LEARNING BY DOING
BY DOUGLAS TOM, AIA

When I was growing up in Salinas, California, a family friend—a local architect—said that architects know a little bit about a lot of things, without being masters of any one thing. I still think that there’s a lot of truth to that. Since becoming an architect myself, I’ve come to see how that aspect can make architecture a valuable tool in general education. It’s a perfect fit for project based learning—an instructional approach that teaches students to learn by doing.

In traditional learning, instructors start by teaching students skills, concepts, and information. Only later do students apply what they learned. In project-based learning, the reverse is true: students are asked to solve an open-ended question or challenge that has real-world relevance. They learn what they need to achieve their goal. Although the projects are carefully structured, students collaborate in small teams, defining the tasks, discussing and reflecting on their values, critiquing each other’s work, and coming together to create a finished product or presentation. Architectural projects lend themselves well to project-based learning. They involve not only designing, but also engineering, financing, managing client relationships, and integrating environmental sustainability. In addition, architecture is collaborative by nature. And while students learn about design, engineering, and construction, they’re also building math, science, and communication skills and gaining insight into broader issues of political science and public policy. Architecture and project-based learning share a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to problem solving well suited to the pedagogical shift underway in higher education today (particularly in the sciences) toward interdisciplinary teaching/learning and research. My first real sense of what project-based learning can do came out of the development of the Build San Francisco Institute in the 1990s. Around this same time, my wife and I were trying to decide whether to send our kids to public or private school, so I was immersed in the topic of quality education. I was a member of the board of the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco, and I found that my fellow board members shared my interest in helping the profession support and enhance public education. Together, we launched the Build San Francisco Institute. Initially an after-school program, it has evolved nto a full partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District, various public agencies, and more than fifty professional design and construction firms acting as mentors. On average, twenty-five San Francisco high school students pair up with mentors, who work with them two afternoons each week throughout a semester, exposing them to the workings of their practice. The other three afternoons, the students are in a classroom downtown hearing visiting architects and other professionals speak, doing classroom assignments, and learning the latest software, like AutoCAD and even Revit. They earn college accepted course credit for these afternoon sessions through the school district. The program exposes students to real world projects led by mentors and full-time teachers. Students collaborate in small teams and produce videos, models, drawings, and other tangible things that reflect what they’ve learned. They often present these in public forums. One year, students from six San Francisco high schools worked together to design and create sixteen ceramic tiles for San Francisco’s Pier 14, which the city was restoring for public use. Students had ten weeks to come up with a theme, make a proposal to the Port of San Francisco Commission for approval, create the designs, glaze and fire the tiles, and deliver them for installation. The commission sent the students back to the drawing board after their first presentation to refine and focus their initial concept, replicating the back-and forth dialogue that is an integral part of real world projects. When the revised design was approved, they felt a greater sense of pride and accomplishment, and they had an authentic sense of the realities of professional life. Other projects that Build San Francisco students have been involved with include the San Francisco Ferry Building renovation, Pac Bell Park, and the renovation of Piers 1-1/2, 3 and 5. One student I mentored through Build San Francisco a few years ago was a former

gang member. He has told me that his internship with our firm turned his life around—he went on to graduate from high school and was accepted at San Francisco State University. Last I heard, he wanted to transfer to the architecture program at UC Berkeley. My positive experiences with the Build San Francisco Institute led to my becoming involved with another educational endeavor that incorporates project-based learning. In 2002, I was introduced to the founders of Envision Schools, a charter school organization in the Bay Area whose mission is to bring high-quality college preparatory education to underserved urban youth, particularly those who will be the first in their families to attend college. At the time, Envision was just getting off the ground and didn’t yet have any sites for the five schools it was planning to launch. I was intrigued by Envision’s focus on combining academic and project-based learning, using the arts and technology to enhance student learning. I helped put the school in touch with contacts in the finance, construction, and development worlds and scouted potential school sites. In the end, the schools were provided buildings from each local chartering school district, as mandated under California law, but by that time I was hooked by its vision and had become a board member. Currently there are four Envision Schools in the Bay Area—two in San Francisco, one in Oakland, and one in Hayward—serving approximately 1,200 students. Envision’s curriculum involves the same elements as Build San Francisco: research, analysis, discussion, and portfolio presentation. It has received national recognition as a model for public high school education. More than 93% of Envision graduates are attending either a two- or four year college, compared with 40% of all California high school graduates. Envision Schools is one of a small handful of charter school management organizations in the country to be funded directly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, receiving several million dollars to help create high-quality options for high school education in California. In 2005, the

United States Department of Education named Envisions’ City Arts and Technology High School as one of twelve exemplary schools in the country. I’ve seen the difference Envision Schools makes in the lives of its students. At the end of their senior year, students must develop a final defense of their work, a public presentation that is attended by their fellow students and parents. A successful presentation is a requirement of graduation. They spend a month and a half working intensively with their teachers to prepare these portfolios, which tend to be highly creative and address substantive issues. Recent examples include a presentation on land use in San Francisco; a study of banned books in the United States; and a multimedia “museum” about the Holocaust, blending digital design, theatrical performance, sculpture, graphic art, and radio broadcasts. Seeing the Envision students present their portfolios, much as architecture students present their design work in school, has left a profound impression on me. Not only has it convinced me that project-based learning enables a student to learn a subject from many points of view, but it also has given me great hope for the prospect of transforming public education. Build San Francisco and Envision Schools show that engaging students in real-world projects is a great motivator—it builds enthusiasm and provides a reason to learn. With a concrete problem to solve, students have to bring together information and approaches from multiple disciplines, dig deeper into what they’ve been taught, and acquire new skills. They retain knowledge longer than with traditional education, they gain confidence in making presentations to adults, and they learn to work together more effectively. Architecture is not just a profession for creating buildings; it can also shape an educational process that motivates young students to excel, become educated citizens and consumers of architecture and perhaps even professionals themselves.

