Seminars – Architecture
You may view the Fall 2023 Previews Presentation.
Instructor: Chelsea Wait (UWM), Dr. Gail Dubrow (UMN)
At some point in our lives, each of us will be disabled. Whether a broken bone, chronic pain, or a long term disease–we will be in situations that require “special” accommodations. Yet, as designers, we simplify, marginalize, and forget about people with disabilities–often focusing solely on the wheelchair as a representation of all disabilities. Ableism is baked into our profession and our society. To address this, this course will explore how to make inclusion and multi-modal accessibility a goal from the outset, not a final corrective step in the design process.
Accessibility is a strength, not a burden. The improvements that help the most vulnerable also assist everyone. This class is rooted in activist design history, taking an intersectional approach, which will push students to reflect on the numerous ways other forms of identity intersect and have been classified as disability. Bridging design approaches and on-the-ground research, students will explore approaches to accessibility to reinterpret place through the lens of inclusive design and disability justice. We will focus on strategies for increasing public awareness and understanding of disability as expressed in American buildings and landscapes. The class will be grounded in scholarly and activist perspectives on disability
justice connected with related subjects: historic preservation, archival practices, public history, exhibition design, and community-engaged work.
This course is taught in collaboration with the School of Design at the University of Minnesota and other universities across the US.
Instructor: Associate Professor Nikole Bouchard
“Buildings, like humans, are the products of their generation and their location…Buildings are inevitably formed by both a place and a history. They are brought into existence, they have a youth, a maturity, a senility, a death. Buildings are not fixed things; they change, they grow, they get sick, they die, or more commonly, they are murdered.” – Annabel J. Wharton The Tribune Tower: Spolia as Despoliation
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), nearly 500-million tons of construction and demolition debris is produced annually in the United States. As designers, it’s our responsibility to critically question how the resources we build with are spec’d, sourced, transported, constructed, maintained, demolished, and discarded. ARCH 390-790: Latent Potentials is a research and design seminar that asks students to explore alternative approaches to our all too familiar irresponsible building practices. Students will be exposed to a wide range
of design practices via texts, presentations, case studies, and design explorations built around the central theme of waste. The course will focus on research, design, and experimentation through intense investigations that explore speculative approaches to and applications of
reused building materials. Physical material specimens will be produced to test ideas about assembly, disassembly, reassembly, materiality, mass, effect, and spectacle in the design of our built environment as it relates to the careful consideration of temporality and waste. By the end of the course, students will produce a material stockyard that uncovers latent potentials in the “waste” that surrounds us. Learning from resourceful design ideas and movements, students will be inspired to rethink and repurpose existing resources instead of tapping into new ones—to defamiliarize and decontextualize artifacts of the recent past in search of finding new and useful applications for obsolete materials and architectures. Readings, presentations, and design explorations will encourage students to discover how the imaginative and
economical reconfiguration of available, found materials, forms, and methods can create built environments that are more socially, culturally, and evironmentally sensitive.
Instructor: Krisann Rehbein
Are you interested in using your design skills to improve Milwaukee? Do you want to work in partnership with a community group and learn more about your city? This class provides Service Learning credits for architecture and urban planning students interested in using their analytical and design skills to help communities solve distinct problems.
Youth and community engagement has become part of the design process for many urban planners and architects. Through this course, we will explore ideas about what makes a city vibrant and family-friendly and discuss what role residents have in creating that vision. We’ll spend time early on in the class getting to know the neighborhood and resident needs and then move into design and implementation. The goal is to leave our community partner with something tangible that meets their identified needs.
In the past, we’ve partnered with the Historic Mitchell Street Business Improvement District on a series of projects. For that course, we analyzed pedestrian alleyways and created comprehensive plans to activate them as part of the BID’s arts and culture programming. Students created a range of design solutions at various price points. Each design was site-specific and had a detailed budget. Additionally, we created a variety of branding identifies and signage and used recycled materials to spruce up a vacant storefront window. In 2020, we partnered with the Business Improvement District on Historic King Drive.
For the past two years, we’ve partnered with the Art Education department at the Milwaukee Public Schools to design something that meets a teacher’s unique needs. Through Independent Study, I’ve worked with select students to build key designs from the class.
Over the past few years, the class has evolved to include the building of full-scale prototypes and, in some cases, actually building pieces that can be gifted to the client.
The partnership for Fall 2023 has not been finalized but I can guarantee it will be a new challenge and students will have the opportunity to shape the direction of the work.
You should enroll in this class if you:
Want to use your design skills to make Milwaukee a better place.
