The course is the first studio in the coordinated five-year educational arc that culminates with Thesis. As a bookend to Thesis, the 1A curriculum emphasizes students’ ability to think critically and to take a position through their work. Three projects in various media introduce students to the relationships between form, geometry, materiality and image, as well as the critical relationship between working methods and thinking. The studio takes an ambitious approach to its curricular goals; challenging students to build a robust catalogue of techniques, as well as to think laterally across various ideas and methods. Critical to the curriculum is the ability for the students to communicate through various modes of representation (images, models, writing) and to be able to discuss and contextualize their ideas given the framework of the studio.

Entering the second semester, this studio develops analytical and formal strategies for the topics of mass, interiority, and spatial ordering systems. A series of interdependent projects will guide students in constructing, analyzing, designing, and discussing architectural form through a range of geometric organizations. In the expanding context of tools and influences, we will slow down and focus on the idea that forms are malleable, constructed, and performative. The studio’s individual assignments will constitute a whole, culminating in an individual architecture design proposal.

The first of this sequence, 2A, looks critically at specific interior-based programs that are integral to urban environments, and are evolving due to cultural changes, i.e. an elementary school. The course speculates on interior and exterior space, program organization, and new forms within existing conditions. Students emphasize workflows that move between analog (i.e. making) and digital (i.e. modeling) mediums, not only to cultivate processes of experimentation and discovery, but to also coalesce students’ sensibilities with their authored intentions. Each semester, the course will put emphasis on a particular representational format (i.e. a plan, a section) to visualize, alter, reveal, and ultimately make a case for an architectural intervention, for an otherwise interior-based program. Students articulate how the given program can be reimagined, through narratives told in the form of images, an analog precursor to the following semester’s (2B) virtual procedures.

The studio will extend student’s spatial investigations from the site to the world beyond and look at ecology as a context. Projects will investigate program organization and alternative building typologies as a response to ecological and environmental issues, with an emphasis on the relationship between internal and external areas, considering the outdoor space as a critical element of the architecture. Through drawings, digital modelling and simulation, new modes of time-based representation will be employed to set the scene for emerging narratives and architectural ecologies. The studio explores the tension and boundary between the natural and the artificial and questions the meaning of landscape in a changing world.

The studio examines how architecture can mediate the relationships across three scales: an individual unit, a cluster of units, and a collection of clusters. Tasked with developing integrated proposals for a multi-unit housing complex, students are encouraged to design into existing urban conditions with an understanding of the dynamic and interdependent forces of economies, access, circulation, privacy, and infrastructure that shapes these projects and their presence in the city. Case Studies will be examined through research and travel to foster knowledge about how such projects are logistically resolved and integrated into their urban settings.

Building on the pedagogy of the second- and third- years, the studio examines the role of public urban spaces in relation to the figure ground plan of a city and a single civic building. This studio is part of comprehensive design and involves the development of each project including tectonics, structure and environmental systems. Case Studies are examined through research and modeling to foster knowledge about how such projects are logistically resolved and integrated into their urban settings with an eye towards organizations that enable new forms of collectives.

Students develop and test individual positions relative to researched interpretations of historical and contemporary points of view. The studio gives rise to a variety of opinions and arguments about the work through live debates, roundtables, and community dialogues. The design of an integrated architectural project is based on the individual student’s attempt to carefully articulate and integrate one or more positions in response to a shared studio brief.

Students work with Visiting Professors or select SCI-Arc faculty on specific topics in architecture, intended to expose them to a greater variety of positions within the discipline. Projects produced reflect different approaches to form, technique, material, history, politics, the environment, and are intended to contribute real-time to contemporary discourse. Vertical Studios are chosen by students according to a lottery system.

A focused thesis project for a highly resolved building design, both conceptually and technically, manifests the cumulative knowledge students have acquired throughout their education and acts as a point of trajectory from which to engage the discipline, field and profession at large. During the final year of the B.Arch program, students work with an advisor to develop an architectural thesis tested through the development of an architectural building project. A focus is placed on presenting and defending positions and contributing to contemporary discourse through a project that advances the highest degree possible of design and technical expertise coupled with critical thinking. Each student is expected to establish a relevant historical, theoretical, cultural, and/or technical position. The position will be tested through several modalities - written, spoken, designed, modeled, and visualized - ultimately culminating in the Final Thesis Presentations at the end of the semester.

