Director: J. Alread
Graduate Coordinator: B. Walters
The School of Architecture recognizes design as a synthesis of thinking, analyzing and making — an iterative process that engages, issues of space, historical precedent, sustainability, ecology, urbanity, landscape, built-form, and construction toward innovation. As Florida will soon support the third largest population in the US, the challenges of rapid growth within sensitive natural ecologies, fluctuating tourism, humid and hot climate, multiple urban centers, sprawling suburbs, dwindling agriculture, lack of mass transit, and extensive coastal hurricane threats requires integrative and collaborative design strategies for the future.
The School of Architecture is uniquely positioned to respond to these issues by deploying studio based design methodologies in collaboration with a new generation of experts in engineering, ecology, business, anthropology, energy, fine arts, medicine and construction. Within the University of Florida, the State’s flagship research institution, a trove of researchers and faculty dedicated to academic excellence and interdisciplinary collaboration are focused on the demands of changing culture. The SoA is one of seven programs associated within the College of Design, Construction and Planning — Architecture,Landscape Architecture, Planning, Preservation, Sustainability and the Built Environment, Interior Design and Building Construction. SoA faculty and students, working independently and collaboratively across disciplines through teaching, research and practice, have garnered international, national, state and local design awards, publish regularly and secure national, state and local grant funding for research based service learning and design projects. This body of work poses theoretical, poetic, cultural and practical questions and suggests responses through the discipline of design.
The GISoA is focused on research-based design that explores critical issues of a changing culture — climate, energy, infrastructure, transportation and population growth/redistribution. Students are engaged in design as a collaborative and integrative methodology addressing both real and speculative projects through coordinated studios, seminars and workshops. To support this effort, nationally recognized award winning Architects from practice and the academy in the US and abroad collaborate with faculty and students in studio and intensive issue-oriented workshops strategically scheduled during the academic year.
