Fall 2021 Elective Descriptions

ARCHITECTURE
*Subject to change* - Please check course search for up-to-date information on ARCH electives

ARCH 711-004: Topics in Arch Theory I: Modern Architecture in Japan – Culture, Place, Tectonics
Ariel Genadt
Monday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
This seminar explores the diversity of forms and meanings that architecture took on in Japan since its industrialization in the 19th century. Through this lens, it poses wider questions on the capacity of construction, materials and their assembly to express and represent cultural, aesthetic, climatic and social concerns. Rather than an exhaustive survey, the course demonstrates salient topics in Japan’s recent architectural history, as a mirror of parallel practices in the world. It examines drawings, images, texts and films about architects whose work and words were emblematic of these topics, including: the role of technology in construction and cultural expression; tensions between tradition and creation; resistance, weakness and resilience in face of environmental forces; tectonic expression in relation to place; the concepts of dematerialization and abstraction in architectural expression.

ARCH 711-006: Topics in Arch Theory I: Rebellious Architecture: On Social Movements for Spatial Justice
Eduardo Rega Calvo
Monday, 8:30 AM-11:30AM
The seminar offers the theoretical tools to explore a rebellious mode of practice for architecture, one that acknowledges its relations to the structures of power, and stands in solidarity with movements for justice. Through weekly readings, class presentations, and discussion, students will be introduced to the tools with which to navigate architecture’s entanglements with the social and political processes that produce space. They will become familiar with key concepts like the rebel, refusal, and spatial justice; expand their exposure to the roots of structural injustice (capitalism, colonialism, racism and patriarchy), and their inscription in space and architecture; and learn from social movements for justice (autonomist, feminist, decolonial and post-capitalist) as they refuse the status-quo and construct other, more equitable worlds. Covering a wide range of essential theoretical texts, the class positions architecture in relation to other fields of study, including geography, anthropology, political theory, and beyond.

ARCH 719-001: Archigram and Its Legacy
Annette Fierro
Wednesday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
Acknowledging the ubiquitous proliferation of "Hi-Tech" architecture in contemporary London, this research seminar examines the scope of technology as it emerges and re-emerges in the work of various architects currently dominating the city. This scope includes the last strains of post-war urbanism which spawned a legacy of radical architecture directly contributing to the Hi-Tech; a particular focus of the course will be the contributing and contrasting influence provided by the counter-cultural groups of the 60's- Archigram, Superstudio, the Metabolists and others. Using the premise of Archigram's idea of infrastructure, both literal and of event, the course will attempt to discover relational networks between works of the present day (Rogers, Foster, Grimshaw, etc.). As this work practices upon and within public space, an understanding of the contribution of technology to urban theatricality will evolve which is relevant to contemporary spheres of technological design practices. Students will be required to produce and present a term research paper.

ARCH 721-401: Designing Smart Objects
Assaf Eshet
Tuesday, 3:30PM-6:30PM
Today's children enjoy a wide array of play experiences, with stories, learning, characters and games that exist as physical stand-alone objects or toys enhanced with electronics or software. In this course, students will explore the domain of play and learning in order to develop original proposals for new product experiences that are at once tangible, immersive and dynamic. They will conduct research into education and psychology while also gaining hands-on exposure to new product manifestations in a variety of forms, both physical and digital. Students will be challenged to work in teams to explore concepts, share research and build prototypes of their experiences in the form of static objects that may have accompanying electronic devices or software. Final design proposals will consider future distribution models for product experiences such as 3D printing, virtual reality and software- hardware integration. Instruction will be part seminar and part workshop, providing research guidance and encouraging connections will subject matter experts throughout the Penn campus.

ARCH 724-001: Technology in Design: Immersive Kinematics/Physical Computing: Body As Site
Simon Kim
Wednesday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
The aim of this course is to understand the new medium of architecture within the format of a research seminar. The subject matter of new media is to be examined and placed in a disciplinary trajectory of building designed and construction technology that adapts to material and digital discoveries. We will also build prototype with the new media, and establish a disciplinary knowledge for ourselves. The seminar is interested in testing the architecture-machine relationship, moving away from architecture that looks like machines into architecture that behaves like machines: An intelligence (based on the conceptual premise of a project and in the design of a system), as part of a process (related to the generative real of architecture) and as the object itself and its embedded intelligence.

ARCH 725-401: Design Thinking
 Sarah Rottenberg
Thursday, 12:00PM-2:45PM
Creating new product concepts was once a specialized pursuit exclusively performed by design professionals in isolation from the rest of an organization. Today’s products are developed in a holistic process involving a collaboration among many disciplines. Design thinking — incorporating processes, approaches and working methods from traditional designers’ toolkits — has become a way of generating innovative ideas to challenging problems and refining those ideas. Rapid prototyping techniques, affordable and accessible prototyping platforms, and an iterative mindset have enabled people to more reliably translate those ideas into implementable solutions. In this course, students will be exposed to these practices and learn how to engage in a human-centered design process.

ARCH 731-001: Experiments in Structure
Mohamad Al Khayer
Thursday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
This course studies the relationships between geometric space and those structural systems that amplify tension. Experiments using the hand (touch and force) in coordination with the eye (sight and geometry) will be done during the construction and observation of physical models. Verbal, mathematical and computer models are secondary to the reality of the physical model. However these models will be used to give dimension and document the experiments. Team reports will serve as interim and final examinations. In typology, masonry structures in compression (e.g., vault and dome) correlate with "Classical" space, and steel or reinforced concrete structures in flexure (e.g., frame, slab and column) with "Modernist" space. We seek the spatial correlates to tensile systems of both textiles (woven or braided fabrics where both warp and weft are tensile), and baskets (where the warp is tensile and the weft is compressive). In addition to the experiments, we will examine Le Ricolais' structural models held by the Architectural Archives.

ARCH 732-001: Technology Designated Elective: Daylighting
Jessica Zofchak
Tuesday, 5:15PM-8:00PM
This course aims to introduce fundamental daylighting concepts and tools to analyze daylighting design. The wide range of topics to be studied includes site planning, building envelope and shading optimization, passive solar design, daylight delivery methods, daylight analysis structure and results interpretation, and a brief daylighting and lighting design integration.

ARCH 732-002: Technology Designated Elective: Material and Structural Intelligence
Sameer Kumar & Mark Nicol
Friday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
The semester long project will involve a gradual development of architectural ideas that are intimately informed by and centered on knowledge of Structure and Materiality. Employing both physical and digital simulations, the students will synthesize knowledge acquired in previous courses in structures, materials, and construction methods to develop architectural solutions within a carefully selected set of determinants.

ARCH 732‐003: Technology Designated Elective: Geometric Structural Design
Masoud Akbarzadeh
Thursday, 1:45PM-4:45PM
Geometric structural design provides a comprehensive introduction to novel geometric methods of structural design based on 2D and 3D graphical statics. The primary emphasis of the course will be on developing a general understanding of the relationship between structural forms in equilibrium and the geometric representation of their internal and external forces. This link is the main apparatus for designing provocative structural forms using only geometric techniques rather than complicated algebraic/numerical methods. Moreover, special consideration will be given to materialization of the structural geometry and the proper fabrication techniques to construct the complex geometry of the structure.

