Included are classroom slide lectures, visits to buildings under construction, visits to buildings with serious problems, and studies of student design projects to predict and improve their performances. Required work includes vignette sketches of systems and a report on one serious building problem or failure. 674b, Architectural Product Design and Innovation . This studio course attempts to broaden the design experience by concentrating on the design and innovation of three-dimensional architectural objects not usually found within architectural commissions. Projects include the design and detailing of several diverse, small-scale, architectural objects such as weather vanes, andirons, step stools, mailboxes, bird houses, bicycle racks, etc.
Emphasis is on wood and metal, but all materials are considered.
Issues of detail, scale, proportion, aesthetics, manufacturing, and commercial viability are explored. 676b, Transposition of Information in Architectural Design . This course examines how architectural design transposes the information that designers encounter and use in their work. Through a sequence of reading, discussion, and design exercises, in which each assigned task succeeds from the previous one toward realizing the designer's aspirations, the interaction between free-wheeling imagination and the rigor of knowledge is revealed. The exercise of choices can thus be enlightened, and the designer's relationships with the design process defined.