Courses

The main objective of this course is to focus on how students learn, develop and make decisions as they transition into architecture education.

This studio investigates the role and process of architectural design as different forms of practice.

This course introduces basic material assembly methods and the use of shop machinery, hand tools, and power tools. It prepares students to participate in a wide range of subsequent building and fabrication projects.

This course is aimed at first year architecture students as an introduction to social justice and design ethics, and Carnegie Mellon Architecture’s pedagogy around these issues.
  
Fulfills minor requirements for: Architecture (non-majors)

This is the first in a two-course sequence that introduces students to cultures of digital drawing and image production.
   
Fulfills minor requirements for: Architectural Representation and Visualization, Architecture (non-majors)

The central learning objective of this introductory course in free-hand architectural drawing is building a capacity for visualizing three-dimensional space through freehand drawing.
   
Fulfills minor requirements for: Architectural Representation and Visualization, Architecture (non-majors)

This course introduces fundamental concepts of building physics. The knowledge and skills obtained from this course can be applied to studio projects and beyond, improving building design and performance through standard methods of evaluation and simulation tools. 
  
Fulfills minor requirements for: Architectural Technology (non-majors) 

We may learn to develop architecture that enriches the context from which it arises by conceptually recognizing the built/natural environment as a complex web of interacting parts constantly exchanging energy and resources.

This course introduces and examines the fundamentals between design intent and construction materials, and the science of materials (performance) and their assemblies.

Fulfills minor requirements for: Architectural Technology (non-majors) 

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of generative modeling using computer aided design as practiced in the field of architecture.
  
Fulfills minor requirements for: Computational Design 

The course introduces contemporary urbanism, offering a comprehensive exploration of how cities and urban systems are made, remade, and even unmade.
  
Keyword: Design Ethics

Studios often conduct site research and then design an intervention for that site. However, in this studio the design research part of the semester becomes the project itself.

This course introduces architectural design responses for energy conservation and natural conditioning, human comfort and the site-specific dynamics of climate.
  
Fulfills minor requirements for: Architectural Technology (non-majors) 

This studio is the capstone of a student’s undergraduate education and is an opportunity to integrate the various technical aspects of their professional degree to date.

This course focuses on active systems in commercial buildings and strategies for their successful integration with passive components.
  
Fulfills minor requirements for: Architectural Technology (non-majors)

This studio challenges students to address the full range of complex and interrelated urban, architectural and infrastructure design issues of a new major intermodal transportation terminal combined with a large, dense mixed‐use program. Students explore structure, systems and building morphology on a grand scale, with major new program integrating with already vast existing buildings and systems.

This studio fosters knowledge built off of years of relationship building in Chiang Mai, Thailand using fieldwork, toys, comics, film and visual storytelling to explore citizen empowered design and the regenerative building practices of indigenous timber construction.

Inside to outside and across a range of scales, the studio will collect data—empirically, experientially and theoretically—to generate propositions for guiding billions of birds safely around cities and buildings. Through an understanding of complex systems, designs will be data-driven and will explore how humans could adapt to live within the natural world without conflict.

This studio examines how we might { break down; undo; rethink; dismantle; discard } the { visions; systems; objects; infrastructures; landscapes; junk; detritus } of { smart; connected; intelligent } technology. 

This seminar prepares undergraduate students planning to work on a thesis project in the following semester. 

The course is organized as a graduate seminar that concludes the cycle of required courses in the history and theory of architecture for the M.Arch program. By revisiting histories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it treats the profession as an uncertain, contested and contingent category.

This course aims to provide graduate students with a general introduction to different modes of conducting architectural research, while creating opportunities for cohort building, social exchange and skills development.

This course introduces architectural design responses for energy conservation and natural conditioning, human comfort and the site-specific dynamics of climate.

This course focuses on active systems in commercial buildings and strategies for their successful integration with passive components.

This summer course for incoming Carnegie Mellon Architecture graduate students helps to establish a baseline of technical skills appropriate to the expectations of the design culture at the school. All graduate students are expected to be familiar with the protocols and workflows covered in this course.

In this first urban design studio, we focus on timely issues that drive contemporary cities, grounded in the fundamentals of urban theory and practice.

This course introduces students to the practice of urban design and explores the roles urban designers play in the design of cities and their leadership responsibilities.

With the notion of “critical technical practice” as a touchstone, this graduate-level seminar draws from across design, media, and science and technology studies to cultivate an awareness of the discursive and political dimensions of technology in design, and to guide participants in the formulation of a graduate thesis in computational design.

Commoning the City is a yearlong research‐based design studio on social justice and community‐led urban transformations. Here, students explore design as an agent of change and how to support citizens in claiming their Right to the City.

This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate development. Students learn about the real estate development process and the social, economic and regulatory context in which development takes place. 

This graduate-level course examines the emergence of computation as a pivotal concept in contemporary architecture and design through a selection of design theories and practices responding to the so-called “computer revolution.”

This course explores the relationship of quality buildings, building systems, infrastructures and land-use to productivity, health, well-being and a sustainable environment.

This intensive course is designed to help students refine their research plan and prepare for their synthesis project.

This course introduces fundamental knowledge in building physics in relation to a variety of environmentally responsive building design principles and incorporates computational approaches to increase resiliency for human habitability while minimizing reliance on mechanical systems.

This course explores core urban design methods and theories organized into three themes intended to give students a foundational understanding of urban design, examine key critiques of urbanization, and explore emerging modes of design agency.

This graduate-level seminar provides an overview of scholarly, design, and research-based approaches addressing ecology, technology and climate change in architecture and urban design.

This course explores new forms of media and representation in urban design.

