Common First Year

COA1012: Fundamentals of Design and the Built Environment II

Prerequisites

 COA 1011

Course Overview

The second of two design studios in the Common First Year sequence required of all students entering the College of Architecture undergraduate programs.  COA 1012 builds upon media and process skills gained in COA 1011.  The design exercises emphasize the role of research, analysis, proposition formulation, decision-making, and collaboration in design process.

The semester is divided into three parts.  During the first part of the semester students work on a series of one-week exercises that take them from research, through problem-formulation, to design development.  Next they spend three weeks putting together a portfolio of their work from COA 1011 and COA 1012.  During the last part of the semester, they work in teams, focusing on particular aspects (detailing, fabrication) of the projects developed by their peers in the first part of the semester.

The two-part research and design project looks at campus bus stops at a series of nesting scales: issues related to product design, signage, furniture, shelter, assembly, building systems, public space, and urban context, are put into play.

During the first part of the semester, students follow a prescribed path of inquiry:  description and analysis based on direct observation; analysis of precedent and analogs; analysis of location and context; a charrette to formulate a design proposition (and design development parameters) that follows from, and is framed in terms of the inquiry carried out earlier; and finally, a two-week design development phase. 

At the end of this phase, students post indexed summaries of their design proposals to the Common First Year on-line environment.  In order to reformat their work for on-line presentation, each student reviews and reshapes his or her proposition and research trajectory.  The cumulative posting produces a rich on-line archive of ideas open to everybody.

During the third part of the semester, groups of students: select one or more projects from this archive (of projects developed earlier); identify the issues germane to the projects selected; and focus on one or more issues to develop, prototype, and test at a larger scale.  Different models for collaboration (client/designer; designer/fabricator; designer/peer critic, etc.) are problematized and employed in consultation with the instructors.

The use of the collaborative on-line environment (the editable CoWeb environment used intensively for the lecture course, COA 1060, in the fall semester) is integrated into the pedagogical apparatus of the studio exercises.  Weekly lectures by invited speakers representing a broad spectrum of design practices supplement studio discussions on design procedures.

Learning Objectives

• Role of research in design.
• Structuring and pacing the design process.
• Problem formulation.
• Collaboration strategies.
• Familiarity with basic digital graphics software (Photoshop, Illustrator).
• Familiarity with basic issues in information design

Course Requirements

• Nine-sheet portfolios incorporating texts and graphics.
• Successful completion of design exercises.