Elective courses available:

ARCH-4840 / Architectural Acoustics I

This course provides an overview of the essentials for architectural acoustics design of performance and public spaces, including concert halls, theaters, museums, classrooms, sports arenas, courtrooms, and religious buildings. There are no prerequisites, but the course may be used as the starting point for a certificate in Architectural Acoustics, a concentration in an architecture student’s professional electives, or the beginning of a master’s degree in acoustics. The course covers basic principles of sound, room acoustics, sound absorption in rooms, sound isolation and privacy, acoustics of mechanical systems, and sound quality. 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. Faculty: Jonas Braasch. Days-Time: Fridays 2-5:50pm. Credits: 4

ARCH 4960.01 / Latin American Architecture

This seminar will explore current developments in Latin American architecture and urbanism within a research matrix connecting issues such as domestic and public space, hybridity, nature, informality, politics, and history. Canonical and recent projects, and main tendencies will be identify, analyzed and discussed in relation to their own architectural tradition as well to current global trends. Pre-requisites: ARCH-4120 (required); and ARCH-4050 and ARCH-4150 (recommended). Faculty: Gustavo Crembil. Tuesdays 12-1:50pm. Credits:3

ARCH 6962 / Geo-Actors I

This course is an introduction to ecological and landscape thinking as it pertains to the work of design undertaken in the Graduate and Post-Professional tracks within the School of Architecture at Rensselaer. This course will investigate history and methods of ecological thinking and design as it relates to the discipline of architecture, developing a framework for inventive urban ecological design. The seminar will read foundational texts, both historic and contemporary, threading a critical take through connections between historical ecological, geological, and contemporary design thinking.  Landscape is here understood as a medium of design, from pragmatic to the conceptual to the fantastical to the territorial, from the Fertile Crescent era to the present.   Projects will address issues of ecology, architecture, landscape, urbanism and public space.  Lecture topics will include landscape architectural history, ecology as public space, data and design at the urban scale, large parks, regional design, ecological aesthetics, maps and territory, land art, sub-natures, wastelands and the Anthropocene. Faculty: Dwyre. Day-Time: Fridays 10am-1pm. Credits: 3

ARCH 4964 – 6xxx / 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. Faculty: Yael Erel. Day-Time: Fridays 10-11:50am. Credits: 2

ARCH 6961 / Advanced Digital Design (Urban Data)

Urban data will focus on the collection of data and creation of projective models as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We will focus on the impacts of the virus in New York City. Students will gather data using open source resources and construct urban maps using QGis and Rhino. This component of the seminar will largely involve analysis and understanding. Students will then address a looming urban issue and project outcomes by transforming their maps into web-based simulations that can update in real time. The design of these projections will involve encoded existing data along with reasonable projections – examples could be how the city might work to alleviate the coming crush of bike commuters hoping to cross bridges or how offices might time work hours to make commuting as safe as possible. Don’t take this course if you’re allergic to the idea of learning some coding. Our web-based models will rely on feedback and other non-linear systems that will require students to develop their own custom javascript models. Faculty; Fleet Hower. Day-Time: TBA. Credits: 2

ARCH 4959 / Geographic Simulacra

In the search for formal precision, architects employ geological techniques to simulate topologies and understand contexts. Geometries and materials are accurately captured to examine the contingency of architecture upon its context. Rather than limiting the use of such precision tools for an establishment of the backdrop, this seminar overturns the figure ground relationship between architecture and contexts to explore the aesthetics of reimagined geographies. From object to field, elements of nature are recalibrated to revolutionize the exiting conditions of landscape formations. By understanding the concepts and techniques of simulation and simulacrum, students will diffuse and dissipate the geographical extant into something nascent. Geography will be decoded and re-encoded with the use of animations, particles, and physics engines. Such inquiries into physical and digital materiality will rewrite its genome to the extent that the original can no longer be identified, thereby becoming a new design agenda that transcends a mere imitation of familiar landscapes. Faculty: Imaeda. Day-Time: Thursdays 1-:10:50am. Credits: 2

ARCH 4963 – 6xxx / Seminar on Sensory Culture

The purpose of the course is to provide the foundation for the disciplined study of senses referencing research and perspectives drawn from biology, cognitive science, physiology, perceptual psychology, literature, philosophy and the arts. The aim of the seminar is to develop an understanding of the relationship between humans and their environments as mediated by the human sensorium. In particular, we are working towards an understanding that is consistent with and supports  design practices.  Therefore, the knowledge we seek is not driven by description and analysis but by the desire to synthesize in the context of practice. The seminar will build factual knowledge of contemporary understandings of perception and the senses across a wide range of disciplines.  The seminar will build critical, analytic, observational, and communication skills while also requiring the synthesis of a revised understanding of the reciprocity between sensory and perceptual processes and biological, social and cultural phenomena.  The seminar will focus on the implications for design of research findings from diverse fields. Faculty: Ted Krueger. Thursdays 1-:10:50am. Credits: 2

ARCH 4961-  / Duchamp – Anarchism Umped

Explore the life and influence of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), grandfather of conceptualism, and a figure who continues to impact art discourse, 52 years after his death. By examining his ideas and those in his circle we will critically map his influence on 20th century art and architecture. Accidentally and deliberately, Duchamp opened up art with his many inventions: the Readymade, machine-based art, gender-bending performances, and the democratic notion that the viewer is the most essential part of “the Creative Act.” This course utilizes dialogues with Duchamp scholars, readings, response papers, forgeries and a field trip (pandemic-permitting) to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

ARCH 4965 / Contemporary Ceramics

This seminar will be conducted as a research lab to prototype the design of non-standard ceramic fittings. Prior to the commercialization of hardware fittings were custom designed by architects. Recent developments with ceramic glaze recipes are making it possible to produce antibacterial ceramics (sanitary-wares) – surfaces that the Coronavirus cannot survive on. This seminar will provide a platform to research and prototype architectural fittings (handles, hardware, doorknobs, physical interfaces, hooks, aka ‘ODDKnobs’) to address the aesthetics and design of sanitary objects using 3d ceramic printing and glazing. The course will make use of the school’s ceramic 3d printers to prototype the fittings you design and will prepare an exhibit proposal for the International Contemporary furniture fair) ICFF in NY in the spring of 21. Faculty: Rhett Russo. Day-Time: Fridays 10-11:50am. Credits: 2

ARCH 4170 – 6380 / Environmental Parametrics

This  is an intensive introductory course on design automation, performance analysis and optimization using the visual scripting capabilities of Rhino Grasshopper and related plugins. Students taking the course will learn techniques for automating design of mass customized building systems, assessing environmental performance, and directing design automation toward optimally performing design options. Along with core grasshopper modeling automation skills, the course focuses on developing an understanding the systems of geometric rules underlying modern building structural, environmental, and envelope systems, along with the tools for capturing and replaying these system organizations across varying design contexts. The course assumes no prior knowledge of scripting or programming. Progressively more complex topics are introduced each week, and each topic is presented with an associated design exercise. This course is taught in a seminar format with some instructor led tutorials and workshop content linked to dedicated breakout time for completing assignments and modeling. Faculty: Shelden. Day-Time: Tuesdays 11am.-12:50pm. Credits: 2