Activities & Opportunities

Unique activities and opportunities that our program offers include

Spirit of Place / Spirit of Design. Led by its founder architect Travis Price, FAIA, this award-winning educational forum explores the design and construction of architectural forms that are able to successfully respond to their natural, sacred, and cultural settings in a modern idiom.  The15 design-build projects done since 1992 have allowed students the unique opportunity to research, design, and construct a project in a remote landscape, as a team. The program’s overriding goal is to foster a new language of modern architecture fostering environmental stewardship, the preservation of cultural metaphors, and the education of architects and artists. For more information, visit the Spirit of Place/Design website.

Walton Family Distinguished Critic in Design and Catholic Stewardship -- The WALTON Studio.  Every Fall Semester, we bring a world-renown architect to lecture, direct an intense 3 day long design charrette, or teach for a more paced, 3 week long process. The Walton Critic returns to CUArch for the final jury of the studio. Architects Antoine Predock (2009), Craig Hartman (2010), Juhani Pallasmaa (2011), Alberto Campo Baeza (2012), Claudio Silvestrin (2013), Eliana Bormida (2014),Michael J. Crosbie(2015), Prem Chandavarkar (2016), Rick Joy (2017), and Susan Jones (2018) have been all the Walton Critics thus far. This program is made possible by a generous grant from the Clarence Walton Fund for Catholic Architecture.

Symposia. SSCS faculty and students participate and/or organize high profile conferences addressing topics relevant to the concentration. For instance, in Fall 2011 we hosted the Symposium “Transcending Architecture: Aesthetics and Ethics of the Numinous” — an event that brought remarkable speakers to discuss the immeasurable qualities of architecture. In Spring 2010, we assisted in the organization of the Symposium “A Living Presence. Extending and Transforming the Tradition of Catholic Sacred Architecture”. In Spring 2007, we collaborated with the Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians to offer the Symposium “Building Spiritual Washington”.

Semester SSCS Meeting. The SSCS concentration usually hosts one meeting per semester to discuss issues relevant to graduate students, faculty, and the program. These meetings are open, relatively informal, and include food and drinks. In the Fall, we usually include the Walton Critic that is visiting the school. For more information on the SSCS alumni group, contact Kristen Weller(at krilweller@gmail.com)

Direct access to professionals and scholarsin the DC area and beyond. SSCS faculty have access to a large array of local, regional, national and international connections that may prove important for thesis research, applying for a job, seeking a PhD., or just travel.