Elective Courses available:

ARCH4020.01 Bedford Seminar: Advanced Building Structures (Civil)

This interdisciplinary seminar consists of students from both the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering department. Presentation of a variety of structural typologies bears direct relation to practical experience and the necessity for constructive interdisciplinary discourse. Specific structural typologies are examined through historic and contemporary project examples that are critically deconstructed and critically analyzed with respect to their basic engineering principles and architectural concepts. Students will be exposed to the collaborative methods inherent within the architect/engineer relationship. The course consists of lectures concerning each topic, case studies and presentations of relevant projects, an interdisciplinary design project and discussion of the projects and presentations with respect to interdisciplinary discourse. Content and delivery may vary by instructor. W 12-1:50. Cr. 3. Taught with CIVL4020. Prerequisite: Arch2230 Structures 1.

ARCH4170.80 Environmental Parametrics taught w/6380

The work of this course sets out to describe the meaning, values, and methods of using parametric techniques as both an analytical tool and a generative device in comprehensive performance-based building design. The students learn techniques to set-up feedback between analysis and tactical response in performance-based design while also situating these techniques within the broader discourse and methodology of fostering design ecologies and creating ecologies of design as they relate to the construction of the built environment and contemporary issues of sustainability. Kelly Winn. Cr 2. CASE / NYC.

ARCH4850.01 Architectural Acoustics 2

In the spring semester, students will have the opportunity to design their own performance hall. This process will include continued studies of acoustics measurements, simulated sound fields, community noise issues, and professional practice in acoustics consulting. The course will also have detailed lectures on concert hall acoustics, sound quality, and synthesized sound fields. Students will be introduced to a variety of simulation software and measurement equipment in the Acoustics Research Laboratory. After both Architectural Acoustics 1 and 2, the student should be prepared for a basic entry-level position in either acoustics in architecture or in acoustical consulting. Prerequisite: ARCH4840 or instructor approval. Todd Brooks. F 10–1:50 pm.  Cr 4.

ARCH4880.01 Aural Architecture w/6890

In this course, design processes in architectural acoustics will be studied from a psychoacoustical perspective. Different concepts to create physical and virtual acoustic spaces will be discussed based on perceptual design goals. Topics include ecological psychoacoustics, sound quality, auditory virtual environments, and auditory computational modeling. Jonas Braasch. T 1- 3:50 pm.  Cr 2.

ARCH4936.80 Research Investigations

CASE Studies Students Only.

ARCH4957.01 Oxymoronic Figures

This seminar explores the aesthetics of morphological symbiosis through various digital techniques and precise assemblages. With the use of geometric scanning, graphical projections, and neural networks, this course will focus on instrumentalizing discrete objects and qualities in a regimented manner, seeking their junctures where contradictory attributes coexist within a single design paradigm. Through dialectical formative development, we will form a critical agenda of representation that drives fabrication of the assembled objects, which will be inserted back into the representational realm to further explore its realism. Imaeda. M 12 – 1:50. Cr. 2.

ARCH4958.01 Projecting Light

The relationship between light, projective geometry and drawing existed since antiquity. Different aspects of light are examined in mini-labs through their literary origins parallel to physical and optical explorations with light. The concluding project is a light construction that explores a thesis about projection in physical form. Erel. W 10 – 11:50. Cr. 2.

ARCH4960.01 Building Envelopes

This course introduces students to the technical design of building envelopes. Students undertake a facade design project that evolves as they consider typology, materiality, performance, and constructability. Through lectures, seminars, and workshops, students are introduced to the tools and methods of performance-based design, and the technical documents and standards that define performance criteria. The execution of custom facades will be considered, along with the role of contract documents in ensuring a positive outcome that meets the design intent. Brainard. M 12–1:50. Cr. 2. Note Architecture student’s 4th and 5th year.

ARCH4961.01 Interfaces and Virtual Worlds: ‘Infra-VISION’

Influenced by different concepts of ‘vision’ and ‘intelligence’ as well as ‘cognition’, this Seminar uses the CRAIVE space to inquire upon potential dimensions of Augmented and Mixed Reality when framed in a spatial immersive environment. Hosted and inspired by the immersive space of the CRAIVE lab, the seminar installs an alternating sequence of discussions and experiments on augmented reality, virtual objects, sites and representation, and inquires upon the potential of space as an interface to virtual domains. CRAIVE lab is a 360 digital projection room located in the RPI Tech Park. The room consists of of a surface of projection for 8 projectors, and a surrounding array of speakers. Leitao. F 12-1:50. Cr. 2.

ARCH4962.01 Structural Anatomy of Buildings (through case studies)

This course will offer students a foundation and familiarity with the use of structural systems through various case studies and examples. Each case study will be presented holistically and then deconstructed and analyzed to determine structural systems used and the reasoning behind the selection. Through structural investigation, students will peel away the design and actively calculate loads and forces while discussing the possibility of modifying existing structures. Pilla. T 4-5:50 pm. Cr. 2.

ARCH4965.01 Casting Against Type

In its geometric rigor and formal character, typography’s link to architecture is obvious: the arcs of a serif, the shear of an italicized font, the grid underlying a glyph’s specific proportions. Yet the considerable level of craft involved in typography is obscured by its semantic role in text. This course argues that by freeing typography from its practical function, its remarkable design potential unfolds. Using fonts in the same way as plans and sections, this course investigates experimental drawing techniques at the intersection of language and architecture. Passeri. R 12 – 1:50 pm. Cr. 2.

ARCH4964.01 ‘Defamiliar’

“Creatives must do more than see the world how it is; they must create interest by making new visual decisions” (Susan Sontag). This seminar deals with creating an image in a viewer’s mind that is unfamiliar and strange in a sense that it causes one to think whether they have seen the image before. As said by artist and photographer George Powell “Everything has been done before, but its new visual decisions that makes old subjects seem new and interesting, the defamiliar is one tool that makes the viewer think they are seeing something original for the first time.” In this seminar we will be looking at traditional and ornamental architectural elements in order to defamiliarize them through methods of estrangement. To transform an architectural object by using imagery and forms that it is not normally associated with, is to defamiliarize it. We will be fabricating these objects during the course of the seminar. Virgil. M 12-1:50. Cr. 2

ARCH4951.01 Hooks and Loops – The Hyper Stitch

In this seminar, we will explore crochet as a conceptual method of design and examine its topological traits as well as its ductility. We will introduce the technique of crochet as research and as a hands-on assignment simultaneously. The crochet stitch will be explored in its spatial and structural capacities and subsequently transformed to acquire radically new space-making and material qualities. Baurmann. F 12 – 1:50. Cr. 2.

ARCH4966.01 The Man Next Door: A.Hitchcock  and the Architecture of Fear

This seminar explores the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock via the urban condition. The narrative structures of Hitchcock’s films often move the characters from pastoral settings to urban contexts, and vice versa. These allegories track naive or innocent characters as they move into self-awareness, a transition always reflected in the costumes, music, lighting, editing and direction. Famously averse to shooting on location, Hitchcock invented and refined techniques for controlling shifts in scale, perspective and space – all part of his reliance on the studio for a kind of ‘world building’. For example, as a way to save on location costs, Hitchcock developed back-lit film transparencies at the scale of architecture. His techniques of sonic and visual abstraction, defamiliarization, continuous takes, color saturation and disorienting perspectives all have analogs in the operations of the modern city. His themes of voyeurism, doubling, mistaken identity and paranoia are hallmarks of the modern human condition. He made the first film to address psychoanalysis as a subject (Spellbound, 1945), shot an entire film on one set (Lifeboat, 1944), and his dark comedy Frenzy (1972) looked at the urban phenomenon of serial murder. From the 39 Steps to Rear Window to Psycho, Hitchcock torqued the city grid as a symbol for both freedom (anonymity), oppression and chaos. The Master of Suspense has also been seen as a misogynist, sadist, humorist and cultural critic. We will critically engage his works via screenings, writing and our own attempts at storyboarding and set design. Oatman. M 7 – 9:50 pm. Cr. 2

