditional building systems in wood, steel and concrete; as well as the skills necessary to represent these systems. The course also seeks to expose students to the material and poetic potential of these technologies related to the making of architectural environments.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3401 Drawing On the City

Drawing on the City brings together two seemingly disparate but actually complementary threads - the ability to draw and the opportunity to understand the city and its histories and issues in some breadth and depth. The course is open to both graduates and undergraduates, to students who are in the Sam Fox School and those who are not, and to students with any level of drawing ability - including none to start. During the first half of the semester, the drawing instruction is dominant, with the neighborhood visits becoming dominant in the second part of the semester. Generally a half-dozen or so neighborhoods are visited, and in most cases you will get to meet and spend time with residents. As the semester evolves, the two threads of the course will merge, and you will use your drawing ideas and your understanding of the city to create an ongoing book [writing, drawing, photography] of the semester, as well as a large, highly-individualized, ongoing drawing that builds on some aspects of the city experience that you wish to explore visually.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3402 Unveiling the Detail: A Lesson in Forensic Drawing & Discovery

This course will explore architectural detailing from the quotidian to the sublime to posit architectural design intent. Through fieldwork and research, students will study the role of architectural detailing in the configuration and execution of architectural space making. Students will be asked to carefully observe their own constructed environment and architectural precedents to understand the truth and fiction in construction. This course seeks to help students understand the role of the architectural detail in articulating and reinforcing architectural concepts. It will strengthen the student's understanding of material properties, opportunities and limitations, construction sequencing, and design execution. Students will gain a new appreciation for the exquisitely executed architectural detail and strengthen the skill to anticipate and navigate detailing challenges in their own design work. Students will be asked to explore architectural details through various drawing methods, modeling, and modes of representation. This course is open to architecture students at all levels with an interest in drawing and realizing architecture as a constructed practice.

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3404 Community Building

This course looks at the intersection of the built fabric and the social fabric. Using St. Louis as the starting point, this course takes students out of the classroom and into a variety of neighborhoods -- old, new, affluent, poor -- to look at the built environment in a variety of contexts and through a variety of lenses. Almost every week for the first half of the semester, students visit a different area of the city, with each trip highlighting some theme or issue related to the built environment. These include topics such as architecture, planning, American history, investment and disinvestment, community character and values, race, transportation, immigrant communities, and future visions. Running parallel to this, students will be involved in an ongoing relationship with one particular struggling neighborhood, in which students will attend community meetings and get to know and become involved with the people of the community in a variety of ways. Students learn to look below the surface and beyond the single obvious story for multiple stories to discover complexity, contradictions and paradoxes. They also come to consider the complex ways in which architecture and the built environment can affect or be affected by a host of other disciplines. College of Architecture and College of Art sophomores, juniors, and seniors have priority. Students will add themselves to the wait list and will be administratively enrolled in the course. This course fulfills the Sam Fox Commons requirement.

Credit 3 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3406 Historic Preservation, Memory and Community

Whose history is significant enough to be worth preserving in physical form? Who gets to decide, and how? Does the choice to preserve buildings, landscapes and places belong to government, experts or ordinary people? How does the condition of the built environment impact community identity, structure and success? This place-based course in historic preservation pursues these questions in St. Louis' historically Black neighborhood The Ville, where deep historic significance meets a built environment conditioned by population loss, disinvestment and demolition. The course explores the practice of historic preservation as something far from neutral, but a creative, productive endeavor that mediates between community values, official policies and expert assertion. Critical readings in preservation and public history will accompany case studies, community engagement and practical understanding. This course is open to both undergraduates and graduates.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3407 Re-Discover the Child

It is said that at this time in history the entire country must make a commitment to improve the positive possibilities of education. We must work to lift people who are underserved; we must expand the range of abilities for those who are caught in only one kind of training; and we must each learn to be creative thinkers contributing our abilities to many sectors of our society. In this course, during the semester we will expand our views about learning by experimenting with the creative process of lateral thinking. We will learn about learning by meeting with some brilliant people at the university and in the St. Louis community who are exceptional in the scholarly, professional, and civic engagement work they are accomplishing. We will learn about learning by working in teams to develop exciting curricula (based upon the knowledge and passion WU students bring from their academic studies and range of interests) for middle school students from economically disadvantaged urban families. Each week of the semester, we will learn about learning by giving 2-D / 3-D hands-on problem solving workshops, once a week for one hour each week, for elementary school students. You and your WU teammate will implement the workshops you create. In this course we celebrate the choices of studies we each pursue, and we expand our experience in learning from each other's knowledge bases and learning from each person's particular creativity in problem-solving. This course seeks students from all disciplines and schools, freshmen through seniors. Course fee applies to mandatory background check and is not refundable.

Credit 3 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3409 Cycles

Students design and build human-powered vehicles from discarded bicycles. The course collaborates with student mechanics involved with Bicycle Works (Bworks). Bworks collaborates in teams with Washington University students to design and build the work.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

ARCH 3415 Digital Fabrications

This course will focus on fabrications both real and virtual. The ubiquity of computers in design, studio art, communications, construction, and fabrication demand that professionals become comfortable with their use. It is also important in a group of ever-specializing fields that one know how to translate between different software and output platforms. This comfort and the ability to translate between platforms allow contemporary artists and designers to fabricate with ever-increasing freedom and precision. This course will introduce students to 3D software with a focus on 2D, 3D, and physical output. Through a series of projects, students will learn to generate work directly from the computer and translate it into different types of output. Starting from first principles, this course will cover the basics from interface to output for each platform used. This course will also familiarize students with a range of CNC technology and other digital output for both small- and large-scale fabrication. The course will be broken into three projects. In the first project, students will focus on computer-generated geometry and control systems. In the second part, students will generate physical output and line drawings. The final project will focus on rendering, context, and cinematic effects. The software covered in this course includes, but is not limited to Rhinoceros 3D, Maya, Illustrator, Photoshop. Additionally, students will use the 3D printer, laser cutter, and/or other digital output tools.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 3416 Digital + Craft : Textile

The seminar blurs the distinct boundaries between Digital computing modeling and manual Craft making. The ease and immediacy of the hand in Craft making is channeled into the process of Digital computer modeling. The seminar dwells in the material complexity and the aesthetic allure of Textile and through the manner of Digital + Craft, begins to blur the classic opposition of structure and ornament.  The seminar begins with the modeling of Textiles in the computing environment, using the parametric controlled materials constraints of Cloth in Autodesk Maya or other Physics simulation software. CAD CAM capabilities will be employed to output pattern layout and cutting.  The students are asked to design and fabricate an architectural assembly that uses Textile as the main form generator.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3419 Anxious Vision: Real Time and the Architecture of Video Games

What can architects learn from examining the visual structures of 3D video games? How have they influenced the culture of architectural representation? Why should the gaming perspective view and level structure be considered essential elements for contemporary architectural theory? How is video game theory instrumentalized in the creation of architecture? To begin, video game engines are becoming ubiquitous features in architectural rendering culture. Platforms like Unreal, Unity, and Twinmotion offer designers tools to create environments that can be explored and interacted with in real time by the user-client. Although 3D modeling, rendering, and animation platforms have been commonplace in architecture schools and experimental studios since the 1990s, accessible, interactive, real-time rendering platforms are a more recent and less studied phenomenon. The architecture of level design and the companion art of worldbuilding constitute a new representational paradigm. In this seminar, we will examine the spatial structures of contemporary gaming titles and explore a series of historical and theoretical texts from Video Game Studies. The final assignment will be project-based and designed using the Unreal Engine.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3420 Evolution of a Section: Architecture and Machine Learning

Throughout human history, architecture was seen as static, a quality attributed to its inherent physicality. This seminar encourages students to conceive of an architecture, through the medium of an architectural section, that mutates across space and time. Using Machine Learning processes, the class intends to propose an alternative and nonlinear means of production to the linear process of architectural design from conception to construction. Machine learning engages graphic information differently than designers do. All fidelity towards visual, cultural, political, and geometrical context is lost, resulting in a new class of compositions that are unique but not critical. The systems, including Generative Adversarial Networks, Convolutional Neural Networks, and Diffusion Models, are explored with input (images/texts) and analyzed as output images. We will collectively conjecture on how to 'train' the AI models to understand spatial features typical of an architectural section. We will rely on the rich history of architectural sections, across time, styles, and media, to inform the potential trajectories that our section follow. The works of contemporary artists and architects, like Matias Del Campo, Gabriel Esquivel, Helena Sarin, Refik Anadol, etc. who work with Machine Learning technologies, will be analyzed to understand approaches towards AI and Design.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3421 1 House

In this seminar, students will research and develop designs for a completely off-the-grid small house in Boquete, Panama, for Kaylee and Jordan of the Nomadic Movement YouTube channel. With input from Kaylee, Jordan, and their crew, students will research traditional sustainable building practices in Panama and develop schematic designs for a small house to be built by them on their property in Boquete, with construction beginning in May 2021. The course will include instruction in residential design, structure, and materials and methods of construction. A subtext of the course will be entrepreneurship and beginning one's practice as an architect. To this end, students will be asked to write a prospectus for their architectural practice, including naming, branding, and producing their first YouTube video.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3423 Matsumoto Modern

Between 1948-1961, the Japanese American architect George Matsumoto designed more than 30 award-winning residences in North Carolina. The houses -- demonstration homes for General Electric and Westinghouse, vacation houses sponsored by Women's Day and the Douglis Fir Plywood Association, and homes for clients interested in new ideas in architecture -- served as prototypes for domestic living inspired by postwar logics of mass production. The experimental homes provided opportunities to challenge norms and amplify particular design aspects through focused investigations of the potential of new materials, innovative construction systems, or provocative formal capabilities. Like the more well-known Art and Architecture magazine's Case Study House Program on the West Coast, Matsumoto's houses aspired to be functional, beautiful, and affordable while providing a model for modern American domesticity. Students in the course will undertake archival research for selected George Matsumoto-designed modern homes throughout the semester. Course work will include experimental, analytical drawings; archival research and writing; museum-level physical models; and other representations of residential work by Matsumoto. The resulting work is anticipated to be included in a future publication, an exhibition, and as a featured part of the larger research project Beauty in Enormous Bleakess: The Interned Generation of Japanese American Designers, which aspires to tell an urgently needed new chapter in design and architectural history that acknowledges the signal contributions of Japanese Americans to post-war culture and cultural life.

Credit 3 units. Arch: CAST, GACS

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3424 Urban Books

Since the beginning of the 20th century, art, architecture, and urbanism together have investigated the production of images that shape the symbolic dimension of our experience of large cities. The main goal of this course is to critically embrace this tradition through the format of the artist's book. St. Louis is the focus for our observations because it is familiar to our everyday lives and also because it provides key situations for understanding contemporary forms of urbanity and how urban space is produced and imagined. The course bridges the curricular structures of art and architecture by enhancing the collaboration between the practical and scholarly work developed in both schools, with additional support from Special Collections at Olin Library. It combines the reading, lecture, and discussion format of a seminar with the skill building and creative exploration of a studio. This course is divided into three progressive phases of development: the first consists of weekly readings, discussion, and responses in the form of artist's books. The second phase focuses on the Derive with physical activities and assignments based on interacting directly with the urban environment. The third phase focuses on individual research, documentation, and final book design and production. College of Architecture and College of Art sophomores, juniors, and seniors have priority. Fulfills Sam Fox Commons requirement.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GAUI Art: CPSC, FADM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3425 Sustainability

This student-initiated course seeks to define sustainability and its relation to our built environment through the lens of anthropology, environmental science, business, law and architecture. The course networks the University's resources by bringing professors from varying disciplines to speak weekly on the issues of sustainability and design. We will examine broad issues from history, philosophy, and literature to practical studies of current land use, climate and technology.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 3426 Biomimicry: A Biokinetic Approach to Sustain(able) Design

There is a conceptual similarity between the way an organism and a building engage their respective environments. A biological system responds to the unique condition of its ecosystem; architecture responds to the unique conditions of the site. Building on this principle are the fields of biomimicry, the study of design and process in nature, and biokinetics, the study of movement within organisms, and their ability to address architectural problems with elegant, technologically advanced, sustainable solutions. Biomimicy: A Biokinetic Approach to Sustain(Able) Design focuses on kinetics as an essential element of biomimicry in the context of architecture and employs the study of the kinetic aspects of biological systems - structure, function, and movement - to inform the design and engineering of buildings. A systematic approach to researching and translating the kinetic function of organisms leads to a successful bridging of biological and architectural concepts.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 3427 Biomimicry, Teleology & Organic Architecture

This seminar is intended to develop an understanding of the history and evolution of Biomimicry as a significant design tool from the emergence of Biology as a science in the early 19th century to the present. Biology was the first discipline to confront the problem of teleology, of design in nature. For the past one hundred years, biological references and ideas are present in the work of architects and in the writings of architectural theorists. Biomimicry, a term coined by Janine Benyus, has developed into a new discipline that studies well-adapted organisms designs and processes and then imitates life's genius to design human applications, aiming at a sustainable development. The intent of this seminar is to establish a systematic approach to research and analysis of the history and theory of this biological analogy and its influence on the history of environmental architecture, as seen through the lens of biomimcry. In addition to a historical analysis, students will analyze case studies that exemplify the relationship of architecture to biology, focusing not only on built work, but on the writings and the designer's positions in terms of this relationship. Classes will consist of a combination of formal lectures and facilitated discussion periods. In addition, each student will choose a particular architect and, through research and analysis, will assess the influence of biomimicry in his/her work and present these results in a paper that includes a critical analysis and a proposal on how to advance the architect's work to the highest level of biomimicry.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 3429 In Detail: Observation, Drawing, & Discovery

This course explores architectural detailing from the quotidian to the sublime to posit architectural design intent. Through fieldwork and research, students will study the role of architectural detailing in the configuration and execution of architectural space making. Students will be asked to carefully observe their own constructed environment and architectural precedents to understand the truth and fiction in construction. This course seeks to help students understand the role of architectural detail in articulating and reinforcing architectural concepts. It will strengthen students' understanding of material properties, opportunities and limitations, construction sequencing, and design execution. Students will gain a new appreciation for the exquisitely executed architectural detail and strengthen the skill to anticipate and navigate detailing challenges in their own design work. Students will be asked to explore architectural details through various drawing methods, modeling, and modes of representation. This course is open to architecture students at all levels with an interest in drawing and realizing architecture as a constructed practice.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3432 The Corner Problem

The corner problem is a classic architectural challenge of how a material, pattern or system turns a corner. In particular, the class will focus on facades that include sun shading elements, thus increasing the thickness of the assembly. Turning a corner sounds benign until you consider that all materials have thickness, and then the problem reveals itself. This too often results in an oversimplification and thus reduction of the design intent. This course will focus on designing custom facade systems using advanced digital modeling techniques and testing through physical prototypes. Knowledge of material systems and modeling techniques will be supplemented through discussions with industry leaders in facade design and fabrication.

