Master of Architecture: Courses

This comprehensive design studio examines the roles and conditions inherent in the transition between the interior and the exterior of a building, perceptual experiences including shelter, threshold, and vista, use programs, environmental concerns, and the clarity or hybridization of construction methods, including examples from the natural world and traditional examples from several cultures.

Investigates the way construction materials engage our primary senses, kindle memories and activate emotions, though their appearance, sensual substance and feel, and their integral psychological and cultural aspects, both expected and unexpected. Encourages a fundamental understanding about the importance of materiality to the experience of design. Exposes students to the ways in which inert matter is transformed into significant and affective means of communication. Delivers an understanding of structural concepts such as the distribution of concentrated and uniform loads, vertical loads, the resistance of lateral loads including wind and earthquakes, moment connections, shear walls, and appropriate systems design with good practice rules of thumb for a variety of related loading situations. Delivers an ability to identify the distribution of loads though a structure of columns, beams, and shear walls, to determine the safe member sizes for columns and retaining walls, including eccentric loads and overturning moments. Given their own work from an earlier design studio, students are now given the responsibility to research and integrate appropriate materials and structural systems into their own design projects.

This studio course will approach issues of 'Families' on two levels: 1) Program -- types vs. organization - Types develop and fall out of use over time. Types can be defined structurally, and they can be identified with certain cultures that used them. They are resistant to uprooting and re-planting. Radical hybridization and program grafting are techniques that that bring to bear the notion of cultural identity and demarcation when situated in the contemporary multicultural city. Families are engines of hybridization. 2) Density ? high vs. low - Based on not only on the index of units per acre -- but also qualitative issues such as location, position, hierarchy, and grouping. Domesticity and urbanity, at both low and high area occupation ratios, will be examined relative to contemporary 'families' located throughout urban and proto-suburban areas. Families of several scales - parental units, multi-generational collections, self-supporting aging communes, neighborhoods, sub-cultural tribes, and self-defined communities will be examined for how their needs fit into particular patterns of inhabitation.

This seminar develops fundamental comprehension and literacy in the language of building codes and specifications. Codes are examined as explicit as well as tacit instances of social values, which reflect cultural boundaries between the built environment and human behavior. Students investigate the notion of confinement and explore the possibilities, as Michael Sorkin put it, where codes, through 'acknowledging the gravity of permanence and the oppressions of extent,' seek, in their limits, 'not to restrain associations, but to free them.' While codes are a means through which society speaks to the architect, their compliment, specifications, are investigated as a vital architectural component of architectural expression. In order for an architectural vision to be manifest in the world, it must be communicated in a common manner both comprehensible and commonly valued. In courts of law, the written always trumps the drawn, even in cases where the drawing is worth a thousand words. In addition to basic proficiency in specification writing and the surrounding professional and legal processes, students also gain crucial understanding of the role of specifications in allowing the practitioner to best control the material articulation of their architectural propositions.

One of two final studio options in the M-Arch program, this course challenges students to demonstrate deep understanding of integrated structural, material and performative component systems in projective but intentional built architectural simulations and prototypes. Research and precedent examination enable new propositional works enabled via various numeric control making and tool processes and technologies available in the AIADO, the SAIC and Chicago.

This class gives individual students the opportunity to define and research an aspect of architectural production in depth, developing a personal approach to an important issue of contemporary significance to the field of architecture, and to the early professional career of the student. Emphasis is on originality, clarity, and high production values at the end of one?s architectural education. Must be taken in conjunction with an elective that brings other particularly appropriate resources of the School to bear on the topic. Topics are vetted and approved by a group of faculty members in required prerequisite evening workshops offered in the previous semester.

This course serves as a refresher in the basic structural engineering that is required of architects who have passed the ARE test. Includes long span structural typologies, hybrid structural systems, wind bracing, seismic loading and design, eccentrically loaded columns, retaining walls, and other structural design topics that were not covered in the two earlier courses with structural components, ARCH / INARC 5113, and ARCH / INARC 5123.

