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2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part III

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This week the 2023 Student Showcase takes a broad look at buildings and parks on university campuses. We look at a couple of design build projects completed by architecture students as well as adaptive reuse designs and new builds that aim to evolve architectural education curriculum through wellness and sustainability. Shifting gears slightly we also feature a video game that inspires architecture learning, after all campus should be a space that encourages enjoyment while learning.

We hope you enjoy this week’s collection of student work and come back next week for a new installment.

Commensalis by Dakota Witte and Dylan Moyano, B.Arch ’23
Washington State University | Advisor: Vahid Vahdat

Commensalism is a biological relationship between two organisms in which one benefits while the other derives neither a benefit nor harm. Here at Washington State University, creating relationships amongst the design disciplines is challenging at the very least. Students are expected to become masters of their own curriculum, however in design, we are also expected to share knowledge with our cousin disciplines. This ideology has become a greater necessity as miscommunications between designers and builders create complications in the design process. The origin of these obstacles can be attributed to our academic backgrounds. A lack of communication can be attributed to the traditional academic architecture practiced amongst universities.

Our goal in this project was to innovate this narrative and create both a physical and psychologically alternative to the educational practice of design. We set out to create a commensalism between design disciplines and the academic system. Our site was located on the South end of WSU’s campus. As a prime location, we began creating an academic building for both engineers and architects. The unfamiliar organism’s veins stretch and pull through the natural scenery. Initially seeming like something out of the Twilight Zone, further innovation within our environment gives a drastic alternative to the organism as it begins to create flower beds and public benches that surround the structure. Exterior cladding of our structure uses traditional red brick to pay respect to the surrounding architecture of campus.

We felt it was important to iterate that our intentions are not to change higher education itself, but rather change the systems we have been using for hundreds of years. To show this, the organism has begun to encompass the exterior of the structure changing its shape as it begins spreading throughout campus. The interior of Commensalis creates a mix of both public and private spaces with a heavy emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration. This first level is home to a large museum space meant to display the projects of various students. The second and third levels of the structure also hold multiple public and private seating areas to encourage a variety of study methods.

Instagram: @dakota.witte, @dgm.design2022, @3rdscript

ArchiLounge by Neroly Mora, Daniel Gribben, Michael Anzalone, Kayla Dawson, Kianna Ladue, Julia Dorr, Abby Lumpkin, Nate Simpson, Lauren Trippiedi, Charles Vasas, Joe Walsh, Serene Martens, M.Arch ’23 and B.S. Arch ’23
Norwich University | Advisor: Tolya Stonorov

Our typical SoA+A design build program has an outward, community focus – this is based on our belief that architecture can help people through providing solutions to society’s problems. This year, however, I was able to teach a design build studio that had a special opportunity to look inwards and focus on our own SoA+A community.

The ArchiLounge design build studio focused on the design and fabrication of the student lounge in Chaplin Hall as well as an overall look on how we could bring our current branding into the building. The studio reimagined and redefined what was needed and proposed an innovative, material rich, dynamic solution. This began with an outreach effort to the entire SoA+A community to determine what program the space should encompass. As part of the lounge, the studio incorporated a memorial to Donovan Kurt, a beloved architecture student who tragically passed in 2022.

The studio’s main focus was on investigating and redesigning the student lounge in Chaplin. This began by understanding how to draw as builts, a tool used in most architecture offices. We conducted a model-focused precedent study and a Surface + Joint study with an emphasis on digital fabrication, both in terms of the joint and overall spaces. We worked with our digital fabrication tools: 3D Printers, CNC router and laser cutters and a CNC router workshop was taught after our initial research. The bulk of the studio involved a heavy investigation into materiality and making. We poured concrete, worked with fabric, wood and metal. While each student had an area of study and is developing expertise, it was my intention that each student contribute to all aspects of the project through group discussions. In order for these group discussions to be successful it was imperative that the studio have an atmosphere of open dialogue. While we discussed and critiqued ideas, we made sure that we were not excluding people from contributing to this process. Working across the table was also an opportunity for all of the studio to learn more about how we all solve problems. I worked many hours outside of studio to try to ensure a successful group environment. This studio had the most cohesive group dynamic that I have experienced in my 11 years of teaching.

The design build process is a ground breaking pedagogy that encourages students to problem solve, think together, and make real design innovations in the field. Students learned that their drawings had real meaning and tangible implications. The studio had extensive community engagement as we worked with the SoA+A students, faculty and staff. Community-focused work in design build studios consistently demonstrates that holding community activism as a goal, yields a rich student experience as a result. I believe that this impact is two-fold: 1) students gain confidence because they are entrusted to design and build a real project and thereby achieve results outside of their comfort zone and 2) they are able to see concretely how their own work can help the community.

Through the design build experience, students shape a personal, more inclusive, definition of the architectural process and its tangible social and economic impacts. Working with the team of 12 architecture students was fantastic, but also challenging. The students were consistently motivated and worked cohesively to produce a beautiful building. Students repeatedly described these design build courses as some of the most valuable of their architecture education.

Instagram: @eaglewolf_14, @_juliadorr_, @abbylmpkn, @stonorovworkshoparchitects, @norwichdesignbuild

Voiland College Student Center by Chenlu Zhang and Luke Nye, B.S. Arch ’23
Washington State University | Advisor: Vahid Vahdat

In this project, we used a variety of software to build a workflow (rhino, revit, enscape, photoshop, to ensure a high level of finished product quality in a limited time.

The link between creativity and schooling has always been a difficult relationship to explain. In the fields of architecture, engineering, and creation, a heavy amount of creativity is required. Creativity requires boundaries to be broken and order not to interfere, which is a direct counter to that of modern education. As a result of the inherit divide between these elements of education and creativity, “Discrete Rectagular” replicates this relationship in the physical structure.

A cavity-shaped, complex organic structure is present next to solid traditional interior rooms. This cavity shape represents creativity as the solid routine structures represent the order that is required in education. For the spaces to work well together, we decided that the organic shape should hold most of the lounging area required in this site while the traditional rooms should be responsible for the more practical uses of the building. This division of labor further defines the relationship between creativity and order. To not disrupt the shape of the entire site, we modified the existing architectural topologies which in turn influence the structure giving it it’s shape. The loadbearing columns at the base of the organic structure are connected to the structure which displaces the overall weight. A lightweight steel was used for the skin (scaffolding with curtain wall glass) of the building which increases the sense of breathing.

The conventional practice of introducing the outdoor environment is not adopted, but the shell through its transparency is used to release the interior space of the whole building giving a spectacle to engage with. Furthermore, the main entrance is equipped with a similar organic shape to continue this spectacle and desire to be inside. The whole building is made of white light material and metallic material so that its square volume floats in place and disappears. The organic structure is heavily used for lounging as we want to challenge the existing academic architecture typology but not change it completely. Hence we chose to use this alternative style.

Instagram: @clzpurplem, @3rdscript

KCAI DoARC by Jessie Grieser, Kendall Hartley, Halima Moore and Abriana Wilson, B.S. Design, ’23
University of Nebraska-Lincoln | Advisor: Peter Olshavsky, Ph.D.

If education involves “values made flesh,” then what values will be incarnate by the year 2050? To think through the entanglements of this question, third year architecture students were asked to design of a Department of Architecture (DoARC) building on the Kansas City Art Institute campus in Kansas City, MO. This effort started from the basis that design education is changing. Our architectural lives, and the education that prepares us to live them well, should aim at our being someone and not just acting professionally.

This 30,000 sq. ft. project, rethought architectural education through curriculum, pedagogy, and the agency of architecture. This new project on the famed arts campus was approached through wellness in connection with sustainable systems. The department was divided into four and one-half levels to support the programmatic needs of its social life. The east and west edges of the building were rounded to create unique campus spatial conditions and maximize view across the Kansas City arts district. The layering of program enables students, faculty and staff to have quality light and in views on three sides. Subtractive gestures on the building’s face to create exterior green spaces and sheltered entrance conditions. Entrances were placed on campus side (facing the quad) and public side (facing Nelson-Atkins Museum) on two different levels to respond to the existing site’s ten foot east-west slope. The facade was develop with white brick to connect to the existing masonry on campus, while the long southern face used glazing and metal paneling to control atmospheric lighting, prevailing winds for natural ventilation, and manage solar heat gain to reduce energy consumption. The external landscape was developed to establish a new social place on a campus that was lacking quality outdoor spaces. Permeable pavers, bio-swales, and native plantings helped managed run-off from the sloped quad while creating a quality natural environment in which student could occupy on the southern end of the intimate arts campus.

Instagram: @jess_grieser, @kendallhartley_, @polshavsky

Cultural Kitchen by Emily Pressprich, Austin Bass, Brandon Garza, Caitlin Truong, David Alvarez, Ian Green, Taylor Sanville, Ivan Cherniske, Kana Takagi, Maddie Crane, Marianne Fitzwilliam, Morocco Branting, Pamela Aymar, Patrick Norton, Radha Iyer and Yessenia Islas, M. Arch ’23
University of Washington | Advisor: Steve Badanes, Jake LaBarre and Miriam Gee

Designed and built by 16 students in the spring quarter of 2023, the World Cultural Kitchen is a gathering and cooking space for visitors, volunteers, and student workers at the UW farm, a 1.5 acre urban farm and educational center on the University of Washington campus. The Cultural Kitchen will be used for cooking and farming demos by the UW Farm, celebrations that are hosted at the adjacent Center for Urban Horticulture, and as a unique meeting place for visitors to the nearby walking trails of the Union Bay Nature area.

The design is a consensus-based group project, working with both graduate and undergraduate architecture students (2 of which are construction management double majors) to create a beautiful and durable structure to meet the needs of the client within an 11 week quarter. After refining a loose program, the class presents their schematic design to the client and then works to develop a construction document set which incorporates client feedback that is appropriate for a tight budget and even tighter construction schedule. By week five, they are building and testing project elements, developing their construction skills, and refining details to preassemble the project elements in studio. The final weeks of the studio involve project layout, site prep, reassembly, and finally a celebratory ribbon cutting as the project gets turned over to the client.