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3434 Body as Site: Jewelry Design as Architecture

In this course, students will undertake a 3D printing and casting process to realize an architecturally conceived set of jewelry in metal and create drawings and renderings of this set. Often, metal 3D printed parts are used as industrial components and engineered mechanical parts. This project will reverse that to create delicate objects that engage with skin. Students will create a parure (a set of related pieces of jewelry) that will examine the human body as an architectural site and test the potential of metal 3D printing in architecture. We will use Autodesk Maya to create hyper-articulated surfaces and employ lost wax and lost plastic metal casting, consequently blurring the line between traditional and contemporary techniques. As a result, we will not simply conceive of a project and outsource its production. Instead, we will use the foundry to provide firsthand experience with material processes. The set of pieces will share characteristics of form and geometry as well as tactics of physical interconnection with the human body, adjusting through site-specific responses to finger, wrist, neck, ear, or head. In addition to a set of renderings and drawings, students will produce wax hand-carved models and 3D-printed plastic objects for lost plastic casting. For artifacts that require fine detail, students will outsource their projects to wax 3D-printing and casting facilities. (Outsourcing for a typical ring costs approximately $15 in steel and $35 in silver. Total course costs are estimated to be $100.)

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3435 Furniture

This seminar will explore the work of the Italian architect Enzo Mari, with a focus on his autoprogettazione? furniture and book project of 1974. The book offers free designs of furniture that can be built with only a few tools, simple materials, and basic skills, such as measuring, cutting, and hammering. In 2015, Mari granted the Berlin-based CUCULA: Refugees Company for Crafts and Design the rights to redesign and sell the furniture. Students will take up this charge and redesign the furniture from autoprogettazione? again, with each student building a redesigned chair. Please note that this seminar will require students to acquire the following tools: a measuring tape, a hammer, a hand saw, and a hand drill and bits (approximate cost of $75.00 new, $25.00 if the student is resourceful). (The professor will contact the student in 25 years and ask if they still have the tools.)

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3436 Service Learning Course: Environmental Issues

This interdisciplinary service-learning experience allows WU students to bring their knowledge and creativity about the many subjects they are studying to students at a St. Louis City elementary school. WU students will learn about the creative process of lateral thinking (synthesizing many variables, working in cycles, and changing scales). WU students will work in teams to experiment with the design of 2-D and 3-D hands-on problem-solving workshops for small groups of students to accomplish. WU students will devise investigations for the workshops about environmental issues embracing fields in the natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, architecture, art, engineering, and business with the community. In this course, we celebrate the choices of studies we each pursue, and we expand our experience by gaining from each other's knowledge bases and each person's particular creativity. This course is for Arts & Sciences students of differing majors and minors, business, social work, architecture and art students, and engineering students from all engineering departments. Course fee applies to mandatory background check and is not refundable.

Credit 3 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3438 Carbon Neutrality in Architectural Design

Team WashU aims to create a solar home to educate the public on a state-of-the-art, carbon-neutral, adaptive healing space for occupational therapy services using innovative interior, architectural, and system design to meet the users' physical, social, and emotional challenges. The study will focus on design, materials, and renewable energy by illuminating the role of carbon in the built environment, and it will help students understand the principles and application of carbon assessment methods and Life Cycle Analytical (LCA) tools. Students will integrate carbon-neutral design principles into design, fabrication, and construction processes, testing the limits of conventional sustainable design practices and developing new strategies for designing carbon-neutral buildings. Students will work individually to create preliminary design schematics (and their associated structural morphologies, enclosure systems, and MEP systems). They will be fused around a single design strategy developed as a group design project, analyzed for its environmental impact and carbon footprint, and finally built by the student team. The course encourages students to participate in the fabrication and construction process developed as collaborative research, design, and construction effort and support professional consultants or manufacturing partners.

Credit 3 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3439 Materials of Memory: Designing a Pavilion for Peace Park

In Wounded Cities (2012), Karen E. Till writes, Artistic interventions advance the difficult 'work' of memory in wounded cities marked by particularly violent and difficult pasts. Such projects also may offer possibilities of place-based mourning and care work across generations that build self-worth, collective security, and social capacity. In this course, architecture students will work alongside art students enrolled in a parallel seminar to develop integrated designs for an open air pavilion, a bus shelter, and educational signage for North St. Louis's Peace Park. This seminar is the current phase of an ongoing collaborative between Washington University and the College Hill Community to find tangible actions that can address past injustices, respect memories of the neighborhood, begin a process of healing in the present, and build infrastructure for the future. Students will conduct memory work by collecting narratives from local residents, exploring the recent and distant history of the site, and examining past placemaking projects that have successfully utilized memory work to create healing spaces. This foundational work will be used as the basis for the design and construction of large operational presentation models to be placed on display for the local residents. This collaborative process will continue after this semester and will result in a built project by the end of the summer of 2023.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3445 The Art Museum: History, Theory & Design

This course will study the conceptual basis of the institution of the art museum in the United States and Europe, including its history, theoretical foundations, design, and cultural function. We will begin with the origins of the modern museum in the 18th century and earlier; trace the development in the 19th century of the earliest national art museums in the United States and Europe; consider the opportunities and problems of museums of modern and contemporary art in the 20th century; address the question of appropriate architectural strategies for art museums of the past and the present; and consider a variety of developments in the art museum today. Prerequisite: Introduction to Modern Art (L01 211), Architectural History II (A46 2284/4284), or permission of instructor. Students in the College of Architecture may register for this course under the assigned College of Architecture course number.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH BU: HUM EN: H

ARCH 3449 Designing Sustainable Environments

The seminar will introduce fundamental concepts of sustainability and sustainable development.  Emphasis will be placed on understanding natural systems, the development of the built environment within natural systems, and the economic, social, ecological, ethical, philosophical, political, psychological, aesthetic, and cultural issues that help shape design decisions.  Students will evaluate a range of methods that may be used to identify and select sustainable solutions to design problems, improve existing solutions, and develop critical thinking.  The LEED Rating system will be presented within the context of its role in professional practice and larger issues of human and environmental health, including how LEED fits into the realm of high performance design and the effective use of the LEED Rating System and principles of sustainability.  The course will be divided into three phases:  1) research current interpretations of sustainability in architecture, examining theories and practices that encourage the development of ecological consciousness as the context of Sustainable Design; 2) critical comparison of the underlying principles of sustainability and design proposed by the different rating systems available today and evaluation of the ways of assessing the sustainability of the built environment currently in use, including the LEEDTM rating system; and 3) the development of a project design in studio that will follow the LEED-NC Version 2.2 Manual as the organizing structure.  In this final project, students will be required to obtain a minimum of 26 points on the LEED-NC rating system in order to have their project certified.  Students will produce the necessary documentation required for LEED-NC certification and make an oral presentation to a panel of guest critics.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3450 Biomimicry: Toward a Sustainable Design

The construction and operation of buildings consume the majority of the world's natural resources and energy, and contribute to expand the landfills. Buildings have diverse effects on the environment during their entire life cycles. Although the tangible impacts are visible only after construction begins, the environmental consequences can be prevented in the first stages of design. The building form and envelope should respond to specific site conditions to help achieve environmental sustainability in architecture. The seminar will be a collaborative studio that welcomes students fo disciplines such as Biology, Engineering, and Architecture, among others. The goal of this course is to create environmental awareness; understanding building ecosystems, and increase the ability to design sustainable buildings from an interdisciplnary perspective. Based on scientific principles, concepts, and methodologies required to understand the relationships of the natural world, the students will analyze alternative solutions for resolving and/or preventing specific environmental problems. The aim of this seminar is to prepare the students to  participate in cross-disciplinary design teams that can develop workig methods to study complex architectural problems and challenges, and facilitate a technical, as well as aesthetically successful, durable and sustainable design. This course will research and study the structure and function of biological systems as models for the design and engineering of materials for buildings. It will involve the study of nature's design and processes as a tool to bring a solution to an architectural problem that will push technology forward while helping us minimize our environmental impact.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3451 Portfolio Design

Architecture portfolios play an essential role in framing and presenting work in academic and professional contexts. The portfolio serves as a record of one's creative and intellectual thought, production, and experience. Through the highly personal and reflective act of re-presenting images and texts, the portfolio frames an individual's position in the field of architecture. Architecture Portfolio Design facilitates the production and development of a comprehensive portfolio and covers the essential concepts and techniques of contemporary portfolio production.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3453 Projective Excavation: Drawing Out the Untold History of St. Louiss Chinatown

From 1869 to 1966 in downtown St. Louis, a small but thriving Chinese immigrant community existed in the area that is now occupied by the Spire Headquarters. St. Louis's Chinatown was home to laundromats, grocery stores, restaurants, shops, and residences until it was razed for urban renewal as part of the Busch Memorial Stadium project in 1966. After the last residents were forced out, the site remained a surface parking lot for decades. Today, St. Louis's Chinatown (or Hop Alley, as it was often referred to) only resides in historical fragments and memories. Working in collaboration with the Chinese American Collecting Initiative at the Missouri Historical Society, students will develop drawings and models that reveal the suppressed history of this site that formed the backdrop of everyday life for Chinese Americans in St. Louis. Focusing on the daily rituals, events, and activities sourced from photos and personal stories, students will develop projective representations of the interior lifeworld of St. Louis's Chinatown. Using techniques adapted from graphic novels, architectural drawing, Chinese landscape painting, and 19th-century panoramic maps, students will investigate how we can use the disciplinary tools of architecture to reveal hidden histories and construct new narratives.

Credit 1.5 units.

ARCH 3534 Furniture Design

This course explores design and fabrication methods for objects of human interaction. Each student will design and build a table, based on a unique concept. To this end, it is up to the individual student to define what the particular table is for, and clearly communicate his or her intentions and ideas. Contemporary technologies will be combined with traditional techniques of metal fabrication, woodworking and plastic forming in the design and production. The course objective is for students to learn how to work directly with machinery and materials in the realization of their design. It is expected that students will have basic shop skills addressed in course prerequisites. Advanced techniques will be introduced, and students will select those most appropriate to their work to build upon. A high level of craft and a great deal of independent investigation are required to excel in this course. Students propose and develop ideas using drawings, models and mock-ups in order to realize the maximum potential for their design.

Credit 3 units. Art: FAAM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3535 Digital Lighting Design: Rapid Prototyping and the CNC

Students in this course will develop an intimate understanding of CNC technology and its ability to rapidly prototype and fabricate within an iterative design process. Through an accelerated feedback loop, the class will work quickly through maquettes, renderings, prototyping, and fully formed products multiple times within the semester. Lectures will include both current and historic approaches to lighting design to better inform the initial drawing process. This course will also include technical instruction on CNC, processes specific to the equipment at Sam Fox. Coursework will culminate in an exhibition of lighting displays and relevant documentation to accompany the research. Students wishing to enroll in this class should have a functioning knowledge of Rhino.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3710 Special Topics

The subject of this seminar varies from semester to semester.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Summer

ARCH 3720 Special Topics Workshop

Special Topics Workshop

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3752 Impossible Collaborations: Architecture and Machine Learning

The mass availability of Machine Learning processes makes individuals with limited experience of the tools perceive themselves as 'AI Experts'. The ever-evolving forms of the technology make it challenging to identify its vast potential influence on the design workflow. This course investigates how the presently available AI tools can productively disrupt prevailing design norms. Student projects will leverage Machine Learning's ability to disassociate from cultural affinities to defy preconceived notions of the architectural canon. These projects will imagine collaborations between canonical architectures and underrepresented, historically ignored architectures. We will rigorously speculate on how these hybrids become relics of a world beyond time, space, and identity by absorbing the exceptional qualities of their origins and introducing a novel method of interpreting precedents in architecture. We will explore AI processing tools like Google Colab, Automatic1111, RunwayML, Adobe Firefly, and Midjourney and delve into transposing/spatializing these images onto architectural elements using 3D modeling software like Rhinoceros, Blender, and Z-Brush. The final deliverables will be a series of estranged architectural models.

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3810 Independent Study

Prerequisite: Sponsorship by an instructor and permission of the Dean of the School of Architecture. Credit: To be determined in each case.

Credit 5 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 3811 Independent Study

Prerequisite: Sponsorship by an instructor and permission of the Dean of the School of Architecture. Credit: To be determined in each case.

Credit 5 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 3827 The Space Within: Interior Experience as the Origin of Architecture

An undergraduate seminar structured around the themes put forward in the book, The Space Within: Interior Experience as the Origin of Architecture, by Robert McCarter. Throughout human history, and particularly in the modern period, interior space and its experience has served as both the beginning, the initial inspiration for the design of architecture, as well as the end, the final purpose of architecture as it is evaluated through inhabitation. Since the beginning of the modern period, and continuing today, pivotal discoveries in architectural design may be traced back to a generative ideal of intimate interior experience, and the quality of the interior spatial experience of the inhabitants may be shown to be both the primary determinant of the architectural design process, as well as the means of appropriately evaluating a work of architecture after it is built. This seminar explores how interior space has been integral to the development of modern architecture, and how generations of modern architects have engaged interior space and its experience in their design processes, enabling them to fundamentally transform the traditional methods and goals of architectural composition. For the leading modern architects and for the most recognized and respected architects practicing today, the conception of the interior spatial experience continues to be the necessary starting point for design, and the inhabitation of interior space remains the primary reason to construct works of architecture. Each class will consist of both faculty lectures based on the chapters of the textbook, The Space Within, and, parallel with the textbook themes, student analyses of selected interior spaces in Florence and Venice, to be visited during the first half of the fall semester. Analytical methods employed in the course cover the full range of contextual, cultural, material, constructive, and experiential attributes of buildings, with particular emphasis on the manner in which the spaces of a building are ordered by the patterns of occupation and the poetics of use, as well as the poetics of construction, or the way in which a building is built, and of what materials it is made, and how all these combine to construct the experience of those who inhabit it.

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3828 Lets Go to the Market

Set against the backdrop of the heavy stone walls of the Renaissance city, the Florentine piazza serves as a hub of rotating events and informal activity centered around the exchange of goods and culture. Concerts, football matches, temporary exhibitions, and markets upon markets fill the public space, contrasting old and new, temporary and permanent. This seminar is intended to get students out of the studio and into the city to observe and engage with these lively spaces through a series of field studies. Students in the course will explore the city and document their observations through various media and techniques, including drawing, printmaking, scanning, and model-making. Using techniques adapted from graphic novels, painting, and traditional and contemporary architectural drawing, the final project will take the form of a field guide that frames Florence as a living system, focusing on themes of mobility, permanence, exchange, and daily life.

