Due to popular demand, Inside Architecture + Design, the summer program immersing high school students in college-level design work at Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies, is expanding opportunities for students to participate. The program, now in its 20th year, will offer two week-long sessions for the first time this summer.  

Inside Architecture + Design provides rising 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-grade students with hands-on experience modeled on the curriculums of the School of Architecture + Design’s top-ranked programs and the award-winning first-year experience course taken by all architecture, industrial design, landscape architecture, and interior design students at Virginia Tech.

To meet increasing demand, the program will be offered during two separate week-long sessions: Sunday, June 24, through Friday, June 29, and Sunday, July 8, through Friday, July 13.

Registration is available on the Inside Architecture + Design website. Tuition is $580. Participants may opt to live and dine in a university residence hall during the program for an additional cost. Space is limited to 100 students and registration fills up quickly. The deadline to apply is May 12.

Over the past two decades, Inside Architecture + Design has welcomed more than 1,400 participants from around the world. The students spend their days working with educators and practitioners in exercises designed to stimulate discussion and discovery, providing insights into the ways designers think and work. The environment models university life and professional practice, with students working individually and in teams.

Studio design sessions involve studies of materials and process as well as model building to explore spatial conditions. Working with various materials and organizational principles, students gain a basic understanding of how design is linked to contemporary architecture and the related fields of industrial design, interior design, and landscape architecture.

Parents also have an opportunity to get involved during special presentations at the beginning and end of the week. The program is led by founding directors Donna Dunay, G.T. Ward Professor of Architecture, and Robert Dunay, T.A. Carter Professor and director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Design Research.

Email taylorcupp@vt.edu for more information.

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