Note that this course is based on ongoing research in the field of 3D graphical statics, and therefore provides students with the opportunity to directly contribute to the current research in geometric methods of structural design. Familiarity with a parametric software is required, and code-writing ability is an asset. Particular attention will be given to structural model making and careful structural drawings. The outcomes of the course will become a primary collection of Polyhedral Structures Laboratory. Also, a unique summer research fellowship will be available for highly motivated students to build a one-to- one scale structural prototype based on the forms developed in the class.

ARCH 732-004: Technology Designated Elective: Matter and Energy
Franca Trubiano
Tuesday, 5:15PM-8:00PM
This seminar/workshop promotes architectural innovation in the field of construction technology. Matter + Energy are the two fields of enquiry which guide and structure the course’s reading seminars and prototype workshops. Students will design and fabricate building related prototypes that productively respond to a well-documented and socially relevant environmental need. The creative and critical integration of Matter + Energy is the ambition of each prototype. Materials such as films, composites and plastic/polymers will be central to the investigation, as will the energy related topics of thermodynamics, light/heat studies and renewable energies. Invited design and building industry professionals will advise student teams and offer critical reviews of their process during the semester. Lastly, students will be introduced to performance design metrics used in evaluating the environmental impact of their material and energy choices, be they embodied energy, carbon emissions, or Life Cycle Assessments.

More specifically, the seminar is dedicated to the development of a body of knowledge aligned with socially relevant ecological design principles. Students are encouraged to design and prototype innovative solutions for housing the world’s homeless. The physical constraints of the art of building are essential to the exercise when the construction of new technologies is positioned between the practice points of energy + matter; power and materials.

Given the world’s energy resources are limited and fair acquisition is impossible given corporate and governmental power dynamics, the design of basic shelter for hundreds of millions of homeless must address this basic lack of fuel. Seeking inventive applications in renewable energy in the design of minimum existence housing is one goal of this seminar; the other, the innovative and intelligent application of materials to the same end. Students working in teams will develop their own Energy + Matter equation, actualizing a world of ideas and fabrication practices which give rise to socially relevant zero energy building prototypes.

ARCH 732-005: Technology Designated Elective: Matter, Making, and Testing: Designing with Next Generation Precast Concrete
Richard Garber
Wednesday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
This seminar will focus on precast concrete and specifically its materiality – how it is manufactured and the logistics of its assembly - and its cultural affects through both traditional uses within the urban environment as well as new approaches to building typologies such as housing. Through a strategic partnership with Northeast Precast (NEP), based in Millville, NJ, students enrolled in the seminar will gain access to places where precast concrete is made, formed, and put into action. In addition to readings and case studies via traditional seminar delivery, students will have access to Northeast Precast’s state-of-the-art facility where they will learn about the precast concrete manufacturing process and produce panel prototypes for wall assemblies that respond to structural, thermal, and water proofing performance. Students will develop a delivery workflow utilizing digital tools to communicate with and transmit panel, assembly and formwork concepts to NEP staff, fostering a collaboration opportunity for students that is not regularly experienced in architecture school.

ARCH 737-001: Semi-Fictitious Realms
Jeffrey Anderson
Thursday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
This course will study the evolutionary advancements made that now allow us to fully inhabit digital worlds through Virtual Reality. Using the Unity Video Game Engine, students will generate immersive, photo-realistic models of unbuilt architectural works and explore digital/physical interactivity. These models will be designed to have compatibility with both 6-DOF and 3-DOF Virtual Reality equipment as well as flythrough-style experiences for keyboard and mouse using various web-hosting platforms. From the terraces of Paul Rudolph's Lower Manhattan Expressway to Boullée's Cenotaph for Newton, the goal of this course is to breathe new life into places and spaces that have, until this time, never been built or occupied.

ARCH 739-001: New Approaches to an Architecture of Health
Mikael Avery
Tuesday, 12:00PM-2:45PM
Health care is taking on a new role in our society—refocusing from episodic care for those who are ill or symptomatic to providing life-long care geared towards maintaining wellness. These changes are evident across numerous areas of design, from wearable technologies that track and analyze to large scale building initiatives that aim to create healthier environments and improve lives through strategic planning initiatives.

A concrete, physical representation of this paradigm shift can be found within the hospital building itself and in the new manner in which hospitals are looking to serve their patients and care for their clinicians. Simultaneously both public and private spaces, hospitals are complex systems in which sickness, health, hospitality, technology, emergency, and community share space and compete for resource.

In order to frame our present day understanding of the role of architecture (and design) in fostering health for individuals and within communities, this seminar will begin with an exploration of the historical and contemporary perspectives on the role of the architect and built environment on health. (Parallels between design and our ever-changing understanding of the biological, social, and environmental causes of sickness and disease will also be explored.) During this conversation, students will read articles and study recently constructed projects in order to examine the ways in which the architects approached these topics through built form. Following from this foundation, students will craft arguments for a new approach to the individual, the community, health, and architecture through a written response and architecturally designed scenario that argues for their perspective on how architecture can and should shape the health of those who inhabit it.

Throughout the course, students will engage in weekly readings (and discussions) of critical texts exploring ideas around the role and impact of architecture on health. Various content experts will be included in the course to provide additional insights into key areas of theory and practice in order to lend additional perspectives and ground the conversation

ARCH 743-001: Form and Algorithm
Ezio Blasetti
Monday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
The critical parameter will be to develop the potential beyond finite forms of explicit and parametric modeling towards non-linear algorithmic processes. We will seek novel patterns of organization, structure, and articulation as architectural expressions within the emergent properties of feedback loops and rule based systems. This seminar will accommodate both introductory and advanced levels. No previous scripting experience is necessary. It will consist of a series of introductory sessions, obligatory intensive workshops, lectures followed by suggested readings, and will gradually focus on individual projects. Students will be encouraged to investigate the limits of algorithmic design both theoretically and in practice through a scripting environment.

ARCH 749-001: Indeterminate Delineations
Maya Alam
Tuesday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
This representation and design seminar will focus on new media applications, its effects on our perception and understanding of space. We will focus on the history and application of contemporary imaging technologies through the lens of the point as a visualization and abstraction device.

Architecture has always been closely entangled with modes of vision. Devices ranging from Dürer's perspective machine to the photographic eye have strongly shaped the way we think and design the built environment of our cities: it is the technologies through which we see and experience the built environment that define the way we construct it. This class leverages the bi-product of scanning technologies - point clouds and image making - to explore inclusive modes of delineations: a visual sensibility to engage with the multi-faceted nature of the built environment.

Points play an important role in the history of visuality: from Impressionism and Pointillism as elements to investigate the mechanics of vision, to the post war period at the Berlin School of Gestalt Psychology as graphic elements to understand part to whole relationships. Aiming to continue this investigation, this class will focus on digital and physical points as anchors to tie modes of vision with modes of construction.

ARCH 765-001: Project Management
Charles Capaldi
Friday, 8:30AM-11:30AM
ARCH 765 is an introduction to construction management, project management and various construction project delivery systems. In the study of construction delivery systems, we will examine the players, relationships and the advantages and disadvantages of different contractual and practical relationships, both on the construction site and at the tops of the various “paper piles”. Exercises and lectures will focus on developing perspectives into the various roles, needs and expectations of the many parties involved in a construction project and the management skills and techniques which help to bring a project to a successful conclusion.

ARCH 768-402 Real Estate Development
Alan Feldman
Monday, 3:30PM-6:30PM
This course evaluates "ground-up" development as well as re-hab, re-development, and acquisition investments. We examine raw and developed land and the similarities and differences of traditional real estate product types including office, R & D, retail, warehouses, single family and multi-family residential, mixed use, and land as well as "specialty" uses like golf courses, assisted living, and fractional share ownership. Emphasis is on concise analysis and decision making. We discuss the development process with topics including market analysis, site acquisition, due diligence, zoning, entitlements, approvals, site planning, building design, construction, financing, leasing, and ongoing management and disposition. Special topics like workouts and running a development company are also discussed. Course lessons apply to all markets but the class discusses U.S. markets only. Throughout the course, we focus on risk management and leadership issues. Numerous guest lecturers who are leaders in the real estate industry participate in the learning process. Format: predominately case analysis and discussion, some lectures, project visits.

HISTORIC PRESERVATION

HSPV 552-001: Building Diagnostics and Monitoring
Michael Henry
Friday, 1:45 PM - 4:45 PM
Building diagnostics pertain to the determination of the nature of a building's condition or performance and the identification of the corresponding causative pathologies by a careful observation and investigation of its history, context and use, resulting in a formal opinion by the professional. Monitoring, a building diagnostic tool, is the consistent observation and recordation of a selected condition or attribute, by qualitative and/or quantitative measures over a period of time in order to generate useful information or data for analysis and presentation. Building diagnostics and monitoring allow the building professional to identify the causes and enabling factors of past or potential pathologies in a building and building systems, thus informing the development appropriate interventions or corrective measures. In the case of heritage buildings, the process informs the selection of interventions that satisfy the stewardship goals for the cultural resource. In the case of recently constructed buildings, the process informs the identification of envelope and systems interventions for improved performance and energy efficiency.

HSPV 555-001: Conservation Science
George Wheeler
Friday, 10:15 AM– 1:15 PM
This course presents the basic principles of conservation science of architectural materials and serves as the foundation for subsequent conservation courses such as HSPV738 – Wood, HSPV739 – Masonry, and HSPV740 – Architectural Surface Finishes, as well as, related courses such as HSPV551 – Building Pathology and HSPV552 – Building Diagnostics and Monitoring. The format includes lectures, demonstrations, and laboratories and is designed to provide a fundamental understanding of architectural materials with respect to their composition, properties, and performance.

Beginning with a general discussion of mechanical properties such as strength, modulus, toughness, creep, and fatigue of all architectural materials, the course moves to porous building materials such as stone, brick, terra cotta, mud brick, concrete, cast stone, and mortar and focuses on the evaluation of their properties and their identification through an exploration of composition and texture using hand specimens and polarizing light microscopy. Rounding out the discussion of inorganic architectural materials is the examination of the unique set of properties of metals including their identification using methods of elemental analysis.

The course then shifts to the important organic architectural materials such as wood and finishes and begins with an overview of basic organic chemistry and follows with a more in-depth exploration of the properties and performance of wood, adhesives, and clear finishes for wood; the chemistry of pigments and paint media; and the identification of pigments, paint media, and clear finishes using several analytical methods. Knowledge of basic college level chemistry is required.

HSPV 572-001: Preservation through Public Policy
David Hollenberg
Friday, 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM
This course explores the intersection between historic preservation, design and public policy, as it exists and as it is evolving. That exploration is based on the recognition that a challenging and challenged network of law and policy at the federal, state and local level has direct and profound impact on the ability to manage cultural resources, and that the pieces of that network, while interconnected, are not necessarily mutually supportive. The fundamental assumption of the course is that the preservation professional must understand the capabilities, deficiencies, and ongoing evolution of this network in order to be effective. The course will look at a range of relevant and exemplary laws and policies existing at all levels of government, examining them through case studies and in-depth analyses of pertinent programs and agencies at the local, state and federal level. Learn More about HSPV 771-001 from David Hollenberg. 

HSPV 640-301 : Contemporary Design in Historic Settings
Pamela Hawkes
Monday, 1:45 PM – 4:45 PM
Contemporary design can add value and meaning to historic settings of any age or scale, from individual landmarks to landscapes and neighborhoods. Rigorous dialogue with history and context enriches contemporary design. This seminar immerses designers, planners and preservationists in the challenges of design with existing structures and sites of varying size and significance. Readings of source materials, lectures and discussions explore how design and preservation theory, physical and intangible conditions, and time have shaped design response, as well as the political, cultural and aesthetic environments that influence regulation. Through sketch analytical exercises set in Philadelphia and outstanding case studies from around the world, students will learn to communicate their understanding of historic places, to critique and generate a range of responses to historic contexts. No prerequisites. Learn more about HSPV 640-301 from Pamela Hawkes. 

HSPV 739-301: Conservation Seminar: Masonry
Roy Ingraffia
Wednesday, 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Pre-requisite: HSPV 555 Conservation Science and permission needed from department.
This seminar will offer an in-depth study of the conservation of masonry buildings and monuments with a particular focus on American building stone. Technical and aesthetic issues will be discussed as they pertain to the understanding required for conservation practice. Part 1 will address a broad range of building stone, masonry construction technologies, and deterioration phenomenon; Part 2 will concentrate on conservation methodology as well as past and current approaches for the treatment of stone masonry structures. The subject will be examined through published literature and case studies. Students will gain practical experience through lab and field exercises and demonstrations. The subject matter is relevant to interested students of conservation and preservation, architecture, landscape architecture, architectural history, and archaeology. Learn More about HSPV 739-301 from Roy Ingraffia. 

HSPV 606-001: Historic Site Management
Laura Keim Stutman
Monday, 10:15 AM- 1:15 PM
This course focuses on management, planning, decision making, and interpretation for heritage sites, from individual buildings and historic sites to whole landscapes and historic objects. Class projects ask students to analyze historic site operations and interpret objects. Course material will draw on model approaches to management, as well as a series of domestic and international case studies, with the goal of understanding the practicalities and particularities of site management. Topics to be examined in greater detail might include histories of historic sites, collections and conservation policies, interpretation, tourism, social justice, community engagement, strategic planning, in addition to fundraising and financial management. The course emphasizes making historic sites meaningful, relevant, and sustainable in the present.

HSPV 747-401: Conservation of Archaeological Sites
Frank Matero & Clark Erickson
Monday, 1:45 PM- 4:45 PM
This seminar will address the history, theories, principles, and practices of the preservation and interpretation of archaeological sites and landscapes. The course will draw from a wide range of published material and experiences representing both national and international contexts. Topics will include site and landscape documentation and recording; site formation and degradation; intervention strategies including interpretation and display, legislation, policy, and contemporary issues of descendent community ownership and global heritage. Depending on the site, students will study specific issues leading toward the critique or development of a conservation and management program in accordance with guidelines established by ICOMOS/ ICAHM and other official agencies.