Instagram: @emilypressprich, @aust1n_bass, @caitlinche, @ivancherniske, @crane_maddie, @morocco.branting, @pameaymar, @patrick_norton, @jacoblabarre, @build_lightly, @co.everything, @NeighborhoodDesignBuildStudio

Bubble Rumble by Kathy Bi, Clytie Mak, Tien Pham and Yuzhou Wang, M.Arch ’23
University of California, Los Angeles | Advisor: Feghali Yara

Bubble Rumble is an educational platform-game that draws inspiration from Archigram’s Seaside Bubbles and City Pop aesthetics. Players ascend platforms, progressing from daytime to nighttime, encountering architectural and artistic moments. Trigger questions provide architectural knowledge, emphasizing learning through play. Bespoke tiles, derived from Archigram’s iconic imagery, give Bubble Rumble a distinctive visual language.

Drawing inspiration from Archigram’s groundbreaking designs, we have developed a set of distinctive tiles that add a visually captivating and unique element to our game. These tiles play a pivotal role in the gameplay experience, and comprehending their functionality is essential for fully immersing oneself in the enjoyment of the game.

Instagram: @feghali.yara

Humb.LED by Trenton Scott, B.Arch ’23
Tuskegee University | Advisor: Roderick Fluker and Dr. Carla Jackson Bell

The design proposal seeks to strengthen community-university relations by developing a public park which links two existing sites significant to each: Tuskegee University campus stadium and a Tuskegee community park and recreational center. Both facilities are enhanced and expanded architecturally and promote sports participation and fitness in bringing together members of each community. The shared spatial programming also provides opportunities for the university to strengthen its recruitment pipeline locally and community engagement for students and faculty.

Instagram: @carla_jackson_bell

 

Head Heart Hands by Tyler Littes, B.Arch ’23
Tuskegee University | Advisor: Roderick Fluker and Dr. Carla Jackson Bell

The project explores the aesthetic implications for a new campus living learning center in the context of the existing historic district of Tuskegee University. Space, program, and material use combine to form an inviting and comforting living environment for students – allowing them to feel empowered to achieve their full educational potential. Symbolically the project employs the themes of head, heart, and hand in addressing student needs, and linking to Tuskegee’s founding, the campus, and the teaching philosophy of Booker T. Washington.

Instagram: @carla_jackson_bell

PASSAGE by Gabriel Valdez, B.Arch ’23
The University of Texas at Austin | Advisor: Nichole Wiedemann

Inspired by the latent potential of old alleys throughout the increasingly dense West Campus, the design introduces another alley, an informal and lively pedestrian passage, that unites a range of people and programs. The strategy helps to resituate a longstanding religious institution, who owns the property, and introduce student living and services. While the base is shaped by mixed-use and church functions creating a public sphere, the residential towers are shaped by views and light. Suggestive of the larger pedestrian network in the neighborhood, the PASSAGE creates a social landscape through intermingling and movement.

Instagram: @nicholewiedemann

Lighthouse Christian Study Center by Alyssa Lee, M.Arch ’23
California Baptist University | Advisor: Dr. Matthew Niermann

The Lighthouse Christian Study Center is on a college campus acting as a beacon of light and hope within its community. The beacon draws faithful people into the unified structure to experience transcendence through the use of light. The Center contains three primary live, study, and worship spaces.

Each significant space displays organized connectivity within a unified form. The gleaming exterior is complemented by an outdoor plaza, cafe, and prayer garden support student life and vibrancy. The post and lintel structure incorporates sun-shading twisting vertically oriented louvers along tall glazed facades. The dynamism of each aluminum louver gives a sense of movement to those passing by and through the building, with further liveliness provided by the varying effect of daylight through the vertical strokes of the facade.

Instagram: @cbuarch

Stay tuned for the next installment of 2023 Student Showcase!

2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part I

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Welcome back to the Study Architecture Student Showcase fall series!

We put out a call over the summer for student work and received a record number of submissions – thank you to everyone who participated. With the Fall semester in full gear, we are excited to share the most outstanding projects with you over the next few months. To give you an insight into what it is like to study architecture, we will take a closer look at student thesis and capstone work from 2023.

Throughout the Student Showcase series, we will feature work from recent graduates of ACSA member schools from across the globe. These projects will highlight an array of topics and explorations, ranging from building designs focused on women empowerment or climate change to research on biomaterials and much more. Tune in every week for a new installment focused on a specific topic.

This week we take a look at projects that are aimed at combatting the issue of flooding, which we are seeing rise in frequency across the globe. In the last few weeks alone, we have seen extreme examples of just how damaging floods can be. The work below focus on how we can improve the flood protection process.

Urban Flooding Reuse for Addis Ababa (Ethopia) by Michael Clifton, B.Arch ’23
Tulane University | Advisor: Ruben Garcia-Rubio

The Urban Flooding Reuse Proposal is intended to create a way for residents of the river meander to live with and reuse flood water for their own benefit. This is a response to a high population of Addis Ababa’s (Ethiopia) residents living in highly vulnerable areas to flooding and a high amount of housing being built from weaker materials like mud and wood. These two problems that exist in the city lead to dangerous living conditions with flooding in a city that experiences plenty of rain and flooding yearly—and is projected to see much more in the future due to climate change.

The proposal tackles other problems as well such as cleaning polluted water and creating public space in the city, while restructuring at-risk housing. The city has problems with pollution due to poor drainage and sewerage systems, and the amount of green space is far below the World Health Organization standard.
The proposal uses a system of channels that serve as pathways for water to travel from parcel to parcel while also being slow mobility pathways for pedestrians. The system for flow of water includes inputs from the Upper Kebena River, and introduces three different types of parcels for different treatment of water. The first being retention pools which hold water at the first stop in the system. The retention pools also include some natural vegetation for slight cleaning at this point. The second parcels are cleaning parcels, which have more natural vegetation and help clean water through the use of bioswales. The third type of parcels are for reuse of water and mostly come in the form of urban agriculture while also providing spaces for recreation and leisure throughout the river meander. The reuse parcels are spaces that create a public environment for pedestrians and can help create jobs through farming. The new housing buildings can have shops on the ground floor as well to help keep the informal economy alive in this area. Runoff water from the city is cleaned through the use of underground water deposits which will help with solid waste filtration and chemical cleaning before water from the streets enters the system. The proposal also includes bridges and ramps to help pedestrians cross the river and more extreme terrain on the north side of the river meander, creating a better connection from the city to the river.

This project was selected by the Oslo Triennale.

Instagram: @rubgarrub

Creative Triggering by Christine Chen, Meichen Duan, Ji Hyun Hwang, Jing Kang, Hong Ke, Wanshan Li, Zhe Li, Xinru Liu, Hoi Yau Lo, Ankita Mallick, Weixuan Wang, Ruijie Zhang, Wenhao Zhang, M. Arch ’23
University of Melbourne | Advisor: Justyna Karakiewicz & Theo Blankley

This studio takes the site of Australia’s largest major urban regeneration project – located at Melbourne, Fishermans Bend – which is over 480 hectares of land directly adjacent to the CBD. We propose the future of the precinct in light of ecological, environmental, structural and social changes across staged developments into the next century.

The Fishermans Bend precinct has its challenges. Much of it is threatened by flooding. A significant portion of the land is heavily contaminated by previous industrial users. We have learned that the quick fixes we often employ are based on misinterpreting symptoms for causes as we try to address current problems. We can observe that our quick interventions distract us from doing the deeper work needed that might lead to a better world for the planet, for all species and the environment, rather than just for the electorate.

By 2025, the Stage 1 will be completed and will feature large scale facilities for advanced manufacturing, fabrication, testing and prototyping with large scale collaborators such as the University of Melbourne, Boeing, Tesla, and others. By 2050, the Victorian Government proposes there will be 80,000 residents and employment for up to 80,000 people. Looking forward, we know that by 2100, much of Fishermans Bend could be under water, even under the most moderate predictions for sea level rises. We know that most of the surface soil is toxic. This combination of toxic land and flooding does not suggest that this is suitable place to live.

Combining Slow, Medium and Fast approaches, the propositions are illustrated by small, medium and large projects. These include two urban infrastructure strategies, and eight architectural projects.The works shown here illustrates an incremental development, with Stage 1 in 2025-2030, Stage 2 in 2030-2050, and Stage 3 in 2050-2100. Students worked collaboratively and developed programs and outcomes that interconnected and linked with each other – as evidenced in the final panels showing relationships between proposals and how one project may ‘trigger’ another.

Instagram: @msdsocial, @msd.gallery, @theoblankley, @meichend_, @lohoiyau, @ankitamallick,

BQE Hydrology Hub by Emma Mangels, B.Arch ’23
New York Institute of Technology | Advisor: Evan Shieh

The re-imagination of the Gowanus Canal aims to address the environmental and hydrological issues facing the Gowanus Canal at the local scale and the surrounding neighborhoods of Brooklyn at the borough scale. The Gowanus Canal and the surrounding neighborhood of Red Hook has been a highly-contested area due to the status of the waterway being declared a superfund site. As well as flooding occurring on the shoreline and also in-land which can be traced back to the out-dated combined sewer outflow system or CSO feeding into the canal.

To address this issue, a “Hydrology Hub” will be created at the crossing of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) at the local scale to clean water in an efficient manner and reduce in-land flooding as well as making the water filtration process visible to the community. The hub will allow for people to follow the newly designed circular system of water filtration that uses both natural and man-made processes. The filtration circulation will bring the person down to the canal level where a walkable park will take over the current hard-edge of the canal. In order to protect the new in-land system, the borough scale will include the implementation of a soft shoreline to slow erosion and provide habitats for flora and fauna, creating a “kit of parts” to foster an environmentally resilient community while also placing an emphasis on circular systems of water.

Instagram: @mangels.arch, @ev07

Island Revitalization by Kelly Zheng, B.Arch ’23
New York Institute of Technology | Advisor: Farzana Gandhi

Coney Island is a peninsula that sits in the southern part of New York City. The site is a smaller scale of NYC that demonstrates the environmental problems that the city faces. It is an area full of residential structures and commercial businesses.