Research material is drawn from physical and digital archives, publications, databases, and the environments around design. Students will collaborate on investigations, conversations, and presentations engaging contemporary and historical approaches to the collection, curation, and dissemination of designed artifacts. The course focuses on three topics related to design: culture, communication, and collaboration. (+ field studies) The field study becomes a site for learning that is embedded tactically throughout the semester. The content introduces students to design cultures of the past and speculates on designing contemporary practices.

Critical study includes the analysis of poetics, modes of writing organization, academic writing, literary style, the short story, and research strategies. Special attention is paid to close textual reading and analysis, peer review and editing. Through the use of rhetorical analysis students become versed in a variety of writing modes. Throughout the course of the semester, attention is paid to sentence style and variety. Guidelines for the correct attribution and citation of primary and secondary sources when performing research are explained and reviewed. Pre-writing exercises help students to generate writing material, both creative and rhetorical. Captions and other editorial techniques are reviewed with an emphasis on clarity and coherence.

By analyzing the expressive techniques, forms, and styles of a variety of films, we will try to assess the ways in which films produce meaning and the status of that meaning in the broader political, cultural, and aesthetic sphere. To best illustrate the changes and maturation of film practices over time, the course will begin with the beginnings of the cinema itself as the 19th century soon turned into the 20th, focusing each week on a different decade as we move towards the present. By the end of the course students should be (1) familiar with the overall arc of cinema’s history to date; and (2) able to express critical thought about film, its history, and its aesthetic development in class discussion, analytical writing, and eventually even in casual conversation.

Artistic styles, art movements, and methods of art production will be contextualized within larger societal, intellectual, and ideological shifts. Key art historical concepts such as form, medium, style, and iconography—and how avant-garde artists later questioned these terms—will be discussed. Topics covered include ancient and medieval art, Renaissance and Baroque art, Neoclassicism and Romanticism, photography and mass media, abstraction and primitivism, modernism and colonialism, among others.

Contemporary art has become an expansive discourse as well as a thriving industry. Why does contemporary art sometimes feel so alienating? How can we make sense of the artworks we see in contemporary art galleries and museums? This course provides a foothold into navigating this uncertain terrain by offering a survey of major artistic movements, pivotal artworks, and theoretical concepts that have shaped the field of contemporary art from the end of World War II until the present day. Taking an international perspective, we will discuss select artworks produced in North America, Europe, Latin America, East Asia, And Africa. Art Movements to be studied include Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Gutai, Happenings, Fluxus, Neoconcretismo, Pop art, Minimalism, Land art, Conceptual art, Institutional Critique, Performance art as well as the artistic use of photography, film, video, and other technological media. Throughout the course, we will examine major issues in contemporary art, including questions of authorship, identity politics, the ethics of spectatorship, postcolonialism and globalization.

Issues covered may range from such historical themes as the lingering impact of slavery and the civil rights movement to the treatment of Native American populations, as well as contemporary discrimination against Asian-American Pacific Islanders, Latinx, and other communities. More recent texts in race theory will also be covered extensively. The goal of the course is to make both American and non-American students more aware of and sensitive to the structural importance of race for the present-day political atmosphere.

Different approaches to writing are explored through the reading and composing of literary analysis, persuasive essay, memoir, critical review, and a short research paper. Critical study includes the analysis of poetics, modes of writing organization, academic writing, literary style, the short story, and research strategies. Special attention is paid to close textual reading and analysis, peer review and editing. Through the use of rhetorical analysis students become versed in a variety of writing modes. Throughout the course of the semester, attention is paid to sentence style and variety. Guidelines for the correct attribution and citation of primary and secondary sources when performing research are explained and reviewed. Pre-writing exercises help students to generate writing material, both creative and rhetorical. Captions and other editorial techniques are reviewed with an emphasis on clarity and coherence.

Areas covered may include such fields as anthropology, mathematics, media theory, philosophy, psychology, race theory, science, sociology, and others. The goal of the course is to introduce the state of the art in these fields through grappling directly with accessible presentations by leading authors. The requirement to use only living authors on the syllabus is designed to ensure that course content will evolve rapidly and year-by-year to cover emerging discoveries and controversies.

