Architectural Design Studio 2 is a continuation of the required design studio courses in the Master of Architecture sequence, and continues the introduction of architectural design through a studio teaching setting. Architectural Design Studio II invites students to evaluate architecture’s impact on and from context, site, and program. The project-based assignments will foreground the tectonic and spatial medium of design.

The course primarily consists of two design projects that emphasize the role of design influenced by site and program. The two projects are weighted equally, yet emphasize different conditions / challenges for site-and-program-based interventions. Arguably, it is site and program of a design project that emphasize architecture’s social and contextual traits. Among the discipline’s preoccupations of the last 25 years, we could offer architecture’s charged relationship to ground and context. The pair of projects highlight tectonics and structural design aspects through elements such as retaining walls, cantilevers, and clear spans.