This course serves as preparation for a research project by students in the MSD-EBD or PhD programs. The students will learn how to develop, plan, and conduct experiments and will develop the tools to write research papers based on these experiments. During the semester, topical lectures and case-studies of novel work in architectural technology will be presented to the students by the instructor and guest lecturers. The research proposal developed during the course will be used as a basis for hands-on exercises in the lab portion.

Traditional building materials are environmentally-expensive to extract, process, transport or recycle, their damage is non-trivial to repair, and have limited ability to respond to changes in their immediate surroundings. Biological materials like cork, coral, silk, skin, shell, or bone outperform man-made materials in that they can be grown where needed, self-repair when damaged, and respond to changes in their surroundings. Their inclusion in architectural practice could have great benefits in wellbeing and the environment defining new tools and strategies towards the future of sustainable construction. Crucial projects describing future biomaterial architectures are emerging in the field. In this seminar, students will review their potential through lectures followed by case studies and propose future developments through a guided research project with special attention to functional, industrial, environmental, and aesthetic dimensions. The course is structured to foster fundamental scientific literacy, cross-disciplinary thinking, creativity, and innovation in biomaterials in design. It also partners with BioDesignChallenge to provide opportunities of project growth and mentorship after the semester ends.

This course introduces the foundational principles and methodologies of comprehensive planning across key domains, including transportation systems, school facilities, environmental sustainability, Title VI compliance, and land development. Designed for students in Environmental Studies, the course provides both theoretical knowledge and practical skills to address complex planning challenges. Students will explore how these disciplines intersect to create cohesive, sustainable, and equitable communities, preparing them to lead projects that integrate environmental, social, and infrastructure considerations. Through case studies, hands-on projects, and strategic planning exercises, students will gain the tools necessary to contribute to urban planning, sustainability initiatives, and infrastructure development.

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This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to social policy and practice perspectives from outside the U.S. and especially from communities in the Global South. The course will familiarize them with global professions and help prepare them for overseas/cross-cultural practice. Through the course students will identify numerous strategies and skills professionals have used to collaboratively build interventions within human rights, social policy, social welfare, education, healthcare and sustainable development arenas.

This course requires a signed Travel Agreement prior to registration. This course will have an additional course fee to cover logistical arrangements. For the last three years, Organizational Dynamics has partnered with Human Resources at ING, a global financial services firm headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, through our course “Developing the Agile Leader and Their Organization.” Our partnership with ING has allowed our students to learn and gain practical experience with Agile mindset and methods. ING is a pioneer in the implementation of agile business practices especially in their HR programs. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time. As a financial institution, ING can play a role by financing change, sharing knowledge, and using their influence. Being sustainable is not just about reducing their own impact, it’s in all the choices they make—as a lender, in their financing and through the services they offer their customers. That’s why sustainability is inherent to their purpose of empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and in business. At ING in the Netherlands (DBNL), they have sharpened their Vision ‘Sustainable progress for all.’ They have set extra ambitions and targets on sustainability and launched a program to deliver new sustainable propositions. ING calls on all domains to create a roadmap by which they will be able to achieve its sustainability goals and ambitions. But how does such a central program relate to their Agile way of working where tribes have a lot of autonomy? ING is looking forward to expanding their relationship with Organizational Dynamics at Penn by inviting our students to join with their team to identify potential strategies for moving ahead with their sustainability efforts using an agile framework. The course includes daily meetings, seminars, tours, and networking with ING leaders and staff. In addition, the participants will also have an opportunity to meet with and learn from Dutch representatives involved in academia, government, healthcare, art, science, culture, and the media.

This course introduces students to the history, theories, and contemporary practice of city and regional planning. Readings, lectures, class discussion, and walking tours focus on: - The evolution of planning ideas, strategies, institutions, and powers, and of planning’s influence on cities and regions around the world; - The structure and dynamics of urban change; - The ways planners and social and environmental scientists have understood, theorized, and responded to social, economic, political, and environmental conditions and change over time; and - The development of the planning profession and its relationships with allied fields, examining various types of planning, urban development, and design.

Disaster management reflects society’s organized attempt to protect its members from natural, technological, and terrorist threats. Often, this involves coordinating with local, state, federal, and non-governmental organizations; alerting the public to impending hazards; and developing plans for the sheltering and mass care of those left homeless in the wake of major catastrophe. The field operates through a complex network of specialists, whose activities often assist the day-to-day and long-term operations of disaster management. As a result, planning for a disaster—be it in the realm of mitigation, preparedness, response, or recovery—calls for a thorough understanding of both the natural and social elements of disaster. This course covers an overview of theory, principles, and the operations of disaster management. Topics include a history and evolution of the profession; an exploration of the concepts of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery; state, local, federal, and non-governmental organizations’ roles in disasters; and an investigation of the social, political and economic consequences of disasters.

This course provides an advanced introduction to the design and delivery of energy policy at various levels of government in the U.S. and beyond. Energy presents theoretical and practical challenges across many disciplines and professions, especially in the context of economic development and environmental sustainability at scales ranging from local to global. This course is intended to provide a broad overview of the institutions, legal frameworks, technologies, and markets involved in energy policy by exploring theories and case studies across these topics, with an emphasis on the energy transition necessitated by climate change. That said, a full introduction to energy policy requires multiple courses and Penn offers many salient ones across several schools including Law, Wharton, Weitzman, SAS, and SEAS. The primary goal of this course is to teach students how to think—rather than what to know—about energy policy. As such, this course provides both (a) a foundation for students who want to take additional courses on energy law, markets, technology, or policy and (b) a synthesis for students who have taken such courses and want to connect ideas and issues across disciplines and professions. Our seminar sessions will be largely discussion and exercise based to allow students to develop skills as energy policy analysts and to collectively theorize connections between laws, institutions, policy design, and outcomes.

