Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction
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    Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction
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    College of Architecture, Design and Construction Academic Programs

    Architecture Building Science Environmental Design Graphic Design Industrial Design Landscape Architecture Graduate Programs

    Tours of Facilities

    Dudley Hall Gorrie Center Wallace Hall Research Commons

    Unique Experiences and Opportunities

    School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture McWhorter School of Building Science School of Industrial and Graphic Design Career Services
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    McWhorter School of Building Science
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    School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture

    Over the past century, the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA) has grown to include four allied programs: Architecture, Architecture/Interior Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Environmental Design.

    APLA is committed to a model of professional education that embraces design and planning creativity, social responsibility, historical perspective, technical competence, and global environmental consciousness, and prepares our students for leadership in their respective disciplines and in their communities. The programs of APLA have enjoyed a strong reputation for the abilities of our graduates and the quality of our faculty, and our consistently ranked among the best in the country in their respective disciplines. 

    APLA has two off-campus programs which operate within the Program of Architecture: the Rural Studio (located in Newbern, AL) and the Urban Studio (located in Birmingham, AL). In addition to providing enriched environments for the study of architecture, these programs involve students in intensive, community-based, service learning activities.

    The coalition of programs within APLA (and with the CADC) exemplifies interdisciplinary collaboration as a model of professional activity; insures that students have an overview of the various components in the design and building process; and promotes the connection among environmental design, landscape architecture, interior architecture, and architecture as interdependent practices. Further, APLA provides our students a context for understanding how these four elements of the building process integrate into the larger wholes of the community and urban context, and the planning, design, and construction industry. The relationship between the programs in the college also allows for joint degree programs that extend professional opportunities.

    The students have the opportunity to participate in the Rural Studio in third year or the fifth year of their architecture program. Participation in the Rural Studio is an opportunity to actually engage a client and look at a way for architecture to directly benefit society. They get to also build the projects. It's a design build program, in a sense, they're not just drawing it, but they're actually physically constructing the building.

    Urban Studio is a option in the architectural program for third year and fifth year students. It's located in Birmingham, Alabama, for students participating in the urban studio, it's a unique experience to be in the design studio, but also engaging with professionals on a day to day basis, earning AXP credit and developing professional skills that translate seamlessly into practice.

    The School of Architecture, Planning and landscape architecture has an incredible legacy of community centered design work, work that's aimed at benefiting communities across the state of Alabama for the Landscape Architecture program the Alabama lab is the way that we're trying to do that, trying to take the things that we're doing and use them to the benefit of communities across the state.

    Design in general, it is important to go out of our comfort zone and go maybe places we haven't been before, to experience the design and culture. So for me, study abroad was a really incredible opportunity in providing me a new culture, a new set of values to design for and a new sense of community. When I'd studied abroad, I spent two weeks in Paris, France and Geneva, Switzerland, and we spent the time walking around the cities and neighborhoods, observing the built projects from previous landscape architects and discussing why they're successful or why they're not, and then sketching them and learning how to represent the qualities of them.

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    School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture
    McWhorter School of Building Science
    School of Industrial and Graphic Design
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