SAID Community Culture Policy

The National Architecture Accreditation Board requires that each accredited program develop and maintain a studio culture policy. Students, faculty and administration have worked over the past six months to identify the issues and concerns that should be addressed in this policy for SAID. Because we understand that a culture of respect and learning extends beyond the design studio, to articulate the values and principles to which we are committed both within and outside of the classroom, we've titled ours the "SAID Culture Policy."

The SAID Community Culture Policy is a work in progress. We hope that it will stimulate discussion and expect that it will be revised as a result of dialogue and debate. Special meetings will be scheduled for face-to-face discussion. But in the meantime, and thereafter, please use this utility on DAAPspace to share your thoughts!

Read the full draft SAID Community Culture Policy, below, or download a pdf.

NAAB Condition 3.5-Studio Culture

The school is expected to demonstrate a positive and respectful learning environment through the encouragement of the fundamental values of optimism, respect, sharing, engagement, and innovation between and among the members of its faculty, student body, administration, and staff. The school should encourage students and faculty to appreciate these values as guiding principles of professional conduct throughout their careers.

The APR must demonstrate that the school has adopted a written studio culture policy with a plan for its implementation and maintenance and provide evidence of abiding by that policy. The plan should specifically address issues of time management on the part of both the faculty and students.

Topics

SAID Mission Statement

The School of Architecture and Interior Design at UC prepares students for critical engagement with practice. This critical engagement presupposes sustained evaluation of the principles, traditions, and requirements of building. Our goal is to advance the profession of architecture by combining ethical judgment and technical proficiency in pursuit of excellence, whether the product of our expertise is a physical or intellectual construction.

In view of constantly changing conditions for practice, our program seeks to multiply insights and abilities in every student?sensitivity to the aesthetic and social responsibilities of environmental intervention; the life-long cultivation of a broad, synthesizing, and humanistic world view; respect for the benefits of research and innovation; deepened commitment to specific lines of inquiry; an advanced understanding of the culture of practice; readiness for licensure; design acumen; advanced graphic skills and technical vocabulary; affection for risk; and love of play.

How does the SAID Mission Statement translate to your daily experience in SAID?

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Optimism

The SAID Community is committed to developing a supportive and encouraging environment for teaching, learning, research, service, and innovation. The SAID Community is committed to bringing its talents and resources to bear on the responsible planning, design, and management of the built and natural environment. This is manifested throughout all aspects of the SAID culture.

  • PRINCIPLES IN ACTION: We will enact our principles.
  • PROFESSIONALISM: Our work is important to the future of the world.
  • SUSTENANCE: Sustainable design is a process, a philosophy, and a practice by which the results contribute to social and economic well-being, have a positive impact on the natural and built environment, and which can be reproduced for the future from a renewable base of human, fiscal, and natural resources. We are committed to a sustainable future. This is evident in our care for the SAID Community.

What does OPTIMISM look like? How does it reveal itself in SAID's daily life? In studio, in classes, and/or on co-op?

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Respect

The active development of respect is valued in relationships between all peoples, as well as in our stewardship of our natural resources, our fiscal resources, and our facilities. Fostering respect for the process, products, and the environments of teaching and learning is the responsibility of each member of the SAID community.

  • RESPECT OUR FELLOW CITIZENS: We celebrate and defend differences. We support diverse opinions, talents, and experiences.
  • RESPECT OURSELVES: Our professional aspirations are evident in our courteous attention, appropriate attire, and professional behavior.
  • RESPECT OUR WORK PLACE: The facilities of DAAP and SAID are our working environment. We are responsible for protecting and maintaining the classrooms, studios, shops, technology, and common areas that have been provided to support our work.
  • RESPECT OUR RESOURCES: We use the resources of our natural world with care and without waste. We reduce consumption and recycle these resources in evidence of our stewardship.
  • RESPECT TIME: Our time for teaching, learning, service, research, and innovation is valuable and finite, and we are the stewards of this time.

How is respect manifested in an environment of professional criticism? What role do the values of respect, as outlined above play in SAID and in the development of the development of the design professional? What does respect look like in SAID, on a daily basis?

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Sharing

The processes and products of teaching, learning, service, research, and innovation within SAID are available and open. Our work has value within our institution as well as within our community, and the SAID community is committed to fostering relationships with the world beyond our walls.

