The University of Michigan Architecture Preparatory Program (ArcPrep) provides Detroit Public School juniors with an immersive, semester-long college preparatory course in architecture, urbanism, and studio design.

Meeting three hours per day, five days a week over the course of a semester, U-M ArcPrep works to broaden career horizons, meet future demand, and bring diverse voices into the fields of architecture, planning, and design by serving students typically underrepresented in American architecture schools and thus the profession of architecture.

During this semester, students engage in a rigorous academic program that introduces fundamental studio design tools. The course strengthens participants’ ability to translate observations about the world into visual and spatial language and, through a spatial justice lens, works to expand students’ sense of agency in the built environment.

Students receive instruction through a series of thematic, interrelated modules structured to deliver fundamental design and research methodologies, offer techniques for critical analysis, shed light on the profession and its affiliate fields, and demonstrate pathways to design education.

This website is a showcase of student work completed on Tuesday and Thursday every week. The projects are led by current architecture students from U-M.