A Perfect Landing on Hallowed Ground
John Leighton Chase, Assoc. AIA

High in the Malibu hills, Tony Duquette’s former Sortilegium Ranch is getting a second life with the arrival of a Boeing 747, reconceived and reassembled as a house. Duquette—“Hollywood’s wild child of design,” in biographer Wendy Goodman’s words—was master of the decorative arts, from furniture to jewelry, costume to architectural design. His legerdemain with recycling was groundbreaking and unparalleled; egg cartons, antlers, and metal pipe all found new existences superior to anything they had known before. His work is an object lesson in reuse: long before architects were keen on green, interior designers and decorators were already hard at work repurposing and re-contextualizing objects. Most of the twenty-one structures of Sortilegium were destroyed by the 1993 Green Meadow Fire, leaving only a few small pavilions. Had it remained intact, the ranch would have been one of America’s most singular and visionary design compounds.

Wing House is the work of David Hertz, FAIA, who, beginning in 1984, pioneered the use of recycled elements as an admixture in his “Syndcrete” concrete. Client Francie Rehwald, owner of a Mercedes dealership, requested feminine forms for the project; Hertz, well schooled in dramatic, organic form as an alumnus of the John Lautner office, offered the swelling curves of the 747. In the noble California tradition of William Wurster’s Gregory Farmhouse and Frank Gehry’s Whitney House, Wing House is a courtyard compound, each building fashioned from a section of the former aircraft. The lower half of the fuselage will be the Animal Barn, while the upended nose cone forms a forty-five foot tall Meditation Pavilion. Although it will indeed be a building, Wing House will retain enough of its former identity to require FAA registration, so that no one reports it as a downed plane.

A single family house that required $100,000 in materials delivery costs, including Chinook helicopter time and the closing of five Southern California freeways, is not about maximum efficiency in recycling. Yet, while 747s have been recycled before as buildings, this is the first of such buildings that is as much a work of art, as rich and complex an artifact, as the original plane. It is a rare occasion when design lightning and visionary recycling strike twice at the same location; Tony Duquette, who used old satellite dishes to make a lyric pavilion of his water tank, would be pleased.

Iggy Peck, Architect, by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts

New York: Abrams, 2007

Peter Exley, FAIA, and Sharon Exley, MAAE

Iggy Peck is the architect we all want to be, the engineer and author of lovely, exuberant structures made from the most exceptional and unexpected materials. Who couldn’t help but love a Gateway Arch if made of towers of pancakes and coconut pie? Iggy’s tale is of one loved and encouraged by parents to follow his heart. Many of us will recall parents who were nurturing—if  perhaps a tad curious about our creative quirks—or a teacher who tolerated our eccentricities, if not with approval, with fondness and patience. Yet it is Iggy’s teacher who first takes a jab, makes a joke, and attempts to extinguish his creative efforts. Banished with his chums to the periphery of the classroom, Iggy the outsider doodles his escapist architecture, and, as the class become victims of a terrible calamity, it is he, our hero, who uses his architectural nous to save the day. Bravo Iggy! Even his resuscitated teacher is impressed, and Iggy’s pals give the reader that look of told-you-so smugness—perhaps they didn’t exactly understand Iggy’s fascination with architecture, but he’s their friend, and they never doubted his brilliance. Andrea Beaty’s poetic story of Iggy is most charming, but it is David Roberts’s illustrations that bring Iggy to life (and give away his Midwestern location). The drawn Iggy is tiny and quirky, especially set  against his own towering structures, but he is a master builder, in charge of his destiny. Each page is a visual treat, filled with architectural details and historical references that lend themselves to close inspection. A clever use of white space and the double page spreads help

create the sensation of height and urban density on every page, while giving the impression that Iggy’s imagination grows along with each new creation. Iggy “quirks” up quite a few of our favorite buildings: architectural aficionados will enjoy the many references to iconic buildings and structures, though they may be a bit obscure for those who’ve never taken an architectural history class. Iggy’s ambition is heroic and original, for sure; a little ugly and ordinary might make the details of the subject matter more accessible. But maybe that’s okay; an impossible Leaning Tower crafted from diapers is certainly funny and could be fine inspiration for a mischievous reader. Iggy Peck, Architect, is a lovely parable of the power of creativity and an oddball manifesto to challenge the linguistic and logical biases of most educational curricula. Will it be the antidote? Likely not, but faith in creativity and invention saves the day in this book, and perhaps that will encourage a bit more tinkering with building blocks, glue, cereal boxes,

and yogurt pots and inspire some future problem solvers. Read it at bedtime (it’s a quick read!), chuckle with your children, and send them to dreamland to build alongside Iggy. Design on the Edge: a century of teaching architecture at the University of California Berkeley, 1903-2003, edited by Waverly Lowell, Elizabeth Byrne, and Betsy Frederick-Rothwell San Francisco: William Stout Publishers, 2009

Sunil Bald

From the edge, perceptions become amplified. This has certainly been the case when it comes to Berkeley’s College of the Environmental Design. One might argue that no school of architecture has been so identified with its location on the nation’s geographic and political spectrum. A handsome and thorough compendium, Design on the Edge paints a complex portrait of this influential institution. The pedagogical contributions of the College of Environmental Design during the sixties and seventies are undeniable. The social, political, and environmental disciplines that it incorporated into architectural education are now being re-discovered, reconsidered, and reimplemented. It is, however, unproductive and inaccurate to define the school solely on these terms and by this era. Berkeley, an outpost that eventually became a touchstone in the national consciousness, struggled like other schools with tradition, history, the changing desires and values of students, the personalities of faculty, and the academy’s relationship to practice. Yet, there always seemed to be the pervasive sentiment that, distanced from the expectations of the East Coast academic hegemony, Berkeley was reinventing architectural education as it was inventing itself. A unique set of characters, from Bernard Maybeck to J.B. Jackson, and the democratic ideals engrained in California’s mythology—from

the consistently high percentage of female students to the early introduction of open juries and free faculty/student dialogue—helped construct an architectural ethos that was inextricably interlaced with the sense of being on the western edge. In the second two thirds of the book, the

more recent intellectual concerns of the curriculum are described, usually firsthand by those who created it. In many ways, the pedagogical inventions of this period—from those planned, to those that were a response to local events that became national spectacle (People’s Park), to those accidentally stumbled upon (Sim Van der Ryn’s wonderful descriptions of his communal experiments in Inverness)— foreshadow much of the recent interest in design/build and sustainable communities. While some schools are finally taking these on, sometimes, as one takes a daily dose of Castor Oil, one understands how they have become germane to Berkeley. It is the latter part of Design on the Edge that holds the multiple overlapping, often contradictory voices that must have made for lively pedagogical debates and interesting faculty meetings. This latter part of the book includes seven sections, among them, “The Research Environment,” “Communities and Cultures,” “Ecology and Building Sciences,” and “Systematic Approaches.”

A section dedicated to the design studio is, however, conspicuously absent. Indeed, save for Dan Solomon’s erudite and entertaining  article, the school’s influential design figures from the last thirty years (Saitowitz, Mack, Fernau, and others) are mentioned only in passing. This is a striking contrast to how the history through William Wurster’s deanship is told, with change and interdisciplinarity happening through design, not in spite of it. A the editors note, writing a history of the period since the 1980s is difficult, there not being sufficient time for reflection.

Accordingly, Design on the Edge feels more like a 75-year history than reflections on a century, and it misses the opportunity for the CED to show how its recent past, while much debated, is ready to be reshaped for a world engulfed in globally interconnected academic, architectural, and environmental exchanges. As Asia’s rise continues, Berkeley is clearly no longer at the edge. The natural question is, “Where does it go from here?”

Grid/Street/Place: Essential Elements of Sustainable Urban Districts, by Nathan Cherry

with Kurt Nagle

Chicago: American Planning Association, 2009

David Thurman

In Grid/Street/Place, Nathan Cherry, Kurt

Nagle and their collaborators pursue the ambitious goal of identifying, analyzing, and summarizing the key attributes of sustainable urban districts around the country. The book’s figure-ground diagrams, charts, perspectives, and photographs form a valuable resource, a worthy complement to the toolkit of any urban designer and architect who works at such a scale.

In the first two chapters, the authors lay the groundwork by presenting examples of both classic districts—Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mizner Park in Boca Raton, and Malaga Cove Plaza in Palos Verdes Estates— and contemporary mixed-use districts, such as Playa Vista and L.A. Live in Los Angeles and Mockingbird Station in Dallas. They considerimportant elements  of districts, such as squares, greens and parks, shopping streets, and “places” (reflecting a yet smaller scale). The book’s restrained drawing style is applied with consistency and rigor. Detailed, same-scale diagrams nurture comparison, encouraging the reader to make back-and forth, page-turning journeys. The diagrams document scale, open space, resources, transit, and  general relationships of chosen districts, along with dimensionally accurate plans. The authors have the good sense to compress the district plans on one or two pages in each chapter, further enabling comparison. Each chapter includes a summary of findings and common attributes, and, although the text lacks literary flourish, one comes to appreciate the no-nonsense, “focus on the essentials” attitude. The book betrays an unstated geographic bias in its selection of districts. As an Angeleno, it is a bias I appreciate and applaud. The authors choose a number of districts from the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which reflects their professional interests but is also a unique

service to the region, considering the Southland’s enduring reputation as the front line of sprawl, lacking significant public spaces. L.A. is important, because it is not a bucolic environment, is very much a contributor to the global environmental crisis, and needs a toolkit of real solutions. Early in the book, the authors discuss the necessity of using branding as a key part of the urban re-envisioning process, an approach that seems directly related to their professional expertise and is highlighted by a later chapter on “shopping streets”—a welcome chapter, given that retail design can be a very misunderstood topic dominated by specialists, and that it is not an area of deep expertise in most architectural offices. If there is a less satisfying aspect to the book, it is the light touch on the topic of sustainability itself. While the chosen districts are clearly sustainable places, the attitude seems to be that their sustainability is self-evident, owing to their compact, mixed-use, and transitoriented character. Yet this approach bypasses a critically focused discussion of sustainable performance, climate change, and other significant environmental pressures, none of which are in fact mentioned. In this area, the book is missing significant data and analysis, comparable to that applied to the physical characteristics and retail circumstances of the districts. One would expect that performance in delivering solutions to greenhouse gas reduction, addressing stormwater needs, incorporating sustainable buildings, or reducing often excessive parking ratios (a potentially critical means to discouraging automobile use) would be central to the discussion. One could easily imagine highly aggressive performance indicators and checklists added to each chapter that analyze how the districts deliver on the critical global deadlines we face. This is the evolving core of professional practice. If there is one

suggestion I would have, it is that the authors consider such issues in a revised version.

arcCA asked each professional architecture school in the state to identify and describe a program or initiative that aptly characterizes the philosophy, attitude, direction, or emphasis of the school. Our goal was to avoid generalities, instead presenting concrete instances that will suggest meaningful differences among the institutions. Nine of the ten schools responded. These are their responses, in order of the age of the architecture program—founding dates indicated in parentheses—eldest first.

