Architectural Studies (BAS)

The McEwen School of Architecture proposes a unique approach to teaching design based, firstly, on hands-on learning. This means incorporating design-build projects in the curriculum to develop an intuitive way of building and designing that combines thinking, the eyes and the hands. Design-build exposes students to the challenge of not only imagining a design solution, but also concretely realizing the project, from the planning to the construction. This is rooted in the belief that design does not only happen at the drafting table while in a studio. Students should use their hands to develop their craft in order to learn through making. Students will thus have the opportunity to build an exciting portfolio of built projects as soon as they enter the first year of the program. The MSoA has an impressive workshop with a large range of tools and offers training and support thanks to specialized technologists to allow students to make their ideas become a reality.

The curriculum also focuses on technology and fabrication as a means to improve the craft and building skills of students. In addition to learning how to use traditional building tools, students will also learn how to master digital tools such as laser cutters, 3D printers and they will learn how to build electronics and electrical components. This leads to project opportunities such as designing and building your own lighting fixture, your own 3D printer, and so much more!

Experiential learning also means concretely designing projects in collaboration with communities, for communities. Once more, students will have the opportunity to leave the studio to be exposed to real community issues and projects. This will allow them to learn how to creatively integrate the aspirations and values of a community and its people into the design and prepare them for the concrete work of the architect with clients.

Incidentally, this is also reinforced by the fact that the curriculum offers a co-op program to build the students’ professional experience during their studies. This valuable experiential learning experience allows the development of new skills, but also facilitate the transition from school to work. Scroll to Co-op to learn more.

The curriculum embraces the resiliency of northern people, their cultures and the uniqueness of the northern landscape. Located in Northern Ontario, the MSoA is truly a school of the north. In that sense, the curriculum revolves around the idea that students should learn how to design in response to place, landscape, and climate by learning lessons from the north. This will firstly allow students to better understand and harness the sense of place. This means realizing architecture is part of a larger geography, ecology, and landscape in order to integrate these ideas to generate a design that is rooted in place and responds to its environment. To support these teaching students are taken out onto the land, experiencing the Northern Ontario landscape, canoeing, snowshoeing, etc. These are precious lessons that can be later applied to different places to generate unique designs.

Designing for a specific place also calls for a special sensitivity and appreciation for local materials. In Northern Ontario, this means exposing students to a wood culture. In a landscape dominated by forests, wood is a culturally significant material, but it is also a sustainable and renewable building material that is unquestionably the material of the future. Wood occupies a large place in the curriculum as students will learn the importance of prioritizing this material and how to work and design with wood through design studio projects (for ex.: designing tall wood buildings) and courses (for ex.: Wood Structures).

Place is also directly connected to cultural identity. This is about knowing who you are, where you are, the values, and connection to the place that shapes you. Culture can be local, but it also refers to a global heritage of ideas, skills, arts, learnings, etc. A truly responsible and sensitive designer should understand cultural sensitivities, diverse histories, and should know how to respect and draw from the culture of a place or a people to develop a design that is appropriate for that particular place. Students are thus exposed to the common cultural heritage (the millennia of architecture construction and design from all over the world) through a large scope of cultural and theoretical courses (for ex.: Sacred Places, Art & Architecture in Canada or Building Case Studies).

Celebrating cultural diversity in the Northern Ontario context also means acknowledging the multiple founding Nations living here. To this effect, the MSoA embraces a bilingual and tricultural approach, providing a further array of cultural and educational perspectives. This also means integrating Indigenous learning into the curriculum. These teaching are integrated in specific courses (for ex.: Indigenous Precedents), but they are also folded in a large number of other courses. This radical idea (the MSoA is the only school in the country with Indigenous faculty and elders on residence) allows students to embrace traditional ways of learning, or thinking and being into the world, to absorb attitudes about sustainability, materials, caring for the land, people, animals, etc. These teaching and values make for better designers, leaders and individuals, while reinforcing ideals of respect and inclusion.

All these lessons from the north reinforce the idea that architecture needs to respond to its environment by being deeply rooted in both its physical and cultural context. By learning from the north, students will be able to generate sensitive projects here and around the globe.

Finally, the curriculum offers a wide range of courses to expose students to environmental challenges and the important roles and responsibilities of architecture in a world in crisis (for ex.: Design for Climate Change, Architecture & Ecology, Building Systems). Students will learn how to design with energy conservation in mind in order to generate buildings that have smaller energy needs but that are also using energy more efficiently, by using principles of passive design, of bioclimatic design and by relying on clean and renewable energy sources.

Reducing the environmental impact of buildings is more complex than operational energy needs and consequently students will also learn about the ecological footprint and how to minimize the impact of buildings on resources consumption, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution due to materials embodied energy, mitigate the effects of building on the ecosystems, etc. Students will also learn about regenerative architecture: going one step further by designing projects that can also revitalize ecosystems by restoring the fauna, flora, renewing material sources, etc.

Mitigating climate change is only part of the equation and increasing the buildings’ resiliency is also crucial. Students will thus also learn how to adapt the way we design and build to allow people and communities to face more easily the challenges of increased heat waves, more extreme weather events, etc.

Along with environmental sustainability, MSoA places an equal importance on cultural and social sustainability where students will learn about the importance of designing with health and well-being in mind (for ex.: Cultural Sustainability). Buildings are designed first and foremost for people and these buildings are only viable and durable if people can identify to them and if they can inhabit them safely and comfortably.

These principles represent the sustainability ethics that students will learn about in the aim of forming a new generation of architects that will put all forms of life at the center of their peoccupations to change the world and protect our precious planet.