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3910 Disegno: Encounters in Public Space (Florence)

One of the origins of the term design is the Italian word 'disegno,' which delineates drawing both as a mark-making process and as a form of critical inquiry. Building upon this dual trajectory, this architectural design studio focuses on a series of site-specific projects that explore public space as a visual and conceptual phenomenon--a space of social encounter that is drawn, re-drawn, and ultimately (re)designed through a series of drawing strategies, including freehand drawing, drafting and making. The projects engage architecture, culture and identity using modern metropolitan Florence as a laboratory for visual experimentation. By embracing the complexities of contemporary Italian society--including its evolving ethnic, cultural and social dynamic--the projects explore the critical dichotomies of past-present and global-local. This course is a dynamic learning environment that encourages students to develop a unique way of working by building upon their intellectual curiosity and diverse educational backgrounds. Course requirements include studio work, discussions and field trips.

Credit 6 units.

ARCH 3921 Fifteenth & Sixteenth Century Florence, Rome & Venice: Rethinking Renaissance Visual Culture

The Early Renaissance - also known as the quattrocento - usually denotes the period from circa 1400 to circa 1500. In those 100 years, Italy, particularly Florence, witnessed an extraordinary coming together of artistic talent, a passionate interest in the art and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity, a fierce sense of civic pride and an optimistic belief in the classical concept of Man as the measure of all things. This course examines the principal artists who contributed to this cultural revolution. In order to take full advantage of the special experience of studying the renaissance in the very city of its birth, the stress is mainly, although not exclusively, on Florentine artists who include sculptors such as Donatello, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo, painters such as Giotto, Masaccio, Uccello, Botticelli, Leonardo, and Raphael; architects such as Brunelleschi and Alberti up to Sangalo.

Credit 3 units. Arch: RW Art: AH EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

ARCH 3922 Florence as a Cultural Artifact: The History of Architecture as the History of the City

This course combines seminar and workshop activities aiming at the understanding of the rich urban and architectural history of Florence, the place of students' work and temporary living during the study abroad program. These activities will be in dialogue with the design studio and art history courses. The intellectual framework of the course is informed by Giulo Carlo Argan's seminal work La storia dell'arte come storia della città (The history of art as the history of the city, Einaudi, 1983), presenting the city as a complex time-space phenomenology of cultural artifacts. While Florence is well known for its cultural contribution to Western cultural history during the 1400s and 1500s, little is known about the full span of its millennial history, including its contemporary developments. The seminar activities will cover such aspects through readings and lecture-cum-sketching urban and architectural documentation tours in the first part of the semester, leading to the development of individual artists' book projects to be completed in the second part of the semester for the program's semester exhibition.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 3980 Transect: Bangkok

Bangkok, a global mega city of 15 million people, is located at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River, in an expansive deltaic landscape. The city sits roughly 5 meters above sea level on a soft bed of sediment, and is slowly subsiding. Over the past century, the city has expanded along its historic canals, covering water ways and exchanging porous land for impermeable surfaces. Climate change is resulting in more intense rain storms which inundate the city, straining infrastructure and putting the vast majority of the city at risk of increasingly long floods. Sea level rise is eroding the coastal area of the city, displacing communities at the outskirts of the city. At the same time, intense development pressure continues, and the few remaining open spaces in the city are under threat of being paved over. While the challenges facing the city are manifold, Bangkok continues to be a vibrant, culturally diverse place with a deep history of living in balance with the River. In Bangkok we see the confrontation of politics, climate change, globalization, and everyday life. While in the field, students will divide their time between direct observation, urban documentation, lectures from designers working to adapt and transform infrastructure, and recuperate natural systems, to increase the city's resilience and enrich the public realm. We will be joined by Kotchakorn Voraakhom, the Pulitzer Artist in Residence. By working between embodied experience (field work) and abstract representations of the city (mapping), students will grapple with the cultural and environmental implications of climate change.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Summer

ARCH 4001 Architecture Elective (Senior)

4000-level elective in architecture.

Credit 9 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

ARCH 4110 Architectural Design V

The third and fourth years introduce a selection of option studios to students. This year emphasizes voice as students adopt their own conceptual position through the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on advanced architectural design and an in-depth study of a specific topic through rigorous design development. All students initially register for section 01. Studio section assignments will be made through a lottery process at the start of the semester and students will change their section registration at that time.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4111 Architectural Design V (Florence)

The third and fourth years introduce a selection of option studios to students. This year emphasizes voice as students adopt their own conceptual position through the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on advanced architectural design and an in-depth study of a specific topic through rigorous design development.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4120 Architectural Design VI

The third and fourth years introduce a selection of option studios to students. This year emphasizes voice as students adopt their own conceptual position through the iterative development of form, geometry, space, and aesthetics. More specifically, this studio focuses on advanced architectural design and an in-depth study of a specific topic through rigorous design development.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4190 Senior Capstone in Architecture

The Senior Capstone in Architecture allows undergraduate students in their final semester of study to pursue individual research projects. All students will participate in shared discussions and presentations, as well as pursue a highly individualized line of research inquiry that potentially starts where a former project left off, supplementing current or previous coursework, or investigating a previously unexplored route. The course will culminate in a presentation and defense of a well-articulated and developed research project.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4340 Structures I

Statics and Strength of Materials through Beam and Column Theory. Loads are defined and states of stress are identified and analyzed. The context of structural behavior is identified and optimal structural behavior and material efficiency structural design is reviewed. Form-active, bulk-active and vector active structural options are explored relative to the transference of load along the length of structural members. The course applies structural theory to the analysis and design of structural members - beams, trusses, arches and columns.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4350 Structures II

Continuation of ARCH 4340 Structures I, with consideration of the effects of forces on structural members of various materials. Introduction to the design of structural members in steel, reinforced concrete and wood.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring, Summer

ARCH 439 Environmental Systems II

We as architects have to analyze and address complex issues and relationships, synthesize them, and then make them manifest through clear design strategies. Building systems must reconcile solar heat gain, glare control, daylight levels, thermal insulation, ventilation, acoustics, air quality, structure and fabrication - all in relation to the scale and comfort of the human body. The development of environmental systems into a clear, comprehensive, and elegant design solution cannot be an afterthought; it must be a synthesized and integral part of the design process, with a clear strategy that operates at multiple scales. Building upon the passive strategies explored in Environmental Systems I, this course will lay the foundation for the integration of active environmental systems with enclosure, space, and the requirements for human occupation. This will be done through the study of climate, air, temperature, water, light, sound, and energy. Each topic will be assessed against problems, principles, possibilities and potential. This course focuses on how important it is to consider active systems as part of an integrated design strategy addressing both FORM and PERFORMANCE throughout the design process. Prerequisites: Environmental Systems I & Building Systems I

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4416 Performance Enhancing

The term Performance has many meanings that are either quantitative, qualitative, or both simultaneously through a range of design professions. The suggested goal of Performance is an optimistic enhancement to a designed entity or idea and holds the potential to be highly provocative relative to the method it is deployed when arguing for a particular design procedure or effect. The double entendre suggested by the term performance relates to both how the system technologically improves a functional aspect along with a more theatrical act of performing. Design in both architecture and fashion relies on both interpretations to create a multi-dimensional discourse necessary to advance conceptual design investigation. The seminar class will explore issues of performance of complex surfaces at the scale of the human body. The class will consist of lectures, discussions, readings, physical material manipulation, and 3D digital modeling and digital fabrication. The use of Rhino (with T-splines and / or Grasshopper) or Maya will be deployed for the digital design of the skin systems. Material systems will be explored initially through manual experimentation and then combined with the digital investigation for the final a digital fabrication using tools such as 3D printing, lasercutting, CNC milling, and thermoforming, resulting in a final garment for the human body. The class is offered to both fashion and architecture students and the investigations would occur in teams of two where ideally one from each discipline is represented.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4418 Mapping Complex Spatial Sequences

New methods of spatial practice have changed the way architects and designers work. As designers, we are no longer tied to static, projection-based drawings as a means to develop and represent our ideas. Time based digital imaging allows us to simultaneously examine the narrative, formal, experiential and spatial aspects of a particular place. Students will map a site through digital photography focusing on a specific spatial sequence much like how a director would set up a scene, moving fluidly from one space to another. During the first half of the semester, this spatial sequence will be used to create a drawing of the entire site as one multilayered composite image with particular attention to the interaction of time, space and movement. The site will then be reconstructed digitally through models or drawings, using the composite drawing as base. Finally, relationships between the drawing and model will be outlined resulting in a more complete experiential spatial sequence.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4419 Building Performance for a Solar Powered House

We will study the state of the art of building integrated solar systems, and design such a system for a house and assess its performance using computational tools. Topics include the fundamentals of solar energy systems, energy management, and its implications to design, either passive or active approach. The course involves building performance simulations using Ecotect, Energy+, HERS, and other tools. Students will use simulation data to study the relation between design and its performance. The course will consist of lectures, review, and student projects. The course will be parallel with several Engineering courses, including ESE 437: Sustainable Energy Systems and EECE 428: Sustainability Exchange. Projects will involve teamwork with Engineering students of different backgrounds. The course will contribute to Team WUSTL solar decathlon with the following features: Energy efficiency: passive design; high performance enclosure; Net-zero energy: renewable energy; heat recovery; Sustainability: water recycle; carbon neutral; lean construction; Resilience: prefabricated house to mitigate natural disasters; Smartness: advanced sensors network; energy management; data visualization; Human-centered living adaptability: flexible space; human comfort and perception controls to operate the house to improve productivity and health; An interdisciplinary effort for renewable energy and sustainable buildings.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4420 Fabricated Drawings

The course will focus on digital fabrication tools, techniques and image theory to uncover new methods of producing physical images. Images are built in a myriad of methods including physical media or from data. Physical images, as defined in the context of this seminar, will be transcend a 2D limitation to develop thickness. The increase to 2.5D or 3D opens opportunities to investigate the use of digital fabrication tools to construct images. In particular, the class will focus on the way information technology continues to have a profound effect on the way we perceive our built environment and the way we represent it. The images that surround us are becoming increasingly easy to generate through information technology. Access to technology both in terms of digital design and output affords the opportunity to reconceive the nature of images. Images are developed through analog, digital or hybrid processes. Their generation is a collaborative interaction between intuition and information processes through clearly defined rules. The scientific theoretician, Peter Galison, discusses the tension between intuition and information on the nature of images in the arts and sciences. Images reveal the intricacy of relations and knowledge, but they are simultaneous deceptive because they bypass the mathematics of pure science. The tension in the arts tends to be between the intuitive, interpretive ability of images as representation versus the image as evidence of a computation-based process. Architectural theoretician Mark Linder talks about how images in architecture are moving away from representations of something else toward a more literal and non-idealized result of a procedure. The image is literally the process of making visible the end result of an operation. Therefore, images are the evidence of the process by which they were generated. As such, the class will develop innovative processes for our digital fabrication equipment to construct images. The projects will develop new methods to use the CNC mill, laser cutters, knife plotter and 3D printer. New tools may need to be developed and built to enable the image fabrication process. In parallel with technological development is material experimentation. Students will be highly encouraged to test new materials to program their behavior and interaction with technology.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4427 Digital Ceramics

The production of ceramic building materials spans from individually constructed and handcrafted to industrial and mass produced. Some of the earliest examples of permanent structures include clay-based building components. At the turn of the century, the Hydraulic Press Brick Company in St. Louis was the most innovative brick company in world, producing 100 million bricks per year by 1900. The abundance of clay and the affordability of bricks contributed to the longevity of building stock, where even modest homes had ornamental bricks, corbeling, recesses, and extensions. Historically, fired clay building components were valued for their strength, modularity, fire resistance, raw material availability, and aesthetics. Ceramic building units are pervasive in their use in the built environment, but they have been underappreciated in contemporary architecture practice. Digital Ceramics examines new possibilities for masonry and ceramics in architecture through computational design and digital fabrication. Algorithmic design techniques, digital fabrication, and ceramic research will be merged for the design and production of nonstandard ceramic components in aggregated assemblies. Readings, tutorials, and guest lectures throughout the course will focus on innovations in digital technology, digital fabrication, advanced geometry, and material practices. Student work will include the creation of 3D-printed and/or CNC-produced molds and slip-cast ceramic components. Additional course work will include drying and firing clay components, staining and glazing techniques, and clay body research. Students will also be introduced to ceramic 3D printing during the course. Digital Ceramics confronts the seemingly disparate modes of physical making and digital form-giving with the introduction of a new material system that expands the aesthetic and performative potential of aggregated enclosure assemblies. In recent digital discourse, we have seen the ability for endless variation and customization through the use of parametric design software. This course intends to underscore a thoughtful consideration of the relationship between technology and adaptability. Through material behavior and calibrated irregularities, we have the capacity to make each component unique. Experience with digital modeling (Rhino) and digital fabrication is strongly encouraged.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4430 American Architecture and Modernism in St. Louis

This advanced history and urban issues seminar will explore the history of urbanism as it developed in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and trace some of its international outcomes. We will examine changing theories of how urban environments should be shaped, placing efforts by designers to transform the built environment within the context of major social, cultural and political changes. These include public urban parks and parkways, City Beautiful neo-classical urban environments, regional planning, auto-based planned communities and shopping centers, highrise hotels, theme parks, and megastructural airports. We will explore the relationships between the built environment, social change, political struggle, and design theory. We will, in addition, track the establishment, professionalization, growth and contests over the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design. We will pay close attention to shifting conceptions of, conflicts over, definitions of the urban public, the boundaries of the public sphere, the relationship between public and private spaces, and the role of government in shaping and policing the urban landscape. By using historical methods to analyze documentary evidence, the course will facilitate greater understanding of the complexity and layering of the urban landscape and critical urban design and landscape practices.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4432 Modern vs. American: Rethinking the Architectural Relationship

What is American about American architecture? Architects, historians, and theorists have asked this question throughout our nation's history, but it gains renewed importance in this age of globalization. Can we, should we, continue to apply national labels to our architecture? This seminar will examine the architectural culture of the United States in the twentieth century, with special attention to the relationship between national identity and the internationalizing forces of modernity, particularly European modernism. Through analysis of theoretical writings, developments in education and practice, and key projects like the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and U.S. embassies around the world, students will gain insight into the dynamic between the local and the global in the design of the built environment. Course requirements include in-class presentations, field trips, and a substantial research paper. Fulfills History/Theory elective requirement.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4433 Modernism in St. Louis

