"There are very few published accounts that seek to share the experience of architecture school," writes Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, on the University of Washington's Department of Architeture blog, ARch[be]log. So Ochsner, a UW professor of architecture and associate dean for academic affairs for the College of Built Environments, wrote Furniture Studio. While not focused on the whole architecture-school process, Ochsner's book on just one of the studios is enough to give interested future architects the gist. But it's also written for today's architects, maybe nostalgic for architecture school, and for academics, maybe looking to start up a furniture studio at their own school. Beyond those specific audiences, all readers will walk with Ochsner as he details the history of shop-based courses, and follows the careers of four graduates from the UW program. Case studies from 1989 (the origin of UW's studio) and onward of finished furniture pieces display a sense of Pacific Northwest modern regionalism, with raw materials such as wood and metal the definining elements. Besides the fact that so many architects go on to design furniture, Ochsner writes that the studio's importance in an architecture program is key because of the necessary connection between and "emphasis on materials and making" that affects all aspects of the design process. • $45; University of Washington, April 2012
