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Special Topics and Seminars
Undergraduate students enroll in 600-level studios; graduate students enroll in 800-level studios.

ARCH 190/390 – Special Topics
Topic: Sustainable Architecture for the 21st Century
Instructor: Greg Thomson

Sustainable Architecture for the 21st Century will introduce students to the concepts and methods being used to design sustainable buildings. This course will cover a brief history of sustainable architecture (so we know where we have been), a summary of current sustainability issues (so we know where we are), before exploring the future of sustainability (so we know where we are going). The course will draw on the experience of experts, examine case studies, and investigate the multi-dimensional characteristics of designing sustainably. As a result, the course will necessarily draw on understanding of sustainability from sources outside of architecture. We will hear from contractors, engineers, energy consultants, government agencies, and architects who work in collaborative environments. Students will learn the differences between energy efficiency, green building, and sustainability, how rating systems are used to track building performance, and how the tripartite goals of economic, environmental, and societal sustainability must be met in the 21st Century. 

ARCH 533 Topics in Architectural Theory
Topic: Urban Design & Practical Theory
Instructor: Larry Witzling

This course teaches students to critically evaluate theoretical approaches to urban design as a practical basic for making decisions about urban form and public places. The course examines a range of urban design theories, including both contemporary approaches as well as their intellectual and historical precedents. Relevant theories for today’s cities address issues of form and spatial order, social and economic factors, attitudes towards urbanism, and issues of public policy. Some theorists are practitioners who focus primarily on explanations of their aesthetic beliefs while others are social critics who address questions cultural, economic, and socio-political issues. Many theories evolved (and continue to evolve) in relation to so-called movements in urbanism including the City Beautiful movement, new urbanism, sustainable urbanism, landscape urbanism, and many others. For this course, the underlying issue is “practical urbanism” -- the relationship of theory to practice and, in turn, how practice informs theory. 

ARCH 533 Topics in Architectural Theory
Topic: Signature Buildings in Geopolitical Context
Instructor: Manu Sobti

This course posits that the history of world architecture should be viewed as the evolving product of catalytic interactions across and within cultural boundaries. Buildings conceived through time and space, especially those that guide the elements of memory, have seldom evolved from within the confines of a single culture. It is therefore critical to look at building and design traditions from both within and without, especially in terms of how architects and designers synthesize diverse, cross-cultural influences. In its detailed "thick descriptions" of selected buildings conceived across time and space in every continent and culture, from the ancient world until present-day, this course evolves a comprehensive model that effectively transcends traditional categorizations of chronology, politics and style, producing a synthetic, interdisciplinary understanding of history within the rubric of an overarching architecture history survey. In its labeling of special buildings across time as "signature buildings", it focuses on how these structures are seemingly endowed with pregnant symbolism and meaning, often including the superlatives of scale, form and function, and setting the tone for important developments in each epoch. Likewise, their architects are often ascribed special status within the specifics of cultural contexts that vary greatly in their socio-cultural, economic and political content.  

ARCH 583 Emerging Digital Technology
Topic: Scripting and Parametric Design
Instructor: Kyle Talbott

Emphasizing hands-on skill development through in-class tutorials and short-duration design exercises, this course provides foundation skills that are becoming a prerequisite for competitive applications to leading graduate schools and entry-level design positions in progressive national practices. Using scripting and rapid prototyping (RP), students will explore parametric design techniques and learn a versatile process of parametric thinking. Scripting is a key parametric design technology, and students will gain proficiency in the coding and use of scripts. Using scripts, students will learn to conceive, generate and manage a range of complex geometry types. Scripting concepts and techniques covered in the course include: generation of planar and curved geometry, propagation of mass-customized components, matrices, gradients, attraction/repulsion effects, randomization, proximity testing, branching, packing and graphic user input. Once students begin generating geometry, they will translate it into material prototypes using laser cutting. This translation between digital and material presents an often under-estimated challenge, and confidence in RP requires special techniques and iterative practice. Students will complete five mini-projects, which use scripted geometry to produce graphical and rapid prototyped output.  

