UNDERGRADUATE  STUDIO
ARCH 322  -  WINTER 2022

Neal Robinson

Peter Halquist, Christina Hansen, Olaia Chivite Amigo, Yojairo Lomeli

STUDIO THEME

Preserve Arch 322 is a coordinated undergraduate studio that focuses on the social, physical, and cultural contexts (in which) we build. Specifically, how outdoor landscapes, their histories, and environs relate to and influence the design of architectural form.

The semester includes fluency and skill-building exercises for understanding topographical representation, translation, and modification, as well as practical and speculative discussion of siting constraints, slope dynamics, content mapping, and the role of conceptual terrain.

The semester culminates with design proposals for a Wellness and Visitors Center for the Matthaei Forest Preserve: a 500+ acre wooded "research" site owned by the University of Michigan at the eastern edge of Ann Arbor. Each student is asked to choose one of three curated sites for their proposal. The primary difference between sites is the degree of topographic animation. One is flat, fielded, and farmed. One is sloped, scrubby, and snaked. The last is ravined, hikeable, and heavily wooded.

The Wellness and Visitor's Center program challenges students to locate their design empathies across a wide range of positions as it is never stated for whom or what requires greater well-being or visitation. Some cared for the forest and its animate ecologies, while others embraced "nature" as an other: foreign and wild.
Coincident with waning COVID-19 protocols, the studio also supported and encouraged ways to speak with emotional intelligence and design about the health of ourselves, our built environment, and what it means to be vulnerable and human.