Featured work from Fall 2020 senior architecture studio

ARC 403: Design Studio 7, Fall 2020
Urban Life: Self + Society
Faculty: Annette LeCuyer, Nicholas Bruscia, Erkin Özay, Brad Wales

The driving force of cities arises from collective energy. These days,that energy might be social, economic, political and environmental, with urban density increasingly being seen as a key to ecological sustainability.

Because of its collective character, one of the challenges of the city is the balance between the public and private realms, an issue that becomes central in the design of urban housing. This semester focuses on the urban dwelling as a threshold between self and society, between local and global, and between nature and culture. Instead of thinking of these conditions as opposites, they can be understood as symbiotic states of being whose relationship, or balance, changes at different scales –from room to dwelling, building, neighborhood, city and natural environment.The work isinformed by engagement with urban issues, history and culture as well as materiality and craft. Studentsdeveloped a critical position based on an exploration of precedents, understanding the current sociocultural environment and speculation about the future. Their projects attempted to test this position at the scale of the city, the building and its tectonic detail, in order to synthesize these wide-ranging and often conflicting considerations into an integrated proposal that is coherent in conceptual, formal and practical terms.