Option Studios
Spring 2011
Design/Build 2011
(4 or 6 credits)
Open to: All CoD majors
Instructors: Bruce Bassler
Sustainability and green design using composite and prefabricated building systems will be emphasized as the Design/Build 2011 team designs and constructs a fourth and final camping cabin for the South Sioux City Parks and Recreation Department. Students will explore the benefits of lightweight structural panels, prefabrication construction technology and minimally disruptive site installation techniques. Moveable walls and roofs will be investigated as a means to blur the distinction between indoor and outdoor space. This collaborative studio of interior designers, landscape architects, architects and other interested students will be grounded in Ames, but will make several trips to Sioux City to install and present our design. Full days of on-site construction are bracketed by meeting local celebrities for hot breakfast at the Townhouse Café and closing the day with dinner at one of many delicious Sioux City restaurants.
Designing the Neighborhood Inside Out
(4 or 6 credits)
Open to: All CoD majors
Instructors: Michael Martin
1927… 1946… 1973… 2011. Fair Lawn, New Jersey… Winnipeg, Manitoba… Davis, California… and now Ames, Iowa. About once a generation, somebody takes a close look at the weirdly wonderful/dearly beloved/suspiciously regarded/extraordinarily successful/rarely duplicated inside-out neighborhood of Radburn and decides it’s time to fight city hall (the zoning department) once again. Reconsider everything about the design of the American neighborhood: architecture, streetscapes, open space, backs, fronts and sides. Each generational “take” features a new set of possibilities and concerns, and each one builds on the lessons of the previous efforts. This studio is for those who like to work new kinds of puzzles, design new kinds of houses, create new kinds of landscapes—all of it informed by understanding the potentials of new materials/technologies, and all of it informed by understanding how people actually want to live among each other in a 21st-century American neighborhood. This studio will include a field trip to New York City, to visit the original Radburn (New Jersey), Sunnyside Gardens (in Queens), and other relevant archetypes.
Green Campus & Building Planning & Design for a Small Tribal College
(4 or 6 credits)
Open to: All CoD majors
Instructors: Lynn Paxson
This studio builds on work done by previous ISU option studios. From initial campus planning and design to the design of individual campus structures, students will help the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations of Oklahoma envision their potential new university, and your work probably also will be used as the Nations continue to raise funds to make this project a reality. The Nations are very interested in green design issues and potentially being “off the grid.” This includes consideration of energy sources, material and tectonic issues, water use, planning and infrastructure, native planting and garden/local agriculture, etc. There are a number of potential program and building types to be explored in this project from student and faculty housing to various academic, office and support facilities,
as well as cultural center/museum, interpretation space and potentially daycare and small medical spaces. This studio offers good opportunities for students from all disciplines to be involved in group/team and individual projects. The studio will take one brief field trip to meet and work with the tribal college planning community.
Hotel
(4 or 6 credits)
Open to: Arch, CRP, ID, LA
Instructors: Jason Alread & Cigdem Akkurt
The Hotel is a means of escape, an experiment for both the designers and the inhabitants. Hotels amplify our perception of a place and offer a means to reconsider how we live. They also deal in amusement and desire, critical realms for designers to understand amidst the technological concerns of constructing real places. Charles Eames was once asked, “Can design be used to create objects reserved solely for pleasure?” He responded, “Who would say that pleasure is not useful?” This studio is designed to integrate the knowledge, skills and philosophies of related programs: architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and planning. The hotel will be located on South Beach in Miami, Florida, and a site visit will be part of the studio. You will be encouraged to engage in a genuine collaboration with your team. We anticipate all of the opportunities and challenges of collaborative work, and we expect the results to be technically adept, exquisitely conceived and beautifully presented.