HSPV 584-401: World Heritage in Global Conflct
Lynn Meskell
Wednesday, 1:45 PM- 4:45 PM
Heritage is always political. Such a statement might refer to the everyday politics of local stakeholder interests on one end of the spectrum, or the volatile politics of destruction and erasure of heritage during conflict, on the other. If heritage is always political then one might expect that the workings of World Heritage might be especially fraught given the international dimension. In particular, the intergovernmental system of UNESCO World Heritage must navigate the inherent tension between state sovereignty and nationalist interests and the wider concerns of a universal regime. The World Heritage List has almost 1200 properties has many such contentious examples, including sites in Iraq, Mali, Syria, Crimea, Palestine, Armenia and Cambodia. As an organization UNESCO was born of war with an explicit mission to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally yet has found its own history increasingly entwined with that of international politics and violence.

FINE ARTS

DSGN 500: Contemporary Theories of Design
Maite Borjabad Lopez
Friday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
This seminar explores a range of theories, concepts, and thought patterns that shape different disciplines of design. From critical science studies to object-orient ontology and speculative design, it discusses how theoretical frameworks drive innovation, critique, and user experience.

DSGN 506: Design 21
Orkan Telhan
Tuesday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Last century, the digital revolution transformed every aspect of our lives. It shaped every design discipline and defined the ways we imagine and fabricate anything from images to everyday products to clothing, cars, buildings and megacities. Today, design is going through other technical and conceptual revolutions. We design with biotechnologies, fall in love in Virtual Reality with AI bots, rent our cognitive labor through cryptocurrencies. Our creative capabilities, on the other hand, are bounded by a polluted, over-crowded, and resource-constrained planet that is suffering major income and educational inequality. Design After the Digital interrogates the role of design for this century. The seminar surveys the conceptual and technical developments in the past decade to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of design, science and technology. We will study how new design and fabrication methods shape what we eat, what we wear, how we form opinions and express ourselves. The goal will be to develop new literacies of design that will help us acclimate better to the realities of the century as creative and critical citizens who can shape its products and values.

FNAR 508: Clay Practices
Staff
Tuesday and Thursday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
This course introduces clay as a sculptural medium through fundamental clay-building techniques, mold making, model making, and casting. Through experimentation with these methods, this course promotes an understanding of materials, processes, visual concepts and techniques for creating three-dimensional forms in space. In addition to using different water-based clays and plaster, other materials such as wax, plastiline, paper pulp, and cardboard will be explored. Students will explore the full range of clay s capabilities and its role in contemporary art through lectures, readings, demonstrations, and assignments that incorporate conceptual and technical issues.

DSGN 520: Pixel to Print
Kayla Romberger
Monday and Wednesday, 10:15am – 1:15pm

This studio course introduces students to the world of print media and circulation through techniques in Risograph (a high-speed digital printing system developed in Japan in the 1980s), xerography, and letterpress, focusing particularly on the format of posters and artists' ephemera. Beginning with the Adobe Creative Suite, students will create their own broadsides, flyers, announcement cards, and print-based installations throughout the course, exploring ways in which artists and designers make use of the printed form to disseminate information; initiate happenings; advertise events; or foment change. Students will learn about some of the most significant producers working within this realm--from Dada to punk bands in the '70s to contemporary hybrid publishing collectives--and develop skills in page layout, typography, and design; digital to analog pre-press and post-print production methods; and mechanized and hand-pulled press operations. The course includes a field trip to NYC.

FNAR 523: Drawing I
Section 401 – Alexis Granwell – Monday and Wednesday: 5:15pm – 8:15pm
Section 404 – Roderick Jones – Tuesday and Thursday: 1:45pm – 4:45pm 
Section 405 – Kaitlin Pomerantz – Tuesday and Thursday: 5:15pm – 8:15pm 
This course is designed to develop visual awareness and perceptual acuity through the process of drawing. Students learn to sharpen perceptual skills through observational drawing, and to explore the expressive potential of drawing. A variety of problems and media will be presented in order to familiarize students with various methods of working and ways of communicating ideas visually. Subject matter will include object study, still life, interior and exterior space, self-portrait and the figure. Different techniques and materials (charcoal, graphite, ink, collage) are explored in order to understand the relationship between means, material and concept. Critical thinking skills are developed through frequent class critiques and through the presentation of and research into historical and contemporary precedent in drawing. If you need assistance registering for a closed section, please email the department at fnarug@design.upenn.edu

FNAR 524: Drawing Investigations
Ivanco Talevski
Monday and Wednesday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
Drawing is a fundamental means of visualization and a hub for thinking, constructing, and engaging in a wide variety of creative activities and problem-solving. This studio class explores drawing in both its traditional and contemporary forms. The projects are designed to help students in all disciplines find ways express and clarify their ideas through the process of drawing. The semester begins with the refinement of perceptual skills acquired in Drawing I, while encouraging experimentation through the introduction of color, abstract agendas, conceptual problem solving, and collaborative exercises, as well as new materials, techniques and large format drawings. Particular attention is given to ways to conduct visual research in the development of personal imagery. Assignments are thematic or conceptually based with ample opportunity for individual approaches to media, subject, scale and process. The goal is to strengthen facility, develop clarity in intent and expand expression. Attention is paid to the development of perceptual sensitivity, methods of imagine construction, and the processes of synthesis and transformation in order to communicate ideas through visual means. Recommended for students in all areas.

FNAR 525: Figure Painting
Jotham Malave-Maldonado
Tuesday and Thursday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Beyond the introduction to technique and materials this course will emphasis the figure in historical & contemporary painting. This course will be based in perception, working from the model and move through modernism and toward varying approaches to the figure. Further investigation about the language of color through color theory will be covered. Drawing 1 pre-requisite, Painting 1 pre-requisite recommended but not mandatory.

FNAR 530: Public Art and Issues of Spatial Production
Ken Lum
Tuesday, 8:30am – 11:30am
The French social philosopher Michel de Certeau upset the common understanding of the relationship between space and place by elevating space as practice place. By this, he meant that place is but a set of geo-physical particularities that has no dynamic meaning unless activated through social engagement so that space is produced. Spatial practice is a key concept in the modern understanding of the city as a society of abstract space, one in which the problem of human alienation is riven with the logic of spatial spectacularization. Public Art is often employed to address or mollify such urban problems through concepts of historical reconstruction or institutional critique, including possibly testing the limits of public expression. Historical markers play a somewhat different role by calling attention to lost or negative histories, albeit most often vetted through the language of tourism factoids. This course will examine the discursive issues at play in respect to art and markers, particularly for Philadelphia. Additionally, important public art works from around the world will be examined. The course will also include the occasional visit of several key works downtown in which the question of what can and cannot said will be pondered.

FNAR 531: Painting Practices
Section 401 – Anthony Bowers – Monday and Wednesday: 5:15pm – 8:15pm
Section 402 – Ivanco Talevski – Tuesday and Thursday: 10:15am – 1:15pm
Painting practices is an introduction to the methods and materials of oil painting. This course begins with an investigation of color and color relationships. The beginning of the semester will cover technical issues and develop the student's ability to create a convincing sense of form in space using mass, color, light and composition. The majority of work is from direct observation including object study, still life, landscape, interior and exterior space and the self portrait. Class problems advance sequentially with attention paid to perceptual clarity, the selection and development of imagery, the process of synthesis and translation, color, structure and composition, content and personal expression. Students will become familiar with contemporary and art historical precedent in order to familiarize them with the history of visual ideas and find appropriate solutions to their painting problems.

