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• Pedagogical strategies and objectives
• Grading
• Introduction to the architectural design thesis

Thesis Preparation is the process through which a written and graphic document is produced which becomes the foundation for the Thesis Design Studio.  Its purpose is to develop the in-depth knowledge necessary to serve as the basis for the design process.  Under the guidance of the Thesis Committee the student will research and develop a proposition and strategy, locate, obtain and organize relevant source material, and prepare a document in printed form to be submitted at the end of the semester for review before the Committee.  The Thesis Prep document is the culmination of independent research, analytical investigation, and the critical development of a coherent architectural proposition.  This course provides the structure through which this document is produced.

Many disciplines in academia require a thesis as the culminating effort toward a degree.  What constitutes a thesis within a school of architecture has been, and will certainly continue to be, vigorously debated. It is to be expected, and encouraged, that different faculty and students respond differently in defining the parameters and goals of a thesis.  It is the student's responsibility to seek out guidance from the Thesis Prep. Coordinator and the Thesis Committee to assist in defining and refining the thesis proposition and argument.

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The course will be organized as a series of presentations by the instructor and other members of the School faculty which address the ways in which components of the design process can be best optimized as means of testing the contention. Typically, each topic will be presented by a faculty member for whom it is of particular interest and expertise. In response, each student will be asked to formulate two questions. Faculty presentations will be followed, during the next class meeting, by a discussion based on the student submitted questions as instigators. No other preparation (beyond familiarity with any readings assigned by the presenter) will be required. Students will be invited to volunteer to lead a discussion but in any case each member of the class is expected to participate in a substantive manner.

Beyond ensuring a certain degree of class participation, this strategy is intended to intensify the dissemination of ideas and debate regarding some issues which are central to architectural discourse in general and are especially relevant to the construction of a viable thesis. An additional objective of this discursive construct is to provide an opportunity for each student to construct their own position (a crucial component of the CONTENTION of their thesis) for themselves, and not rely uncritically on received, conventionalized thinking.

Another pedagogical objective of this course is to maximize the availability of each student's work and ideas as a potential resource for the entire thesis class. Your initial thesis proposals (and any subsequent updates) are considered to be in the public domain. They will be placed on reserve in the ARR for the reference of your classmates. At some point, most likely around the time of the second review, they may be "published" on the course web site to facilitate broader faculty and student understanding of thesis proposals within the School. Through this means, you are encouraged to seek out classmates whose work and ideas are similar to yours, or perhaps usefully different.

The final grade for ARC505 will be determined by each student's thesis committee at the conclusion of the final review of the work at the end of the semester. Although this final review will form the sole basis for the course grade, students will receive advisory grades after each preliminary review.

Attendance.

Attendance is mandatory at all classes and attendance will be taken at each class. While the presentation / discussion series plays no formalized role in the determination of final grades, a report of the student's attendance for this course will be given to the thesis committee which is expected to take this into account in the determination of the thesis prep grade. This report will not play a direct part in the committee's calculation of the term grade for ARC505 after the final Thesis Preparation juries. However, this report can be useful to the committee in providing additional information regarding the student's performance and may play some role in resolving borderline grades.

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the·sis (thê/sis) noun / pl. the·ses (thê/sêz)

1. a proposition stated or put forward for consideration, esp. one to be discussed and proved or to be maintained against objections.  2. a subject for a composition or essay.  3. a dissertation on a particular subject in which one has done original research, as one presented by a candidate for a diploma or degree.

Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language

An architectural design thesis is a process as well as a product which results. It is comprised of an CONTENTION (also known as "the thesis", "the hypothesis", or "the proposition") and a VEHICLE, or design problem by which that contention is tested.

1. The CONTENTION is a projective statement about the built environment which can be manifested in architectural, urban, and / or landscape form in any combination. It should always be articulated in the form of a pro-active statement; a contention by definition is not an "investigation" or an "examination". The contention should also have some degree of specificity. It should not be so broad that it cannot serve as an effective criterion for directing and evaluating the design process and its outcome. For example, the unqualified statement "I contend that architecture is a cultural phenomenon" means everything and nothing.
The contention should be thought of as somewhat provisional; it should be subject to testing and verification through the thesis process. Because of this, it should be thought of as available for refinement and/or elaboration as that process unfolds over both semesters of work. In the same way that a designer's understanding of a building's parti evolves and intensifies with the development of the scheme, the understanding of the contention underlying the design thesis project can also evolve. Accordingly, you are strongly encouraged to periodically revisit your contention during the two semesters of your thesis work, and revise it as appropriate.