Informal Education: Haiti 2011
(6 credits)
Open to: All CoD majors
Instructors: Nadia Anderson
As the gap between rich and poor widens throughout the world, understanding the practices of those who get by with little becomes critical to developing design practice and pedagogy that addresses the needs of these people and uses design thinking to solve global problems of inequity. In this studio students will work in interdisciplinary teams to initiate long-term projects at a range of scales in collaboration with the residents of the village of La Croix, Haiti. These projects will require initiative, creativity and collaboration as well as ingenuity and open-mindedness. The studio will follow a format of investigation + engagement + reflection centered on a 10-day visit to Haiti. In the 2-3 weeks prior to the trip, students will study Haiti’s landscape, politics, economics and social systems as well as existing and proposed aid projects. While in Haiti, students will visit a range of sites but will live and work closely with the people of La Croix. Upon returning from Haiti, students will develop their projects by preparing visual documentation, budget and phasing for construction. This work will be submitted to the ACSA-sponsored Haiti Ideas Challenge competition. It will also be used by volunteer groups and future student groups to build the proposed projects in La Croix.
Poetry of Place, Earthworks, and Revelations
(4 or 6 credits)
Open to: All CoD majors
Instructors: Bambi Yost
Poets strive to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm of words. Poetry expresses an imaginative awareness of experience, revealed through a chosen and arranged language, exhibiting qualities of spontaneity and grace. In this studio we will explore poetic qualities of place and earthworks in an effort to stir the imagination and to give a heightened and more meaningful experience for others and ourselves through interpretive and expressive design. Poetic devices, such as imagery, metaphor, rhyme and meter will be used to inform designs and narratives. In this process-driven studio, students will create drawings, study models, sculptures, installations and earthworks resulting in a body of well-documented and highly experiential creative work. Critical dialogue about place and designing with the land will be explored in depth through readings and required and optional field trips.
River Hills – Downtown Des Moines
(4 or 6 credits)
Open to: Arch, CRP, ID, LA
Instructors: Erin Olson-Douglas
In downtown Des Moines, at the foot of the Center Street Bridge, east of the Des Moines River, north of the East Village, west of the State Capitol, and along the freeway, lies a frontier of tired warehouses. What could the area become? The first half of the semester will focus on urban planning proposals for the district that will be generated by multidisciplinary teams. Multiple individual or team projects will be identified and serve as the focus for the second half of the semester. Students will participate in research, planning and design projects and will seek critiques by College of Design faculty with expertise in multiple design disciplines, River Hills stakeholders, and Des Moines-area professionals.
TOYS!
(6 credits)
Open to: All CoD majors
Instructors: Mitchell Squire
In 1840, Friedrich Froebel invents Kindergarten, a departure from normative educational models, aiming to foster in individuals an uninhibited curiosity about the world around them—employing “gifts,” boxed sets of blocks, spheres, cubes and cylinders in different sizes and colors. A generation later, the Futurist Fortunato Depero believed toys to be transformative objects. He and fellow Futurist Balla designed toys in order to “give flesh to the invisible, the impalpable, the imponderable and the imperceptible.” The superior strength of triangles was discovered—and the geodesic dome conceived—by the combination of Buckminster Fuller’s imagination and Froebel’s 19th gift, “peas work,”
a toy of moistened peas and toothpicks. This studio will offer an opportunity to engage in a critical exploration of the history, interest and impact of toys and play in disciplines of design. Students will be responsible for research, analysis, design and creation of toys. But as “toys are not really as innocent as they look [but] are preludes to serious ideas” (Charles Eames), the toys of this studio will be both whimsical and serious in order to lead us to a deep understanding of our world.
Zero-Energy Building & Sustainability
(6 credits)
Open to: All CoD majors
Instructors: Kevin Nordmeyer
The National Science and Technology Council has identified the need to address the interrelationship between improving energy efficiency and increasing renewable energy technologies for the development of zero-energy buildings. In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Green Building Council, ASHRAE and Architecture 2030, among others, have begun to move the design and construction industry toward high performance, zero-energy buildings by assessing innovative solutions to building design and operation. However, a balance between energy conservation, distributed energy sources and affordability is key in moving toward energy independence and environmental sustainability. This option studio will utilize a fast-paced integrated design method to design a modest, high-performance office and training center and related site development. The primary goal is to engage a multidisciplinary student team with industry, building professionals and building owners to assess the viability of affordable zero-energy sustainable building. Early investigative work and precedent studies will be conducted individually, but final building design and development will likely be conducted in teams.