ARCH4967.01 Architectural Apparatuses

The seminar will develop workflows focusing on tools for design and communication. Students will be given in depth tutorials in advanced digital and algorithmic modelling techniques focusing on formal qualities. In parallel with digital modelling, students will also interrogate the agency of various modes of representation. During the course of the seminar we will confront the problem of representation in relation to the object (form) and its properties (solidity, texture, transparency, etc…) through the use of multiple mediums of translation:
Model making: The digital to physical translation
Drawing: The orthographic translation
Rendering: The atmospheric translation
The aim is to develop a digital workflow for creating architectural artifacts and spaces through addressing the interrelationship between image, object, geometry and matter. Lintner. T 4-5:50 pm. Cr. 2.

ARCH4968.01 Architectural Evolutions between Art and Science

Architecture over centuries has been closely associated with art. We often attribute this discipline to the leading role in art disciplines such as painting and sculpture. In recent decades, the development of computer technologies has enabled a huge development of science. The computer has discovered the biology again. New convergences and possibilities have been created. In this context we will discuss changes which are taking place in architecture: shifting from forms to processes as well as increasing interest in digital and biological controlled systems. Oksiuta. R 12 – 1:50. Cr. 2

 ARCH4969.01 The Arch of the Screen: Relationships between Film and Architecture.

While architecture is one of the oldest forms of cultural expression, film, by comparison is one of the youngest. Although seemingly at odds with one another, due to the physicality of architecture, and the image based condition of film, architecture has learned a great deal from the expressive capacities of film. In this seminar we will study the manner in which certain filmmakers have captured the physical environment in dynamic and provocative ways. Anthony Titus.  R 10 – 11:50 am. Cr. 2.

CIVL4450.01 Conceptual Structures Systems

This course covers concept of structural systems. The course is aimed to understanding of behavior of different structural systems and how they respond to various loading conditions. The concept of load transfer, shaping and form finding is of particular interest. This concept is reinforced through analytical, digital, and physical modeling intended to foster intuitive thinking. The course includes the following: approximate analyses of statically indeterminate beams, rigid frames, and vierendeel frames; cable suspended structures, arch supported structures; masonry structures, space frame and folded plate structures; spherical, cylindrical, and hyperbolic shells; net and tent structures; air-supported and air inflated structures, and hybrid structural systems. The course includes guest lectures, project, and testing of physical models. Pilla. T 6-9. Cr. 3. Prerequisites:  CIVL 2670 Introduction to Structural Engineering or ARCH equivalent.

LGHT6760/4760.01 Lighting Workshop

The Lighting Workshop is a research and design studio integrating scholarship, technology, design, policy, and communication in an intensive, project specific context. The course includes a number of topics, selected each year by faculty. These topics are selected to emphasize scholarship; require a variety of written and verbal presentation techniques; increase synthesizing skills in design, applications, and visualization software; and require teamwork and individual efforts. The Lighting Workshop emphasizes studio and seminar work supplemented with lecture, class discussions, and individual and group research, design, writing, and reading assignments. Narendran. TF 12:30 – 3:20. Cr. 4.

LGHT6770/4870.01 Light and Health

This course will explore the effects of light and lighting on people’s physical and psychological health and well-being. Lectures will focus on the physiology of the visual and circadian systems, the relationship between lighting and visual performance and circadian photobiology, including the relationship between lighting and Alzheimer’s disease, sleep disorder, alertness, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and breast cancer. The course will conclude with a research project studying the interaction of light and human health in the built environment. Students will learn to apply their newly acquired knowledge of the health effects of light to lighting design and application. Figueiro. MR 10 – 11:50. Cr. 4.

ARCH4963.70 Sensorial Creativity_The haptic experience in India

This seminar is intended to support and reflect on the studio work and the India experience. Drawing from texts of poet Rabindranath Tagore, Rudyard Kipling and Art historian Coomaraswamy as well as from the work of contemporary artist Anish Kapoor, Pritzker Prize laureate Balkrishna Doshi and others, it will give a glimpse on the complexities and richness of Indian Artistic Heritage to inspire the studio work. Perez-Guembe. India studies students only. Cr. 4.