It is in the undergraduate Department of Architectural Sciences, however, that the faith in architecture as more than a technical profession becomes most clear and that the Faculty of Design plays an important role in demonstrating the integral connection between an understanding of the visual arts and a general education.

Newton emphasizes that the Faculty does not look upon the Arch. Sci. program as only a preparation for the GSD. Like all the departments of the College it is non-professional. (However, it is possible for qualified seniors to combine the last year of college studies and the first year in GSD. Last year only nine of 16 persons qualified took the option.) Instead Newton believes that Arch. Sci. "is as legitimate a field for general education as any other." It serves as an introduction to a profession whose basis is no less than "fulfillment of the social requirements of our times." In the words of the catalogue the work of the graduate student, "tends toward the establishment of an imaginative order that should be the expression of our physical and spiritual requirements. This order is achieved by the intelligent and sensitive use of forms, structures, enclosures, surfaces, and colors, which make for better and more beautiful environments." Arch. Sci. provides an initiation into this realm. The broad range of courses offered aims to fill in a student's background in the field of visual arts and introduce him to some of the social implications of design. The outcome, Newton insists, is a polity of intelligent citizens aware visually of their social and spiritual environment.

Even here the stress on the creative studio method of learning is maintained. "Fine Arts is about something, we are in something," was the way one member of the Department put it. The students distinctly feel that theirs is an artistic approach rather than a critical one, although the end result is, hopefully, a critical ability.

Central place in the undergraduate program belongs to the workshop courses in drawing and design fundamentals at the Design Center on Memorial Drive. The courses have proven so popular that they are to a large extent responsible for the increased number of concentrators, now over one hundred, according to the Dean. Furthermore they have attracted so many non-concentrators--about one-third of the classes--an additional instructor has been hired.

Direction of the workshop rests with Mirko Basldella, noted Italian artist who joined the Department two years ago. Under his guidance students experiment with the properties of line, color, texture and the various media. The courses are not directed to architectural design but are rather concerned with having the student gain experience with "the fundamentals of design" in its widest sense; and consequently the students play with three dimensional wire models, geometric patterns, and metal masks. The presence of a first rate artist directing the courses is note-worthy; it is comparable in kind, if perhaps not in degree, to the writing courses of MacLeish and the composition courses of Piston.

The importance assigned by the GSD to workshop type courses is evident from its desire that entering students should display some such in their background. Indeed there have been sporadic suggestions in the past that a similar course in visual design be required of all undergraduates, as it is at many other institutions. Unlikely as it is, such a suggestion reflects the concern of many that the normal academic education neglects this field, which is a major element in our contemporary society.

In the words of the Committee on the Visual Arts, "Less and less is modern man swayed by the argument of the written word, and more and more by the photograph, the bill-board, the cinema, the picture magazine, and now television. Until both sender and receiver of these visual messages are trained in the twin arts of perception and discrimination, the educated man may hardly claim to be the master of his own environment.