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The University of Washington Department of Architecture was officially established by the Board of Regents in 1914 as the nineteenth architecture school in the United States. Carl Gould was appointed the head of the department, and, as the first head of the program, he based the curriculum on the the Beaux-Arts system of architectural education: the Ecole method of teaching that dominated architectural education in the United States and Europe as adapted to fit within the structure of American universities. As architecture in the United States shifted increasingly towards Modernism during the 1930s and 1940s, architecture education followed. Accordingly, the Beaux-Arts pedagogical methods were slowly phased out before they were completely abandoned by the University of Washington Department of Architecture during the 1950s.

The Ecole des Beaux-Arts curriculum

The Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, was founded as part of the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1648, but it was not established as a separate institution until the Academie was dissolved in 1793 during the administrative reforms of the French Revolution. The school, which had divisions in painting, sculpture, and architecture, developed world-wide significance and influence in the 19th century.

Although much of the architectural instruction took place in Ecole-approved ateliers , teaching studios headed by leading architects who accepted paying architecture students, the Ecole exercised control through its entrance exams, standardized problems issued for design competitions, jurying of students' submissions, and the awarding of points by which the students could progress from one level to the next. Students progressed through the curriculum by accumulating points in the design competitions, or concours . University of Pennsylvania professor John Harbeson writes that the purpose of Ecole training was "to impart each student a method of attacking and studying any problem in architectural design which may be presented" so that students could organize their designs rapidly, clearly, and develop the designs through a focused process of refinement.

The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design and the Society of Beaux-Arts, New York, 1916-1932

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Ecole played a critical role in informing American architecture and architectural education. American architects who had studied abroad inspired others to do the same; the number of American architecture students attending the Ecole grew from under ten in the 1860s to over 110 in the 1890s. At the same time, the first architecture schools were founded in the United States at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1865; the University of Illinois, 1869; Cornell University, 1871; the University of Pennsylvania, 1874; and Columbia College (later Columbia University), 1881. By 1910, there were nineteen American collegiate architecture programs and most had adopted the Ecole model for their curricula. As American architectural education was growing, the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects (SBAA) was founded in 1894 to promote the influence of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in American architecture. The SBAA shaped architectural education in America by preparing standard programmes (architectural problem statements) that were sent to architecture schools and independent ateliers all across the United State to be assigned to students at the appropriate level. The students' design projects were then sent to the SBAA in New York for jurying in a nationwide comparison with student work submitted from other schools and ateliers. This system was intended as a way to develop consistency and raise standards in American architectural education nationally.

In 1916, the SBAA delegated its educational activites to the newly formed Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (BAID) which had leased space in New York City to carry out the educational activities of the Society. The University of Washington architecture school had joined the BAID in 1916 and, like many other American architecture programs, UW students were assigned BAID programmes (problem statements) as well as supplemental assignments developed by Gould and other faculty members. The students' work on BAID programmes was routinely sent to New York for juried review and the drawings typically received a Society of Beaux Arts stamp indicating the points awarded for the assignment. When the UW discontinued their affiliation with the BAID in 1932, all problem statements were written and juried by the Department of Architecture's faculty.

Lionel Pries and the University of Washington curriculum, 1928-1945

In the early 1930s, most architectural education programs, including the University of Washington, continued to follow the pedagogy of the Ecole des Beaux Arts; however, by the end of the decade, a few leading schools had abandoned the traditional approach as students' interests shifted towards the new architectural movements in the United States and abroad. Although the University of Washington discontinued its affiliation with the BAID in 1932, the curriculum and pedagogy continued to be based on the Ecole des Beaux Arts. During the 1930s, students began experimenting with the new design vocabularies that were dominating architecture in the United States and by the late 1930s, students were primarily interested in International Modernism.

In 1928, the school implemented a five-year curriculum and Lionel Pries joined the faculty of the University of Washington as an instructor. Pries had been trained under the pedagogy of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, receiving his B.Arch from the University of California at Berkeley in 1920 and his M.Arch from the University of Pennsylvania in 1921. Pries taught in a two-person team with Lancelot E. Gowen; together they taught sophomores, second- and third- quarter seniors, and fifth-year students. Pries developed into one of the region's foremost designers and instructors; his rigorous teaching methods, which embraced the artistic and conceptual processes of design and emphasized place in architectural design, shaped the thinking of a generation of influential Northwest architects that includes Paul Hayden Kirk, Roland Terry, Victor Steinbrueck, Fred Bassetti, Robert Shields, Wendell Lovett, and Minoru Yamasaki.

