A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
SAIC faculty member F. Philip Barash.

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F. Philip Barash

Full-Time Visiting Faculty

Contact

Professional Site

Bio

Full-time visiting faculty, Historic Preservation department. Publications: “One More Day in the Life of Jason Pickleman,” Newcity Chicago EXPO Guide, 2024. “To Find Solutions for Chicago’s Ills, Look to Our Communities,” Crain’s Chicago Business, 2024. “Not Your Granny’s Granny Flat,” Chicago Architect, 2023. “Restoring the Alexander Girard Home,” Santa Fe Reporter, 2022. “State vs. Jahn: the Thompson Center is Dead, Long Live the Thompson Center,” Newcity, 2021. “Into Detroit’s Backwater,” Landscape Architecture Magazine, 2019. "Designing for the Urban Sublime: the Uncanny as a Programmatic Motivator,” (with Gina Ford), in Staging Urban Landscapes: The Activation and Curation of Flexible Public Spaces, 2018. “Exploring the Changing Landscape of Public Art,” (with Nina Chase), Building Design and Construction, 2016. “The Ecology of Maya Lin: a Memorial for the Planet,” ArtSlant, 2016. Bibliography: The New York Times, The Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking at the Brookings Institution, Architect Magazine. Service: American Planning Association, Vice-chair, Arts and Planning Division. International Downtown Association, Board of Directors. Urban Land Institute, Panel Advisory Services Honorary Association. Education: BA, 2004, University of Detroit; MA, 2005, The University of Chicago.

Personal Statement

F. Philip Barash is an urbanist, writer, and educator. He is the co-founder of the urban planning and placemaking think tank Public Sphere Projects. Through his professional practice, Barash advises governments and institutions on strategies that invigorate public life, honor the character of communities, and enhance shared places. He established guiding principles for the Obama Presidential Center, co-led a transformative public art initiative with the National Park Service, launched a cultural policy effort supported by the Walton Family Foundation, and piloted philanthropic investments into inclusive public spaces across greater Boston.

His writing explores the changing, contested American landscape. Barash served as the inaugural design editor of Newcity magazine, covering architecture, planning, preservation, and related disciplines. His journalistic writing, which appears in publications including Landscape Architecture Magazine and Chicago Architect, exposes stories of forgotten watersheds, underground music venues, and controversial buildings. In addition, his thought-leadership has been featured by The New York Times, Architect Magazine, and the Brookings Institution among others.

Alongside his appointment at SAIC, he regularly lectures and serves as guest critic in the TUDelft Master City Developer program, Boston University’s City Planning and Urban Affairs, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Barash is an alumnus of the University of Detroit Mercy and the University of Chicago. He lives and works in Santa Fe, NM, and in Chicago.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course will consider a continuum of policies, incentives, and governance models that support arts and culture in place. Students will support community goals by researching best practices in district- and community-scaled arts administration. In consultation with local stakeholders, students will assess community needs and develop models for local and regional arts support. The course will culminate with a presentation of findings to Arts Alliance Illinois leadership.
Partners include: Arts Alliance Illinois, Cook County, Selected communities, Legacy Consulting, Public Sphere Projects
Reading include Arnold Alanen and Robert Melnick, ¿Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America¿; Americans for the Arts, ¿AEP 6¿; Jeff Speck, ¿Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time.¿
Assignments will be both group driven and based upon individual research interests within the overarching topic and in relation to the partner/ client organization Arts Alliance Illinois. Students will prepare initial draft strategy proposal documentation as a group and then based upon review they will develop a specific part of a final project strategy document. While the work will stem from conversations with Arts Alliance Illinois as a 'client' the finished material will be presented 'as live' with the potential for adoption rather than as a live consequential proposal.

Class Number

2410

Credits

3

Description

This course will consider a continuum of policies, incentives, and governance models that support arts and culture in place. Students will support community goals by researching best practices in district- and community-scaled arts administration. In consultation with local stakeholders, students will assess community needs and develop models for local and regional arts support. The course will culminate with a presentation of findings to Arts Alliance Illinois leadership.
Partners include: Arts Alliance Illinois, Cook County, Selected communities, Legacy Consulting, Public Sphere Projects
Reading include Arnold Alanen and Robert Melnick, ¿Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America¿; Americans for the Arts, ¿AEP 6¿; Jeff Speck, ¿Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time.¿
Assignments will be both group driven and based upon individual research interests within the overarching topic and in relation to the partner/ client organization Arts Alliance Illinois. Students will prepare initial draft strategy proposal documentation as a group and then based upon review they will develop a specific part of a final project strategy document. While the work will stem from conversations with Arts Alliance Illinois as a 'client' the finished material will be presented 'as live' with the potential for adoption rather than as a live consequential proposal.

Class Number

2411

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

1928

Credits

3 - 6

Description

The Practicum provides structure for engaging in off-campus practicum work based on content and subject matter identified through thesis strategies and in support of thesis studio project development. In consultation with faculty This can include; internships and/or co-operative learning opportunities; experiential and/or focused observational research; service learning and community collaborations. Faculty develop and deliver methodological requirements for the class leading to functional documentary outcomes, that allow students to articulate professional contexts in relation to their thesis work.
Students work from self-identified materials related to their thesis studio work. Typically a student will identify a project accompanied by a bibliography as part of AIA6213 Thesis Strategies.
Students are required to develop a media rich documentary report from their working experience in this practicum. The report is developed in conversation with the faculty and enriched by professional encounters through their project work. The report is built through iterative drafts that are presented and critiqued in the class three times.

Class Number

2403

Credits

3

Description

The graduate level Thesis Strategies seminar-studio is offered in fall semesters and intended for graduate students in Architecture and Interior Architecture engaged in preparatory research work that will ground and inform the successful development and final resolution of thesis project work in a following semester. The class will offer content on research methods, project structure and execution, and clarify common art and design thesis conventions and research-through-design methods. Professors directing the pre-thesis and research practicum, together with external critics, will respond to core project concepts, the relevance of proposed thesis concerns and questions and help to structure a viable project proposition, a timeline and introduce primary references and case studies so that the final thesis results in a comprehensive integration of research, intent and project exploration.

A Graduate Thesis must make a contribution to the field and will be defended within a critical and reflective academic environment. The Thesis Strategies course prepares graduate students for this responsibility and allows for the translation of research into a personal position and informed platform from where thesis project work will develop.

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 will vary, but always provide the background and theoretical grounding for individual research-through-design explorations and the crafting of a critical theoretical position.

Outcomes are a cumulative archive of the process of problem analysis, critical reading and discourse, and the initial design problem exploration. Combined, this body of work are the synopsis of insights into facts and ideas ? all being shared through text, diagrams, drawings and abstract models.

Class Number

2253

Credits

3