Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought. Albert Szent-Györgyi

The First Year Program offers two trajectories of entry into The School: The Foundation Unit Studios and the Summer Option Studios. The Foundation Unit consists of two semesters of design studio coupled with a variety of support and university core courses. This track of study is tailored to the incoming freshman that meets the high academic standards required by the program. As an alternative, continuing and transfer students may enroll in the rigorously challenging Summer Option studio prior to seeking admission to the second year of architectural studios.

The Education of an Architect
Architectural Education is based on two simple premises. The first is that we can learn more together than we can by ourselves (the studio), and the second is that we can learn how to design things by designing them (learning by doing). The paradox of this arrangement is that we ask you to do things that you do not know how to do. That is one of the reasons that we do it together.

The studio is a class, a place, and an environment. Its design is your first urban project. You will learn at least as much from your colleagues as you do from your instructors. Conversely, you are responsible to contribute to the environment. It is extremely selfish just to listen. A point of view is worth 60 points on an architectural intelligence test. A point of view which is held firmly but delicately such that it might change or be set free by another point of view is inspired and productive.

Studio the class is one class among others. The others are important, not only in the way they help to prepare you to become an architect, but also in the way they are connected through the studio. We will expect you to make these connections through your work.

Studio the place is first a place for work, second a place for mutual discovery, and third a place for discussion and evaluation. There is an aspect of this last part that is also devoted to public celebration of effort and imagination. In the studio, ideas are free and may be assumed without regard to authorship or ownership as long as the origins are acknowledged. Picasso made this clear when he stated that “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” He also revealed that when you make an idea your own it changes, and so do you.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the studio class is self evaluation and its related public counterpart of external critique. Common wisdom states that because you invest so much of yourself in the work you must distance yourself in order to make criticism productive. This is a difficult proposition, at best. Try this instead: you must care so deeply about what you do that the desire to make it better, to know more, prompts you to seek criticism from wherever it may come. Reaction to your work from diverse sources tells you more. Shortcomings that remain concealed cannot be repaired.

There is an important moment in the education of an architect when a student realizes that what they have just done, is not done, and could be better. Actively seeking this moment marks the change from a student who is here to be educated (a passive condition), to one who wants to learn - an active condition. The student who wants to learn will come to know that school is not preparation for life, but life itself.