UCLA Architecture and Urban Design
2012-2013 M.Arch. II SUPRASTUDIO
Led by Greg Lynn

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, announces SUPRASTUDIO 2012-2013, a new model for architectural education that elevates the academic experience of future leaders in architectural design to a level unique amongst post-professional M.Arch. II programs. The M.Arch. II degree promotes critical practice by emphasizing applied research.

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
http://www.aud.ucla.edu/pdfs/ucla_suprastudio_Lynn_2012_2013.pdf.
www.aud.ucla.edu

Application deadline is Dec. 15, 2011
View the film SUPRASTUDIO Greg Lynn with Walt Disney Imagineering from 2009-2010 at www.aud.ucla.edu

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, announces SUPRASTUDIO 2012-2013, a new model for architectural education that elevates the academic experience of future leaders in architectural design to a level unique amongst post-professional M.Arch. II programs. The M.Arch. II degree promotes critical practice by emphasizing applied research.

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 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 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.

Application deadline is Dec. 15, 2011
www.aud.ucla.edu
Contact
Jim Kies
Student Advisor
1317 Perloff Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Phone: 310.825.0525
Email: admissions@aud.ucla.edu