Coney Island suffers from bad air quality, urban heat, flooding, and poor water management, causing bad living quality and health risks. These issues should not be understood and treated separately. They are all part of a reciprocal ecosystem where one problem typically worsens another.

It is essential to develop a holistic and comprehensive integrated solution that makes Coney Island more livable today and far into the future. The proposal is inspired by such solutions found around the world and at multiple scales from masterplan to kiosks.

Coney Island was originally a collection of islands and shifting sand, with inlets connecting the islands during low tide periods. In the late 1700s, the sand-shifting movements closed the inlets, so the residents filled in the space and connected the islands into one whole island. Coney Island Creek was the water body that separated Coney Island from the mainland. Over time, the island expanded due to natural and manmade activities such as sand shifting or landfilling.

The proposal reintroduces the creek, forming additional routes for water flow. Additional canals will be integrated, dividing the island into 3 mini-islands. This development isolates the island’s midsection, the portion that will be most likely affected by flooding. The isolation prevents water overflow from entering the surrounding inland areas. The middle mini-island will be redeveloped as an amusement island, and be designed as a sponge park to absorb flooding or overflowing water.

Recreational areas and water management systems are incorporated into the islands, rapidly expanding the amount of green and blue to decrease the environmental risks. Real-time visual notifications and warning systems are integrated into the streets, using lights, sounds, and kiosks to educate people about environmental factors and give alerts for safety threats. The strategies and real-time data systems work together to build a stronger, low-vulnerable community for citizens and visitors.

Instagram: @kellyzhangarch

Replacement by Zoe Holiday, B.Arts ’23
Savannah College of Art and Design | Advisor: Gordon Nicholson

Replacement is a Community Center located in Wilmington Island, GA. The site is nestled between an elementary school, a fire station, and two churches. A walking path alongside a main road accessing the site encourages pedestrian and vehicular engagement. The proposed community center – Replacement – will do just that by superimposing a new structure of CMU while maintaining the existing concrete structure. The main concrete columns will be inverted to create void where there was once a solid. The exterior faces of the new structure take shape from the radii of the trees defining the current landscape.

The building’s approach to water was integral to the form of the roof and interior courtyard. The two form a connected system of water collection through phytoremediation, water retention, and overflow channels that are capable of managing storm water and flooding. Replacement aims to become a shelter and everyday hub for the Wilmington Island community.

Water Wise Wrapper by Debdeep Dam, M.Arch ’23
University of Southern California | Advisor: Lisa Little

California and the world at large have been facing tumultuous weather patterns. Respite from long-term drought comes in the form of devastating floods.

Throughout history, humans have had a symbiotic relationship with natural sources of water; often carrying both cultural and spiritual significance. Unfortunately, modern city-making has been oriented toward over-engineered city planning because modern cities have had access to uncontested water resources without regard to ecosystems or context. The modern city treats stormwater as a nuisance; something to be drained away out of sight even though water scarcity has become so real an issue that architectural systems that try to mitigate this by having systems in place for water conservation, collection, cleaning, and reuse should be adopted by all buildings.

With the increasing commodification of clean potable water and gross exploitation of this natural resource, it has become imperative to explore options for democratically using, storing, and distributing this natural resource.

“Water-Wise Wrapper attempts to bring this crucial subject to the forefront of urban living while advocating for a system that can leverage the vast vertical landscapes of the modern city and act like a sponge: absorbing or releasing water when needed and releasing it when required. This thesis proposes a system that physically stores and releases water while also acting as a visual representation of the scarcity of this vital resource.

This project won the USC Master of Architecture Innovation in Directed Design Research Award. In recognition of the most outstanding graduate final degree project illustrating technological innovation and advancement.

Instagram: @debdeepdam, @lisa_k_little

Hydro-Urbanism: A Walkable, Coastal Neighborhood Designed to Withstand Flooding and Use Water as A Design Asset by Zachary Faza, M.Arch ’23
Florida Agricultural And Mechancial University | Advisor: Kyle Spence

Located on the low-lying, sandy peninsula of Pinellas County, St. Petersburg, Florida, is a coastal city that has much at risk from hurricanes and heavy rainfall events. No Florida county has more buildings and more value at risk in Category 1 storms.

When a severe storm impacts a coastal city, high winds build up and push the water from the sea over the land. This is called storm surge, and it can cause devastating damage like that seen during 2022 Category 4 Hurricane Ian impacting this region of the State.

Zachary’s design-research investigative thesis presents research on existing case studies of aesthetically pleasing, multi-beneficial flood infrastructure that benefits society beyond flood control. This project applied intuitive thought to produce a design proposal for a walkable, 40-acre master-planned development that integrates flood-adaption infrastructure as aesthetic and recreational features.

The proposed master planned development orients around a central pond serving as a water retention feature and encloses two public park islands. This pond connects to a site-wide network of waterways and bioswales (naturally filtering landscape features) designed to absorb, filter, and store stormwater runoff from neighborhood roads.

Around the pond are several distinct built areas, each with latent design exploration. The primary regions built around the pond include a Canal-Front residential area that has elevated structures that looks inwards onto tree-lined canal parks, the Waterside Shops mixed-use shopping center with a grocery store, waterfront commercial spaces, and apartments, and the public Forest Park that spans two islands within the central pond and forms the spine of the development’s pedestrian and bicycle circulation network.

Zack’s project is a design exercise demonstrating that flood adaptation measures can be an aesthetically pleasing part of a holistic urban design solution that mitigates damage from floods and storms and creates vibrant, profitable commercial, public, and residential areas.

This project won the FAMU Three-Minute Thesis First-Place Award

Come back next week for Part II!

2023 Student Showcase Call for Projects

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For the last four years, Study Architecture has put out a call to architecture school faculty from around the world to nominate graduating students whose work exemplifies excellence in architectural education. This year, we invite you to submit your student’s most impressive work to be featured in the 2023 Fall Student Showcase on Study Architecture’s website and social media.

Submission deadline: July 7, 2023

Click here to be directed to a Google form where you can nominate your students and submit their work.

We hope by sharing a glimpse into what architecture students create while in school, more students will begin to take an interest in the architecture field and potentially apply to a program that appeals to them. Architecture is a broad field and we are excited to highlight the many unique aspects of design that are submitted.

Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part IX

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Welcome back to Part IX of the Study Architecture Student Showcase! This week we focus on production systems in the built environment and how architects can reimagine those infrastructure systems to improve not just our economy but also the climate crisis. As we consider how to improve our rail systems, meet a nationwide housing demand and address the issues globalization has created around the globe, this week’s contributors shed light on solutions and areas that need our attention.

Incase you missed past installments, check out Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII and Part VIII.

Post-Industrial Landscapes: Amplifying Existing Food Systems in Chicago’s Chinatown by Juanita Li, M.Arch ’22
University of Maryland | Advisor: Brittany Williams

Cities have long grappled with how to feed their populations. Globalization allowed cities to supply food and grow beyond ecological limits. During Industrialization, global networks expanded in capacity with the advent of rail, eroding a city’s tie to surrounding agricultural land. Rail was the genesis of Chicago’s expansion into a major urban center. When the rail system was elevated, rail lines and yards spanning many city blocks scarred and carved the city. One neighborhood bounded and constrained by active and remnant rail structures is Chinatown.

This project proposes a contextual response for a productive, post-industrial urban site, drawn from an historical review of Chicago’s rail history, Chinatown’s identity, and a typological food system analysis. Food is central to Chinatown’s identity as a destination, since food generates economic activity as a raw and crafted, cultural good. The neighborhood is food rich despite high poverty rates. Chinatown’s immediate spatial context is constrained by active rail lines, idle container yards, and major expressways, obstructing neighborhood growth.

An idled rail container storage yard severs Chinatown. Extending for over 3 city blocks within Chinatown, this 18-foot-high concrete embankment sees active commuter rail activity. The low-rise residential area to the east has no visibility of the low- and mid-rise mixed-use area to the west. Viaducts through the embankment are 445 ft long tunnels, creating a further spatial separation. The challenging edge and tunnel conditions emphasize the spatial separation and require design solutions that soften and blur the division. The proportions of the site do not suggest that a rails-to-trails proposal is a viable solution.

Extending Chinatown’s robust food system becomes an opportunity to amplify the existing conditions, provide needed green space and economic opportunities, and create additional points of connection for the neighborhood outside of its boundaries. An 18-foot-high concrete, idled rail container yard spanning three-and-a-half city blocks is transformed into a place where Chinese food culture cultivates community and connection through its craft and consumption. The solution preserves the industrial and cultural identity of the site, maintains active rail, and can serve as a model for a diverse urban food system at multiple scales.

A Fabrication Process: Form from Assembly and Material Culture by Erin M. Paul, M.Arch ’22
Hampton University | Advisor: Carmina Sanchez-del-Valle & Marci Turner

If we put aside building types and formal styles, to consider the material culture and the ways in which we make, we will encounter forms that break with the traditional. Those that we impose now respond to a perception of a world preserved by rules that maintain a kind of aesthetic stasis. In architecture, designing for the materials and for construction, will deliver forms that will be more representative of who we are, than if we work by imposing them. Materials, ways of building, and the conditions of the digital can generate new forms.

This research is driven by the exploration of form through small scale physical models. The study models varied depending on the size of the base used to generate form – the site. Forms were also determined by the dimensions and qualities of modeling materials and their joints.

The research plan consisted of three phases. The first “Methods of Building” explored the structure for form. 2D and 3D grids and meshes were used to define boundaries. The second “Material Value” investigated shaping materials using gravity, applied loads, tension and compression, in both wet and dry conditions. The third “Contextual Domains” transposed a selection of the physical forms created into the digital adding scale and mass, and defining architectural components.

The design research made it possible to “see” gaps found in the representation of building components and their assembly into wholes. We make intricate drawings and struggle to translate them into the buildable. There is a disconnection between what we illustrate, and what is actually built. The research made tangible that what seems as very simple physical form, when transposed into the digital, becomes extremely complex and geometrized. Also, new forms appear. Building “know how” connects assembly possibilities to material potential. Form is always affected by the qualities of material.

