Interface

Envelopes, Elements, and Enclosures

Arch 1302 · Coordinator: Pratana Klieopatinon

Instructor: Zachary Casey

The second semester of First Year Studio is titled Interface: Envelopes, Elements, and Enclosures. It will extend the first semester’s primarily abstract investigations of form and space into more specific human contexts and environmental conditions. The aim is to speculate relationships, further interpretation, and consequently develop meaning.

Projects will reference the body as a critical generator of the occupiable “envelope” in dialogue with time and place. Defining ways of connecting the body to the “enclosure” will be examined through the interface of architectural “elements”. Various topics, approaches, and methodologies are pursued—from the scale of artifacts and human interaction, to 1:1 material experimentation, and systematic making and thinking.

The semester concludes with the adaptation of consequent strategies into tangible design proposals situated in a precise context. It will require students to produce a series of empirical documentations, narratives, physical constructions, and definitive representations to demonstrate understanding of material tectonics, human interactions, and atmospheric qualities.

Façade City

Arch 3602 · Coordinator: David Turturo, Ph.D

Instructors: Jaclynn Herbein · Erin Hunt · Jimmy Johnson, AIA · Pat Klieopatinon · Lauren Phillips · Deborah Pittman

How does architecture face the city? In Façade City, we will study the city as architecture's most complex yet necessary context. Assignments will alternate between elevational studies of the city's ephemeral accumulations and planimetric studies of the city's concrete aspirations. This oscillation between vertical, horizontal, spontaneous, and planned will help us to question if architecture can occur in a vacuum; to query the aesthetic, regulatory, ecological, typological, and socio-economic opportunities and constraints that are integral to architectural design. Façade City begins with urban analysis, moves onto a collaborative design game, and ends with new contextual proposals for a dense urban site.

The Ecotechnological Dwelling

Arch 4602 · Instructor: Logman Arja

This studio leverages additive manufacturing technology and ceramic fabrication to develop novel, replicable, deployable, environmentally conscious hydroponic public dwellings and integrated architecture systems.

The studio will elaborate on ecotechnology as a framework for the next generation of small and agile micro-infrastructures that are inherently ecological and technological. The studio integrates the 'ecology of technics' and the 'technics of ecology. We will utilize particles of light, jets of water, and bits of data to transform dust into customized architecture platforms and non-soil mediums for growing plants. The objective is to address broader concerns of food deserts in urban contexts and hinterlands. Students will theories and reintroduce the concept of inhabitation that might not be exclusive to humans but rather to other organisms and plants. Students will develop various hydroponic prototypes and speculate on their implications on the built environment. A dedication to creating physical environments and postulating technologically informed ceramics as disruptive to the culture of buildings is paramount.

Students will be introduced to ceramic 3D printers to fabricate their prototypes and models. Through interactive demonstrations and tutorials, students will develop a workflow spanning digital fabrication and machine craft. Through research and regular presentations, students will develop a body of work on urban farming technologies and horticulture practices.

On ‘Dwelling Poetically’ between a Parking Lot and a Playa Lake

Arch 4602 · Instructor: Hendrika Buelinckx, Ph.D

This studio…

will seek inspiration and pay homage to the Early 20C Modern and Mid-Century Modern architecture of SoCal;

will continue to document and critical inquire LBBs current housing developments;

and will culminate in the exploration and tectonic articulation of a design proposal for a place to dwell poetically in the second quarter of the 21 C.

