SEGAH SAK
Teaching
I have been teaching in higher education since 2010. Here, you can find information about the courses I have taught since 2019. You can check out sample syllabi and briefs prepared/developed by me and selected works by my students. I am also sharing visuals from selected events and activities, curricular or extracurricular, we pursued with my students.
Recent Courses | Events & Activities
Urban Metabolism: Tools from Social Sciences for Architects and Designers
Undergraduate third-year elective, 2019-present.
The course is designed to provide the students with intellectual tools and skills to think about, look at, and study the built environment with a socio-spatial perspective.
Tools that are explored are both texts and methodologies which flow between social sciences and spatial design. Consequently, the students encounter a body of classical and contemporary readings on cities as well as practicing research conduct that relates to socio-spatial research.
How Houses Build People
University-wide core-curriculum elective, 2022-present.
The course aims to use the basic unit of the house to understand how spaces frame and guide the practices, movement, and behavior of people. The cases discussed are global (ranging from eastern Asia to the Americas) and diachronic (from prehistory to the contemporary period) in their scope.
1st-year Basic Design Studio
Undergraduate first-year studio on design basics, taught to architecture, urban design, and interior architecture students, 2014-2022.
Basic Design 1 introduces students to the fundamentals of design and design thinking. The students work on abstract design problems by processing systems and geometrical manipulations.
Basic Design 2 introduces students to the fundamentals of spatial design.
Architectural Theory and Criticism
Undergraduate senior elective lecture, 2021.
The course aims the Investigation of architectural history, theory, and criticism on special topics, discussion of social, cultural, and political influences on architecture, and reading of important theoretical and critical writings about a broad range of topics.
Discussions evolved around “texts” (both written and
constructed). A selected body of readings was analyzed while interpreting the built environment with a critical approach.
Architecture and Society
Undergraduate third-year lecture, mandatory for architecture students, elective for urban design and interior architecture students, 2017-present.
The course investigates the social aspects of the built environment based on the idea that the production of spaces is an extensive domain including but not limited to architectural design. Consequently, we discuss actors, practices, processes, and products to grasp the built environment as a social phenomenon. The syllabus is designed to create a discussion to position ourselves between spaces and the living.
2nd-year Architectural Design Studio
2nd-year undergraduate studio, 2023-present.
ARCH 202 Architectural Design Studio II aims to integrate basic urban concepts into the architectural design process. It develops architectural design skills in the context of urban design and development. The studio focuses on the reciprocal relationship between the building complex and the site. The course covers social, cultural, historical, environmental, and aesthetic aspects related to the understanding and making of a sustainable urban environment. In this respect, it emphasizes sustainability not as a set of new technologies but as a shared value comprising social equity. Architectural responses today cannot be isolated from urban issues and challenges of increasing complexity. Within this framework, the studio encompasses the ‘reading’ of the existing urban environment in relation to the given site for an enhanced architectural interpretation.
4th-year Architectural Design Studio
Undergraduate senior studio, 2016, 18, 19.
The graduation studio emphasizes architectural complexity involving all relevant issues of a comprehensive design process, including production drawings and documents. The aim is to develop contemporary design solutions for a high-quality, sustainable, and aesthetic built environment, focusing on multifunctional building design with complex programs in an urban context and integrating the building physically and socially into the urban texture.
Architectural Readings
Graduate seminar, 2020.
Through critical analyses of architectural texts, the course aims to explore methods for analyzing architectural artifacts and ways of deciphering (re)presentations of architecture.
Discussions evolved around concepts through which we can read spaces.
