Courses

This UB Seminar on Architecture and the Human Body engages students with questions of significance in architecture and the wider world. The Seminar helps students with critical thinking, ethical reasoning, communication skills, and learning at a university, all within topic focused subject matter. The course includes an introduction to ways that design and related disciplines are studied within a large research university.

ARC 101 introduces a variety of architectural concepts and principles with a primary focus on four elemental aspects of architecture: space, site, use, and materials. The course helps students build a vocabulary of fundamental architectural terms and definitions that students carry throughout their development and careers as architects. Students are also introduced to a variety of drawing and modeling techniques, as well as decision-making strategies and design processes. Learning is both individual and collaborative. 

Let’s celebrate the 105-years-old Dom-ino system by Le Corbusier. By this prototype, we are freed from the traditional practice of building facade, liberated from the conventional dependence on tectonics, and released from the plan typology. Before the Dom-ino system, the structure, history, and authority were evident on the facade, but Corbusier saw this system as a ‘free facade’ and ‘free plan’ toward the architecture of the new industrial era. 

Overview on interrelationship of the physical environment and buildings, specifically examining site design and environmental technologies, as they relate to environmental building systems design. More specifically, will develop an ability to respond to site characteristics including urban context, developmental patterning, zoning, soils, topography, ecology, climate, and building orientation. Students will also be introduced to the environmental technologies of lighting and acoustics including criteria relating to concepts and analysis in support of building systems design. Includes lectures, labs, field work, readings, exams, and projects. 

The studio will begin with the construction of buoyant vessels which will be floated at Gallagher Beach and raced as part of an annual regatta. As an instrument, they are ideal objects from which to investigate many fundamental questions that pertain to the tectonics of architecture – space and geometry, structure and skin, form and function, material and construction, etc. As an introduction to a semester-long pedagogy focused on tectonics, students will work collaboratively to design, fabricate, and float a 1:1 wooden vessel.

As the third course in the undergraduate media sequence, ARC311 aims to build on skills attained in Media 1 + 2. Media 3 explores the relationship between 2D and 3D information through a series of tutorials and workshops. 

A compendium on buildings, summarizing the essential information a developer needs in order to participate with other team members in the design of buildings, presented in a concise and comprehensive manner. 

In this seminar, students study architectural education and its recent history, as well as its implementation at K-12 levels. The seminar begins with readings, discussions, and planning sessions that introduce the basics of lesson planning and design curriculum development. Subsequently, each student will have a teaching experience in which they partner with a local architect, a primary, middle, or high school teacher, and the seminar instructor. 

The driving force of cities arises from collective energy. These days, that energy might be social, economic, political and environmental, with increased 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 is central in the design of urban housing. 

As a continuation of the media course sequence, students will continue building proficiency with 3D modeling techniques as they pertain to architectural visualizations. The primary focus of this course is to practice modeling with intention, by incorporating the design of architectural form, structure, and skin into a single coordinated process. Hands-on tutorials and weekly exercises are intended to assist and reinforce the studio agenda, while covering a variety of technical topics that are relevant to the current digital architectural toolset.

This seminar will focus on tectonics, the convergence of poetry and technique in architecture. The course will explore innovative uses of materials through the examination of a series of contemporary buildings by distinguished international architects. It will seek to develop an understanding of how technical decisions in the deployment of materials, construction systems and details can be directed towards conceptual and cultural ends.

This is the second course in the Structures sequence. We will begin the semester by learning what types of loads are applied to our structures by using Building Code prescribed loading criteria such as Dead, Live, Wind, Snow and Seismic Loadings. The course will then move to develop an understanding of how these applied loads are resisted in structures using various materials such as wood, structural steel, reinforced concrete and Masonry. 

This is the third course in the structures sequence and will attempt to connect the basic understanding of structural behavior acquired in previous courses to the design-related thinking integral to the production of architecture. Thus, although focused on the study of structures, this course will investigate the relationship between structure and architecture. 

Environmental Systems 2 deals with the thermal and environmental processes that affect buildings, and gives design students the means to respond to and manipulate the thermal environment. Building science and design principles will be presented against a backdrop of sustainability: buildings consume 40% of the energy used in the US each year, mainly through heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting. Integration of appropriate environmental technology suggests ways that this energetic appetite might be reduced. 

The fusion of biological, technological and design expertise present in alternative practices today has a robust history. That history, in turn, draws on an alignment of architecture with the natural world that has prevailed since Alberti declared that nature demonstrated reproducible principles of harmonious unity. What was designated by the term nature, however, has changed with time. The focus on anatomy and classification, for example, yielded to evolutionary reasoning in science and design with the emergence of the biological disciplines early in the nineteenth century. 

This course will focus on early career development in the profession of architecture. The goal is to help students understand the various professional trajectories available and provide guidance as to the necessary steps to follow the path they would like to pursue. Through presentations, readings and weekly discussions students will become familiar with both traditional and alternative career paths in architecture and design.

The seminar gives students an opportunity to explore and improve techniques for assembling legible, clear, graphically engaging work portfolios. The capacity to produce, format, manipulate and present design work is a key skill in the visual communication and conceptual narrative of an architect's career. 

This course will offer students instruction in assembling a clear, legible, graphically compelling portfolio of their work.

Your portfolio is the main document showcasing your work you accomplished during your time studying architecture to a larger audience. The portfolios significance can be compared to architectural photography in the work of an architect. You will spent one semester to critically assess your work and create the strongest documentation possible of your work. 

The collapse of land values in Detroit and the city’s subsequent ‘comeback,’ have been widely publicized. In a span of only ten years, towers that once sat vacant are now occupied, and construction has recently begun on the new tallest building in Michigan. Real estate speculation abounds. Yet each year, tens of thousands of families continue to lose their homes through foreclosures and water shutoffs, driving a cycle of poverty, vacancy, and blight demolition. While downtown development booms, the majority of the city suffers from disinvestment.