FNAR 532 & 534: Painting Studio 
Jackie Tileston
Monday and Wednesday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Painting Studio IV focuses on continuing the student's exploration of techniques, problems, and poetics of painting, the nuances of the painting language, and the development of a personal direction. While students may choose to work on assigned projects (either in consultation with the instructor or following the projects that the Painting II/III students may be involved in), the emphasis is on the investigation of the student's own sensibility. Students will be expected to engage in ongoing critical analysis of their own practices and assumptions.

DSGN 536: Digital Figure Modeling
Scott White
Friday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
This course introduces methods of modeling, texturing, and rendering human and animal figures. Students will study anatomical bone and muscle structures, and then employ this knowledge as they develop polygonal models for real-time 3D simulations or gaming environments, high-resolution renderings, and rapid prototyping.

DSGN 538:  Open Book
Sharka Hyland
Monday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
"Open Book" will focus on visual communication of information. It will address two methods of inquiry and the corresponding means of visual representation: the objective, will structured research of facts and images, and the creative process of their subjective evaluation and restatement. Students will propose a topic based on their area of interest and engage in a focused, semester-long exploration, which they will present in the form of a designed and printed book.

FNAR 540: Mystics and Visionaries
Jackie Tileston
Tuesday, 1:45pm-4:45pm
As a pioneer of abstraction in the early 1900's, Hilma Af Klint channeled a complex and highly original body of abstract symbolic work in secrecy. Using the upcoming Hilma Af Klint exhibition at the Guggenheim as a focus and departure point, this course will explore the ways in which artists have accessed alternative ways of seeing, knowing, and embodying non-visible realities as a source for their work. Accessing spiritual realms has been the subject of early European Modernisms investigations into Theosophy and Anthroposophy, as well as the primary intention of Tibetan Thangkas and Indian Tantra paintings. Postmodernism's crisis of belief and skepticism generated a cultural situation wherein the subject of spirituality was marginalized, ridiculed as anti- intellectual, and in disgrace. The Hilma Af Klint exhibition and surge of interest in her work signifies a new moment, where questions about consciousness and the nature of reality are being addressed with renewed vigor. How do we create space in a technology driven world for experiences that attempt to align the viewer/maker with the contemplative realm, heightened states of consciousness, or transcendence? We will examine a wide field of artists in an attempt to understand the possibilities of the "spiritual" in art and contemporary culture. This seminar will engage in readings, lectures, discussions, projects, and field trips. This course is appropriate for both grad and undergrad, art majors and non-majors alike.

FNAR 541:  Hand-Drawn Computer Animation
Joshua Mosley
Tuesday and Thursday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
Using software tools designed for hand-drawn animation, students will develop animation skills applicable to all forms of animation. In this course students will learn to draw with a sense of urgency and purpose as they represent motion and drama in a series of frames. Through careful study of natural movements, precedents in the history of animation, and through the completion of a series of animation projects students will develop strategies for representing naturalistic movement, inventing meaningful transformations of form, and storytelling.

FNAR 545: Sculpture Practices
William Udell
Tuesday and Thursday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
As an introduction to traditional and contemporary three-dimensional practice, this course is concerned with the concepts and methodologies surrounding three-dimensional art making in our time. Students experiment with a variety of modes of production, and develop some of the fundamental techniques used in sculpture. In addition to these investigations, assignments relative to the history and social impact of these practices are reinforced through readings and group discussion. Processes covered include use of the Fab Lab, wood construction, clay, paper, mixed media, and more. If you need assistance registering for a closed section, please email the department at fnarug@design.upenn.edu

FNAR 550: Intro to Printmaking
Joshua Zerangue
Monday and Wednesday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
The course offers an introduction to several forms of printmaking including: intaglio, screen printing, relief, and monoprinting. Through in-class demonstrations students are introduced to various approaches to making and printing in each medium. The course enhances a student's capacity for developing images through two-dimensional design and conceptual processes. Technical and conceptual skills are developed through discussions and critiques.

FNAR 552: Screenprinting
Roderick Jones
Tuesday and Thursday, 5:15pm– 8:15pm
This course is an introduction to technical skills and investigative processes in screen printing and relief and examines methods for combining digital technology with traditional print media. The course introduces students to several contemporary applications of silkscreen and relief printmaking including techniques in multi-color printing, photo-based silkscreening, digital printing, woodcut, linocut, and letterpress. Demonstrations include photo and image manipulation, color separating and output techniques, hand carving and printing, as well as drawing and collage. Both traditional and experimental approaches are explored and encouraged and technical and conceptual skills are developed through discussions and critiques.

FNAR 565: Nonhuman Photography
Arthur Vierkant
Thursday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Our culture is increasingly made up of nonhuman actors. Facial recognition algorithms spend more hours "seeing" in a day than humans; drones equipped with visual sensors conduct our warfare; voice chat bots call businesses and make appointments for us. Meanwhile, humans conduct labor that we view as the work of bots: posting disinformation for political gain, or mass-producing children's YouTube videos for ad revenue. As objects begin to see and think, how can we understand the role of human agency and the possibilities (or lack thereof) for artistic expression in this space? What does the future of art look like when more photographs are taken as surveillance than by individuals, or when important cultural producers are nonhuman intelligences? In Nonhuman Photography, we will attempt to interrogate these ideas from an artist's perspective, approaching nonhuman agents and the various components that comprise them both as tools for studio work and as generative entities in their own right. Over the course of the semester we will read and discuss these issues extensively, while engaging in studio projects in a variety of media. While the course bears the title "photography", we will find that many of these tools will be non-photographic or para-photographic, and as a result many of our studio projects will be interdisciplinary. This course takes its name from Joanna Zylinska's Nonhuman Photography, parts of which we will examine over the course of the semester.

DSGN 566: Graphic Design
/> Section 401 – Staff – Tuesday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Section 402 – Mark Owens – Thursday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
The aim of this course is to introduce students creative ways to use color, typography, and layout across materials and media, ranging from print to physical objects. Students will explore visual design through a set of assignments and projects that are geared towards exploring the role of design in visual arts, interaction design, media design and architecture. The course introduces a number of design concepts such as content organization, navigation, interaction and data-driven design and show ways to develop new design metaphors, presentation techniques, and imagery using old and new technologies. Course is structured as a combination of lectures and hands on workshops where students will have the chance to work both individually and collaboratively to realize their projects.

DSGN 568: Biological Design
Orkan Telhan
Monday and Wednesday, 1:45am – 4:45pm
This course is a research-based design studio that introduces new materials, fabrication, and prototyping techniques to develop a series of design proposals in response to the theme: Biological Design. The studio introduces life sciences and biotechnologies to designers, artists, and non-specialists to develop creative and critical propositions that address the social, cultural, and environmental needs of the 21st century.

DSGN 569: Typography 
Sharka Hyland
Monday and Wednesday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
The study and practice and typography spans the history of individual letterforms through the typesetting of full texts. It is a complete immersion into type as an integral part of visual communication. Typesetting conventions and variables including legibility, readability, texture, color and hierarchy will be stressed, as well as a form for organizing information and expressing visual ideas. Studio work will include collecting and analyzing type, designing and original typeface, researching type history and experimenting with typographic forms.

FNAR 571: Introduction to Photography
Section 401 – Karen Rodewald – Wednesday: 10:15am – 1:15pm
Section 402 – Gabe Martinez – Wednesday: 5:15pm – 8:15pm
This course is an introduction to the basic processes and techniques of black & white photography. Students will learn how to expose and process 35mm film, SLR camera operation, darkroom procedures & printing, basic lighting and controlled applications. It begins with an emphasis on understanding and mastering technical procedures and evolves into an investigation of the creative and expressive possibilities of making images. This is a project-based course, where students will begin to develop their personal vision, their understanding of aesthetic issues and photographic history. Assignments, ideas and important examples of contemporary art will be presented via a series of slide lectures, critiques and discussion. No previous experience necessary. 35mm SLR cameras will be available throughout the semester for reservation and checkout from the photography equipment room. If you need assistance registering for a closed section, please email the department at fnarug@design.upenn.edu

FNAR 580: Figure Drawing
Jotham Malave-Maldonado
Tuesday and Thursday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
Students work directly from the nude model and focus on its articulation through an understanding of anatomical structure and function. Students will investigate a broad variety of drawing techniques and materials. The model will be used as the sole element in a composition and as a contextualized element.

FNAR 583: Performance/Camera: Performance And-With-Through-For Cameras
Menkkat Dukan
Tuesday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
This intermediate course will explore the wide and expansive territories of art-making that exist between live performance and mediated image making-both still and moving. For much of the 21st century, the mediums of performance, video and photography have been weaving in and out of contact. Performance is known and understood largely through its documentation: sometimes voluminous and sometimes little more than a single photograph. On the other side, video, film and photography each developed through widespread explorations that were deeply entwined with the "capturing" of bodies on film. Using photography, video and performance in equal parts, the course is a hands-on exploration of this capacious terrain. The course will be structured by a series of bi-weekly assignments that allow for individual and collective production. The course will also include a regular schedule of short readings and presentations/screenings of existing works.

FNAR 588: Getting Caught: A Collaboration On and Off Stage Between Theater and Anthropology
Staff
Wednesday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
Our workshop is an exploration of and a cross pollination between research and narrative practices in theater and anthropology. By creating a dialogue between these disciplines in a laboratory format, we hope to pose questions and engage techniques in ways that will enrich our engagement with anthropological questions and performative productions. We recognize the value of the work of Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, and Erving Goffman in their exploration between anthropology and performance studies. This is not, however, a workshop on the anthropology of theater nor an experiment in performing ethnographies, but rather a lab where we use theatrical techniques to engage empirical questions and material. Rather than enacting our research, we put the elements of the stage (lights, sets, objects, sound, bodies etc.) into conversation with our research material. This generates surprising and often more affective analyses. We explore how anthropologists can take from theater a more visceral posture towards research, and a more performative understanding of narrative that can translate into either a new kind of texts (essays, plays, short stories, installations, etc.), or into a revitalized existing practice of academic writing. On the other hand, theater makers and other artists can learn from anthropology a more nuanced understanding of political and cultural contexts, how to approach the different discourse formations around events and social issues, and to pay attention to the complexities of worlds and their grammars. We use the practice of Affect Theater. This theatrical devising technique is a practice for working with non-theatrical source material (interviews, archival documents, medical and legal reports, various media sources, etc.) to construct narratives for the stage. The practice of theatrical devising departs from traditional theater in that a finished script is not the starting point for the staging and direction of a play. Devising emerged as a means to revitalize how theatrical texts are created. It is a collaborative process involving the members of a company devising and writing together. Our workshop aims at extending this way of writing to other disciplines and their forms of textual production (books, articles, essays, installation, exhibits, etc.). We encourage participants to include their own empirical data as a part of the source material we utilize in our devising practices. This creates the opportunity for students and faculty to shift their relationship to their research through this collaborative engagement.

FNAR 589: Mixed Media Animation
Joshua Mosley
Tuesday and Thursday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Mixed Media Animation is a contemporary survey of stop-motion animation concepts and techniques. Students use digital SLR cameras, scanners and digital compositing software to produce works in hand-drawn animation, puppet and clay animation, sand animation, and multiplane collage animation. Screenings and discussions in the course introduce key historical examples of animation demonstrating how these techniques have been used in meaningful ways. Students then learn how to composite two or more of these methods with matte painting, computer animation or video.

FNAR 596: Surrealism in Americas: A Creative and Critical Writing and Performance Workshop
Ricardo Bracho
Thursday, 3:30pm – 6:30pm
Surrealism in the Americas is a workshop focused around the reading, writing and production of surrealist manifestos, plays, performances, poems and fiction. Taking the stance that surrealist literary production is at its base a left aesthetic engagement with form and politics, the course will survey North American, South American and Caribbean engagements with what is largely misunderstood as a European aesthetic and movement. The works of Aime Cesaire, Adrienne Kennedy, Leonora Carrington, Martin Ramirez, and Grupo Etcetera, among many others, will be studied and used as models for students' own writing and performance. Work will be both individually and collectively generated and the opportunity to work on public performances of surrealist plays will be part of the workshop.

FNAR 615:  Across Forms: Art and Writing
Sharon Hayes and Rachel Zolf
Wednesday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
What if a poem spoke from inside a photograph? What if a sculpture unfurled a political manifesto? What if a story wasn't just like a dance, but was a dance-or a key component of a video, drawing, performance, or painting? In this course, artists and writers will develop new works that integrate the forms, materials, and concerns of both art and writing. Many artists employ writing in their practices, but may not look at the texts they create as writing. And many writers have practices that go beyond the page and deserve attention as art. This course will employ critique and workshop, pedagogic methodologies from art and writing respectively, to support and interrogate cross- pollination between writing and art practices. Additionally, the course will examine a field of artists and writers who are working with intersections between art and writing to create dynamic new ways of seeing, reading, and experiencing.

FNAR 622: Big Pictures: Mural Arts, Cultural Diversity in the US
Jane Golden and Shira Walinsky
Monday and Wednesday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step by step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The class is co-taught by Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and Shira Walinsky, a mural arts painter and founder of Southeast by Southeast project, a community center for Burmese refugees in South Philadelphia.

DSGN 625: Design Tools and Technology
Orkan Telhan
Monday and Wednesday, 12:00pm – 1:30pm
This studio focuses on providing digital skills to conceptualize, produce and disseminate design products. Through workshops, software training sessions and labs, students will engage with different design professionals and learn state-of-the art tools used in interactive media, UI/UX, modeling and fabrication design. Students will also learn ways to work with open source software and have a chance to build their own design tools through creative programming exercises. The course does not require any technical background, but assumes basic familiarity with visual design tools (i.e., Adobe Creative Suite).

FNAR 625: Contemporary Art Studio
Matt Neff
Tuesday and Thursday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
This course offers an introduction to studio-based practices aimed at synthesizing the expansive potentialities of art through exposure to a diverse set of approaches, their histories, and contemporary applications. A wide range of multi-disciplinary projects will provide students with skills to conceptualize and visualize material investigations. Lectures, readings, films, visiting lectures, field trips, and critiques, will provide a historic and theoretical foundation for critical inquiry.

DSGN 634: Art of the Web
Nika Simovich Fisher
Monday and Wednesday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Art of the Web: Interactive concepts for art and design is a first step in learning how to create, analyze and discuss interactive content, as a visual creator. It is an exploration of the culture of the internet, the ideas behind its quirks, the dreams and freedoms it encapsulates, and the creative power it gives us. Students will be assigned projects that will challenge their current understanding of the web, and the ways it shapes human connectivity and interaction. Upon completion of this course, students will possess a working knowledge how to organize and design websites and learn to critique web-content including navigation, UX design and information architecture. The course will require analytical conceptual skills and foster creative thinking.

