Online courses directory (186)

This class is a general study of modern architecture as a response to important technological, cultural, environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical challenges after the European Enlightenment. It focuses on the theoretical, historiographic, and design approaches to architectural problems encountered in the age of industrial and post-industrial expansion across the globe, with specific attention to the dominance of European modernism in setting the agenda for the discourse of a global modernity at large. It explores modern architectural history through thematic exposition rather than as a simple chronological succession of ideas.

本課程以崑曲的歷史文化、文學、音樂、表演、美學為核心主題，透過學者與表演藝術家的解說示範，提昇學生對中國傳統文化、古典文學與表演藝術之鑑賞能力。 (A shorter English version will be launched in 2015. The exact date is to be announced.)

The Music of the Beatles will track the musical development of the band, starting from the earliest days in Liverpool and Hamburg, moving through the excitement of Beatlemania, the rush of psychedelia, and the musical maturity of Abbey Road.

In this course, you will learn to weave beautiful, structurally superior wet-weave baskets in the ancient Aquacamamata style. Underwater basket weaving is a craft that seamlessly merges scientific intellectualism, manual dexterity, and deep spiritual engagement. We look forward to having you with us on this exciting journey into art and anthropology!

An introduction to the life and work of Andy Warhol, one of the world’s most famous artists, through exploration of five thematic framings of his life and career: celebrity, sex, money, death and time.

This course explores the noir aesthetic as it emerged in the post-World War II era as a major style of Hollywood filmmaking. The course also brings together many digital projects that involve deepening our critical and popular understanding of film noir.

This class focuses on representation tools used by architects during the design process and attempts to discuss the relationship they develop with the object of design. Representation plays a key role in architectural design, not only as a medium of conveying and narrating a determined meaning or a preconceived idea, but also as a code of creating new meaning, while the medium seeks to establish a relationship with itself. In this sense, mediums of representation, as external parameters to the design process, are not neutral tools of translating an idea into its concrete form. They are neither authentic means of creativity, nor vapid carriers of an idea. Therefore, an important aspect in issues of meaning is how the architect manipulates the play of translating a concept to its concrete version, through the use of a medium of representation. The course is a continuation of the equivalent course taught in the fall semester and specifically focuses on digital media. The course is intended to establish a reciprocal relationship with the design studio, feeding from and contributing to its content.

The course investigates e-Learning systems from a business, policy, technical and legal perspective. The issues presented will be tackled by discussion of the design and structure of the various example systems. The connection between information architectures and the physical workplace of the users will also be examined. The course will be comprised of readings, discussions, guest speakers and group design sessions. Laboratory sessions will be focused on implementation tools and opportunities to create one's own working prototypes. Students will learn to describe information architectures using the Unified Modeling Language (used to specify, design and structure web applications) and XML (to designate meaningful content).

The transition from high school and home to college and a new living environment can be a fascinating and interesting time, made all the more challenging and interesting by being at MIT. More than recording the first semester through a series of snapshots, this freshman seminar will attempt to teach photography as a method of seeing and a tool for better understanding new surroundings. Over the course of the semester, students will develop a body of work through a series of assignments, and then attempt to describe the conditions and emotions of their new environment in a cohesive final presentation.

How do we define Public Art? This course focuses on the production of projects for public places. Public Art is a concept that is in constant discussion and revision, as much as the evolution and transformation of public spaces and cities are. Monuments are repositories of memory and historical presences with the expectation of being permanent. Public interventions are created not to impose and be temporary, but as forms intended to activate discourse and discussion. Considering the concept of a museum as a public device and how they are searching for new ways of avoiding generic identities, we will deal with the concept of the personal imaginary museum. It should be considered as a point of departure to propose a personal individual construction based on the concept of defining a personal imaginary museum - concept, program, collection, events, architecture, public diffusion, etc.

Please note: Our faculty members have indicated that several important changes need to be made in order to improve the course and your experience as a student. In 2013, we will be re-releasing this course under the simplified title: ARTH101: Art Appreciation and Techniques. Until then, you are welcome to work through this course at your own leisure; there

Please note: Our faculty members have indicated that several important changes need to be made in order to improve the course and your experience as a student. In 2013, we will be re-releasing this course under the simplified title: ARTH101: Art Appreciation and Techniques. Until then, you are welcome to work through this course at your own leisure; there

If there was one century in the past that saw radical changes in established ways of thinking comparable to the 20th Century, it would be the 16th. Before this, in Western Europe, there was only one type of Christianity

The 17th Century is the era of the Baroque style, characterized by energy, drama, and movement. The Church in Rome needed art that spoke to its resurgent power even as the conflict between Protestant and Catholics continued. A new realism

Cairo is the quintessential Islamic city. Founded in 634 at the strategic head of the Nile Delta, the city evolved from an Islamic military outpost to the seat of the ambitious Fatimid caliphate which flourished between the 10th and 12th century. Its most spectacular age, however, was the Mamluk period (1250-1517), when it became the uncontested center of a resurgent Islam and acquired an architectural character that symbolized the image of the Islamic city for centuries to come.

Cairo today still shines as a cultural and political center in its three spheres of influence: the Arab world, Africa, and the Islamic world. Moreover, many of its monuments (456 registered by the 1951 Survey of the Islamic Monuments of Cairo) still stand, although they remain largely unknown to the world’s architectural community and their numbers are dwindling at an exceedingly alarming pace.

This seminar is open to graduate students, and is intended to offer a synoptic view of selected methodologies and thinkers in art and architectural history (with many theorists from other fields). The syllabus outlines the structure of the course and the readings and assignments for each week; the goal is to become aware of the apparatuses of discourse, and find your own voice within them.

This course covers theories about the form that settlements should take and attempts a distinction between descriptive and normative theory by examining examples of various theories of city form over time. Case studies will highlight the origins of the modern city and theories about its emerging form, including the transformation of the nineteenth-century city and its organization. Through examples and historical context, current issues of city form in relation to city-making, social structure, and physical design will also be discussed and analyzed.

This class will be constructed as a lecture-discussion, the purpose being to engage important theoretical issues while simultaneously studying their continuing historical significance. To enhance discussion, three debates will be held in class. Each student will be required to participate in one of these debates. Each student will also be required to write three short papers. Class participation is essential and will be factored into the final grade.

The course will portray the history of theory neither as the history of architectural theory exclusively, nor as a series of prepackaged static pronouncements, but as part of a broader set of issues with an active history that must be continually probed and queried. The sequence of topics will not be absolutely predetermined, but some of the primary issues that will be addressed are: pedagogy, professionalism, nature, modernity and the Enlightenment. Classroom discussions and debates are intended to demonstrate differences of opinion and enhance awareness of the consequences that these differences had in specific historical contexts.

This studio discusses in great detail the design of urban environments, specifically in Providence, RI. It will propose strategies for change in large areas of cities, to be developed over time, involving different actors. Fitting forms into natural, man-made, historical, and cultural contexts; enabling desirable activity patterns; conceptualizing built form; providing infrastructure and service systems; guiding the sensory character of development: all are topics covered in the studio. The course integrates architecture and planning students in joint work and requires individual designs and planning guidelines as a final product.

From the frivolous paintings of Fragonard to the politically-charged moralizing images of David, this tutorial brings us from the King of France and his court