Carl Ray Miller

Introduces the meaning and making of architecture and interior architecture through individual and group design projects. Students learn design processes by experimenting with materials and exploring architectural and interior architecture representation, and measure the implications of their work on broader cultural contexts. Students work on design projects using the latest software and digital tools, and develop techniques for integrating analog and digital design and fabrication processes. Students research historic precedents and contemporary culture and design to inform their work. This course requires students to have a laptop that meets SAIC's minimum hardware specs and runs the AIADO template.

The Introductory studio in the accredited professional graduate degree addresses the relationship between natural and cultural ecologies and the notion of site as contextual generators of architectural ideas. Including ideas about co-existence, thresholds, material flows and urban-rural bio-regions and systems. Course Goals and Objectives include the role that site and context play in contemporary architectural design, understanding design processes, developing basic design methods, conceptual experimentation and rigor. The studio requires the conceptual design of a small architectural intervention within a complex site and an intermediate level of visual and architectural analysis and representation through diagrams, plans, sections, elevations and physical and digital models.

Student performance criteria (SPC) that address the most recent National Architectural Accreditation Board (NAAB) requirements will be highlighted and form part of the coursework outcomes.

Readings, textual and visual case studies and site visits will vary, but always provide the background and theoretical grounding for the site and project analysis and final project development and representation.

Project work is a cumulative archive of the process of problem analysis and design exploration that are translations of observations, facts and ideas ? all being made visible through diagrams, drawings and models. Parts of the semesters work will be conducted in groups and which will contribute to individual project work presented in a final critique.