Faculty members affiliated with CAST offer courses through the Situated Technologies Graduate Research Group in the Department of Architecture.
The curriculum engages design experimentation that repositions architecture in an expanded field. The group explores methods of study and conducts experiments that probe the limits of architecture: prototypes, processes, techniques, modes of collaboration, and workflows. It adopts new methods to identify new sites of inquiry, at different scales and within different social and political settings, for an expanded field of practice.
Design studios and seminars result in a wide range of outcomes–buildings, devices, events, infrastructures, tools, workflows, interfaces–and in skillsets that enable students to articulate new agencies for architecture.
Instructor: Mark ShepardARC 606: Situated Technologies Graduate Design Research StudioSpring 2026 DESCRIPTION: The Spring 2026 Situated Technologies Graduate Design Research Studio will address the design of green infrastructure for multispecies urban
Instructor: Mark ShepardARC 626: Situated Technologies Graduate Design Research SeminarSpring 2025 DESCRIPTION: Contrary to the commonly held belief that cities are agents of ecological degradation, recent research has found that
Instructor: Mark ShepardARC 606: Situated Technologies Design Research StudioSpring 2025 DESCRIPTION: Contrary to the commonly held belief that cities are agents of ecological degradation, recent research has found that urban
Instructor: Mark Shepard | Type: Studio
This design research studio explored the spatial epistemology of contemporary remote sensing practices.
Instructor: Nicholas Bruscia | Type: Studio
While stereotomic projection is associated with shaping mass, surface disclinations may be associated with shaping thinness, turning our attention away from the monolithic and toward the monocoque.
Instructor: Albert Chao | Type: Seminar
In dialogue with Hans Haacke’s 1965 Condensation Cube, this seminar investigates how to draw, model, and build physical and digital prototypes to explore tempered environments.
Instructor: Mark Shepard | Type: Studio
This graduate design research studio will investigate how to map a course of action in face of uncertain conditions.
Instructor: Gabrielle Printz | Type: Seminar
This seminar examines the social constitution of technology, its dimensions of power, and its impossible neutrality in the conceptualization and manifestation of “the future.”
Instructor: Albert Chao | Type: Seminar
The Situated Technologies Spring studio will explore the space of manufacturing and the promise of mass customization.
Instructor: Omar Khan | Type: Studio
The Situated Technologies Spring studio will explore the space of manufacturing and the promise of mass customization.
Instructor: Mark Shepard | Type: Seminar
This seminar will survey the changing dynamics between manufacturing, labor, technology and society from the Industrial Revolution to the present.
Instructor: Nick Bruscia | Type: Seminar
This course will explore the notion of manufacturing variety as influenced by the role of representation in the design and fabrication process.
Instructor: Nick Bruscia | Type: Studio
Adopting similar plywood forming techniques exemplified by the Eames’, this sponsored studio will devise flat-to-form, lightweight shells as disaster relief partitions in open, densely packed, interior environments.
Instructor: Omar Khan | Type: Studio
The Cybernetic Factory takes as its subject the architecture of advanced manufacturing and its integration into local economies and communities.
Instructor: Nick Bruscia | Type: Seminar
This hands-on course will explore the relationship between materiality, form and the environment through speculative computational drawing and simulation techniques.
Instructor: Mark Shepard | Type: Studio
This design research studio will investigate the limits of sensing, processing, and actuating physical space through the design, fabrication and development of a full-scale installation that attempts to playfully engage the contingencies of its use and occupation.
Instructor: Omar Khan | Type: Seminar
This seminar introduces students to the significant ideas that define the information environment and how they concern architecture and urbanism.
Instructor: Jason Geistweidt | Type: Seminar
This design research workshop investigates this interweaving of code and space within the built environment through project-based experimentation.
Instructor: Jason Geistweidt | Type: Seminar
This design research workshop investigates this interweaving of code and space within the built environment through project-based experimentation.
Instructor: Nick Bruscia | Type: Seminar
Using a Vicon Motion Capture System, this course will focus on the calibrated modeling of bending-active wooden elements as a topic from which to gain experience with iterative digital form-finding as related to material behavior.
Instructor: Nick Bruscia | Type: Studio
Some composite materials are designed to return to their initial form after deformation by bending or stretching back into position. The studio will explore the scalability of flexible materials, and how we might organize them to produce stable but intentionally flexible architecture.
Instructor: Nick Bruscia | Type: Seminar
This course will explore Ricolais’ concept of isomorphic systems via experimentation with bending-active surfaces and their skeletal equivalents.
Instructor: Nick Bruscia | Type: Studio
The studio will introduce students to computational form-finding as it pertains to the design of structurally elegant long-span roof canopies.