ARCH 790 Special Topics
Topic: Practicum in Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures
Instructor: Arijit Sen

This course explores past and present approaches to the historical study of the built environment and cultural landscapes. Course work includes field application and learning from the analysis of local buildings, landscapes and cultures. Requires travel in/around Madison and Milwaukee. By focusing on the material world this course expands our methods of historical inquiry beyond the analysis of written records, texts, biographies, art, photography and folklore. Although there is a long history of cultural interpretations via the study of the material world, Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures scholars continue to search for new methods of enquiry in the field. Originally based on material culture methods this field of enquiry now adapts methods and theories from environmental history, performance studies, cultural as well as non-representational geography, urban/architectural history, landscape history and public history. Class Text: Thomas Carter and Elizabeth C. Cromley, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Landscapes, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005)  

Mixed Undergraduate/
Graduate Design Studios

Undergraduate students enroll in 600-level; graduate students enroll in 800-level studios.

ARCH 615/815 Studies in Architectural Technology and Theory
Subtitle: M2fx: The Spancrete Studio
Instructor: Gil Snyder

The thrust of this design studio is to explore the relationship between technology and design in contemporary architectural culture. Through the focused lens of the technology of prefabrication in concrete, this studio will seek to reconcile the role of the architect, not simply as the arbiter of aesthetic organization, but as the deliberative force who can effect integration of construction, product engineering, and materials science. This studio is teaming up with Spancrete Industries, one of the premier national purveyors of precast concrete systems, located in Waukesha, Wisconsin, for a close examination of architecture and materiality. This studio will focus on mastering the specifics of precast concrete in order to "push the envelope" of our understanding of these systems, both as constructive processes and as architectural design. The studio will provide students an opportunity to blur the lines between architect, builder, engineer, and scientist with the express intention of relocating the means and methods of building back into the sphere of architecture.

If interested in this studio, email gsnyder@uwm.edu no later than 11/18. Accepted students will be notified prior to 11/21 and registered by the Student Advising Office.  

ARCH 615/815 Studies in Architectural Technology and Theory
Subtitle: Neo-Postmodern Skyscraper/Animation Studio 
Instructor: Joe Stagg

This studio explores a new building archetype, the Neo-Postmodern skyscraper, including programmatic issues, precedent analysis of traditional and future skyscrapers (eVolo), parti-getting, and solids modeling. Vasari’s Adaptive Components, advance REVIT, digital evaluation tools, and 3DS MAX are used to explore form, structure, skin and other elements of the new skyscraper. The animation tools of 3DS MAX are used throughout all aspects of the design process as a means of exploring student design and for creating finalized movie-quality presentations.

ARCH 633/833 - Chicago Design Critic Studio
Instructor: Neil Frankel

This is a focused design studio directed by internationally known Chicago architect, Neil Frankel. As the centerpiece of the Chicago Experience this design studio connects the goals of design excellence in the context of a social research agenda. The program concept is based on demonstrating the inclusive role of design and applied social research for workplace effectiveness. The goal is to expand research as well as to further develop design skills as students engage in studio work, interactive workshops, tutorials, field trip experiences and interaction with corporate leaders and architects throughout the region. The entire semester is spent in Chicago.

Related Required Courses (all taught in Chicago): ARCH 390/790, ARCH 582, ARCH 586

ARCH 636/836 Studies in Form and Composition
Subtitle: Small Buildings in Difficult Places
Instructor: Don Hanlon

"Small Buildings in Difficult Places" encourages students to explore hybrid functions and uses in often ambiguous physical circumstances. This requires a considerable degree of interpretation expressed in metaphor, analogy and iconography. The studio emphasizes the cultural conditions of architectural experience, whether it is the culture imposed by a single individual or a society. Professor Hanlon also encourages experiment and risk-taking in regard to artistic media by which students convey their ideas in design.

