Spring 2025
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4.617 Advanced Study in Islamic Urban History – The Colonial City: Past, Present, and Future
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Instructor | Nasser Rabbat
Meeting |Tuesdays 2-5 pm
in 5-216
T.A.|Maia Simon
The colonial city represents a nexus of power, culture, and spatial organization, serving as both a tool of imperial expansion and a site of (asymmetrical) exchange. This seminar examines the historical, theoretical, and critical dimensions of colonial cities, tracing their evolution from the ancient Greek polis to the present day and extending into speculative futures of space colonization. By exploring diverse models and case studies, this seminar highlights how colonial urbanism shaped the political, social, and cultural landscapes of cities acrosshistory and geography.
Historically, colonial cities have embodied the ambitions of empires to conquer and settle new territories, from the Roman castrum to Renaissance-era trading hubs and British colonial centers in India. These cities were not only practical mechanisms of governance and control but also symbolic representations of domination and ideology. Theoretical frameworks, such as those underpinning the Hippodamian model of Greek colonies or Haussmannian urban planning in 19th-century France, reveal the deliberate strategies behind spatial design and social organization. Critically, this seminar engages with the legacies of colonialism, interrogating how colonial urban experiments have perpetuated inequalities and influenced contemporary postcolonial cities.
Looking forward, the concept of colonial urbanism extends beyond Earth, as aspirations for space colonization echo historical practices of conquest and settlement. The exploration of the colonial city invites critical reflection on the enduring impact of colonial ideologies on urban environments, emphasizing the need to reimagine cities as spaces of inclusivity and resistance. Through a cross-cultural, cross-temporal, and interdisciplinary approach, this seminar provides a comprehensive understanding of the colonial city as both a historical phenomenon and a lens for analyzing current and future urban paradigms.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4.s60 Undergraduate | 4.s62 Graduate | Special Subject: History, Theory & Criticism of Architecture &
Art (meets with 4.s62) – Environmental Histories of Architecture
Note: for the Spring 2025 term, 4.s60 is a HASS-H subject
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Instructors |Huma Gupta |Caroline Murphy
Meeting | Mondays and Wednesdays 11-12:30pm
in 5-233
T.A.|Krista Mileva-Frank
How does architecture impact the environment? How does the environment impact architecture? Drawing on case studies from the ancient world to the present day, and from geographies across the globe, this class will explore the myriad ways in which the creation of architecture has involved the modification of natural environments and climates and the exploitation of resources. Rather than examining architecture’s history as a succession of monuments, this course investigates the metabolic processes of raw material extraction, transportation, and manipulation that made the creation of buildings, infrastructures, and designed landscapes possible in the first place. Students will explore how material and climatic considerations played into the design and aesthetic of buildings at various points in time, while gaining an awareness of the largely-invisible, increasingly far-flung networks of environmental management and labor that underpin our built environment.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4.s69 Special Subject: Advanced Study in the History of Urban Form — Alternative Futures from the
Sahara: Design Strategies for Reclaiming Commons
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Instructor |Safouan Azouzi
Meeting | Mondays 9:30 -12:30
in 26-142
This course examines the challenges faced by the oasis agro-ecosystems, focusing on Tunisia’s Nefzawa region as a case study and delves into the historical, environmental, and socio-economic factors at play in the region. By reviewing the literature, analyzing climate projections, and utilizing Earth observation data, students will learn about the unsustainable use of natural resources, worsened by climate change and land/water dispossession processes.
The course will highlight pathways to resilience and alternative economic models centered on “commons” and “oasis connectivity.” We will identify ways to integrate/combine traditional low-tech commoning practices with modern technology to enhance community resilience and promote biodiversity, while seeking innovative approaches that go beyond simply preserving environmental and agricultural heritage.
Students will participate in scenario-building exercises for the Nefzawa oases, drawing insights applicable to broader urban areas across the Arab world, many of which are projected to become uninhabitable by the end of the century. The course will emphasize social and climate justice as essential components of sustainable futures, positioning design as a tool for societal transformation and collective action.
In this interdisciplinary setting, that bridges humanities and STEM fields, students will critically assess the balance between innovation and remembrance in design. They will explore how these unique eco-social landscapes can inform broader decolonial frameworks in architecture, urban planning, and design, addressing urgent challenges like climate change, resource scarcity, and socio-economic inequality. In this studio, we will delve into the dual narratives of the heavenly aspects and imaginaries of oases while confronting the harsh realities of plunder, drought, and ecological destruction.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Spring 2023
4.617 Climate Futures, Cities Past
Instructor | Huma Gupta (guptah@mit.edu)
Meeting | Thursdays 2-5pm in 5-216
Office Hours | (calendly.com/humagupta/20min)
T.A. | Meitha al Mazrooei (meitha@mit.edu)
R.A. | Mahwish Khalil (mkhalil3@mit.edu)
“Moving images move us: they project our imagination across the territory of the world they produce, drawing viewers into the movement of the storyline, the actions and reactions unfolding in and through and around the places and characters portrayed.” – Adrian J. Ivakhiv
Do moving images, indeed, move us? If so, who would like to move us, how, to where, and why? Cinematic meditations on the environment have grown and proliferated in the past century, ranging from experimental video art, indie favorites, agitprop, activist docs, to blockbuster productions. This course critically explores the narrative structures, aesthetic norms, environmental imaginations, and “biofictions” embedded in these film-worlds. The Senegalese novelist and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène believed that cinema was a form of cours du soir (evening classes) that despite its high economic cost, was a powerful tool of pedagogy and persuasion due to its accessibility and mass appeal
Perhaps these very claims of film’s impact and ability to move people intellectually, creatively, and emotionally explains why it remains an attractive medium for artists, activists, and architects who are explicitly or implicitly engaged with environmental concerns. These concerns include indigenous struggles for territory, disasters, displacement, mining, energy, extinction, waste, water, toxicity, degradation, deforestation, symbionts, seed sovereignty, refugee housing, ecological collapse, climate trauma, policy paralysis, and resurgent presents and futures. Whether the promise that these films will lead to collective, desired change is fully realized or not, film-worlds create “an atlas of emotion” which connect sight, site, motion, and emotion. This course asks how can such connections help conjure other ways of living through feeling?
Climate Futures, Cities Past thus, engages with eco-philosophy, film theory, and architectural approaches to environmental crises through a seminar-workshop model. Students will examine material, perceptual, and social dimensions of visual storytelling as they pertain to our unstable conceptions of both ‘climate futures’ and ‘cities past.’ This inquiry is important given that the historic rise of industrialized urbanity with its insatiable demand for fuel, food, forced labor, along with formal and spatial hierarchies stands accused of causing or accelerating the climate crisis. Moreover, the politics of constructing climate as a matter of urgency through an elite imagination of an apocalyptic dystopia yet to come disregards that “the majority of the world already lives ‘within the collapse of civilization’,” one which is unevenly distributed across time and space.
In addition to completing readings and video reflections, students will produce a 7-to-10-minute essay film through an iterative process spanning thirteen weeks. This essay film can take several forms, such as a short documentary, animation, narrative short, interactive film, poetic meditation, moving image drawing, video art, LIDAR film, or data visualization-driven reportage à la Forensic Architecture. Students will be asked to work on a site or topic that is either the subject of their primary thesis research or part of an existing, long-term research project. Moreover, students will have access to extra-class instruction on Adobe Premiere Pro with a professional Film Editor, who will also help them finalize their projects.
MIT School of Architecture & Planning SA+P Courses
MIT Department of Urban Studies & Planning Courses
AKPIA at Harvard – Aga Khan Program at the GSD