UC Berkeley (1903): The Cal Design Lab @ Wurster

Jennifer Wolch, Dean

Over the past decade, something called “design thinking” has swept business, engineering, and other professions the world over. Now, at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design (CED), faculty and students are coming together with others from across campus—entrepreneurs, information technologists, industrial designers, and engineers—to work on critical design challenges.

The medium is the studio environment—nothing new for architects, planners, or landscape architects, but decidedly different from the traditional environments of other professionals. The experiment has been crafted to understand whether disciplinary cross-talk, exposure to a wide variety of design methods and ways of thinking and doing, and collaborative work around prototypes and projects can lead to a new form of educational experience and design practice.

The experiment started when I was approached by CED alumnus and lecturer Clark Kellogg, along with Sara Beckman and John Danner from the Haas School of Business. Clark is an architect, designer, and expert on innovation; Sara pioneered UC’s popular course on product design, along with her colleague Alice Agogino from Mechanical Engineering; and John is a management guru and senior fellow leading courses in new venture development and global poverty. They wanted “think-do” space for a collaborative design studio: for classes, informal group projects, and faculty seminars. In the face of their energy, enthusiasm, and vision, I quickly carved out a corner of the 5th floor studio and said: Go for it!

Because enthusiasm is infectious, the deans of the Haas School of Business and the Information School also signed on to participate in the experiment. Dean Rich Lyons of the Haas School of Business recognized that this type of space would afford MBA students a chance to work in a completely different way, not only because it encourages collaborative thought but also because it allows the persistence of visual information over time. After several iterations, we settled on a name: the Cal Design Lab. The 5th floor space is the Cal Design Lab @ Wurster, but we hope that eventually—with community and corporate support—there will be Cal Design Lab facilities in other corners of the campus, creating a network of intersecting groups focused on design in its many instantiations.

In July, a charrette was held to think through how to equip the space for future use. Faculty and staff from CED’s Department of Architecture, Haas School of Business, Information School, and College of Engineering participated, as well as senior staff from Steelcase, keen to nurture an experiment into future learning styles and their physical environments. Even without fancy furnishings, however, students were already being exposed to design thinking in practice; last spring, Jon Pittman, a senior executive from Autodesk, taught his course on the role of design as a competitive strategy there. This year, introductory courses, mini-courses, and project-based courses from architecture, engineering, and business will cycle through the space. Student teams are apt to prototype green products, frame innovative business ventures, craft social marketing campaigns, collaborate around design competitions, and more.

The Cal Design Lab @ Wurster will also be the locus of cross-disciplinary faculty seminars focused on the design process. This effort builds on CED’s tradition of scholarship on design theory and methods; in the 1960s, Professor of Architecture Horst Rittel coined the idea of “wicked problems” and used systems theory and data to understand how designers crafted solutions to them. The seminars’ goal is ambitious: how can we retrieve the still powerful pieces of this scholarly legacy, while recognizing that today’s thinking has changed under the influence of subsequent intellectual currents and a communications revolution that necessarily alter our understanding of how designers think about problems?

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (1964): Professional Studio Henri de Hahn, Department Head Cal Poly is heir to the French polytechnic education, one that finds a balance between theory and practice. This dual identity remains at the core of an architectural education that is committed to nurturing the practice and practices of architecture. In 2005, the department set in place an innovative professional off-campus program that responds to emerging trends in the profession.

A Professional Studio, a collaboration between the Architecture Department and an architectural firm, grew out of conversations with the KTGY Group, Inc. and developed into the quarter long placement of students in firms. During the quarter, the students work as paid co-op employees and are taught a fourth year design studio by firm members.

The program provides students with professional work experience and financial support; a comprehensive design experience informed by the firm’s deep knowledge of a building type, design philosophy, and processes; and an immersive experience in the profession of architecture. Students are involved in co-op work about 24 hours per week and in design studio about 16 hours per week, with evenings and weekends available for additional work on design projects.

The first Professional Studios were offered by KTGY during the 2005-2006 academic year. WATG of Irvine joined for the 2006-2007 academic year, and since then LPA of Irvine, Roesling Nakamura + Terada Architects of San Diego, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects of Los Angeles, and Gensler of Santa Monica have joined the program. Firms typically participate in the program for one or two quarters each year and move in and out of the program as their workload permits. We are fortunate to have the long-term commitment from firms that allows us to offer multiple Professional Studios as an ongoing part of our curriculum.

A Cal Poly faculty member works with the identified firm members to develop the design problem and mentors them in course organization and teaching. The faculty member visits the firm for a mid-term evaluation of student progress and to provide support for the firm members regarding teaching issues. At the end of the quarter, the faculty member, firm members, and students make a presentation at Cal Poly, which all faculty and students are invited to attend.