ARCH 636/836 Studies in Form and Composition
Subtitle: das Auto Kunstwerk Museum
Instructor: Mo Zell

"Motorization is soaring virtually everywhere. The number of motor vehicles in the world is expected to reach about 1.3 billion by 2020. The fastest growth is in Latin America and Asia." – Daniel Sperling.
"Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all of the wrong reasons."
– Buckminster Fuller
This studio uses the car museum as a vehicle to question and provoke issues relevant to architecture and culture. Each of the following characters considers the automobile differently, providing insight into how one might take a position for this design project. The connoisseur considers the auto as a piece of art; the feminist examines the role of women in car advertising; the cultural anthropologist looks at the effects of the auto on the built environment – suburbs, sprawl, highways or the effects of motorization on developing countries; the enthusiast considers the rally car a toy; the environmentalist sees the car as a pollutant and the resulting network of built form as unsustainable; and the consumer sees the auto as an appliance/utilitarian device.
Character – Viewpoint of the Car
Connoisseur - objet d’art Feminist - advertising
Cultural Anthropologist – suburbs/developing countries
Enthusiast - toy
Environmentalist - pollutant
Consumer – appliance

This studio requires each student to take a position in creating the car museum. Are you the connoisseur, feminist, cultural anthropologist, enthusiast, consumer, someone else or some combination of characters? What kind of museum unfolds from this particular point of view? How would you reflect upon and ultimately (re)present the car?

An optional field trip Germany (Berlin and Stuttgart) will be organized over spring break (March 17 – March 25). Stuttgart:
Mercedes Benz Museum – Stuttgart – UN Studio
Porsche Museum - Delugan Meissl
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart Hascher and Jehle
Neue Staatsgalerie – James Stirling

Berlin:
Transport Museum - Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin - Neubau:
Ulrich Wolff und Helge Pitz[1]
Meilenwerk Berlin – Wiebestrasse 36 – 37, 10553 Berlin
Jewish Museum, Berlin – Daniel Liebskind

ARCH 637/837 - Competitions Studio
Instructor: Matt Jarosz

Students in the studio will enter one or more competitions from a menu provided by the instructor. These may include several sponsored by the ACSA (Wood, Steel, Glass, etc) as well as other national or international competitions that are available at the time. Competitions may be pursued either individually or in teams.

ARCH 645/845/URBPLAN 858 Studies in Urban and Community Design Theory
Subtitle: Inner Harbor Redevelopment
Instructors: Larry Witzling
Carolyn Esswein

As part of SARUP’s multi-year Inner Harbor initiative, this studio will focus on integrating effective urban design and redevelopment plans with a full array of goals for a sustainable community neighborhood concerning environmental health, social equity, and economic vitality. This challenge effects not only Milwaukee but a broad spectrum of urban communities worldwide. Last spring, this studio explored a broad range of urban design plans throughout the Inner Harbor. This included historical research, case studies, and detailed concepts for public places. This work provides a springboard for spring semester’s inquiry. The Inner Harbor is filled with old industrial sites, is adjacent to the Port, borders Kinnickinnic Avenue and Bayview, includes the new campus for the School of Freshwater Science, and surrounds a dramatically under-appreciated shoreline.

Problem/Solution Format
The studio will begin with a presentation and discussion of last year’s projects. Based on this discussion we will identify target neighborhoods or districts. At this time, the faculty anticipate a focus area near the mouth of the Inner Harbor where there is an opportunity to design a new mixed-use community based on the technology of shared district energy. The degree to which the studio focuses on one neighborhood or multiple subareas will be decided after the first week. The goal is to allow each student to focus on personal interests and, at the same time, develop skills regarding larger problems of urban design and development. As a first phase, all students will develop street and block plans for a specific subarea. This type of knowledge is essential for community redevelopment. Subsequently, individual design projects may include specific buildings, public places, streets, or more detailed components of a master plan. Issues within these problems might focus on water/energy conservation, programming, neighborhood growth, landscape architecture, property development, and/or combinations of questions. Since this course includes students at different levels, the scope and depth of each project will be tailored to the student’s background. Planning students may be engaged in harbor/port precedent analysis or sustainable best practices research.

Studio Initiation – Precedents and Case Studies Selection
After the first week of reviewing last year’s work, students will (a) conduct individual research on historical precedents and case studies and (b) study the site and community from several perspectives. This investigation may be driven by specific design concepts that a student wishes to pursue, a method of observation (e.g., sketch book, photography, historical maps), or by a general topic regarding urban design (e.g., analysis of streets, community demographics, architectural character). Towards the end of this phase, students will begin to define their semester-long project.

