First-Year Core Studio serves as the introductory design experience for beginning Graduate students who enter the program with baccalaureate degrees in undergraduate majors in other fields. Parallel with Studio is a course in Architectural Graphics. Both provide the experience for describing and manipulating space and form in the analysis, description and design of 3-D environments. Fall semester parallels explorations in design Studio with analysis and description of case studies of historic buildings in Architectural Graphics.
Functional complexity parallels the investigations and increases with each problem.
Students also are introduced to the traditions of the modern experience and theory through readings and, in the spring semester, through further projects which continue the theme of reiterative and sequential design experiences. The tradition of abstraction in architectural thought is presented as a critical feature in pictorial space and its application in architectural design is explored as a means of broadening emerging architectural vocabularies.