Please review the video, presentations and studio descriptions and then complete the preference form. Student preference will be taken into account when making studio assignments. However, students are not guaranteed any specific studio.
Before completing this form, please be sure that you do not have a hold on your account. If you have a hold on your account, work to remove the hold before the survey submission deadline. Students who are currently registered for more than 13 credits cannot be registered for studio due to the maximum credit limit policy (19 credits). So please drop to 13 credits or less. Failure to do this or remove a hold may lead to lower studio priority.
The deadline to submit this form is May 12, 2025.
The fall 2025 Urban Design GRG studio will explore the downtown fringe - that weird zone between the downtown skyline and the rest of the city. That zone where the bright lights fade into tarmac, vacancy, and missed opportunities. Exactly a hundred years ago, the American downtown fringe was already known as the ‘zone in transition’ by Chicago School sociologist Ernest Burgess. And transition it did since then! What is today’s downtown fringe transition, and can we explore new opportunities toward a more sustainable and inclusive city?
Particularly, this studio will focus on the fringe of downtown Buffalo, where we explore the potential of typical downtown fringe properties: parking ramps and lots, low-rise buildings that await a new future, vacant storefronts. But like so many American downtown fringes, our Buffalo site also serves as a gateway and an area of tremendous historic interest. Also typically, our fringe is an area in twilight: a 2021 city RFP for several properties on the site was won by a large developer to become a dense mixed-use district, yet construction has not yet started. A field of parking lots awaits a brighter future. A gateway street looks to remain vibrant.
You will re-imagine the future of this piece of Buffalo fringe. Not just by yourself - you will investigate the site opportunities in collaboration with the Masters of Real Estate Development capstone project in interdisciplinary teams. In various configurations, teams will jointly analyze the site and its surroundings, study downtown fringes and their best practices of transformation, propose a realistic yet innovative urban design and development concept, and engage in an iterative process of designing blocks, building types, and public spaces while testing their financial and regulatory viability. Ultimately, your team will present your proposals to a jury of local development and planning partners and stakeholders for a grand prize, akin to the high-profile Urban Land Institute Hines Urban Design Competition. As this studio has the willing ear of several key downtown stakeholders, who knows what change you might bring to downtown Buffalo's fringe.
Uniquely situated to deal with spatial design of the public realm, urban design is a bridge between architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture. Urban designers work on a range of scale and complexity from the street intersection to the neighborhood, transportation infrastructure, the city, and even the region.
We are Hiro Hata (representing ARC/UP) and Xuanyi Nie (representing UP). As we collaborate with each other, we are privileged to be members of affiliated faculty with the Bruner Center. We are highly indebted Professor Bob Shibley for his support.
Studio as an inquiry to the real-world:
Entitled as Downtown Studio: Queen City Revisit, this is a joint and interdisciplinary studio between ARC and UP. In collaboration with the Bruner Center that is charged with developing a new plan for Queen City Revisit (the first Queen City was adopted by the City of Buffalo in 2004), we will be bringing in a real-world project to the studio. We are looking for a group of highly-motivated and hard-working women and men to take the studio (can accommodate up to around 20-24 students).
As the first of the three-semester studios planned to be offered for the next three consecutive falls starting in 2025, continuing to falls in 2026 and 2027, the topic of the first studio is Discovery to take a deep look at what is downtown, its historic roots, and why it is in decline. We will use a methodology called Inventory & Analysis of the historic and present conditions of downtown and Precedent Study from global perspectives to understand why downtowns go through the cycle of decline and revitalization. In both, we will use architectural-urban design graphic tools (both digital and hands-on sketches and mapping). The first phase will be followed by a short project for redeveloping a major street infrastructure — followed by a final presentation and a publication of a studio report.
Faced with Downtown in decline, the studio/Queen City Resist is mounted to understand causes of decline and to help with devising alternative solutions in stabilizing its downward-slide — and eventually help revitalizing it as a region’s prosperous hub for government, commerce, housing for mixed-income residents, arts, education, sports, recreation, and fine public spaces including parks. Job creation, building permanent affordable housing for a diverse-range population, and making the high-quality public realm in downtown are among top priorities.
The studio’s intended learning outcomes are to familiarize yourselves with the real issues with real people trying to solve the issues at hand, best practices, and holistic thinking with different scales and complexities. In addition, we will continue to learn how to make an effective presentation to the public, and how to put your studio work in the form of semi-professional studio report (in a single-volume) that will be impactful.
The studio will be rigorous demanding students’ concentration and attention. Students will attend in-studio seminars that encourage student conversations/discussions on fundamentals of urban design, planning, landscape architecture, and other important topics. We are planning five-six seminars during the semester as well as inviting guest speakers on downtown decline and redevelopment opportunities. We will develop and refine projects using daily/weekly pinup reviews. At the beginning of the semester, the studio will take frequent field trips to downtown to study the site. No long-distant travels are expected. Faculty will recommend readings and online references for students. In addition, we recommend that they attend fall 2025 school lecture series — especially those given by experts from relevant fields.
In summary, it is critical to learn about/from the real world, its stakeholders, and your future professional contributions to your communities. As the studio will simulate a real-world practice/research, students will learn about effective collaboration with your fellow-colleagues from the same discipline or allied disciplines. The studio is beneficial to second year MARC or MUP students or first year students with an advanced standing interested in the real world and working with real people representing the project. The studio welcomes students with high-level of interest and passion for a large-scale project.
