University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

Art school at the University of Cincinnati

The University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) is an arts and architecture college of the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was initially established as the School of Applied Art in 1926.

In 1922, the College of Engineering and Commerce started a Bachelors of Science degree in architecture, offering courses in architecture, landscape architecture. In 1935, the department became the School of Applied Arts. A Department of Design was later added to the now College of Applied Art.

The college is distinguished for its mandatory co operative education program, which was first conceived at the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering in 1906. Students alternate between working as paid employees in design firms and attending classes, giving them experience that enables them to easily enter the workplace after graduation. Students are required to spend a certain amount of time in the workplace, usually adding up to several years of job experience, before they are able to graduate. This extends most of the programs that would normally be four year programs into five or more years.

The Alms Memorial Hall opened on October 17, 1952 for the cost of $200,000 in memorial of Frederick H. and Eleanora C. U. Alms. It was located on a knoll in Burnett Woods.

In 1988, Peter Eisenman was commissioned to design what would become the Aronoff Center along with Lorenz & Williams of Cinicnnati. The team was selected amongst five internationally known architects: Arthur Erikson, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, and James Steward Polshek. The project was anticipated to cost $20.8 million. The architects had all been asked to lecture students, faculty and the public during the interview process for the audience to better understand challenges and potential solutions of the expansion and renovation project at the university. Eisenman's planned addition united the existing buildings of DAAP, sloping down a hill and adding studios, a theater, library photography darkroom, and offices with an atrium between the old and new buildings. While some of the faculty did not like the new design, Dean Jay Chatterjee in The Cincinnati Enquirer had the philosophy "that the building should be at the edge We need something for the future and not repeat the past. If we don't do things at the edge of our profession, who will?" The Stanley J. Aronoff Center opened in 1996 with wide acclaim, costing $35.3 million. The soft blue, pink, grey, and green unparallel building has an 800 foot long central concourse runs through it that expands and contracts both vertically and horizontally. The concourse serves as circulation for the building, linking a central atrium with studios, auditoriums, a library, a cafeteria, and offices. The 140,000 SF building links with the old building doubling the size of the college. At its time of completion, the University was already recognized as "one of the most architecturally dynamic campuses in America" and the project – along with the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Greater Columbus Convention Center – helped solidify Eisenman's reputation as a leading architect and architectural theorist. Business Insider ranked the world’s best 25 design schools listing DAAP as third, second only to RISD and MIT. For 2005, the graduate architecture program was ranked second in the nation after Harvard and ranked as the most innovative architecture program in the nation. Two of "The New York Five" architects attended the University of Cincinnati: Michael Graves and John Hejduk (though Hejduk did not ultimately graduate from the program). In 2008, the interior design program was ranked first in the nation for the ninth consecutive year in "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools", published by DesignIntelligence. New to the list in 2006 was the school's industrial design program ranking at No. 2, besting the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit and second only to the prestigious Art Center College of Design in California. The combination of these three top ranking disciplines gave the college of DAAP the title as the Best Art College in the nation. The college is also known for having the only School of Planning in the U. S. to have accredited programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate levels. Born out of the School of Architecture in 1961, their postgraduate degrees have been ranked at near the top in the Midwest as well as in the top 20 nationwide.