ARCH 506L Intro Grad Studio II/ARCH 506 Graphics Seminar ©
Faculty: Karen King and Geoffrey Adams
Course Timeline: Spring semester of a one-year studio sequence for 3.5 year masters degree: January 20, 2004 through May 14,2004
Number of Credit Hours: 5 hours + 2 hours
Brief explanation of where the studio falls within the curriculum sequence: Second graduate level studio in the 3.5-year masters degree program in architecture.
Pre-requisites to the studio: ARCH 505L Intro Grad Studio I ARCH 505 Graphics Seminar I ARCH 561: Graduate Seminar I ARCH 541: World Architecture I ARCH 285: Construction I Co-requisites: ARCH 568: World Architecture II ARCH 573: Arch Programming ARCH 381: Structures I
Approximate Number of Students: 22 students (two sections)
Pedagogic Framework
Typically we give three projects varying in scope, scale and site which explore process, the city, and the section (as the base issues) along with a final portfolio submittal for the year. The project timetable is approximately five weeks, two weeks, and seven weeks with two weeks for the final portfolio submission. The semester is woven together utilizing the notion of connectedness and shifting scales contained within Charles and Ray Eames' film, Powers of Ten. The studio meets three days a week for 4 hours each day and the graphics seminar is rolled into the studio process. There is a lecture and discussion component along with work in the studio. Students work individually and in teams depending on the project and the specific content. Desk critiques, pin-ups, group discussions, formal reviews, gallery reviews, written feedback, and exit interviews are all employed as means to give students feedback on their process, progress, and product. Students use computers, hand drawings, physical models/assemblages/collages and writing to explore the issues posed to them. We occasionally travel with the studio when it benefits a particular group (this is determined through the acquired knowledge and accumulated experience with these students in the first semester). The studio structure is akin to jazz in that we set the basis for what we need to accomplish, but allow for adjustment and improvisation based upon getting to know these students in their first semester.
Project Overview
Finding middle ground: We propose to embed a user-expert into the studio across three projects. Please see the approach section for pedagogic philosophy and reasoning regarding this tact. We give three projects of varying scales, with suburban/urban/city slice sites, which focus on process, section/vertical aggregation, and seeing/analyzing context. We do not determine the program topics until we get to know the students, but always give projects that we would enjoy doing ourselves. Past projects include neighborhood schools, alternative gymnasiums, body parts, research/analysis/transformation, single room occupancy, shop/residence for a toymaker, analyzing/unearthing/reconstructing the city, atomic research center, and affordable single family housing (secca HOME/House project). Our user-expert would join us throughout the semester to discuss visitability/accessibility/universal design and architecture across projects, helping us find the desired middle ground. We would not give a special project, but establish a thread, a continuum in the beginning of architectural education, one of many components folding into the process of design.Core Objectives
- Humanize what architects typically view as statutory requirements.
- Find design opportunities in the range of human experience, which is not only visual, but involves the other senses as well.
- Find a similar level of dimensional information for accessibility as that employed for other real world issues introduced and developed in this semester such as egress/exiting, structures, etc. (i.e. develop rules of thumb for accessibility to go along with rules of thumb for other types of issues).
Clients and/or user consultants involved
Rebecca Ingram is an architect, a woman, and a person with a disability. She is a very fine practicing architect and access consultant with advocacy and teaching experience. Her diverse experience gives her a unique perspective that would be invaluable to our students. As she has conveyed to us, "The key is to get architects to integrate all the issues of design from the outset of a project. What better place to begin than at the beginning of architectural education when enthusiasm renders students open to the possibilities."
Bio: Rebecca Ingram is an architect and access consultant with many years of experience in both the public and private sectors, most recently as a technical specialist for the contractor developing Fair Housing training for HUD. She worked with the internationally recognized firm of Antoine Predock Architect, and was the project manager for such award-winning projects as the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, Florida, the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, Mesa Public Library in Los Alamos, and the Winandy Residence in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Prior to reestablishing her own practice, she was employed as a staff architect for the State of New Mexico Governor's Committee on Concerns of the Handicapped. This position afforded her the opportunity to be active in national and state building code development, statewide plan review and access consulting. She also provided training and technical assistance to fellow architects, engineers, building code officials, building owners, government agencies, architecture students, and individuals with disabilities.
