Courtesy of Friends Center for Children

At the School of Architecture, students conceptualize, design and build housing for a real client — all in their first year. 

The Jim Vlock First Year Building Project was founded in 1967 and is mandatory for all students in the Master of Architecture I program. During the second semester of their first year, students work with a local organization to design housing that they later help build. 

“I think it was the main reason I came to Yale to study architecture,” said Tara Vasanth ARC ’26, a first-year student currently working on the project. “Being a non-background architecture student, I really love the idea of just being thrust into a project and working with all these different people.”

Started by Charles W. Moore and Kent Bloomer, the project was renamed after Jim Vlock in 2009, after his family endowed it.

In founding the project, Moore hoped to familiarize architecture students with the logistics of actually building the works they designed. 

Given widespread student unrest on college campuses in the 1960s, he was eager to create a project encouraging students to create positive change through their architectural pursuits. 

According to Adam Hopfner, the program’s project director, “Students engage with a real client to develop conceptual designs for a building, which will ultimately be built by those same students.”

For the last two years, that client has been Friends Center for Children, a New Haven-based daycare center. Envisioning housing for the school’s teachers, students spend the spring semester designing homes in small groups before sending their proposals to the center, which ultimately decides which submission they like most. From there, the entire cohort of students collaborates to build the housing throughout the summer, ultimately finishing in the fall.

According to a press release from Friends Center, 20 percent of its teachers live in housing it has provided. A document shared by Samantha Kupferman, the communications lead for Friends Center, listed their Teacher Housing Initiative as a means of supporting educators without “burdening families with increased tuition.”

Hofner added that the housing is provided to the teachers free of charge as part of their compensation package. He emphasized that M.Arch I students begin their spring semester by listening to the needs of their client, prioritizing their understanding of these needs before they embark on the designing process.

Gaining insight into their client’s needs and hands-on experience in the field, the students learn about the practical application of architectural principles.

“The building project is a unique vehicle for learning whereby the learning is experiential,” Hopfner said. “Both because it’s a collaborative endeavor and also because architecture at its best is a service, and that requires a willing client.”

Owen Wang ARC ’25, who undertook the endeavor last year, said that the Building Project is what makes the M.Arch I program so important. Noting its applied approach to architecture, he said that Yale’s program is distinct from those offered at other architecture schools he considered.

Vasanth, expressing her admiration for teachers in early childhood care, said that speaking with teachers about their experiences has been a valuable part of the project.

“We wanted to be really mindful and create a space that was a little bit of a sanctuary to return to at the end of a very long day,” Vasanth said.

In the project’s initial years, architecture students worked across the U.S. on projects like a medical building in West Virginia for people who suffered from black lung disease. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, though, the program’s focus shifted to Connecticut, with an emphasis on housing. In Connecticut, there is a shortage of 89,000 houses for people with low incomes.

The project has also experienced several other changes since its genesis. This semester, students are dedicating time to work exclusively on the project. In previous years, students have had the challenge of simultaneously focusing on the Building Project and studio work.

Yale’s Architecture School has tools available on-site, but it also has a facility on West Campus that students use for prefabrication components of the project. Wang said that a key element of designing the housing is prioritizing pragmatism.

Last year, Wang and his group worked to design and build housing for two single mothers and their children.

 “It had to be a single house, with a shared element to fulfill zoning requirements,” Wang said. “So the challenge we had was ‘How do we leave the private and public together?’”

Ultimately, Wang’s group decided to design a shared kitchen for the space. Striving to create a space that catered to both a sense of familial responsibility and shared community, his group’s design was selected to be built.

Elucidating challenges her group has been facing, Vasanth mentioned that the site has lots of foliage they don’t want to disturb. In trying to find a practical solution, they decided to design a cluster of rooms that are aligned along one axis with a clear corridor running through them.

“If you look at the plan,” she said. “It looks like two fish lightly touching.”

That synthesis of utility and creativity has fueled a sense of purpose in students like Wang and Vasanth. Combining functionality and innovation, students work together to overcome obstacles and create their designs.

Wang said that addressing difficulties in making the design a reality often facilitated debate among his peers, and Vasanth noted that she and her teammates’ desks are littered with sketches and traces. Both students emphasized their appreciation for being able to participate in a building project so early in their graduate education.

“I’m very grateful for the experience of working on my first house,” Vasanth said. “It’s been a formative and beautiful project. We’re going to haul the wood and we’re going to lay the foundations and we’re going to select the landscaping and all of that will come into fruition during the summer. I really love its mission.”

The School of Architecture is located at 180 York St.

Correction: Feb. 5: A previous version of this article stated that students finished the project in August. The center aims to finish the project by the fall. A previous version of the article also stated that 20 percent of its teachers live in housing built by Yale students. The housing is a combination of student-built and donated housing. The article has been corrected accordingly.

Correction, Feb. 6: This article has been amended to consistently refer to “Friends Center,” which is the organization’s correct name, and not “the Friends Center.”