Research & Teaching

This advanced research seminar in Miami-Dade County, Florida, is thematically focused within the integrated practices associated with designing and planning for climate change at an urban and regional scale.

More than half of the world's population (54 percent according to the World Health Organization) live in urban areas, and this share is expected to grow in the future (65 percent by 2050 according to the United Nations).

This course is the third of four modules (6121, 6122, 6125, & 6125) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture and the Master of Design in Energy and Environments. 

Through the lens of climate change, this foundation course surveys the intellectual development of resilience and adaptation in the social, natural and applied sciences. Through a critical reading and analysis of central bodies of literature, students are provided a conceptual and empirical basis

The broad goal of this course is to introduce students to the foundations of key sectoral and thematic knowledge for important challenges to sustainable development including food and nutritional security, social service delivery, energy policy, water resource management, urbanization, infrastruc

According to the World Bank, countries need to invest 4.5% of their GDP in infrastructure to reach de Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2030. In order to do that, we need to start thinking about building new infrastructure and transforming the existing one.

Virginia’s Eastern Shore, which together with its northern Maryland counterpart forms and protects the massive Chesapeake Bay estuary, is confronting sea level rise at a rate 40% faster than the global average.  Climate models declare the inevitable: This land mass will be lost.

The Miami hybrid project-based course + studio is part of a series of courses funded through the Knight Foundation that addresses contemporary challenges facing the American city.

What is the relationship between the natural environment and the design of successful places? How do we know? And how can we mobilize these ideas as planners and citizens?

This course is the first of a two-module sequence in Building Technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture.

Developing and implementing good solutions to real problems facing human society requires a broad understanding of the relationships between technology innovation, science, manufacturing, design thinking, environment, sustainability, culture, aesthetics, business, public policy, and government.

This course introduces the concepts and components of a geographic information system (GIS). It also teaches the essential skills of spatial data management, analysis, and visualization through the use of the ArcGIS software package.

This course introduces the basic principles of tourism master planning, enabling students to learn how communities, governments, business, and civil society can take a more inclusive and sustainable approach to planning tourism destinations worldwide.

Confronting the reality of environmental degradation requires more than remote sensing, statistical analysis or institutional restructuring. As images of the changing planet become emblematic of our time, designers are responding with a scrutiny towards amplified scales and extreme events.

Zero energy buildings, also known as net zero energy buildings, are buildings (or a community of buildings) which produce with on-site renewables the same, or more, amount of energy as they consume on an annual basis.

“Today, we are shapers of the world of tomorrow. There is no way we can duck the responsibility, and there is no reason why we should.” ­—Walt Disney

This course introduces contemporary theories of landscape as a medium of urbanism and product of urbanization.

Career Focus

Provides an overview of the issues involved in transportation policy and planning, as well as an introduction to the skills necessary for solving the various analytic and managerial problems that are peculiar to this area.

The proseminar introduces MLA II students to a range of theories and methods in landscape architecture and their implications for practice and research.

The environment is the milieu in which designers and planners operate. It is a messy world of facts, meanings, relations and actions that calls them to intervene - i.e., to make a plan, solve a problem, create a product, or strategize a process.