• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

Heather Roberge, director of the Jump-Start program, said the studio classes’ hands-on qual

Photo

Heather Roberge, director of the Jump-Start program, said the studio classes’ hands-on qual

Photo

Heather Roberge, director of the Jump-Start program, said the studio classes’ hands-on qual

Photo

Designing architectural models, like those pictured above and to the lower right, is a large part

Fast-paced, intense, highly competitive – and unprepared. Without an undergraduate architecture major at UCLA, such is the life of many graduate students entering UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

The Jump-Start Architecture program began at UCLA last summer to give inexperienced students an edge. Its second run this summer provides both undergraduate and incoming graduate students the chance to immerse themselves in the many facets of architectural study before deciding to apply to the graduate architecture department.

The program enrolled about 55 students last year and now boasts over 90 students for this year’s edition. The six-week summer session spans from June 26 to Aug. 4, offering three courses: Architectural History from Baroque to Present, Introduction to Design Studio and Introduction to Representation.

The program features extensive projects, lectures from prominent individuals in the field, and trips to study the architecture of various nearby locations. Director Heather Roberge emphasized the wide range of architectural study the summer session offers students.

“Architectural education is a pretty unique experience, so we want them to have a sense of all of the facets that go into architectural education,” Roberge said.

“That includes more traditional coursework seen with the history course,” she continued, “but also a lot of hands-on work through the studio course, where students are assigned a design problem and work through different modes of representation, from three-dimensional, physical models to two-dimensional drawings.”

The architectural coursework is not the only varied aspect of the program. The students participating this summer are just as diverse in their levels of experience and hail from universities across the nation.

“We have a broad range of students who might be fine arts majors, students who are English majors or history majors. Some are experienced in visual arts while others have no experience at all,” Roberge said.

Jonathan Frommer, a Jump-Start student last summer, came to the program as a graduate from New College of Florida studying visual arts and art history. Although he was interested in pursuing architecture on the graduate level, like several of the students in the program he had no prior experience in the field. For Frommer, the program not only supplied him insight, it also affirmed his desire to pursue architecture as a career.

“The program definitely confirmed my belief that this was the right career and right trajectory for me,” Frommer said.

After attending the summer session and having a positive experience with the program, Frommer applied and was accepted into the UCLA Department of Architecture. He will be attending this fall.

He cites the most beneficial aspect of the program as its realistic nature toward the difficulties of graduate school.

“In terms of how demanding the courses were, I thought it was a very accurate representation of what it will be like as a graduate student,” Frommer said.

Todd Gannon, an instructor for the design studio course, also stressed that the program shows students the higher expectations involved in studying architecture on the graduate level.

“A program like this, which is pretty short, but at the same time intense and well-rounded, gives you a better sense of what the design studio environment is like, and these sorts of programs are a real good way to see what you’re getting into,” Gannon said.

The program also offers a much smaller, one-on-one environment than other summer programs at universities such as Harvard and Columbia. And unlike other universities that only offer a few or no units, Jump-Start gives participants 12.

Another helpful element of the program is the fact that it gives students with no experience or work of their own the chance to produce architectural samples that can be featured in a resume or application.

Frommer found this particularly useful when he decided to apply to UCLA’s architectural graduate program.

“If you know you want to go to architecture school, you need work for your portfolio, which is one of the most important components of graduate applications in architecture. Probably half of my portfolio that I used for admissions was work that I did during the Jump-Start program,” Frommer said.

Whether looking toward a lifelong career in architecture or just following an interest in the subject, the Jump-Start program’s short run has already offered its participants an up-close experience with architecture, as demonstrated by the Friday field trips.

“We arrange for them to see a lot of the landmark buildings that are here in L.A.,” Gannon said. “For a lot of the students that are coming from out of town or out of state, this gives them an opportunity to get a sense of what Los Angeles has to offer an architecture student.”