Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times architecture critic, reviews Harvard's first online architecture course

2017-05-04T14:42:00-04:00

[K. Michael Hays] represents an approach to teaching architecture and architectural theory that has held sway in the American academy for at least a generation. This approach doesn’t simply treat architecture as a discipline separate from the rest of the world, with its own passwords and protocols. It guards that separation with its life.

A spirited Christopher Hawthorne reviews Harvard GSD's first online course as taught by K. Michael Hays, who appears to prize obfuscation and condescension as teaching methods (Hawthorne does explain the history behind this autonomous pedagogy, which resulted from architects of the 1970s needing to break away from corporate/political control). Still, the question of whether online courses are actually any different than the level of instruction you would receive in a classroom appears to be trending toward no, at least in substantive terms. The medium isn't the message, especially if you're taking instruction from a lecturer who thinks speaking at you, rather than engaging with you, is the way to go.

Michael Hays to teach free online course through Harvard

2017-01-20T17:42:00-05:00

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced that K. Michael Hays will offer a free online course starting on February 28. The course will be part of the Harvard EdX platform, which facilitates MOOC’s, or Massive Open Online Courses.

Entitled “The Architectural Imagination”, the course will look at “some of history’s most important examples that show how architecture engages, mediates, and expresses a culture’s complex aspirations.”

Alongside Hays, Erika Naginski and Antoine Picon will help teach the course.

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Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times architecture critic, reviews Harvard's first online architecture course

Michael Hays to teach free online course through Harvard