The Integrated School of Building (InSB), has recently launched their website in preparation for a 2014 opening. InSB will be located in Chicago and has established a mission to, ‘by means of a collaborative and innovative platform, advance the knowledge of and educate students in architecture, engineering, and construction’. Focusing on a collaborative effort, a group of individuals, architects and educators, have united to establish a new way of educating students in architecture, engineering, and construction education.
Follow the break for more about the programs and certifications InSB plans to offer.
The school will provide students with rigorous academic studies while engaging, fostering, and supporting creativity, innovation, and determination, and its vision is to become a first choice institution for those that seek to become leaders in the industry. Its establishment in the city of Chicago is no less than poignant, the place that could be considered the capital of architecture in the United States.
The InSB academic programs are currently under development, but do include unprecedented degrees like the Bachelor of A/E Management + Marketing, which will have emphasis on the development of in-office executive and strategic leaders, and the Bachelor of Post-Disaster Design + Reconstruction, with emphasis in emergency planning, mobilization, resources optimization and allocation. They will also offer certificate specializations of BIM & IDP, Sustainable Design, Building Commissioning, Building Forensics, among other.
“Linear thinking is over. We have to be open to simultaneous input and teach ourselves to be open to input from all relevant parties” says board member Randy Deutsch, AIA, LEED AP and author of recently published “BIM and Integrated Design: Strategies for Architectural Practice” (Wiley, 2011).
Other members of the founding board include Arturo Vasquez, AIA, current CSArch Firm Leader in New York, and instructor of the Master’s Thesis at the Boston Architectural College, and Tabitha Ponte, Assoc. AIA founder of the WIA (Women in Architecture) Fund.
The founding board is now working on budget and administrative issues, the school’s content and curricula, finding a potential urban home for adaptive reuse, and in the establishment of a stellar advisory board. They have an aggressive tentative timeline of three years to open doors.
InSB mission starts with the abiding of 3 pillars : AEC multidisciplinary Integration. To maintain and promote Financial and Social Equity. To foster Academic Innovation and Engagement.
The InSB will host its first symposium in the summer of 2012 – “The Fabric of the City” – in downtown Chicago.
You can find the InSB and other education reform enthusiasts via the monthly virtual #ArchEdu forum and also follow the InSB on twitter.
