Summer Academy: High School Design Exploration

Summer Academy at the BAC is a four-week design exploration program providing high school students the opportunity to build fundamental architectural design skills through hands-on projects. For the month of July, the BAC studios in the Back Bay are home to high school students working closely and collaboratively with their studio leaders and fellow students addressing design problems across the spectrum of scales they might encounter in college design classes. Issues of structure, form, sustainability, beauty and utility in the built environment are all encountered as students are challenged to creatively solve architectural design problems. Projects in the studio include model building, full-scale prototyping, free-hand drawing, graphic collage, mapping, diagramming and photography.

Students are encouraged to experiment with new techniques and learn new skills while working both individually and in small group teams. New trends and important social and environmental design issues being addressed in the architecture professions both locally and internationally are explored through visits to design firms, presentations by studio leaders and local field trips where we delve into the built fabric of the city of Boston, visiting Boston's significant contemporary and historical architecture and landscape architecture.