This 6-credit studio acts as a mixing chamber in the Architecture Program curriculum. It combines continuing undergraduates in their third year, undergraduate transfer students both from within the college, and from other institutions of architectural education, incoming graduate students with an unrelated undergraduate degree who have just completed a intensive summer “bootcamp” and continuing 4th year under-graduate students who spent their previous fall in a semester long study-abroad program and are now circling back to this studio.

The studio required the development of a cohesive pedagogy that meets the educational needs of each of these student groups where they are (rather than where the teacher might like them to be) while fulfilling the specific education objectives of the course in the larger curriculum (bridging foundational and analytical stages of learning).

The course pedagogy integrates a systematic assessment of incoming abilities across the full group. A series of flexible exercises of increasing complexity are presented which optimize growth across the group in key areas where a need for remediation is identified. These assignments are limited in scope to overcome trepidation common in less-experienced students, and designed to allow for continual adaptation, ensuring all students are being challenged and supported as the course develops.

INTRODUCTORY EXERCISES

The studio investigates the relationship between context and architecture through the lens of visitor-oriented nature spaces along a highway route in northwestern Washington. The course begins with the design of a series of small-scale roadside interventions along the route. This effort coincides with in-depth research into the larger context, tourism and architecture, and evolving western ideals about nature and our relationship to it.

IMMERSION

Students take an extended research trip along this route, stopping at each of the sites along the route to critically reflect on design decisions made in the studio in light of the lived experience on-site. they are also given a design charrette brief to be completed at a new site along the route. This approach encourages a more critically-oriented, thoughtful engagement with the sites in preparation for an extended visit to the term-length project site.

Lessons learned in the introductory exercises and research as well as a class visit to the region that informed the longer-term project; an educational retreat (at the Rolling Huts in the Methow River Valley for 2021, and at Naturebridge on Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park in 2019).

During the research trip, they visit notable precedents in the region, stay on site. They engage in directed and independent analysis, interviewing staff and other visitors, and documenting existing conditions.

“Sites of Visitation: Leveraging the Touristic Endeavor”.

Lawrence, Scott.

Conference Paper and Presentation.

National Conference on the Beginning Design Student. Denver, CO

2019