2. The VEHICLE is the actual design problem which must be carefully constructed to most directly manifest and test the contention. As with any design problem, the thesis vehicle includes the two following major components:

1. Program
2. Site

It also implies a concern for:
3. Design processes
4. Representational techniques

As you know from your previous design experiences, each of these components itself contains multiple dimensions and can be construed to inform form-making in multiple ways. However, there is a crucial distinction between the roles played by the interpretation of these design problem components in a typical design problem and the thesis vehicle. Every aspect of the thesis vehicle design problem, along with the contention, is subject to the discretion of its author. This presents a crucial opportunity to construct a design problem which is precisely directed toward the embodiment and testing of a given contention.

Achieving optimal congruence between contention and vehicle design problem is an important goal of your work in ARC505.
For example, the PROGRAM can be considered primarily as a set of volumetric requirements, occupancies, adjacencies and separations, useful in its implications for formal resolution. On the other hand, the program might be thought of as a conceptually backgrounded condition which enables some other aspect or aspects of the design problem to be foregrounded in order to optimally manifest and test a given contention. However, the program can also play a generative role in the construction of a contention. It can also be considered as the spatial expression of a cultural institution, whose role, location and conventional means of architectural representation (i.e., through typological form) within an urban structure can be affirmed, challenged, or transformed. The program can also be considered as a social text which encodes real and imagined relationships between economic classes, genders, ethnicities, and other sets of power relationships. Here again, the social implications of the program can be affirmed, challenged, or transformed. The program can also be an invented institution, or a hybrid of existing ones. Regardless of your interpretation of the program condition, The volumetric requirements and occupancies must be clearly declared and all relevant research into the programmatic implications completed and documented as a part of your work in ARC505.

At its most basic, the SITE is simply the physical context within which the project is to be located. By the conclusion of this course it must be thoroughly documented, anlyzed and researched. Many other interpretations may also exist. To paraphrase Carol Burns, the site can be seen as a blank surface upon which the architect operates in response to other preoccupations, or it can be seen as a record of human settlement and ecological processes over time which are formally generative. Thoughtful consideration of a physical site's spatial or temporal boundaries, or the ways in which it displays or conceals the marks of historical processes which have configured it, may inform an already emerging contention, or may help generate one. It may also be useful to challenge the fundamental construal of "site" as simply the physical location of a building. In a society in which an electronic image understood as site "the website" plays increasingly significant cultural and economic roles in everyday experience, what is meant by this word? In any event, the conceptualization of the "site" of any design intervention should not be taken lightly; its spatial and temporal boundaries, as well as other extra-spatial aspects such as social and cultural roles is crucial to the success of any thesis project.

The DESIGN PROCESS is the specific set of techniques and practices which are used to propel the generation of form. This is a crucial and occasionally underestimated means of directing a design problem to optimally manifest and test a contention. At first, the design process may seem like a neutral, enabling set of operations unrelated to the conceptual content of form-making. However, an uncritical reliance on a conventionalized, generic process of designing from whole to part, from plan to section to volume to elevation, can severely compromise the ability of a design problem to act as a means of contention-testing or can even compromise the successful resolution of the design problem itself. It is essential to carefully examine both the contention and the design problem for cues toward the optimal organization of your design process.

The design process also takes on additional significance in the context of the thesis design problem as a largely self- directed experience. Unlike your previous design studio experience, where you met regularly with the critic and pin-up reviews were regularly scheduled, you will only have a total of 4 scheduled working meetings with your thesis committee (as well as the 2 final semester reviews) over the two semester period. Therefore, it is essential that you effectively design your working process for both semesters to include periodic assessment points, with clearly articulated and realistically achievable goals for each.

3. The specific means of TESTING the vehicle through the contention and the contention through the vehicle will vary according to the specific natures of both. It is important to explicitly identify the means and criteria by which a design should Generally, it is expected that this testing will occur through the examination of designed form. For this reason in particular, the use of diagrams--whether graphic or 3-dimensional, physical or digital--are absolutely essential in the thesis process as a means of demonstrating the relationship between concept and form.

Extra-formal means of testing are not absolutely prohibited, but they must be carefully established with the full consensus of the thesis committee. Criteria such as desired social effects of spatial interventions, or experiential characteristics, are much more difficult to verify through the typical results of an architectural design thesis and should be deployed with caution and the consensus of the thesis committee.

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