Mar 28, 2024  
Graduate Record 2014-2015 
    
Graduate Record 2014-2015 [ARCHIVED RECORD]

Urban Design Certificate


Return to: Graduate School of Architecture: Departments/Programs  


The Urban Design Certificate program is open to master’s degree candidates in any department of the School of Architecture who want to pursue an interdisciplinary program that focuses on the design of land in urban areas. The four graduate departments – Architectural History, Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban & Environmental Planning – each offer unique contributions to the program. The certificate is structured to synthesize concepts, methods and strengths across disciplines into new approaches to the design and planning of cities and settlements.

Urban Design Certificate students have an opportunity to closely work with an emerging new reality. When defining the “oblique function,” cultural critic and urbanist Paul Virilio describes a diagonal journey to discover the “inclined plane,” which he sees as an alternative lens for examining the urban condition. Rather than reducing urban design to the placement and massing of buildings –the vertical line of the skyscrapers of Manhattan, or the horizontal configurations of suburbia – this program explores the latent “inclined plane” in the blurry, fluid and mutable space in-between urbanism, cultural history/theory, architecture and landscape. The certificate program guides students to explore the intersection of these disciplines with the expectation that the result will be greater than the sum of each when practiced independently. Students will be expected to view the boundaries of their professions as an open space for exploration, and an oblique place of different intersections.

Energy and History


Participants in this certificate are asked to assume the cities of the future will respond coherently to environmental challenges. Urban growth cannot continue unchecked without a clear strategy for responding to climate change and the difficulty of generating sufficient clean energy. This program proposes to use the need for energy as a tool for discovering how we can design new cities. Energy can help to establish new relationships between the land and the city.

It is assumed that design and planning professionals need to understand the past in order to imagine the future. Students will work with faculty to investigate the histories and memories of a place, as well as the environmental and architectural actions that constitute a powerful catalyst of our contemporary urbanity. Students will invent new design strategies and tactics as much as design finished objects. By developing new open systems, students will be encouraged to understand the role of the ephemeral in the design process, while also keeping in mind the power of the material dimensions of the city. The certificate program will focus on discovering the new tools of urban design. The students will learn how we can respond in this unstable, delicate and provocative contemporaneous moment when our cities need to find a new relation with the land, from the scale of site to that of the territory.

Admission


The certificate program is open to graduate students in any of the School of Architecture’s four departments. Students wishing to enter the Urban Design Certificate program must first be admitted to one of the graduate departments in the School of Architecture. In order to ensure proper academic advising and program coordination, students interested in the Urban Design Certificate should attend the program meeting at the start of each fall semester. Upon arriving at the Architecture School they should also file a program application form with the Architecture School’s Registrar. There are individual courses that fulfill the requirements of the Urban Design Certificate curriculum that also fulfill requirements within a student’s departmental curriculum. Satisfactory completion of the 21 credit hour program leads to the Urban Design Certificate. Graduate students in the School will normally be able to complete the program requirements and earn the certificate within the time required for their graduate degree programs. It can be accomplished during the standard length of a professional degree by taking the urban design courses as one’s elective credits, or the certificate can be completed over an additional semester.

Requirements


The curriculum for the Urban Design Certificate is comprised of 9 credits in three required core courses; 6 credits in an urban design studio as designated by the program director and 6 credits of elective coursework.

Core Courses (required):

 
 
  

Design Studio:

 /  – selected from options issued each year

Elective Coursework:
Elective Courses, Credits: 6 – selected from list issued each year and semester

Total Credits:
21 credits

Graduate students from departments other than Architecture and Landscape Architecture must have some design studio background prior to taking the required research studio. For non-design graduate students with a previous degree in architecture (comparable at a minimum to the U.Va. M.Arch. PATH 2.5 program), there are no prerequisites to enroll in the studios. For students with previous degrees in landscape architecture or urban design, a similar degree with a minimum of four studios is required. If a student is not enrolled in the MArch or MLA program, and does not have a previous degree in one of the aforementioned disciplines, they must enroll in the Summer Design Institute (SDI) at the School of Architecture as a prerequisite for taking the required design studio.

The content of the required courses will supplement the required design studio by providing an overview of the history, theories and practices of urban development. Each year, the director will issue a list of approved studios and elective courses that can be used to fulfill the requirements. Elective courses allow students to pursue individual interests in greater detail and offer the possibility to benefit from the breadth of expertise found within the School of Architecture and the University. The elective coursework will be selected from courses taught in all four departments in the School of Architecture, and courses in other schools and departments around the University. The program is also enhanced by annual lectures and symposia offered within the School and at the University.