This seminar allows students to examine modernist architecture in St. Louis through a series of lectures followed by building tours of local examples. Lecture topics will include: Classicism Reevaluated, The FLW Influence, The International Style, Concrete Forms, Utopian Visions, and Personal Statements. Among the works to be visited will be that of Charles Eames, FLW, William Bernoudy, Harris Armstrong, HOK, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Safe, and Adrian Luchini. Each student will be asked to document one of the buildings visited for an exhibition at the end of the semester. The course is limited to undergraduate seniors. The availability of a car is required.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4434 Building Detectives: A Practical Seminar On Researching Historic American Architecture in St. Louis

The purpose of this seminar is to both acquaint students with and give them practical experience in the methods of researching historic architecture, both in archives of primary documents and in the field. Initial course sessions are aimed at giving students necessary background in understanding both the formal (stylistic, technological, and material) and spatial content of historic buildings. Reading buildings for what they reveal about the social and material aspects of everyday life will be emphasized. Then students will learn how to use the documentary record to both uncover the history of individual buildings, as well as their urban and social contexts, by visiting local archival repositories. The remainder of the course sessions will be spent in a group collaborative project, recording and documenting a particular building or set of buildings in a St. Louis neighborhood and uncovering the hidden histories encoded in structure, space, and the historical record. It is anticipated that aournd one-half to two-thirds of the class will be spent in archives and in the field. Given the collaborative nature of the final project of this course, students will be expected to be diligent in their attendance and to pull their own weight in helping to complete the final project. The site and the product of the course will depend to some extent on enrollment--the more people in the class, clearly the more ambitious the project will be. At the very least, a visual (photographic and drawn) record of a historic building will be produced, and a documentary record will be established for it, and these will be assembled in a form appropriate for public presentation. This documentation will be intended to aid local St. Louis heritage/preservation/civic efforts.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4435 Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg and the Aura of Chicago Modernism

This seminar explores the mid-century architectural modernism and its relationship to visual imagery, finance, and labor. It focuses on Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City, a pioneering mixed-use housing complex completed in 1964 in Chicago. With its unique circular form, Marina City quickly became a popular icon of modern lifestyle and was often represented in film, magazines, and on the CD covers. A study of Marina City's design, construction, promotion and reception will extend into a detailed study of Goldberg's entire opus, contextualizing his work within the larger trajectory of the Chicago School of Architecture. The course will draw comparisons to the work of Goldberg's educators, such as Mies van der Rohe and Josef Albers, as well as the work of other Chicago architects such as Walter Netsch and Harry Weese. Goldberg's work will be conceptualized within a broader socio-economic context, illuminating his buildings with a selection of primary theoretical texts relevant to architectural modernism. Course requirements include weekly reading summaries, in-class discussions, presentations and a substantial research project.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4436 Gender, Race, and Architecture in the American City, 1865-1960

Architecture and the built environment of the American city has been an instrumental force in the ongoing construction and definition of racial, gender, and sexual identities. Through intensive reading, discussion, and visual presentations students in this course will investigate the spatial structuring of racism, segregation, and desegregation, the relationship between suburbanization and the middle-class ideology of separate spheres, the impact of the integration of women in the factory and office, and the role of gender and race in the design and programming of public and private institutions, including libraries, parks, schools, Masonic temples, the YMCA, and the YWCA. During the semester students will write weekly response papers, give several in-class presentations, and develop an independent research project.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4437 American & International Urbanism

This advanced history and urban issues seminar will explore the history of urbanism as it developed in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and trace some of its international outcomes. We will examine changing theories of how urban environments should be shaped, placing efforts by designers to transform the built environment within the context of major social, cultural and political changes. These include public urban parks and parkways, City Beautiful neo-classical urban environments, regional planning, auto-based planned communities and shopping centers, highrise hotels, theme parks, and megastructural airports. We will explore the relationships between the built environment, social change, political struggle, and design theory. We will, in addition, track the establishment, professionalization, growth and contests over the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design. We will pay close attention to shifting conceptions of, conflicts over, definitions of the urban public, the boundaries of the public sphere, the relationship between public and private spaces, and the role of government in shaping and policing the urban landscape. By using historical methods to analyze documentary evidence, the course will facillitate greater understanding of the complexity and layering of the urban landscape and critical urban design and landscape practices. Fulfills History/Theory elective requirements. Fulfills Urban Issues elective requirement.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4438 Urbanism: Cambridge Ma

This design research seminar will focus on urban buildings adjacent to two transit stops adjacent to two major university campuses, Harvard and MIT, in the City of Cambridge, a Boston area city of about 105,000 people.  Its continuing rapid growth  as a center of research and digital economic activities have led to continuous transformations in its urban form, particularly in the past few decades. This seminar will combine historical and field research on some of the many architectural urban design interventions in Cambridge near the Harvard and Kendal Square subway stations.  A class field trip will take place, and students with choose among several topic areas to produce detailed drawings and digital models of specific Cambridge urban interventions. There will likely be a publication of the work. Topic areas include the campus planning and built work of Josep Lluis Sert and others near  Harvard Square; buildings on the MIT campus by Eero Saarinen, Frank Gehry, Fumihiko Maki, and others; and recent Kendall Square area corporate urban developments by Maya Lin and others.
 

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4439 Urbanism: Chicago

This design research seminar will focus on the urban infrastructure and associated buildings of central Chicago, in and around the areas near the Loop. The Chicago metropolitan area is the third largest in the United States, and from 1870 until the 1950s, Chicago was America's second city, surpassed in size only by New York City. It remains the densest and most urban of the cities of the Midwest, with many examples of complex interconnections between rail lines, highways, and various kinds of pedestrian-oriented urban environments. This seminar will combine historical and field research on some of the many architectural urban design interventions in Chicago. Students with choose among several topic areas to produce detailed drawings and digital models of specific urban interventions. There will likely be a publication of the work. Topic areas for digital documentation include the pedestrian relationships between transit lines and various buildings and urban complexes, including the large Millennium Park interventions by SOM and others over the Illinois Central railway lines adjacent to Lake Michigan, and Wacker Drive, a 1920s underground limited access highway along the Chicago River, and other projects. Fulfills History/Theory and Urban Issues elective requirement.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4440 Unbuilt Sert

This design research seminar will focus on the digital simulation of the unbuilt architectural design projects of Josep Lluís Sert (1901-83). This spring we will document and analyze Sert's drawings for St. Botolph's Chapel (1963) designed for the Boston Government Center complex with the goal of virtually 'building' it. Sert practiced in Barcelona in the 1930s during the era of the Spanish Republic and later in the U.S. as both architect and planner. He was the President of CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture) from 1947-56, and Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1953-69 where he developed urban design as a discipline and academic program. The chapel was an effort to combine elements of Catalan modern architecture with his concept of a modern New Monumentality suitable to the postwar world. The seminar will also visit several of Sert's major built projects in the Boston area, and will include presentations by Dean Emeritus Edward Baum, who was job captain on the St. Bololph's chapel project with the Sert, Jackson firm. Students will work in teams to produce detailed digital models of the project to simulate the 'built' chapel inside and out. Publication of the work is anticipated.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GACS

ARCH 4441 Designing the Modern City

This course, which is based on the textbook Designing the Modern City: Urbanism Since 1850, is a lecture course that examines designers' efforts to shape modern cities. Topics covered include the technical and social changes in mid-19th century industrial cities, notably London, Paris, and Barcelona, as well as varied efforts to shape urban extensions and central new interventions elsewhere. These include reform housing efforts for the working class in 19th-century London and New York, Städtebau (city building) in German-speaking environments, the Garden City Movement, the American City Beautiful movement, town planning in Britain, and urbanisme in France (the source of the contemporary term urbanism). Less well-known topics that will also be addressed are urban modernization in East Asia before 1940 and suburban planning in the United States, including Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City. The book also addresses social change and modern urbanism in Europe in the 1920s, including the emergence of CIAM (International Congresses for Modern Architecture), which met from 1928 to 1956; the political, technological and urban transformations of World War II; the expansion of racially segregated decentralization in the United States; and some European and Latin American postwar urbanism. It also addresses urbanistic aspects of postwar architectural culture, including critiques of modernist planning by Jane Jacobs and others and more recent responses to the ongoing challenges posed by efforts to create organized self-build settlements and to make more ecologically sustainable cities.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GAMUD, GARW, GAUI, RW

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4442 Modern St. Louis, 1940 to 1974: Art, Architecture and Social Change

This seminar addresses the research question, How did modern art and architecture become such a major aspect of St Louis's cultural life in the middle decades of the 20th century? Offered in preparation for a fall 2022 exhibition on this topic at the Kemper Museum, the seminar will research this question, both by presenting notable works of modern architecture that were built here and by examining art collecting and philanthropy here during this time period, where new and more socially inclusive values then associated with modern art had a significant impact on changing both the political and artistic culture of this large metro region. Architectural works to be researched include the works of Harris Armstrong; Cloethiel Woodard Smith (a Washington University architecture alumna); Samuel Marx; Frederick Dunn; Eric Mendelsohn; Eero Saarinen; Dan Kiley; Joseph Murphy and Eugene Mackey, Jr; George Hellmuth, Minoru Yamasaki and Gyo Obata; and Charles E. Fleming.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GARW, RW

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4443 The Chicago Skyscraper

This seminar will consider a set of projects by Burnham and Root, Holabird and Roche, Wm. Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, and others. A central example will be the Monadnock Building, with its two sections by Burnham and Root (1891) and Holabird and Roche (1893). As one of the main lines of inquiry, we will define the skyscraper type, evaluate examples through comparative study, and unfold intersectional aspects of the buildings with respect to race, gender, and labor. Special attention will be paid to symbolism and the relationship between structure, tectonics, and ornament programs. Circumstances permitting, the seminar will apply photogrammetric techniques to the documentation and study of architectural details, entailing a field trip. Space will be reserved for undergraduate students. Prerequisite: Architectural History I or II.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GARW, RW

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4444 Peking and Forbidden City

The life history of China's imperial capital from the 13th-century Khanbaliq visited by Marco Polo to the Peking of the last emperor, Pu Yi. Topics include Chinese city planning and symbolism, timber-frame architecture, ceremonial and mortuary sites, domestic architecture and gardens. Readings in primary sources.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH BU: HUM, IS

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4445 Urban Topographies

This digital seminar introduces students to the basics of Geospatial modeling at both regional and local scales, with an emphasis on the creative application of GIS data towards design thinking, site analysis, and speculative urban design. The course explores the potential for GIS data as more than just for inventory and mapmaking, but also as an invaluable creative design tool. A series of digital workshops will touch on a range of cross-platform workflows, from digital cartography to parametric modeling to 3D animation. Tying this together will be a speculative urban landscape project that the students will model and visualize utilizing the software introduced. This year's iteration will lean more towards an experimental and explorative use of GIS for design, art, and visualization. This course is intended to give students the flexibility to approach the syllabus as an independent study or as a supplement to their studio work. Software that will be covered includes ArcGIS, Autodesk Infraworks, 3DSMax, and Grasshopper.

Credit 3 units. Arch: ECOL

ARCH 4447 Meso-American Architecture

The first half of the course will trace the major civilizations of central Mexico from 1500 BC until the Spanish conquest after 1400 AD, focusing on developments in architecture and landscape, calendarics and cosmology, ceramics, the ballgame and sacrificial rituals, gods, myths and legends, language and hieroglyphics, and political, religious, and social organization.  The survey will feature detailed and extended tours of specific sites by means of drawings, maps, slides, and digital images, we may even attempt a couple of virtual tours on-line.  In the second half we will deal with the Mayan area, ranging from the lowland jungles of Chiapas and Yucatan to the Peten and the highlands of Belize and Guatemala.  High points include the Jaguar dynasty of Yaxchilan, the reign of Pacal at the hybrid site of Palenque, and the demise of 18 Rabbit in the city of Copan, Honduras.  Tikal will be featured as the culmination of Mayan culture, and the Chenes, Rio Bec and Puuc styles will also be examined.  See a complete and independent cultural development going back at least 7000 years, and equal in greatness to Egypt, Greece, or Rome. This is also a chance to examine civilizations existing at the margins of ecology and sustainability, and how they may at times succumb when the limits have been reached. Students will be encouraged to focus on a particular area of interest for further inquiry, to be developed into a paper or a project.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4448 Discover Latin America: Literature, Culture & Cinema

This seminar aims to explore the identity of Latin America through its own literary production and cinema. Our point of departure will be the popular image of Latin America in a permanent state of crisis.  We will analyze how this extended condition has determined a resliient search for original survival strategies.  We will take these artistic forms as the space of resistance against social, historical, economic and cultural impositions. We will particularly study the short story tradition within Latin America and its main contributions to the self-exploration process. We will concentrate on issues such as the confrontation between nature/environment and man, tradition vs. change, the economic struggle and social exclusion/inclusion, the urban movement and the realist portrait, the fantastic exploration and the power of the unconscious, the Latin American boom and new directions, the strategies of humor and transgression, and the female voice and its personal challenges. In turn, we will discuss a selection of films that depict the diverse range of Latin American realities in connection with specific scenarios of crisis--the literary crisis (the fantastic representation, the magical realist answer, the neo-baroque turning point), the political crisis (dictatorships, revolutions, wars, national mythologies, exile, censorship), and the social/cultural crisis (mainstream machism, patriarchal traditions, imperialism, language andorigins, hybridity, gender issues, poverty, injustice, margins). The course consists of the critical reading/watching and formal literary/visual analysis of the selected texts and films. The main goal is to open an engaging dialogue among participants to better understand what we call Latin America, and also to learn to think critically when it comes to tradition, identity, and paths of self-discovery.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4449 Latin American Literature

This course will explore the process through which different Latin American countries have come about.  We will concentrate on a selection of literary texts that somehow represent the quest for a national voice in each case.  The "labyrinth" of Latin American self-exploration strategies implies a diversity of artistic paths.  Thus, we will include other cultural forms involved in the on-going and current self-constructing protrayal of Latin America--films, theater, current events, art exhibits, music, and tango/milongas, among others.  We will pay especial attention to those films that have a literary inspiration or are the adaptation of a literary piece in order to study the connection between literary and visual discourses in particular.  Through this analysis, we aim to enhance the experience and understanding of Latin America as a vibrant cultural system.  The seminar attempts to shed light on the different nation-building processes and on their permanent search of identity.  The main goal is to open a critical and engaging dialogue through which students will be able to learn about Latin America's past and present, as well as to integrate their own first-hand impressions from the unique immersion opportunity they will have while being in Buenos Aires.  

