Designed Transitions: Form andEcology in the Dense City (ARTS 3371 V)
Term: 2026-27 Academic Year Fall
Description
This design studio will investigate foundational design principles through the concept of transition, focusing on the exchange between built and natural environments. It will address this relationship in both physical and social dimensions, through a lens of ecology that involves individual and collective appropriation. The course will be structured into two modules that progress from the fundamental to the complex. In the first half of the semester, students will engage with typical elements of transition in architecture, such as windows, doors, and corridors to develop an architectural analysis that is at once documental (working with projective standards, scale, line weights, and precision) and experimental (explores the abstract potential of form to derive
alternative interpretations of elemental types). The second half of the course will investigate transitions at an urban scale, focusing on types such as the street and the square. The studio’s pedagogical approach relies on conceptual inquiry and iterative design experimentation. Students will work both individually and in groups, integrating analog methods with advanced digital tools.