According to the 2003 Internship and career Survey, conducted by Arch Voices and the American Institute of Architects most (58%-1 Survey available online at www.archvoices.org,) of our interns and students stated that engaging in community and professional service is a high priority for them. Indeed, if you ask students why they enter architecture schools, they typically mention the desire to help their communities and/or a childhood predilection towards making, building and construction.

Fusing the altruistic desire by our students to help their communities with the impoverished context of our physical and social settings, one can discern an educational summons -– a call for the academy to forge a pedagogy that situates our students in real-world conditions where critical reflection, ethical commitments and poetical outcomes become common practice.

Since its inception, the Building Institute has aimed to open up new paths for the learning processes of our students by inserting them into a social context that they have rarely encountered in any meaningful way: the world of chronic poverty, homelessness, addiction, mental illness, and the non-profit agencies that are in the trenches of these societal battlefronts.

In order to achieve a critical and active learning opportunity for our students, our effort- the Building Institute, like the Rural Studio, deliberately places them into a slice of present day America where physical and societal conditions are at a crisis point. While their design and constructing skills generate the most visible outcomes, this should not diminish the impact that these participations have had on their capacity to reflect on their culture, social conditions, and communal needs. This sustained encounter by our students with atrisk populations has altered our students' critical and ethical thinking in ways that are hard to measure but are real nevertheless

Like most other architecture schools in the country, our university is located in a city that has urgent needs and critical tears in its social fabric that require immediate design intervention. For the last four years, these interventions have formed the basis of projects that, in the context of the academic semester, must yield quick results. Therefore, we have adopted a strategy that we term accelerated fabrications - projects designed and fabricated on a very fast track.

An added bonus of accelerated fabrications is their catalytic effect upon the communities where they are built. They work as a kind of environmental first-aid. Often these communities have been deprived for so long, this quick turn around offers them a tantalizing first glimpse of the larger vision our Building Institute can provide.

Finally, the effect of the Building Institute’s projects upon our students is profound. The responsibilities and ethics instilled through the projects have had both immediate and long-range effects now beginning to be revealed.

The structure of the Building Institute is both highly directed yet responsive. The organization is highly directed in its continuity and mission. From its inception in 2001, the Building Institute has remained committed to its mission statement of addressing local sites and needs and by building relationships with local charities, professionals and industries.

The Building Institute is responsive in terms of its format and curriculum. It operates as an architectural elective that is taught every semester, and in the summer. Two to four faculty members teach the course with one primary director to provide continuity. In the summer, the course also operates as a paid internship following the model in other disciplines such as Business.

The curriculum of the Building Institute begins with a syllabus / project brief like most studios. However, the focus of the Building Institute project brief is the schedule. The exact program is left for the students to identify through client meetings and charettes. The course goals and methods of student evaluation are based on meeting the prescribed schedule defined by the academic semester and producing a measurable, physical outcome.

The pedagogical intention of the Building Institute is to engender a critical, poetical and ethical process / practice. Because of program, budget and schedule restraints, the process must engage improvisation and collaborative design, as well as project management and technical skills. Teaching ethical and critical design also entails mentorship and an experiential learning environment. Both of these strategies are found on-site in the design/build studio where professors serve as mentors / architects-of -record for their apprentice students. It is in this manner we seek to instill an understanding of professional responsibility and collaboration without stifling independence and creativity. Finally, we believe the site of our work, the tears in the social fabric, demands a caring and ethical approach.

Improvisational design and fabrication facilitate learning by doing. The fertile yet challenging constraints of extreme needs, budget and schedule dictate that our students think on their feet, observe intensely and act with precision. Improvisation implies sufficient mastery of an art to allow one to “stray, wander and explore.”

William J. Carpenter, AIA states in his book, Learning By Building, that the following criticisms of architecture schools can be addressed in design/build programs:

“Schools are not inclusive of pragmatic issues like technology. Schools are too insular and are therefore not engaging other departments and community. Schools lack collaborative exercises, which more closely mirror the actual environment in the architect’s office or the construction site.”

Without a doubt, there is no better place in which to experience, practice and internalize technical, communication and management skills than on the construction site. Means, methods and materials become personal and intimate. In the heat of construction battle, communication and collaboration become critical, not only to successful execution of the design, but indeed to one’s own safety.

Project management skills such as budgets, schedules and other logistics become players on the design stage revealing a relevance often ignored or excluded in the classroom. It is in the design/build studio that the ethical responsibility of the architect for the Health, Safety and Welfare6 of the public becomes crystallized.