Coordination with Other Classes, Faculty, and Projects
Other spring classes (both studios and lectures) may include work related to the Inner Harbor. Opportunities for interactions between classes have not yet been formalized. Some ideas under discussion include: lectures/presentations in one class being attended by students in other classes; faculty from one course (addressing Inner Harbor issues) serving as jurors in a parallel course; or community members participating in reviews (such as representatives from planning agencies, architectural firms, community groups, and/or business leaders).

Supporting Data and Maps
Before the spring semester, background data will be assembled through the Institute for Ecological Design, including a community base map, other student projects, and outside source information.

ARCH 685/885 Studies in Building Typology
Subtitle: Collegiate Cocooning
Instructor: Grace La

Embedded within the spatial organization of college dormitories are profound conflicts between opposing conditions: public vs. private space, individual vs. collective identity, transient vs. permanent occupation, bounded vs. open domains, claimed vs. unclaimed territories. These forces are frequently submerged beneath conventional stylistic adornments that are assumed to be the content of dormitory housing design. The goal of this studio is 1) to excavate beneath these stylistic preconceptions to more fundamental qualities that emerge when the oppositional conditions within the dormitory are revealed and 2) to discover spatial opportunities, cocoons, which mediate opposing forces and which suggest evolving trends in dormitory design.

The most profound and exemplary precedents of dormitory housing design are those which reconcile one or more of the oppositional conditions noted above, discovering and illuminating the space “between,” i.e.) the threshold, or the cocoon, which serves as a visual, physical, and spatial interval that simultaneously acts as the buffer and the connective tissue between contrasting realms. In this focus, the studio will touch upon broader issues; including the conflict between the single unit and the aggregation, zones of control and spontaneity, the large and the small scale, the need for withdrawal and for interaction, as well as the inherent energy efficiencies in dormitory housing and the environmental factors that challenge this notion.

The studio will begin with an in-depth precedent analysis and research phase intended to stimulate the dormitory typology. We will also conduct and document primary research based on the students’ personal experience. We will then explore a dormitory project on a campus site.

This studio is co-sponsored by KI, the international furniture manufacturer, and the UWM School of Architecture & Urban Planning. Our studio will include collaborations with KI, headquartered in Green Bay, WI.

Graduate Design Studios

ARCH 820 Architectural Design I
Instructor: Kyle Talbott

This design studio, for first-year 3.5 year M.Arch students, further develops the theories and methodologies of architectural design taught in ARCH 810. Design projects emphasize specific issues of theory, structure, context, program, and graphic communication.

ARCH 825 Comprehensive Design Studio
Subtitle: Liquid Architecture: The Water Institute
Instructor: Jim Shields

This graduate comprehensive studio will be based upon on a new building designed to support the range of private businesses that have formed a consortium around the topic of water resources. To be located on a waterfront site near the new School of Freshwater Sciences building, the Water Institute will help to forge connections between University research and private for-profit industry. The studio will focus technologically on water; both as a resource to be conserved and as the primary element to be dealt with in the durability and weathering of construction.
Prerequisite: ARCH 516 or concurrent enrollment. Priority will be given to students who have not previously taken an 825 studio.

ARCH 825 Comprehensive Design Studio
Subtitle: The Inner Harbor Wetlands Education and Wildlife Rescue Center
Instructor: Tom Hofman

"Imagine a building informed by its eco-region's characteristics that generates all its own energy with renewable resources, captures and treats all its own water and uses resources efficiently for maximum beauty." In an effort to reverse the effects of urban industrial decay and as part of the ongoing challenge to revitalize and reinvent itself, Milwaukee is looking towards the Inner Harbor as a place of transformative rebirth. What better place than Lake Michigan, the Inner Harbor and its connective estuary, to demonstrate the variety of economical and ecological possibilities for restoring the environment while designing for a sustainable future.

