It’s time for a new post in our Greatest Hits series, highlighting individual MIT departments through a handpicked selection from their most-visited OCW courses. This month we feature the departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning.

This model from a student’s final project in 4.111 Introduction to Architecture & Environmental Design demonstrates the relationship between object and void. (Courtesy of Johanna Greenspan-Johnston. Used with permission.)

Architecture

• 4.111 Introduction to Architecture & Environmental Design, taught by Lorena Bello Gomez
  This course provides a foundation to the design of the environment from the scale of the object, to the building to the larger territory. The design disciplines of architecture as well as urbanism and landscape are examined in context of the larger influence of the arts and sciences.
• 4.125 Architecture Studio: Building in Landscapes, taught by Professor Jan Wampler
  This undergraduate design studio “introduces skills needed to build within a landscape establishing continuities between the built and natural world. Students learn to build appropriately through analysis of landscape and climate for a chosen site, and to conceptualize design decisions through drawings and models.”
• 4.241J Theory of City Form, taught by Professor Julian Beinart
  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.
• 4.341 Introduction to Photography and Related Media, taught by Andrea Frank et al
  This course provides practical instruction in the fundamentals of analog and digital SLR and medium/large format camera operation, film exposure and development, black and white darkroom techniques, digital imaging, and studio lighting.”
• 4.401 Introduction to Building Technology, taught by Professor Marilyne Andersen
  This course provides a fundamental understanding of the physics related to buildings and an overview of the various issues that have to be adequately combined to offer the occupants a physical, functional and psychological well-being. Students are guided through the different components, constraints and systems of a work of architecture. These are examined both independently and in the manner in which they interact and affect one another.

The Post Office Square in Boston served as the site of a student’s project in 11.309J Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry. (Image courtesy of Francisca Rojas. Used with permission.)

Urban Studies and Planning

• 11.001J Introduction to Urban Design and Development, taught by Professor Susan Silberberg
  This course examines the evolving structure of cities and the way that cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas can be designed and developed. Boston and other American cities are studied to see how physical, social, political and economic forces interact to shape and reshape cities over time.
• 11.011 The Art and Science of Negotiation, taught by David Laws
  This course provides an introduction to bargaining and negotiation in public, business, and legal settings. It combines a “hands-on” skill-building orientation with a look at pertinent social theory. Strategy, communications, ethics, and institutional influences are examined as they influence the ability of actors to analyze problems, negotiate agreements, and resolve disputes in social, organizational, and political circumstances characterized by interdependent interests.
• 11.126J Economics of Education, taught by Professor Frank Levy
  This class discusses the economic aspects of current issues in education, using both economic theory and econometric and institutional readings. Topics include discussion of basic human capital theory, the growing impact of education on earnings and earnings inequality, statistical issues in determining the true rate of return to education, the labor market for teachers, implications of the impact of computers on the demand for worker skills, the effectiveness of mid-career training for adult workers, the roles of school choice, charter schools, state standards and educational technology in improving K-12 education, and the issue of college financial aid.
• 11.309J Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry, taught by Professor Anne Whiston Spirn
  This course explores photography as a disciplined way of seeing or investigating urban landscapes, and expressing ideas. Readings, observations, and photographs form the basis of discussions on light, detail, place, poetics, narrative, and how photography can inform design and planning.
• 11.431J Real Estate Finance and Investment, taught by Professors David Geltner and Tod McGrath
  This course is an introduction to the most fundamental concepts, principles, analytical methods and tools useful for making investment and finance decisions regarding commercial real estate assets. As the first of a two-course sequence, this course will focus on the basic building blocks and the “micro” level, which pertains to individual properties and deals.