IMStudio- Academic

Academic:
	BIOMIMICRY: Innovation in Architecture Inspired by Nature. Elective Seminar. Fall Semesters. SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA. The seminar finds inspiration from the animal world and, through the analysis and understanding of specific examples such as spider nets, termites, polar bears, bees, birds, etc., translates the learned principles to the built environment. (Faculty: Ilaria Mazzoleni)
		PubliCity. Studio 2A, Fall 2008, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA. This studio will investigate the nature of ublicness in the context of the city of L.A. In our re-search of a re-definition, re-interpretation or re-argumentation of what is public today in Los Angeles, where stereotypically individuality has been for many years considered the basis for design of any type of space, can we today start to re-consider and re-connect to the city in a different way? (Faculty: Marc Frohn, David Gerger, Ilaria Mazzoleni, David Ross)
		Design Is One – Milano, Italy. 3 Elective Seminars Field Trip. Summer 2008, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA. Organized more like a field trip than typical academic course, during their visits to Milan, Bologna, Torino and Modena students learned about the development of design fields through a series of site visits to world leading Italian design factories, designer studios and cities that shaped the design field at large in the past centuries. The starting point for the seminar was the 2008 Milan Furniture Fair, the most important European annual event that hosts the protagonists of design from all around the world in the city of Milan for the launch of their new products. The so-called Italian Style and its way to choreograph the city at different scales has been the unspoken protagonist of the seminar: the class explored how contemporary design disciplines are merging in new ways from the spoon to the city and defined the professional figure of the architect as someone who could and would design buildings, cities and objects with the same involvement. (Faculty: Elena Manferdini, Ilaria Mazzoleni)
		LA must grow - WILSHIRE IS GROWING. Building on the top. Los Angeles, CA. Studio 3B, Fall 2007, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA. We envision the future of the city as increasingly dense in multiform ways: not only taller buildings, not only closer together, but partial buildings, growing on top of each other, or from the side on another……Transformation, not demolition and reconstruction, is the proposed attitude for this studio. The e – gallery will focus on the contemporary topics related to the environment: urban, natural, sociological, and political. (Faculty: Ilaria Mazzoleni)
		A L A M E D A C O R R I D O R - The Architecture of X Ecologies. Los Angeles, CA. Studio 2GB, Spring 2008, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA. The 2GB Studio begins with a simple premise. Cities [yes, they start with a plan and yes, evolve through the complex efforts of planning and even, sometimes, urban design - especially with respect to infrastructural systems and certain elements] are the result of an accumulation of buildings. If the makers of those buildings develop a set of ideas about the city past and city present, and visions about the city becoming, then the city may develop in ways that accumulate richness and allow for necessary variety and diversity as opposed to cancellation, reduction, and exclusion. An ENERGY and ENVIRONMENT resource center for the City of LA and its region is the program to be developed in this studio. (Faculty: Marc Frohn - Margaret Griffin - Ilaria Mazzoleni - Mary-Ann Ray)
		miLAnxchangesCross Cultural Exchanges in Architecture & Design. Studio 4A, Spring 2007, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA. The studio addresses the development of architectural design through the engagement with identified cultural differentials of new urban cultures emergent in Los Angeles and Milan. We like to think that we can, starting from the design of an object, arrive to the design of a building and its insert in the city fabric. (Faculty: Jean-Michael Crettaz, Ilaria Mazzoleni)
		Fabbric(itt)a* : Urban Production. RE-MAPPING, RE-MAKING, and RE-TAKING ALAMEDA Cinema makes the City, Factory makes the City, Architecture makes Architecture, and Architecture makes Cinema. Studio 4A, Fall 2006, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA. This studio, Fabbric(itt)a, is about the interrelation between the city (citta’) and its places of production (fabbrica). Through the re-appropriation (re-taking) of the north part of the Alameda Corridor we will be re-thinking (re-making) the places of production and through a re-consideration of the role of these architectural spaces we will re-define (re-mapping) the role of this part of the city in the larger contemporary urban discourse. (Faculty: Ilaria Mazzoleni, Dwayne Oyler, Mary-Ann Ray)
		*Dynamic Architectural Systems: Emergent Integration and Performative System. Biotech Think Tank, La Jolla, CA. Studio 3B, Spring 2006, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA.* This studio will presume that great architecture, in fact, is an integrated symphony of all building systems, operating in a carefully choreographed manner on one hand, on the other is the relationship between the users and the building’s specific program. (Faculty: Ilaria Mazzoleni, Rob Ley)
		*Formworks: Sites, Contects. AMARC, Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson AZ.* Studio 2A, Fall 2005, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA.** Reflecting on and responding to a specific site will be considered over the semester as a way to prompt formal and technical investigations and ultimately as a means to locate a setting for locating for innovative architectural proposals. The studio will be to design a visitor center for AMARC, based on our analysis of the site as both a physical fact (desert surface as aircraft storage facility) and a socio-political condition (airforce base as museum or artifact of the post Cold War era.) (Faculty: Andy Ku, Ilaria Mazzoleni, Peter Zellner)

Academic: