UCLA

M.Arch.II

Master of Architecture II Degree Program

Second professional degree program in Architecture. 
1 year.
Degree Conferred: Master of Architecture

The UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design, known for its powerful synthesis of avant-garde thinking and innovative design practice, announces SUPRASTUDIO, a new model for architectural education. A higher order of design education, SUPRASTUDIO evates the academic experience of future leaders in architectural design to a level unique among post-professional M.Arch. II programs. The M.Arch. II degree promotes critical practice by emphasizing applied research.

SUPRASTUDIO is an intensive combination of five elements modeling advanced design practice:

  • Close, extended studio work with a major architect

  • Intensive collaboration with outside consultants

  • In-depth study of contemporary architectural and urban issues using cutting-edge research, modeling, and visualization techniques

  • A team of faculty and visitors offering critical studies and technical seminars related to the studio project

  • Direct experience working with a private or institutional client

SUPRASTUDIO is a series of four studios and associated research carried out over a 39-week period leading to the post-professional degree.

SUPRASTUDIO investigates architecture’s experimental deployment at the city scale, as well as the building and its fabrication. A team of faculty and visitors offer critical studies and technical seminars related to the studio project. Advanced students from across the globe undertake projects with internationally recognized faculty in collaboration with expert consultants, visitors, and client leaders from industry, government and civic community. The year’s focused, four-studio sequence, anchored by emerging design technologies and current theory, takes a fresh look at architecture in the contemporary post urban condition. There is no better site than Los Angles to use as a springboard into the provocative opportunities confronting the next generation of architects.

SUPRASTUDIO has been conceived as an experimental post-professional program dedicated to the research of urgent global issues that intersect across the diverse landscapes of Southern California. Motivated by questions currently unanswered, as well as by those that can be manufactured from speculative thinking, Suprastudio demands a connection to people whose organizations are concerned with the future of Los Angeles, a city whose expansive horizontal structure distorts, in the most dramatic fashion, the frames of our basic urban reference systems: time, space, and distance.

Technology Transfer
Studio Professor Greg Lynn will lead a one-year studio exploring the impact of robotics from the local aerospace, naval, automotive, defense, and entertainment industries on architectural environments. California has the highest concentration of high technology industries in the world and is the center for entertainment and animation technologies whose implications for architecture were first deployed by Professor Lynn more than two decades ago. This Suprastudio is not merely vocational; although new tools will be learned, the focus is on creative and critical thinking in collaboration with cultural development partners around new civic building types and spaces.  The studio will explore the integration of technologies associated with new design and manufacturing mediums into dynamic building environments.  Several projects in the Los Angeles region will be chosen to illustrate the applicability of these technologies to the design of a state-of-the-art sustainable building. The studio will culminate in a documentary film and publication.

 
ANIMATE FORM
The SUPRASTUDIO will be guided by two premises; first, that the majority of the construction industry has already or soon will be effected by the control of manufacturing processes by computers and that for the last 15 years this topic of CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) manufacturing methods and documentation and description of these elements through BIM (Building Information Modeling) is now an industry standard.  Secondly, there have been several instances already of large, building scale, robotic mechanisms being integrated into buildings for both functional and culturally spectacular effect.  This frontier for moving building elements is of great interest to developers involved with design forward, culturally driven buildings, and environments.  The dual interests in robotic manufacturing and dynamic environments will guide the design topics and building types throughout the year. 
 
A NEW EDUCATIONAL MODEL 
UCLA Architecture and Urban Design was the school that invented the integration of large scale digitally controlled machinery with cutting edge design studios 15 years ago.  In 2006 it launched a new model for architectural education by combining a world-renowned member of its design faculty with a creative industrial partner with the SUPRASTUDIO program.  A higher order of design education, SUPRASTUDIO elevates the academic experience of future leaders in architectural design to a level unique among post-professional M. Arch. II programs.  The M. Arch. II degree promotes critical practice by working with leaders in the industrial and cultural industries to define the topics that will shape the world ten years or more in the future giving the students a creative and critical edge for future practice.  The program is global not just in its ambitions, faculty, consultants, visitors and partners but also in the student body; advanced students from across the globe bring their experiences and insight to client leaders from industry, government and civic community.  
 
SUPRASTUDIO is a series of four studios and associated research investigating architecture’s experimental deployment at the city scale, as well as the building and its fabrication. A team of faculty and visitors offer critical studies and technical seminars related to the studio project. Advanced students from across the globe undertake projects with internationally recognized faculty in collaboration with expert consultants, visitors, and client leaders from industry, government, and civic community. The year’s focused, four-studio sequence, anchored by emerging design technologies and current theory, takes a fresh look at architecture in the contemporary post urban condition. There is no better site than Los Angeles to use as a springboard in to the provocative opportunities confronting the next generation of architects.  
 
