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Architecture and Community Design
Building Communities for Human and Environmental Sustainability
The Architecture and Community Design Program at the University of San Francisco combines an introduction to the disciplines of architecture, urban design, city planning, and landscape design with a strong emphasis on the social sciences and humanities. The program draws from the university's diverse resources and faculty to form a unique interdisciplinary curriculum of study, which reflects the university's mission and commitment to building community for a more just and humane world.
This interdisciplinary program emphasizes the critical role of design in negotiating between individual and collaborative acts of making and the larger framework of political, social, and cultural issues. It seeks to engage and encourage students to understand the contemporary metropolis through a breadth of analytical approaches and design strategies. Through this process we train students to become impassioned readers, interpreters, actors, and designers of their cities, institutions, and communities.
The curriculum has been carefully crafted to satisfy the entrance requirements for graduate programs in architecture and urban design at the nation's top thirty universities.
View Architecture/Community Design Program Student Projects
Elements of the 48-unit Major Program Include:
- Four intensive core studio courses that address local and global urban and architectural design issues
- The use of San Francisco and the greater Bay Area as urban laboratories for the study of history, theory and design
- Training in both abstract and applied design
- Integration of the studio core within the context of a liberal arts education in social sciences, science, and the humanities
- Preparation for graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, environmental design and city planning; and, also for any number of professional career tracks including government, law, history, business, journalism or the visual arts
- An international design, history, and social science semester located in an important city in a developing or evolving nation
- A semester of study abroad in Budapest, Hungary
- A Bay Area and International community design outreach course and a practicum/internship
- A small full-time faculty augmented with adjunct faculty drawn from diverse areas of expertise within the design professions, university, government, and design communities
- A small cohort model of instruction (maximum 12 students per studio class)
Requirements for the Major:
The Major in Architecture and Community Design requires 48 units.
Required Courses:
Year 1
- ARCD - 101 History of Architecture 1
- ARCD - 102 History of Architecture 2
- ARCD - 110 Architecture Studio 1
- ARCD - 120 Architecture Studio 2
- ARCD - 121 Architectonics 1
- ARCD - 122 Architectonics 2
Year 2
- ARCD - 203 History of Architecture 3
- ARCD - 204 History of Architecture 4
- ARCD - 230 Architecture Studio 3
- ARCD - 240 Architecture Studio 4
- ARCD - 290 Intro to Structural Engineering
- ARCD - 250 CAD 1
Year 3
- ARCD - 350 Architecture Studio 5
- ARCD - 330 Design in Crossroads International
- ARCD - 310 Intro to Construction Materials
- ARCD - 390 International Projects
- ARCD - 300 CAD 1
Year 4
- ARCD - 400 Community Design Outreach
- ARCD - 410 Portfolio Lab
- ARCD - 420 Practicum/Internship
- ARCD - 320 Intro to Landscape Design
- ARCD - 390 Special Topics
Electives
- ARCD ? 200 Sustainable Design
- ARCD - 290 Special Topics
- ARCD - 390 Sacred Spaces
Note: Additional courses will be added as they develop.
Learning Goals/Outcomes for the B.A. in Architecture and Community Design
Students who complete the B.A. in Architecture and Community Design will:
- Gain a historical foundation of architecture from pre-history to recent developments in the field, through a broad and inclusive approach to the range of social and economic factors affecting the design of world cities and buildings
- Develop familiarity with social justice issues in under-served communities and developing regions of the world as well as more traditional perspectives on architectural history
- Develop critical skills and methodologies of inquiry, analysis, conceptual development, and resolution and presentation of design ideas
- Learn to integrate aspects of site, program, space, structure and material to create designs for buildings, which also actively respond to the historical, cultural, social and political exigencies of time and place
- Develop analytical tools that give attention to the various historic and social forces that intersect to create the built environment
- Gain a solid foundation in technical and conceptual design skills, enabling them to present their architectural ideas visually, verbally and in writing to clients, associates, and communities at the grass roots and municipal levels
- Graduate with the knowledge and skills enabling them to facilitate positive change to built environments in the world
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