A ceiling is the upper interior surface of a room. Sometimes simply the underside of the structure above (be it a roof or a floor), other times an independent membrane, the ceiling has an ambiguous tectonic status. Miming structure but rarely structural, and often with an unobvious materiality, ceilings offer an unsurpassed field for representation, metamorphosis, and architectural “Nachleben”. This course explores the richness and ambiguities of the ceiling – an architectural element charged, so says Gottfried Semper, with the task of overcoming “the oppressive feeling evoked by any separation between us and the open sky.”