Translating Suburban Spatial Experiences into Urban Environments

Mike Vala, one of our current Semester 4 students, has been working towards creating a new spatial configurations by inserting suburban ideals back into urban environments. One of the ways in which he is studying this is through a methodology of testing through collage. At the moment, the work above is focused on gaining some programmatic understanding of mixing different types of uses with housing to create a dynamic impetus for urban living. In the next few weeks, Mike will be creating new collages which develop the facades in relationship to the existing site conditions and working on integrating his intervention into the urban fabric of the city.

Preparing for the August Intensive

Process work by Stacey Poppel


Our next Intensive begins in about three weeks and the current Semester 4 students (one semester left!) are busily preparing for their August 16 review. Yesterday we held a review utilizing web-ex: all the critics were on location at the BAC and the students were all able to attend, wherever they were in the States. The students prepared PPT presentations describing the framework for their thesis work, their design process/design development and the current state of their schemes. The critics for the day were Luis Carranza, Professor, Roger Williams University and Robyn Reen, ASLA, Senior Associate, Sasaki Associates. The criticism was TOUGH - many holes were identified that suggest their are some conceptual holes in the relationship of the design testing to the thesis and some disconnects between the choices of site or program to the thesis idea. But, in terms of preparing for August, we could not ask for better ideas from our critics and we thank them for their help in forcing better relationships between design/process/idea! We are going to be posting in the next few days, some of the student work so everyone can see what is happening in design process.