Michigan Architecture Prep

1. Tool Box

The Tool Box module introduces students to the discipline of architecture, inviting them to explore the contemporary analog and digital tools professional designers use to actualize their ideas. 2D & 3D representation techniques are honed through sketching, model making, and the use of software packages including Rhinoceros 3D and the Adobe Creative Suite.  Through iterative design exercises, students develop a technical proficiency necessary to complete a sophisticated final project.[1]

2. Food, Culture, and Access

The Food, Culture, and Access module introduces students to the concept of spatial justice in relation to food as a right, a material of cultural expression and a component of a broader urban network, touching on the social, economic, and environmental implications of food systems. Through a series of lectures, presentations and workshops, the module will address current topics around food insecurity/equity and explore ways architecture and design can serve to make positive change.[2]

3. Institutions and Civil Liberties

The goal of the Institutions and Civil Liberties module is to imbue students with a sense of agency to critique the harmful institutions that structure the world around them, envision alternative futures, and put those visions into practice. It will also instruct students about how people who have been directly impacted by the carceral system have marshaled creative expression to critique that system and put forth their own visions for their communities. The module is structured around three creative modalities: writing, visual art, and community building. Each section of the module introduces students to individuals and activists who have used that modality and provides students with opportunities to practice that modality themselves.[3]

4. Technology and the City

This module introduces students to the topics of urban data and digital infrastructure. Throughout, they are encouraged to think at a range of scales – from the body to the city. The goal is to be realistic about the challenges and contemporary political issues surrounding digital infrastructure in Detroit, but to also make students feel empowered. They will be introduced to a range of ways to intervene in the digital infrastructure of the city, from hands-on technology tutorials, to understanding digital media as a vehicle for joy or aesthetic pleasure, to activism surrounding the way that digital technology is – or should be – implemented in Detroit. [4]

5. Building Society: Applied Final Project

Each year, ArcPrep selects an institution for students to reimagine. The branch library has been tabbed this academic year, as the library system in Detroit finds itself under unprecedented burden and pressure. Only six of 21 branches are slated to reopen in the Fall of 2021, after funding shortfalls, accentuated by the challenges of an ongoing pandemic, have strained a beloved civic institution.  Students will be asked to consider the future of branch libraries – their alterations, sustainability, social obligations, and civic role both in Detroit and more broadly.[5]

Yojairo Lomeli, Director of the Architecture Preparatory Program

Since joining the faculty in 2015, Yojairo has received accolades for excellence in teaching. Three-time winner of the Donna M. Salzer Award for Teaching Excellence, three-time U-M Golden Apple Award nominee, and co-recipient of the competitive U-M Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize, Yojairo’s approach has consistently illustrated how a sincere commitment to student experience creates an outstanding environment for learning.

Yojairo’s research and practice focus on advanced and traditional modes of design and fabrication. His built and speculative projects explore culturally nuanced narratives through careful consideration of context, craft, and expertise. He brings light to these concerns in the classroom, empowering early designers through experimentation and making while encouraging high-level outcomes.

Over the past years, Yojairo has made regular contributions to the ArcPrep program through guest workshops and lectures. With a deep, personal knowledge of the Detroit Community Public School system, he carries a wealth of experience to the position as well as a proven record of helping students chart pathways to higher education. As ArcPrep Director, he will bring the program to the next level of growth and evolution: expanding blended pedagogical strategies, developing academic and institutional partnerships in Detroit and beyond, and structuring new student engagement opportunities.

Anya Sirota, Associate Dean of Academic Initiatives

Anya Sirota is an architectural designer, associate professor, associate dean of Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and founding principal of Akoaki. Her work, situated at the intersection of architecture and urban design, explores how a distinct synthesis of aesthetics, social enterprise, and cultural programming can offer contemporary and multi-disciplinary strategies for urban transformation. Her ongoing research and design efforts have received international recognition with recent projects featured at the Vitra Design Museum, the Brussels Design Museum, the Centro Pecci Prato, the Saint Etienne Design Biennale, and the Chicago Cultural Center. She is the recipient of the Architectural League Prize (2018), the ACSA Faculty Design Award (2016), the SXSW Eco Place by Design Award (2015), the R+D Award from Architect Magazine (2013), and other honors. Sirota regularly contributes to international lectures, panels, workshops, and expositions addressing socially driven architectural practice and its impact on cities.

