Summer architecture intensive attracts minds of all designs

Left to right, UIC teaching assistant Jocelyn Hernandez and clinical associate professor Ania Jawroska discuss Dylan Cullison's project during the 2025 YArch summer architecture program. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC) Listen to story summary

Daniel Goering is a cinema studies graduate of Oberlin College. These days, he works for a general contractor.

So what brought him to the top floor of the UIC College of Architecture, Design and the Arts building on a July afternoon to create a summer folly with foam and a new-to-him computer program? And what's a summer folly, anyhow?

The architectural term for a building created for aesthetic purposes is just one of the many things Goering and his fellow classmates learned this summer in UIC's YArch program.

After a decade of working outside his chosen college major, Goering let his continuing passion for art lead him to the month-long summer intensive that teaches architecture to students of all backgrounds and ages. Goering wondered if he could return to an academic schedule so long after his college graduation. In YArch, he's surrounded by undergrads, secondary teachers on summer break, recent graduates considering a master's degree in architecture and people with long careers in other fields.

YArch (pronounced "why-arch") is the brainchild of architecture department instructors who noticed that not all grad school applicants came with an architecture background. The program introduces concepts of structure and design to anyone who's interested, even those who haven't studied architecture before.

"A lot of the people that come in feel like, 'I really want to tap into something creative and have always thought about architecture,'" said Ethan O'Kane, adjunct assistant professor in the UIC College of Architecture, Design and the Arts. "I think this is a really diverse group with a lot of interests and experiences."

YArch students spend four weeks in July learning both the basics and advanced concepts of architecture. They tour Chicago and a handful of the city's architecture studios where they learn how large firms operate and how smaller practices differ.

They also create a final project that encompasses what they learned through the program and their own understanding of architecture.

Kennedy Marren was a student in UIC's 2025 YArch summer architecture program. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC) Students in the program learned many ways to illustrate their architecture ideas. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC) Daniel Goering followed his interest in art to the summer program at UIC. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC)

For his project, Goering took inspiration from the ever-growing dining table in the 1941 movie "Citizen Kane" to create a building that represented the coming together of two sides of a debate.

"One of our instructors gave me a comment that each building reminded her of characters themselves, so I've really tried to run with that," Goering said. "Unlike 'Citizen Kane,' I would like the possibility of a central coming together, that the horizontal space of the table is hopefully an opportunity for people to go their separate ways, but then return. The relationship is part of the story of the building."

Learners of all backgrounds

Goering was not the only student in the 2025 YArch program who had been out of school for some time. While the youngest attendee was 19 and still an undergrad, the oldest had two college-age children of her own.

Gwen Fullenkamp, director of student academic affairs in the school of architecture, said the diversity of students' experiences helped launch the YArch program in 2008.

"Our graduate program has been really accepting of students from lots of different backgrounds and points of view, often coming from totally unrelated fields," Fullenkamp said. In other words, an undergraduate degree is not required for acceptance into UIC's architecture master's degree program.

"We've seen how they can really thrive in architecture, even if they haven't come in with an undergraduate architecture degree," she added. "YArch was a natural extension from that philosophy."

Some students find that the four-week program is enough to satisfy their curiosity about architecture. For others, YArch is a step toward graduate school in the field, Fullenkamp said.

Goering was motivated to apply to architecture graduate schools, including UIC's, after his YArch experience.

"My No. 1 goal coming out of this month was to give myself a firm answer as to whether or not I was going to be filling applications for grad school," Goering said. "In the middle of (week three), I was locked in - yes."

Success doesn't need a final grade

Students this summer designed structures using compositional strategies and relationships between volumetric spaces. They learned how to represent their projects using a variety of architectural software. And they learned architectural theory, listened to guest lecturers and received feedback on their portfolios from UIC professors.

After graduating in Texas, Peter Huynh came to UIC specifically for the YArch program. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC) YArch students built their projects with both digital and physical models. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC) The YArch program was held at the UIC College for Architecture, Design and the Arts. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC)

"We felt like the students achieved success two weeks in," said Ania Jaworska, clinical associate professor in the College of Architecture, Design and the Arts and YArch instructor. "That's when they started to show us their great ideas and concepts and developed that kind of architectural thinking that everyone had to adjust to. The projects have imposed boundaries and rules, but there's also a lot of open-endedness, and every student has created original projects that reflected their individual approach and ideology."

Peter Huynh majored in architecture at The University of Texas at Arlington, where he recently graduated. He came to Chicago specifically to join UIC's YArch program. Though some of the theory was review, the summer experience was beneficial for his schooling, he said.

"I'm really drawn to the writing aspect of the architecture program at UIC," Huynh said. "I think I'm more interested in how architecture affects the human experience and how we can enhance it or sort of dial it down."

High school students invited

The success of the YArch program led to the creation of HiArch, a summer camp for high school students. They attend for one to two weeks instead of four. The second week of camp is optional, though nearly two-thirds of the 60 high school students in this year's camp returned for the second week.

The high school camp attracts students from around the city and suburbs, and attendees learn everything from hand drawing to 3D rendering. They learn about computer software and digital drawing, then have an exhibition at the end of the first week. Some students can continue practicing and augmenting their creations with physical model making in the second week before another exhibition.

Fullenkamp said more of the students in the HiArch program are destined for architecture school than those who complete YArch. Many already know they're interested in design.

"HiArch is a little bit of a different animal in the sense that it's more focused on learning and making architecture over two weeks, and we don't take them off campus," Fullenkamp said. "We've seen students who have done the high school program for multiple summers who then feed into our undergrad program. Every year since we started it, we have several incoming freshmen who have done HiArch at some point in their high school career."

Applications for YArch and HiArch are taken every year through May, and interested students can apply through the College of Architecture, Design and the Arts website.

Huyhn said the experience showed him a different side to the architecture he's been studying through his college career.

"It's amazing because I see someone from a physics background, and I can see their perspective on architecture," he said. "Then I see someone studying psychology, and I see their perspective. It's refreshing to hear new ideas and see new projects, because in my cohort in college, everyone is sort of molded the same way. Here, it's exciting to see new ideas and in ways I've never thought about."