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Graduate Landscape Architecture Program

Curriculum (.pdf outline)

Graduate students in Architecture are exposed to a variety of ideas and perspectives by a faculty who represent diverse attitudes and approaches to architecture. Most graduate level classes are small with a student teacher ratio in design classes being approximately 12:1. While the faculty maintains a fundamental commitment to teaching, the full-time faculty is also actively engaged in research and creative activity, including architectural practice. Thus students are exposed to issues, problems and opportunities that confront contemporary architectural thought and practice. Despite their busy schedules and numerous responsibilities, professors readily make themselves available to students to assure that knowledge is transmitted and that students are receiving a full and comprehensive professional education.

The curriculum presents architecture as an intellectual discipline. The major elements of a professional architecture program include professional practice, applied technology, history and theory, and design. It is the design studio which serves as the backbone of the curriculum. Here the students are challenged to develop their creative capacities directed towards inventive and responsible solutions to the ever-changing problems and opportunities which confront the built environment.

FIRST YEAR
The beginning portion of the three and one half year program is dedicated to the acquisition of skills, experience and architectural vocabulary needed to investigate architecture in a broad and comprehensive way. For those students without the requisite drawing and basic design skills, courses are offered during the first summer to address these issues. The intention of these courses is to enable the student to begin to coordinate the mind, eye and hand in order to assure that ideas and intentions can be articulated in architectural form. During the Fall and Spring Semesters of the first year, students are exposed to design projects of increasing complexity in terms of spatial configurations, function, site considerations, and symbolic, social and cultural content. Concurrently, the student receives a substantive grounding in the technical, historical and theoretical content of building. Representational skills are extended in a required computer course. While rigorous and comprehensive, these first year courses are introductory in nature and thus they are assigned undergraduate level course numbers. During the academic year, design studios are taken exclusively with other graduate students, but the technology and history/theory courses are taken with students in the first professional degree undergraduate degree program. These courses often have special graduate discussion and tutorial sections.

The first year is designed to immerse the student in architecture and as a result, no electives are offered. First year courses are meant to provide a comprehensive grounding for the next two years which deal with synthesizing the technical, pragmatic and poetic issues which are part of any architectural work.

SECOND YEAR
At the start of the fall semester second year, students begin to take courses for graduate credit. At this point it is necessary to maintain a minimum of 3.0 grade point average as mandated by the University of Tennessee Graduate School. Second year focuses on architectural production using the skills and knowledge gained in the first year as its base. The fall semester design studio investigates communal grouping of buildings and how variety and specificity can be achieved through the creative deployment of repetitive units. Housing is often the focus of the studio. During this semester students are introduced to sustainable design strategies and practices. Spring semester focuses on the tectonics of architecture, integrating technology with the poetics and craft of construction. Sustainability issues are extended this semester, as are the technical and cultural components of building. Seminars are linked to the design studios and students are challenged to creatively synthesize the knowledge they have gained in the program to bear on the challenges which confront contemporary architectural practice.

THIRD YEAR
The final year of the program begins with a design studio which focuses on the relationship of culture to architecture, with particular emphasis on the city. Design studio projects typically focus on urban issues, often using Tennessee cities in which the projects are based. Central to the final year is the preparation and execution of the thesis.

In the fall semester, each student makes a thesis proposal related to the design of an appropriate project. The thesis preparation semester concerns itself with documentation and inquiry which identifies, expands, and interprets the thesis topic and thrust. In the thesis design semester, students develop their thesis ideas through the synthetic design of a specific project which should be conceptually clear and consistently developed.

The graduate thesis represents the culmination of the Master of Architecture coursework. Through research and creative application, the thesis is both a celebration and confirmation of the skills and knowledge acquired in the program. Fundamental to the thesis and its line of inquiry is the synthesis and critical judgment evidenced in the architectural design and accompanying text. While emphasis is not dictated, the student is expected to acknowledge the environmental, technical, cultural and ethical forces that shape architecture.

The thesis is an opportunity for the student to explore and develop in depth the ideas and principles of architecture which the candidate finds compelling, relevant, and challenging and of interest to contemporary architecture and culture. The thesis is both an exploration and a demonstration of a student’s architectural skills and knowledge. It serves as a benchmark of the student’s development as an architect as she or he enters the profession.

ELECTIVES
In addition to the forty-eight required hours of graduate courses graduate students take in the second and third years of the program, there is also the opportunity to take twelve hours of elective courses. Typical electives offered in the School of Architecture include urban theory, historic preservation, technology topics, architectural history, planning, financial development, computing and architectural theory. In consultation with his or her advisor, a graduate student can develop a purposeful approach to these electives, supplementing knowledge, exploring new areas, and/or developing a specialized expertise.

These electives provide the student a chance to take full advantage of the offerings not only in the College, but in the broader University as well.