Course Description
Architectural Design Studio is offered during the Rome semester in continuity with the curricular sequence of the University of Arkansas School of Architecture.

The Rome project offers opportunities to investigate complex design problems in the context of over 2000 years of western architectural development. Utilizing examples sited in the Eternal City or its surrounding context, this course tackles advanced problems in architectural design and planning.

The studio focuses on examining a project site on both urban and architectural scales. Urban analysis of the area and related surveys are carried out in order to understand the site’s morphological characteristics, its configuration, and related urban stratifications. The specific project proposal focuses on a more detailed scale, with emphasis on adequate solutions to the design, technology and theory issues proposed in the different phases of the project.

Educational Objectives
The course aims at developing an understanding of urban history and layering while taking into account the city’s contemporary complexities. The project site’s numerous urban stratifications are taken into consideration for the conceptual framework, and for the development of the planning and theoretical requirements of the course.

The projects are devised to analyze and understand the historical and formal values of the context area while inspiring design solutions to establish a relationship with the broader context as the systems which generate the contemporary urban space of Rome and its metropolitan area.

Completion Requirements
Instructors expect an adequate solution to the planning as well as theoretical issues proposed in the different phases of the project. Assessment of the work is based upon:

• the tectonic quality (i.e. the level of resolution of the systems which compose and articulate the projects)
• the structural and technological elements
• the type of materials and the logic in why they are chosen,
• a satisfactory general compositional layout in plans, sections, vertical surfaces and in the three-dimensional exploration of the project

Specific requirements are made during the semester in terms of drawings and media that are pertinent to the specific work and to the related issues. Students are required to constantly attend studio activities and lectures.