Like the idea of working with your hands and making full-scale prototypes.
Enjoy the challenges of working with a real client. These might include time and communication constraints, managing expectations and shifting schedules.
Are considering an alternative career in design and want to hear from people who have taken pathways other than traditional firm work.
Want to learn more about community-engaged design.
Instructor: Adam Goss
How is it that today’s architecture students are presenting the same way architecture students presented in 1999?
Authentic communication between the architect and the public is threatened by imagery that lacks real experience and has no regard for the public that uses the space. We can all become better storytellers and communicators to help decode the architectural world.
Students will learn how to reveal why design matters through filmmaking and other mediums. We will study the illustrious duo, Charles and Ray Eames, and make our own contemporary Eames-inspired films.
Building empathy for design and the people using it requires patience and an obsessive process. To add value to a place, designers must take time to connect, communicate, and empathize with people outside the profession.
Instructor: Professor Filip Tejchman
This course is a seminar examining how the institutions of architecture developed during the 19th and 20th century. Through weekly readings and discussions, we will focus on how the struggles and aspirations of early modernism were transformed by regulations, politics, economics, academia, and class-conflict. Emphasis is placed on how contemporary interests such as nature, historic preservation, sustainability, and representation – among others – became regulated institutional expertise. The goal of this seminar is to familiarize students with those aspects of the profession that appear obvious yet conceal divergent structures, motives, and actors.
Course Structure:
Students are expected to read an essay and complete a 500-word written response on a weekly basis.
Every student will make one presentation based on an assigned reading (once per semester)
Students are expected to actively contribute to the weekly discussion.
It is recommended that students wishing to enroll in Arch 650/850: Island(s) also consider enrolling in this seminar as the readings and discussion will offer additional depth to the topics covered in studio.
Instructor: Matt Jarosz
560 Introduction to Historic Preservation is a 3 credit lecture course focused on historic preservation and is required for the Certificate in Preservation Studies – a transcript concentration for graduate students. The course offers students a broad overview of the challenges associated with saving and reusing important historic buildings and environments. As an introductory course, it examines a variety of issues and topics delivered in a lecture format, twice a week. This is the first course of a series of courses at SARUP that prepare graduates for a professional career, in the private or public sector, focused on historic preservation. And though the course is for graduates, it is open to high performing undergraduates who demonstrate seriousness and commitment to this focus.
Course Objectives: A central objective of this course is to better prepare students for work in professional offices that require deep knowledge and broad understanding of historic preservation. As the design profession continues to move in the direction of smart growth, reduced carbon footprints, and ecological stewardship, architecture offices continue to increase their portfolios of work that include reuse of existing. Nearly all design offices now have specialized studios in historic reuse and additions. Unfortunately, architecture schools remain lacking in proper preparation of students. This course fundamentally addresses that need and has been a unique and beneficial offering for students who want to maximize their credentials for future employment. The loss of historic buildings and sites has reduced our collective sense of identification with the past and its ability to provide economic, social, and emotional well-being. This course examines both the theoretical principles of historic preservation as well as the practical challenges of keeping old buildings. By reviewing preservation initiatives of cities and countries from around the world, we become better equipped to develop solutions to our preservation challenges here at home.
This course also connects students with local, national, and international preservation organizations in order to take advantage of the latest scholarship on building retention and reuse. This course tracks the latest technical developments in building research, documentation, restoration, and reuse. A special emphasis is on aggressive reuse of existing buildings and structures and the many challenges associated with their retention. This course will allow students to enter architectural practice with specialized skills to work both the private and public realms of historic preservation. This course also intends to use the great historic fabric of Milwaukee and Chicago as a learning laboratory, with a predilection of preservation principles applied to pragmatic preservation challenges here in the historic Midwest.
Instructor: Carolyn Esswein
The practice-based seminar covers a variety of urban design topics to understand how design contributes to urban character, and how regulations impact the built environment. Local and national projects are presented that highlight design and city planning principles, along with in-class discussions about best practices. Local and national guest speakers are included.
Topics include:
retail design standards and trends from pop-ups, main streets, to big boxes
design strategies and programming for inclusive public spaces
redevelopment planning for mixed-use neighborhoods
missing middle housing as an affordable housing strategy
complete streets policies focused on pedestrians,bicyclists, autos, and alternative transit modes
design features of public spaces, plazas, and parks
waterfront design guidelines as a public amenity and sustainable strategy
form-based codes that regulate how cities are [re]developing.
