The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

Rituals are performed in our day-to-day lives. They are both sacred and profane, loaded with ecumenical meaning, and/or devoid of theological origin. Rituals can be both ordinary and extraordinary, quotidian and divine. They come in different forms, and accordingly, rituals determine different forms and forms of life. This semester we will research mythologies embedded in our daily life. Ceremonies and rituals will serve as the chassis for us to plumb how we hold myths and stories in our imaginaries and our bodies. Rituals are spatial, temporal, and material practices. They are embodied performances and they span myriad genres and registers. Rituals function as states of exception, but in doing so, can reify the existing status quo. They can also embody liberatory potential and rupture world orders. Rituals will be explored as a world-making endeavor, a series of performances co-created and co-authored that reenact mythologies. The sonic and spatial registers of ritual procession will be looked at via scores and notations. This studio will be conducted as an experiment in collectivity. Sample outcomes could include an exhibition, archive, and/or publication. The intention is to create a body of work as a collection, but the process will be loosely determined as both a series of individual and group efforts. As a group we will determine the processes and outputs.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 - $200.00

Elective

This course will develop one's ability to critically read and understand architecture through formal, geometric, tectonic and spatial analytic processes. Analysis acts as an intermediary between observation, expression, and understanding, offering deep insights into works of architecture. The course builds upon the processes introduced in Architectural Projection. Through various conceptual and representational frameworks, the issues of mapping-layers. Point of view, scale, morphology, topography and tectonics will be explored as part of a larger creative process, embracing visual imagination, communication and critique.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $20.00 - $100.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

Comprehensive design of building enclosures - integrated consideration of structural design, tolerance, detailing, thermal transmission, air transmission, and moisture transmission. Introduce typical and atypical systems of enclosure with emphasis on relative advantages of different systems depending on location, intended performance, and design intent.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Preference is given to Junior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture