A Message from our Dean
Welcome to the University of Tennessee’s College of Architecture + Design!
21st Century education in architecture and design is evolving and will look very different from what it looked like a decade ago. Increasingly, students and faculty members are realizing high impact design research projects in collaboration with professionals, public entities, and partners from industry. More and more, these collaborative enterprises will challenge designers to further enhance their ability to integrate diverse and often unfamiliar arrays of skills and knowledge.
Here, at the University of Tennessee, we strive to be at the forefront of changes that will transform professional education in architecture and design, changes that will enable the best and brightest students to pursue entrepreneurial initiatives, to lead creative teams, and to accelerate innovation. Through design research, our aim is to bring about healthy sustainable communities, drive advances in building technology, and connect our research with industry in order to create new economic opportunities for the citizens of this state, the region, and beyond.
Already, before leaving school, our students will make their mark on the world with technologically advanced, environmentally sensitive, and socially enlightened building experiments. A few years ago, the College’s UT Zero House provided a glimpse, at a small scale, of what a house in a sustainable, carbon-neutral world might look like. Now, two full-scale applied research projects, the NCARB award winning New Norris House and Living Light, a sophisticated solar house, were completed. Last spring, work was begun on a new secondary school complex in rural Haiti. Locally, in our UPSIDE Program, we continue to work with disadvantaged secondary school students making houses for the East Knoxville community and our Nashville Civic Design Center continues to shape the urban fabric of the state capital. Working side by side with professors and non-faculty architect practitioners, students are learning to communicate the value of design, to explain technical and aesthetic decisions, and establish trust between the design professions, community members, and partners from industry.
Discoveries emerging from our innovative research projects are beginning to have technological,environmental, and social impact, making their way into the everyday lives of people throughout our region and beyond. This highly public work adds value to an already strong curriculum and challenges our faculty to continually reflect on the future of design education.
As the demands of practice change at an unprecedented pace it is crucial to have an educational environment that supports innovative learning. Our college is keenly aware that we are preparing students for a workplace that will be unlike the past. To meet the challenges of the future––to be ready for the world––our students work with state of the art design and fabrication technologies, engage faculty members and visitors with specialized expertise, and participate in new opportunities for collaboration and international exchange.
Our goal is to make Knoxville a Design Research Hub that reaches out from Tennessee to the world. We are convinced that creativity is a competitive advantage and that creative thinking will increasingly drive innovation and economic growth.
And creativity is in demand. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEO’s from over 40 countries cited creativity as the #1 ‘leadership competency’ for the future. Across the globe countries are making creativity development a national priority.
To advance innovative curricula in the College of Architecture + Design, we will be adding the courses, programs, technological capability, intellectual capital, and industrial affiliates necessary to meet the global demand for creativity and reach our objective of being a center for design thinking. To enrich the learning experiences of our students we will engage research partners across the university––from engineering and agriculture to biology and business. We will challenge ourselves to think about design from the scale of molecules to manufacturing. And, to reinforce the idea that design is a competitive advantage, we will aspire to create value for everyone involved with our college.
Please visit our website as it changes in the upcoming months and as we experiment with new ways to convey information and tell our exciting story.
Sincerely,
Scott Poole, Dean
College of Architecture + Design
Scott Poole, Dean
coaddean@utk.edu
Contact Us
College of Architecture and Design
Art + Architecture Building
1715 Volunteer Boulevard,
Room 224
Knoxville, TN 37996
Undergraduate:
ARCHITECTURE
phone: (865) 974-5265
email: archinfo@utk.edu
INTERIOR DESIGN
phone: (865) 974-3253
email: idutk@utk.edu
Graduate:
ARCHITECTURE
phone: (865) 974-5253
email: gradarchinfo@utk.edu
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
phone: (865) 974-5253
email: larchinfo@utk.edu
Request Information
