i. institutional support and commitment to continuous improvement

I. Institutional Support and Commitment to Continuous Improvement
exploring “idea-making, idea-communicating, and the relationship of anything and everything to
the environment.” This expanded vision asked students to create and then solve their own design
problems, meeting faculty weekly on a tutorial basis. Twice a week the entire department’s faculty
and students met in an interdisciplinary plenary studio session. These classes included film screenings,
sculpture installations, and experimentation with new media such as the mixture of projected slides,
performance, and music. By the end of the decade John Kurtich, an architect, archaeologist, and
musician, became head of a department re-defining itself to remina cutting edge.
In 1973 the Environmental Design and Visual Communication departments merged under the rubric
of Design and Communication, which also incorporated performance art. A sequential studio system
was reinstated, called Space Design, described as “a series of three-dimensional problem solving
experiences.” By the mid-seventies the department, responding to student demands, added classes
that supplied a vital working vocabulary: structural and mechanical systems, material studies, and
technical drawing. Intent on retaining the integrity of the department’s generalist approach, Kurtich
insisted that philosophy underscore the pragmatic at every opportunity; complicated interior spaces
were discussed as a metaphor for the spiritual as well as a collection of functional solutions. Slowly but
surely, Environmental Design was becoming Interior Architecture again, with a name change making it
official in 1976. Performance and Visual Communication were spun off as separate departments while
maintaining solid working relationships between the three areas.
Preparing for his sabbatical in 1983, Kurtich invited architect Linda Keane to become head of the
department. Keane established as her primary goal the achieving of parity with the Chicago’s other
significant architectural programs. Full day comprehensive design studio sessions met twice a week,
architectural theory and history classes were strengthened, and historic preservation classes were
introduced. By the end of the decade, the number of full- and part-time faculty grew from 12 to
19; funding quadrupled; materials library and computer labs were added; a student AIAS chapter
was founded; the department became an affiliate of the ACSA and began sponsoring the Chicago-
centered National High School Career Day; and the first five-year Bachelor of Interior Architecture
graduates completed the program.
In 1994, the department re-designed the BIA program into a four-year track to better coincide with the
BFA program. In 2002 the School conducted a study of the established architecture programs in major
cities throughout United States and abroad, realizing that while New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo each
maintained many competitive architecture programs, Chicago, a city known for its groundbreaking
architecture, had only two major architecture programs. As the School sought to expand its design
program, and with the majority of the faculty in Interior Architecture already licensed architects, the
administration determined that the School was in a key position to establish a professional program
in architecture that would raise the level of critical inquiry at the School and take advantage of the
enormous existent resources germane to the field through the combined corporation of the School
and museum. Finally, the successful establishment of the Master of Science in Historic Preservation
in 1993 furthered this sense of preparedness. The idea that a Master of Science could be successfully
offered by a premiere fine arts school was a major factor in the success of subsequent planning for
professional architectural degrees at SAIC.
The desire to strengthen the teaching of design by introducing programs in architecture and product
design corresponded with a similar strategy in which sculptural practices were taken out of the gallery
and into the larger cultural landscape. The School’s Design Initiative recruited a full-time faculty/
administrator in Design, established a collective think tank of key faculty and administrators, and began
to explore the expansion of design, recognizing that to be a significant art school in the twentieth-
first century meant the integration of exceptional design programs. The School laid the foundation
for its current programs in architecture and designed objects while reconsidering the role of the MFA
9 | Spring 2011
SECTION I Institutional Support and Commitment to Continuous Improvement