First Week

IAR 412 studio will be focusing on a plot of land south of UNCG's campus below the railroad tracks off of Lee St.  We will be designing for a Studio Arts Center similar to the Gatewood Studio Arts Building we are currently using, and also focus on the land development and urban planning around that plot of land.  This semester we will be working on many scales from city plans, master plans, urban design, and development plans, down to building design, interior spaces, programming, and space planning.

This first week of the semester our class has been divided into three groups focusing on programming, precedent studies, and site analysis.  Being in the programming group, we've taken a look at our own building and have begun to evaluate it through diagramming patterns of how the space is used in terms of public vs private, circulation, and the division between the art department and the interior architecture department which share the building. The main uses of the space consist of faculty offices for both departments, studio spaces for art students, iarc students, and grad students, workshops include the wood-shop, clay modeling shop, ceramics shop, the foundry, digital studios, and the dark room, as well as mechanical/electrical 

spaces, maintenance and service rooms, toilet rooms, galleries and critique spaces, circulation areas, conference rooms, and resource rooms.  

We've also began to survey the users of the building to evaluate thermal comfort, acoustics, natural and artifical lighting, and circulation of the space.  We will continue to survey building occupants to aid in the design of the new program and to help generate ideas of improving how we use the space.