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4450 American Architecture and Urbanism

This seminar will focus on new ways of thinking about American architecture and urbanism in the 20th century. It is part of an effort to offer new conceptual frameworks to understand American architecture within its larger context of social, political, and urbanistic change. Unlike an architectural history survey course, it will not only focus on the canonical works of well-known designers such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn, but it will also situate architecture within the various new social, spatial, technological, and legislative directions that have shaped American metropolitan areas since then. Students will present selected readings and pursue individual research projects for this course.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GARW, RW

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4452 The Design of Practice in America

The Design of Practice in America will trace the changes and developments of architectural practice in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century through the present. Through historical case studies, students and professor will explore how architects and designers shaped and responded to the changing demend for their services in the marketplace through periods of growth, depression, and change. Key examples will illustrate how figures like Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Kahn, and john Portman developed working structures, partnerships, and business models to put forth their ideas and designs and make a living. We will look at a variey of strategies that architectus have developed over time to define, vallidate, and sell architecture as a n artistic enterprise, community service and profession. Weekly discussion will focus around themes in the creative design of architectural practice. Local practitioners will be invited to class to share their experiences in a variety of practice settings. Students will also undertake a semester-long research project on a St. Louis firm whose papers have been preserved or whose history is maintained through oral history. The goal is to familiarize the students with the process of primary research and the inner workings and development of a firm.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4453 Architecture in the Age of Identity: Race, Gender, Ethnicity and Their Discontents

Identity is both an individual and social category. It is deeply personal, woven with memories, feelings and emotions, but also collective, informed by history, society and culture. Consequently, this gap between individual self-expression and societal conformity remains one of the fundamental tensions of human existence, but also a source of inspiration and imagination in our rapidly changing world. Categories such as race, gender, class and ethnicity-as well as their intersections and overlaps-remain dynamic. They constantly evolve, responding to the changing socio-economic context and engaging an ever-expanding array of cultural production-from literature and film to philosophy and sociology. This course expands the conversation even further, examining the relationship between design and identity in architecture, with a particular emphasis on architectural education. Covering a range of case studies that emerged after World War I, the course moves freely across various divides-between North-South and East-West, between socialism and capitalism-examining the representation of identity through a variety of architectural media, including drawings, texts and buildings. The course probes architecture schools and practices as both disciplinary enterprises and as hubs of identity formation, suggesting the capacity of equity and representation to serve as agents of both political and architectural emancipation. The course content includes lectures, discussions and presentations, as well as reading and research.

Credit 1.5 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4454 Modern Architecture, Race, and Ethnicity

This course will review the issues mentioned in the title as represented in recent literature and historical examples, focusing mainly on the urban context but more on architecture than urbanism. Themes will include the history and theory of architecture; architecture as art and as service; architecture and social class; and technology and intersectionality. An emphasis will be placed on information literacy, including the use and management of primary and secondary sources, accessed digitally. Assignments will include a series of short papers and a final paper. Space will be reserved for undergraduates. Prerequisite: Architectural History II or equivalent.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GARW, RW Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4455 Decoding Sustainability

This course engages worldwide conversations regarding current global environmental issues in relation to the production of building materials. Students will begin by defining dilemmas faced by designers and architects in the selection of materials, followed by introductory information on Biomimicry, Natural Capitalism, True Cost, and LIfe Cycle Analysis. This course will then look at national, international and industry environmental standards that govern building materials with respect to the triple bottom line: environmental impact, economic impact and social equity. By anaylzing specific certified building materials, students will see how much or low little is being measured and how transparent the certification processes are. Building materials and the environmental standards that govern them will continue to evolve throughout the entirety of a designer's life. Therefore, developing a thinking/filtering process to employ in the selection will aid each designer in theri career. This course seeks to develop design thinking in relation to the environment while developing tools to understand how building materials can be evaluated for sustainability.

Credit 3 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4456 Precarious Structures: Composition/Anti-Composition

This design seminar will explore the construction of architectural compositions as time-based events using motion graphics, physics engines and scale models. Design exercises will be supplemented by readings and lectures that track intersections between abstract painting, color theory, choreography, video game physics, and architectural space. The suite of digital videos and models generated during the course of the workshop will make an argument for animation software as an architectural-form-generation technique. This workshop is designed as a visual-studies-focused exploration of material assemblages. In his recent text entitled Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency, theorist Hal Foster analyzes contemporary visual artists like Thomas Hirschhorn and suggests the term precarity to describe one of the major emerging themes in post-2001 art; this is a meta-category that he puts forward alongside the abject, mimetic, archival and postcritical. These terms, Foster suggests, might replace the postmodernist overprivileging of images and language. Following the work Foster highlights in his text, we will engage with what sculptor Robert Morris calls anti-form: the material and optical territory of the formless (all that is horizontal, unconstructed, and otherwise base). It is without doubt that the specters of postminimalism -- Alice Aycock, Robert Morris, Eva Hesse and Mary Miss, for example -- loom large in contemporary aesthetic research. This pervasive (if underarticulated) interest in base materialism, elemental tectonics, and provisional structures owes much to the antiformal revisions of minimalism that these artists celebrate in their work (so many piles, ruins, stacks, stick-frame forts, huts, and shelters). Can architecture revitalize these types and add elements (spatial, economic, political and technological complexity) to the sculptural articulation of precarity? Can we design with formal provisionality at the forefront? Requirements: Beginners with no background in the following platforms are welcome. However, some familiarity with Rhino 3D, the Maya platform, and processing will be helpful.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4457 Surface It, With Pieces

The seminar will focus on the in-depth understanding and development of ideas based on the technical, experiential and aesthetic exploration of one material: concrete, into a specific application; pavers. The students will design a module and then explore different pattern options. The pattern modules will consider the limitations of the material in terms of strength, weight, size, etc. The goal is to make a single piece or pieces that can be lifted by a single person without much effort and combine them in different ways in order to create an artificial topography. Students will learn about the material itself as well as the act of construction, assemblage, and mass production; which will include methods and technology, ranging from tools to form work. The forms for the concrete pieces will be built through a process of CNC milling and/or vacuum formed plastic. The challenge will be to define environmentally sensitive strategies for problem solving, conceptual development and poetic expression at both levels of the design process, conceptual and real. Sustainable principles, such as the use of recycled materials as an aggregate in the concrete mix, will be an important consideration for this class. They will be also asked to investigate water run off in a given area and alter the percentage of open grids as a way to create a pervious, though walkable surface. Construction will be the ultimate goal.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4458 Furnish It, With Pieces

Public space is a key constituent that determines the character of a neighborhood and a city. It is embedded the urban fabric and it can mediate the relationship between people and their particular surrounding landscape. Urban furniture and hardscape can play an important role in offering a wide range of uses for public spaces. The design of such pieces affects the way people live and experience a particular environment. The ultimate goal of this course is to design, fabricate and install a set of repeatable units to equip a vacant urban lot in order to offer opportunities for social interaction. The seminar focusses on the in-depth understanding and development of ideas based on the technical, experiential and aesthetic exploration of one material: concrete, into one specific application: urban furniture. This seminar builds up on the scope of the Creative Activity Research Grant awarded by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts where 5 porous concrete pavers were designed for a vacant plot in North St. Louis. The challenges are to adapt the given pavers to a new site condition and to propose new urban furniture made out of concrete. It involves the construction of pieces able to equip a gathering space as well as sidewalks that can offer local residents the opportunity to interact with others. This provides not only aesthetic appeal to the residents and visitors, but also allows the possibility of implementing an actual project in an abandon plot in Old North. We will enrich the community with a wide range of training opportunities as each step in the process of making the plaza will be used for teaching purposes, from making pavers and other pieces, to salvaging, reusing or repurposing recycled material. Students are asked to design and build concrete urban furniture necessary for the gathering area. The pieces can encompass a wide range of uses: chair and benches, tables, raised beds, planters, litterbins, modular fencing and mobility-related pieces such as bike racks, bollards and car stoppers. This is an opportunity for hands-on experience. These pieces have to consider the limitations of the material in terms of strength, weight, size, etc.; learning about the material itself as well as the act of construction, assemblage and mass production, which will include methods and technology, ranging from tools to molds. The formwork for the concrete pieces will be built through a process of CNC milling and rubber molds or vacuum formed plastic. The challenges are to define environmentally sensitive strategies for problem solving, conceptual development and poetic expression at both levels of the design process, conceptual and real. Sustainable principles such as the use of recycled materials as an aggregate in the concrete mix will be an important consideration. Construction is the ultimate goal of this class. We will be working in collaboration with Anova, a local manufacturing company dedicated to the design and production of site furnishings. Anova will provide some materials and bring their expertise to the project.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4459 Precast Concrete Enclosures

In contemporary construction practice, building enclosures are sophisticated assemblies conceived through complex processes that merge design, science, technology and craft. The outermost layer of the exterior wall is the most exposed to natural forces and therefore it needs careful attention as it must work effectively over the lifetime of the building. The primary goal of this fabrication seminar is the construction of full-scale mockup pieces that function as part of real building envelopes; this is an opportunity for hands-on experience. Students will design, develop and build enclosures out of different types of precast high-performance concrete assemblies as critical components of building envelopes. The course will be developed in partnership with Gate Precast, a leader company in the precast concrete industry. Supported by a grant from the PCI Foundation, students will have a budget of $12,500 to design and prototype precast mockups of building envelopes. Students will start by conducting research and analyzing historic and contemporary buildings, focusing on their skin properties and configurations. Then, they will proceed to identify specific environmental condition(s) and develop an enclosure as a response to such condition(s), advancing the design through detail drawings and study models, culminating in a full-scale mockup mold. Construction of the molds will be done at Washington University's facilities combining digital and analog methods of fabrication, including CNC milling, laser cutters, 3D printers, and vacuum-formed plastic, among other methods; a fully equipped wood shop is also available. Once the molds are finalized, they will be transported to Gate's architectural plant in Ashland City, TN, for reinforcing and concrete casting; this project will culminate in the demolding of full-scale precast mockup pieces. Students will tour the facility and participate in the entire fabrication process, including mold preparation, reinforcing, casting, demolding, handling and finishing of the final panels.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4460 Advanced Grasshopper

With a base knowledge of the Rhino+Grasshopper interface, this class will focus on developing an entirely scripted building system. Each student will be given a set of initial parameters (building volume, square footage, percent of transparent/opaque facade, required programmatic elements/size, etc.) They will begin by selecting a formal precedent that will help them determine a structural system. Within this framework, students will develop an algorithmic logic to organize program and then articulate a responsive skin. The goal of this exercise will be to develop understanding of the potential use of scripting in design. Scripting allows the designer to transform their design dynamically as the parameters change or update. The final output of this class will be detailed, annotated drawings of each student's structural system as well as a 1/4 scale model of a small portion of their design utilizing available tools in the FabLab such as 3D printing and CNC routing. Students taking this course must have working knowledge of Grasshopper. This class is an advanced class exploring design through generative modeling.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4461 Information Modeling & Technology

This foundation-level course will introduce students to the digital tools of Geographic Information System (GIS), Building Information Modeling (BIM), and Building Performance Analysis (BPA). Its goal is to equip the student with the ability to gather information, analyze it, and make decisions within the information-rich environment of architectural design and construction. Students will develop an understanding of these three seemingly distinct approaches and their role in preserving the quality and quantity of accumulated information for 'upstream' use. The topics addressed in the course will be further developed in more advanced courses during subsequent semesters. The introduction of information-gathering principles within GIS will expose students ot the wealth of information, such as maps and census data, that is already available, as well as methods of turning raw data into analytical material for use in their design work. This segment of the course not only provides a foundation to ArcGIS, but also leads toward use of this information within applications like Revit Architecture. Creating and managing an information pool of digital GIS and design and construction data and making it available throughout the lifecycle of a project is commonly referred to as BIM. In the second part of this course, we will explore how BIM is being utilized today and learn the basics of one of the leading BIM compliant applications, Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010. During the third part of this course, students will be introduced to BPA, a process that embodies a holistic approach toward the integration of sustainability and design. By understanding when and how to apply sets of analytical exercises via applications like Ecotact Analysis within the context of Information Modeling, students will develop an understanding of how design decisions have a profound and lasting impact on the overall building sustainability and performance.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4462 BIM in Practice

BIM (Building Information Modeling) is a developing method of creating, sharing and managing project data through a visualized 3D or 4D model. While it continues to deliver on an initial promise to increase design consistency and efficiency while minimizing errors, the focus of attention is shifting to the use of BIM to facilitate integrated methods of project delivery. The course will explore the use of the BIM platform and the development of data exchange methods in architectural design through a case study and subsequent design project. Students will be provided instruction in Revit covering the creation, management, and extraction of data from a model, but will also look at the technology more broadly, discussing the changes advanced by the deployment of BIM processes in practice.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4463 Coding Growth: Scripting & Computational Methods for Design

The course will cover an array of advanced design techniques using scripting within the rhino/grasshopper environment. Although, thorough knowledge of grasshopper is not required, it will help to ease the transition away from graphic algorithm creation, and into the C# scripting language. C#, while slightly more difficult than its technical equal, VB, the language can be used in a wide variety of other programs and applications, such as 'Processing and the Arduino micro-controller, which students will have the opportunity to explore should they feel comfortable in those environments. The foundation of the class will be based around three major categories: Mathematical Systems, Agent-Based systems, and simulated Growth. Before covering the base material, a three-week intensive overview of grasshopper will cover nearly everything students will need to know in order to proceed successfully. We will begin basic scripting exercises by duplicating existing grasshopper components and proceed to the advanced categories from there. In the first category, mathematical systems, students will learn how to create and control useful L-Systems like branching, fractals, and generational scaling. We will then move into topological algorithms, in order to learn how to sort and search through the scripted results to quantify their success or failure. Once single codes can be executed relatively successfully, the course will progress into agent-based systems. The topic will be introduced through simple investigations in basic geometrical relationships like circle packing and mesh relaxation. We will then study the behaviors of birds, ants, fish, and termites in order to extract the necessary parameters to mimic their behavior. Building complexity yet again, students will investigate the ways in which one can code growth. This will ultimately lead to an architectural project at the pavilion scale where students will be asked to design a single unit that will mutate and deform itself iteratively in order to achieve explicit performance criteria that have been laid out for them. Students will learn how to use genetic and generative algorithms, (a combination of the previous lessons) to design the building unit and appropriate transformation criteria, and, hopefully, by the end of all of this, each student will have designed a site-adaptable, feasible pavilion without knowing what that pavilion will look like in any given application.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4464 Advanced BIM in Practice

While the adoption of BIM continues to grow across the industry, criticism of its effectiveness as a design tool remains. The foundation of BIM, the creation and management of geometric objects with associated non-geometric data, is often at odds with established methodologies of design. Current practice typically manages this schism by separating design from the use of BIM for documentation and construction. The class will seek to develop methods of design within a BIM environment, not through the translation or reshaping of traditional techniques, but through the design of a methodology that seeks to capitalize on what BIM enables: direct, digital collaboration and the facile management of large data sets. This is not an introductory class. Basic knowledge in Revit (or an alternative BIM software) is required. Skill in other parametric and 3D modeling software as well as a basic knowledge of Grasshopper or other algorithmic processes is strongly preferred. Students will investigate and design digital processes using a short design brief to enable the investigation.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4465 Designing With Grasshopper

The best way to learn how to design with Grasshopper is to use it. Each student will be guided through five different projects incorporating computational design logic throughout. The outputs of this course will be published on Instagram (@wustlhopper) and/or reddit (r/generative). The course will build in complexity as it progresses through Grasshopper methods and plugins. At the end of the course, each student will have completed a 2D patterning project going from Rhino to Illustrator/Photoshop, another 2D patterning project animated in Grasshopper through Photoshop, a 3D patterning project animated in Grasshopper through Photoshop, a simulated interaction using Kangaroo and animated, and a fully rendered looping model incorporating all of the lessons from throughout the course.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4466 Digital Diversions

This course will employ advanced digital computing tools to examine the fabrication and assembly of materials diverted from the construction industry waste stream for new possibilities within design.  While current digital fabrication techniques are commonly used to produce cut sheets and fabrication instructions for the assembly of cousom components, this often results in a large amount of raw material entering the waste stream despite complex nesting (cut sheet configuration) softwares. In addition, the EPA estimates that building-related construction and demolition debris totals approximately 136 million tons per year, accounting for nearly 60 percent of total non-industrial waste gereration in the U.S. Given the scale of materials available and the introduction of powerful, advanced computing techniques, this course will closely consider the construction waste stream as a point of entry for the digital design of highly repetitive assembly systems.  Students will research and develop desigh proposals that minimize the production of waste using standard CNC production techniques or porpose innovative methods to employ digital tools to assemble materials destined for the waste stream.  Students will follow a research trajectory throughout the semester that utilizes one or more of the advanced computing techniques being addressed in the course (scripting and/or parametric modeling) to design a prototypical assembly system that makes "something out of nothing."  

