FAU | School of Architecture

Welcome to the Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture Instagram! Student work, faculty work, and many exciting events in and around the School will live here. Promoting student and faculty work in the School is intended to create a new attitude towards the work itself. By fostering a competitive but productive environment we aim to encourage students to form innovative but grounded projects. Faculty research is also multi-faceted and covers a range of pedagogical material to particular architectural solutions. Please stay tuned for all of the content we have planned! . . . . #fausoa #fau #owls #architecture #schoolofarchitecture #archdaily #arquitectura #architectureschool #projetdarchitecture #universit #laval #architecturestudent #workshop #archilovers #architect #dezeen #archisource #thebestnewarchitects #architecturedetail #architecturedesign #bhfyp

Welcome to the Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture Instagram! Student work, faculty work, and many exciting events in and around the School will live here. Promoting student and faculty work in the School is intended to create a new attitude towards the work itself. By fostering a competitive but productive environment we aim to encourage students to form innovative but grounded projects. Faculty research is also multi-faceted and covers a range of pedagogical material to particular architectural solutions. Please stay tuned for all of the content we have planned! . . . . #fausoa #fau #owls #architecture #schoolofarchitecture #archdaily #arquitectura #architectureschool #projetdarchitecture #universit #laval #architecturestudent #workshop #archilovers #architect #dezeen #archisource #thebestnewarchitects #architecturedetail #architecturedesign #bhfyp

Welcome to the Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture Instagram! Student work, faculty work, and many exciting events in and around the School will live here. Promoting student and faculty work in the School is intended to create a new attitude towards the work itself. By fostering a competitive but productive environment we aim to encourage students to form innovative but grounded projects. Faculty research is also multi-faceted and covers a range of pedagogical material to particular architectural solutions. Please stay tuned for all of the content we have planned! . . . . #fausoa #fau #owls #architecture #schoolofarchitecture #archdaily #arquitectura #architectureschool #projetdarchitecture #universit #laval #architecturestudent #workshop #archilovers #architect #dezeen #archisource #thebestnewarchitects #architecturedetail #architecturedesign #bhfyp

[Student Work] | Professor Willa Granger @willa_granger | Modern Architectural History | Fall 2025 In the fall of 2025, students in Professor Willa Granger’s Modern Architectural History course learned to study the vernacular American landscape through the work of artist Ed Ruscha. Working across multiple media, Ruscha famously produced a series of photobooks in the 1960s and 1970s that focused on the “everyday” built environment—gas stations, apartment complexes, parking lots—using a serialized approach. By photographing the same architectural forms repeatedly across different sites and contexts, Ruscha revealed both the patterns and the particularities of features often dismissed as “forgettable,” elevating mundane spaces into subjects of formal inquiry. Drawing on this method, FAU students were asked to identify a “common” feature of the built environment and to document its recurrence across South Florida through serialized photography. Projects ranged in scale from entire building typologies to individual fasteners. Through this exercise, students came to understand how ordinary architectural forms can offer insights into social and cultural conditions comparable to those provided by monumental architecture. Image Credits Images 1 - 4: Kolos Jeli’s study of “What Bolts See” (2025) Images 5 - 7: Anthony Callahan’s study of auto body and mechanic shops (2025) Images 8 - 10: Alice Kovalevsky’s study of thresholds and portal ways (2025) Images 11 - 13: Stanley Araujo-Ortega’s study of barber shops (2025) Images 14 - 17: Ed Ruscha’s selected works Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) + Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967)  #studentwork  #architecturalhistory  #edruscha #artandarchitecture #southfloridaarchitecture  @fausoa @fauartsletters @archi_students

