ARCH 320 – Architecture Design Studio VI
Discipline(s): Architecture & Historic Preservation
Credits: 5
Available: spring semester 2026
Instructor: Franco Pisani, M.Arch., Licensed Architect, Stefano Corazzini, Ph.D. Candidate
Prerequisite: ARCH310 or equivalent
Taught in: English
Course Fee: $ 400.00
Course Description
This is a third-year design studio course for architecture majors (VI of X for Masters). More urgently than ever, today’s world needs innovative, informed design, and architects are in need for more complex and interactive profiles. This Design studio regards the designer as a thinker as well as a maker, working conceptually and strategically across the fading boundaries of traditional design disciplines. The studio will have an emphasis on context, urbanity, urban fabric and public space. The studio will focus on two design goals: develop investigative skills to integrate context and buildings and to evaluate the ways structural and mechanical systems inform spatial strategies. We’re here to define and nurture design’s emerging roles and methods – to educate, to envision and (I hope) to lead.
Course Objectives and Learning Outcomes
CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT
The main opportunity offered by a design studio in Firenze, is the opportunity of working in a strongly characterized historical context, with its multiple layers and its continuous in progress status. Firenze and its built environment will be the textbooks for the studio, and the studio will develop methods to learn from it. Students will be asked to go behind appearances and to look at the city from different points of view and not as tourists.
Architecture is strategy and communication.
The main goal of the studio is to provide students with an insight into the nature of the public domain and the ways in which architecture and urban space are weaved to create the physical setting for the activities and rituals of public urban life.
STYLE IS NOT AN ADDED QUALITY
The studio will not focus only on a merely functional program , instead, it will operate on the premise that public spaces are important to the livability of a city. Students will cultivate design not to explore style, but to explore what they consider to be fundamental to architecture: namely, issues of space, urbanism and meanings, searching a way to hide thoughts inside shapes.
ORDINARY vs EXTRAORDINARY
Unorthodox programs using contemporary complexity of urban phenomena will be of main importance in developing design proposals.
- Students will complete site analysis and pre-design in which they research local zoning requirements.
- Students will create a master plan that integrates the building with the public space.
- Students will develop a preliminary structural diagram for their design.
- Students will create spaces that meet life safety egress requirements.
- Students will create presentation drawings.
- Students will create a portfolio.
Course descriptions may be subject to occasional minor modifications at the discretion of the instructor.