Throughout the semester we explore various types and scales of change. Each week we review various concepts, such as mass customization, computationally responsive environments and facades, open building, shearing layers of change, adaptive reuse, metabolism, persistence, preservation, circular economy, design for deconstruction and reuse (DfD+R), and repair/maintenance.

In this course, MSAECM students apply the diverse knowledge and skills they have acquired during the program to a critical public interest issue related to Pittsburgh’s built environment.

This course is a compendium of Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) practice, methods and management with an emphasis on how the AEC professions can more effectively work together by understanding each other’s roles, responsibilities and professional perspectives.

This course is an introduction to the importance of the indoor environment and human health and productivity. Throughout the semester, the course lectures challenge students’ intellectual curiosity as it relates to the built environment.

The culmination thesis project for the Master of Science in Building Performance & Diagnostics includes individual and collaborative dissertations on the integration of advanced building and urban technologies for environmental sustainability, human health and productivity, and organizational change.

This course explores several evolving topics of material and digital culture in contemporary architectural design, research and practice in order to provide foundational knowledge necessary for the establishment of the MAAD thesis proposal.

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of generative modeling using computer aided design as practiced in the field of architecture.

The Master of Advanced Architectural Design (MAAD) program culminates with a design thesis in the final year of studies. This two-semester independent project allows students to conduct design research and develop a project on a topic they have defined in consultation with the program track chair.

This graduate course focuses on heating, cooling, ventilation and power supply systems for new and future commercial buildings. It introduces HVAC and power supply needs and system choices likely to produce comfortable and healthful buildings that help us move toward a zero-carbon future.

In this course, students learn how to use a Geographic Information System (GIS) to investigate spatial relationships, patterns and processes of cultural, biological, demographic, economic, social, environmental, health and other phenomena.

This course serves as an introduction to the spatial concepts of architecture for students from other disciplines. The hands-on course is focused entirely on project design work.

This course is focused on physical model-making of soft forms. It offers a series of encounters with material specificity, including textile, metal and plastic materials, and the techniques used in transforming 2D patterns to 3D forms.

This design research seminar pinpoints architectural and urban detail as a point of departure to understanding socio-ecological systems in the worlds around us. While the conventional “detail” in architecture and urban design normalizes professional values, we will look to the mundane to nurture a critical appreciation of material culture, landscapes and people.
    
Keywords: Design Ethics, Design Research

This course provides practice in the use of color to depict architectural surroundings. A central objective is that by the end of the course students will have good judgement in evaluating color hue, value and temperature and gained confidence in the use of watercolor.

This course is geared towards undergraduate and graduate students to assist them with preparing their resumes and portfolios for job searches.

This course is designed to focus on professional and personal development for a career within the discipline of architecture. The goal of the course is to make students more marketable, preparing them to become valuable professionals within a global economy.

This course is geared towards graduate students that are seeking an internship or new employment opportunities post-graduation. The course focuses on building networking and verbal and communication skills, and how students can increase their human capital.

This course prepares students for modeling geometry through scripted development of parametric schemes primarily for design applications.

This project-based design seminar concentrates on how critical design theory and powerful storytelling might pave the way for a more responsible, equitable and exciting future.

Through transdisciplinary methods and a framework of thinking and practice that this course terms “Unreasonable Architecture,” the course aims to introduce a more expanded knowledge framework of meaning that includes indigenous systems and spatial technologies that sit outside the constraints of modern reason and economic legibility.

The intent of this course is to explore how Afrofuturism allows one to shift perspectives out of a Eurocentric, white, patriarchal, heteronormative perspective to give agency to those who see and experience the world through different eyes, allowing one to discover new possibilities of being in the world.

This new class is designed for upper level undergraduates and master’s students who would like to delve deeper into the urban history of Pittsburgh and develop research skills that can be applied to other cities.
   
Fulfills major and minor requirements for: Architectural History
   
Keywords: Design Ethics, Design Research

This graduate seminar explores important writings and ideas being discussed in architecture today in relation to “Design Ethics,” one of the central pedagogies of the school and the M.Arch program.

In this course, students develop the schematic design for the Spring Carnival entryway pavilion, to be built in spring 2025.

In this course, students work on design development for the Spring Carnival entryway pavilion, to be built in spring 2025.

By delving into the fundamentals of acoustics and employing quantitative prototyping methods, this course examines the application of the acoustic performance-based design (APBD) method. 

The history of Interaction Design (IxD) is far richer than what is visible from today’s tech. Many great ideas have been mangled and even lost. By making prototypes inspired by this history, we reach new insights and illuminate a future of promises and perils.

This course introduces advanced topics in computational structural design and analysis. Through various form-finding algorithms and design methodologies, students learn how to use structural geometry as a key design driver to shape efficient and expressive forms.

In this course, students work on developing entries for the NOMAS competition.

This course builds upon this rich history and foregrounds architectural component customization to explore prototyping and customization within the context of contemporary practice.

This course provides a practical, hands-on introduction to the application of industrial robotics in architectural and related construction domains. It also provides students with the necessary knowledge and safety protocols to work in the architectural robotics lab. 

This course is designed to introduce students to 3D software tools (3 units each), including Autodesk AutoCAD 3D, Revit Architecture and/or 3D Studio MAX.

In this course, students engage with the process of material distribution and designing, tooling, testing, prototyping and true-scale fabrication using bamboo, a meticulous endeavor that extends the sphere of their architectural education.

This course charts the emergence of the now connected world to explore the possibilities for future products and connected spaces with the Internet of Things (IoT). This introductory, hands-on course invites students without any knowledge of programming, electronics or systems to create connected products.

This design-research seminar explores alternative material formations beyond our current petrochemical reality.

In this course, students learn how to use a Geographic Information System (GIS) to investigate spatial relationships, patterns and processes of cultural, biological, demographic, economic, social, environmental, health and other phenomena.