Representative authors may include such figures as Susan B. Anthony, Simone de Beauvoir, Niels Bohr, Jorge Luis Borges, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Frantz Fanon, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Franz Kafka, Melanie Klein, Lynn Margulis, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Flannery O’Connor, though assignments may vary slightly from year to year. The goal of the course is to empower students to grapple directly with accessible presentations by leading historical figures.

Representative authors may include such figures as Francis Bacon, Emily Brontë, Charles Darwin, René Descartes, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglas, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Galileo, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Madame de Lafayette, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Alexis de Tocqueville, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, though assignments may vary slightly from year to year. The goal of the course is to empower students to grapple directly with accessible presentations by leading historical figures.

Representative authors may include such figures as St. Thomas Aquinas, Farid ud-Din Attar, Chaucer, Dante, John Scotus Eriugena, al-Farabi, al-Ghazali, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Sina, Li T’ai Po, Moses Maimonides, Petrarch, Jelaluddin Rumi, Murasaki Shikibu, and Tu Fu, though assignments may vary slightly from year to year. The goal of the course is to empower students to grapple directly with accessible presentations by leading historical figures.

Representative authors may include such figures as Aristophanes, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Bible (Genesis), the Buddha, Julius Caesar, Confucius, Euclid, Lao-Tzu, Ovid, Plato, Sappho, and Sophocles, though assignments may vary slightly from year to year. The goal of the course is to empower students to grapple directly with accessible presentations by leading historical figures.

The focus will be on significant considerations in the field across history, issues of origins, and visual regimes. The organizing principle of this class is thematic rather than chronological. Students will explore architectural history synoptically rather than merely factually, and selectively via case studies as opposed to comprehensively: depth is privileged over breadth. Environmental, socio-economic, technological, and political contexts will be considered as inflecting rather than determining disciplinary thought and action.

It is structured as a dialogue between the historical and theoretical frameworks that have shaped the discipline by means of selected case studies. Although the class is roughly chronological, its organizing principle is thematic. Students will explore architectural history synoptically rather than merely factually, and selectively as opposed to comprehensively: depth is privileged over breadth. The core of the course material is drawn from the Baroque (17th century) through the dawn of modernity (turn of the 20th century). The class treats a range of concepts developed by architects, philosophers, and historians, and traces the ways in which they landed, or didn’t, in a variety of different environmental, socio-economic, geographical, and political milieus. Our overarching goal is to consider architecture as a way of thinking and acting in the world with its own unique set of agendas, agencies, and objects.

Building on History I, with its focus on the core concerns of the discipline, and History II, with its investigation of the complex relationships between architecture and ethics, equality, power, and capital over time, History III explores architectural projects, texts, and agendas in the context of the technological developments, political upheavals, wars, and hopes of the long 20th century. As always, depth is privileged over breadth. Readings focus on the intellectual context in which a project took shape. In-class discussions are weekly opportunities for students to demonstrate nuanced, thoughtful, and original understanding of the material at hand.

The seminar operates as a series of roundtable discussions with the aim of collectively identifying what is on the horizon in terms of design and architecture’s current and future roles in society, and the impact of environmental, technological, and cultural transformation on design and architecture’s media as well as means and models of design and architectural production. The seminar prepares students to develop well-constructed and contextualized arguments as they ap-proach their thesis year at SCI-Arc.

A focused thesis project for a building engaging a site and context manifests the cumulative knowledge students have acquired throughout their education and acts as a point of trajectory from which to engage the discipline, field and profession at large. During the final year of the B.Arch program, students work with an advisor to develop an architectural thesis tested through the development of a project that advances the highest degree possible of design and technical expertise coupled with critical thinking. Each student is expected to conduct research to establish a relevant historical, theoretical, cultural, and/or technical position. It is anticipated that the position will be tested through several modalities - written, spoken, designed, modeled, and visualized – ultimately culminating in Undergraduate Thesis Presentations.