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4467 Expanding Skin

In the 1957 text The Pliable Plane: Textiles in Architecture, Anni Albers wrote, if we think of clothing as a secondary skin we might enlarge on this thought and realize that the enclosure of walls in a way is a third covering, that our habitation is another 'habit'. In this text, Albers proposed the concept of skin as an inhabitable layer, first as a covering for the body and then as an expanded layer of enclosure. This course will explore Albers' concept of a second skin by developing new strategies for constructing complex surfaces at the scale of the human body, particularly in the context of digital fabrication and computational design. Emphasis will be placed on assemblies that yield innovative visual or tactile effects while also engaging specific material performance. How can we design with a focus on performative pattern that can enclose the body and its structural and geometric complexities? How can we conceive of patterns that are not disrupted by these complexities but rather enhanced by them? The course will consist of lectures, readings and seminar discussions, tutorials, iterative material investigations, 3D digital modeling, and digital fabrication. Student projects will focus on the design of inhabitable, layered constructions while engaging constructive techniques from both the fashion and architectural disciplines. Rhino (with Grasshopper), Maya or Z Brush will be utilized for the initial digital investigations. Students will experiment with materials and develop innovative construction methods that engage digital fabrication tools such as the 3D printer, laser cutter, and CNC mill for the production of a second skin in the form of a garment for the human body.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4468 Modern Architecture in Japan

Japan was among the first non-Western countries to emerge as a major center of international modernism. This seminar will examine major movements, events, figures, sites, and other contingencies associated with this historical process. Themes will include national style, technology, architecture and art, tradition and historiography, historic preservation, housing, and institutions of architecture, such as schools, journals, construction industry, and codes and regulations. The seminar will start with the Meiji period when 19th century European architectural styles and construction methods were transplanted into Japan.  We will end the course with the recent past, such as the early careers of Ando and Ito. Students in Architecture should have completed the Architectural History I & II sequence.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4470 The Japanese House

This seminar examines the Japanese House as a modernist idea as it evolved over the course of the 20th century, both within Japan and internationally. The single-family, tofu-cutter house came to define Japan's suburban, industrialized landscape in the postwar era, but the type historically emerged out of a certain modernist imagination of Japan's pre-modern architecture, as architects and critics such as Bruno Taut and Arthur Drexler projected their specific readings of shoin and minka architecture onto a mandate for contemporary practice. The seminar will investigate major strains of domestic architectural design in postwar Japan, paying particular attention to the formalist exercises of Shinohara Kazuo and technology-driven designs of Ikebe Kiyoshi. More contemporary pursuits by SANAA and Atelier Bow-Wow in materiality, transparency, smallness, and urban complexities will also be covered. This course satisfies the History/Theory elective requirement.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4471 Aviation & Architecture: Air Terminal Design and Emergence of AIrport Cities

As seaports and train stations were once hubs of commerce and trade, airports serve as vital engines to today's economy, linking cities and regions to the globalized economic landscape. Surrounding airports, entire cities are emerging both organically and in planned developments, building upon the business related to air travel with office parks, conference centers, hotels, entertainment districts and retail. This seminar will be structured in three parts. In the first part, we will examine the fundamentals of transportation architecture and the way air terminal design has developed. Starting as simple structures on an airfield in the 1920s, airports were designed as heroic modern structures from the 1940s to 1980s, ubiquitous terminals in the 1980s thru early 2000s, and most recently as regionally expressive terminals in the 21st century. Students will research, analyze and present case studies, mapping an understanding of the basic architectural components of air terminal design. In the second part, we will explore the rise of airport cities. Students will work in teams of two to research and analyze the planning, governance, impact and growth of airport cities. Sites we will study include developments around Singapore's Changi, Amsterdam's Schipol, London's Heathrow, Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Chicago's O'Hare. The third part of the seminar will allow students to select a topic of special interest that spans the scale of terminal design and airport cities. Students will initiate independent research to deliver a final paper and presentation on the topic of their choice related to aviation, transportation architecture and planning. Seminars will be supplemented with guest lectures and will be highly conversational. We will explore opportunities for site visits to both airports and airport cities.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GACS

ARCH 4472 Art and Architecture

From Ancient Greece to the Renaissance, architecture, painting, and sculpture were regarded as the principal fine arts. In later years, the visual arts were relegated to a separate sphere, independent from buildings and removed from the expediencies of use; however, these positions are perennially contested. How have the distinct positions of art and architecture in private and public spaces been articulated -- and unmade and reworked -- around imperatives such as education, economy, equity, or environment? When has the tension between art and architecture been a problem or a source of inspiration and origin of form? This seminar looks at selected models and the situations, ideologies, and concerns that attended or motivated them. Examples will be drawn from Ancient and Classical periods to the present.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GARW

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4474 Dubois Meets Churchill: Social Justice & the Built Environment

Winston Churchill famously stated, We shape our buildings and afterwards, our buildings shape us. W.E.B. DuBois equally famously stated, The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. This course is about what happens (and has happened, and perhaps could happen) at the intersection of those two quotes. With the built environment always in the middle of the table, but never in isolation, students in this course will consider its role relative to social justice as viewed through a multitude of lenses. Schedules permitting, faculty from other schools in the university might also offer their perspectives on how their respective disciplines touch on issues of social justice and the built environment. There might also be field trips to a few selected locations around St. Louis where some of these issues have played out or are playing out. This course will deal with many of the issues that the fall course, Community Building/Building Community, deals with, but in a lecture format. This is partly the result of weather constraints (the Spring semester is not as amenable to extensive field trips as the Fall semester is), but it will also allow students who can only take a Spring course to do so, and in a more traditional lecture format, without as many tours and without the community service requirement.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4475 Community Design Sprints

In this course, students will provide scoping, phasing, programming, and conceptual design for small-scale yet pressing St. Louis needs through selected projects for community members and small organizations. Students will work directly with a local organization over 7 weeks in to clarify and move forward a community project; students will learn community engagement, facilitation, and communication skills, as well as practicing research, representation, and design skills.

Credit 1.5 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4476 Way Beyond Bigness...or Towards a Watershed Architecture

2015 marked the 10- and 20- year anniversaries of two seminal events that have challenged architects' relationships to large scale, complex societal issues: 1) the publishing of the S,M,L, XL in October 1995 that featured Rem Koolhaas' manifesto of Bigness; and, 2) the landfall of Hurricane Katrina just outside of New Orleans in August 2005 that catapulted fields of design into an unprecedented post-disaster context. Students will reconcile these two disciplinary jolts by understanding these seemingly incongruous snapshots of history as jumping off points for new modes for architectural activism and opportunism. Students will design a manifesto, in newspaper format, for a future-based discipline of architecture that sails uncharted realms that are Way Beyond Bigness. This will require the simultaneous submersion and assertion of architecture within other disciplines; the formulation of alternate modes of representations for emerging practice-based models; the blurring of academic and professional agendas in the urgency of activism; and, the integration of multiple scales, interest groups and agendas in ridiculously complex and antagonistic situations. Underpinning Bigness and Hurricane Katrina will be additional case studies, guest lectures and field trips that cover: CIAM and the emergence of urban design; Koolhaas' thesis and OMA's early practice; mega-scale urban renewal projects in St. Louis; contemporary investigations into territorial scales of design; and, multiple scales of contemporary, integrated Water-based designs, post-Katrina efforts and beyond. This course fulfills the History/Theory Case Studies elective requirement.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GACS

ARCH 4477 Segregation By Design: A Historical Analysis of the Impact of Planning and Policy in St. Louis

This course aims to examine the causes and consequences of American Apartheid and racial residential segregation in metropolitan St. Louis and propose a report that suggests potential mitigation strategies for a given community. This transdisciplinary seminar, bridging humanities and architecture, introduces students to research, theories, and debates currently being conducted on issues of segregation, city planning, urban policy, and sustainability . By placing these debates in a historical and local context, students will discover how policy and decision-making are entrenched in racial, cultural, physical, and socio-economic segregation and engender the spatial transformation of America's divided cities. Students will learn to evaluate and analyze policy and planning throughout the history of the neighborhood to ultimately understand the physical manifestation of segregation during growth and decline. Taking advantage of the academic resources in the region, the course offers a cross-university, cross-disciplinary environment to respond to the importance of this issue. Student teams develop mitigation plans for selected communities in the St. Louis metropolitan region. The teams will be assisted by volunteer professional mentors from diverse fields and residents from the selected communities. The final product of the student teams will be a book that will be a compilation of the work of the students in detailing the history of the communities, causes, and consequences of segregation, as well as potential policy and design strategies.

Credit 3 units. Arch: CAST, GACS Art: CPSC EN: S

ARCH 4478 Radical Mapping

Maps are instruments of power. We have seen this, for example, in the racially-motivated 'redlined' maps that legitimized urban clearings of entire neighborhoods in American cities in the 1930s. But maps are also instruments of resistance, for visualizing lived experiences and critiquing political systems and relationships of power. Maps are tools for re-writing dominant narratives and spatializing truths. Maps stage new design possibilities. This class will introduce students to the agency and potential of maps and mapping, a skillset all designers need in the face of our current moment of social and environmental justice collapse-a moment that has long been occurring. The course will cover interdisciplinary theories of mapping; critical cartography; American sub/urbanism; issues of race and place; and techniques of visualization. Students will build a radical 'atlas of spatial politics' centered on selected themes, focused on a common American first ring suburban site-either Ferguson, MO, or Kenosha, WI or similar. There are no formal pre-requisites for the class, but knowledge of Adobe Illustrator and In Design are a must. Students will initially work with GIS ArcMap/ArcPro, a geospatial software-provided free, alongside an introductory tutorial and troubleshooting session/s with the WashU Geospatial Library analysts.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GAMUD, GAUI Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4479 Information Modeling for Sustainable Design

This course will focus on the principles of sustainable design as examined through Building Performance Analysis (BPA) and applied Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology. The foundation for this course will be an introduction to BIM and BPA and the significance of both for the future of sustainable architectural design practice supported by analytical modeling. This emphasis on the suitability of building modeling for analytical purposes and on the interpretation of such data will provide the basic knowledge necessary for the second phase of this course, in which students will use a previous or current studio project for an in-depth study of their building's performance in the context of its chosen site. Exploring the interaction between the simulated environment (climate, isolation) and the virtual building with its physical characteristics (materials, assemblies, passive design strategies, heat transfer, daylighting, embedded energy), we will attempt to confirm and test the principles of sustainable design at the schematic level of project development. The model analyzed by each team will provide sufficient comparative information for a design approach whose desired goal is carbon neutrality in the lifecycle of the building. Students will be encouraged to investigate the suitability of analytical modeling software, in the context of critical design methodology. Prerequisites for this course are a basic understanding of BIM methodology and insight into sustainable design practices. Fulfills Digital elective requirement.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4480 Articulating an Idea

Architecture has always related to other practices: painting, scenography and theater in the  Renaissance, photography and film in the modernist era. Techniques of representation such as drawings, model-making, photography, cinematography or videography, etc. allow for different modes of interpretation, production and communication of architecture. Other systems that are not visual, such as music and literature, are transposed into architectural form through the different mechanisms at play in the process of representation (such as metaphors) in a purely symbolic manner. Architecture often operates metaphorically, trying to emulate other fields, in particular philosophy and science.  In this case, architectural representation (through experimentation in drawings and other media) works as a shifter that allows codes of one system -- science, geometry, mathematics or physics -- to be switched to another, culture, painting or architecture. While new vocabularies are developed in this process generating stylistic changes, the mechanism or production and communication of ideas remains untouched. Most of the time more than one tool is required to illustrate an architectural idea thoroughly. To articulate this seminar, we will research five of these tools:  Sketch (DaVinci, Siza, Luchini, Holl); Photomontage (Picasso, Miralles, Hockney, OMA); Diagrams/maps/notations (Tschumi, Big, Allen, OMA); Iconography (Venturi, FOA, Diller Scofidio, Holl); and Animation/parametric (Shop, Andrasek, Asymptote, Lynn). The sequence of research shall proceed as a series of focused exercises designed to build the student's knowledge in a cumulative fashion.  As a final exercise of this seminar, students will be asked to articulate the idea of their current project to create a strong link between this seminar and the studio work.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4481 Pattern Recognition

Interrogates a recent history of architecture replete with pattern. Case studies of patterning in contemporary projects will be undertaken through the production of analytical, computational models to reveal an underlying logic of performance and construction. In parallel, the course will present a theoretical survey of related issues in art, psychology, computation, and ecology. In this context, pattern will be understood as a performative expression of an ecological system, distinct from historical issues of ornament and representations. Informed by the analysis, students will then digitally produce an original pattern, both graphically operative and spatially materialized.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4482 Constructing Ideas

