ARCHITECTURE III

Architecture III is a course that is designed to allow students to utilize their technical skills in a more creative manner. Each student is responsible for choosing a location where they would like to "build" a vacation home. The student then conducts research on both the local geography and the culture of that area to generate inspirations to help them formulate the idaes for the design of their vacation home project. Students create their vacation home project from the ground up, starting with thumbnail sketches and renderings, then they create mass models of those ideas in SketchUp. They eventually work their way up to a full scale model in Revit for the final design. The final project must be displayed in presentation form, similar to a college-level project. This is explained in some detail below and some examples of student work are shown in the Architecture Student Project gallery on the previous page. The curriculum by which each lesson plan is created is available for download in the RESOURCES tab. At the end of this course, students will have enough skills for an internship position,summer job or professional employment at the entry level in a variety of areas.

Design Research

Students use the internet to conduct research on the location and inspirations that will influence their design. From there, they will collect several samples pertaining to the materials, structure, and nature of their design. After collecting enough samples to develop their ideas, the students must research their geographical location for all influencing factors, such as climate, building materials, history, culture, and other surrounding factors. Once enough information has been gathered, students will proceed with the designing of their structure in a similar manner learned in previous architecture classes.

Sketching & Mass Modeling

Students are required to develop a series of thumbnail sketches and bubble diagrams to accurately convey their initial design concepts. These concepts are extracted from the data accumulated in the research process of this project. Some sketches will be shaded and colored at a later date and scanned into the overall presentation. Non-traditional walls, materials, and roof structures are highly encouraged to make the students think outside the box. Gable roofs and traditions styles are abandoned in an effort to create a unique one-of-a-kind look. Once the sketching process has matured enough to consider an abstract design, students use Google SketchUp to develop a series of mass modeled concepts.



These mass model concepts are refined with additional inspirations from their research to allow them to include some specific details they wish to incorporate into the project. The sketches and mass models will serve as the preliminary designs to guide the students through to the final product, which will be created in Revit. 

Autodesk Revit - Vacation Home 

The challenge for the students is to take this unusual, abstract architectural design and create it in Revit software. The non-traditional walls, materials, and roof structures are encouraged in the early design process, create unusual challenges and create many difficult tasks for the students when creating their model in Revit. The result is a more proficient student who can present a variety of concepts in a single architectural model. It also serves as a culminating activity to showcase a variety of skills which is presented on each students web page.