Welcome

Located within one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing universities and set in the context of one of the country’s most rapidly urbanizing metropolises, the School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture (SALA) is engaging in a new paradigm for teaching and research in the 21st century. In this dynamic context, SALA is redefining the mission of environmental design as not only a holistic pedagogical approach to architecture and landscape architecture but also a form of inquiry that crosses disciplinary boundaries, synthesizes the qualitative with the quantitative, and promotes an inventive approach to systems thinking. The extreme climate and dynamic cultural conditions makes Phoenix a perfect laboratory for demonstrating innovation within and among the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism. To this end, SALA dedicates itself to creating an educational setting for learning, teaching, research, and discovery that helps create a particularly responsible vision for the future of our built environment.
Darren Petrucci, Director

Back to top

INNOVATION THROUGH INTEGRATION

The School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture’s collaborative structure fosters innovation through integration. This ethos brings together the expertise of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and environmental science to pool knowledge among these fields of study and synthesize our discoveries to define relationships among culture, technology, and design. We call upon and integrate the expertise of our own faculty, as well as faculty members from other academic units, to foster creative and innovative design research that seeks to embody the university’s goals and benefit our own professional community both locally and globally.

Back to top

UNITS INTEGRATION

The integration of complimentary fields of study creates holistic educational environments that are more culturally resonant.

SALA is the home of four distinct yet related disciplines: architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and building science design. Recognized as independent disciplines and professions, SALA fosters innovation through the synthesis of these four modes of design investigation. In the first two years of the four-year undergraduate program, architecture and landscape architecture are taught as one integrated curriculum. Therefore, students graduating with either a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture (BSLA) or a Bachelor of Science in Design (BSD) understand design as an integrated discipline that considers issues of the body, land, building, city, and region.

SALA’s graduate program provides four distinct master’s degrees: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design*, and Building Science. The graduate school promotes a dual degree program (MArch/MLA, MArch/MUD, MArch/MSBE, MLA/MUD, MLA/MSBE) that allows students to broaden their education through a combined curriculum that adds one year to their graduate studies. The objectives of the dual degree programs are to gain knowledge and skill in complimentary disciplines, thus increasing professional opportunities and working toward a more sustainable design future.
* beginning in 2009

Back to top

Institute INTEGRATION

SALA is one of seven schools within the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. The schools include the School of Art, the School of Arts, Media and Engineering, the School of Dance, the School of Design Innovation, the School of Music and the School of Theatre and Film. While each school operates as an independent entity developing their respective expertise, SALA has initiated integrated studios, clustered learning environments, and project collaborations that cross disciplinary boundaries fostering transdisciplinary teaching and new networks of knowledge. Other programs that we interface with include the Master of Real Estate Development, Housing and Community Development, the Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family, CriticalCorps, and InnovationSpace.

These collaborations among various design disciplines broaden the scope of the school providing opportunities for pedagogical integration and new innovations in design.

Back to top

UNIVERSITY INTEGRATION

The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts is charged with teaching design and the arts to the university. SALA’s expertise relative to that mission is to foster design awareness of the built environment through education, research, and practice. SALA’s research agendas are integrated and facilitated within the university through the college’s Herberger Center for Design Research. SALA is collaborating with Arts, Media and Engineering, the Ira A Fulton School of Engineering, Del E Webb School of Construction, and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society. SALA has strong connections with GIOS (the Global Institute of Sustainability) through our Master of Science in the Built Environment degree program.

These networks, among fields of study that traditionally do not operate within the culture of design, provide new opportunities to both enrich the other disciplines as well as broaden the expertise of design researchers and practitioners.

Back to top

CURRICULUM OVERLAPPING SYSTEMS

The pedagogical structure of the school provides a contemporary design education through three independent yet overlapping systems: Complexity, Clusters, and Collaborations. These three systems allow the school to develop a strong curricular agenda, create interdisciplinary moments for considering current issues and events, and provide collaborative opportunities for funded research initiatives. Together these three structures create a strong, agile, and productive pedagogical environment for teaching design.

COMPLEXITY
“Complexity” establishes a set of six curricular imperatives: History, Context, Program, Technology, Construction, and Representation. These make up the curricular DNA, and as such, are part of every design studio from first year through sixth year. The objective is to develop an understanding of design as a nonlinear set of conditions that are synthesized toward a possible solution. The curriculum begins with a simple DNA and increases with complexity as students move up in years culminating in a graduate design thesis.

CLUSTERS
“Clusters” are short (one to three day) interdisciplinary colloquia framed around a contemporary issue or topic. Clusters bring together students, faculty, and professionals from various disciplines around particular issues through a series of lectures, panels, and question and answer sessions. Clusters occur as interruptions within the Complexity curriculum and can be vertical in class structure. The objective of the Cluster is to create a place for addressing contemporary issues within the structure of the school curriculum. The goal is to allow the school to have some agility in both addressing pertinent issues and creating networks between various modes of inquiry.

COLLABORATIONS
“Collaborations” provide specific locations within the curriculum for interdisciplinary research and design studios to work on a specific project. These studios operate as integrated studios, bringing together students and faculty from various schools and departments within the college and the university. Led by SALA faculty, the collaborative studio synthesizes faculty research agendas with funding and/or sponsorship. Students are taught the psychology of Collaboration through conflict resolution while they work as an integrated team toward excellence in design.

Back to top

Teaching–Thinking–Acting