Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning

09/24/2026

Join us for a meet-and-greet with our new faculty director for the B.S. in Urban Technology, Lisa Sauve, on October 8.

This virtual event will highlight the recent employment report with a showcase on the jobs our students entered, along with insights about internships and graduate school study after finishing at U-M.

Come and learn about the exciting places this degree can take you!

Reserve your spot: https://umforms.tfaforms.net/219401

09/17/2026

Join us 6/21 for gru.a: Looking at the Intersection Between Architecture and Art

gru.a is an architecture studio founded in 2013 by Caio Calafate and Pedro Varella. The studio works across diverse scales and typologies, focusing on the intersection of architecture and the arts. Its production is shaped by the academic, research, and design practices of its members.

This lecture is made possible by the the Charles Correa International Lecture Fund and is part of the Fall 2026 Taubman College lecture series CRAFT.

gru.a is an architecture studio founded in 2013 by Caio Calafate and Pedro Varella. The studio works across diverse scales and typologies, focusing on the intersection of architecture and the arts.

09/11/2026

Introducing the Taubman College Fall 2026 Lecture Series: CRAFT

Craft is a way of working. It brings material, method, labor, and judgment into relation. This semester’s series considers craft as a mode of inquiry, thinking through making and asking how spatial knowledge takes form before it becomes style, system, or standard.

Our invited speakers approach craft expansively: as tectonic intelligence; as embodied and collective labor; as computational and organizational practice; and as a culture of maintenance, repair, adaptation, and reuse. Across these registers, craft is what we make, how we make it, with whom, and to what ends.

9/3-12/4 Out of the Ordinary | the work of John Ronan Architects Exhibition • 9/21 gru.a • 10/2 Climate Week | Emerging Innovations in Mass Timber: Regional Advancements in Policy, Practice, and Education • 10/5 Aroussiak Gabrielian • 10/15 Amelyn Ng • 10/26 Billy Fleming | Book Launch, Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions • 11/4 Suzanne Lettieri & Anya Sirota | Book Launch Junior Architects: New Paradigms in Design Education • 11/16 Jia Yi Gu & Kate Yeh Chiu

For more information: https://taubmancollege.umich.edu/news/2026/09/02/taubman-college-announces-fall-2026-public-programs-craft/

09/10/2026

Revamped ArcStart program helps high school students explore architecture and build portfolios
(This article is featured in the Fall 2026 digital edition of Portico+)

This year’s ArcStart cohort was the largest in the program’s 15-year history, with 69 students representing 19 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and four countries. In his first year as director, Jacob Comerci, ArcStart director, managing director of Academic Initiatives, and a lecturer in architecture at Taubman College, worked with colleagues on the college’s Academic Initiatives team to revamp the program’s business model, staffing, and curriculum. They aimed to draw a strong, diverse group of students while expanding access through scholarships and a partnership with Wolverine Pathways, a free, year-round college-preparatory program for eligible middle and high school students in Detroit, Southfield, and Ypsilanti. Another goal was to find the “sweet spot” between exploring the university experience and producing portfolio-ready work on a compressed timeline.

This new iteration comes as Taubman College’s pre-college programs are being aligned and expanded as Michigan Design Sessions (MDS), a suite of nondegree and pathway programs aimed at broadening access to design education. In addition to the existing MDS: ArcStart and MDS: Detroit — a workshop-based program formerly known as ArcPrep — for high school students, opportunities are being explored for adult learners, including continuing education for practicing architects and pre-architecture programs.

“We already have two robust programs, and the Michigan Design Sessions umbrella is intended to strengthen and better connect them, create opportunities to reshape those programs, and identify new ways to expand our pre-college and non-degree offerings,” Comerci said.

Read the full article: https://taubmancollege.umich.edu/news/2026/08/27/revamped-arcstart-program-helps-high-school-students-explore-architecture-and-build-portfolios/

Story by: Eric Galippo
Photos by: Devin O'Neill
Special Thanks to Josephine Majid

09/09/2026

Out of the Ordinary: The Work of John Ronan Architects, is on display now at the newly renovated Taubman College Liberty Annex in downtown Ann Arbor.

Led by alumnus John Ronan (B.S. '85), John Ronan Architects is an internationally-recognized design firm based in Chicago and comprised of dedicated design professionals committed to producing architecture of the highest quality, marked by conceptual innovation, exploration of materiality, and a rigorous attention to detail. Led by John Ronan, FAIA, (B.S. ’85) the firm pursues an iterative design methodology to explore and test a wide range of ideas in order to find the response that feels intuitively correct for each situation, based on its unique site, program and context (cultural, historical, economic, social). Working across a wide range of scales and project types, there is a searching quality to the studio’s work which seeks to produce that which is compelling and memorable.