SNAP! homes by Simon Needham, B.Arch ’22
University of Cincinnati | Advisor: Whitney Hamaker

SNAP! homes reimagines the Case Study house as a catalogue of precast modular systems of home components that ship on-site in addition to a mobile pod system which snaps to host structures and moves among sites. 3 options are given, allowing for a range of lifestyle choices for the consumer at varying scales. The whole proposal is streamlined with a website that users can order their home from.

The H-01 and H-02 homes are constructed from multiple precast concrete modules sandwiching a layer of insulation. Each module encases a programmatic element that the user may purchase or omit from their home. After the modules are chosen, users may swap the layout orientation of the modules, creating customized living spaces tailored to the user’s preference. Once the modules are chosen, the user picks the interior partition wall colors, adding another layer to the customization of the home. After the home is ordered, it is trucked to site and assembled quickly, as all of the interior elements have already been installed. The H-01 and H-02 homes range from just over 400 sq. ft. up to 1750 sq. ft.

The P-01 option from the SNAP! homes catalogue is the host module and mobile pod. The host module is again formed from precast concrete modules. This will contain the necessities for living (not found in the mobile pod) such as access to water, electric, bathrooms, a kitchen, and living area. This structure gives the ability for 6 pods to be hosted at once by easily snapping them into place. The mobile pod contains the user’s sleep and work spaces with ample personal storage in the thick wall. The exterior is clad in corrugated metal, while the interior walls contain CNC-milled sanded plywood panels that aid in dampening sound from the exterior. This allows for a peaceful interior as a quiet space is necessary for work sessions and sleeping. With the mobile pod, the user may choose to move their pod to a new host location as they please, not getting tied down to the same scenery or setting.

Instagram: @needham_arch, @daapsaid

Make Fashion Make Sense by Adriana G. González, B.Arch ’22
Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico | Advisor: Pedro A. Rosario and Juan Emmanuelli

Fast fashion consumption has led to companies making new items more frequently, which has proven to lead to a higher percentage of discarded clothes accumulated in landfills, making the fashion industry the second largest polluter in the world. The approach of the industry to today’s increasing amount of consumption has weakened its own sustainability.

Therefore, the goal was to create a production network through a program that covers all the stages of the life of a garment (from design, to fabrication, to retail, to recycling the materials, and so on). This way, a circular cycle is created to reduce the costs of importation, and the amount of waste generated, to promote local sustainable clothing, and to enable accessibility to all spectrums of consumers.

The project, located along New York’s Garment District, consists of eight floors that showcase each phase with framed extrusions that are visible from its exterior. Its visitors start the journey with a display area that demonstrates through art the reality of the fashion industry. A level dedicated to retail follows. The third floor has a double-height runway area, which is the main focus of the East elevation with its lit up space being front and center for the pedestrians to admire the show from afar. An open activity area on the fourth floor creates a transition between the public levels below and the private ones that commence from that point on. The fifth floor has the fabrication/manufacturing area with another double-height open space for the workers to be comfortable and receive a considerable amount of natural light. The remaining floors are used for research, processing, educational and administrative purposes. Transformed into an outdoor area, the roof includes extensive gardens and solar panels placed to create smaller roofed spaces at the top. Lastly, a perforated mesh envelope clothes the structure with a weaving-like pattern. With buildings like this, hopefully a safer and healthier setting is generated for the fashion industry to make sense.

EVERYDAYLAND: Living within Disney’s Chemical Spectacle by Rocio Crosetto Brizzio, M.Arch ’22
Columbia University | Advisor: Mark Wasiuta

Chemicals and spectacle are indivisible elements in Disney World. Despite the persistent image of “purity” and “cleanliness” that Disney projects, it depends on and adds to the chemical components that shape contemporary life. Disney is part of our chemical modernity.

So, what if instead of hiding its chemicals, we render them visible?
Then, what would it be like to actually live within Disney’s fireworks? To be consciously part of that chemical experience?

Everydayland is a housing project at the center of Magic Kingdom, at Disney World Florida. It is a tower for long-term life at the center of Disney’s entertainment.

Everydayland rearranges Disney’s fireworks, so that they become a crucial component of everyday life, and through this it exposes their chemical condition and its presence in our culture.

By associating the fireworks with the castle, Disney makes chemical entertainment a fantasy, like Tinkerbell’s magic dust. Everydayland Tower both allows Disney fans to live this fantasy by literally making the castle a home. But at the same time it also shifts the chemical dimension of the fireworks from the world of fantasy into the real world – so it provides a fantasy and “de-fantasizes” at the same time.

Everydayland is formed by 5 main elements:

1- The Castle is Everydayland’s Lobby.
2- The Roller Coaster is its Real Estate best-selling machine.
3- The Atrium is a high-rise attraction
4- The Facade is the new fireworks launching site
5- The Domestic Life is completely immersed in the fireworks’ spectacle.

Fireworks, chemical entertainment, toxicity, fantasies, utopias, dystopias, bodies and materials configure a complex network in which Everydayland emerges as a radical way of living that acknowledges that chemicals and toxicity are part of our life – and they keep us entertained.

The dream to live in “the happiest place on earth” is now possible. If fantasy becomes real, would it still be fantastic?

Instagram: @rocrosetto, @balsa.crosetto.piazzi

Grids as a foundation by Jing-Ying Su, M.Arch ’22
Cranbrook Academy of Art | Advisor: Gretchen Wilkins

The grids: a set of horizontal and vertical lines. “The Grid Book” tells the story of the evolution of each grid from the handmade brick through the ethereal Internet in the language of a generalist to modernist boxes of architecture. The persistence of grids demonstrates that once a grid is invented, it never disappears.

Grids are the foundation of our understanding. We identify things in the world by building a line between me and the object. When things start to get complicated, the grid becomes a network that recognizes myself and various objects. The moment people realize the existence of the grid triggers our desire to understand.

In my project, I built a subtle grid in nature. The grid system in nature is unimportant to the viewers, but the project questions this unimportance by constructing a subtle grid foundation to reveal the uncertain relationship between nature and human existence. During the observation, the viewers disassociate with themselves, wandering in the grids as the mediator to arise their awareness of the movement of shadows, the reflection of sunlight, and the sound of wind. We exist in that moment. The hereness.

Instagram: @su780213, @grtnwilkins

Laves Twist by Gelmira Gourgel, Peiyao Guo, Allissa Gonga, and Chase Gasser, B.Arch ’22
University of Cincinnati | Advisor: Christoph Klemmnt

The Laves Twist is a bipartite capstone project which explores and researches the possibilities of the grid-based design by computational algorithms and its prospects of allowing for the repetition of componential geometries. (I) Using the Plesiohedron Laves Grid, which is a cluster of the 17-sided module that by a 4-rotational gesture allows for its multiplication and growth in all 17 directions, creating infinite possibilities on its aggregational exercises. Further, through the voxelization of the Laves Grid, the Laves Twist was born. In which translates to the elaboration of a precast concrete component that was derived within the 17-sided module. As a result, the generation of the growing structure entity. (II) Thus, with this connection system created using the Laves grid technology, each team member was to proceed to the next part individually to explore this connection system within different architectural programmatic exercises. With the Laves Twist connection system + the problem of how to infer its application to different programs, algorithms were developed to explore the potential of the system in the creation of whole structures, façade systems, architecture interventions, and cite climatic impact. Opening thought for growing entities grid systems as a design architectural medium.

The Laves Twist team won the Director’s Choice Award at the University of Cincinnati School of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning’s DAAPWorks 2022 showcase under the B.S. Architecture Group Project category (https://daapworks.uc.edu/2022/directors’-choice). It was also displayed in the Reed Gallery Director’s Choice Award 2022 Summer Exhibition. (more of the Laves Twist project in this video) https://youtu.be/OahLyaSw1Gw

Instagram: @gourartch, @chaseg25, @gpei.yao, @alissa_gonda, @orproject

Data, Interstellar & Romance / The BIO-TECH Facility in the Universe in 2069 by Man Shu, M.Arch ’22
Southern California Institute of Architecture | Advisor: Damjan Jovanovic

In 1969, humans landed on the moon for the first time. In 2069, humans established the first BIO-TECH facility that simulates the cosmos’s environment, preparing for their colonization of other planets in the universe. This BIO-TECH facility is no longer a conventional building on the earth. It is a scientific center for data collection, processing, and research. It is a process of translating data into cultural artifacts of architecture.

Scientists collected data on the earth and brought them to other planets, storing them in the innumerable Bio-Module units, which were densely distributed on the façade of the building. Data is of great importance for humans. It includes the entire history of human beings for richness, diversity, variety, and ability to express cultures, languages, places, times, customs, methods, processes, and every other element of our ecosystem and civilizations. The future of architecture is to give sensibility to a multitude of voices and data, often invisible or underrepresented and yet crucial for our global survival. These Bio-Module Units are also the decomposed structure of the double-layer enclosure, which are considered as shields to protect the interior living space from the harsh environment of other planets. Also, The program of a BIOTECH building will represent the interconnected interests of multiple stakeholders. As a building for research and laboratories, where individuals with similar infrastructural needs convene, it will be programmed as a negotiation place for various points of view.

We should consider what kind of habitat we want to live in on other planets in the future 2069. We no longer want to live in cold building machines which are everywhere on today’s earth. We are humans. We have hearts, alive hearts, beating hearts, warm hearts. We can feel the fragrance of flowers, the beauty of diamonds, and the coldness of stones and metals. Our hearts fear death and yearn for freedom, love, and romance. That’s what makes us different from machines, robots, AI, etc. Therefore, the future habitat on the other planets we will live in should be filled with emotion and romance instead of cold machines.

Instagram: @sookie_man_shu, @d4mjan

Stay tuned for next week’s Student Showcase series!