Reviving Heritage

Adaptive Reuse and Ecological Resilience Along the Ogallala Aquifer

Arch 4602 · Instructor: Asma Mehan, Ph.D

This adaptive reuse studio investigates innovative approaches to transforming abandoned industrial heritage sites along the Ogallala Aquifer into catalysts for ecological resilience, cultural revival, and sustainable design. As the largest freshwater reserve in North America, the Ogallala Aquifer faces significant challenges from overuse, depletion, and climate change, making it a crucial context for exploring adaptive reuse as a tool to address pressing environmental and community needs. Through the lens of the Commons Residency scenario, students will design semi-permanent, mobile facilities that harmonize historical preservation with architectural innovation, delivering meaningful, net-positive contributions to the land, ecosystems, and local communities. The studio invites participants to reimagine industrial relics as active agents of sustainable futures, using adaptive reuse to bridge the past and the present while fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and ecological stewardship. By integrating cultural heritage with environmental ingenuity, this course positions architecture as a transformative medium for advancing sustainability, ecological restoration, and community empowerment.

Integrative Architectural Design Studio II

Arch 5602 · Coordinator: Christi Wier, AIA

Instructors: Steven Roop · Adrian Anaya · Darrick Wade, AIA · Daniel Pruske

In this second graduate design studio we will explore the concept of scaled therapeutic architecture and the many different applications and methodologies. This studio will take an integrative approach to the design of a comprehensive project dealing with several scales. The studio will integrate observing sessions at the Texas Tech Therapeutic Riding center, extensive site analysis and documentation, in addition to researching and collaborating with consulting disciplines. Following an initial research phase, studio work will be collaborative and integrative with last semesters’ daylighting/energy/lifecycle cost analysis and across disciplines in the University. This design project will develop architectural ideations, design methodologies, and materialization strategies for innovative architectural solutions for an Adult and Pediatric Therapeutic Equestrian Center.

Healthcare Design

Arch 5604 · Instructor: Saif Haq, Ph.D

This semester’s focus will be the environmental attributes that support Mental Health. Research based evidence, coupled with spatial requirements of various treatment options, will be translated into clever architectural moves to create a world class community based psychiatric hospital in Lubbock, TX.

As complexities increase, so does the need for an architect’s creativity. In this way, complex projects test the design acumen of practitioners. Experience in dealing with complexity, plus skill in health care design will position graduates to be leaders in the 70-billion-dollar yearly healthcare construction that is only projected to increase.

If you want to make meaningful differences through your design, if you want to create experiences rather than objects, if you are willing to use both sides of your brain, then please join this studio. You will mature as a designer through this experience.

Then Now Then

Arch 5604 · Instructor: Piyush Khairnar, Ph.D

In the cradle of earthly ambition,
When stone rose to sanctify, not subdue,
The city unfurled like a tapestry,
Its squares brimming with laughter,
Sidewalks woven with neighborly threads.
Time walked alongside humanity,
Unhurried, unbroken.

Structures lay low, grounding dreams,
Shaping spaces where solitude met solidarity,
Harmonious in scale and intent,
Each stone a testament to the collective rhythm of life.

In the vertigo of relentless ascent,
The city rotates itself,
Unfolding skyward,
A vertical mirror of ambition.

Parks once lush, alive with whispers of belonging,
Have become private terraces for the privileged.
Sidewalks, once the veins of communal interaction,
Have turned into corridors,
Sterile arteries devoid of pause.
Elevators, not streets, now carry lives—
Silent, solitary.

The observer pauses,
Tracing the lines of glass and steel,
Asking not how, but why?
Why this new typology of estrangement,
This labyrinth of verticality?

Emerging from scarcity or efficiency?
Born of land wrested by capital,
A construct of necessity—
Or of power’s spectacle?

What promise lies in the ascent of tomorrow?
Will the city rediscover its communal heartbeat?
Or spiral ever upward,
A lonely beacon of human hubris?

Imagine towers as truly vertical cities,
Their heights filled with shared spaces,
Corridors transformed to streets in the sky,
Where voices ripple, not echo.

Let the lessons of the earth inform the sky: To build not just upward, but outward—
Not in form, but in spirit,
Ensuring the vertical connects,
Not divides.

What will we build when we build futures?
A question etched in ever-rising silhouette,
A reflection of both our ingenuity
And our humanity.