The freshman year began with an intensive introduction to drawing taught by Arthur Herrman and Richard Pearce, 1928-1932, and Henry Olschewsky, 1932-1945. The course focused on basic techniques, shades and shadows, watercolor and running washes, renderings, perspectives, and delineation. The intensive drawing course would lay the technical foundation for the later conceptual problems in design studio. As the freshman year came to end, students were typically asked to address the elements of architecture found in historical examples and textbooks and combine them in an analytique that allowed for little individual expression, such as a classical window or a niche for a vase.

Students were also asked to produce analytiques during the first two quarters of the sophomore year in the Architectural Design I design studio class, taught by Pries and Gowen. Sophomore problems lasted four to six weeks, and the last two weeks of the quarter were spent focused on the analytique. By the beginning of the last two weeks, students had already completed projets which served as drafts of the required plans, sections, elevations, and details. These drawings were typically critiqued and re-done multiple times through the quarter until the drawings were ready to be produced as a final presentation. Final projects were juried by faculty behind closed doors and discussed with the class in the next design studio.

Junior year marked the beginning of Architectural Design II, taught by Arthur Herrman and Henry Olschewsky. The design studio, which emphasized the development of practical design and a workable plan, covered the entirety of a student's junior year and would often extend into the first -- and sometimes second -- quarter of a student's senior year. Students could also take a class in the History of Architectural Ornamentation taught by Lionel Pries. The ornamentation course was based on the tenet of the Beaux Arts pedagogy that decorative details are an essential part of architectural design. Architectural Design III was the culmination of the architecture program, which did not require a terminal project or thesis. Rather, the class, typically undertaken in the fourth and fifth years of study, required the completion of multiple large and complex problems.

As new design concepts reflecting the growing interest in Modernism began to appear in students' work, Pries continued to the use the analytique as a teaching device, focusing on the process of training in design, while allowing many of the classical elements associated with the traditional analytique to disappear from students' work; additionally, drawings were no longer produced with watercolor wash, but often as pencil and ink on illustration board. Pries' influence in the Department of Architecture began to wane in the early 1940s.

Changes in the Department of Architecture, 1945-1961

The end of World War II in 1945 saw a rapid increase in enrollment that sought to accomodate students seeking a professional architectural education, leading to the eventual abandonment of the Beaux Arts pedagogy in 1949. Keith Kolb, who had studied under Lionel Pries and graduated from the University of Washington in 1947, had returned to the University of Washington as an instructor in the early 1950s. Although the pedagogy of the Ecole des Beaux Arts had been largely abandoned and a new curriculum had been established, Kolb argued that the analytique taught necessary compositional and presentation skills and the analytique returned to the University of Washington curriculum as a junior-level assignment from 1953 to 1961.

The death of faculty member Lancelot Gowen and the forced resignation of Lionel Pries in 1958 marked the end of the Beaux-Arts curriculum and the faculty members who endorsed its methods at the University of Washington. Shortly thereafter, Robert Dietz succeeded Arthur Herrman as Dean of the Department of Architecture in 1961, bringing a greater emphasis on research and new methods of design training, such as physical modeling. Since assignments were coordinated across all studio sections and had been planned out for two-years in advance, it took until the end of the 1961-1962 academic year for the curriculum and the analytique to be phased out completely.