Constructing Ideas is about creating design concepts and transforming these into built architecture. We will learn how conscious imagination and coherent interventions lead us to ideal realities. This class examines the design and construction process as academic research. We consider the practice of making architecture as a synthesis of analysis, interpretation and transformation. Studies will teach us how a building idea influences its construction and how the knowledge about construction can become the starting-point of an idea. Interrogating design problems and investigating existing typologies as a methodology will lead us to specific answers. We will explore conceptual-artist practices and examine their strategies, learning to lead with intent, play with parameters and question the givens. From there, we will look at examples of Swiss Architecture whose early integration of construction in the design process has a long tradition. One could say, that the bearing itself gets designed in Switzerland. We will consider invisible structures and material specificity. Learning this language gives us the ability to transform our ideas into specific architectural expressions and precisely tailored solutions. The form of the seminar is experimental. We consider our meetings to be spatial and contextual interventions, precisely designed like architecture. Sessions will vary, from a lecture to an exhibition, talks, a dinner- the goal is to be very conscious about what we are doing. This process is going to be documented through the whole semester. Each student will create his own design thesis and realize an installation that reflects it. The results will be exhibited and presented to the public.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4483 Design Strategies for Energy Efficiency

High-performance, zero-energy buildings are an integral part of addressing climate change, pollution, social inequality, and other urgent contemporary issues due to the outsized impact the built environment has on global energy use. The course will allow students an opportunity to learn the technical skills required to design highly efficient buildings using energy modeling and simulations. The energy impact of the building's orientation, thermal envelope, fenestration, shading, air sealing, thermal bridging, thermal mass, ground contact, natural ventilation, and mechanical systems will be examined. Emphasis will be placed on cost, performance, sustainability, renewable energy, and the professional designer's role in efficient buildings. The course concludes with each student completing a cumulative project which encompasses a whole building approach to energy efficient design. Each of these projects will be specific to the individual student and focused on the energy efficiency design principles which relate to the type of building, occupancy, climate, and design aesthetics of the project. Students will need to exhibit mastery of the concepts and techniques used throughout the semester in order to synthesize the existing constraints with energy efficiency, sustainability, and design excellence.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4484 Invisible Cities

This graduate and advanced undergraduate seminar takes as a point of departure the famous 1972 Italo Calvino text that reframes a single city (Venice) as multiple cities, told through a sequence of discrete narratives and descriptions. Each of Calvino's Invisible 'cities' reflect different emotional and physical environments and possibilities-or impossibilities-for their inhabitants, yet are all still connected through an overarching narrative. Invisible\Cities, the course, builds on this premise that a city is not a one-size-fits-all experience (nor a monolithic construct with a uniform constituency), but instead is comprised of radically different environments all selectively accessed, depending on one's positionality or relationship to urban redevelopment processes. In places like St. Louis-but in fact in all American cities-residents live out different urban realities or imaginaries, with unequal access to the same services, provisions and processes. A highly visible instance of this occurs along Delmar Blvd in St. Louis where two contrasting lived experiences play out in neighborhoods across from each other on the north-south divide. However, this class posits that much less visible instances of the duplicitous city also exist, in spaces not geographically divided, but (more insidiously) overlaid. The course will focus on this conceptualization of inequality where both privileged and underserved populations co-exist in much more intertwined ways. Within any given block, neighbors live according to different opportunities, for education, health access, police services, or routes to property acquisition and financing. These are the invisible, spatially simultaneous cities; the urban realities that are much harder to see-at least to those who do not live those realities on a day-to-day basis. Like in Calvino's world, urban and lived space is endlessly continuous and accessible for some; for others it is fragmented, even disorienting or opaque. This course will examine, frame, collect and document the various manifestations of invisibility together with the political instruments and policies that produce-and reproduce-it. We will use the St. Louis region as our primary focus, with comparisons to other sites. Our studies will involve a close re/reading of many of the mechanisms of daily governance and urban design such as policies, planning tools, legal, financial and real estate protocols and of course design decisions and processes; ie the apparatuses of urban redevelopment that exist right before our eyes. The seminar welcomes both graduate students and advanced undergraduate students from across disciplines. Support for Invisible\Cities is provided by the Washington University in St. Louis Ferguson Academic Seed Grant Program granted through the Offices of the Chancellor and Provost and the Olin Business School. Fulfills Urban Issues and MUD Track elective requirement.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GAMUD, GAUI

ARCH 4485 City Life and Urban Worlds: An Introduction to the Urban Humanities

The urban humanities is an inter-/anti-disciplinary project that brings together theory, practice, and methods from fields in architecture, urban design, and the humanities to interrogate the urban condition. In this core course, we will delve into key theorists, texts, and methods that inform the urban humanities through seminars, site visits, and design projects. We will debate emerging perspectives in critical urban theory and then explore the applicability of these positions in St. Louis through mapping, street ethnography, and subtraction. In addition, this seminar is designed to introduce urban scholars from across the humanities and design fields to each other. Participants will be encouraged to experiment, trade, and engage in dialogue across their fields. What, we will ask, is the status of the urban commons in an era of enclosures and privatization? What can postapocalyptic cyberpunk from Lagos teach us about smart cities? How do built environments get their politics? Can these politics be redirected or subverted?

Credit 3 units. Arch: GAMUD, GAUI Art: CPSC

ARCH 4486 Architecture and Photography

Seminar that deals with issues raised by use of photography by architects, historians, and critics. Seminar will confront the assumption that our knowledge of notable buildings and architectural space is based primarily on the photographic image. Photographs are tacitly accepted as objective facts, and the pervasiveness of photography in magazines, books, and exhibits as substitute for direct experiences are rarely questioned. Goal of seminar: to foster a healthy skepticism of photographs, and to investigate the role of photography as a means of record and convey complex spatial conditions by the ordering conventions of the frame. While not technical, the course will introduce students to technical aspects of photography that are particularly relevant to architectural photography: parallax, lighting, lens distortion, depth of field, format and grain, cropping, photomontage, and point of view. Fulfills History/Theory requirement.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4487 Art, Design, and Entrepreneurship: Creative Placemaking Beyond the City

This course invites students from diverse areas of interest to engage with the cultural landscape of Marion County and Hannibal, Missouri - a region that, through the work of Mark Twain, popularly epitomizes both rural life and the allure of the Mississippi River. While a quarter of a million tourists visit this area each year to follow in Tom Sawyer's footsteps, the work of local artists, designers, and entrepreneurs are innovating the narrative of this place and opening up room for consideration of African-American experience, local food systems, and the complex series of social and economic connections within life along the Mississippi. This course puts that spirit of collaboration and imagination in the hands of students, challenging them to think beyond the borders of their disciplines to create projects that present new connections between place, community, and culture to both rural and urban audiences. The National Endowment for the Arts defines creative placemaking as an opportunity when public, private, not-for-profit, and community sectors partner to strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, tribe, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Through fieldwork, research, and idea-creation, students will collaborate with mentors on the ground to create locally appropriate projects that address questions of culture and design in the region. Occasional off-campus visits will be joined in the classroom to a wide range of readings, case studies and webstreamed conversations with national leaders across fields. The course will conclude with small teams designing a specific plan, event, or project that could later be implemented in the community.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4488 Disappearing Act

What does erasure make, and how might we reconstitute what has been lost? This seminar will explore the architecture of ghosts: things thought to be lost or destroyed, or which can no longer be accessed. This representation-forward class will test a range of drawing and making techniques in various media and scale to foster a dialog about what drawing misses and the presences and absences of the built environment. We will frame our work and ideas in architectural discourses of subtraction, palimpsest, and productive removal. Our work will capture the dynamism and logic of the built environment.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4489 Appraising the Opaque: Studies of Architectural Opacity

From the early decades of the 20th Century, transparency has been a critical concept in the theorization and practice of modern architecture. Transparency's other -- opacity -- was typically associated with the past, specifically the Beaux-Arts tradition, and was shunned by the avant-garde.  Lacking apologists, opacity went unrecognized and unrewarded. However, the weight of opacity can clearly be felt in many canonical examples of twentieth-century architecture:  Wright's Ennis House (1924), Le Corbusier's Notre-Dame du Haut (1956), and Kahn's Trenton Bath House (1959), to name a few.  Likewise, today's renewed interest in transparency runs in parallel with explorations in opacity such as OMA's Casa da musica (2004), Zumthor's Brother Claus Field Chapel (2007), and Herzog & de Meuron's Caixa Forum (2008).  This seminar will assess the role of opacity in modernist discourses, and will explore its relevance to contemporary architectural practice. Students will gain an art historical understanding of opacity in the conception and realization of architectural works, and delve specifically into the tectonic and sustainable aspects of opacity.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4490 On the Thresholds of Space Making: Contemporary Japanese Architecture

This seminar is offered in preparation for the exhibition, On the Thresholds of Space Making: Installation Art by Young Japanese Architects, to be held at the Kemper Art Museum in Spring, 2014. With contemporary architecture being bombarded with an ever more daunting array of formal, social, technological, and environmental exigencies, the seminar and exhibition will revisit a series of core artistic and representational issues of architectural design through installations by a new generation of Japanese architects. Kshigami Junya, Nakamura Ryuji, Nakayama Hideyuki, and Kikuchi Hiroshi represent a highly energized and promising collective of young creative talent pushing the frontiers of architectural design, unrivaled in contemporary global practice in their intellectual rigor and stylistic coherence. This collective evolved out of Japan's avant-garde architectural culture of the 1970s, spearheaded by Toyo Ito, who synthesized two opposing ideals of architectural design of the previous generation, represented by Shinohara Kazuo and Kikutake Kiyonori. The seminar will trace the genealogy of this collective from Shinohara and Kikutake in the 1960s, Ito in the 1980s to 90s, and SANAA in the recent past. Fulfills History/Theory elective requirement.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4491 Edges of Privacy

In collective housing, interactions between neighbors occur in often tight spaces of shared access. In hallways, walkways, stairs, and landings, proximity to the private spaces of the dwelling is extreme. Many architects have been experimenting with open-walkway access type in collective housing beyond an economical means of circulation. Buildings that use open-walkways-which in colder climates can be glazed-often provide energy savings, as they allow for the cross-ventilation of units and can serve as climatic buffers and passive heat sources. Additionally, these spaces offer potential scenarios of both conviviality and conflict, a contrasting condition to be reconciled through design to create housing for diverse groups of people. In this seminar, students will explore selected historic and contemporary housing examples with open access walkways-both successes and failures- in Europe and Latin America. Through lectures, research, analysis, discussions, and rigorous redrawing of selected buildings, students will examine-organizationally, spatially, and socially- the modes of interaction afforded by design and the potential for this access type. The seminar is part of the ongoing research project Edges of Privacy. Open Access Walkways in Collective Housing and the work may result in a publication and exhibition. It is open to undergraduate juniors and seniors and graduate students who have completed the core sequence.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4492 Continuity and Transformation

Throughout history and across cultures, certain ideas, concepts and organizational strategies have persisted in architecture, despite advances in social ideals and technological capabilities. The seminar explores the phenomenon of this continuity with the goal of uncovering the manner in which these ideas and strategies are transformed. Whether classified by use, characteristic form, or compositional device, the continuity of these notions is clearly traceable as a body of knowledge waiting to be revealed, understood, assessed and, when valid, built upon. The transformation of ideas and strategies is one of the most fundamental activities of the designer, but relies on careful study. We will discover evidence of this phenomenon in vernacular architecture, patterns of settlement and habitation, and in the work on many of our most influential practitioners, such as Le Corbusier, Kahn, Moneo, and Zumthor, as well as in the realm of painting and sculpture including Cubism, Suprematism, and Expressionism.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4493 Landscapes Through Time: The History of St. Louis' Built Environment

From the Mississippian mound builders to the urban conditions of the present day, this course will investigate the different approaches of various cultures to creating built environments that meet the needs of their time in terms of landscapes and structures. Using the City of St. Louis as an example, the course will examine the layout and infrastructure of the city at various periods, discussing the effects of technological changes in the creation of structures, improvements to transportation, facilitation of trade and the effects of these forces on the cultural and built landscape of the city. The course will also trace the history of inequity within the city and the imposition of racial apartheid. Each class session will discuss the structures and landscapes that defined individual eras in the history of the city, and the ways in which these were successful or unsuccessful. This course fulfills the History/Theory Case Studies elective requirement. Requirements will include a mid-term paper, two in-class reports and a final paper.

Credit 3 units. Arch: CAST, GACS

ARCH 4495 Mid-Century Modernism in St. Louis 1930-1965

St. Louis is home to many significant architectural works of Mid-Century Modernism, design by local, national, and international architects of great repute. One of the most powerful ways  to understand and appreciate architecture is to experience it firsthand. In this course, we will tour significant extant works after brief presentations of the design architect's work by the course lecturers or visiting lecturers.  In addition to site visits, the course will involve architects and historians (to the greatest extent possible) who have firsthand knowledge and experiences of Mid-Century Modernism of St. Louis through lectures and site visits, culminating in a round table discussion with the class able to ask questions after a semester of exploration, discovery and focused investigation. Each week, students will document their observations of each site visit through writing, photography, sketching, diagramming concepts, and additional research of the architecture, architect or historical context. A private blog site will be created to post information and assignments so that all in the class may read and contribute to the body of research being developed. Also, each student will be expected to research a topic of their choice from a list of 20 or so buildings selected by the instructors. This semester project will culminate in a thirty-minute class presentation and subsequent discussion. Ultimately, the weekly and semester projects will be documented in an 8.5" x 11' format to be incorporated into a booklet documenting the student's cumulative efforts.  

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4496 Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s-70s

This seminar will examine postwar modern art and architecture in St. Louis within the changing design and social contexts of the postwar era, which included massive spatial and racial transformations. Using artworks, photographs, films, and architectural drawings and models, this course will bring together design and social documentation to understand this remarkable creative and conflicted period in St. Louis's history. Michael Willis, FAIA, will also give several lectures and lead two tours. Students will present selected readings and pursue individual research projects for this course.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GARW, RW Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4501 NOMA National Design Competition

The NOMA Student Design Competition Seminar will allow students to work collaboratively on the annual Barbara G. Laurie national design challenge. The students will have an opportunity to research the prompt, gather physical geographic, neighborhood context, and demographic data. They will also work together in developing an exhibition and other related digital graphics. The seminar is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Credit 3 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4502 American Architectural Culture Since 1945

This seminar focuses on new ways of thinking about American architecture in the postwar period, to develop new conceptual frameworks to better understand American architecture in the postwar years in its larger context of social, political, and urbanistic change. Unlike a history survey course, it will not only focus on the canonical works of well-known designers such as Mies van der Rohe or Louis Kahn, but will also situate such work within the various new spatial, technological and social directions of the postwar era. It will begin by examining how American architecture changed from the neo-classical and arts and crafts inspired directions of the prewar years into the more fragmented and complex situation after 1945. This course will also consider the complicated ways that American cities in that period were transformed from dense, street-car based industrial environments into sprawling suburban metro areas, typically also becoming racially divided in this process. It will also look at some of the complexities within modern architecture itself, some of which developed directly into post-modenism. These included important innovations in spatial organization, environmental planning, and new building technologies, as well as fundamental changes in landscape design, campus design and public school design which have since become part of mainstream practice. Improtan changes in building technology in this era, which have also tended to be undervalued in the shadow of later concerns about building imagery, will also be addressed.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4503 Architecture Service Learning Practicum

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, College of Architecture, and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, is giving a problem-solving studio workshop about architecture, community, and the environment. Fourth through tenth grade students from schools in the St. Louis Public School District will do 2D and 3D hands-on problem-solving projects, use the libraries and computer labs on campus, and be introduced to the field of architecture through lectures and discussions about design projects they will undertake. Washington University graduate and undergraduate students in architecture will participate in the important responsibility of being teaching assistants.

