architecture program report - University of Massachusetts Amherst

ARCH-DES 600 Graduate Design Studio III 6 credits
Instructor: Lugosch, Miller Pollin
Course Description:
Principles and process of architecture and site. Projects developed and presented by student with individual
attention from instructor. Each project reviewed by open jury system with visiting critics. Readings from texts and
journals. Design projects, sketch problems.
Learning Objectives:
This studio is a collaboration with the graduate students in landscape architecture. The emphasis during the
first portion of the semester will be on site planning. Continuous linkages will be made among the disciplines of
architecture, landscape architecture and planning. Landscape architecture and planning graduate students will
team up with graduate architecture students to inventory and research a specific site in the region. Research
will include site history, history of the surrounding context, demographics, regional employment, local codes and
planning efforts, natural features, critical cultural phenomena and sensory factors. Based on this research
students will learn to evaluate the site in terms of its assets and deficits.
Simultaneously, a series of short studio design exercises will be given. These exercises will focus on spatial
typologies in planning that are the result of direct relationships between built form and open space within
communities. Special topics within the studio will be Transit Oriented Design (TOD), Smart Growth
Communities and sustainability.
The second portion of the site will allow a finer grain collaboration between students in landscape architecture
and architecture students. Students will be asked to select a portion of team-generated master plans. They will
examine this smaller portion at a larger scale and generate schematic designs that weave together exterior and
interior space.
The studio will also be a continuation of the design methodologies studied in ARCH-DES 501--design
methodologies that stress; process, inventive analysis, media transformation, interpretation and discovery.
The importance of clear visual and verbal communication in the design process will also be emphasized.
Carefully crafted presentations will be an integral part of the studio work in this course.
Students will learn site research methodologies; site analysis; interdisciplinary team dynamics and importance of
the collaborative; process; programming; continued development of the individual design process; the role of
precedents and case studies in architecture, planning and landscape architecture; key considerations in
involvement with local, municipal and regional; planning groups/governing bodies; incorporation of health and
safety factors in the design development process; and further development of methods of communicating design
ideas through verbal, graphic/digital and three dimensional means.
Course Requirements:
The primary activity of the studio will be collaborating with landscape architecture graduate students as well as
planning students to produce a series of site planning design options for a complex program on a high impact
regional site. Studio time will be used to share research and analysis and to work with instructors and peers to
continue the design process from site planning through selected individual building design.
Work will be reviewed and discussed in individual desk critiques, informal pin-up sessions and more formal final
reviews in the studio.
Class discussions, readings and written responses will supplement the studio work.
Prerequisites:
ARCH-DES 501
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