All fourth year students in good academic standing are eligible for the program. The faculty member, in consultation with the student and firm, makes student assignments based on interest, GPA, and portfolio. Students work in a range of work assignments appropriate to their capabilities and the firm’s needs. They are involved in such things as site visits, client and consultant meetings, production meetings, and CIDP/IDP meetings. The goal is to make the co-op experience as broad and rich as possible. Students create a report on their co-op experience and provide examples of their work. The program mentors at the firm provide feedback on the student’s co-op performance and a grade recommendation.

The firm-based design studio is not intended to replicate an on-campus studio, but to provide students a comprehensive design experience informed by the firm’s knowledge, philosophy, and processes. It is important that the design project, process, and outcomes be unique to each firm within our overall curricular goals.

The project is based on the firm’s experience with site constraints, program, construction, etc. and is designed to capture the richness of the firm’s work. The approach to solving the problem mirrors the firm’s design philosophy and process while providing an opportunity to reflect on its rationale and implications. The output of the process and its presentation reflect the firm’s experience in  creating successful internal, peer, and client communications.

UCLA (1964): SUPRASTUDIO

Neil Denari, 2008-09 SUPRASTUDIO Director

“What’s next?” Although this meta-question encompasses all possible questions about the future of architectural education, within it is the implication that certain agendas have run their course and new ones must be initiated. Now that sustainability, in all of its forms (urbanism, materials, housing, natural resources, growth, etc.), has become, rightly, the lens through which the public discourse of architecture is perceived, “What’s next?” suggests a series of other questions: “What is the future of urbanism?” “What is the language of a sensitive, logic-based architecture?” “What exactly is cultural sustainability?” “How can architecture affect energy policy in the U.S.?” . . . and so on.

These and similar queries prompt an exhortation to schools to “Get Real, Get Public,” to leave the free fall of the digital field for a focus on applied research and the problems that face us as a global society. It is not yet clear, however, what will be the actual role of design, in contrast to the point-based logic of environmental assessment.

To address these questions, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design established a post professional degree program in 2008 entitled SUPRASTUDIO. Designed for M. Arch. II students, it centers around Los Angeles based sites, programs, consultants, and client sponsors, all of which come together in a dedicated curriculum that includes studios, technology and theory seminars, and field research in various cities. More akin to a one-room schoolhouse or the European Unit system, the year is written and taught by one professor with a fulltime assistant, with invited experts forming an expanded faculty team.

SUPRASTUDIO takes advantage of UCLA’s rich recent history of advanced design and reaches for new levels of interactivity with companies and agencies whose work or products affect both L.A. and our lives. SUPRASTUDIO’s agenda is to confront what is now a collective problem—that of the sustainable future—with a sensibility that does not create adversarial relationships between design and responsibility, between aesthetics and the anodyne, between academic and professional realms, or between the commercial and the avant-garde. Each year endeavors to develop ideas that are both speculative and rigorously real.

The 2008-09 year collaborated with Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., to explore the ways transportation and urban form can come together in large-scale undeveloped regions of Southern California. Entitled “Megavoids,” the studio designed a series of projects of enormous scale (both in form and population den sity) that challenged the pro forma of low-density sprawl without recourse to familiar urban models. This work allows Toyota to imagine its future as a transportation solutions company as they look to a peak oil time frame of 2025 and beyond. Field research was carried out in Vancouver (the most livable city in North America?) and Tokyo (the most chaotic with the most order).

For the 2009-2010 year, Professor Greg Lynn and Walt Disney Imagineering studied entertainment and the spectacle of physically immersive environments. Not usually associated with an academic enterprise, this constellation of figures and forces introduced a new conversation on design engendered by the programs of themed environments. Disneyland/Disneyworld has been theorized for years, but this was the first time that design research produced at a research university would have an impact on Walt Disney Imagineering’s design department. Pritzker Prize winner and Distinguished Professor Thom Mayne will lead the 2010-2011 academic year. In collaboration with the RAND Corporation, this SUPRASTUDIO will explore the intersection between cultural initiatives, public policy, and urban design, culminating in a comprehensive cultural plan for a selected city. For more information, see www.suprastudio.aud. ucla.edu.

Cal Poly Pomona: Shaping California’s Future

Michael Woo, Dean

California’s rise to global prominence in the second half of the 20th century was propelled by the state’s trail-blazing Master Plan for Higher Education, adopted in 1960, which opened up opportunities for many young Californians to become the first in their families to attend college. Subsequent decades of prosperity and economic expansion have proven the wisdom of staking California’s future to the public higher education sector.

At Cal Poly Pomona, design education has been a key part of the university’s service to the public. Building upon the polytechnic philosophy of “learning by doing,” the Architecture Department grew as it attracted prominent architects and designers such as Craig Ellwood, Ray Kappe, Richard Saul Wurman, Thom Mayne, and Marvin Malecha to join the faculty; and as it welcomed practitioners such as Richard Neutra and Raphael Soriano, who may have been too busy to teach but came to the campus regularly to critique student work.

As its graduates became known for acquiring practical, employable skills, the department evolved a distinctive role, especially in Southern California, where many of its alumni became stalwarts of the profession. And its high academic quality and low cost to students have made admissions extremely competitive.

But the steady erosion of state support for public higher education threatens the department’s achievements. Prominent faculty may consider moving to more financially stable institutions, and rising costs will close the door on students who cannot afford the unsubsidized cost of a high-quality, professional education.