Credit 1 unit.

ARCH 4504 Explore & Contribute: Collaboration Between Washington University & Henry Elementary School

A major goal is to have elementary school students explore sustainable ways to live during the 21st. century. To this end, we will offer students curriculum ideas which will emphasize ecological sustainability, environmental health, personal responsibility, leadership, and a high-quality academic program. We will place emphasis on the environmental sciences, energy alternatives and conservation, recycling, organic gardening and the food sciences, and the emerging green economy. We will work to help the students improve their math, science, writing, and hands-on skills - using the range of topics about sustainable living as the vehicle. This course invites both undergraduate and graduate students from different fields of study to apply their discipline to the goal of designing and teaching hands-on problem -solving projects for elementary students. Gay Lorberbaum, with advising from administrators at the elementary school, will work individually with each WU student and each WU team to develop the right fit between the creative contribution each WU student will offer and the range of emotional and intellectual needs of the elementary school students. WU students enrolled in this course will work on-site at the elementary school during the scheduled weekly meeting times.

Credit 3 units. Art: CPSC

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4505 In\visible St. Louis: People, Place, and Power in the Divided City

This course approaches the study of segregation and inequality in St. Louis as deeply relational and contextual -- that is, embedded in a particular space and place and constituted through social-political relations. Students will be immersed in the history, theory and contemporary academic debates surrounding inequality, segregation, and social justice initiatives in urban cities across the United States. The course pairs this theoretical base (conceiving of segregation as multifaceted and durable, historical, spatial, and interpersonal) with intensive research experiences drawing on the methodological tools available across sociology, urban design, and architecture (archival research, data collection, mapping, diagramming, interviewing, field observation). Students will initiate collaborative research projects aligning with the needs of local organizations that serve the city's historically disadvantaged populations. Local guest speakers (scholars, community leaders, residents) will enhance students' classroom learning, as will site visits and other discussion formats. This interdisciplinary course bridges the Department of Sociology and the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, a collaboration supported by The Divided City initiative.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: SSC, SC BU: BA EN: S

ARCH 4506 Mixed-Reality Fabrication

The translation from digital design to physical construction has long presented challenges and opportunities for architects, engineers, technologists, fabricators and contractors. Mixed-reality is a process of overlaying virtual objects in real-world space. Wearing a HoloLens or similar assists construction workers to accurately locate the correct parts where they are needed. In lieu of using robotics, humans are already quite adaptable for different types of construction and mixed-reality enhances their skill and precision. While accuracy and efficiency are benefits to the contractor, the benefit to architects is allowing for non-standardization to be more easily incorporated in the design. The course will explore the use of mixed reality in half-scale to full-scale fabrication prototypes to understand its challenges and benefits.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4507 Fields and Frames

The 3D printer is widely known for its ability to produce models with endless variation and customization, and its output is typically characterized as precise, fixed, and immaterial. However, when combined with clay, a soft, visceral material that slumps and oozes when extruded and layered, the 3D printer's tectonic language becomes highly idiosyncratic. This course will investigate the use of ceramic 3D printing for a collaborative temporary public artwork with a community partner. During the seminar, students will use Potterbot ceramic printers to explore 3D printing with clay in tandem with an investigation of the architectural frame that structures the artwork. With new materials and digital fabrication technology, we have the potential to rethink the relationship between structure and frame. Students in the course will engage in a rigorous workflow focusing on the relationship between designer, tool, material, and frame. Over the course of the semester, students will engage in a series of assignments and tutorials intended to create a strong understanding of the methods for robotic deposition and working with clay while also challenging the prominence of precision and control associated with digital fabrication technology. Central to the class discourse will be the exploration of the relationship between the highly articulated frame and the field of ceramic components, focusing on notions of authorship, precision/imprecision, loose fit, scale, and tolerance. Additional coursework will include drying and firing clay components, post-printing physical manipulation, staining and glazing techniques, clay body research, and full-scale prototyping. Proficiency in Rhino is a requirement for the course.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4508 Aesthetic Subcultures: Identity, Values, and Architecture

Aesthetics is about belonging. Visual codes or styles express cultural identities and values, and they can be used to create a sense of exclusivity, separating those who get it from those who do not. For some subcultures - like punk and hip-hop - being difficult to decipher has served the goal of creating an identity in opposition to a complacent or oppressive mainstream. Some aesthetic movements - like avant-garde modernism and afrofuturism - have sought to offer visions of a better world and glimpses of how this world might be designed. This course asks: What are the aesthetic subcultures that drive architectural production today? Where did they come from? What are their motivations and how are these expressed? The underlying premise throughout the semester will be the idea that subcultures construct their own cultural spheres around shared experiences - for instance, an experience of violence that demands social justice or an environmental crisis that demands a different relationship with ecological systems. To decode the meanings and motivations behind any unique style of architecture, we need first to understand how it is situated within a historically-specific social, economic, and political system. In the modern western world, consumerism and the fashion system have been key. The first part of the course begins with the architectural consequences of the consumer revolution in 18th century England before exploring the mass production of cultural objects in the 19th century, visionary modernist movements, and the cultural fragmentation of postmodernism. The second part of the course focuses on contemporary aesthetic subcultures in architecture that have formed around new technologies, protest and justice movements, explorations of new forms of collectivity, and other phenomena. Case studies in architecture will be presented alongside key theoretical texts. Assignments will ask students decode a selected aesthetic subculture through writing as well as speculative design.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GARW, RW

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4509 Towards Common Ground

Given that free market interests and extraction dominate contemporary urbanization, this class will explore socio-spatial configurations towards commoning that are surfacing within today's urban reality. With this in mind, you are invited to explore opportunities towards a common ground via the creation of a game. The debate on urban commons and commoning has grown exponentially in the twenty-first century. We are confronted with a significant amount of literature on commons, commoning, and the common, while the contemporary urban world is dominated by socio-economic disparities, privatization, inadequate resource distribution, and excessive resource extraction. As these forces and challenges unfold, the urge of urban inhabitants to collectively come together is on the rise. We generally see commoning as a base for collaboration and solidarity. Commoning, however, is a complex process as it relates to sharing knowledge and resources, and with regard to conflict and power struggles. Commoning in this context is an act of collective self-regulation and of self-awareness, as the sharing of resources, knowledge, and power create constantly changing rules for commoning and Commoners alike. As the philosopher Jacques Rancière reminds us, flourishing processes of commoning need both narrators and translators. Together, they enable commoning; they help facilitate the connection between people to enable new spatial configurations and stories to unfold. This course organized through two main principal agendas that are intertwined with one another -(re)search analysis and the development of a game revolving around the idea of commoning. The final product of this course will conclude with a play/presentation of the game you develop.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GAUI

ARCH 4510 Under the Scramble Suit

Materiality points to the whirling complexity and entanglement of diverse factors in the digital (and post-digital) age, in which material, which like sound or language can now also be something that is not physical, is an effect of an ongoing performance. By surveying the pseudo-archeology of the term materiality, from the specificity discussions to post-medium conditions, we investigate a material and environmental turn in the media studies and visual culture. We explore the way media mediate materials and a possibility for the media to be understood as environments in an age where the collapse of realism is already widespread through the visual discourse.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4512 Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s-1970s and Beyond

This seminar, offered parallel to the current exhibition at the Kemper Museum, will examine postwar modern art and architecture in St. Louis within the changing design and social contexts of the postwar era, which included massive spatial and racial transformations in this region. Using site visits, potographs, films, architectural drawings and models, and guest lectures, the seminar will bring together design and social documentation to understand this remarkable creative and conflicted period in St. Louis's history. Students will present selected readings and pursue individual research projects for this course.

Credit 3 units. Arch: GARW, RW

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4513 Immeasurably Small and Inconceivably Immense

The path one takes when 'following the materials' is not a linear one. Rather, one encounters complex and anachronistic layers, incorporating references that point beyond canonical boundaries. This course is the second installment of the media and materiality seminar. In addition to mapping the genealogy of the formation of materiality as a concept, this course brings up notions of matters and materials, dematerialization, immateriality, intermateriality, transmateriality, and material in-formation in contemporary media studies. We will continue our investigations of way that media mediate material relations and explores possibilities for the media to be understood as varied environments. The course format consists mainly of small lecture sessions and active reading discussions which are moderated by the faculty but led by the students. In addition, there is a semester long and hand on materiality in-formation project. Through this project, we will utilize visualization and 3D projection mapping to bring focus on the moments when materials leave behind the confines of their conventional roles and become willful actors to engage the audience with layers of critical fabulation about potential futures of eroded pasts, roads not taken, and stories untold.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4514 Encountering the Otherwise

The real is saturated with the spaces of projection, possibility, and the new that we now designate as virtual in order to keep them contained behind the glassy smoothness of the computer screen. The virtual reality of computer space is fundamentally no different from the virtual reality of writing, reading, drawing, or even thinking: the virtual is the space of emergence of the new, the unthought, the unrealized, which at every moment loads the presence of the present with supplementarily, redoubling a world through parallel universes, universes that might have been. Elizabeth A. Grosz Focused on Media and Materiality, we will be mapping the genealogy of the formation of materiality as a concept and will investigate ways that media mediate material relations. Heavy emphasis is given to possibilities for the media to be understood as varied environments. The course format consists mainly of small lecture sessions and active reading discussions which are moderated by the faculty but led by the students. There is a semester-long hands-on project. Through this project, we will utilize visualization and 3D projection mapping to bring focus on the moments when material relations point to incorporeal environments.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4516 Decon & Recon: Design a Pavilion to Demonstrate Circular Economy in Architectural Design

A genuinely circular architectural design requires the Reuse of the salvaged materials from Deconstructed buildings (DeCon) at their highest quality in new Construction (ReCon). Team WashU will explore the opportunity to design and build a unique pavilion, about 50-200 square feet, at Forest Park or the Botanical Garden based on a fully circular economy concept using various harvested materials in St. Louis. The pavilion will present innovative architectural solutions for salvaged building materials, demonstrate their possibilities, and give the material a new life in the new structure. The pavilion will be wooden, light-gaged steel, or a combination skeleton strapped with steel connectors. The students will investigate a new approach to easily reversible component connections in the pavilion without needing nails or glue. In this way, Team WashU will tackle global challenges, such as climate change, linked to the meaningful social justice transition.

Credit 3 units.

ARCH 4519 Urban Mining in Architectural Design

Urban Mining, encompassing deconstruction, salvage, and reuse, aims to recover materials and components from existing old buildings to repurpose them in new construction, which can significantly reduce embodied energy and carbon footprints while creating new forms. Design for Urban Mining (DfUM) presents a new paradigm for architectural design for sustainability. In Spring 2025, team WashU will investigate DfUM concepts, methods, and processes by experimenting with (1) design with salvaged material for future construction, (2) design with the concept of future deconstruction, (3) showcasing urban mining innovations through an experimental living unit, potentially contribute to, Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 2025). Students will use design/build as a vehicle to study how architectural design deals with resources from the city and how it can create attractive architectural forms. The course will include literature review of the state of the arts, and the research may be transformed into a formal journal or conference publication.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4520 Grounds for Play

How can we provide for the possibility of public space to become a ground for social interaction - a ground for participation to contribute towards the idea of collective play? Exploring the intersection of art making and play, this course will experiment with the design of a playful and non-conventional obstacle course that embraces participatory imagination and collaboration for children between the ages of 6 to 11. With this in mind, we will develop a kit of parts that will allow for collaboration, inventive thinking, and interconnective activities among children. We will create interactive devices, made of shapes and forms that allow for the adaption and transformation of the obstacle course. This will allow for a site-specific sequencing of the obstacle course. It is encouraged you bring curiosity, playfulness, and knowledge of digital design software (such as Rhino, SketchUp, and illustrator) to the course. In addition, it would be helpful if you are familiar with the fabrication-shop at the Sam Fox School as the final product will be a 1:1 scale obstacle course you will build as a team. Each team member will develop one part of obstacle course, contributing to the greater assemblage. We will test the obstacle court at the end of the semester with invited guests from a nearby elementary school. Note: This course meets every other week for the length of the semester.

Credit 1.5 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4521 Pathways: A Collaboration With Sumner High School

Students will work as mentors to collaborate and undertake a co-designed installation project with the students in the Sumner High School Studio Lab in the Ville. In the course, students will hone their architectural expertise to develop strategies to connect design pedagogy to a high school learning environment through peer-to-peer learning. The class will consider how we can extend the knowledge of our discipline to community engagement, creating pathways for architectural education. Together with the students from Sumner, Wash U students will explore an architectural project focused on digital fabrication, pattern, and color that engages historic and contemporary compositions of the Ville neighborhood. The specific co-designed project will engage themes of temporality and permanence, cultural memory and projected futures while looking to the Sumner School and Ville community history to envision a new architectural imaginary. This course will be held in the Sumner Studiolab.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

ARCH 4710 Special Topics

Special Topics electives vary each semester.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

ARCH 4810 Independent Study

Prerequisite: Sponsorship by an instructor and permission of the Dean of the School of Architecture. Credit: to be determined in each case. Maximum credit 3 units.

Credit 5 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ARCH 4811 Independent Study

Prerequisite: Sponsorship by an instructor and permission of the Dean of the School of Architecture. Credit: to be determined in each case. Maximum 3 units.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

LANDARCH 2040 Shared Ecologies and Design

This interdisciplinary course will introduce biological, social and cultural ecology concepts to proactively address current stressors that impact and are being impacted by design and the built environment. These effects and affects range from (but are not limited to) climate change science; racial and social justice impacts; sustainability, resiliency and adaptation-design strategies; systems-based and multi-scalar understandings; and interrelational human and non-human environments bound in both acting and being acted upon locally and globally.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring