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.
Fall 2023 Course Description:
Displaced by war. Migratory for work. Unhoused by earthquakes and climate crisis. Under-resourced through the uneven and inequitable distribution of social infrastructure. This studio will address the potential for architecture and the built environment to support and strengthen communities of unsettled populations, focusing on the unique conditions of a site in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Postwar, between 1976-1986, Cyprus developed a significant amount of experimental refugee housing to settle those displaced by the war that captured territory in Northern Cyprus in an attempt to form a Turkish state. These housing projects, currently undergoing social and physical changes, will be the site of our work in Cyprus where we will research and design projects to address the gaps in the social infrastructure and civic spaces that support resilient communities.
The original refugees that the housing was designed for are considered “internal refugees.” They were displaced from one part of Cyprus to another – northerners, many of them farmers from small towns, were displaced to the south – forced to move into refugee housing as new boundaries were delineated. Over time, the inhabitants of this housing have shifted, and now they are a mix of the original displaced Cypriots as well as new migrants who work in the area.
The boundary dividing the north and south is a demilitarized zone known as the Green Line, which crosses the center of the capital, Nicosia. And while border crossing was significantly opened in 2003, the boundaries are again being challenged by expanded requests for asylum. Cyprus currently has the largest numbers of asylum seekers per capita in the European Union including a high percentage of unaccompanied and separated migrant children.
Architecture studios at the University of Nicosia, led by Barnard alumna, Professor Alessandra Swiny, have been researching and mapping one of these original housing projects this spring semester. In the Fall of 2023, our studio will work in parallel with colleagues there, building on design research underway in the Architecture School at the University of Nicosia to help envision new futures for these communities. We will spend a week in Cyprus collaborating with students and faculty from the University of Nicosia, visiting the experimental housing projects of the 70’s, and traveling throughout Cyprus, north and south, to learn about its rich and complex history.
As an advanced research studio, students will develop independent research on the broader topics as well as work collaboratively on design projects for this community. Projects will address alternative visions for civic projects and shared spaces and landscapes to support a shift from unsettled and abandoned to, optimistically, resilient and recognized. Our work will contribute to the ongoing research being done at the University of Nicosia so that the transition of this housing project, a current project of the state, supports the needs of the local community.
Syllabus available upon request.