Credits: 1-9-4 (4 semester hours)
Type of Course: Supervised Studio
Instructors: Sabir Khan, Ann Gerondelis, Varies
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 individually 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.
During the third part of the semester, groups of students: select one or more projects from the 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 are problematized and employed in consultation with the instructors.
Weekly lectures by invited speakers representing a broad spectrum of design practices and professions.
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