DSGN 635: 3-D Computer Modeling
Scott White
Section 401 - Monday and Wednesday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
Section 402 - Monday and Wednesday, 3:30pm – 6:30pm
Students will develop a comprehensive knowledge of how virtual worlds are constructed using contemporary computer graphics technique with a fine arts perspective. The course will offer the opportunity to explore the construction, texturing, and rendering of forms, environments, and mechanisms while conforming to modeling specifications required for animation, real-time simulations or gaming environments, and rapid prototyping.

DSGN 636: Art, Design, and Digital Culture
Section 401 – Jacob Rivkin – Monday and Wednesday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
Section 402 – Jacob Rivkin – Monday and Wednesday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Section 403 –Christopher Lawrence – Monday and Wednesday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
Section 405 – Avery Lawrence – Tuesday and Thursday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Section 406 – Christopher Lawrence – Tuesday and Thursday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
This course is an introduction to the fundamental perception, representation, aesthetics, and design that shape today's visual culture. It addresses the way artists and designers create images; design with analog and digital tools; communicate, exchange, and express meaning over a broad range of media; and find their voices within the fabric of contemporary art, design, and visual culture. Emphasis is placed on building an extended form of visual literacy by studying and making images using a variety of representation techniques; learning to organize and structure two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, and designing with time-based and procedural media. Students learn to develop an individual style of idea-generation, experimentation, iteration, and critique as part of their creative and critical responses to visual culture. If you need registering for a closed section, please email the department at fnarug@design.upenn.edu

DSGN 637:  Information Design & Visualization
Mahir Yavuz
Tuesday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
Information design and visualization is an introductory course that explores the structure of information (text, numbers, images, sounds, video, etc.) and presents strategies for designing effective visual communication appropriate for various users and audiences. The course seeks to articulate a vocabulary of information visualization and find new design forms for an increasingly complex culture.

FNAR 640: Digital Photography
Section 401 – Sarah Stolfa – Monday: 10:15am – 1:15pm
Section 402 – Demetrius Oliver– Monday: 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Section 403 – Demetrius Oliver – Monday: 5:15pm – 8:15pm
Section 404 – Gabriel Martinez – Tuesday: 10:15am – 1:15pm
Section 405 – Gabriel Martinez – Tuesday: 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Section 406 – Heather Phillips – Tuesday: 5:15pm – 8:15pm
Section 407 – Jamie Diamond – Wednesday: 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Section 408 – Jamie Diamond – Wednesday: 5:15pm – 8:15pm
Section 409 – Frederick Wahl– Thursday: 1:45pm – 4:45pm
This class offers an in-depth technical and conceptual foundation in digital imagery and the opportunity to explore the creative, expressive possibilities of photography. Students will become proficient with the basic use of the camera, techniques of digital capture, color management and color correction. They will also develop competency in scanning, retouching, printing and a variety of manipulation techniques in Photoshop. Through weekly lectures and critiques, students will become familiar with some of the most critical issues of representation, consider examples from photo history, analyze the impact of new technologies and social media. With an emphasis on structured shooting assignments, students are encouraged to experiment, expand their visual vocabulary while refining their technical skills. No previous experience is necessary. Although it is beneficial for students to have their own Digital SLR camera, registered students may reserve and checkout Digital SLR cameras and other high-end equipment from the department. If you need assistance registering for a closed section, please email the department at fnarug@design.upenn.edu

FNAR 642:  Digital Photography II
Jamie Diamond
Thursday, 10:15am – 1:15pm
In this course students will continue to develop conceptual, technical, aesthetic and formal strategies in digital photography, expanding their artistic process while refining their critical approach to researched subject matter. The class will be driven initially by a series of assignments formulated to further expose students to broad possibilities related to the medium and then they will be guided towards the evolution of a personalized body of work that is culturally, theoretically and historically informed. We will be examining key issues surrounding the digital image in contemporary society, led through a combination of class lectures, readings, group discussions, film screenings, gallery visits and class critiques. Students will further their knowledge of image control and manipulation, retouching and collage, advanced color management; become familiar with high-end camera and lighting equipment and develop professional printing skills. In addition to learning these advanced imaging practices, this course will also emphasize an investigation of critical thought surrounding contemporary visual culture and the role of digital media in the creation of art.

FNAR 648: Counter the Land
Frederick Wahl
Friday, 10:15am – 1:45pm
Starting with the representation of landscape in painting in the early 1800s, the course will then move through Pictorialsim and the Modernist movement in photography. Revisiting the later half of the 20th century, we will begin to consider the shifting practices of landscape and the ways it has been photographically depicted up to the present. Collaborating with the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, students will begin their photographic exploration with the work of Andrea Wyeth and the landscape of the Brandywine Valley. As we consider Wyeth, the images of James Welling will also be introduced. Credited for pioneering new forms of representation in photography in the 1970s, Welling also revisited the work of Wyeth from 2010-2015, and committed to a fresh (and challenging) look at tradition. Working with imagery and text, this class will also touch on conceptual art, the New Topographics, and postmodernism. Through these various concentrations, students will consider and counter the traditions that they are already familiar with, while creating work based on issues of the landscape today. Questions about meaning, politics, social critique, land rights, technology and methods of presentation will be encouraged and explored throughout the course.

FNAR 661: Video I
Section 401 – Emory Van Cleve – Monday and Wednesday: 10:15am – 1:15pm
Section 402 – Sosena Solomon – Monday and Wednesday: 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Section 403 – Emory Van Cleve – Tuesday and Thursday: 10:15am – 1:15pm
Section 404 – Menkkat Dukan – Tuesday and Thursday: 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Section 405 –James Howzell – Tuesday and Thursday: 5:15pm – 8:15pm
In this studio based course, students are introduced to video production and postproduction as well as to selected historical and theoretical texts addressing the medium of video. Students will be taught basic camera operation, sound recording and lighting, as well as basic video and sound editing and exporting using various screening and installation formats. In addition to a range of short assignment-based exercises, students will be expected to complete three short projects over the course of the semester. Critiques of these projects are crucial to the course as students are expected to speak at length about the formal, technical, critical and historical dimensions of their works. Weekly readings in philosophy, critical theory, artist statements and literature are assigned. The course will also include weekly screenings of films and videos, introducing students to the history of video art as well as to other contemporary practices. If you need assistance registering for a closed section, please email the department at fnarug@design.upenn.edu

FNAR 663:  Documentary Video
Michael Crane

Wednesday, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Documentary Video is an intensive production course involving the exploration of concepts, techniques, concerns, and aesthetics of the short form documentary. Building on camera, sound, and editing skills acquired in Video I, students will produce a portfolio of short videos and one longer project over the course of the semester using advanced level camera and sound equipment. One short presentation on a genre, technique, maker, or contemporary concern selected by the student is required.

FNAR 667: Advanced Video Projects
Sosena Solomon
Wednesday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
This course is structured to create a focused environment and support for individual inquiries and projects. Students will present and discuss their work in one on one meetings with the instructor and in group critiques. Readings, screenings, and technical demonstrations will vary depending on students' past history as well as technical, theoretical, and aesthetic interests.

