The class itself is very interesting and fun to study and interact with. As for professor Osman, he can go off on tangents sometimes, which is fine. There are indeed a lot of readings, but as long as you spread out your time, you'll be fine; otherwise, it'll be very time consuming. This class is mostly memorization.

With this in mind, I am selling my class notes for $15
(text me at **********)
They are very clear and will help you, I guarantee it. They took me a long time to make, meaning they will be worthwhile. :-)

There are a lot of readings! Plus, it's really confusing...at the start. It took a while to get use to the material, but once I started to take notes on each reading and lecture in my own words, everything started to make sense. Looking at the grade spread, I can't believe that in Fall of 2015 I was 1 of like 2/3 who got an A+. That's why I want to help my fellow bruins and sell copies of my notes that I used to ace the class. I am selling them for $20, and you can text me at **********. The class, overall, is very interesting but I spent so many hours trying to comprehend the different concepts. So trust me when I say my notes are going to save you probably dozens of hours trying to understand this class.

I learnt so much from this class last quarter. It's a lot of reading and often pretty dry (I was under the impression no one in my discussion actually did any of the readings ) but kudos to Osman for trying to impart some esoteric wisdom to a bunch of college kids. You don't need to be a prospective architect or artist or designer to do well in his class. Just keep an open mind and do the readings!

Professor Osman is an outstanding lecturer who has been teaching this class for over a decade. He is extremely knowledgeable about architectural history and is very passionate about the subject. Not only that, but he is very charismatic and funny. He can take the driest subjects and make them into a joke that everyone can laugh at. This class really explores different concepts associated with architecture without a distinct timeline or chronological order. You'll find that the first two weeks will be a little confusing or vague due to the nature of the class and the nature of his lectures. But as the quarter progresses, the lectures become more interesting as well as the content discussed. The TA's are all very helpful and will help you understand concepts that a) aren't covered in lecture or b) are only brushed upon during lecture. I highly recommend attending discussion as much as you can for this class because it will only be easy if you make the effort to understand and memorize the different buildings, concepts, etc. alongside peers.

This class provides you an insight to the discipline of architecture. Some of the materials are really challenging and takes a lot of time to fully comprehend, if you are really interested in the subject. Otherwise you can just understand the key ideas of each reading (and the title, author and the architectural concepts), plus paying 100% attention to the lectures. You need to write a reading response every week, plus a midterm and a final.
In order to get good grades, there're a lot of memorization and it was kind of overwhelming. The prof will ask you to write very specific details of a work from many many works you've learned (like the year of a work, or its relation with another one)
I can be your TUTOR and point out which concepts you actually need to memorize for exams, and also help with the reading responses, help with the reading. I got near perfect score from this class and still memorizes the class very well, so A PLUS is GUARANTEED ! Text me at ********** (Mike)!

Osman is an engaging lecturer and I always found his classes to be interesting and captivating. He goes over the main concepts that drive architecture and its history. That said he talks extremely quickly and you must write very fast to keep up with him. The weekly reading response and the midterm/final require you draw upon the things he talks about in lectures, so it is important to keep comprehensive notes. He also assigns 3 readings with a total of 50-70 pages a week that you have to understand for the reading responses/midterm/final. I recommend you keep up with the reading schedule and take notes for each one, however I only read one reading a week and then crammed the rest into week 10 and still ended up getting an A. I highly recommend this class as a GE because it is so interesting but I would not take it if you are looking for something easy or are not curious about architecture.

There are a lot of readings! Plus, it's really confusing...at the start. It took a while to get use to the material, but once I started to take notes on each reading and lecture in my own words, everything started to make sense. Looking at the grade spread, I can't believe that in Fall of 2015 I was 1 of like 2/3 who got an A+. That's why I want to help my fellow bruins and sell copies of my notes that I used to ace the class. I am selling them for $20, and you can text me at **********. The class, overall, is very interesting but I spent so many hours trying to comprehend the different concepts. So trust me when I say my notes are going to save you probably dozens of hours trying to understand this class.

Great lecturer, one who cares about the subject.

About 10 hours of reading per week. The readings are philosophical and difficult to understand sometimes but the lectures help!

It was helpful to read prior to lectures or a day afterwards to solidify understanding of weekly themes and remember them in the long-run. Recalling things from readings will be necessary on the midterm and final so it's good to have a strong understanding of the readings.

I kept up with the readings for the most part and reviewed my lecture notes/connected weekly themes a couple days before the midterm/final.

My advice is to keep up with the readings, cramming before the final because falling behind even on a couple readings was a stress fest 10th week.

Also, his final is 10th week so it can be good (focus on other finals 11th week) or bad (less time to study).

Final grade: A-

Osman is a great lecturer. He gets super excited and into his lectures, and he pulls you into them even if you aren't interested in the topic. Under another professor I would have hated this class but under Osman I loved it. Plus, 40% of your grade is based on discussion participation and 5 one-page responses, and the final isn't cumulative, so what's not to love?

The class can feel overwhelming at times because he speaks very quickly, but you'll realize that even though he's saying a lot, a lot of the time he's saying the same thing in four different ways to really drive the point home (this sounds boring but it's really not), so it's not a big deal if you only write down half of what he's saying. Also, this is NOT an architecture class: It is a HISTORY and THEORY of architecture class, so keep that in mind when enrolling.

Also, shoutout to my TA, Christina! She was awesome.

I agree with the reviewer below. I really enjoyed this class even though I didnt realize it well into the quarter. Michael is passionate about architecture and this class is like a revelation to me in that it never occurred to me that architecture could deeply change the way we conceive the space in which we live, and the way we interact with space as well as others in the same space. This class is by no means like a survey of different schools of thought in architecture history. This is more about the philosophy behind buildings, thoughts and so on. His lectures are highly organized and in fact, very dense. I went to every one of his 8am lectures and even was only late for once(which is like a miracle to me) simply because I didnt want to miss any bit of his lecture!