ARCH 416 – Advanced Topical Design Studio: Urban

Description 
The primary mission of Arch 416 is to enable students to explore how architecture, landscape architecture and urban design operate (as formal, meaningful and performative constructs) and how they relate to the historical context at different scales. The course proposes that site can be understood as a field within which different forces interact; it is the role of the designer to engage in analytical, intuitive, interpretative and transformational processes that lead to design solutions of significant meaning and value. The goal is to equip students with the necessary tools to describe, represent, analyze and interpolate the urban fabric. To this end, attention is focused on issues of context by means of initial intensive exercises in site analysis and documentation. Practical and pre-professional experience from building construction site visits and field trips to Rome, Turin-Milan, Venice-Vicenza, Genoa, and the Florentine surroundings will be the core of the course.

Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course students will have enhanced competency in the following:

– Professional Communication Skills: Ability to write and speak effectively and use representational media appropriate for both within the profession and with the general public.
– Design Thinking Skills: Ability to raise clear and precise questions, use abstract ideas to interpret information, consider diverse points of view, reach well-reasoned conclusions, and test alternative outcomes against relevant criteria and standards.
– Investigative Skills: Ability to gather, assess, record, and comparatively evaluate relevant information and performance in order to support conclusions related to a specific project or assignment.
– Architectural Design Skills: Ability to effectively use basic formal, organizational and environmental principles and to inform two- and three-dimensional design.
– Use of Precedents: Ability to examine and comprehend the fundamental principles present in relevant precedents and to make informed choices about the incorporation of such principles into architecture and urban design projects.
– History and Global Culture: Understanding of the parallel and divergent histories of architecture and the cultural norms of a variety of indigenous, vernacular, local, and regional settings in terms of their political, economic, social, ecological, and technological factors.
– Ordering Systems: Ability to apply the fundamentals of both natural and formal ordering systems and the capacity of each to inform two- and three-dimensional design.
– Cultural Diversity and Social Equity: Understanding of the diverse needs, values, behavioral norms, physical abilities, and social and spatial patterns that characterize different cultures and individuals and the responsibility of the architect to ensure equity of access to sites, buildings, and structures.
– Site Design: Ability to respond to site characteristics, including urban context and developmental patterning, historical fabric, soil, topography, ecology, climate, and building orientation in the development of a project design.
– Pre-Design: Ability to prepare a comprehensive program for an architectural project that includes an assessment of client and user needs; an inventory of spaces and their requirements; an analysis of site conditions (including existing buildings); a review of the relevant building codes and standards, including relevant sustainability requirements, as well as an assessment of their implications for the project; finally, a definition of site selection and design assessment criteria.
– Codes and Regulations: Ability to design sites, facilities, and systems that are responsive to relevant codes and regulations, including the principles of life-safety and accessibility standards.
– Structural Systems: Ability to demonstrate the basic principles of structural systems and their ability to withstand gravitational, seismic, and lateral forces, as well as the selection and application of the appropriate structural system.
– Environmental Systems: Ability to demonstrate the principles of environmental systems’ design, how design criteria can vary by geographic region, and the tools used for performance assessment. This demonstration must include active and passive heating and cooling, solar geometry, day lighting, natural ventilation, indoor air quality, solar systems, lighting systems, and acoustics.
– Building Envelope Systems and Assemblies: Understanding of the basic principles involved in the appropriate selection and application of building envelope systems relative to fundamental performance, aesthetics, moisture transfer, durability, as well as energy and material resources.
– Building Materials and Assemblies: Understanding of the basic principles used in the appropriate selection of interior and exterior construction materials, finishes, products, components, and assemblies based on their inherent performance, including environmental impact and reuse.

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

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