Nestled within the southern portion of the 970 acre Inner Harbor study site is a remote portion of a former industrial site bounded by an otherwise inhospitable industrial landscape…your building will be located here and will be part of an effort to recreate a wetlands. The Center will be sited on the boundary or within the proposed wetlands restoration area and will mediate between the industrial and natural landscapes. The wetlands are also assumed to be part of a larger stormwater management system for the whole study area. In addition to the design of the building, the design of exterior gathering spaces for lectures and programs as well as a trail system that connects to the extended harbor walk will be expected. The site is approximately 14 acres surrounded by functioning or abandoned industrial sites, active railway lines and the Kinnickinic River. The majority of the east and west edges of the site are bounded by either water or rail lines, leaving only a small southern portion open to pedestrian or vehicular access while the northern edge which is expected to be developed commercially will have the greatest potential for site access.

The construction of the 12,300 square foot Inner Harbor Wetlands Education and Wildlife Rescue Center will allow the community and the School of Freshwater Sciences to make use of this important ecosystem as a teaching tool. The Center will house a permanent display depicting changes in the wetlands from the early 1830’s to the present day. Exhibits illustrating the fauna of the area and the importance of the wetland to help maintain water quality, reduce flooding and serve as a habitat for many terrestrial and aquatic species will provide an important local educational resource. The Center will provide research space for school groups and dedicated researchers focused on the study of wetlands ecology. In conjunction with the School of Freshwater Sciences, the Center will be a place to host local and regional conferences and events. Collaborative endeavors with the city, UWM and other institutions will also help foster stronger connections and aid in the understanding of environmental stewardship.

Completing the loop of healing the environment, a portion of the building will be dedicated to the preservation of wildlife that has been challenged by the domination of the surrounding industrial landscape. Finally, as part of the effort to be consistent with tenants of environmental stewardship, the building is planned to be a showcase for sustainable practices, providing the public with a model of how careful and planned design can enhance the value of the community and have a positive impact on the natural environment. Prerequisite: ARCH 516 or concurrent enrollment. Priority will be given to students who have not previously taken an 825 studio.  

ARCH 825 Comprehensive Design Studio
Subtitle: Building Enclosure
Instructor: Hanno Weber

In the most utilitarian terms a building’s enclosure serves as a filter or mediator between inside and out; it keeps out inclement weather, dirt and noise while providing view and ventilation and it controls the levels of daylight and sunlight admitted into habitable spaces. The enclosing layer of a building, however, is more than a skin; it is the most visible manifestation from which we read and speculate about the occupants and activities within inhabited structures. Enclosing systems also convey the processes and materials used in supporting and constructing buildings, while providing references to the organization of spaces within. Furthermore, enclosure like other building systems such as the plan, the volumetric organization and the structure, can be seen as one more formal compositional order – generalized patterns that are derived from geometry and the timeless play of theme and variation. The studio’s intention is to develop in the participants a literacy and confidence in designing based upon a consciousness and control of enclosure elements and their syntax as they contribute to the making of building form in specific contexts. The studio also seeks to convey and exercise in its assignments the related technical skills essential for the integration and implementation of the tectonic fabric in buildings. Since the studio meets only once per week, on Tuesdays, the semester’s work will follow a regimented schedule of assignments and their review that will take place weekly.

Prerequisite: ARCH 516 or concurrent enrollment. Priority will be given to students who have not previously taken an 825 studio.

ARCH 834 Distinguished Visiting Design Critic Studio –
MARCUS PRIZE STUDIO
Instructor: Chris Cornelius

African architect Francis Kere, founder of Kere Architecture in Berlin, Germany, is the recipient of the 2011 Marcus Prize for Architecture. He will lead a studio in the Spring of 2012 that will focus on issues he is most interested in: people, place, materials, community and sustainability. Mr. Kere has a unique voice and distinguished body of work in these areas. Students will be asked to complete projects concerning these issues under his direction, with the assistance of Associate Professor Chris Cornelius. Because of this unique opportunity to work with an accomplished architect, the commitment required by the students will be more than the typical studio.

If interested in this studio, submit a digital portfolio in pdf format, maximum 3MB file size, by email to christc@uwm.edu  no later than 11/18. Accepted students will be notified prior to 11/21 and registered by the Student Advising Office.