CLASS ACTIVITIES
mixed-use neighborhood walking tour
street and neighborhood analysis
urban design or building code review
case study
exercise where you apply design and regulation strategies to a local site.
Instructor: Robert Gamperl
This course explores the mechanics of the real estate development process and the role of the architect as a participant, influencer and decision-maker. You will gain the ability to perform financial analysis and understand how the architect can become a key influencer of what is built, by taking a leading role within a multidisciplined development team. The coursework is strongly oriented to understanding the budgetary and financial aspects of the built environment. Your work product will also include a conceptual design associated with the main project. As in the real world, the quality of your design concept is equally important to the success of your financial and business decisions. While you’ll be gaining new skills using spreadsheet-based analytics, you will learn how to couple that analysis with a design proposal you
formulate for a particular site.
This course will be most successful in person and its outcomes will largely be based on your participation. There will be a text book that supports the class discussion and real world investigations. We will meet
in the evening weekly, with each class being critical to build upon the prior discussions and exercises. Resource: Real Estate Development, Principles and Process, 5th Edition by Mike E Miles, Laurance M Netherton, and Adrienne Schmitz
Seminars – Urban Planning
Instructor: Steve Kreklow
An understanding of public sector financial principles and policies as well as budget processes is vital to a successful career in local government. This course, led by an instructor with 30 years of experience in public sector management at the local, state, and federal level, while providing students with a practical understanding of the application of key budgeting and finance concepts including:
Development and application of financial policies,
Long-range financial planning,
Capital planning and budgeting,
Economic development from a local government finance perspective,
Revenue analysis and forecasting,
The budget cycle: roles and responsibilities,
Performance management and budgeting
Coursework also includes opportunities to apply concepts to exercises simulating real world work assignments that might be typical for individuals in local government entry level positions.
Instructor: Carolyn Esswein
WHAT MAKES CITIES GREAT PLACES TO LIVE, WORK, AND PLAY?
The practice-based seminar covers a variety of urban design topics to understand how design contributes to urban character, and how regulations impact the built environment. Local and national projects are presented that highlight design and city planning principles, along
with in-class discussions about best practices. Local and national guest speakers are included.
Topics include:
retail design standards and trends from pop-ups, main streets, to big boxes
design strategies and programming for inclusive public spaces
redevelopment planning for mixed-use neighborhoods
missing middle housing as an affordable housing strategy
complete streets policies focused on pedestrians, bicyclists, autos, and alternative transit modes
design features of public spaces, plazas, and parks
waterfront design guidelines as a public amenity and sustainable strategy
form-based codes that regulate how cities are [re]developing.
CLASS ACTIVITIES
mixed-use neighborhood walking tour
street and neighborhood analysis
urban design or building code review
case study
exercise where you apply design and regulation strategies to a local site.
Instructor: Michael Benedict
In today’s technology sector Geographic Information Systems is making a name for itself as a leader in helping to understand complex geospatial questions. According to US Department of Labor, GIS related fields are one of the three technology areas that will create the greatest number of new jobs over the coming decades. ESRI, the leading GIS software company, says the industry is growing at 35 percent overall, and some of the sectors such as business GIS are growing at a 100 percent rate.
This graduate and under-graduate course covers core GIS concepts, history, techniques, smart cities, ethics, and real-world GIS applications. Students will get an appreciation for different GIS technologies and software often used by governments and the private sector to deliver meaningful maps and applications. We touch on GIS software such as ESRI, Google, and QGIS. Other topics covered include GIS data, map making, GIS analysis, and what it means to be part of the GIS community. The course consists of a lecture and a lab section. The lab section of the class focuses on learning and using modern GIS software, such as ArcGIS Online. Students learn how to use ESRI’s StoryMap technology to build a real world GIS application for their final project.
After completing the course students will understand modern web-based GIS software and how it can be used to help solve many of today’s local, regional, and global issues.
Instructor: Carolyn Esswein
PRINCIPLES OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY
A sustainable city includes human, social, economic, and environmental principles, combined within our built environment. The seminar explores how planning and design decisions can improve the quality of cities. Local and national projects are presented that highlight sustainability standards, trends, and principles, along with in-class discussions about best practices. A variety of guest speakers will provide multiple perspectives: architecture, planning, and political ecology. Speakers will present their work to demonstrate how resiliency is at the core of their mission, and how projects are improving the built environment to create healthier cities.
