The course presents a broad overview of architectural and urban histories from the early twentieth century to date. These histories will be positioned within broader disciplinary contexts informing the contemporary design and research practices. The seminar will challenge linear narratives that have privileged Western contexts as epicenters of historical and cultural production by embracing diverse and inclusive areas of discussion. Each session will address one of these areas, and each area will bring to the seminar an ongoing discourse across the works of scholars, architects, urbanists, artists, and activists, and several crucial positions that have emerged through them. We will invite some of these practitioners to expand our conversations and help us understand how topics such as domesticity, technology, materiality, climate, human rights, gender, race, and nationalism unfold in diverse design and research practices. We will also dig into relevant literature by past and contemporary theorists. Some of these readings will address methodological issues and will help to set up a theoretical framework for discussion and analysis. Other readings will provide in-depth historical and design contexts. While many texts’ contents might overlap diverse areas of discussion, each session will serve as a magnifying lens allowing specific observations of the intricate historical, theoretical, and design worlds. Through their observations, students will develop individual research interests and personal forms of analysis, critique, and storytelling that will form the basis of their final “visual essays.” Visual essays will explore histories and critical thinking through a combination of text and images that is instrumental for the development of an argument. Students’ arguments will hinge on the collection, production, and sequencing of drawings, diagrams, and images providing visual information that is hard to put into words. Visual essays will be presented in a public event and delivered in the form of digital booklets, short films, or websites. The course provides foundations and methods for graduate students willing to engage with higher levels of historical and theoretical study, as well as research-based design and multimedia practices.