Program Focus

The Program focuses its teaching, community outreach, Internships, research on the landscape challenges facing the Intermountain West. Among those challenges are:

• Explosive urban growth accompanied by struggling small towns and rural areas.
• Boom and bust cycles in the mining, ranching, and forestry industries.
• Large federal land ownership.
• A critical shortage of water.
• Environmental degradation.
• Expanding recreational needs.
• Reliance on transportation for goods and services.

The Curriculum supports this focus through a series of courses in university liberal arts core, in desert environment, in professional and technical skill, and in design, history and theory. The fifth year studio brings these skills and knowledge together into a year-long capstone course in which each student pursues an individual research-based design project.