2022 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VII

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In part seven of the Study Architecture Student Showcase series we share eight student projects that focus on Wellness and the importance of healthy lifestyles in society. From dreaming to reflection to exercise there are many ways that architecture can help facilitate movement and a healthy community. These projects span globally from Canada to Lebanon to Korea but all have the same focus: wellness.

For a recap on the 2022 Student Showcase series so far, check out Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI.

ECO-SCAPES: From Dreams as Spatial Experiences to Ecological, Social & Economic Alternatives by Hussein Zarour, B.Arch ’22
American University of Beirut | Advisor: Carla Aramouny

Long being a subject of artistic inquiry, dreams are often defined as successions of ideas, emotions, images, and sensations that occur in the mind. Research shows that dreaming serves its own important functions in our well-being, often associated with therapy. It conveys a spectrum of past experiences, recent events, defensive operations, perceptions of self and others, conflicts, problems, and attempts at their resolution. By doing so, dreams represent a certain adventure in a world where our internalized thoughts, feelings, unfulfilled needs, and wants come to life as many theories state and support (Jung, 1974).

This project titled “ECO-SCAPES: From Dreams as Spatial Experiences to Ecological, Social & Economic Alternatives” thus investigates dreams as an entry point to design explorative, therapeutic, and experiential spaces/landscapes which stand as ecological, social but also economic alternatives to an environment defined by destruction, deterioration, and deprivation.

The location of intervention, the capital city Beirut, has been facing continuous challenges, being ecological, social, and economic, favored by unhealthy spaces and unethical political systems. Most of the citizens, mentally and physically affected, find themselves deprived of most of their basic needs, thus naturally seeking a spatial alternative in response to this destructive environment.

Instagram: @zarour_hussein, @ard_aub

Architecture and the Oneiric: An Imaginative Translation of the Intersubjective Dream Experience by Amanda Scott, M.Arch ’22
North Dakota State University | Advisor: Stephen Wischer

“One has never seen the world well if he has not dreamed what he was seeing” (Gaston Bachelard). How can architecture be reimagined through oneiric thought? Could this evoke an architectural representation akin to dreams?

This thesis explores such questions by examining the phenomenon of dreaming from an embodied architectural perspective in response to an increasingly objective architectural framework. Drawing from psychological, philosophical, artistic, and mythical sources, we can examine aspects of dreaming not as something to escape into, but rather a primary form of reality, which is often overlooked in our rational, modern way of interpreting the world. Through the piecing together of historical and fictional fragments, architecture is reconstructed into a dreamlike re-description of reality that breaks down the distinction between real and imaginary, inside and outside, conscious and unconscious, acknowledging that we may actually see in the same way that we dream.

Walking along Freedom Tunnel in New York City, existing structures are transformed into transitional elements blurring realms of verity and obscurity, providing movement through a journey of dreamlike encounters. Drawing from six influential plotlines, with the hidden infrastructure of the tunnel as its setting; surrealist spaces are reimagined through a living translation of oneiric experience.

Instagram: @amandaa_scottt, @ndsu_sodaa

The Forever Home: Redefining Aging-In-Place by Laura Deacon, M.Arch ’22
University of British Columbia | Advisor: Inge Roecker

How do we house our aging population? This question – often overlooked, is one that requires an immediate solution. The population of individuals over 65 in Canada is projected to nearly double from 2020 to 2046, reaching 22% of the overall population. With this in mind, it is essential that architectural solutions are able to meet the dynamic needs of this aging demographic. The existing housing stock consist of reactive solutions, whereby individuals sequentially progress from one typology to another in accordance with their needs. This causes strain, confusion, and requires extensive support from the community as individuals orient and adapt to a new environment.

The primary objective of this thesis is to create an engaging environment that eliminates the burden of aging by allowing individuals to age-in-place throughout ones entire lifespan, in a vibrant community that facilitates architectural flexibility while simultaneously building resilience for future generations.

The Forever Home is a seven-story development situated in the heart of Yaletown, Downtown Vancouver, within close proximity to surrounding amenities and services. The proposed development features 196 adaptable modular units that allow for families to expand, contract, and divide at various stages of life, supplemented with a palliative care unit and guest suite located on each floor. Units are configured in a single-loaded corridor typology shaped around a central courtyard, which ensures adequate natural daylighting and cross ventilation is achieved. Residences are dichotomized into blocks consisting of eight units clustered around shared residential green space. Units also feature a semi-private buffer space between the public corridors and private units, which promotes socialization and neighborly connections amongst residents. Reverse community integration is achieved using a public grocery store, child care and adult daycare facility, restaurant, and smaller scale shops dispersed vertically throughout the building. In addition, residential amenities are also located on each floor. A clear wayfinding strategy assists residents to circumnavigate the building using a bright red bulkhead and a highly contrasting change in floor material, colour, and texture.

Instagram: @laurdeacon @ubcsala

Changing Place: A Persuasive Multipurpose Park for Healthy Lifestyles by Cesar Tran, M.Arch ’22
NewSchool of Architecture and Design | Advisor: Michael Stepner, Kurt Hunker and Rebekka Morrison

Sedentary lifestyles are becoming a standard that may lead to adverse health impacts over time. Surmounting these impacts include daily non-exercise physical activity (NEPA) to support mental, social, and physical health. In many scenarios, providing the space for NEPA may not be enough to encourage participation. Built environment designers can combat this by incorporating persuasive psychological techniques for physical activity. These methods are typically found to stimulate consumerism and addiction, therefore, this thesis reclaims these methods to promote wellness through the suggestion of healthy lifestyles.

A literature review was conducted to better understand the components of a healthy life, the types of psychology employed for increased engagement, and the different architectural environments that encourage NEPA with or without intention. The review culminated with the creation of a framework consisting of nine strategies that can be considered in architectural design for habitual NEPA. Case studies were then analyzed to better understand the usage of the strategies in today’s built environment. The results were then utilized and demonstrated in a theoretical project to encourage NEPA in National City, CA which is known to have high rates of coronary heart disease and stroke.

A multipurpose park with flexible food markets and co-working spaces was designed to attract community members to participate in NEPA. The primary reason to journey here is to satisfy a person’s basic needs, sustenance. Pairing this program with multiple incentives associated with stress relief and play creates convenience for users which can lead to a routine over time. This example supports the thesis through framework application and exhibits one of the ways the built environment can encourage healthy routines through the power of persuasion.

[A]WAITING TO DIFFUSE by Joseph Chalhoub, B.Arch ’22
American University of Beirut | Advisor: Carla Aramouny

When starting any design project, we, as architects, always start by analyzing the site, mapping out conditions and studying human behavior in order to better understand how we can intervene. However, while we look at walking patterns, climatic conditions and many other aspects, we are always neglecting one very important factor: WAITING.

During the most recent economic and infrastructural collapse Lebanon has been going through, the project zoomed into ‘waiting’ as a research topic. At the time, waiting was something happening on various scales, from existential waiting to waiting in line for gas.

With a blend of anthropological research, design experiments, and research in the arts, architecture, and placemaking, the project tackles how the notion of waiting can be repurposed, reused and activated to make the most out of this urban condition. In fact, the project presents a set of functions tailored to the needs of the neighborhood and encourages users to participate and help out in the different activities. Here lies the notion of interconnected functions. By taking the waiting out of certain functions, we can repurpose them towards others and so on and so forth.

This type of adaptive reuse can feed back into the architectural intervention in more than one way. Waiting would be recycled by giving the individual multiple outlets for their time. The project presents a new kind of “Waiting Typology” that can possibly be adapted and integrated into different neighborhoods in order to answer the need of the person waiting and change depending on the site specifications. Waiting then becomes something that we can use within our research, something that is regenerative, something that is awaiting to be diffused.

Instagram: @joeych99, @ard_aub

Wellness in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ): Connecting with Culture and the Environment by Briana Pereira, B.Arch ’22
New York Institute of Technology | Advisor: Dongsei Kim

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is one of the most militarized areas in the world. Protected from urbanization for the last 69 years, the DMZ has become an involuntary park for flourishing flora and fauna with minimal human intervention.

This project takes advantage of this unique condition and nature’s healing ability to house a new mental health wellness center within the DMZ open to both Koreans and foreigners. Located on the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) within the DMZ, the project is integrated into the cascading landscape in the heavily forested eastern region of the DMZ. Immersed in nature, visitors engage the natural environment through the project’s landscape and architectural spaces to recuperate and improve their mental health.

In addition, visitors engage in traditional Korean cooking and pottery, tea ceremonies, meditation, yoga, reading, walking, and other reflective programs and activities to improve their mental health. Here architecture becomes a container for shared Korean cultures. Further, the project benefits visitors’ mental wellness through how the architecture frames the immediate mountain ranges’ beauty and how it captures the Korean peninsula’s four distinct seasons.

Instagram: @briana_pereira_, @dongsei.kim

Wood is Good: Informing Wood Architecture Through the Investigation of Craft in Furniture by Daniel Rodrigues, M.Arch ’22
Laurentian University | Advisor: Randall Kober

The act of craftsmanship, specifically woodworking, gives a sense of accomplishment that is therapeutic. Improving the well being of someone who is part of this maker culture yields positive benefits to the state of their mental health from making as a form of therapy in a nonclinical manner.

The final project will be a community oriented woodshop, located in the downtown of Sudbury, Ontario. This is a methodology driven thesis, where the primary method is learning through making; specifically, the design and construction of an intricate workbench as the most important experiment.

The focus of the research is to investigate how the design and craft of furniture can inspire and inform contemporary wood architecture at varying scales. This architecture will be didactic in nature, exemplifying craft through the tectonic connections of complex wood joints that embody the inherit potential of wood as a building material.

Instagram: @danielrodrigues343, @randallkober

I WENT FOR A WALK Observations, Reflections, and Imaginings upon Montréal’s Everyday Thresholds by Shane Villeneuve, M.Arch ’22
Carleton University | Advisor: Piper Bernbaum

I went for a walk.