COURSE TOPICS
Adaptation + Resilience Planning
Smart Growth Strategies + Technology
Urban Agriculture Opportunities + Challenges
Compact City Design
Green Infrastructure
Campus Sustainability Efforts
Urban Open Space Benefits
Equity of Sustainability Impacts
Water-Centric Cities and Policies
Rating Systems, Scorecards, + Dashboards
Removing Barriers to Green Development
CLASS ACTIVITIES
Site Tours
Interactive In-class Viewpoints
ecology + economy
diverse strategies for community
recycle + reuse realities
technology assistance
future feasibility
Municipal Planning Assignment
Rating + Measurement System Assignment
Group Project: Special Topic
Case Study + Application
Design Studios
Mixed Undergraduate/Graduate
Instructor: Matt Jarosz
BSAS students enroll in ARCH 650
M.Arch students enroll in ARCH 850
This studio focuses on the interrelated problems of historic preservation, adaptive reuse, and the design of new construction. These issues are investigated through design interventions in complicated and controversial physical, social, and political settings. The semester
includes three different types of preservation design challenges.
Project #1 – DOCUMENTATION: Taliesin Workshop – Wood Plus: Saving Wisconsin Barns, Sept 21 – 23, Spring Green, WI
The great barns throughout Wisconsin have struggled to remained. The vulnerability of wood has contributed to their extensive decay. This first project will include a three-day workshop at Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio in Spring Green, WI. Students will
be divided into teams and complete a laser scan documentation of the barns. This will be on display at the workshop and students will be able to participate in a series of seminars with design professionals, focused on wood construction. Additionally, student teams will laser scan and convert into VR, documentary information about a series of mid-century modern houses designed by the Leenhouts and located in the Milwaukee area. Students will work with Professors Gabrielle Bustoss and Whitney Moon to create a Virtual Reality experience of the houses as part of a special exhibit.
Project #2 – ALTERATIONS: The FUAS German Collaboration – Reusing the Industry.
Frankfurt University of Applied Science has collaborated with SARUP several times. Last year UWM students went to Germany and the German students came here last fall. The collaboration was created to interact with the German students and faculty in the newly emerging interest of reusing abandoned industrial campuses. Both Frankfurt and Milwaukee have an abundance of these complex but interesting building collections. Students will properly document these places using advanced laser scanning tools of the HPI and create REVIT drawings. This will be the backdrop information for new design interventions that advance the beauty and sculpture of these places while proving practical ideas of reuse.
Project #3 – ADDITION: The Oak Park Project – A Visitor Center Addition to Unity Temple, Oak Park, Il
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois is an international landmark of the highest order. The building exhibits the genius of Wright on many levels – firmness, commodity, delight. It has been visited and experienced by many great architects over the years.
Its appeal has also been its challenge. Though a private religious use, the great crowds of visitors (who have provided much needed cash for restoration and maintenance) have interfered with the religious programs. Students will be challenged to create an adjacent visitors
center that respects the existing and provides much needed new program services. The purpose of the studio is to go beyond the hypothetical and to use real programs and real budget constraints to address matters of design, heritage research, technology, and building construction with extant buildings and environments. These existing conditions will not merely serve as the default backdrop for new design interventions, but will, in fact, determine the most appropriate reuse function and visual expression for a new generation.
Instructor: Professor Lindsey Krug
BSAS students enroll in ARCH 650
M.Arch students enroll in ARCH 850
Mono-Poly-Dollar was developed with the support of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and was the recepient of the 2022 Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society. For more info about the winning course proposal, see here:
https://www.acsa-arch.org/resource/course-development-prize/2022-course-development-prize-winners/
As of March 2023, with 19,022 stores and counting, Dollar General Corporation continues to operate as the country’s largest small-box retailer (with nearlydouble the number of Walmarts). Nearly 1 in 3 new stores opening in the US is a dollar store, revealing an unprecedented proliferation of the dollar store economy, and as a result, the dollar store architectural landscape. During the Fall 2023 semester, this design and research studio, running concurrently at UWM and the University of New Mexico, will use Dollar General Corp, the largest and most influential of the dollar store triumvirate (Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General) to examine the country’s environmental, economic, and architectural fault lines, and highlight this understudied vernacular typology. The course asks students to re-imagine the architectural canon, challenge their existing value systems, and use the local and familiar as catalysts for change. Through a process of close examination, research, and debate, students will form positions, establish critiques, and build new dialogues to test the efficacy of their claims on how small-box architecture has the potential to create new design regimes to respond to 21st century questions of climate change, equity, and sociality.
