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.”