We are open to students after the session through email with additional questions.
The Fall 2025 Material Culture Graduate Research Studio, “Scaffolded” begins by acknowledging that architects typically do not make buildings, we draw buildings for others to construct. Despite this, our profession often neglects to consider how this is achieved. Have you ever questioned, how did that element get way up there? The answer likely involves a person lifted to and supported at that height.
Building technology and the access industry have coevolved, enabling us to surpass the physical limitations of our bodies and ensuring safety during the construction process. Scaffolding, an ancient and globally prevalent technology, has enabled the great works of our species. Many of the earliest scaffolding strategies remain in use across various regions, as new systems and materials continually redefine the boundaries of architectural possibilities.
The studio’s research will focus on both historic and contemporary scaffolding techniques, as well as considering construction strategies that eliminate the need for secondary infrastructure. Primarily utilizing large physical models, students will apply this research to the design of buildings that do not require secondary infrastructure and assume the role of facilitating access and ensuring safety for their creators.
This studio will explore emerging frameworks of architectural production based on mixed reality (MR) guided handwork fabrication and assembly. Student work will hybridize physical making with digital interfaces to consider a workflow that is precise but improvisational, and technical but speculative. The goal is not to replace or improve upon handwork technique; rather, to reconsider the relationship between design and production as a process that demands corporeal visual discernment within architectural representation.
MR can be seen as an extension of digital design proficiency (long since ubiquitous) and presents an educational paradigm that is still in its exploratory phases. Students will gain transferrable skills in parametric modeling, physics-based form finding, interactive MR, and handwork fabrication. Group and individual projects will be grounded by research stemming from case studies in AR/MR and beyond.
The studio frames ‘situated technologies’ into a set of communicative acts by acknowledging that technology consists not only of machines, devices, and software, but more importantly the relationships between tools, people, and fields of knowledge. The influence of the technical arts on traditional forms of architecture has carried through to present day, reinvented by the accessibility of advanced digital tools and manufacturing equipment. Architectural innovations are often made possible when technical expertise matures into creative problem solving, and it is essential that architectural research transcend the traditional borders of our discipline to creatively address an increasingly unpredictable environment.
The studio will build on MR fabrication knowledge developed within recent Situated Technologies coursework. Students will have direct access to Microsoft HoloLens2 and Meta Quest Pro AR headsets, and a third-party software plug-in that facilitates a real-time connection between AR devices and Grasshopper models. Technical skill building will be supported by the studio faculty through extensive one-on-one and group feedback.
During the Fall 25 semester this studio will focus on studies of water through the design of two buildings.
WATERSTUDIO will collaborate with others.
WATERSTUDIO will operate in a global context
WATERSTUDIO will require students to read, write, draw and make.
In 2021, The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University released “Green Reconstruction: A Curricular Toolkit for the Built Environment.” In the document, they argued that:
Change is learned. On the streets and in the public sphere, imagination, knowledge, and know-how go hand in hand. At a time of mounting social and ecological turmoil, planning and designing a just, equitable built environment requires professional focus anchored in intellectual ambition. Rote allegiances to orthodoxy must reorient toward new realities. Professional education, in short, must be rethought. For the arts and sciences of the built environment, change therefore begins in the classroom, as a shared learning that rebuilds the imagination from the ground up: Green Reconstruction.
We will begin the semester by studying and taking the exams for the Certified Passive House Consultant designation. Through a partnership with the Passive House Institute of the United States (PHIUS), we will have access to the course materials, the online exam, and the take home exam that tests knowledge by applying it to a design prompt. If students successfully complete the PHIUS training and pass both exams, they will earn the CPHC designation as part of the studio.
The general question we will address in the second half of the studio will be how can we incorporate these building science principles into additional development at the PUSH Buffalo Sustainability Workforce Training Center on the West Side? Working with PUSH, we will work on the design of a weatherization training facility, a four season greenhouse, and a series of tiny homes to provide residents with training opportunities.
This class is linked with the Ecological Practices seminar taught by Laura Lubniewski; enrollment for the class will be managed by the Department of Architecture. If students are enrolled in the Ecological Practices Studio, they will be force registered into her class unless they have already taken the course. Support for this class comes from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) under PON 3981: Energy Efficiency and Clean Technology Training.
Jonathan White (jrwhite2@buffalo.edu) and Nicole White (nrwhite2@buffalo.edu)
This advanced design studio challenges students to create an inclusive, transit-oriented, mixed-use affordable housing development at LaSalle Station in Buffalo, NY. Based on a real RFP issued by the city and the NFTA, the course blends urban planning, accessibility, housing policy, and architectural practice into a rigorous, hands-on experience. Students will design for real-world constraints while exploring how inclusive design strategies can create more equitable, vibrant, and connected communities.
Taught by practicing architects from the IDEA Center, the course goes beyond minimum compliance to examine international case studies, robust design methods, and real construction documents from clients actively pursuing this work. Students will gain experience analyzing zoning codes, accessibility standards, and multi-use program requirements while generating detailed drawings and architectural diagrams that respond to social, spatial, and urban transit needs.
This studio is intended for students who want to deepen their understanding of inclusive housing, large-scale mixed-use design, and the relationship between architecture and urban infrastructure. The course emphasizes the complexity of coordinating real-world projects and provides a foundation for thinking critically about accessibility, transit connectivity, and community impact in design practice.
Studio Selection deadline has past. Please contact Stacey Komendat for additional information.