The McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science will be offering a new concentration in architectural engineering and design beginning Fall Quarter 2008.
“Our objective is to prepare students for careers in architecture and to provide them with design opportunity,” said Brian Moran, chairman of McCormick’s department of civil and environmental engineering, which will house the new concentration. “We want to prepare them to engage with architects and engineers and have a wholistic understanding of architecture and engineer industry upon graduation.”
The program was spearheaded by McCormick Dean Julio Ottino, who saw the concentration as an opportunity to combine Chicago’s legacy of architecture with McCormick’s strong design initiatives.
“According to the big architectural firms in Chicago, there is a real need for creative thinking,” Ottino said.
McCormick has been adding design initiatives since the 1990s, when the school began its Engineering Design and Communications course. In 2005, the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center opened to house the school’s design programs, and two masters’ programs in design began in Fall Quarter 2007.
For the architecture concentration, students will take a cluster of classes in engineering design area, including existing courses in concrete design and new courses that are being developed.
“We are ironing out the details of the curriculum as we speak,” Moran said.
Ottino is not in charge of the curriculum’s development, but as a painter he is interested in the possibility of incorporating art history courses into the concentration, he said.
“A more artistic eye is needed,” Ottino said. “Right brain and left brain – we are trying to do both in here.”
The program will be directed by the new distinguished architect in residence – Laurence Booth of Booth Hansen Associates, a Chicago-based architectural firm. It will initially be offered as a concentration, but it has the potential for rapid growth, perhaps becoming a certificate program, Moran said.
Over the years, students have expressed interest in adding an architectural design component, Moran said.
“Students are very receptive to the program,” he said. “It was in part the desire of students to have an architectural engineering element to their studies that drove development of the program.”
The concentration is intended to fit about 20 students, Ottino said.
“We’re not shooting to be very large,” Ottino said. “But the concentration is a big push toward design as a part of engineering as a whole.”
McCormick students who have already declared other concentrations said they too were interested in the program.
“I do plan on taking the courses that I can, but I’m not sure if I’ll have enough time to take them,” said McCormick junior Alex Stack. “But it allows for a creative part of civil engineering that hasn’t previously been matched by other majors.”