Ms. Ingram is an ICBO certified Accessibility Specialist and lectures nationally on universal design and fair housing for people disabilities. In addition to her design practice, she works with many diverse organizations to create initiatives to address the housing needs of persons with disabilities. She has served on the Board of Directors of Home New Mexico, the National Home of Your Own Alliance Advisory Board, the Albuquerque Affordable Housing Committee, the Albuquerque Universal Design Sub-committee and she is a member of the Disability Rights Action Coalition for Housing.
Approach to the Proposed Studio Process and Content
This Intro Graduate Studio/Graphics Seminar is the second in a yearlong sequence for students with degrees in other disciplines. The very first project in their first semester sets the framework for the year. It is a cumulated project, built of focused exercises, the typical things one might expect when introducing design. However, we do not stop at composition. Once the students have built the context, they are asked to interview the clients (via narrative), two civilizations with rather different modes of moving through space (motility). Additional amazing characteristics are sussed out in the narratives and used in helping evolve the design to celebrate a program of co-existence. This project sets the content of design: composition, site, sustainability, construction, structures, and inhabitation. Climate and enclosure come later. Every project thereafter, in the 505L and 506L studios are required to be inclusive, regardless of topic and irrespective of legal requirement. Doors are open for important discourse on the human and the dimensional: principles vs. legalities, empiricism vs. the practice of minimums.
Now we aspire to find the next step to evolve the first year experience, a bridge to the real-world client experience which comes later in our studio curriculum (via the design planning assistance center). Because specific topics for second semester (506L) projects are not determined until we know the students better (personal interests and skill levels from the first semester), we are proposing a thread which can give a face and dimension to our content of inclusion. We would use the stipend to involve a user-expert at several key times in the semester across projects. As an architect and a person with a disability, we have a unique resource who understands the spatial way architects think and can fill out the middle ground of why and how with respect to the human and dimensional aspects of accessibility. We believe it is this middle ground that is absent from architectural education, and not only with respect to access. But it is perhaps most evident here as the level of design completed in studios is preliminary while access is a matter of inches as described by documents from which a building or environment is constructed.
The studio experience provides a unique setting for learning, complicated by the fact that beginning students are learning something they do not know by doing. We are open with our students about the challenge this poses. At its best the studio is a rich collaboration where students are not passive learners but active resources for one another. It cannot be otherwise with the amount of material to be covered and skills to be acquired. We do individual work, collaborative work with rotating teams, rotating project charrettes (students work on each others projects), and include students on reviews. Last semester a team of students from this studio won the secca/HOME House competition through a process of competitive collaboration. We seek ways for students to engage their passion for architecture and become as invested in the studio as in themselves. We also use formal reviews as a way for students to learn to present their work. The key is inviting appropriate critics who want to help students learn (not those who want to listen to themselves speak).
Kathryn Anthony, along with Max Underwood from ASU, directed a faculty retreat on studio culture sponsored by the school this past year. While we identified areas for improvement, we were struck by how we were already addressing many of the concerns raised. To our way of thinking these are issues of common sense, basic humanity, investment in our students and in our teaching. Our students already have very interesting life experience by the time they choose architecture. We value what they have to offer and work to make certain the projects include topics of interest to them. We consciously search for the ways each of them learn and provide a framework for each to succeed and build confidence from those successes.
This means embracing their diversity while setting forth common goals and learning objectives. Our location in New Mexico gives us a culturally rich cross-section of students. Along with the more typical mix of male/female and foreign students, Hispanic, Chicano and Native American students from a variety of tribes enhance our cultural experience as individuals and as an institution. And we have been at our best when student experts step forward to share their perspectives. For example, a student from Afghanistan shared their point-of-view after 9.11 and a student with a disability was featured prominently in a university film about program access (mistakes can be profound opportunities to learn and teach as well). Imagine what these student experts added to their studios. And all of our students are experts in something. So we structure our introductory studios like jazz with a construct that allows us to adjust and improvise, drawing out each student and giving them their best opportunity for individual and collaborative achievement.