Borrowing from the methods of The Situationist Movement and setting out to explore “the in-betweenness” of the city of Montréal, this thesis engages in a series of personal “drifts.” The moments explored in the work are liminal spaces – most commonly defined in architectural practice as thresholds. A threshold is a space of anticipation existing at the convergence between different spatial conditions. It possesses such depth that it may elicit a profound stimulation of the senses in the human body. Perception is personal and tied to our own needs, desires, and experiences; a wanderer may perceive a threshold in the public sphere of the city as monumental or banal depending on their subjective and personal relationship with it.

Therefore, this thesis attempts to explore and question the most mundane experiences of the everyday thresholds encountered in the drifts and consider what extraordinary value is found in some of the most overlooked spaces. How do we slow down? How do we feel safe? How do we learn from the way space is used and appropriated, and the complexity of how it serves the city through its everydayness instead of only considering it for how it was originally designed? Thresholds become places of crossing over, of repose, of exchange and of transition, and become a space where the public can engage in the architecture of the city in the in-betweenness. Through “drifting”, this thesis eventually becomes a space to imagine new threshold conditions revealing and amplifying the potential that these moments offer to everyday citizens.

Instagram: @villeneuves @piperb @carleton_architecture

Stay tuned for Part VIII of the Student Showcase!

2022 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VI

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Welcome back to installment Six of the Study Architecture Student Showcase series! This week we share six student projects that take a look at the role of architecture in conflict. From Korea to Russia to Afghanistan, these projects show how conflict effects the identities of communities and how architecture fits into that balance.

For a recap on the 2022 Student Showcase series so far, check out Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

Angle Masses: Korean War Memorial Museum in Seoul, Korea by Joo Young Lim, B.Arch ’22
Auburn University | Advisor: Il Kim

History of Korean War
At the end of World War II, Joseon (archaic name of Korea) was freed from Japanese occupation. Soon, the victorious countries drew the border line on the Korean Peninsula based on 38th degrees north latitude. The north side of this border, the 38th Parallel, was occupied by the Soviet Union’s socialist force, and the United States’ capitalist force took the south. As Kim Il-Sung (North Korea) invaded the south across the 38th Parallel, the peninsula became a field of proxy war of ideological forces.

Design
A history timeline is set as X-axis, and a territorial shift between the north and the south as Y-axis. The representation of the 38th Parallel is parallel to the X-axis. Various historical events, including conflicts, were expressed as slits on the passage of the 38th Parallel.

The triangular masses are designed to pierce across the representation of the 38th Parallel. These triangular masses symbolize the military forces in the Korean War, and they vary in size depending on the strength of the forces. Interlocking with the axis of time, each of four triangular masses represents Kim Il-Sung’s invasion of the South Korea, U.S. and U.N.’s military supporting the South, the Chinese People’s Army supporting the North, and lastly, months of long siege.

Each of reversed-pyramid triangular masses elucidates war’s grave consequences. They are seemingly unstably connected to each other, and their dark metal exterior panels represent the gloomy war. Inside, the viewer, walking on the ramp between RC concrete columns, thinks she/he is passing through the ruins of war. The floating tips of the reversed pyramids are visible in the underground gallery. This sense of floatation was achieved by extending the RC concrete columns in the middle of the structures. The shards of glass-like tips represent the agony of the victims and refugees. These tips visually connect the upper gallery and the lower, underground gallery. The upper gallery illustrates the power game of the war written by the political forces who started the war, while the underground gallery displays the relics of the victims who were anonymous citizens.

Instagram: @limarch94

The Two Sides of Otherness: A Cross-Cultural Regeneration of Reality by Daniel Porwoll, M.Arch ’22
North Dakota State University | Advisor: Stephen Wischer

In our current context, “identity” often stands as an edge where one being ends and the next begins; simultaneously separating and unifying. Yet, this inherent overlapping between self and other continues to be threatened by ideological and homogenizing narratives; either as a force of assimilation or division.

Among the many affected areas around the world is the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the Russo-Ukrainian Border, and the Carlisle Pennsylvania Indian Cemetery, in which hostile situations pose a unique yet difficult edge condition that might be mediated by empathetic imagination instigated by architecture. Responding to each situation, we examine how architecture might act as an archive for deeper understanding and exchange in an attempt to mediate new realities.

Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty confirms this method through his concept of “flesh”, which examines the relationship between oneself and the Other as “reversible,” wherein edges become folds in order to gain a deeper interpersonal, intercultural and intersubjective understanding of the Other ourselves.

Instagram: @dkp.arch

[IN]visible by Ying Xuan Tan and Xi Xiang, B.Arch ’22
Syracuse University | Advisor: Lawrence Chua

This thesis is a conservative proposal seeking an eclectic solution to provide a stable environment for Afghanistan’s people and the preservation of human history. The project [IN]visible seeks to create a point of balance between the turbulent environment and its rich historic heritage meanwhile following a preliminary, iconoclasm.

Bamiyan valley was marked as an important trans-cultural portal for Afghanistan and Central Asia. Statues, stupas, viharas, shrines, and grottos here have all witnessed the cultural creolization of this land. The government today had promised to engage in international diplomacy and make compromises. Preserving artifacts at Bamiyan is a humanitarian act and brings the government financial income.

The project seeks to find ways to preserve precious artifacts in the age of the Taliban’s regime, respecting the Taliban’s ideology on the surface while showing the real deal on the inside. Using various materials, water, and light as a tool to hide the artifacts from the surface. The design process discovers methods of visual illusion. Water, an essential element in Middle East architecture, would orient throughout the project. The stream would lead the locals and visitors to enter the project to see the actual side of these cultural artifacts.

This thesis is a pioneer experimental practice toward religious conflict that does not follow mainstream standards. It is also a conservation proposal seeking an eclectic solution to ensure a stable environment for Afghanistan’s people. In the end, no matter how the government change, it is the people’s life happiness that matters the most.

Instagram: @tototan_yx, @xxixixiwest

Guerilla Museology: By All Means Necessary by Brendan Wallace, B.Arch ’22
University of Tennessee | Advisor: Jennifer Akerman

For many, it is believable that colonialism has met its end. The latter half of the 20th century witnessed a global spirit of liberation, specifically within African and Asian continents. New annexations of land allowed nations to declare sovereignty in watershed spirit. Yet, the residual effects of the colonialist era has effectively perverted contemporary spaces, especially those typologies which have a legacy deeply rooted in the violence of looting, stealing, raping, and pillaging- namely, the museum.

While direct subjugation under colonialism may have met its end, the 21st century has challenged this premise, understanding that colonized structures remain to inhibit this “autonomy”. The likes of the Louvre, The Met, The British Museum, and the Saint Hermitage Museum, are all national treasures which lie of the heart of an imperial memoryscape. Their educational commentaries have transitioned from the national to the global scale as they are catapulted into the role of a universalist museum with artifacts from all parts of the globe. Their objects represent a past which has been bastardized, deceptively rewritten, and Westernized. Their place in the arena of global memory has prevailed on top and contribute to modern day racism, xenophobia, necropolitics, and various forms of othering.

The museum is unyielding, working as a contemporary agent for cultural genocide.

This thesis works to acknowledge these power structures and subvert them as a way of envisioning a new, equitable museumscape. I am interested in all scales of museum work to invite democratized curatorial practice. The steps are as follows:

1. creating a new museum infrastructural system to ensure curation is achieved as a global practice
2. engaging the city as a system of participatory intelligence
3. decolonizing the museum aesthetic whose expression implies subordination
4. proposing curatorial machines as curatorial agents
5. ensuring the appropriate and holistic contextualization of all objects

These steps are meant to ensure the redevelopment of public trust and redefine the everyday museumgoer as a worthy contributor to curation and exhibition practice. Guerilla Museology inspires an aggressive reclamation of curation by acknowledging the possibility of a post-museum world where the globe itself is a museum site.

Instagram: @brendan.com_, @j_akerman

Stored Labor by Kristabel Chung, B.Arch ’22
Syracuse University | Advisor: Lawrence Chua

This project examines the relationship between domestic labor laws and the “spatial practices” of migrant domestic worker (MDW) spaces in Hong Kong. The project asks, how do the designed and spatial practices of domestic worker accommodation inform us about the hierarchy and future of domestic space in Hong Kong?

In 2003, Hong Kong issued a law requiring domestic workers to live with their employers. For apartments without a designed servant space, makeshift accommodations have been created within those apartments to comply with the law. The research studies these modifications within the home and creates spatial abstractions through differently scaled models.

The spatial practice of employers and the designs of residential developers of migrant domestic worker accommodations in Hong Kong creates a hierarchy between the servant and the served through varying means, ranging from porousness to confinement. We see this in examples such as sharing spaces with other household members, living in the living room or kitchen, and in objects such as fabric partitions, unlockable doors, or security cameras.

The research is based on a survey that was carried out in collaboration with the Mission for Migrant Workers, an NGO in Hong Kong. Additionally, in-person interviews revealed that employers renovated servant spaces antithetically to the developer’s designs. The survey asked questions about privacy and had the workers draw a floor plan of their accommodations, while the interviews allowed for an intimate understanding of spaces and casts that preserve the material damage due to their labor. This project proposes shifting furniture and structural changes to the participants’ apartments to expose the absurdity of the condition.

Since many employees struggle to voice their opinions about space, the passive-aggressive act of rethinking the functions of these household objects as weapons to ensure privacy also critiques power dynamics in the household. Furniture alterations allow for the employee to play more games of resistance during the hours when the employer is at home. It utilizes what is of importance to the employer as leverage for the employee to get privacy, respect, and dignity.

Instagram: @kristabelchung

Living with Ghosts by Ximeng Luo and Shihui Zhu, B.Arch ’22
Syracuse University | Advisor: Lawrence Chua

“Maps! Living with Ghosts” is a thesis project on representation based off from our research of the border region between China and Russia, in which we translate the data collected from official statistics, policies, documents, and more private travel logs, interviews, diaries, memoirs, and literature, into a composite drawing, to explore the possibilities of images and representation techniques.

In the contemporary context, the same piece of natural land often displays a superimposition of various truths. The collapse of overlapping spacetime can be found in marks created by human construction activities, compressed into the concept of contemporaneity.

