IT'S A GE CLASS!!!! HE NEEDS TO GET DOWN FROM HIS HIGH HORSE AND NOT GIVE OUT C'S FOR HARD WORKING STUDENTS!!! To get an A it appears that you must attend all of his office ours, not know anything about engineering, and just know how to creatively "synthesize" philosophical ideas about noteworthy pieces of architecture.

Warning: his grading philosophy is strict. When you get your midterms back Osman will say that you shouldn't question the amount of points he's given you. If you decide to challenge for more points, he said "You are challenging my authority. By asking for a re-grade I'll be in a worse mood than when I was first grading your exam and therefore, you will receive a lower score." Just warning you all about this :(

I found the second half of the class more interesting than the first, since the topics are less abstract. Osman himself is a great lecturer, who is so brilliant that the subject matter can become a little confusing, especially his analysis of the images in his slides.

I am selling my notes on the whole class for $12, and my reading responses for $1 each. These notes are comprehensive, and if you use them you will probably get an A in this class. Text me at ********** if you are interested. Thanks!

Great lecturer. Helpful tip that i noticed: mostly south campus major struggle with this class. Creativity is key for succeeding on his exams. Good luck!

Where is my grade?

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. :-)

Osman is the professor listed on the course, but Prof. Svehla was actually the class lecturer. Her lecture was very engaging and covered board topics and perspectives on many themes of architecture, for example, the grid, power, nature, and labor. I gained a unique perspective from this class that I would never regret taking; this is such a great introductory course for architecture and urban design. The course was very structured with readings, reading comments, weekly assignments, midterm, and final. However, during my quarter, the final was optional due to the TA strike. Because of a very structured class, you are expected to keep up with all the lectures and assignments. The lectures in this class were very dense, and you could miss a lot if you did not attend because the lessons were not recorded. Even though the last three weeks of the class were canceled due to the strike, I was disappointed that I could not gain the complete lessons from this course. Nevertheless, I was grateful that I decided to take this class. This is a fascinating GE with an understandable workload. I enjoyed taking this class and would recommend it to anyone interested in architecture and urban design.

definitely take this, easy and interesting. professor seemed like a genuinely good guy n wants class to get A's...take notes during class like mad..he posts all the slides that u need to know for the exams so be prepared to write on those and u'll get an A. u don't need to do the reading.

super easy A. just take really good notes and regurgitate on exam. don't need to do reading..book was def waste of 100 bucks. he's also very passionate and a fun lecturer.

It was easy to just ramble on the papers and get check plus grades on them. I had Rebecca, the Asian TA, and she always gave me check pluses on my papers and midterm. I really don't understand how people get checks and check minuses as the papers only require you to put some sort of an opinion into it to receive that check+ grade.....some people just want to be hand-held through "easy" GEs.

The second half of the course was foggy because I started to not care about the course as much after I found out how easy it was to bs the tests, but I still got an A in the end.

Yes, Osman did have his own psychological BS thing going on, but to be honest, this course seemed pretty free reined in that you could say whatever popped into your mind and as long as you could back it up, you were never really wrong.

Pros: Easy to bs, easy HW, easy material
Cons: No slides provided online (you had to take pictures of the slides shown in class), short time crunch on tests, and the reader was a waste of money

Note: Rebecca is the harder TA who will yell at you if you attempt to take photos during review sessions. Plus she likes to sit back and watch people debate in discussion.