Yet, even a severe, multi-year fiscal crisis cannot hold back the creativity of the department. For example, over the past three years, department faculty have collaborated with faculty from the highly-regarded Civil Engineering Department to teach an innovative studio offering architecture and engineering students a rare opportunity to work together on the design of a wooden bridge connecting two buildings on the campus. Led by Architecture Chair Judith Sheine and Professor

Gary McGavin, architecture students have come to appreciate engineers’ thinking processes in ways that will serve them well in the real world.

Although budgets are tight, and the university’s bureaucracy does not make it easy to  forge collaborations between departments in different colleges, the value of the experience over three years has convinced both Architecture and Civil Engineering that the relationship needs to be solidified and expanded, even if it requires raising external funds.

ple of raising external funds to create opportunities for students and faculty to interact with industry professionals, the Architecture Department organized a Building Enclosure Sustainability Symposium earlier this year in collaboration with the engineering firm Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, Inc., with additional support from HMC  Architects and other firms.

In addition to the ingenuity of faculty and students, the department has two other notable assets upon which to draw in response to external challenges. First, with Los Angeles County’s infill development to the west and the rapidly-urbanizing Inland Empire to the east, the campus is well-positioned for case studies, pilot projects, and client relationships, which are especially relevant to our growing emphases on sustainability and preservation studies.

Finally, the most striking factor may be the student body’s ethnic and cultural diversity,

with high percentages of students who were born in another country, learned English after starting out in another language, or are the first in their families to earn a college degree. Opening doors of opportunity for those striving to enter the middle class has been the historic mission of public higher education in California.  But for a program that aims to produce the architects who will shape our environments, the daily diversity of life at Cal Poly Pomona is

truly emblematic of California’s future.

SCI-Arc (1972): So We Opened a Gallery Eric Owen Moss, Director

Krishna once admonished Arjuna:

“…not fare well, but fare forward, warriors.”

SCI-Arc was listening.

So we opened a gallery.

Here’s the SCI-Arc conundrum: in a tradition of non-tradition, in search for the perpetual experiment, on the lookout for a pedagogy that hasn’t yet been discovered, SCI-Arc aspires to teach what it doesn’t yet know.

How can you teach what you don’t know?

So we opened a gallery.

What we don’t know is the destination of the architecture discourse.

But we understand where to look.

So we opened a gallery.

What we know is our intention.

We intend to begin again, and again, and again.

We intend to sustain the fragile idea, the tentative thought, the preliminary sensibility, the not-altogether clear hypothesis.

We intend to disestablish.

So we opened a gallery.

SCI-Arc teaches intent: the wonder of wondering, one architect at a time.

Imagining architecture’s Magellans: lost and found, and lost and found again, one architect at a time.

So we opened a gallery.

What’s durable is the intellectual and emotional toughness of SCI-Arc’s critical pursuit.

Not intellectual Darwinism, with gradually evolving chronologies of thought.

More a cataclysmic evolution of thought moving by twists and leaps.

So we opened a gallery.

Magellan’s circumnavigation was never guaranteed.

But the means were available, and the end was plausible.

Ditto SCI-Arc. [Although Magellan himself didn’t make it.]

[And that makes  sense to us too.]

So we opened a gallery. SCI-Arc doesn’t own invention.

What SCI-Arc guarantees is a mind-set of discovery.

Independence, idiosyncrasy, self-confidence.

And that mind set makes invention at SCI-Arc plausible.

Not the durable ends, but the durable means to evolving ends.

It’s the process of imagining that’s compelling. Or more precisely, the pursuit of what doesn’t yet exist.

So we opened a gallery.

Why?

Not long after its birth, the new, once fragile, now less new, no longer fragile, is codified— doctrine, books, has advocates, teachers, becomes an allegiance.

A codex. If there’s a code, there’s a map.

If there’s a map, there’s a route.

If there’s a route, It’s the post-codex institute.

SCI-Arc is the pre-codex institute.

That’s the enduring aspiration. So in 2002 we opened a gallery.

NewSchool: Serving Education, Addressing Need Steve Altman, President NewSchool of Architecture and Design (NSAD) students are making a difference in the real world from San Diego to Monterey to Liberia through participation in Design Clinic. As a continuing opportunity in the curriculum, Design Clinic has provided master planning and preliminary design services to individuals, the underserved, and disaster victim groups and community partners for the past decade.

Started under the guidance of Graduate Program Department Chair Kurt Hunker in response to the damage caused by local wildfires, the program has grown significantly as it has gained visibility in the past few years. Now under the purview of Associate Professor Chuck Crawford and Adjunct Professor Adriana Cuellar, this course allows NSAD to give back to the local, state, and—increasingly—the global community, while affording students the opportunity to test their planning, design, and communication skills outside the classroom. They learn how to deal with the intricacies of ill-defined projects, diverse clients, and the necessities of teamwork.

The projects range from a 600 square foot thrift store renovation benefiting single mothers to a 200,000 square foot automotive museum. Gateway San Diego, an Intermodal Transportation Center Proposal under the direction of NSAD Board Member Jim Frost, was the recipient of the 2009 San Diego Architectural Foundation “Orchid” for planning excellence.

The clinic’s most ambitious project is the Morweh Educational Institute (MEI) in Liberia, Africa (http://www.morweh-edf.org/ project.html). A self-supporting village on 4,000 acres, it features indigenous construction materials and techniques, passive heating and cooling, and a phased construction plan for classrooms, housing, dining and worship facilities, sports fields, and food production, including farming, livestock, and a fishery. This summer, the residents of Morweh began pressing natural mud bricks and digging foundation trenches, and construction is scheduled to begin in December. NSAD student Paul Davis was awarded a scholarship from the Morweh Educational Institute Foundation and will be traveling to Liberia after graduation to assist in the on-going design and construction of the Institute.

