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 result in lower studio priority.
The deadline to submit this form is Monday, May 4, 2026.
If you have any questions on this process, please contact Stacey Komendat at staceyga@buffalo.edu.
New connections
This studio will challenge you to dive into some of the largest contemporary urban paradigm shifts, preparing you for one of the most prevalent urban design challenges of our era. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our cities and their societies have profoundly shifted. Shifting populations and work patterns challenge the connected, equitable, and sustainable city, pressuring public transit and retail systems. While cities are bearing the brunt of these shifts, they also play out in suburbs, which are experiencing similar demographic, social, ecological, and infrastructural shifts. We will focus these challenges head-on by retrofitting the former regional mall, located in an inner-ring suburb just north of Buffalo. At the lynchpin of suburban change, new MetroRail connections, and ongoing ecological challenges, the Mall site awaits a new future, and you will help shape it in conjunction with various local partners. In collaboration with planning and real estate students and co-taught with MSRED director Matthew Roland, you will team up to analyze the site’s potential, survey the nationwide wave of retrofitting vacant malls, and propose a holistic, viable concept, program, block structure, and public space design for the site. The studio is shaped as a competition format, with interdisciplinary teams juried by local stakeholders and experts in urban design and development.
Re-Assembling the City
This studio utilizes hands-on making to engage with architectural artifacts and their real and imagined histories, as well as their potential futures. With a base at The Assembly House, a Dreamworld for the Building Arts in downtown Buffalo, we will explore techniques of construction, reconstruction, and transformation while testing approaches to preservation and adaptive reuse. We will gain a deeper understanding of concepts, materials, and methods of making and pursue possibilities for new architectural designs that respond to the past with an intentionally open-ended ethos. Skills of observation, analysis, and craft will be sharpened through full-scale material experiments, drawing/recording exercises, and fieldwork. Resources within the surrounding city of Buffalo will provide additional opportunities for study. Throughout the course, the field of preservation will be engaged as a creative space rife with contradiction and paradox. Themes of documentation, restoration, and stewardship will be seen against the movements of time, materials, and tools—in a most experimental way.
Architectural Design for Diverse Minds
The fastest growing sector of architectural practice today is behavioral health. These comprehensive centers and clinics strive to meet the growing need for mental-health services through more humane, user-centered design. Yet, behavioral health is not the only area of architectural practice with an increased focus on design for the mind. There is a rising trend in design for safety, healing, and choice in everything from memorials and judicial spaces, to schools, workplaces, and recreational spaces. There is also added awareness of design for neurodiversity, such as ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. As such, this studio will explore ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN FOR DIVERSE MINDS, with each student designing a modest building of their own choosing.
SKY
SKY STUDIO will work on two projects during the semester. Each of those projects will require each student to design an urban building focused on the sky.
SKY STUDIO will require students to read, research, draw with precision and build models at differing scales.
SKY STUDIO will pursue integrative approaches to design and city building.
D-MAC Studio One: Geometric Refinement and Construction
This studio introduces foundational concepts in material-aware computational modeling and simulation, examining how geometric principles shape the design-to-construction process. Through design-build work, students compare physical and numeric approaches to form, structure, and fabrication while exploring how digital models respond to material behavior, production methods, and construction constraints. Students will learn a range of computational modeling techniques as they relate to material production, while testing the relationship between digital workflows and physical construction. The studio will unfold in three phases: (1) the “big project,” a large-group workshop that will culminate in a large-scale installation behind Crosby Hall; (2) the “small project,” which gives students time and space to develop their technical skill sets; and (3) the “design project,” which challenges students to combine these efforts into an individual demonstration of their own design-to-production workflow.