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Architecture and Environmental Design

  A Hands-on Education
  architectural boot camp
  Hampshire students can do hands-on work in architecture and design through a program set up in fall 2006 with the New York Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (NYIAUS).
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Because the field of architecture and environmental design incorporates so many different ways of viewing the world, it is a perfect example of Hampshire’s unique interdisciplinary curriculum. In architecture we find elements of engineering, design, and the studio arts, as well as urban planning, sociology, and political science.

Through a combination of practical and theoretical approaches, Hampshire’s design students examine the social, political, and legal aspects of planning in the context of studying architectural form.

They explore not only questions of “What makes a building stand up?” or “What makes a landscape beautiful?” but also: “Why do we design buildings?” and “In what ways do the shapes we create affect and reflect our society?”

Affiliated Faculty
  • » Gabriel Arboleda, Five College visiting assistant professor of sustainable architecture
  • » M. Naomi Darling, Five College assistant professor of sustainable architecture
  • » Karen Koehler, professor of architectural and art history, coordinator of the Five College Architectural Studies Project
  • » Thom Long, Five College assistant professor of architectural studies
Student Project Titles
  • » An Architectural Vision Quest
  • » Architectural Design and Three-Dimensional Representation
  • » Building Spaces with Children
  • » Architecture and the Pursuit of Truth
  • » Rebuilding New Orleans: Studies in City Planning
  • » Applications and Innovations in Retail
Sample First-Year Course

Art and Exile

This course will explore the changing representations of exile in visual art, architecture, literature, and film. We will unpack the shifting meanings of exile, displacement, and diaspora as experience and metaphor in the context of modernity, as well as discuss relationships between imagined/remembered homelands and transnational identities, language loss, bi and multilingualism and translation, alienation, difference, and memory as they are expressed by diverse artists in exile. We will cover a range of periods, places, and genres; from Chagall and Duchamp to Dali and Gropius, from Gertrude Stein to Salman Rushdie to Marjane Satrapi. We will explore questions of national and ethnic identity, cultural and linguistic heritage, and community and personal memory, as we investigate both the actual and imagined positions of the exile. Expectations include a series of progressively more complex papers and presentations. This course will incorporate a series of public lectures and panels on the topic of art, exile, and memory.

Sample Courses at Hampshire
  • » 1950s Art History, Architecture, and Critical Theory
  • » 3D Design and Model-Making
  • » Advanced Design + Media Lab: Art, Architecture and Environment
  • » Architectural Concepts and Fundamentals
  • » Architectural Design: Basic Approaches
  • » Architectural Design for Diversity and Social Change
  • » Art and Exile
  • » The Bauhaus
  • » Body, Movement, and Architecture: An
  • » Investigation into Cinematic Theory and Spatial Experience
  • » Concentration Seminar in Studio
  • » Crafting a Sustainable Design Lens
  • » Designing the Post-suburban Community
  • » The House
  • » Making Space: The Role of Built Environments in Social Change
  • » Mills to Lofts: Transforming Space and Community Through Design
  • » Modernism and Modernity
  • » Poetic Structures of Space
  • » Sites and Citations of the City
  • » Urban Space and Nature: Recent Environmentalist Approaches to Urban Design
  • » Zero Impact House
Through the Consortium
  • » Architectural Design Studio (AC)
  • » Architecture and Design (UMass)
  • » Architecture Since 1945 (SC)
  • » Building Physics (UMass)
  • » European Art and Architecture 1400-1800 (AC)
  • » Modern Architecture (MHC)
  • » Sculpting Space with Meaning (MHC)
  • » Site and Space (SC)
Facilities and Resources
 

Five College Architectural Studies Program
The Five College Architectural Studies program (FCAS) explores collaborative programs in architectural studies and the built environment. The objective of FCAS is to cultivate concerned architectural thinkers, writers and designers through a flexible yet rigorous interdisciplinary course of study. The program encourages students to explore a broad cross section of courses, both in and beyond the architecture discipline across the Five Colleges - and introduces students to a diverse collection of faculty members, methodologies, and design approaches.

Summer Programs and Semester Exchanges
Through a relationship with the Studio Arts Center International (SACI), Hampshire students in architecture have the opportunity to spend a semester in Florence, Italy, studying architectural design. SACI was founded in 1975 to create a program for students seeking excellence in studio arts and liberal arts instruction. It combines the cultural resources of Italy with well-equipped facilities minutes away from Florence’s central market, and is well known as a leading resource for students interested in art, art history, or architectural design.

A newly formed affiliation with the New York Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies will allow current and future Hampshire architecture students to participate in summer programs or semester exchanges with this prestigious and innovative institute. The institute seeks to promote improvisational and interdisciplinary design solutions that address contemporary environmental and social issues.

 

Contact Us

Office of the Dean of Faculty
Hampshire College
893 West Street
Amherst, MA 01002
413.559.5378
Fax 413.559.6081
dof@hampshire.edu
 

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