Provides insight into the legal and ethical ramifications of agreements and contracts with clients for professional architectural services, and responsibilities and liabilities during construction observation. Provides insight into the financial management of offices that offer professional design and architecture services, and other kinds of design businesses. Provides information on the IDP internship program, and a forum for the preparation of a resume and preparation for and performance in a job interview.

This comprehensive design studio examines the design of multi-space, multi-level interior environments, beginning with research methods. Emphasizes spatial sequence development, circulation for groups of diverse capabilities, the support of diverse activities with appropriately designed furniture fixtures and equipment, and the inventive use of materials.

Investigates the way construction materials engage our primary senses, kindle memories and activate emotions, though their appearance, sensual substance and feel, and their integral psychological and cultural aspects, both expected and unexpected. Encourages a fundamental understanding about the importance of materiality to the experience of design. Exposes students to the ways in which inert matter is transformed into significant and affective means of communication. Delivers an understanding of structural concepts such as the distribution of concentrated and uniform loads, vertical loads, the resistance of lateral loads including wind and earthquakes, moment connections, shear walls, and appropriate systems design with good practice rules of thumb for a variety of related loading situations. Delivers an ability to identify the distribution of loads though a structure of columns, beams, and shear walls, to determine the safe member sizes for columns and retaining walls, including eccentric loads and overturning moments. Given their own work from an earlier design studio, students are now given the responsibility to research and integrate appropriate materials and structural systems into their own design projects.

Students explore the patterns of movements and function in spaces and buildings, in order to transform their building designs. They work on alternative programming techniques, using visualization methods and mapping diagrams that take time, altered function, and altered sensibilities into account. Architecture as a fixed organization in space and time is replaced with one programmed and designed to take into account diversity, change, and speed.

This seminar develops fundamental comprehension and literacy in the language of building codes and specifications. Codes are examined as explicit as well as tacit instances of social values, which reflect cultural boundaries between the built environment and human behavior. Students investigate the notion of confinement and explore the possibilities, as Michael Sorkin put it, where codes, through 'acknowledging the gravity of permanence and the oppressions of extent,' seek, in their limits, 'not to restrain associations, but to free them.' While codes are a means through which society speaks to the architect, their compliment, specifications, are investigated as a vital architectural component of architectural expression. In order for an architectural vision to be manifest in the world, it must be communicated in a common manner both comprehensible and commonly valued. In courts of law, the written always trumps the drawn, even in cases where the drawing is worth a thousand words. In addition to basic proficiency in specification writing and the surrounding professional and legal processes, students also gain crucial understanding of the role of specifications in allowing the practitioner to best control the material articulation of their architectural propositions.

One of two final studio options in the M-Arch program, this course challenges students to demonstrate deep understanding of integrated structural, material and performative component systems in projective but intentional built architectural simulations and prototypes. Research and precedent examination enable new propositional works enabled via various numeric control making and tool processes and technologies available in the AIADO, the SAIC and Chicago.

Under the cluster theme of Propositions, students propose a final 'Thesis' project that includes a programing document, a code search, a written theoretical underpinning, a comprehensive design solution and presentation, outline technical documentation to scale including a significant overall section and detail sections, outline specifications for a significant assembly, and a budget estimate of labor and materials. Students may elect to do this thesis in collaboration with a student in the art and design collaborative studio that is taken concurrently. Students may elect to do a thesis in collaboration with another student. Students may elect to do a competition as a thesis, as long as all component parts of the thesis listed above are finished by the end of the academic term.

This course serves as a refresher in the basic structural engineering that is required of architects who have passed the ARE test. Includes long span structural typologies, hybrid structural systems, wind bracing, seismic loading and design, eccentrically loaded columns, retaining walls, and other structural design topics that were not covered in the two earlier courses with structural components, ARCH / INARC 5113, and ARCH / INARC 5123.

