UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School, in collaboration with Penn State Outreach, is offering two options for students interested in its annual Architecture and Landscape Architecture Summer Camp on the University Park campus this year.
The first session is scheduled for July 12-16 and is designed as an introductory, hands-on course that requires no previous prior knowledge of architecture, landscape design, art, construction, etc. Perfect for beginners, the camp is intended to get students to think spatially about design.
While the camp website indicates that this first camp is for students entering the 9th and 10th grades, that is not a rule but rather a suggestion to allow campers to be surrounded by their immediate peers.
“This is a chance for aspiring designers to quickly test out studio life at Penn State. They will be in the same studio, using the same workspaces and learning from some of the same professors as the architecture and landscape architecture undergraduate students,” said Brian Peterka, assistant teaching professor of architecture, who is co-leading the camps along with Alec Spangler, assistant professor of landscape architecture. “It is a fun and immersive way to see if architecture and landscape architecture are for you, and if you already know that they are it is a chance to develop some new critical thinking skills.”
The second camp option will be held July 19-23 and is intended for students who have had some design experience — perhaps a drafting class or some other experience with spatial design concepts in high school. Students entering 11th-grade through recent graduates are recommended to take the second, more advanced camp.
“The projects we will work on in the advanced camp will build quickly into complex representations of abstract spatial conditions, but the studios are designed and supported to make sure that no one is left behind,” said Peterka.
Both camps, which will be centered in the Stuckeman Family Building, are heavily rooted in the conceptual and theoretical possibilities of what it means to be an architect or a landscape architect in a contemporary studio environment. Guided studio time with the instructors will allow campers to develop a creative solution to an architecture and landscape architecture design problem.
Campers in both sessions will get an overview of the profession and practice of the two design fields and will be introduced to technology used in computer-aided drafting and modeling. Despite the advances in these technologies, both camps will emphasize physical hand drawing and physical model making to create quick, lively and direct engagement with the built world.
Students will go on a field trip and attend various lectures, films, workshops, campus tours and social activities on and around campus.
Those who have questions about which camp option may be the best fit for their student should contact Brian Peterka at bp@psu.edu.
Learn more and register via the camp website.