Assistant Professor Willa Granger’s (@willa_granger @fausoa ) article, “Consuming Care: The Americana Corporation and the Advent of the Modern Nursing Home,” was just published in the September 2025 volume of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH) @sah1365 . In this research, Willa explores the forces that shifted nursing home architecture from a mom-and-pop model of adaptive reuse to the medicalized design more commonly associated with it today. This project took Willa from urban Chicago to rural Illinois as she traced the history of one nursing home business in particular, “The Americana.” The JSAH is one of the leading journals in the field of architectural history. She produced this article with support from a Tyson Scholarship at the Crystal Bridges Museum @crystalbridgesmuseum Read the article: “Consuming Care: The Americana Corporation and the Advent of the Modern Nursing Home” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians September 2025, Volume 84, Issue 3 https://online.ucpress.edu/jsah/issue/84/3 FREE ACCESS THROUGH OCT 22,2025 #fausoa #JSAH #architecture #vernacular #medicine #history #nursinghomedesign #tysonscholarship #architectureresearch #academicpublishing

Dr. Willa Granger was honored with the AIA Fort Lauderdale Educator of the Year Award for 2024 for her exemplary contributions to architectural education. As the sole architectural historian at FAU SOA since 2022, Dr. Granger has transformed how undergraduate architects engage with design history. Through immersive field-based studies and cultural explorations across South Florida, she highlights how socio-cultural history, and the humanities are essential tools for future designers. Her teaching emphasizes the role of empathy in design and how lessons from the past can inspire solutions for the future, earning her recognition from students and peers alike.  Congratulations on this incredible achievement! @willa_granger @fausoa #architectureeducation #aiafortlauderdale #architecturehistorian #educatoroftheyear

[Student Work] Director Joseph Choma @josephchomadesign | Design 2 | Spring 2024 This design studio is a first introduction to designing an actual building. In the previous semester, students created a series of artifacts-to-think-with through four pedagogical exercises (making with rules, shapes carving shapes, plane surface volume, and curves with lines). In this semester, the students further developed one of those “spatial curiosities” into a building. Students were introduced to site analysis, program organization, structural systems, means and methods of construction, and architectural drawing conventions. The project was a design proposal for a new Shark Valley Visitor Center at the Everglades National Park (@evergladesnps ).  Image Credits Image 1: Nina Moubarak Image 2: Jillian Elias Image 3: Amy Niketic Image 4: Emma Soucy Image 5: Esperanza France Image 6: Anthony Buchanan #architecture #next_top_architects #architecturestudents @archi_students #foundationstudio #buildingsofthefuture #computationaldesign #fausoa

DANCING COLUMNS: Equation-Based Robotic Fabrication An exploration of robotic 3D printed objects generated from mathematical equations, created by Joseph Choma (@josephchomadesign @fausoa ) and Luis Pacheco (@luigi_pacheco @fiu_soa ), with fabrication support from the RDF Lab at FIU (@rdflabfiu ). The featured objects are derived from a family of morphed toruses, where altering the parameters of the equations leads to captivating and unexpected geometric features. The forms emerge from a complex interplay of sine and cosine functions, as seen in the provided equations, where variables are manipulated to create intricate, undulating surfaces. This collaboration bridges the gap between digital design and physical manifestation, emphasizing the artistic potential of mathematical equations in creating dynamic forms. A deeper study of these geometric mutations can be found in the book, “Morphing: A Guide to Mathematical Transformations for Architects and Designers” by Joseph Choma, which delves into the processes and theories behind these transformations. The opening reception for this exhibition is scheduled for Thursday, October 17th, 6:00-9:00pm at the PHASE Gallery in Miami Beach, FL (@moonlightermiami ). PHASE Gallery at Moonlighter FabLab 1661 Pennsylvania Ave. Miami Beach, Fl. 33139 #morphing #mathematics #computationaldesign #parametricdesign #mathart #architecture #columns #trigonometry #materializingmathematics #roboticfabrication #futureofbuilding

