Course Number: CSU-ARC 211
Course Name: Architectural Design 1
Number of Credit Hours: 3 Credits
Prerequisite(s):
N/A
Corequisite(s):
N/A
Course Description:
You are starting a life-long learning process for two outstanding, demanding and rewarding professions. Our Foundation year allows you to transition into visual-spatial and project-based/studio-based work that is critical to success for engineers and architects. CSU ARC 211 will typically be referred to as ‘studio’. This course is exploratory, experimental, immersive, iterative, and likely entails whole new sets of skills and ways of thinking that are challenging and complex to master and often awkward to initiate. The fact you have gained admission to two of the most competitive majors on campus tells us that you have been a superior student. There is a high correlation between your previous success and success in these programs, but it is going to be different than you expect. We do all projects as a learning community, and if one aspect differs from what you may be exposed to through high school, it is that the studio is a shared and collegial experience. Criticism is frequent and public, and we learn from mistakes as much as from successes. 'Studio culture' develops through the work and from the faculty, but more importantly it grows laterally from and with each other. It is different learning environment than you’ve likely experienced before and it takes time to get used to, but it is the way good design teams work, and it’s a wonderful way to learn and work.
We have found that Beginning Design for the vast majority of students is exhilarating, exhausting and meaningful. In many ways, in ten months you will still be the same person, but you will engage the world differently. You may look the same, but you will not see the same.
About CSU ARC 211:
An introduction to the issues, concepts, processes and skills pertaining to two-and three-dimensional design and the freehand, constructed and digital representation and visual communication of ideas, objects and environments. Shop safety, machine and tool operation, and smallscale design and construction.