Now in its fifth year UCLA SUPRASTUDIO has partnered with industry giants in the transportation, entertainment, cultural, and development arenas with great success. In 2008-2009 Neil Denari engaged in a collaboration with Toyoto Motor Sales, Inc., Buro Happold, and AECOM examining future urban scenarios played out across “superlarge” open sites; in 2009-2010 Greg Lynn collaborated with Walt Disney Imagineering to explore the impact of new manufacturing and digital technologies on past and future design and technological innovations in urban resorts, theme parks and creative campuses; in 2010-2011 Thom Mayne in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts investigated the impact of contemporary cultural and artistic events on struggling U.S. cities. By integrating public policy, urban studies, contemporary culture and its spatial manifestations, Culture Now reframes the current conversation; in 2011-2012 Neil Denari will focus its inquiries into urban form and human interface in the city on a well known site in Los Angeles: Westwood Village.
 
Greg Lynn biography
Greg Lynn has defined how designers and architects use computers as a medium, operating in an expanded field that fuses cutting-edge technology, contemporary art, and science fiction aesthetics with architectural form. He was named a 2010 fellow of United States Artists (USA) and won the 2008 Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for Best Installation Project. In 2005, Forbes magazine named Lynn one of the ten most influential living architects and in 2000 TIME Magazine named him one of one hundred people that would shape the next century. He is the author of several seminal books and the subject of Rizzoli’s publication edited by Mark Rappolt, Greg Lynn FORM.
 

SUPRASTUDIOS
GEO-GRAPHICS: The Geometry of Urban Geospace 2011-2012

Professor Neil Denari, winner of a 2010 United States Artists Award, will lead a one-year studio that responds to the urgent call for a more efficiently performing building culture, based on the misuse and a lack of understanding (either real or perceived) of the limits of natural resources. Architecture now faces the environmental crisis with a sense that its less quantifiable and less defensible metrics such as aesthetic performance, cultural sensibility, and geometric experimentation, to name a few, cannot exist on the same plane as a zero carbon footprint, efficient planning, precise functional programming, and material optimization.

Culture Now: The Contemporary American Condition 2010-2011
Thom Mayne, Distinguished Professor
Karen Lohrmann, Lecturer

Culture Now investigates the contemporary American condition to shift perspectives in struggling U.S. cities.  By integrating public policy, urban studies, contemporary culture and its spatial manifestations, Culture Now reframes the current conversation.  The use of demographic, infrastructural, and cultural evidence immediately extends this discussion across disciplines, and encompasses institutional and political models of the public.

Since August 2010, Thom Mayne, Design Director of Morphosis, with Karen Lohrmann, and a group of advisors have been leading 14 architecture and urban design graduate students in an inquiry about the dynamics of culture, now.  By identifying existing systems and correlations, dependencies, initiatives and interactions, the studio examines spatial, communal, economic and ecological transformations as instruments of change.

PUBLICATIONS:

Culture Now: Gray Zones
11"x17", 24 pages, Newsprint, Edition of 2,000

Summer 2010 Research
8.5"x11", 24 pages, Edition of 1

Culture Now: The Contemporary American Condition
11"x17", 24 pages, Color newsprint, Edition of 1,000

Presidents Committee on the Arts and Humanities Presentation
8.5" x 11", 50 slides, Powerpoint Presentation, Edition of 1

Suprastudio 2009-2010
Professor Greg Lynn with Walt Disney Imagineering 

Professor Greg Lynn led a studio in collaboration with Walt Disney Imagineering exploring the impact of new manufacturing and digital technologies from aerospace, naval, automotive, defense and entertainment industries on architectural form. California has the hightest concentration of high technology industires in the world and is at the center for entertainment and animation software whose, applications for architecture were first deployed by Professor Lynn.

Fascinated by the future of bringing robots to the scale of buidlings, UCLA graudate students led by Greg Lynn with Walt Disney Imagineering, explore these possibilities in the new film Suprastudio Greg Lynn with Walt Disney Imagineering.

Suprastudio 2008-2009
MegaVoids

This studio led by Pressor Neil Denari engaged with Toyota Motor Corporation and is Advance Product Strategies (APS) group located in Torrance, Californa as collaborative client/partner. The research focused on Future urban Scenarios played out across superlarge open sites that were classified as MegaVoids, those site that for one reason or another, remain undeveloped.