With an open-mind toward the dollar store as a heroic architectural act, students will formulate socio-spatial positions and projections by conducting primary research in the form of local travel, interviews, documentation, product testing, and studying permitting applications. As students unpack the complexities of Dollar General as a case study in American 21st-century capitalism, they will acquire projective and bold design skills, imagining experimental architectural futures that take root in the urgent issues of today. Students should be prepared to take several local day trips – both during and outside of scheduled class time – to visit various Dollar General stores and distribution centers.
Instructor: Brian Schermer
BSAS students enroll in ARCH 650
M.Arch students enroll in ARCH 850
Housing the country’s aging population in the future will rank, along with climate change, as one of the most significant challenges for architects and planners. It will require a sea change in how we think about space, building codes, services, community, and what it means to grow older. We need to invent new programs and architectural solutions. With imagination and insights built upon a fuller understanding of the human condition and the participation and expertise of people who seek to live better lives, they will be.
The Living Well Initiative, a consortium of Milwaukee-area corporations, seeks to inspire future architects and designers to imagine age-integrated communities that promote active living and enable people to pursue purposeful and meaningful lives. This studio will introduce students to industry players, including architects, developers, careproviders, as well as inventors of cutting-edge technologies intended to improve thequality of people’s lives as they age.
Instructor: Professor Filip Tejchman
BSAS students enroll in ARCH 650
M.Arch students enroll in ARCH 850
How do we live now? Or, how could we live now…?
Throughout history, Architecture has served as a catalyst for responses to often wildly dynamic social, cultural, economic, and technological change. Habitation, in particular, was once the site of constant design interest aimed at supporting new and emerging societal habits and etiquettes. Unfortunately, our contemporary state of being when it comes to the concepts of living and dwelling have not kept pace with the dynamics of this century.
Although we are surrounded by spaces that seem unchanging, much of what we consider familiar, if not expected, is a relatively new creation. It was not unusual for someone living in an apartment building in Milwaukee at the turn of the century, to share a bathroom with other tenants, to not have the use of a private kitchen, and to use their — only —room for everything ranging from sleeping to entertaining, and even to conducting business. Similarly it was expected that every respectable private residence at that time included a parlor for receiving guests, a separate study, dining area, living room, as well as an area for servants to move about and provide for the needs of the inhabitants, including a cellar and pantry, and possibly an ice house.
How we live now is a reflection of a century of economic growth and technological change, shaping our needs to reflect our historic desires. And in this way, the domestic space of the western world has become a homogenous amalgam of rooms set aside for rituals that we never participated in as well programs that have morphed from utility to excess — restaurant scale kitchens used for serving cheese and wine and enormous bathrooms styled as day-spas for Caligula’s descendants. Whether living in generic abundance or near-poverty, our concept of home has remained stable and universal. Living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen/dining, suggest a surety of what we imagine as necessary, but also assume that humanity is primarily composed of families and not single people, single parents, co-parenting couples, the elderly, or any of the infinite range of possible combinations. No matter what, we’ve decided that the best fit for everyone is some version of what was desirable circa 1900, but with a refrigerator and
bathroom. That, is the good news.
The bad news is that our homes are play the role of low-security prisons for reinforcing codes of cultural and economic conduct that are at odds with our circumstances — environmental and social. The potentials of economic abundance that we enjoy and our collective desires are squandered on the same bathroom, the same kitchen, the same infinity pool, home theater, wine cellar, outdoor deck with stainless-steel grill and fire ring. It is as if the entirety of architectural invention has been replaced by the mentality of a real estate agent. In Island(s), we will examine how we could live now by developing prototypical dwellings for a range of persons and situations. Our goal is not how to tailor a better combination of living room, bedroom, kitchen or bathroom. Rather than using architecture as a purely reactive tool for the design of a better prison, we will work to make projective proposals that set us free, that ask: How could we live now?
This studio is aspirational in its design goals, yet it is also pragmatic in its methods. Three dwellings will be designed over the course of the semester and each is expected to address issues of structure, building envelope/cladding, construction, interior finishes, and life-safety requirements. Consider this a residential version of the comprehensive studio. Physical model-making will be the primary design exploration tool.
Instructor: Trina Sandschafer, et. al., Kahler Slater
BSAS students enroll in ARCH 650
M.Arch students enroll in ARCH 850
Recognizing the richness of collaboration between academia and practice, we are excited to introduce an unprecedented model of collaboration! With this studio, we will bring together students in a cross collaboration between cities, universities, and practitioners.