Provides insight into the legal and ethical ramifications of agreements and contracts with clients for professional architectural services, and responsibilities and liabilities during construction observation. Provides insight into the financial management of offices that offer professional design and architecture services, and other kinds of design businesses. Provides information on the IDP internship program, and a forum for the preparation of a resume and preparation for and performance in a job interview.

Studio format, covers a basic introduction to 3D computer drawing, modeling, and rendering, and manufacturing techniques useful in the designed objects, interior architecture, and architectural fields. Assignments include dimensional data entry, 2D to 3D modeling tools, material creation and assignments, lighting techniques, rendering, and exporting and importing files from one program to another..

This course is a survey of contemporary material systems, fabrication processes and the current practices in architecture and design that employ them to produce new objects, spaces and building systems for an increasingly complex and resource aware world. Research and precedent examination are augmented with skill building in numeric control making and tool processes available in the AIADO, the SAIC and Chicago.

Studio format, covers a basic introduction to 3D computer drawing, modeling, and rendering, and manufacturing techniques useful in the designed objects, interior architecture, and architectural fields. Assignments include dimensional data entry, 2D to 3D modeling tools, material creation and assignments, lighting techniques, rendering, and exporting and importing files from one program to another..

This course is a survey of contemporary material systems, fabrication processes and the current practices in architecture and design that employ them to produce new objects, spaces and building systems for an increasingly complex and resource aware world. Research and precedent examination are augmented with skill building in numeric control making and tool processes available in the AIADO, the SAIC and Chicago.

This comprehensive studio class examines the relationship between people, buildings and places as has evolved in particular locales. Current trends in habitation, evolving social organizations, and methods of architectural fabrication are examined as they influence definitions and issues of site conditions. The design of complex systems that welcome and interact with a site over time, rather than obliterating them, are also studied.

Introduces simple construction systems such as masonry, light wood framing, heavy timber framing, steel framing, cast in place concrete, pre-cast concrete, and hybrids using aspects of these systems. Covers the history and current state of these systems, and concentrates on assembly and capability, with structural design added in the afternoon. Provides the knowledge necessary to choose a system during preliminary design, and understand the limits and possibilities of basic construction systems. Delivers an understanding of structural concepts such as free body diagrams, moment diagrams, statics, the strength of materials, and simple formulas for bending and deflection. Covers the ability to distribute loads through a simple structure, design a uniformly loaded joists, beams, and girders, and determine a safe continuous foundation size for a bearing wall.

This trans-disciplinary AIADO Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects studio focuses on program scenarios that demand engagement at multiple scales and require combinations of various disciplinary techniques of inquiry, analysis and description. Students will work in collaborative teams to research and make legible and visible the tacit and intangible or time-based aspects of complex situations found in everyday life. Having accomplished and shared their team research, students can work alone in their chosen discipline to design objects, environments and organizations, or they can continue in multidisciplinary teams to design interconnected systems of objects, environments and organizations. Subsequent studio activities will build on and re-consider the collective research findings, with the goal of producing propositional designs which may be beyond the current marketplace, or inscriptive designs with a human behavioral component, or interactive designs with embedded technologies.

Investigates the socio-technical consequences of the shift from centralized hierarchies to distributed networks in global and local populations. Covers the impact of sub-cultures, and the proliferation of specialized markets. Student work examines and models topologies of neural connectivity, networks of objects and environments, and interior and interior program changes resulting from this recent paradigmatic shift. Topics include the production of power, improvisation, tactics versus strategy, control practices, the identification of market niches, and the impact of globalization. Provides an overview of interface design, interaction design, embedded control and situated technology through case studies. Students experiment with elementary sensing and acting objects/systems which can be used to propose, design, develop and prototype more complex behaviors, relationships, actions or instructions, using dot-syntax object oriented scripting languages.