Students will then explore passive and active design techniques that can be implemented to make buildings operate efficiently within a geographic location. With skill and intent, buildings can be designed to be healthy and effective while also reducing resource consumption and waste. The course will analyze the design and construction process and establish tools for project architects to make decisions on site impact, material selection, operational effectiveness, and integration of systems. The course will review sustain-able rating schemes that attempt to inspire, regulate or standardize current and future designs. Examples covered within this course will include: LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), Architecture 2030 Challenge (Carbon neutrality), UN Sustainability Design Guidelines, and Net Zero and Regenerative targets. During the semester, students will be exposed to theoretical principles explained through lectures, case studies, and field trips. Project research will enable students to apply techniques to their designs.

The course looks at common building materials – wood, steel, concrete – and their mechanical properties to understand how and when to apply these materials in construction. Through in-class examples and discussions, and homework assignments that include exercises in shear and bending moment diagrams and the calculation of equilibrium and internal forces, students develop a practical understanding of structural systems and how these systems are deployed in building construction.

During the first part of the term, the class examines concepts and definitions of gravity framing systems. The latter half of the course introduces lateral loads and the structural systems used to resist those loads. The class introduces students to building code requirements pertaining to lateral load definition and lateral load-resisting systems.

The content includes passive, active and generative building environmental systems and design strategies and their integration and optimization with the building site, orientation, and envelope/façade, in relation to renewable natural resources and occupant needs. The seminar also covers building systems and services such as plumbing, electrical, fire protection, acoustics, vertical transportation, security and building management systems; focusing on architectural considerations and overall systems integration. Through a series of lectures, software tutorials, assignments, student presentations, quizzes and exams, advanced systems, design strategies and architectural precedents will be explored and critically analyzed using various qualitative and quantitative techniques including benchmarks/rule-of-thumbs, prescriptive (building codes and standards), and dynamic building performance simulations.

Working through precedent analysis students document the established and emerging technical, environmental, and cultural dimensions of a building facade, formulating hypotheses about the interrelationship between envelope systems, materials and supporting structure. Students will activate their research through a detail transformation of a precedent, making design decisions that respond to the concerns of the envelope including building performance, aesthetics, effects and materiality.

The course includes a review of basic and advanced construction methods, analysis of building codes, the design of Structural and Mechanical systems, Environmental systems, Buildings service systems, the development of building materials and the integration of building components and systems. The intent of this course is to develop a cohesive understanding of how architects communicate complex building systems for the built environment and to demonstrate the ability to document a comprehensive architectural project and Stewardship of the Environment. A series of built case studies will be presented by the instructors along with visiting professionals in the field who are exploring new project delivery methods. These case studies will be shown in-depth with construction photographs, 3D renderings, and technical drawings and details. Pertinent specific topics for the course will be highlighted in each presentation, with a focus on the evolution of building design from concept to built form.

The course aims to equip the student with knowledge, skill, and judgment needed to fit an architect for his/her professional duties, and to understand how an office organization and a design project are managed for this purpose. Topics include human factors, planning, scheduling, cost control, risk management, design and construction management and developments in information technology for project management and documentation will be discussed. Topics covered will include such questions as how clients select architects; how architects find commissions; how projects get publicized and published; how to obtain and maintain your licensure, keys to selecting and working with collaborators; engineers, consultants, and contractors. How to start your own practice; working with owners, contractors and developers. Students can expect to learn the skills needed to make design, management, and technology decisions in the building of their own practices and in the roles as project architects.

The course introduces students to the fundamentals of architectural projection, digital representation, and material fabrication. Digital modeling will provide students with an abstract order that governs spatial relationships, proportional systems, and geometric logic, while physical modeling will introduce them to tangible resistance, tactile matter, and environmental responsiveness. Presentations, workshops, tutorials, and discussions will delve into topics of craft and technique, form and formwork, size and scale, material tolerance and image resolution.

Drawing on filmic techniques of visualization, the course introduces students to rendering material, mood, and atmosphere and to developing a narrative arc through storytelling. Presentations, workshops, tutorials, and discussions will delve into topics of simulation and realism, perspective and point-of-view, voice and sound, animation and movement. Projects will be showcased through scenic views and sequences and provide a foundation for the second-year studio curriculum.

This curatorial approach operates as both documentation and invention within the discipline. The course situates formatting within an expanded field of digital and material archives, where drawings, images, models, and films circulate through modes of print and online publishing. Workshops in graphic layout, digital typography, image sequencing, text captioning, discursive writing, and model photography, will prepare the students to curate, format, and submit their first Gateway Portfolio of original work at the end of the semester.