• Analytique: Carefully composed monochromatic presentation drawing usually including a partial plan, section, elevation, and fragments of the architectural elements at larger scale, assembled to form an orderly and pleasing composition. Analytiques were used during the Freshman and Sophomore years in the School of Architecture at the University of Washington, 1915 through the 1940s. Analytiques were discontinued after Winter 1948 as the school shifted towards Modernism, however, they enjoyed a brief resurgence from 1953 to 1961. See also: Design/Analytique.
• Atelier: The student organization of which all architecture students at the University of Washington were usually inducted after spring quarter of the freshman year. The student group sponsored the annual Beaux-Arts Ball and, beginning in 1933, published student work in the ANNUAL. Although the student organization continued, the name Atelier was dropped after the late 1940s as the curriculum shifted increasingly towards Modernism.
• Design/Analytique: Combined terminology because the projects in the first two quarters of the sophomore year were design projects; once the students arrived at their designs, they then presented them in the form of analytiques. In the spring quarter of the Sophomore year, students began to design small buildings and analytiques were no longer used for presentations. See also: Analytique.
• Design/Thesis: In the years from 1920 to Spring 1928, the four year architecture program leading to the B.Arch degree culminated in a thesis, a design project of the student's own choosing, usually presented in multiple large drawings. The combined terminology "Design/Thesis" is selected to explain that it was a design project that was the thesis, not a research project as in many academic disciplines. Beginning in Fall 1928, the program was extended to five years and the thesis was no longer required. Students in the fourth and fifth years sometimes did very large projects, but they were not individually selected and were not called by the name "thesis".
• Drawing exercise: Drawing exercises were generally assigned in the freshman year as a way to teach basic drawing skills. In a typical drawing exercise, students were asked to replicate a standard plate or a drawing made by someone else. The emphasis in a drawing exercise is on mastery of technique, not on the development of a new composition.
• Esquisse: Literally, sketch ; the esquisse was the first step in the student's development of his/her design in a multi-week project within the framework of the Beaux-Arts system. The aim of Beaux-Arts system was the students learned to get an idea quickly and then to study and develop it over a long period. The design process typically began with an esquisse showing a plan, a section and an elevation, which the student completed in isolation over a period of eight hours. At the end of the timed period, the student turned in the esquisse, but retained a copy to serve as the basis for the next weeks or months (at UW most projects lasted four or five weeks) of development and refinement under supervision of the instructor and with the advice of one’s peers. The student presented the final project in the form of beautifully rendered drawings; however, if the student's final project diverged too far from the design in the esquisse, then he/she would receive an H.C. No known examples of UW student esquisses survive.
• Esquisse-esquisse: Literally, sketch-sketch ; sketch problem. Typically assigned every seven to fourteen days, students were given a half-page descriptive text of a design problem that usually included limiting parameters of the design. The assignment was typically handed out at 2:00 p.m., and the students' single sheet presentations of a solution to the problem were due the same day at 10:00 p.m. Sketch projects were juried by faculty behind closed doors and awarded points based on the final grade: a "Mention" was worth one point; a "Half Mention" received one-half point; sketches graded with an "X" ("ding") received no points. Students would need to average four sketch points each year to progress and graduate on schedule. Sketch problems grew in complexity as students progressed through the program. While this form of instruction was based on the pedagogical model of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, this element continued as part of the curriculum (known simply as "Sketch Problem") after the school's shift to Modernism in the late 1940s. There is no complete list of these assignments.
• H.C.: Hors de concours (literally, outside the competition). In the Beaux-Arts curriculum, if a student's final project strayed too far from the initial esquisse, it would be marked H.C. to indicate that the drawing had been disqualified and the student received no points for the work.
• Historical drawing: At the University of Washington in the Freshman year, once the student began to master basic drawing techniques learned through drawing exercises, one of the routine assignments was a drawing of a significant work from the past. This drawing represented a significant architectural structure, usually one found in Europe -- a monument, fountain, small building, or something similar. The student might base his/her drawing on published plates, but the student was expected to present a large drawing precisely delineated in ink, showing the work with all its detail.
• Lettering exercise: In American schools that followed the Beaux-Arts method in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s, students were often taught drafting using exercises in which they were required to draw capitalis monumentalis , or Roman square capitals: large, capital letters copied from standard plates that look like Roman inscription lettering. In the first exercise, students might be asked to draw the letter V at 12 inches or 14 inches tall. The exercise taught drawing straight lines at angles and meeting at corners, and using a compass to correctly make curves. The next exercise might be a series of 3 or 4 different letters at 9 inches tall. To complete these exercises successfully, a student had to learn how to hold and manipulate a pencil, how to control line weight, when to sharpen it, as well as learning to manipulate a T-square, triangles, and compass.
• Measured drawing: An architectural drawing of an existing structure or detail, accurately drawn to scale on the basis of field measurements. Generally completed during the freshman year.
• Ornament class drawing: These drawings were completed as part of the History of Architectural Ornamentation class offered by Lionel Pries during the 1930s and 1940s. Drawings focused on an artistic arrangement of decorative objects, historical motifs, and architectural details.
• Projet: Literally, draft, plan, or project. Typically used to refer to design projects completed by students during the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s.