Meanwhile, this August, students Miguel Abarca, Yousef Al-Rashed, Allen Ghaida, David Mandel, Lynn Ritz, and Ramiro Saenz presented their models and drawings to over 300,000 auto enthusiasts attending the annual Monterey Automotive Week. The Monterey Automotive Heritage and Preservation Foundation is using this material to obtain entitlements and funding for the most ambitious automotive museum and educational and restoration center in North America.

NSAD students have provided homeowners devastated by wildfires the documents necessary to rebuild their homes; they have worked with non-profit advocates for the homeless to research and interpret building and zoning codes; they have proposed options for transit stations at UC San Diego and a community village and gateway at San Diego State University; and they have advocated on behalf of an award-winning transportation hub that would bring together automobile parking, bus lines, surface light-rail trolleys, Amtrak’s “Coaster,” and San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, all contained under a new urban park at the edge of San Diego’s bay. Current projects include a collaboration with estudio teddy cruz to design prefabricated room additions for low-income residents of San Ysidro, a gymnasium for the YMCA, and a “net zero” care-taker residence for a dog rescue shelter in Texas.

This is (or should be) the mission of every school of architecture: making our communities better places to live and work on both a local and global scale. Our students learn by doing, and the excitement and satisfaction from their experience propels them to want to do even more.

For more information visit: www.newschoolarch. edu/designclinic.

Woodbury University (1984): Fieldwork Transforms

Norman Millar, Dean, and Vic Liptak, Assoc. Dean

Fieldwork is a state of mind, a consideration of the world as laboratory, of lived experience as archaeology. Through fieldwork, we address urgent issues grounded in reality and  contemporaneity. The Woodbury B. Arch. Program has extensive opportunities for students to immerse themselves in architecture away from campus. Faculty lead programs in Barcelona,Berlin, India, Tahiti, Colombia, Costa Rica, Buenos Aires, Nanjing, Paris, Rome, and the American Southwest. Students also take advantage of exchange programs in England, Spain, Germany, Mexico, and South Korea.

Fieldwork as ethos permeates Woodbury Architecture’s new issue-driven master’s curricula, engaging local Southern California territories, distant learning sites, and unexplored academic terrain. The diverging and intersecting paths of alternative practice and entrepreneurship, landscape design and urbanism, and architecture and technology encourage advanced students to develop a practice of architecture with a focused expertise.

Woodbury’s School of Architecture offers programs leading to a professional B. Arch. Or M. Arch., a post-professional Master of Architecture in Real Estate Development or in one of three focuses described below, and a BFA in Interior Architecture.

The focus on Alternative Practice and Entrepreneurship challenges the architect to take a greater role in the development of the built environment, from infrastructure design to policy making to community advocacyand public art. For students who wish to follow their M. Arch. with an MBA, six pre-MBA courses in the School of Business may be taken as electives, allowing the M. Arch. Recipient to move directly into Woodbury’s one-year MBA program.

The focus on Landscape Design and Urbanism addresses the history of the city, urban and rural landscapes, contested landscapes, wilderness edge conditions, borders, energy and infrastructures, geography and watersheds, community design, landscape architecture, urban design, and policy and planning.

The focus on Architecture and Technology addresses emergent technologies and materials, green technologies, responsive environments, building skins and systems, mass production, prefabrication, rapid prototyping, and digital fabrication.

We maintain a critical, inventive, resourceful, and exceptionally dedicated faculty representing diverse interests and strengths. Faculty interests under development include research and design in response to US-Mexico trans-border conditions, and designing a landscape architecture curriculum toward a professional MLA degree. Three faculty initiatives have already attracted external attention and funding:

The eponymously-funded Julius Shulman Institute provides programs that promote an appreciation and understanding of architecture and design, focusing on Shulman’s enduring involvement in the broad issues of modernism in Southern California and the application of photography as a basic instrument for presenting and representing design.

The Center for Community Research and Design acts as a resource and research center for both real and visionary responses to questions about the future of the communities of Los Angeles. Its public art and architecture work in universal design are supported by the NEA.

The Arid Lands Institute (ALI) is an  education, research, and outreach center addressing water scarcity, increased hydrologic variability, and climate change in the arid and semi-arid American West. ALI received a $600,000 grant from HUD in 2009 funding three years of research, development, and educational opportunities in collaboration with communities in Burbank and Embudo/ Dixon, New Mexico, and culminating with a two day conference in 2012 on Best Practices in Dry Lands Design in collaboration with the California Architectural Foundation. ALI is developing a fellows program to attract scholars who will further the institute’s work.

California College of the Arts (1985):

Architecture Labs

Ila Berman, Director

The architecture programs at CCA promote the understanding of architecture as a critical and rapidly evolving practice within a larger cultural context. In addition to providing students a firm foundation in the profession, they offer specialized areas of investigation supported by three exploratory labs focused on digital technologies, urbanism, and ecology.Each lab consolidates advanced research expertise around project- and studio-based activities, which are then shared through public workshops, exhibitions, lectures, publications, symposia, and other events. The labs intensify areas within the curricula, through the provision of core and elective course offerings; they form, as well, the locus of research for our new interdisciplinary, post-professional Masters in Advanced Architectural Design (MAAD).