Documentation is a very important part of this studio for a number of reasons, including the usual opportunities for job-hunting and publication. Students document all projects digitally and produce physical portfolios of the first years work. In the course of composing the portfolio, students see how very far they have progressed in two semesters. This boosts the confidence of students who need it, however, it could do more. We would seize this opportunity to enhance the students writing ability and add a requirement to the portfolio submission for students to write the human experience of their projects (scale/points-of-view/haptics/visual/auditory/range, etc.) with visual or other material from their studio projects as appropriate. Our intent is to have students engage and reflect upon the experiential aspects of their work, while taking measure of the impact of our user-expert upon the studio experience. The ultimate product is, of course, students who think of design as being for people, are cognizant of the range of human experience, and have the beginning conceptual and dimensional tools with which to evolve their future academic and professional work.
Responses to Reviewer’s Questions
- Assure that all projects have a social agenda.
My teaching partner, Geoffrey Adams, and I believe that all architecture is inherently social and political. This is always in our thinking as we develop the content for specific problems and will challenge us to experiment with projects that are seemingly less well suited. For example, we gave an atomic research center, which was intended to confront the complex political and social make-up of our state. New Mexico has one of the lowest per capita incomes, while having one of the highest numbers of PhDs in the nation. We gave this problem (pre-9/11 by the way) to a studio that included students from Europe and Asia as there was the opportunity for diverse points of view. The exchange did not disappoint. Even when we gave an alternative gymnasium project, there was discourse among the students about mixing skateboarders and their counter-culture with rock-climbers and theirs. And of course in this particular case, preconceptions regarding abilities, came to the front of the discussion. We have given topics with more evident social programs as well, such as single room occupancy hotels with retail to support employment and subsidize the sro location, neighborhood schools and affordable single-family housing. The typical language in our project briefs is, “The project must be accessible to the full range of the human experience.” We don’t directly refer to statutory requirements, such as the ADA, until we refer to other statutory requirements, such as the UBC (uniform building code). We prefer to focus on broader issues of inclusion and motility with beginning students.
- Also find ways that the students experience wider client diversity
and that they don’t think that disability assumes wheelchair use.
Assure that the subgroups include: children, older people as well as people
with disabilities.
We gave very careful consideration as to who and how to incorporate user-experts/consultants within this particular studio. Let me outline (as briefly as possible) the considerations which led to the proposal of a single expert consultant and how we think the other subgroups being mentioned are being addressed within the culture of our curriculum.
a. We have the opportunity for students to both present studio projects to communities throughout the state, as well as to work directly with community groups as clients through studio experiences that occur later in our student’s academic careers. This happens in a number of ways. Our original submittal mentions the DPAC studio (design and planning assistance center), which has traditionally provided design services to groups who cannot afford professional services. In addition there is a graduate community studio. Graduate students take one or the other of these studios; and undergraduates in our program have a service requirement that is typically met in the studio setting. Recent projects in these studios have included a main street project for Clovis, New Mexico, street furniture projects for Alamagordo, New Mexico, a bus-stop competition for the city of Albuquerque, affordable housing along the Mexico/New Mexico border, and an early childhood development center for Laguna Pueblo. DPAC has been in existence for more than 20 years and worked with almost every conceivable sub-group including the two mentioned by the reviewers – children and older people. Additionally it is not uncommon for other studios to be engaged in work, which is presented to various communities and private interests. Performing arts centers have been presented in Angel Fire, New Mexico, multi-use developments have been presented in Los Alamos, New Mexico and I am currently co-teaching a masters studio that will exhibit their work to the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine upon completion.
b. Our school is also fortunate to house I.E.E. (Institute for Environmental Education), which works with K-12 students, and teachers who teach architecture in the public education system. That program has recently encouraged and provided a venue for Native American students in the graduate program to work with Native American students in the community. The curriculum component is a service-learning course called Architecture and Children. So there is a direct opportunity (which we failed to mention in the proposal) for architecture students to engage this sub-group.
c. Along with the diverse experience which Reviewer 2 mentions, our students in the 3.5 year masters program are older and often have personal experience (access) to children and older people (aging parents, friends, or relatives) which we encourage them to draw upon.
d. Reviewer 3 is correct in the observation that we have identified a missing element with reference to disability. What this user-expert brings to the table is actually quite amazing. She has worked with diverse groups including those with mobility, vision, auditory, and cognitive issues in her practice, employment with a government agency, and volunteer work. She has practice experience which precedes her own wheelchair use working with Native Americans, housing clients concerned with aging in place, a museum of science and industry in Florida (school children are big users these types of venues and Florida also caters to older people), and a library for the community of Los Alamos. She neither sees nor presents her view as singular – always as a range. Having said that, she is also open to helping students understand spatial issues which are most evident through those who use assistive devices such as wheelchairs, walkers, canes, crutches, vans with lifts and the like.
e. It is very easy to overwhelm beginning students. Remember that parallel to the integration of the user-expert, they are learning completely new skills and to communicate their work though drawing, model building, verbal and written means. This is the semester when they learn how to construct a stair and make buildings that are vertical as well as horizontal. Composition, proportion, scale, light, climate, structures and materials are all relatively new areas they are grappling with. We want to impart upon them the importance of including human occupation and all that entails as being central to their conceptualization, consideration and decision making of their work in design. It is our experience that students also have a learning curve in how to deal with constructive criticism. It’s one of the reasons we try to give them feedback in multiple ways. Our second observation is that people are typically more open to learning from people who are like them in some fashion. And finally, consistency and continuity are of inestimable value to beginning students.
Subsequently, our proposal is for a single user-expert/consultant of exceptional breadth, who can be in the studio frequently enough to provide consistency and continuity for the students across multiple scales of projects; a user who is also a designer, like the students, a woman, like some of the students, and a person with a disability, perhaps like some of the students.
f. One of our observations and concerns about user-experts and other volunteers is that they are generous many times beyond what is reasonable. People with certain types of disabilities in particular require assistance, so that when they volunteer, they are actually paying out of pocket to participate. This should not be the case. So in addition to the other considerations regarding who, what, and how user-experts might be most appropriately employed to expand our learning objectives in the beginning studio as a bridge to other user-client-community experiences, we have concluded that the best use of time and money in pairing the objectives of the awards program with imperatives of the beginning studio and our program as a whole is this single user-expert/consultant.
g. We believe that in this approach, the concerns expressed are being considered and addressed. However, we will also be considering other creative ways of incorporating the suggestions of the reviewers – perhaps expanding our use of the narrative client (which I have experimented with in other studio settings using writings by diverse groups of individuals which are experientially descriptive and suggestive), perhaps by using multiple physical points-of-view in the drawing/observation exercises we do in our study of the city, perhaps in ways not yet sussed out as we are focused on the semester at hand – when we have further opportunity to plan the specific topical content of next semesters work (which happens upon knowing the students this semester).
Hopefully, the clarification of the proposed approach and elaboration of our thinking will provide you with the assurance you require regarding our intentions and enhance your willingness to take a leap of faith with us. We are most excited by the understanding and enthusiasm of the reviewers in their respective comments. It is our sense that you get what we are trying to do and that is source of great optimism to us personally.
For more information contact Karen King at kjk2@unm.edu and Geoffrey Adams at gcadams@unm.edu
Citation: King, Karen & Adams, Geoffrey (2003). ARCH 506L Intro Grad Studio II/ARCH 506 Graphics Seminar II ©. Retrieved (Enter date here), from Universal Design Education Online web site: http://www.udeducation.org/teach/asj/king.asp