DSGN 678: Interfacing Cultures
Staff
Monday and Wednesday, 5:15pm – 8:15pm
This course introduces advanced topics related to contemporary media technologies, ranging from social media to mobile phone applications and urban interfaces. Students learn how to use new methods from interaction design, service design, and social media and work towards prototyping their ideas using new platforms and media. The class will cover a range of topics such as online-gaming, viral communication, interface culture, networked environments, internet of things and discuss their artistic, social, and cultural.era functions and post- production techniques is expected.

Please contact cityplan@design.upenn.edu for more infomation. 

*Subject to change* - Please contact the department directly for up-to-date information on electives. More information on LARP electives will be announced as soon as it is available.

LARP 720-001: Topics in Representation: Landscape Drawing
Valerio Morabito
Thursday, 5:15 – 8:15 pm
The research of an “Idea” of landscape and the training to the representation of it is the aim of this course. Sometimes it is easy to lose this “Idea” or it is impossible to recognize it because of the millions of images we can meet in every city, space, book, magazine and so on, and we often use them without a critical position. Maybe we have no particular training to break up an idea of landscape from a form of it. Traditional sketches, digital sketches, abstract models, alterations of pictures and a relationship between pictures and sketches, are the tools we will use to discover and to understand our personal and collective “Idea” of landscape. Tools we can use day by day, to form a personal training, in a way to preserve an abstract condition of space, an interior of our own space, a special place where we will be able to preserve our idea of landscape. This course is open to all interested Weitzman students who have previous drawing experience or have taken foundation studios.

LARP 730-001: Topics in Professional Practice: Transformational Leadership: Research and Practice
Lucinda Sanders
Wednesday, 1:45 – 4:45 pm
This course is designed to bring forward the voice and identity of each student by developing a unique capacity for leadership.  Students explore an area of interest shaped by a question that becomes both the focus and the backdrop of the course.  Aspects of transformational leadership are explored alongside of each research question recognizing that possible conduits for expanding the field of landscape architecture arise out of research and manifest in practice, the academy, or activism.  This course is an excellent introduction to a future Independent Studio or Independent Study, or it can be used to create an armature for professional development. Registration will be limited to LARP students, others by permission of the instructor.

LARP 730-001: Topics in Professional Practice: The Practice of Landscape Architecture
Barbara Wilks
Wednesday, 8:30 – 11:30 am (TBC)
How does a project come into being? What is a project and who defines it? Landscape architects have more power and agency than they often realize. What/where are the opportunities for the landscape architect to shape a project at each step of the process —pre to post design? How can they use this power to give it meaning as well as value for the client and others? In this class we will examine the opportunities for landscape architects to lead and shape a variety of project types and scales and their obligation to consider whose values are represented.

This will be illuminated through case studies by the instructor as well as other guest professionals representing a wide range of firm leaders. This course is open to students in other departments if there is space.

LARP 740-001: Topics in Digital Media: Sensing & Sensibilities
Keith VanDerSys & Sean Burkholder
Tuesday, 10:15 am – 1:15 pm 
As global ecological problems pileup, landscape architects are increasingly moving into sites and scales of immense physical and biological complexity. Considering these developments, the term “landscape” has arrived at a turning point; remote optics and radar are now our primary means of imaging and thus territorializing a “landscape.” The invisible world of NIR optics, radar, and algorithms have supplanted the previously dominant modes of imaging: human and photographic eyes. What are the epistemic impacts of this? Additionally, the trans-political nature of such far-reaching sites and scales makes good data procurement illusive; absent any singular governing body of territorial control, data collection and management are nonexistent. Our predictions and prescriptions, however, are dependent on the verity of spatial data. How then do we operate in these interstices?

Low cost, simple-to-use surveying and sensing equipment are increasingly available and accessible to designers. Sensing and syncing data collected across scales, however, remains cumbersome. Yet, imagining technologies form our primary means of translating and expressing our environment. Through hands-on field collection exercises and in-class demos, students will be introduced to an array of sensing tools that are central to collecting and analyzing environmental changes across scales: Arduino sensors; unmanned aerial vehicles (aka drones); RTK GPS receivers; and image recognition software. This technology and representation seminar will be taught collaboratively; the primary instructor will participate in all modules. Limited to LARP & Planning students who have successfully completed LARP 543 Media III or equivalent. Instructor permission is necessary for registration. Course availability is limited.

LARP 740-002: Topics in Digital Media: Game Design Toward Posthuman Relational Aesthetics
James Billingsley & Patrick Danahy
Tuesday, 1:45 – 4:45 pm
This hybrid technology/theory/design seminar proposes an experimental approach to world-building through game design, simulating ontologically diverse agents in complex relational environments. Together, we will explore the possibilities of engaging non-human intelligences in pursuit of authentically Anthropocene, deanthropocentrized landscape design.

In phase 1, students will receive close technical instruction in modern game design technologies: C# programming in the Unity game engine; character design in Maya and ZBrush; physical sensor integration; and machine learning. (NOTE: this class is designed for beginners; no prior experience in programming or any of the above software is required or expected.) These workshops will be paired with deep, seminar-style discussion of contemporary texts investigating post-humanism, game design theory, and speculative realist and object-oriented ecological and landscape thought, along with case studies (and gameplay demos) of modern simulation games.
In phase 2, students will use this critical-practical toolset to design, share, and play their own (and each other’s) games, working together in a collaborative gameplay environment to simulate the unique relational and aesthetic worlds of chosen landscape characters. These virtual intelligences will then become semi-autonomous design partners in a physical design workshop, as students bring their aesthetic-computational environments to bear on the “real” world, working recursively to construct relationally activated, “sensitive” material objects to be exhibited as a vibrant, multidimensional artificial ecology at the seminar’s end.

LARP 755-001: Arboretum Management I: Understanding Plants
Cynthia Skema
Tuesday, 1:45 – 4:45 pm
In this course, students will learn about plants from an organismal perspective, an applied/practical perspective, an aesthetic perspective, an environmental perspective, and an evolutionary perspective. Utilizing the plant collection of the Morris Arboretum as a living laboratory and the expertise of arboretum staff, this course will bring all students, novices and experts alike, to a better understanding of plants. Session topics integrate both theoretical and hands-on practical work. Course assessment will be based on weekly practical assignments and two exams. Please note that this course takes place at the Morris Arboretum in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia and students are responsible for transporting themselves to and from the arboretum on their own for class each week. For further information about the course, students may contact Cynthia Skema (cskema@upenn.edu).

LARP 760-001: Topics in Ecological Design:  Large-Scale Landscape Reclamation Projects
William Young
Thursday, 5:15 – 8:15pm
This course will present practical techniques for the restoration of large tracts of disturbed lands. The course will emphasize techniques used to evaluate sites before a landscape design or restoration plan is prepared. Case studies will be employed to illustrate real world, practical application of course principles. Topics will include examples of how to evaluate and assess health and ecological (toxicity) condition of sites, remediation using sustainable practices, and how to add real economic value to clients’ projects and portfolios of properties through ecological restoration. The class promotes sustainable design through the application of “the triple bottom line”: Ecology-Economy-Culture, and a template approach on how to achieve that on every project. Open to all Weitzman graduate students.