Finding Our Mission

From the beginning, we aspired to excellence in architectural education.  In the cultural context of the 1960's, we also wanted work in the School to be socially relevant and to engage students in some of the current environmental design problems and issues confronting our community and nation. 

To this end, studio work included theoretical studies, but also included real-world design projects involving citizen ‘users' in setting design project parameters and goals, and in critiquing student work.  Sometimes, we framed this studio work as design competitions. 

We also believed in the principle of ‘learning from building', so some of these early projects involved students and faculty in the actual building of winning student designs.