Spring 2025

Object/Noun/Verb explores the craftsmanship of imaginative storytelling. Through concurrent investigations of narrative fiction and speculative object making, this course bridges creative writing and the physical craft of making to communicate original ideas through the universal language of stories.

This course examines the role of the architectural detail in the formation/thematic development of a work of architecture and how the detail reinforces the theoretical position of the architect.

This freehand drawing studio considers perspective from three understandings of perceptual psychology, including the pedagogy of Kimon Nicolaides, the early work of the perceptual psychologist J.J. Gibson, and Gestalt psychology.

This course investigates the creative repurposing and reconfiguration of found and discarded timber cut-offs (design) as material stock for digitally fabricated laminate wood structures (fabrication). Leveraging computational design tools – AI, parametric design software, and more – students explore novel economic models that are smaller, more sustainable, and circular.

This course is geared towards graduate students who are seeking an internship or new employment opportunities. Focus includes building networking skills, verbal and communication skills and how to increase their human capital.

The current energy crisis and climate change have impelled architects to challenge many standing assumptions in material culture and rethink the relationship between materials, the environment, construction methods, and labor. To address the urgent need for climate protection, architects should scrutinize the enduring material system, and practices and seek simple, adaptive, and constructive solutions that enable ongoing change.

The course is organized as a research-by-design seminar that charts environmental uncertainty and contends with the role of spatial practices in territorial and ecological transformations. Central to our attention is the region of western Pennsylvania, its rivers, forests, fracklands, cities and its associated social, political, cultural and material geographies.