Studios

This design studio course for non-majors introduces design as an analytical, representational and productive act. Emphasis is placed on the development of a methodology for architectural design work and critique. Students explore various analytical, conceptual and design approaches and examine existing and potential spatial and programmatic conditions. Students use and experiment with various modes of representation (collage, sketching, orthographic drawing, physical models). Students are encouraged to address architecture through the expertise of their own disciplines. Studio work is integrated with field trips throughout the city.

Syllabus available upon request. 

This architectural design studio explores material assemblies, techniques of fabrication, and
systems of organization. These explorations will be understood as catalysts for architectural
analysis and design experimentation.

Both designed objects and the very act of making are always embedded within a culture, as
they reflect changing material preferences, diverse approaches to durability and obsolescence,
varied understandings of comfort, different concerns with economy and ecology. They depend
on multiple resources and mobilize varied technological innovations. Consequently, we will
consider that making always involves making a society, for it constitutes a response to its values
and a position regarding its technical and material resources. Within this understanding, this
studio will consider different cultures of making through a number of exercises rehearse design
operations at different scales—from objects to infrastructures.

Syllabus available upon request. 

This architectural design studio course explores modes of visualization, technologies of mediation and environmental transformations. These explorations will be used as catalysts for architectural analysis and design experimentation. Introducing design methodologies that allow us to see and to shape environmental interactions in new ways, the studio will focus on how architecture may operate as a mediator – an intermediary that negotiates, alters or redirects multiple forces in our world: physical, cultural, social, technological, political etc. The semester will progress through three projects that examine unique atmospheric, spatial and urban conditions with the aid of multimedia visual techniques; and that employ design to develop creative interventions at the scales of an interface, space and city.

Syllabus available upon request. 

In this two-semester sequence of studios students study architectural design as a mode of cultural communication and imaginative experimentation. As the studio sequence evolves, emphasis is increasingly placed on the relationship between material, tectonic, and programmatic organization and the social and cultural contexts of a site of investigation. Students work at a variety of scales, with a variety of techniques and in a variety of research situations and are asked to comprehensively address architectural problems. Emphasis is placed on architectural production as a process of analysis, critique and synthesis. The two studios broaden and deepen the students' awareness architecture as a discipline.

Note: Advanced Architectural Design I is taught only in the fall semester and Advanced Architectural Design II is taught only in the spring.

Syllabi available upon request. 

This is a vertical studio taught by our senior faculty. The studio focuses on intensive research based experimental work.

Note: Advanced Architectural Research and Design is taught only in the fall semester.

Syllabus available upon request.