Architecture (BArch)
Offered as a first professional degree, the Bachelor of Architecture program provides an intense design education by developing each student’s capacity to synthesize critical thought, artistic vision, and responsible leadership. With passionate professional faculty, diverse collaboration teams, emerging technologies and fabrication labs, and sensitivity to sustainable methods – together we will participate in shaping our physical world.
Duration
4 years
Starting Date
February, June, September
Tuition Fee
$1,214 per credit
Location
San Francisco, United States
Program Learning Outcomes
Undergraduate students will meet the following student performance criteria:
Conceptual Thinking and Process
- Communicate conceptual thinking verbally and in writing
- Articulate and extend conceptual thinking through diagrams
- Develop a rigorous material logic for model-making to test ideas
- Produce diagrams indicating critical analyses of relevant precedent buildings or the built environment recognizing the significance to the discipline of architecture
- Produce critical analyses of contemporary, historical, global precedents inclusive of buildings, urban planning, theoretical texts, or related arts applicable to studio projects and systems
- Develop a design identity which synthesizes critical thought, architectural intent, and urban design strategies by developing decision-making criteria substantiated by research
Fundamental Design & Drawing and Making
- Develop criteria to generate and evaluate an architectural order and formal language
- Develop architectural proposals sensitive to the site context in scale and use based on research
- Produce architectural drawings with appropriate drawing conventions to convey spatial qualities and design intent
- Convey materiality in design projects based on an understanding of construction material properties
- Construct drawings and models with a high level of craft and attention to detail
Presentation Skills
- Clearly explain and defend design projects in verbal presentations
- Create presentation boards, slides, and/or printed materials which exhibit logical sequencing and a hierarchy of information
- Develop effective visual communication strategies to convey information that build towards an argument
- Determine appropriate representation techniques to describe the spatial qualities and human experience of the design proposal
Leadership and Community
- Demonstrate a commitment to community building and social equity through programming and organization of an architectural project
- Demonstrate sensitivity to diverse viewpoints of user groups in the design of a building
- Engage a collaborative process in the development of a design, with a range of design and engineering disciplines
- Demonstrate and articulate knowledge of professional practices and contractual conventions
Integrated Design
- Conduct a user & programmatic analysis
- Communicate analyses of the urban and environmental conditions of a site with clear graphic devices
- Integrate sustainable and energy-conscious strategies into the design of a building
- Communicate analyses of environmental performance systems of the design with clear graphic devices
- Develop an energy-conscious strategy for the design of building envelope systems and material selection
- Integrate structural systems into the design of a building
- Produce technical documentation describing the integration of architecture and building systems
- Accommodate accessibility and life safety requirements in the design of a building
Courses Included
- Projective Drawing & Perspective
- Freshman Symposium: Artistic Resilience
- The Classical and the Contemporary
- 2D Digital Visual Media
- Composition for the Artist