Nathan Rennich

This two-day core undergraduate design studio focuses on the role of the designer in public life, and the role architecture plays in shaping public life. Students address the legal, ethical, cultural, and political concerns that shape architecture practice through the development of a design project. Students use rigorous representation techniques, achieving a professional level of presentation. Students are expected to complete a professional portfolio and resume, along with their design work. This studio examines issues of program, structure, and building skin to identify how public architecture represents itself as a cultural and political artifact. Rather than understanding architecture as autonomous from its social, cultural, and political environment, the studio posits that architecture must be integrated into the world, be informed by and transforming the social and technical systems that enable our built environments. Students will review and study design approaches to expand their understanding of possibilities about new spatial dynamics informed by emerging social relationships, hybrid conditions and the social shaping of technology. 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 portfolio presentation. 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, in group discussions and workshops and/or site visits; and which will all contribute to individual project work and portfolio development to be presented in a final critique. This course requires students to have a laptop that meets SAIC's minimum hardware specs and runs the AIADO template.