Especially in the first quarter, this class was pretty heavy on the "buildings" and light on the "climate": it was a lot of architectural history and some thermo/architecture/design stuff. I thought this class was pretty boring, but the readings are skimmable and you can honestly skip a lot of lectures and be fine, since there weren't any exams when I took it. Your experience is heavily dependent on your TA - I had Luciana and I think there was a common consensus among the class that no one wanted to be there (including her) but it felt like she was on our side.
Winter quarter was pretty boring and almost everyone I knew skipped most of the lectures. Spring quarter was dependent on the seminar you took - I took the one about sensory cognition and really enjoyed it.

I got an A, and I dropped this cluster after one quarter. Here’s why.

First: Your experience depends heavily on your TA. In my case (Luciana), the course felt extremely rigid for a GE. Participation is compulsory and graded stringently, which means people speak to avoid losing points rather than to contribute meaningfully. Discussions often become a two-hour rotation of meaningless and extremely boring comments, which is unfortunate for such an interesting topic.

Attendance and participation penalties are harsh. Students were docked 15 points for missing a 15-minute Sunday Zoom meeting. That enforcement-heavy approach makes people anxious about points rather than interested in the material. For participation, only 2 students in our entire section got 100.

All lectures are mandatory, and the writing workload is significantly heavier than a typical GE. This is not a “light” class, but may be considered if you want to satisfy Writing II. I spent as much time on this as I spent on Math and Chem.

The topic itself is interesting. The structure is what turns people away. My friends had much better experiences in their GE, and I've loved my new GE classes.

I dropped because I didn’t want two more quarters of that structure. If you value flexibility and organic discussion, think carefully before enrolling.

Class experience is almost totally dependent on your TA. Your TA is the grader of all your papers and leaders of your two-hour discussions. TA Lin is the goat.

Besides the TA's, the lectures were pretty boring; however, attendance is worth a huge chunk of your grade. There were also three different lecturers throughout the fall quarter, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

If you're a first year considering this class, I would advise you to try to get a more interesting cluster first and use this as a fallback. The good part about this class is the GE's that it satisfies, that's pretty much it.