  • CREATE OPPURTUNITIES: We initiate and respond to opportunities to share and collaborate with diverse disciplines in our work and in our communities of interest.
  • DISSEMINATE KNOWLEDGE: We value the work that we do with communities outside our own, whether that work is practice, service, or scholarship.
  • COOPERATIVE LEARNING: We value the exchange of knowledge and skill that occurs when we migrate to and from diverse environments.

What does SHARING look like at SAID, on a daily basis? How does it impact the way we work and the way we discuss our work? How can we better encourage the process of collaborative learning both within our local environment of SAID/DAAP and in our larger environment of the University of Cincinnati and indeed in the neighborhood as a whole?

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Engagement

Each individual plays a critical role in our community, and this role requires that each individual is motivated to engage our work, our goals, and our responsibilities with open and honest effort. All members of the SAID community agree to remain fully engaged in the process of teaching, learning, research, service, and innovation.

  • PARTICIPATE IN THE DIALOGUE: We listen and we speak to advance our understanding of our contribution to our professions. Teaching and learning take many forms, and they are the shared experience of faculty and students.
  • PARTICIPATE IN THE OPPORTUNITIES: We encourage the effort of the SAID community to enlarge our learning by participating in the opportunity to learn from the distinguished guests who share their unique perspectives in our lecture series and our reviews.
  • PARTICIPATE IN CONSTRUCTIVE DISCONTENT: We are responsible for contributing to the governance and development of the SAID community. We are engaged in the review and assessment of our curriculum. We are diligent in our pursuit of improved teaching, learning, service, research, and innovation.

What does engagement look like in SAID, on a daily basis? What distinguishes -constructive discontent- from -disruptive discontent?- The cornerstone of design education is critical involvement in all stages of the design process, how can we, as a college, better teach and encourage this critical involvement?

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Innovation

SAID encourages innovation in teaching, learning, service, and research that explores and defines where the disciplines of architecture and interior design will be in the future. Innovation inherently involves risk-taking. Risk-taking inherently involves failure. Innovation in design and research is encouraged with the understanding that there will be opportunities for learning in this process. In the end, no goals will be achieved without risk and failure.

  • AFFECT CHANGE: we apply the fundamental knowledge and skill of our work to experiments in process, product, and communication.
  • EXCEED EXPECTATIONS: We learn more because we look for the unexpected and pursue the possibilities, with rigorous investigation, toward credible achievement.

What areas of innovation are most needed in modern architectural and interior design education? Are there any areas of research, which would serve the overall design methodologies and studio culture policies? How can we support and foster innovation in SAID?

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Implementation and management

Once ratified by students, faculty, and staff, the SAID Community Culture policy will become a living document, guiding our relationships and actions within the School of Architecture and Interior Design. We will need to monitor these principles in action, review our compliance and progress toward living the values the policy articulates.

  • How--and how often--should we review our progress?
  • What can we do to keep these principles in our conscience?
  • What are the consequences of violating the policy?

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The 2010 Imperative

To successfully impact global warming and world resource depletion, it is imperative that ecological literacy become a central tenet of design education. Yet today, the interdependent relationship between ecology and design is virtually absent in many professional curricula. To meet the immediate and future challenges facing our professions, a major transformation of the academic design community must begin today. To accomplish this, Architecture 2030 calls upon this community to adopt one of the following:

PATH A: 2010 Imperative Curriculum

Adopters of Path A commit to: Beginning in 2008, adding to all design studio problems the requirement that the design engage the environment in a way that dramatically reduces or eliminates the need for fossil fuel, and, by 2010, achieving complete ecological literacy in design education, including:

  • Design / studio
  • History / theory
  • Materials / technology
  • Structures / construction
  • Professional practice / ethics

PATH B: 2010 Imperative Curriculum and Facilities

Adopters of Path B commit to PATH A: 2010 Imperative Curriculum and, by 2010, achieving a carbon-neutral design school campus by:

  • Implementing sustainable design strategies (optional - LEED Platinum / 2010 rating)
  • Generating on-site renewable power
  • Purchasing green renewable energy and/or certified renewable energy credits

(REC's, Green Tags), 20% maximum.

  • How can SAID help support these goals at UC?
  • How can or should architects and interior designers be held accountable to these standards?
  • How can SAID prepare students to lead the professions in sustainable design?

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References

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