Run date: Now – December 4, 2026
Public Hours: Fridays (6- 9 PM) and Saturdays (1- 4 PM)

https://taubmancollege.umich.edu/event/out-of-the-ordinary-the-work-of-john-ronan-architects/

This event is part of the Taubman College Fall 2026 lecture series, CRAFT.

09/01/2026

Welcome to the 2026-2027 academic year from Taubman College Dean Jonathan Massey. Filmed on location at the newly renovated Liberty Annex, Dean Massey showcases the exciting growth at Taubman College.

08/31/2026

Welcome to the 2026-2027 academic year from Taubman College Dean Jonathan Massey. Filmed on location at the newly renovated Liberty Annex, Dean Massey showcases the exciting growth at Taubman College.

07/15/2026

Congratulations to the seven undergraduate students who received the 2026 Wallenberg Studio Awards!

Each year, senior undergraduate students in the Taubman College B.S. in Architecture program complete the Wallenberg studio, named after renowned alumnus Raoul Wallenberg. As the final studio required for completion of their degree, students build on their past skills and experiences to explore the transformative power of architecture through a focus on broad humanitarian concerns.

At the end of the semester, the top students are awarded the Wallenberg Studio Award. Funded by the Raoul Wallenberg Endowment, awards are offered as a stipend for international travel to a country of the student’s choosing. Building on Wallenberg’s legacy, the stipend encourages students to engage with the people, architecture, and culture of the country they visit and return with a broadened understanding of the world. This year, there was a winner awarded for each studio, as well as eight honorable mentions.

This year's winners...

Constanza Capriles, “Tierra de Gracia: Thresholds”
Studio: Imagineries for Patchy Ecologies
Instructor: Zain AbuSeir

Fatema Almoamen, “reFramed: A Series of Do-It-Yourself Reactivating Assemblies”
Studio: Salvaging: Material and Memory after Demolition
Instructor: Tess Clancy

Emma High, “Ambler Medevac + Trauma Clinic”
Studio: THE AMBLER ROAD – Cosmopolitics of Arctic Territory
Instructor: Nitzan Farfel

Misk Aldulaimy, “Land as Memory”
Studio: Celestial Artifice + Subterranean Clouds
Instructors: Dawn Gilpin and Gina Reichert

John Watha, “Beyond Babel”
Studio: Swamp Logics
Instructor: Neal Robinson

Gulshat Roziali and Taylor Horsfall, “End of the American Dream”
Studio: Mavericks, the Multitude, and the Mesa
Instructor: Geoffrey Thün

Read more:

Taubman College recognized seven undergraduate students with 2026 Wallenberg Studio Awards during a May 1 symposium. The winners were B.S. Arch ’26 students Constanza Capriles, Fatema Almoamen…

07/10/2026

How can autonomous vehicles help foster adolescent independence or expand access to transportation? These are just a couple of big questions urban technology students spent the winter semester working to answer with industry partners General Motors and ATLAS.ti (Lumivero), as part of Sheng-Hung Lee’s UT210: Listening—Design Ethnography Methods course at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

UT210 explores how design ethnography can inform the development of future autonomous urban systems through a human-centered, systems-oriented lens. Led by Lee, assistant professor of urban technology and director of d-mix lab, the course brought together 18 students in a studio-based, team-driven format to investigate real-world challenges at the intersection of mobility, equity, and everyday life.

During a final presentation attended by representatives from GM and several Taubman College faculty and students, Wade Bryant, design manager in Advanced UX Insight and Human Interface Design at GM, said the opportunity to partner with the class was one he couldn’t pass up.

Read the full story:

How can autonomous vehicles help foster adolescent independence or expand access to transportation? These are just a couple of big questions urban technology students spent the winter semester working…

07/09/2026

Access by Design: Through Fresh Graphics, Julia McMorrough is helping future architects rethink accessibility and inclusion in the built environment
(This article is featured in the Spring 2026 digital edition of Portico+)

Growing up with a disabled sister with complex access needs, Julia McMorrough learned at an early age about the challenges disabled individuals can face in going about their daily lives. However, because her family simply did what was necessary to help her sister move through the world, she was well into her 15-year career as a practicing architect before she realized the important connection between architecture and access.

“As an architect, I was slow to recognize that the built environment should be doing more to design accessible spaces that are enabling, rather than disabling, for everyone,” says McMorrough, associate professor of architecture at Taubman College and co-founder of studioAPT, an Ann Arbor-based research and design collaborative.

McMorrough’s ARCH500 seminar, Fresh Graphics, breaks the concept of designing for accessibility into bite-sized pieces for students. Launched in 2013, the class prioritizes graphic communication to demystify big concepts. In its current focus on accessible design, it connects students with the disability community and provides the tools and opportunities to disseminate information about accessible design to a broader audience.

Read the full article:

Through Fresh Graphics, Julia McMorrough is helping future architects rethink accessibility and inclusion in the built environment Growing up with a disabled sister with complex access needs…