Launch fires up creativity
Rice School of Architecture gives undergrads a taste of studio life

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

The intensity of life as an architect isn’t easy for those outside of architecture to understand, but the Rice School of Architecture (RSA) found a way to offer a taste of the lifestyle to students considering it this summer.

Launch is a new program aimed at giving current or recent undergraduate students a feel for what a career in architecture would be like. An initial group of five students took advantage of the four-week summer session, operated through Rice’s Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, to get a crash course in the process of design.

	JEFF FITLOW
	Students and their mentors participate in a critique during the fourth and final week of Launch, an intensive studio design course that began this summer at the Rice School of Architecture.

“Since we only publicized the course a month in advance, I’m thrilled that we were able to do it at all,” said the program’s director, Grant Alford, a visiting professor who came to RSA from Texas Tech a year ago.

Alford said it’s widely understood and appreciated that many architects come to the field from other studies. “Architects thrive on interdisciplinary collaboration, and one thing people are surprised about architecture graduate schools is that they get applications from all fields.

“My friends in graduate school had been undergraduate math majors, art majors, history majors,” he said. “A graduate school of architecture really seeks out and takes others in to make things more interesting.”

But it’s hard to get a sense of what architecture studies are really like from a book or a visit. Launch, which concluded this week, offered students the chance to immerse themselves in theory and technique; they took classes in the morning and spent the rest of the day in an intensive design studio.

“It’s impossible for students in other majors to sample architecture studios during the school year; the credit hours are high and the commitment level beyond that is even higher. You can’t just dive in. Launch gives them that possibility,” Alford said.

For that reason, the participants — two from Rice and three from elsewhere — experienced a condensed, complete studio in four weeks during which they designed, drew and modeled their ideas for a public pavilion on a vacant plot on Main Street just to the east of Interstate 45 in downtown Houston.

The students’ pavilion proposals ranged from small buildings in a comforting green space to a grand structure that put the focus on the enclosed courtyard and views of downtown.

“The programming of the pavilion was open to interpretation,” Alford said of the assignment. “It wasn’t ‘We’re doing a café,’ or ‘We’re doing a bookstore.'” The students were guided through a study of the surroundings — which included construction of a physical model of the downtown neighborhood — to a set of precedents and concepts from which they could draw inspiration. From the models, he said, the students developed initial ideas and then solid proposals.

Two RSA graduate students, Ian Searcy and Sue Biolsi, did the bulk of the teaching while Alford oversaw the project and acted as chief critic of the students’ creations.

“They don’t teach architecture in grade school, like they do English or math,” said Biolsi, a native New Yorker who expects to earn her degree next year. “This has been a really good way to expose people to Rice and to architecture.”

For one student, the course served as a refresher. Victor Chavez, who earned an undergraduate degree in architecture in Monterrey, Mexico, and moved to Houston, said, “It’s totally different from when I started nine years ago. The software, the way to design, the reference projects have changed. The tools are new.”

Chavez’ intricate take on the space was an Escher-esque series of ramps that would provide a view of downtown and of a central courtyard.

Ashley Fatjo’s building, while smaller, would enhance the sense of community, she said. It would include a café and serve as a connection point for the surrounding buildings.

Fatjo, a junior finance major at the University of Texas at Austin, found the course through her father, a Rice alum. “It’s awesome. I really like it,” she said of the course. “I’ve learned a lot and think it’s something I’m interested in pursuing for graduate school. I’m really glad I got the chance to do this before I decided to commit.”

Eventually, Alford hopes, Launch will launch many more careers. As the program grows, he expects the RSA to welcome as many as 40 students each summer, giving the school a way to expand its breadth while introducing a broader audience to architecture.