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WSOA In-Flux is a publishing platform for student work launched by Woodbury School of Architecture in 2020.





Woodbury School of Architecture is distinguished by its multiple locations at the heart of the Southern California creative industries: Los Angeles, Hollywood and San Diego. Together, these sites form a critical infrastructure for architectural investigations.

Our undergraduate and graduate programs prepare students to effect positive change in the built environment, to tackle theoretical debates, and to take on architecture and interior design as critical practices. We educate our students as entrepreneurs, citizen architects, and cultural builders equally committed to professional practice, theoretical discourse, social equity and to formal and technological inquiry.

Our faculty are architects, designers, academics and policy makers practicing in Los Angeles, San Diego and Tijuana. This internationally recognized and award-winning group works closely with students to teach the skills required to push the limits of practice.




Mission

Good design is a human right. Woodbury School of Architecture produces graduates who affirm the power of design to improve the built environment and the lives of others by addressing the pressing issues of our time. We transform our students into ethical, articulate and innovative design professionals prepared to lead in a world of accelerating technological change.



Vision

The future belongs to Woodbury. Woodbury School of Architecture creates an environment that empowers our students to impact the future of the profession through meaningful built work. We imagine a world in which there are no disciplinary rights or wrongs, where diverse and sometimes contradictory values collide to generate new ideas, design innovation, unexpected practices, and the means to expand the influence of our discipline.



Woodbury School of Architecture offers a welcoming environment for students to develop their own unique design voice.  We approach the design disciplines multi-dimensionally, teaching a range of pedagogies and design methodologies. Our students leave Woodbury with the confidence to engage in local and global discourse.

Through engaged faculty-student interaction, we transform our students into innovative professionals with a commitment to the power of good design. Our students and faculty share a commitment to sustainable practices, community outreach and civic engagement.

Our School of Architecture is among the first 14 accredited architectural programs to be accepted for participation in the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) Integrated Path to Architectural Licensure (IPAL) initiative. Successful students will have the opportunity to have an architectural license upon graduation.

We believe that our school is a role model for the direction in which the profession is heading – improving gender parity and ethnic diversity among its members, and reaffirming the importance of ethical conduct and social responsibility. Ours is a welcoming community for every race and orientation, and we resist acts of intolerance in favor of thoughtfulness, generosity and kindness. The economic, ethnic, and academic backgrounds of our students reflect Southern California itself. We are determined to provide a place for open debate, the respectful airing of differences, and for rich forms of expression and imagination.


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The Future of Practice ︎




Uniquely situated in a region where some of the most exciting design experimentation is occurring, Woodbury is at the nexus of pressing issues related to immigration, housing insecurity, climate change, and gender equality. Daunting? Yes, but it’s also exciting to imagine how architects and designers might engage such critical concerns. Our locations in Los Angeles, Hollywood and San Diego offer a complex context with messy, often oppositional tendencies for our students to explore. Our studios provide a sanctuary that inspire our students to experiment without fear and with ambition and ingenuity to construct not just buildings, but environments that enrich and effect change outside of the traditional confines of physical spaces and of our discipline. Embedded in our curricula is the ethos that diverse points of view lead to innovative design solutions.

Accessible education leads to accessible architecture. The work on this platform – ranging in methodology, topic, scale, technique, formal investigations, tools, and concentrations – celebrates and amplifies the intrinsic diversity of our students which spans across spectrums of gender, racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. What unites us is an optimistic affirmation of the value of our profession. Woodbury School of Architecture is, above all, a school committed to the future of practice.

What does this mean?

Our paramount mission is not just to educate our students to succeed as architects and designers, but to dynamically shape the future of practice. Not all our students end up working within these bounds, of course, but this is the beauty of the discipline: that the education of an architect opens doors to careers we cannot even begin to imagine. Design acumen is combined with a fundamental belief that good design is a human right.

Investing in “The Future of Practice” suggests not only commitment to the profession, but to a method of applying knowledge. The word “practice,” is of course, both noun and verb. It is about action.

It implies doing something, not just dreaming something. Speculation is underpinned by an ability to execute. Design acumen is arrived at by experience and exercise. Excitingly, many of our students now practice sooner through our Integrated Path to Architectural Licensure.

Representational virtuosity is the most visible means through which our students are iteratively exploring and developing their personal language. Beautiful drawings that engage and invite are a powerful means of making architecture more accessible. Technology, used smartly, is another means of access. As technology shifts from being a top down brand-driven process, to an intellectual engagement with computing and light fabrication machines, we are there.

What does it mean to practice as an architect? What does it mean to practice as an interior designer? The work of our faculty exemplifies a breathtaking wealth of ways to practice. They are architects and educators but also public artists, real estate developers, creators of pre-engineered building systems, authors, fabricators, coders, curators, exhibition designers, landscape architects, furniture makers, filmmakers, interior designers, visual artists, façade consultants, delineators, and principals of their own architectural practices. Is it any wonder that our alumni are so successful, using design not just to to craft unconventional career paths but to galvanize communities?

“The Future of Practice” is our invitation to ask: “What next?” Understanding that good architecture has the potential to bring joy and beauty to others, we seek to reenergize the profession by stretching its limits and exploring its possibilities from within. Areas of concentration, led by faculty research engaged in a range of projects, allow students to craft customized degrees, uniquely blended to their skillsets and passions. In our student’s projects, you will find uncommon combinations: applied computer science and civic engagement; augmented reality and real estate development; immersive digital environments and curation; material research and representational virtuosity. The future really does belong to Woodbury.







Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, FAIA




Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter is an architect, educator, and design consultant specializing in the building envelope and the experimental architectural use of glass. Currently Dean of the School of Architecture at Woodbury University, she has taught at Yale, Cornell, the Bartlett, and SCI-Arc. She is also Director of WUHO, the Woodbury University Hollywood gallery, a venue for experimental installations, public lectures and workshops. She currently serves on the LA Forum Board of Advisors.

The work of her collaborative office, WROAD, navigates transdisciplinary territory in the diverse type and scale of projects. She has collaborated on multiple award-winning projects including as façade consultant on Bloom with DoSu Architects, the Portland Aerial Tramway with AGPS, the Centre Pompidou exhibition, Continuities of the Incomplete, with Morphosis, and as project architect for the Corning Museum of Glass with Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects.

Named AIA Fellow in 2018, Ingalill is recipient of AIA California Council 2016 Educator Award, was honored with the AIA|LA 2018 Presidential Educator of the Year Award, and recognized by DesignIntelligence as one of the nation’s Most Admired Educators in architecture and design.