Indigenous knowledge and local understandings get lost in the supersession of the old understanding of space by the new that is observably dictated by modern maps. Hence, memory itself becomes a representation of the space being understood and remembered, and it continues to influence people’s perception of reality, like a ghost that haunts the living. While the nation state can easily encroach upon ungoverned spaces and wipe out their past, the people who lived on the land carried their ghosts with them as they proceeded in life.

In the project, individual memories are collected and translated into certain forms of representation and overlaid on top of the scientific map, showing transparency as well as complexity, a new composite representation of spatial relationships and identities.

The scene is set along the Heilongjiang. A fluid water body that feeds populations in the Russian Far East and Northeastern China, simultaneously delineates the long and winding national border between contemporary Russia and China.

The project traces the river downstream, investigating five specific sites. From man-made landscapes in the forms of nomad camp, temporary settlement, village and town, and cities in this borderland far from the state’s central power, we are looking into both the natural landscape and environment, presence of the authority, and the resulting forms of living.

Instagram: @sximengl, @sunnyynnuss

Part VII of the Student Showcase coming soon!

2022 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part V

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Week Five of the Study Architecture Student Showcase is here! The compilation of seven student projects we share this week all reimagine the relationship between architecture and community. From Bosnia to Knoxville, TN we take a look at how communities are shaped by architecture. If you’ve missed the past installments, check out Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

Chinatown Collective by Cecilia Lo, M. Arch, M. La ’22
University of British Columbia | Advisor: Inge Roecker

This project seeks to represent the relationships between culture, heritage and identity.

As a first generation Chinese-Canadian settler immigrant, I look to investigate the forces of the built environment that has shaped my personal identity and the forces that are shaping others perception of my identity. I situate my investigation in the context of North American Chinatowns, one of the most glaring examples of a Chinese-Canadian space. Through storytelling, I explore how heritage can be spatialized and how its representation reframes culture and identity.

Current heritage conservation methods have trapped spaces in time. By regulating the appearance of these naturally changing spaces, they’ve been forced into stagnation because of competing pressures of nationalism and consumerism. Heritage sites become representations of an ideal that is imposed on by designers, politicians, and government. Heritage has become a commodity.

However, I argue that heritage is not an asset to be protected and conserved. Heritage must be sustained and defined by the everyday lived experiences of people in order to result in the creation of resilient cultural spaces. Through storytelling, I speculate on the narratives of these people and ask the question: What do these places become when they are created, designed, and inhabited by the community living there?

Instagram: @ceeclialo, @ubcsala

Re(clay)ming Doyle Lane Center for Ceramic Arts by Sarra Starbird, B. Arch ’22
Cal Poly Ponoma | Advisor: Robert Alexander

The Los Angeles Technical Trade college in South Central LA encourages the growth of Design/Media, Construction Sciences, and Culinary arts to name a few. Los Angeles is home to a largely growing ceramics community, and demand for programs is outweighing LATTC’s current department facilities.

By reclaiming the adjacent AT&T data center building projected to be moved due to expansion, the reuse of this facility will house the education and exploration of emerging ceramicists. Prominent Los Angeles Ceramicist Doyle Lane was known for utilizing tactile glazes within his ceramic murals. In honor of this prominent figure, The Doyle Lane Center for Ceramic Arts is an expansion to the LATTC curriculum, one that is fueling the flame for ceramic exploration. Nestled adjacent to the Metro Blue blue line and the Intersection of the 10 and 110 freeways LATTC campus has strong ties to the Los Angeles community.

I am proposing to adapt the remaining non-campus building on the LATTC Campus block. This will help unify the college in relation to the campus’s main street: West Washington Boulevard. The heat of this project creates a tie between differing backgrounds and crafts, linking passion through a flame. This project aims to engage the Los Angeles ceramics community and create an outlet for the craft of ceramics both sculpturally and architecturally by reshaping an existing form and reimagining it in a language parallel to the department’s pedagogy, one that teaches from the exterior what is reflected within.

Instagram: @starbird.arc, @rbrtalxandr

Sarajevo Art and Activist Center by Shuyu Meng, B.Arch ’22
Syracuse University | Advisor: Lawrence Chua

The historical background of the region governed by authorities with different cultures and religions creates the multi-ethnic country of Bosnia and Hercegovina (BiH); recent war caused by ethnic nationalism further splits the country and segregates ethnically groups geographically. As the capital of BiH, Sarajevo is a typical example of an ethnic exclusive situation happening extremely in the historical center of the city retained by current political constitutional issues.

However, under ethnic violence, various forms of activist activity are held spontaneously by citizens in Sarajevo and from all over the country — both during the war and in the postwar period in today’s Sarajevo — a powerful way to resist ethnic conflicts, increase cross-ethnic communication, and express civil voice to the government and the world.

Therefore, the Sarajevo Art and Activist Center is proposed in the Baščaršija area to provide an inclusive space and open stage for people to gather, produce artwork, exhibit, perform, and any potential public activities. People with different ethnic background are welcomed to participate in everyday activities which promotes cross-ethnic interaction through civic effort.

The architectural form of the project is inspired by and abstracted from traditional local architecture in the context, creating communal space that is reshaped in a modern manner. To accommodate various programs in the Center including temporary gathering and long-term art production, both the interior and exterior space is designed openly with simple shape that can be divided by movable panels for special needs.

Instagram: @syr_arch_nyc

The Belly of South Central by Josue Navarro Lazalde, B.Arch ’22
Cal Poly Ponoma | Advisor: Robert Alexander

Markets were once the basis of town formation, and their role as places where food was sold has been one of the fundamental characteristics of early settlement. Today, South Central’s zoning codes and policies physically separate activities revolving around food.

This project seeks to carve out public space and adds to the built urban fabric that sets the stage for social interaction centered on food. Located at 233 W Washington Blvd sits a paved piece of land similar to the prevailing ground-level parking lots throughout Los Angeles, however, unlike similar sites that persist as tourist attractions, 233 W Washington sits in a culturally rich and diverse neighborhood only visited by its inhabitants; community members, commuters, and students.

The South Los Angeles community, primarily made up of Latino and Black individuals bring forth numerous artisanal cuisines that dominate the area with hole-in-wall restaurants, food trucks, and pushcart vendors. Sporadically, alongside these nested cultural centers lie fast food chain restaurants. The absence of supermarkets alongside the abundance of informal vendors created the necessity for space with qualities resembling the mall/market typology.

The integration of a new below-grade station and street crossing for the LA Metro A line train will not only serve the community by creating a safe traffic-free zone to board trains but also promises a constant flow of users to the project. Through this synthesis of programs, the market and station hope to support the existing cultural context, promote user comfortability, foster continuous vendor economic security, and prolong its viability with sustained user activity.

Instagram: @josuenavarrolazalde, @rbrtalxandr

Line of Action: Unfolding Cycles of Placemaking by Beatriz Morum de Santanna Xavier and Michelle Singer, B.Arch ’22
Pratt Institute School of Architecture | Advisor: Gonzalo Jose Lopez Garrido and Daniela Fabricius

The traditional practices of border drawing and map-making negate the experiential, the three-dimensional, and subjective experience of the human. Therefore stewardship and radical design of boundaries, borders, and waters edge can be something of rebellion and have the potential to disrupt the geometric and oppressive systems implanted by white settler-colonialism.

We ask how can we radically occupy the residual spaces that the grid could not reach, where it disintegrated, and what it left out? Projects have studied the historical segregation of colonial cities, but few look to the regions of in-between generated by centuries of settler-colonialism. The act of paving gridded streets into divided terrain was only possible where the land was flat enough to colonize. What happens to the terrain labeled as “impassable”in Sanborn maps? These landscapes cannot be subdivided and paved over.

Engaging these in-between spaces as means of action and placemaking can address unseen histories of the ancient past while acknowledging the prevailing struggles of the current moment. Through methods of folding, our project establishes a framework for collective use, inhabitation, and eventual co-stewardship of spaces, through folding the urban grid for the reclamation of communal land. We propose legislation that allows for collective action to undermine biased authorities that approve land use. We take from the concept of adverse possession – squatter’s rights – and create a direct pathway to collective stewardship, providing a suggestive framework for communities to reclaim abandoned lots and parceled land without a seal of approval.

Our research unfolds in liminal cities of ancestry, Kansas City, Missouri and Recife, Brazil. These sites become case studies that reflect one another in two parallel worlds of colonization where we have familial ties. Designing connections and stitching together geometric interventions, we introduce a suggestive framework adaptive to cities across the americas.

Instagram: @bia_mxavier, @m_ch_ll_, @gjlg, @knitknot_architecture

Microcosme in the West by Jenny Leclerc, Olivia Lessard, B.Arch ’22
Université du Québec à Montréal | Advisor: Borkur Bergman

A microcosm in the West is a project where the community is key. The exchanges, the encounters, and the participation of everyone forms the spatial organization. It offers a great density through a path between a various amount of indoors and outdoors spaces. It plays with the public and the private borders to generate a sense of community and openness. There is a residential, a work and a commercial area in every building without neglecting the communal areas.

The preservation of the Seagram Distillery patrimonial complex was part of our main concerns. Since the site had an industrial vocation, the project keeps that essence. The intentions are to provide the community with mixed purposes and proximity working places. Meanwhile affordable housing for people in need is crucial. In addition to improving density, we linked the social housing development in the vicinity to the Seagram pole where jobs, schools and different services will be available.

The urban form responds to the Nordic climax. It changes the lifestyle of the occupants to make the most of every season. The form of the buildings generates a mild climate that allows comfortable circulations for the users.

The Lost Path is a trail where the biodiversity leads and allows pedestrians to cross over the whole site. It is also possible for cyclists, skiers, ice skaters to wander between the different points of interest. The access to active transportation is, therefore, made easier. The relation to the territory is an important consideration that guided our reflexions.

Instagram: @jennyleclerc, @livlessard

Community in Context by Ariani Harrison, M.Arch ’22
University of Tennessee | Advisor: Jennifer Akerman

What is community growth?

