The Design Research Internship course recognizes the unique knowledge and skills our senior, undergraduate students acquire in the liberal arts milieu of the BAAS program. This course bridges academic knowledge with professional practice and advances for upper level, architectural studies students models of design research that inform real world projects. In the form of a six-week internship, students have the opportunity to apply critical research and visual communication skills to focused work within the professional office of a local practitioner.
CONTEXT
The non-professional nature of our BAAS program, specific to Daniels, affords positive academic freedom which allows our students’ deep indulgence in the design disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design without the burden of pre-professional requirements. At the same time, the opportunity for experiential learning seems critical for exposing and engaging UofT students in how these disciplines are intrinsic to aspects of professional practice, and in the space where critical design research can shape and influence the design process for real projects.
The pedagogical positioning of our BAAS program rooted in the liberal arts milieu is the only one of its kind across Canada; and it’s where we find unique opportunity to not only bridge academic research with professional practice, but also to define for students models of design research that advance lessons from design studios and course work into multivalent, and sometimes interdisciplinary design research problems. Combined with the opportunity afforded by the concentration of some of the country’s most recognized design practitioners at the University of Toronto’s doorstep, DRIP finds itself in a new category within the long history of design internships.
DEVELOPMENT
The idea for DRIP began in 2020 by Professor Pina Petricone who shares her time as co- principal architect at Giannone Petricone Architects in Toronto and knows first-hand of the unique talents and strengths of our Daniels students, as well as the nature of design research that is intrinsic to everyday, critical practice.
Following Petricone’s intensive pilot internship course in the summer of 2021, DRIP was formally launched in 2022 and received the transformative support of a LEAF Impact Grant by the University of Toronto Vice Provost for Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching. In its first three years, commitment and enthusiasm for DRIP has been overwhelming on the part of students and partnering practitioners alike, doubling the number of internships offered in 2024.
