ARCH 410 – Architecture Design Studio VII

Description
This is a fourth-year design studio course for architecture majors (VII of X for Masters). This studio course emphasizes context, the urban fabric and public space. It will pursue two main design goals: to develop investigative skills aimed at integrating context and buildings on the one hand and to evaluate how structural and mechanical systems inform spatial strategies on the other.
Class meetings will be structured so as to define and nurture design’s emerging roles and methods, that is, to educate, to envision and to lead. Consequently, the studio will not focus on a merely functional program; instead, it will operate on the premise that public spaces are important to a city’s livability. Students will cultivate design in order to explore what is commonly regarded as fundamental to architecture: namely, issues of space, urbanism and meanings, thus seeking a way to hide thoughts inside shapes.

Objectives 
At the end of this course students will have an enhanced ability to:
– Develop a design style and a contemporary approach that reveal sensitivity to a highly defined historical context.
– Manage and organize innovative projects that exploit the complexity of today’s urban phenomena.
– Understand the public realm of urban context so as to add context to the projects.
– Work within the constraints (and take advantage of the opportunities) of an historical context.
– Use tools and develop skills to design, communicate, evaluate, define and coordinate an architecture project.
– Conflate culture, technology, and design into a single project.
– Produce a complete set of presentation drawings by using different media and tools.

Course descriptions may be subject to occasional minor modifications at the discretion of the instructor.

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