Alberto Ortega Trejo

This two-day core design studio is the introductory course in the Arch/Inarc core studio sequence. Students learn architecture and interior architecture design processes including precedent research, formal analysis, schematic design, and design development, all using the latest software and tools. This course exemplifies the rigorous model of the architecture studio. It encourages design experimentation and provides an analytic framework for developing an advanced understanding of how drawing and model making shape design processes. This course requires students to have a laptop that meets SAIC's minimum hardware specs and runs the AIADO template.

This seminar examines the formative impact of the Middle Passage and settler colonialism on the shape of the built environment in the territories that came to be the United States. Focusing on the early modern period from the arrival of the first enslaved workers in colonial Virginia to the formation of a new republic founded on the institution of slavery, we examine how the design of buildings and landscapes was inextricably linked to the brutalization of Black Lives and the theft of Indigenous lands. Readings vary but typically engage key sites of cultural and political conflict like plantations, and Indigenous conceptions of built form and land. Discussions chiefly focus on Black and Indigenous spaces and perspectives on space. Assignments vary but generally introduce students to material culture approaches to the study of the built environment, as well as feminist and BIPOC approaches to analyzing the cultural and political meanings of architectural form. Students should expect to produce a research paper or equivalent over the course of the semester.