STUDIO OVERVIEW
Design Studio I is the second semester of an innovative new way to teach and learn architectural design—its language of visual communication and related concepts, theories, and creative problem-solving design methods in 5 design projects exploring 4 historical definitions of architecture, re-contextualized for our time, plus a new one. Students develop their powers of observation and design awareness through techniques of critical systems-thinking & communication with readings and precedents to increase their sensitivity toward the built environment related to the natural world. Probe 4 explores an emergent definition of architecture as the art + science of social-ecological systems design: human-to-natural environmental transactions between biotic/abiotic elements + processes across spatio-temporal scales toward greater global-to-local systems resilience and adaptability. Students took on the systems analysis and design of a ‘center for regenerative architecture’ in nearby Grove Park involving material reuse within a circular economy as called for by the 2024 Lyceum Fellowship competition.