The design/build service-learning courses offered by USF’s School of Architecture and Community design uniquely provide opportunities for architecture students to serve the Tampa Bay community while achieving academic learning objectives focused on the interrelationships between design and building processes.

In the Pre-Build Design Seminar / Design/Build Practicum course sequence, the design/build project will serve as the vehicle for achieving academic learning objectives associated with the poetic potential and technical properties of material and building processes, the effects of gravity, and the physical situation of a building between land and sky. Architectural design-build courses are unique from typical architecture design courses because students use their own hands to construct their design proposals in the field at full-scale thus bridging the theoretical design realm of the studio and the physical realm of the world. This bridging promotes further understanding of the relationship between architectural representation and physical buildings and emphasizes the exploration of design and construction as reciprocal poetic and technical acts.

As a service-learning experience, the community-based organization   collaborates in the educational process by proposing a design project which serves its mission and by providing opportunities for students to learn through the exchange of viewpoints, knowledge, and experiences with the broader community.  This exchange provides further opportunities for students to better understand the interrelationships between architecture and the cultural, social, and economic realms in which it develops and exists.

The project, from conceptualization through construction, serves as the vehicle for learning. The community-based organization collaborates in the design and construction processes, supports the course learning objectives, and provides resources for design and construction materials, tool rentals, fees, and specialty contracting. Students volunteer their time and labor while the course instructor advises the students in organizing, managing, and reflecting upon the project/learning process.

Priority will be given to projects proposed by charitable non-profit organizations and governmental entities with missions directed toward revitalizing the broader community. In design/build service-learning courses, course credit is earned and work is evaluated based on achievement of the academic objectives established for each course. The broad pedagogical objectives which guide the learning objectives of the Pre-Build Design Seminar / Design Build Practicum courses are to:

·      Enrich understanding of the inter-relationships between theoretical design acts and physical building processes in achieving poetic architectural expression

·      Demonstrate learner-leader attitudes and skills

·      Produce, share, and communicate design and building research within a team setting

·      Learn from and effectively communicate with community participants during design and building processes

·      Develop a commitment to civic and social community service