Coursework
Current class offerings include multidisciplinary seminars and research-driven design studios in
Burbank/Los Angeles.
AR 491 Dry Studio: Architecture, Infrastructure, and Adaptation in the Arid Lands
The centerpiece of ALI’s Summer Field Station, the Dry Studio introduces graduate and undergraduate students to the history, issues, and debates surrounding water management in the west through an intensive 10-week research and design process. Immersive learning, community collaboration, and fieldwork are integral to the course. Students collaborate with a client community to generate schematic designs for low-carbon micro-infrastructures and community watershed plans. Advanced topic studio +/or urban design studio. 6 Units.
AR 493: Design Development Studio
Working in partnership with the community of Embudo / Dixon, New Mexico, students develop schematic designs generated in the Dry Studio, focussing on the technical resolution of projects addressing:
• Water: quality, quantity, conservation, availability, and accessibility.
• Building Technology: Innovative low carbon building systems and materials
• Land Use: Sustainable urban and community planning, low carbon irrigation systems, and sustainable infrastructure systems.
IS 3747: Reading the West: Texts, Landscapes, Constructions
This seminar is a transdisciplinary approach to the “meanings” of the “west” in the United States. Students will engage with a variety of "texts" and methods for reading them by surveying the diverse ways in which Americans have used the landscape to describe, critique, structure and maintain competing notions of civilization. In this course, “text” means any modality for creating a message: archaeological sites, painting, photography, land art, and film (as well as writing). Seminar. 3 units. Prerequisite: AW 112; lower division humanities course; and instructor consent.
I'm interested; please send info.