Sirota earned her Master's in Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where she was awarded the Araldo Cossutta Prize for Design Excellence. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University.[6]

Salam Rida, ArcPrep Leader

Salam Rida will be joining Taubman College as our 2022-23 Michigan-Mellon design fellow. In this role, she is responsible for the development of the ArcPrep curriculum; administration of the Michigan Research Studio and digital dissemination platforms; coordination of graduate teaching assistants and invited faculty; and other outreach activities.

Jacob Comerci, Project Manager for Academic Initiatives

Jacob Comerci is a designer, educator, and project manager for Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He was the 2019-2020 William Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan, having previously received a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. While at Princeton, Comerci was awarded the Suzane Kolarik Underwood thesis prize for excellence in design and the Howard Crosby Butler traveling fellowship where he studied building groups in Berlin. He has worked with the offices of Bureau Spectacular in Chicago and Los Angeles and with MOS Architects and LTL Architects in New York. He is co-founder of Taubman Public Design Corps alongside María Arquero de Alarcón, Irene Hwang & Anya Sirota – a program connecting students in architecture, urban design, and planning with organizations to tackle pressing economic, environmental, social, and spatial challenges.  His ongoing research and design work reconsider models for collective life and work by way of the interior fit-out of existing real estate with furniture-scaled domestic equipment.[8]

Ishan Pal Singh, New Media Specialist

Ishan Pal Singh is the new media specialist at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. A licensed architect in India, he received a Master of Architecture from Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and a Bachelor of Architecture at Sushant School of Architecture, Delhi NCR, India. While at Taubman College he was awarded the Alpha Rho Chi Award for leadership. In India, he held his own private practice for two years and was awarded the IIDA Best of Asia Pacific Design Award. [9]

Academic Achievement Award

The Academic Achievement Award is granted to up to five students per semester who have exhibited exemplary maturity and work ethic contributed to an intellectual and collegial environment and shown independent and innovative thinking in the execution of project assignments and public presentations.[14]

Academic Improvement Award

The Academic Improvement Award is granted to up to three students per semester who have improved their performance through growing initiative and independence in the classroom. These individuals have shown an increased willingness to learn from their instructors and peers, resulting in a strong final project.[15]

Studio Award

The Studio Award is granted to up to three students for design excellence.  These individuals have iterated upon numerous designs, expanded on their best option, visually represented the project in a technically proficient and compelling manner, and presented their vision with clarity and confidence to a design jury.[16]

University of Michigan ArcStart Award

Multiple scholarships will be awarded to high-achieving students to attend ArcStart, a three-week-long residential program for high school students that offers students the opportunity to explore the built environment firsthand through an introduction to architectural design. Participants will experience the rewarding intensity of an engaging college architecture studio, partake in skill-building workshops that reinforce analytical and conceptual problem-solving skills, and visit architecturally significant projects in Southeast Michigan.[17]

Cornell Future Architecture Award

University of Michigan + Cornell University Joint Initiative

Michigan Architecture Prep and Cornell University’s Department of Architecture offers the Cornell Future Architecture Award to students who have shown an interest in and talent for design and architecture. Awardees will attend the Cornell Introduction to Architecture Program – a six-week architecture enrichment program at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York – at no cost. Each year, ArcPrep graduates accepted into this program receive a full tuition, room, and board scholarship covering all expenses related to the program.[18]

Rossetti Internship Program

University of Michigan + Rossetti Joint Initiative

Rossetti, an award-winning architecture and design firm based in Detroit, offers up to three paid internships to high-achieving graduates of the ArcPrep program. Summer interns will work on architecture, urban design, and interior design projects at Rossetti offices in downtown Detroit.[19]