The curriculum embraces the resiliency of northern people, their cultures and the uniqueness of the northern landscape. Located in Northern Ontario, the MSoA is truly a school of the north. In that sense, the curriculum revolves around the idea that students should learn how to design in response to place, landscape, and climate by learning lessons from the north. This will firstly allow students to better understand and harness the sense of place. This means realizing architecture is part of a larger geography, ecology, and landscape in order to integrate these ideas to generate a design that is rooted in place and responds to its environment. To support these teaching students are taken out onto the land, experiencing the Northern Ontario landscape, canoeing, snowshoeing, etc. These are precious lessons that can be later applied to different places to generate unique designs.

Designing for a specific place also calls for a special sensitivity and appreciation for local materials. In Northern Ontario, this means exposing students to a wood culture. In a landscape dominated by forests, wood is a culturally significant material, but it is also a sustainable and renewable building material that is unquestionably the material of the future. Wood occupies a large place in the curriculum as students will learn the importance of prioritizing this material and how to work and design with wood through design studio projects (for ex.: designing tall wood buildings) and courses (for ex.: Structures 1: Wood).

Place is also directly connected to cultural identity. This is about knowing who you are, where you are, the values, and connection to the place that shapes you. Culture can be local, but it also refers to a global heritage of ideas, skills, arts, learnings, etc. A truly responsible and sensitive designer should understand cultural sensitivities, diverse histories, and should know how to respect and draw from the culture of a place or a people to develop a design that is appropriate for that particular place. Students are thus exposed to the common cultural heritage (the millennia of architecture construction and design from all over the world) through a large scope of cultural and theoretical courses (for ex.: Sacred Place, Canadian Art and Architecture or Building Case Studies).

Celebrating cultural diversity in the Northern Ontario context also means acknowledging the multiple founding nations living here. To this effect, the MSoA embraces a bilingual and tricultural approach, providing a further array of cultural and educational perspectives. This also means integrating indigenous learning into the curriculum. These teaching are integrated in specific courses (for ex.: Indigenous Precedents), but they are also folded in a large number of other courses. This radical idea (the MSoA is the only school in the country with indigenous faculty and elders on residence) allows students to embrace traditional ways of learning, or thinking and being into the world, to absorb attitudes about sustainability, materials, caring for the land, people, animals, etc. These teaching and values make for better designers, leaders and individuals, while reinforcing ideals of respect and inclusion.

All these lessons from the north reinforce the idea that architecture needs to respond to its environment by being deeply rooted in both its physical and cultural context. By learning from the north, students will be able to generate sensitive projects here and around the globe.

Finally, the curriculum offers a wide range of courses to expose students to environmental challenges and the important roles and responsibilities of architecture in a world in crisis (for ex.: Design for Climate Change, Architecture & Ecology, The Well-Tempered Environment). Students will learn how to design with energy conservation in mind in order to generate buildings that have smaller energy needs but that are also using energy more efficiently, by using principles of passive design, of bioclimatic design and by relying on clean and renewable energy sources.

Reducing the environmental impact of buildings is more complex than operational energy needs and consequently students will also learn about the ecological footprint and how to minimize the impact of buildings on resources consumption, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution due to materials embodied energy, mitigate the effects of building on the ecosystems, etc. Students will also learn about regenerative architecture: going one step further by designing projects that can also revitalize ecosystems by restoring the fauna, flora, renewing material sources, etc.

Mitigating climate change is only part of the equation and increasing the buildings’ resiliency is also crucial. Students will thus also learn how to adapt the way we design and build to allow people and communities to face more easily the challenges of increased heat waves, more extreme weather events, etc.

Along with environmental sustainability, MSoA places an equal importance on cultural and social sustainability where students will learn about the importance of designing with health and well-being in mind (for ex.: Cultural Sustainability). Buildings are designed first and foremost for people and these buildings are only viable and durable if people can identify to them and if they can inhabit them safely and comfortably.

These principles represent the sustainability ethics that students will learn about in the aim of forming a new generation of architects that will put all forms of life at the center of their peoccupations to change the world and protect our precious planet.

The curriculum is built around the idea that students will learn the fundamentals of architecture (theory, history, culture, representation, technology, structures, sustainability, ecology, etc.) through Architectural Lecture courses, but will acquire and develop their design skills by testing and applying all this knowledge to real design problems and projects in Design Studios. As a result, the entire curriculum revolves around the Design Studio courses. To this effect, students will have one studio course every semester of each year. The studio courses are worth more credits and require more time in class than any other course. The studio course is inspired by the ancient approach to learning architecture as an apprentice in an office, supervised by a mentor. In this way, students will have to design theoretical buildings or real design-build projects in close support with a studio instructor with whom they will meet on multiple occasion during a typical week. Each studio instructor is responsible for a group of +/- 14 students, which means each student benefits from a lot of face-to-face time and expert guidance. For each of the four years of the program, the Design Studios are organized under specific themes, each progressing naturally to the next as the scope and level of complexity increases.

In accordance with The Canadian Architecture Certification Board (CACB), responsible for assessing the educational qualifications of architecture graduates and for accrediting professional degree programs in architecture in Canada, the McEwen School of Architecture undergraduate curriculum includes general and professional studies, but also elective studies (15 elective credits to be completed in years 2, 3 and 4 of the program). These courses allow students to study in other fields of expertise of personal interest. This is extremely valuable as knowledge acquired related to other topics (social, scientific, technical, historical, etc.) will complement and reinforce the architectural education and increase critical thinking skills. Electives must be selected at the start of the year by the student from the range of Laurentian University programs, but the McEwen School of Architecture can recommend specific courses that are relevant to architecture to help students navigate their options. Though all architecture courses are taught at the McEwen School of Architecture (downtown Sudbury), almost all electives are taught on the Laurentian University campus (a short bus ride away).