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UW-Madison is leveraging swaths of experience across departments — and across the University of Wisconsin system — to meet student demand for an architecture program.

UW-Madison launched its first general architectural certificate, located in the College of Engineering, in late August. Three weeks later, in mid-September, 52 students had signed on — a tiny portion of the university’s 50,000 student population, but large enough to make architecture the College of Engineering’s third-largest certificate program. With the engineering college’s second-largest certificate program at 64 students, architecture is poised to take the second-place spot within a year.

“Certificate” is UW-Madison’s word for “minor.”

UW-Madison has had many of the pieces of a robust architecture certificate for years. The College of Engineering offers civil and environmental engineering, which includes design for infrastructure such as roads and bridges and land surveying. The School of Human Ecology has programs in design studies that look at how spaces can be designed with human needs in mind. The landscape and urban planning department teaches students about sustainable land use. And UW-Madison’s art history courses already teach about historical architecture from Wisconsin and around the world.

What was missing, though, were the introductory courses. UW-Milwaukee has stepped in to provide those online. While those classes are taught by UW-Milwaukee faculty, the classes are considered native to UW-Madison and eliminate the need for students to transfer credits between institutions.

UW-Madison’s lack of a broad architecture program has cost the university prospective students in the past, architecture certificate director and civil engineering professor Greg Harrington said.

“We routinely get high school students interested in our (civil engineering) program who say, ‘I’d come here if you had something in architecture, but you don’t.’ And so that was a motivation for us to increase opportunity for students here,” Harrington said.

The certificate, though, is open to students across campus, not just those in the College of Engineering, so the classes are showing broad appeal. In a 400-level architectural design class this semester, there’s a cohort of College of Business real estate graduate students designing Italian cuisine restaurants for East Washington Avenue alongside psychology and structural engineering majors. Read more here

When Barbara and Robert Elsner bought a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in 1955, they wrote the famed architect to ask if he had designed any landscaping for the house. Wright responded that he hadn’t, but told them that their 1917 home was “a good house of a good period for a good client.” 

Since then, the Elsner family has carefully preserved the Milwaukee house, returning the interiors to their original paint colors and buying back the home’s custom-made furniture.

Now, however, the family is ready to hand the house over to a new steward, according to the Elsners’ daughter Margaret Howland, who lives in the home. They are putting the property on the market for the first time in 68 years, asking $1.5 million.

The five-bedroom, roughly 6,700-square-foot home is a stone’s throw from Lake Michigan in the historic North Point neighborhood, said listing agent Melissa LeGrand of @properties-elleven Christie’s International Real Estate. Read more here

The building would stand out in even the biggest of cities.

But here, amid a sea of nearly ripe corn, a solar field and wetlands in northeastern Kenosha County, the Pritzker Military Archives Center overshadows the rural landscape.

The building’s shape resembles a World War II landing craft. Its steel girders and columns are painted a bright red.

Its founder is a retired colonel who happens to be a billionaire with a passion for military history. The building’s architect is world renowned, and the project serves as a unique gateway to this village of just over 9,000 people in southeastern Wisconsin.

Chicago-area architect Celeste Robbins wasn’t in the market for a weekend getaway, but it was love at first sight when she laid eyes on a low-slung 1956 residence designed by architect Winston Elting overlooking Lake Michigan. “A client had contacted me about doing some work on the residence, but in the end they decided not to purchase it,” recalls Robbins. “It was a completely spontaneous decision to put in an offer, but I love the mid-20th-century vocabulary and the two-acre site is fabulous.”

The iconic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright is found in abundance in his home state of Wisconsin. Born in 1867, Wright is often considered the greatest architect of all time.

His designs, famous for incorporating light and nature, are referred to as Prairie Style, after the low, flat lines of the landscape of the Midwest. Wright also designed budget homes to reflect the impact of the Great Depression, called Usonian homes; these homes were considered affordable yet beautiful places to live.

Wright was commissioned to create private homes, offices, and public spaces such as churches and civic centers, almost all of which are still standing today. There are many Wright homes and buildings in Wisconsin and for fans, a Frank Lloyd Wright Trail was created in 2017 to provide travelers to Wisconsin a way to map out several of the iconic stops.

Since there are Wright designs in almost every state, other “trails” exist around the country. Read more here