The topic for this class is how creative program analysis drives creative, complex design solutions. The Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) led by Rem Koolhaas has made a spectacular success by pioneering this method of starting the design process on public projects. It is one of the techniques that allows OMA to design XL buildings and bring their complex parts into new and exciting convergence. Starting this way has several advantages. It persuades clients that the designer respects the work they have done to prepare for the project. It demonstrates that the designer is listening but also has some insights into the culture that the project springs out of and must exist in. It allows the designer to build a foundation of understanding for the radical forms that will arise later. It helps the clients identify with, and thus happily take ownership of the radical forms that arise later. Understanding the particular nature of the given commission involves seeing through and beyond what research and writing the client has given to the designer as a starting point. It involves understanding obscure existing conditions and cultural changes in clear terms so the client and the public can be led to understand them and the new solutions that arise out of them.

Develops comprehension and ability in the selection and location of building systems and their integration. Includes Energy production, Energy consumption and management, Vertical Circulation, Security, Communications, Networking, Wireless, Emergency alerts and assistance systems, Sprinklers, Potable water supply, Waste water and soil removal, Organic garbage removal, Recycled material sorting and removal, Ambient lighting, Task lighting, Emergency lighting, Ambient temperature and humidity conditioning, Electrical power supply for an expanding number of peripheral devices; all of these and more must be coordinated in the design and description of a building. Develops a fundamental understanding of the physics behind, and operation of, the basic artificial and natural mechanical building systems that create a well tempered interior environment. Principles of luminous intensity, convection, conductance, radiation, gravity, pressure differential, and fluid dynamics are explained for their impact on the operation and design of a variety of common illumination, plumbing and HVAC systems. The interaction of natural, passive, and mechanical systems are investigated. Given their own work from an earlier design studio, students are now given the responsibility to research and integrate appropriate systems into their own design projects.

Thesis Strategies is offered in the fall term and is designed for any AIADO grads engaged in the preparative research work that underpins the successful resolution of a thesis project. The class will offer content on research methodologies, project structure and execution and common art and design thesis conventions. In addition to this, instructors in the pre-thesis and research practicum will deliver critique of core project concepts, project relevance and impact and help to structure a viable project timeline such that the final project, executed later, is the comprehensive integration of research, intent and skill.

Thesis Strategies is offered in the fall term and is designed for any AIADO grads engaged in the preparative research work that underpins the successful resolution of a thesis project. The class will offer content on research methodologies, project structure and execution and common art and design thesis conventions. In addition to this, instructors in the pre-thesis and research practicum will deliver critique of core project concepts, project relevance and impact and help to structure a viable project timeline such that the final project, executed later, is the comprehensive integration of research, intent and skill.

Provides insight into the legal and ethical ramifications of agreements and contracts with clients for professional architectural services, and responsibilities and liabilities during construction observation. Provides insight into the financial management of offices that offer professional design and architecture services, and other kinds of design businesses. Provides information on the IDP internship program, and a forum for the preparation of a resume and preparation for and performance in a job interview.

In this comprehensive design studio students examine inherent material effects, and more ephemeral sensory effects, and their manipulation to communicate an architectural intention in a single space. The qualities and placement of spatial openings are studied, including windows, doors, skylights, bands, slots, and occuli, forming thresholds between an interior and its exterior, and reinforcing the sensory effects of selected materials. Concentrates on the comprehension, appreciation, creation, and management of this diverse set of interior spatial sensations as the basis for architectural experience and production.

Introduces simple construction systems such as masonry, light wood framing, heavy timber framing, steel framing, cast in place concrete, pre-cast concrete, and hybrids using aspects of these systems. Covers the history and current state of these systems, and concentrates on assembly and capability, with structural design added in the afternoon. Provides the knowledge necessary to choose a system during preliminary design, and understand the limits and possibilities of basic construction systems. Delivers an understanding of structural concepts such as free body diagrams, moment diagrams, statics, the strength of materials, and simple formulas for bending and deflection. Covers the ability to distribute loads through a simple structure, design a uniformly loaded joists, beams, and girders, and determine a safe continuous foundation size for a bearing wall.

