Summer is a great time for aspiring students and professionals to enhance their skills and expand their portfolios. With the season quickly coming to a close and students ready to begin a new school year, let's take a look at a few of the architecture workshops and intensives around the world. 

Spanning anywhere from one week to a full month, the following summer programs provide high school students, architecture students, and other adults without architecture backgrounds the ability to explore and expand their exposure to the field.

Program: Making+Meaning
Institution: SCI-Arc
Program Faculty: Alexis Rochas (Program coordinator)
Zeina Koreitem, Matthew Au, and David Eskenazi 

"Most of our students come from incredibly diverse backgrounds—chefs, sociologists, physicists—with a piqued interest in what architecture is, but nobody really knows how to define it," Alexis Rochas, program coordinator for SCI-Arc's Making+Meaning program explains during the program final review. This year, students dove into the art of abstraction and translating those processes into digital and 3D forms. 

In the program's recap press release student Georgie Weiss shares her experience. "It's been amazing to talk to practicing architects and teachers and professionals in the industry and just have conversations about what architecture is, what architecture could be, and how to kind of evolve your thinking to sit within such an interesting profession.”

Program: JumpStart Program
Institution: UCLA Architecture and Urban Design
Program Faculty: Mohamed Sharif (Program Director)
Stephanie Odenheimer, Maria Sviridova, Ben Gourley

This year students, many hailing from various academic backgrounds, immersed themselves in a design studio experience where they learned how to draw plans, render models in Rhino, and craft hand-made models. For the program's final review and reception, students used the Schindler's Kings Road House to explore "formations and constituents of architectural thresholds in three phases" Throughout the summer, were tasked with the challenge of "multiplying and then situating components of the site within a simple geometric array." 

Students explored the possibilities of architectural space, form, order, and the relationships between objects and fields in the program; Fatima Kabbaj, a 4th year statistics major at UCLA, reflected on the experience, saying, "Using programs like Rhino and learning how to make a building in 3D was really exciting. I'm glad I joined even though I didn't have a background in architecture."

Program: Teen ArchStudio
Location: University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) 
Program Faculty: Mohamed Sharif (Program Director) 

This year UCLA AUD partnered with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to award summer scholarships to 20 students from high schools with design-focused STEM programs. During this two-week residential intensive, participants were given the opportunity to learn about form and volume by exploring Japanese origami. During their studio "Fold to Form," students learned how these volumetric components take shape through a series of deliberate paper folding maneuvers. 

Program: São Paulo Visiting School
Institution: AA Visiting School 
Program Faculty: Anne Save de Beaurecueil & Franklin Lee (Program Heads) James Solly, Alison Grace Martin, and James Elkis 

During this 10-day program, participants investigated ways in which an elevated highway can be preconceived. The ‘High-Line São Paulo’ Visiting School explored these ideas through parametric weaving. After researching various design strategies, a temporary pop-up bamboo structure was placed along São Paulo's high-line for members of the community to play and interact with.

Program: Chengdu Visiting School
Institution: AA Visiting School 
Program Faculty: Stewart Dodd (Program Head)

For this year's visiting program participants were asked to investigate the the built environment and ways in which sustainable and communal living could be accomplished. During this 10-day program, the group was tasked with designing and fabricating a 1:1 scale intervention using drawings and computational design. The result was an immersive installation titled "Space for Reflection" which allows visitors to walk through mirrored wood beams.  

Program: DesignDiscovery Young Adult Program
Institution: Harvard GSD 
Program Faculty: Bryan Ortega-Welch (MArch '20) & Delara Rahim (MDes ADPD '20)

During this four-week summer intensive high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors are exposed to drawing, modeling, and various design approaches that include landscape design, urban planning, graphic, industrial, and fine arts design. Program Instructor Bryan Ortega-Welch writes, "Our concept this year draws upon Delara Rahim's (MDes ADPD 2020) undergrad thesis at USC." Students also participated in studio exercises branching into the arts. Ortega-Welch shares students engaged in an exercise led by UK Poet Ross which invited them to "design spaces ruled by dream-logic."

Program: Introduction to Architecture Summer Program
Institution: Cornell University
Program Faculty: Luben Dimcheff, Henry Richardson, Dasha Khapalova

The six-week intensive provides college students the opportunity to learn new design principles, explore experimental architectural drawing, while also strengthening their portfolio. This year, the program kicked off with students exploring architecture models as heir opening assignment in a project titled Spatial Cube. Students were also visited by guest critics like Fleet Hower. During Hower's visit, he worked with students on digital design strategies and examined these processes through a Grasshopper Algorithm.  

Program: Space Saloon - Fieldworks
Location: Morongo Valley, CA 
Program Faculty: Danny Wills Gian Maria Socci (Curators)
Rebecca Looringh-van Beeck, Max Harden,  Willis Bigelow,  Fruzsi Karig, Kate McAleer, Office Kovacs (Andrew Kovacs)  Kyle May, Architect MILLIØNS (Zeina Koreitem and John May), i/thee (Neal Lucas Hitch, Martin Hitch, Kristina Fisher) the 2vvo (Lena Pozdnyakova, Eldar Tagi), Leah Wulfman & Maxime Lefebvre, Listening Instruments (Alex Braidwood) Alex Coetzee Roundhouse (Noemie Despland-Lichtert & Brendan Sullivan Shea) 

"Space Saloon is a design laboratory on the move," explains program curators Danny wills and Gian Maria Socci, "We explore the potentials of site by crafting collaborative hands-on experiences." During the two week-long workshop, students designed, prototyped, and constructed two giant, site-specific structures. This year's workshop experience, titled "FIELDWORKS," allowed students to question various processes and techniques through data collection and application. Along with guest workshops and lectures, students were invited to re-imagine the possibilities of a site and its surrounding environment.

Program: Design Camp
Institution: University of Arkansas
Program Faculty: Alison Turner (Program Director), Kimberley Furlong, Rachel Smith-Loerts, Lynn Fitzpatrick, Scott Biehle, Noah Billig, Carl Smith

Students entering in the 9th thru 12th grades participated in an applied learning based camp which allowed them to explore the basics of design. The program's director of communications shares, "The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design hosted weeklong Design Camps in several cities across the state to engage youth in design professions. Camps were held in Fayetteville, El Dorado, Bentonville, Little Rock, Hot Springs and Wilson, and the Fayetteville camp expanded into two sessions." 

This year, the Fayetteville Design Camp spent time with Lori Yazwinski Santa-Rita of Jennings + Santa-Rita Architects, Alli Thurmond Quinlan of Flintlock, and Sally Chew, president of NWA ASID and explored what it's like to be a designer. Students also spent time in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, followed up by an opportunity to showcase all that they've learned through model-making.