The MEDIAlab (mlab.cca.edu) integrates the interdisciplinary culture of CCA with our region’s cutting-edge digital milieu. It advances skills and research in generative design strategies, parametric modeling, scripting and computation, building information modeling, digital fabrication, advanced visualization, robotics, and interaction. These rapidly advancing technologies will continue to transform the ways in which we design, build, and think about architecture and will have one of the largest influences on the evolution of the profession in the hands of the next generation. Research projects and events mounted through this lab include the exhibition FLUX: Architecture in a Parametric Landscape, lecture series and workshops coordinated with the 2009 International Smart Geometry Conference, and Biodynamic Structures—an intensive workshop investigating the application of dynamic energetic processes in living systems to environmentally and materially responsive building structures and skins—co-developed with the Emergent Technologies and Design Programme at the Architectural Association in London.

The URBANlab (ulab.cca.edu) investigates the design challenges and potentials of the urban environment in the 21st century. Supported by the lab, our new post-professional program in this area integrates organizational, systemic, and morphological investigations in architecture and urbanism with urban geography and landscape design. Developing projects that operate on the local, metropolitan, and regional scales, this lab engages the realities and transformative potential of the post-industrial city and explores future urban ecologies and their architectural and infrastructural systems. Such projects as Transformative Land: Envisioning Bay Link Pier 70, focused on the redevelopment of the San Francisco waterfront, and Agropolis, dealing with the overlay of urban agriculture and architecturally embedded systems for energy harvesting, represent examples of the lab’s endeavors. Global-scaled research on international cities and their environs, such as Jerusalem: Divided City/Common Ground, and research projects in Shanghai, Taiwan, Vienna, Berlin, and Buenos Aires, are supported through travel studios and collaborative workshops.

The ECOlab (elab.cca.edu) focuses on environmentally responsive architectural systems and ecologically informed design strategies.  Recent projects include the Refract House, first-place winner in the architectural category of the 2009 Solar Decathlon, designed in collaboration with Santa Clara University; the Sustainable Skyscraper: Vertical Ecologies and Urban Ecosystems studio; and the Networked Urban Sensing project, a partnership with geographers and meteorologists at SFSU that develops architectural and urban systems in response to the measurement of city-scaled microclimates.

Digital technologies, global urbanization, and ecological imperatives are three critical domains guaranteed to have a tremendous impact on the ways we practice architecture in the future. Architectural educational institutions must be the place where such design research and innovation occur in ways that are highly integrated with, yet have some autonomy from, the daily structure of our professional curriculum.

Academy of Art University (2001):

Meaning and Making

Alberto Bertoli, Director

The Academy of Art University was established in San Francisco in 1929 with a philosophy of  building a faculty of established professionals to teach future professionals. The AAU began preparations for an Architecture School in the year 2000 and launched its graduate program in the fall of 2001.

Since its inception, the architectural program at the Academy has been under continuous academic development with the intent of educating future design professionals capable of critical thinking and service to both society and the profession. The program teaches students the fundamentals of the architectural profession and, through the exploration of Meaning and Making, exposes them to the continual historical unfolding of architectural ideas—

from classical times through today—and the factors that influence design: aesthetics, technology, urbanism, media, and social behavior.

The School of Architecture at the AAU strives to achieve a balance of focus in theory, technology, history, practice, media, and sustainability and at all times to encourage a synthesis of these areas in the process of design and aesthetic discourse. Fixation with the fashionable is dismissed in favor of a genuine and vigorous creative pursuit and a methodical investigation of architectural possibilities. Siting, planning, programming, selection of materials, and even detail development are components of a conceptual investigation used to understand the formation of architectural Meaning. Design studios are the core of the curriculum and the forum for this continuing discussion. Starting with the analysis of case studies, students develop a personal architectural language that they can augment over the course of a progressive studio sequence. The gradual introduction of studio topics such as sensory systems, site analysis, and the technical and aesthetic importance of structural systems culminates in a comprehensive studio that is a precursor to a two-semester thesis period.

Communication of an architectural thought is encouraged through all available graphic media and techniques. While a comprehensive set of digital resources (emulating those found in the profession) is made available and supported in the curriculum, hand drawing remains a vital component in the generation of design ideas. Craftsmanship is considered a priority, and drawing is emphasized as a tool for both representation and exploration. Similarly, the practice of physical model making is incorporated not only as a representational tool and a mechanism for developing craftsmanship, but also as a design strategy for the generation of form, space, and composition, emphasizing the importance of the concept of Making.

A unique component of academic life at the AAU is the interaction across multiple disciplines of art and design. Selected studios offer collaborative projects in which participation from students enrolled in other programs (Industrial Design, Sculpture, Painting, and Interior Design) provides a cross-fertilization of ideas and uncovers mutually enriching information and processes—an early introduction to the type of teamwork that is critical to the architectural profession.

At the completion of the program, students presenting their final theses are required to extend their field of study and learn to represent their thesis idea in a painting. More than the acquisition of an additional graphic skill, this step involves stretching the student’s notion about the boundaries of their discipline and enhancing their ability to communicate an idea regardless of the media used.

As an extension of the curriculum, the School of Architecture is involved in two major events during the academic year. In the fall, a visiting moderator leads a public symposium, in which a panel of professionals, students and guests debate a pre-determined architectural topic. Each Spring, a visiting professor leads the Visionary Charrette—involving all students in a week-long effort proposing solutions to an urban project located in San Francisco. The Charrette culminates in a public debate in which students must defend their proposals. It is the intent of the school to publish these events at regular intervals and use them as theoretical material within the curriculum.