This course will explore the physical science of the Earth's environment and human interactions with it. Coverage will include the Earth's various environmental systems, various environmental problems, and the direct and indirect causes of these environmental problems. Fresman seminar will mirror the ENVS100 recitation, and have additional discussions and social media projects.

Exploration of the methods and tools for managing land use and shaping the built environment. Presents how to create a successful Comprehensive Plan, Zoning Ordinance, Subdivision Regulations, Capital Improvements Progam, and design guidelines. Also, presents functional area, regional, and state-level plans.

The course is an introduction to the most important concepts in materials science and engineering. You will learn how the control of chemical bonding, synthesis, processing, structure and defects can be used to tailor the properties and performance of materials for applications that range from sustainable sources of energy, to construction, to consumer electronics. Case studies are also included to highlight environmental issues associated with materials degradation. This course includes lab demonstrations of key materials properties and a final project where students research an area of materials technology of their own interest.

The course introduces students to the participants and components to the development process, as well as specific development strategies and design tools for engaging them. Design in this sense is not simply a vision, or a concept utilized for obtaining approvals, it is understood as an encompassing set of procedures that both allow for and ensure that goals are being met at all stages of a project, from early conception through the approval process and building construction. Students will learn how to engage municipal land-use laws and regulations, produce strategies for geometric development based on land-use and environmental constraints, and use simulation to perform value-adding operations to a development proposal. Through lectures and exercises, students will have the opportunity to analyze a building and the redevelopment procedures surrounding it, and develop a geometric response and then parse data from that model to drive a series of documents relating to project cost, funding, and schedule. These documents will be analyzed against a variety of construction means and funding models so time- and cost-effective basis that meets design intentions can be developed. This course is primarily intended for Architecture Students who wish to enroll in the Real Estate Design and Development Certificate.

This course reviews the infrastructure, databases, deployment, and development of emerging digital technologies in cities. We review existing initiatives, discuss challenges and opportunities, and critically evaluate what technology has and has not been able to offer cities. We contrast utopian visions of teaching with the possible realities. Finally, we ask; what makes a city smart?

The study of sustainability-the long term viability of humans in harmony with the environment-has been identified as a critical issue for society and industry and is evolving to examine how society should conduct itself in order to survive.There are a number of aspects to how society organizes its activities that will be reviewed. Issues such as sustainable products, sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, sustainable fisheries, and sustainable communities, to name just a few, are areas that are the focus of the need for change.

This course provides an overview and introduction to urban transportation planning and policy. Although the focus is on US transportation, the course also puts an emphasis on transportation issues in the fast-growing cities of the developing world. The course is organized around: (1) histories and theories of transportation and travel behavior; (2) transportation policy and project evaluation; (3) transportation demand modeling; and (4) multimodal transportation planning and policy. Particular attention is given to interactions between transportation and land use systems.

Recent technological changes have raised awareness of the magnitude and devastating long-term effects of poverty, food insecurity, limited and unequal access to education, and other social issues. Coupled with growing awareness of these issues is the emerging sense that traditional government programs and charities may be unable to solve these problems - at least, not alone. What may be needed are new strategies - strategies borne of (a) a deep understanding of the issues; (b) interdisciplinary collaboration; and (c) access to business knowledge, frameworks, and resources. This course is designed to provide the information, strategies, examples, and analytical mindset to make students more rigorous, insightful, and effective in analyzing social ills and crafting potential solutions. Together, a cross-disciplinary group of undergraduate students, including students in Wharton, the College, and other Penn Schools, will examine the nature and extent of two pressing social problems - food insecurity and barriers to post-secondary education - and current approaches to solving these problems.

This course presents the tools and methods for preserving private lands and expanding public lands by federal, state, and local government agencies and private non-profit organizations. Topics include purchase and donation of development rights (also known as conservation easements), transfer of development rights, land acquisition, limited development, the preservation of urban greenways, trails, and parks, and community land trusts for affordable housing. Preservation examples include: open space and scenic areas, farmland, forestland, water resources, battlefields, natural areas, and affordable housing.

Most previous attempts at "landscape archaeology" tended to focus on the relationship of sites and the natural environment. This course will highlight the cultural, "anthropogenic," or "built environment"--in this case human modification and transformation of the natural landscape in the form of pathways, roads, causeways, monuments, walls, agricultural fields and their boundaries, gardens, astronomical and calendrical alignments, and water distribution networks. Features will be examined in terms of the "social logic" or formal patterning of cultural space. These can provide insights into indigenous structures such as measurement systems, land tenure, social organization, engineering, cosmology, calendars, astronomy, cognition, and ritual practices. Landscapes are also the medium for understanding everyday life, experience, movement, memory, identity, time, and historical ecology. Ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and archaeological case studies will be investigated from both the Old and New Worlds.

Landslides are important geomorphic agents in mountainous terrain, mobilizing sediment and playing a key role in controlling relief and elevation. The work of landslides is often characterized by their magnitude-frequency, which also has direct implications for people, property, and infrastructure in mountainous terrain, and for the approaches taken to minimize the risk from landslides. This course will introduce students to a conceptual understanding of landslides at a range of spatial scales, including the mechanics of the processes governing landslides from trigger to deposition. Methods of slope monitoring and the varied approaches to landslide risk mitigation and management will be explored, with a range of geotechnical and environmental applications. This course includes lab-based sessions to demonstrate simple techniques to understand fundamental landslide processes, and applications of GIS technology to explore slope monitoring and failure prediction.