This advanced level undergraduate studio focuses on conceptual and/or design/build topics at the intersection of architecture with other disciplines. Studio options vary from year to year.Section Description:This studio will investigate the reuse of objects, materials, and waste as a critical practice of architecture.Central to the conventions of our discipline is a process of designing through abstraction – imagining idealized form before considering material. Implicit in this attitude is an expectation that the world will transform to suit our needs – providing endless raw resources, extracted and elaborately refined, as building products. The consequences of this hubris are obvious in our growing landfills and ecological crises.The circular economy of reuse suggests a different attitude toward the world – rather than imposing our will on material, design is understood as a creative dialog with the supposedly inert things we call waste. Although adaptive reuse is frequently understood as merely pragmatic and economical, the studio will engage it as a speculative and critical endeavor. We’ll build on Levi-Strauss’ notion of the Bricoleur – one who works with whatever is on hand in devious ways, mis-appropriating known things to make them unknown. In this sense we’ll be as interested in the ethics of redirecting waste as in the potential of reinscribing an object’s meaning and character.The topic will be explored through speculative drawings, reading discussions, case studies, and a series of full-scale fabrication projects using salvaged architectural objects. The course is an Advanced Interdisciplinary Studio. While offered by the Architecture Department the studio’s subject matter and working methods are appropriate for any design discipline including Interior Design, Furniture, and Industrial Design. Students must be familiar with Rhino 3D modeling software or equivalent in order to take the course.

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