As a first-hand witness of the campaigns communities in Houston and Phoenix brought forward during city transformation, I believe that ground up community growth is important. Taking back the urban form from developers and government that have no stakes in the communities they build in gives power back to residents. Moving to Knoxville, I have seen developments which remind me of the obscene growth of Phoenix. Where sky scrapers are built along a man-made lake claiming the over-priced retail at the street level will give the city enough taxes for more public investments. Yet, senior citizens are becoming homeless in the same area because rent has inflated so much. I can only predict the same of South Knoxville as the waterfront is developed.

I am for making architecture more accessible, for the agency of mapping, and for using oral stories as tools to create a system towards a collective urbanism, one where the community has access to agency to change their space. South Knoxville has organically grown along the Tennessee River and perpendicular roads; however, growth in the area has not been valued until recently, resulting in ‘luxury housing’ and other general development moving in. Cities across the country have similar sentiments, where parts of the city slip through the cracks until superficial planning ideas, like mixed-use podium structures or creating high density within low density areas, are plopped into place to “revitalize” the area. Unfortunately, those implementations do not always work as there is no
relationship to the community, it can cause more chain brands to come in, and push locals out. What if the community had a say in their growth?

Connecting them to local organizations and leaders and giving three different scales of possible interventions based on context of the community could inspire these left behind communities. This prototype uses South Knoxville to show the insights one can find through mapping meaningful places, roadblocks to connectivity, and collecting the story of place with resulting possibilities for urban life. By mapping local and unused spaces along a central corridor, the community can take back spaces through temporary and semi-permanent projects.

Instagram: @arianiharrison, @j_akerman

Stay tuned for Part VI of the Study Architecture Student Showcase!

What Is the Best School of Architecture?

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This is a common question that people ask about all colleges and universities. You’re bound to find rankings of architecture schools and the universities that house them. There is no objective way to say which are the best schools. Best for what? For what you can afford? For the location you desire? For the size of institution you wish to attend? For the special interest on which you wish to focus?

Best should mean best for you. Understand that architecture schools are very diverse. You can find them in large public universities, in independent art schools, in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and in many other varied settings.

At the undergraduate level, prospective students and their family should discuss the student’s educational aims. An undergraduate degree can be the basis for more advanced study at the graduate level, or it can end with a direct path to a career in a firm or other setting. Each architecture program will present its strengths and provide a picture of what students can get from the program, its campus setting, and the various opportunities that the school and its faculty provide for students.

At the graduate level, students tend to understand clearly why they wish to enroll. Students have more ability to match their interests and strengths to various graduate degree options. Schools that are worthy of your focus can explain to you why graduate education will advance your career opportunities, whether this means advancement in your firm, a career change, or a path into teaching or research.

Whether you are looking at an undergraduate or graduate degree, do not hesitate to contact the admissions staff to get a better understanding of a potential school. Schools want students to succeed and should be willing to provide ample information about what makes them unique and a good choice.

At Study Architecture, we avoid ranking programs and do not recommend making decisions solely based on what a particular ranking says. The journey into an architecture program should involve reflection on where you’re going. This path should be exciting and empowering, because opportunities to thrive abound in architecture school.

Pt II: Questions to Ask the Admissions Office

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Part II of our series: An Application Guide to Architecture School 

Today, we are highlighting a few questions that you should ask admissions offices when considering which school to choose for your undergraduate or graduate degree.

What degree programs do you offer in architecture and related fields?

Associate degrees (A.A., A.S., A.A.S): This 2-year degree can be an entry point directly into the architecture workforce or a starting point to gain some foundational skills and transfer to a 4-year institution. It is not NAAB accredited and will not satisfy the education requirement for initial licensure.

Bachelor of Art or Science in Architecture (B.A. or B.S. in Architecture, Architectural Studies, Environmental Design, Architectural Engineering…etc.): This 4-year degree is a common precursor to the NAAB accredited M.Arch. It develops a comprehensive knowledge of the discipline of architecture but is not NAAB accredited and will not satisfy the education requirement for initial licensure in most states. If you’re unsure about becoming a licensed architect, one of these degrees could still encompass everything you enjoy about design and construction.

Bachelor of Architecture (B. Arch): This 5-year degree is the most popular undergraduate degree that will satisfy the education requirement for initial licensure. Students develop a comprehensive knowledge of the discipline of architecture as well as foundational professional knowledge and a basic understanding of related fields. Most of the 55 U.S. licensing boards require that architects hold a professional degree from a NAAB-accredited program and this is the only undergraduate NAAB accredited architecture degree offered in the U.S.

Master of Architecture (M.Arch): This 2-year or 3-year degree is a graduate level degree and can be paired with a B.A or B.S. in Architecture or a bachelor degree in a non-related field. This is the most popular graduate degree that will satisfy the education requirement for initial licensure. A student will develop an understanding of architecture including knowledge of the academy and the profession as well as some level of specialization.

Master of Science (M.S. in Architecture): This 1-year or 2-year degree is a graduate level degree and is commonly a post-professional degree, meaning it comes after the completion of a B.Arch or an M.Arch. It is usually research focused and predicated on independent inquiry. It is not NAAB accredited and will not satisfy the education requirement for initial licensure.

Doctor of Architecture (D.Arch): This 3-year or 4-year degree is a graduate level degree and, much like the M.Arch, can be paired with a B.A or B.S. in Architecture or a bachelor degree in a non-related field.

Are there any additional admissions requirements?

Many schools require an additional major-specific ? essay, but some schools of architecture also require students to submit a portfolio. A portfolio is a collection of your design work to date. This traditionally includes architectural drawings, photography, models, technical solutions or other artistic mediums. A few schools also recommend students participate in on-campus interviews.

Do you have an estimate of any additional expenses that are not included in tuition and fees?

Often times architecture students are required to purchase a specific laptop, a drafting board, and/or specific software and art supplies. Some schools require students to travel for studio projects and other schools require a semester of study in another country. It is a good idea to plan ahead for these expenses and add these expenses into your total cost of attendance. If you are hoping to save money, a good follow up question would be about the availability of computers and materials available for students to use free of charge.

What policies do you have to ensure student wellbeing?

The truth is, architecture schools are notorious for being rigorous and time intensive. Schools know this and should be able to articulate measures they take to ensure students are managing the balance between schoolwork and college life. Each school should have a studio culture policy and should be able to share how they implement that policy. Some schools close studios at certain hours to instill healthy work habits while others offer one-on-one mentoring for students to share successes and failures.

Does this program allow me to gain practical work experience while I am a student?

Depending on degree type, some programs will facilitate work experience. Some schools offer co-op programs that integrate working in an architectural practice as part of your degree and some programs offer the Integrated Path to Architecture Licensure (IPAL). IPAL schools provide a few students with the opportunity to complete the Architectural Experience Program® (AXP®) and the Architect Registration Examination® (ARE®) required for licensure at the same time they are completing the degree.

Does this program offer study abroad or interdisciplinary opportunities?

An architectural education is dependent on a well-maintained balance between how much time you spend studying, and how much time you spend seeking inspiration from the world around you. Traveling outside of the United States can be helpful in finding that balance. Make sure the program you choose encourages opportunities to develop soft skills outside of the classroom because architects have to work well with people outside of their discipline.

Download the Application Guide to Architecture Schools Part I and II as a PDF. 

Read Part I of the Application guide here.

Archisoup

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Archisoup is an online learning resource and platform for architecture students, young architects, and enthusiasts. We provide the next generation of architects with opportunities to learn and evolve through shared expert knowledge, tutorials, guides, and studio resources. By bridging the gap between architecture school and the licensed profession, we aim to help students understand, and define their own paths in architecture, starting from high school to professional work. Having been through and completed what can be a very lengthy, and often overwhelming learning process ourselves, we are able to provide aspiring architects with the opportunity to learn and evolve, through our own past and current knowledge and experiences.

We provide support to prospective undergraduates, current students, postgraduates and licensed architects, helping them to navigate and develop their unique skill sets and career paths.

HOW TO USE ARCHISOUP

The platform is broken down and organized into the following sections, with new and updated content added weekly.

START HERE

Our ‘Start Here’ section aims to cover the fundamentals of architecture from both an educational and professional point of view, and provides a general introduction into the subject, and life as a student and professional.

Here, we cover topics such as how to choose the best architecture school for you and the ultimate guide to starting architecture school, through to a study into the definition and meaning of architecture and the various key professional bodies that regulate it.

STUDIO GUIDE

The studio guide is our primary resource, and the information contained within it forms the foundations of the Archisoup platform. This platform provides an architectural study aid to both students and young architects, that offer’s tutorials, tips and guides for everyday architectural and project activities.

Based on our own experiences of the architectural education process and school environment, we share industry and personal knowledge to provide a constantly evolving library of information. We cover topics such as how to choose the right architectural software, through to how to successfully create an architecture portfolio. We provide detailed answers to the most common architectural school and studio questions.

Alongside this, we offer shorter studio resources such as understanding architectural scales, brick dimensions, and bonds.

TOOLS & RESOURCES

The architect’s toolbox must include both physical and mental elements, and be in constant update whether it is through technological or informational resources.

In this section, we feature and recommend the useful assets and tools that assist us in our learning and day to day lives as young and aspiring architects, aiming to make the architectural learning curve a little bit easier.

In constant update and review, we feature equipment lists such as 31 Essential Tools for Architecture Students and The Best Books on Architectural Design & Concepts through to detailed guides on how to choose the best computer.

BIOGRAPHIES

Architecture is the very fabric that clads our society; however the men and women behind many of these creations often go unknown, and only once in a while will one of these creators stand out as a true master of their craft. 

In this section, we have created an ever-growing architectural database of famous and inspiring architects, and through the documentation of their lives and careers, we invite you to learn from the world’s best designers.

SHOP

In continual development and growth, our shop provides bespoke informational products and resources for general architectural use. Our aim is to cover each part of the creative process from a project’s inception through to its completion.

SOCIAL ACCOUNTS

You can find us on all the main social media platforms, however as architects we are visual people and so we tend to focus our efforts on Instagram and Pinterest, where you’ll find daily updates and architectural inspiration.