Princeton University | School of Architecture | Spring 2020

instructors: Parsa Khalili, Clemens Finkelstein

level: Graduate Course

"This seminar supports students in developing a broad range of thesis topics optimized for the SoA faculty. A series of exercises guide students to identify the primary questions that currently structure the discipline and those extra-disciplinary concerns that architecture must engage today. Throughout the work, analyses of these issues are linked to contemporary architectural production."

Kent State University | College of Architecture and Environmental Design | Fall 2019

instructors: Clemens Finkelstein, Anthony Morey, Ivan Bernal

level: Graduate Course

invited guests: Taraneh Meshkani (KSU), Katie Strand (KSU), Jon Yoder (KSU), Irene Chin (CCA Centre Canadien d’Architecture), Gary Fox (Getty Research Institute), Jia Gu (Materials & Applications), Lisa L. Hsieh (University of Minnesota), Kyle May (Kyle May, Architect PC), Antonio Petrov (University of Texas San Antonio), Leila Anna Wahba (A+D Museum, Los Angeles)

"Architecture and Cultural Techniques of Play investigates the role of play in architectural design, introducing students to creative and experimental methods that challenge conventional approaches. This course explores how playful strategies—such as improvisation, games, and rule-based systems—can be harnessed to generate innovative architectural forms and spatial experiences. Drawing from cultural theories of play, students will engage in hands-on exercises, collaborative design challenges, and speculative projects that blur the boundaries between play, function, and form. By integrating practical techniques with a spirit of exploration, this course fosters a playful yet rigorous approach to architecture, encouraging risk-taking, creativity, and adaptive problem-solving."

Princeton University | School of Architecture | Fall 2018

instructors: Elizabeth Diller, Sylvia Lavin, Parsa Khalili, Clemens Finkelstein

level: Graduate Course

"The M. Arch I Thesis is a yearlong independent research and design project based on a hypothesis developed by students individually and derived from a common prompt for the group. This year’s prompt is 'Institution.'"

(Image Courtesy © I.(R).A.-B. John Cooper / Clara Syme 2018)

Harvard University | Graduate School of Design | Winter 2016

instructors: Clemens Finkelstein, Anthony Morey

level: Graduate Course

"Naïve Design explores the intuitive, unrefined, and immediate aspects of architectural creation, encouraging students to tap into raw, instinctual ideas free from over-analysis or formalized constraints. The course challenges conventional design processes by emphasizing spontaneity, simplicity, and direct responses to environmental, social, and material contexts. Through hands-on projects, sketches, and model-making, students will explore how “naïve” approaches can inspire innovative solutions, drawing from vernacular traditions, childhood creativity, and untrained aesthetics. By stripping back preconceptions, this course cultivates a fresh perspective on design, urging students to reconnect with a more instinctive and human-centered architectural practice."

Deichtorhallen - Museum of Contemporary Art and Photography | School of Survival | Hamburg, DE | May-June 2024

"Planetarity provides a key perspective for survival in the 21st century. The concept refers to the nature of a planet and how it impacts the living conditions of its inhabitants. This seminar introduces artists, researchers, and indigenous knowledge keepers who engage with the various dimensions of planetarity: Geologic Planetarity, Hydrologic Planetarity, Atmospheric Planetarity, and Transplanetarity."

Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA) | Universiteit van Amsterdam | Amsterdam, NL | March 2023

"This masterclass interrogates vibration as an evolutionary media and architecture as its systemic agent, exploring how the phenomenon’s formative capacities significantly materialized at the dawn of the twentieth century as scientists and architects progressively operationalized vibration as a force of industry and design practice. Considering ongoing research into an epistemology of the abstract that investigates the materialized cosmologies of vibration during significant epistemic shifts, participants will join a collective discussion that considers transdisciplinary histories and methods of research. 

How can an environmental history of vibration contribute to contemporary discourses of planetary thinking, remodel the human-centric sense of agency, and confront critical ecological processes of world-building? What are the architectures of vibration that shape the built and natural environments, carry imprints of said worlds across thresholds of perception, and critically mediate between environmental scales and their dwellers — from the nucleobases of acellular life to the corporeal envelopes of human bodies, buildings, and the planet we inhabit? 

This masterclass encourages participants to critically engage with pre-circulated texts and share reflections on the materialized cosmologies — ‘ideas of the order of nature that are elaborated, embodied, and contested in concrete settings, representations, objects, institutions, and actions’ (Tresch) — of their own research. It will be of particular relevance for graduate students and researchers in the fields of media and urban studies, art and architecture, history of science, the environmental humanities."