This trans-disciplinary AIADO Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects studio focuses on program scenarios that demand engagement at multiple scales and require combinations of various disciplinary techniques of inquiry, analysis and description. Students work in collaborative teams to research and make legible and visible the tacit and intangible or time-based aspects of complex situations found in everyday life. Having accomplished and shared their team research, students can work alone in their chosen discipline to design objects, environments and organizations, or they can continue in multidisciplinary teams to design interconnected systems of objects, environments and organizations. Subsequent studio activities build on and re-consider the collective research findings, with the goal of producing propositional designs which may be beyond the current marketplace, or inscriptive designs with a human behavioral component, or interactive designs with embedded technologies.

Investigates the socio-technical consequences of the shift from centralized hierarchies to distributed networks in global and local populations. Covers the impact of sub-cultures, and the proliferation of specialized markets. Student work examines and models topologies of neural connectivity, networks of objects and environments, and interior and interior program changes resulting from this recent paradigmatic shift. Topics include the production of power, improvisation, tactics versus strategy, control practices, the identification of market niches, and the impact of globalization. Provides an overview of interface design, interaction design, embedded control and situated technology through case studies. Students experiment with elementary sensing and acting objects/systems which can be used to propose, design, develop and prototype more complex behaviors, relationships, actions or instructions, using dot-syntax object oriented scripting languages.

This studio focuses on the relationship between complex assemblies of interior spaces, and the larger context of spaces that surround them, whether they are adjacent interiors, or complementary enclosed exterior environments, or natural landscapes. The studio emphasizes is the increased energy efficiency of very large, fat buildings with a low ratio of energy-expensive exterior skin to profitable enclosed space. Greater interior spatial volume puts creative pressure on interior circulation, which can lead to more fluid space, and interior urbanism is the intended result.

Develops comprehension and ability in the selection and location of building systems and their integration. Includes Energy production, Energy consumption and management, Vertical Circulation, Security, Communications, Networking, Wireless, Emergency alerts and assistance systems, Sprinklers, Potable water supply, Waste water and soil removal, Organic garbage removal, Recycled material sorting and removal, Ambient lighting, Task lighting, Emergency lighting, Ambient temperature and humidity conditioning, Electrical power supply for an expanding number of peripheral devices; all of these and more must be coordinated in the design and description of a building. Develops a fundamental understanding of the physics behind, and operation of, the basic artificial and natural mechanical building systems that create a well tempered interior environment. Principles of luminous intensity, convection, conductance, radiation, gravity, pressure differential, and fluid dynamics are explained for their impact on the operation and design of a variety of common illumination, plumbing and HVAC systems. The interaction of natural, passive, and mechanical systems are investigated. Given their own work from an earlier design studio, students are now given the responsibility to research and integrate appropriate systems into their own design projects.

Thesis Strategies is offered in the fall term and is designed for any AIADO grads engaged in the preparative research work that underpins the successful resolution of a thesis project. The class will offer content on research methodologies, project structure and execution and common art and design thesis conventions. In addition to this, instructors in the pre-thesis and research practicum will deliver critique of core project concepts, project relevance and impact and help to structure a viable project timeline such that the final project, executed later, is the comprehensive integration of research, intent and skill.

Thesis Strategies is offered in the fall term and is designed for any AIADO grads engaged in the preparative research work that underpins the successful resolution of a thesis project. The class will offer content on research methodologies, project structure and execution and common art and design thesis conventions. In addition to this, instructors in the pre-thesis and research practicum will deliver critique of core project concepts, project relevance and impact and help to structure a viable project timeline such that the final project, executed later, is the comprehensive integration of research, intent and skill.

Provides insight into the legal and ethical ramifications of agreements and contracts with clients for professional architectural services, and responsibilities and liabilities during construction observation. Provides insight into the financial management of offices that offer professional design and architecture services, and other kinds of design businesses. Provides information on the IDP internship program, and a forum for the preparation of a resume and preparation for and performance in a job interview.