Illinois Tech's College of Architecture has received national recognition for its second-year studio course, "Repetition and Difference: Collective Living, Biophilia, and Mass Timber on the Campus of IIT in Chicago." The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture awarded the Housing Design Education Award to Assistant Professor Ryan Roark and Associate Teaching Professor Michael Glynn for their innovative approach.
The award is typically given to graduate-level or advanced undergraduate courses, making this recognition notable as it honors a studio designed for relatively new architecture students. Michael Glynn emphasized the importance of early education in housing design: “This award is telling every architecture school in the country that you can engage second-year undergraduates with a rigorously designed program to learn about housing, and they can be successful,” he said. He also highlighted the urgency of addressing serious housing issues in the country.
In their second year as co-directors of the curriculum, Roark and Glynn tasked students with designing a dormitory building suitable for Mies Campus. The focus was on sustainability through mass timber and biophilic materials. In contrast, during the fall semester, students worked on small housing units designed to fit within standard Chicago backyards. Roark explained that this change in scale allows more room for expression and experimentation.
“We focused on dorms because it allows students to explore a wide range of ideas that are realistic in the U.S. housing market,” Roark stated. She emphasized using precedents heavily by analyzing existing houses or dorms to create new designs.
Roark began developing this studio concept at Rice University in 2019 before bringing it to Illinois Tech where it gained acclaim. Glynn has extensive experience teaching housing studios at Illinois Tech's College of Architecture.
About 120 students completed the spring 2024 studio, with their projects contributing significantly to winning this award. Glynn remarked on the prestige associated with receiving such an accolade: “This award is saying that the very best course in housing in the country is taught here at Illinois Tech, in this studio.”