The Kahler Slater Studio will be a collaborative studio bringing together: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The studio will focus on design issues relative to the needs of the city in which the studio is housed. In 2023, the site will be in Milwaukee. Central to the area of study will be an understanding of the urban environment and context in which our site and building are located. The urban scale and complexities will inform the architectural response.
The Kahler Slater Studio will be offered in the fall semester for 3 years: Fall 2022, Fall 2023, and Fall 2024. The 2023 studio will be dedicated to the overlapping areas of Education, Sports and Wellness, and Culture. Effort will be made to incorporate Corporate, Hospitality, Residential and Healthcare uses. Interdisciplinary study will be central to the studio approach. Studio kickoff, research, and reviews will engage real world stakeholders including city officials, client partners, and collaborators.
The Kahler Slater Studio will be held in our Chicago and Milwaukee offices. Students from each school will be hosted by the Kahler Slater office in their home state and collaborate on a regular basis. This immersive experience will support energy and collaboration of the combined professional and academic studio. Travel between studios is part of the course. Our robust group of Kahler Slater design leaders are eager to support this initiative as faculty, guest lecturers, and reviewers and each student will be matched with a one on one mentor. At the conclusion of the semester, students will collaborate with our graphics team to produce a portfolio of the research and design outcomes of the studio. One student will be awarded a guaranteed internship in any of Kahler Slater’s offices.
At Kahler Slater, we believe in the power of design. We believe in collaboration. We view this studio as an extension of these beliefs – a studio which will bring together academia and practice, ensuring that we design to enrich life and achieve powerful results. Join us.
Instructor: Marc Roehrle
BSAS students enroll in ARCH 650
M.Arch students enroll in ARCH 850
This semester we will focus on the design of an affordable single-family house. I have been working with the Milwaukee chapter of Habitat for Humanity for a few years now – designing several prototypes that they are currently building. We will design a single-family house on a typical urban lot by engaging in “real world” conditions – buildability, cost, bureaucracy, climate, culture, sustainability, etc. Furthermore, we will explore domestic architect in all its complexity.
The greenest square foot of any building designed is the square foot that isn’t built. One component to producing affordable housing is to decrease its size. Over the past several decades, the average size of an American house grew from 1,600 square feet in 1973 to 2,500
in 2015. This increase in the size of the house coincided with an actual decrease in the size of the family from 3.01 to 2.54. In other words, in this period the square foot per person grew from 550 to 1,050. (Source: Census Bureau). We will explore how to do more with less; how to
be smaller and smarter.
This studio will perform a deep dive into your design. As architecture is both a physical and intellectual endeavor, your projects will be predicated with intention. And throughout the semester we will explore how to make your ideas manifest. We will develop your projects at
multiple scales – from site plans to window details. At the end of this semester, you will have an understanding of how to design, beautifully detail and construct a wood-framed house. I will encourage you to challenge your preconceived notions. You will be pushed to develop a
rich, sophisticated understanding of the elements of building – door, window, wall, ceiling, roof. You will be challenged to be innovative, smart, and thoughtful. You will have the ability to work in pairs this semester. You can sign up for this studio with a partner in mind, you can be paired up once the class has been enrolled, or you can work on your own. This will all be determined by total enrollment numbers.
The housing industry requires a Copernican Revolution. A critical evaluation of current building practices needs to be undertaken from the role that offsite manufacturing can provide, to creatively rethinking the systems required to build a home and by implementing best practices
to achieve the highest performing home in the most economical means possible. Smarter smaller designs will greatly improve the daily life of the homeowner and can be that first step to eradicating poverty and spurring generational wealth. As Einstein famously said, “Insanity is
doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Design Studios
Graduate Only
Instructor: Jim Shields
This studio will provide a comprehensive model for the entire building design process from programming to construction documentation. This model will call for design excellence and integrity at every phase in the design of a single public building, pursued throughout the course of the semester with a focus on simple, direct, and elegant design solutions. Students in this studio must be able to comprehend the technical aspects of design, systems, and materials, and be able to apply that comprehension to architectural solutions.
The studio project will deal with the planning and detailed design of a building intended to house and make available for study an important collection of historic books, bound manuscripts, records, and photographs. This building will be called The Archive of the City of Milwaukee and will bring together collections from several institutions (City ofMilwaukee, County Courthouse, Historical Society, etc.) and provide the collection with proper facilities for the storage, conservation, use and exhibition of these materials. In this conjectural scenario, the city has asked for a Net-Zero Ready Building, involving significant reductions of energy usage from a standard building, and an extremely efficient mechanical system that is all-electric in operation to allow for a fossil fuel free future.