Joseph Choma, Director of the School of Architecture at Florida Atlantic University, is the recipient of the 2023 ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence. The ACADIA awards are internationally recognized as one of the highest honors in the field. This award recognizes innovative research that contributes to the field of computational design in architecture. The award distinguishes research with the potential to transform contemporary practice. From the jury’s citation: “This award recognizes the significant contribution of Joseph Choma to the field of computational design and digital fabrication research. His rigorous and captivating work spanning the areas of expertise in computational materials, fabrication, manufacturing, and design continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in architecture and design.” Congratulations to @josephchomadesign on receiving this award for his innovative work! #computationaldesign @acadiaorg #innovation @fausoa

[Student Work] Encoding Intelligence Students: Arie Chocron @ariethearchitect , Alyssa Scherger @scherger.design , Thomas Tucker @ttucker.design Prof. Bolojan Daniel @nonstandardstudio Architectural Design 10 This architectural thesis project explores how features from various design-based professions, such as fashion, furniture, sculpture, and car design, can be integrated into an architectural project. The project proposes an innovative approach that involves using artificial intelligence networks and tools to extract, transfer, generate, blend, and analyze features from different domains through an interconnected workflow in order to encode them back into architecture. To achieve this goal, the project entails a comprehensive process of extracting, analyzing, and encoding features from nine design domains. Each domain undergoes several steps, including dataset curation, image-to-text predictions, semantic analysis, prompt curation, image generation, semantic cross-examination, and diffusion model training. The trained diffusion model encodes features from the nine domains onto images of the project site location, utilizing a combination of semantics from all nine domains to blend the features cohesively onto a set of images that represent the project site. The project aims to demonstrate a full artificial intelligence design process, similar to how parametric and computational tools are used in design. By leveraging the unique capabilities of artificial intelligence networks, the project creates an outcome that would not have been possible without these tools. Overall, this thesis project seeks to contribute to the field of architecture by exploring how artificial intelligence can be integrated into the design process and offer new ways of approaching the design process through the lens of artificial intelligence. #deeplearning #creativeai #generativeai #encodingintelligence #architecturalintelligence #fausoa

As the Director of the Creative AI LAB, Prof. Bolojan’s research is focused on Creative AI application in Architectural Design, creating generative AI tools that don’t replace, but rather augment and elevate, designers’ native abilities, therefore positioning AI tools as active collaborators in the creative process. The Biomorphic series project envisions a future where personalized and specialized AI empowers creative individuals to construct their own universes, define their unique syntax and language, and fine-tune custom models to realize their envisioned universes in real-time. The project Sagrada Familia, showcased at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, the project's use of deep-learning techniques to learn from the architectural style of Gaudi and develop strategies to liberate the tectonic detail, while retaining the underlying composition of tectonic details, resulting in new novel compositions, is an innovative and pioneering approach that has the potential to revolutionize the field of architecture. The exhibition of the project at such a prestigious event is an affirmation of this research and the potential it can have to shape the future of architecture and the built environment. Prof. Bolojan is responsible for developing the DeepHimmelblau project, the first AI model to be developed in an architectural office, in collaboration with the Viennese architectural practice CoopHimmelblau. The project explores the potential of teaching machines to interpret, perceive, be creative, and propose new building designs, and augment design workflows and architect's/designer's creativity. In 2021, the DeepHimmelblau project was awarded the "DigitalFUTURES Project Award", for being "one of the most outstanding examples of the application of AI in architectural design to date" in the world. #fausoa #danielbolojan #nonstandardstudio #creativeai #generativeai #stablediffusion #architecture

Assistant Professor & Director of Creative AILab Daniel Bolojan has received the AIA Florida Design and Honor Award for Theoretical and Research-Professional category for Machine Perceptions: Gaudi + Neural Networks, Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain. Bolojan’s research focuses on the application of computational design and deep learning strategies in architecture and architectural design process. Prof. Bolojan also received the “Rising Star Of The Year”Award from AIA Fort Lauderdale and AIA Miami Chapters for his research and work as a emerging professional. Congratulations on this amazing work & Award! @aia_florida @fausoa @nonstandardstudio #computationaldesign #deeplearning #machineperception #neuralnetworks