Summer 2025 courses

A 6 credit study abroad covering three countries on the Baltic Sea—Finland, Sweden and Denmark—each with a distinct culture influenced by its unique landscape. From the lakes and forests in Finland, to the Swedish archipelago and the cultivated fields of Denmark, we will experience the unusually close relationship between nature and design in Scandinavia. Traveling from west to east, we will see how vernacular buildings, with their intimate relationship to the landscape, have informed the urbane architecture in the capitals.

Contemporary Practice will survey professional architectural design practice business models and processes through stakeholder panel discussions, online visits with local architectural practices, lectures and assignments.

The course explores topics including specialization and interdisciplinarity; ethics and practice; assembling consultant teams; project management and delivery methods; cost control methods and tools; and project procurement and tendering. Central to the course is a consideration of the future of practice and, through the creation of design value propositions, how this presumed evolution might inform speculative practice business models.

Communicating Construction will address the role, composition, organization and conventions of the formal documentation necessary for communication of an architectural design to those undertaking the construction.

This course will explore how the city’s urban dwellers navigate topography. Through a survey of selected stairs, ramps, interstitial spaces and edges, we will be looking at some of the most unassuming and ordinary moments of circulation that are in fact, keystone elements in stitching the city’s spaces together. You will be asked to draw in situ these moments and consider things like, cadence, material, their sequential and/or episodic context, and character of movement as both flow and eddy space for the social body.

The majority of the course will occur as a series of site visits where students will be asked to carefully sketch and document each navigational moment (i.e. stair and/or ramp and their context). These observations will then inform a series of final narrative drawings to be completed by each student. Potential sites may be located at Simon Fraser University, Capilano University, and City of North Vancouver’s waterfront. Students will need to arrange their own mode of transport to and from sites. Please note that there will be extensive walking and time spent outdoors.

wood begins with the trees…the trees form a compact densely planted forest that provides a dry and shady storage space for UBC Farm’s practicum program. The close planting pattern has resulted in a dim understory largely devoid of shrubs and groundcovers.

Our group will spend a lot of time on this site getting to know the forest and the trees through walking, observations, discussions with the practicum teachers and students, drawings and making. The goal is to make a clearing for an outdoor classroom by thinning out some dead trees, storing and airing them for future use, and collaborative design of a platform.

The work will involve immersive site drawings of the existing forest and the proposed, physical work in clearing the trees, and hands on making using only hand held wood working tools. This course builds from my work in the SALA Materials Lab, a collection of building materials that includes standard local wood framing lumber…this elective looks to origins as wood begins with the trees…

Building / Information: Architectural Production with Revit pairs pragmatic training with a critical perspective, placing building information modeling in the context of the broader historical and sociotechnical shifts in architectural production that it is precipitating. It couples the technical learning of an increasingly-widespread architectural design and representation tool, Autodesk Revit, with critical reflection on the use of Revit as a design medium, the analytic opportunities its use can provide, and the design approaches to which it is conducive.

Fundamental techniques will be introduced through in-class exercises and workshops; simultaneously, these techniques will be applied through a semester-long study of an exemplary precedent building. 

This course will teach fundamental coding, using the programming language Python, as applied to the built environment. Students will be taught the necessary skills to automate common workflows, create geometries, perform sophisticated urban analyses, and explore and visualize large datasets.

Programming does not need to be inaccessible! All code will be written using either Grasshopper or Python notebooks, providing instant visual feedback, which will help students gain a more intuitive understanding of the code they are writing. Foundational programming concepts will be explored through case studies directly applicable to the workflow of a SALA student or built environment professional.

A knowledge of parametric design in general and Grasshopper in particular is an asset for incoming students, but not a requirement. A brief introduction to Grasshopper will be given in class and extra learning material will be provided for self-learning. Students with coding experience are also welcome to join to explore building specific applications of programming.

This course is an introduction to the role of planting design in enhancing ecological function and urban resilience, integrated with the values of aesthetics. This course will focus on developing student competencies through integrated knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Co-taught by three instructors, the course format will consist of in-class lectures, site reviews, field observations, participatory activities, independent and collaborative assignments, and constructive critique.

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be equipped with an understanding of the role and importance of planting design, and the interconnectedness of designed sites with the regional ecosystem. Critical aspects of the successful selection and specification of plants will be covered. Students will become familiar with theories, concepts, topics, and precedents relating to planting design, and foundational design competencies applicable to other courses and professional practice.  

There will be a field trip to look at regional ecology on Saturday, May 24.

Students will live and work on Keats Island at Keats Camp. During the week, students will work full time with instructors as well as members of the Keats Camp staff to construct the project students designed during the spring semester. This will involve coordination of construction schedules and materials, leading small task teams within the larger 12-person team, collaborating closely to refine the designs as needed to evolving site conditions, and full-time building work to complete the project’s construction in 6 weeks.

This 6 credit study abroad will travel to the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, a landscape that shares a similar ecology with the lands and waters that stretch from the Iberian Peninsula to the Levant. Yet, Sardinia’s unique geology has also resulted in place-specific agriculture, material practices, and other seasonal land-based activities. On this trip, we will consider relationships to place, land, and time through cultural landscapes, ethnobotany, and material building traditions.

The study abroad will include two parts.  In the first half, we will be based in the towns of Alghero and Nuoro, where we will visit National Parks, museums, and other sites related to Sardinia’s cultural and environmental histories.

In the second half, we will stay in the town of Seméstene, one of the smallest villages in the Sardinian countryside. In Seméstene, we will engage in land-based practices through daily excursions focused on harvesting and planting, dry-stone building, and shared cooking and eating. Throughout our time in Seméstene, we will engage closely with land (touching, smelling, listening, working) to ask questions about what it means to know, care for, and repair a place.

Through this physical engagement with land, each student will create a unique project that is rooted in the Sardinian landscape.

Design studio focusing on neighbourhood and district scale urban design with a particular emphasis on sustainability of natural, cultural, and economic systems.

Cities change over time. Time is a crucial element in the formation of cities and the main recurring theme throughout this course. The course will focus on urban transformations and explore methods and tools to document, categorize and represent urban change, which is often intangible and difficult to grasp. Methods that planners and designers can use to make informed speculations will be examined, to understand past processes as well as shape future directions of development. A critical approach will be developed by the students towards future-facing design challenges in the purview of the built environment professions. 

The neighbourhood is a key ingredient in the everyday life of cities large and small.  This course explores neighbourhoods as a particular geographic scale of planning and design, but also locates them as part of the larger ‘pattern language’ of cities. Attention will be paid to local, national and international case studies of neighbourhood planning and design, as well as the role and interplay of different neighbourhood elements, such as housing, transportation, shops and services, public space and placemaking, and social/cultural amenities. The course will feature a mixture of class work, site visits and walking tours.