A few years from now, it might be more apt to refer to the Architecture, Art and Planning College as the Architecture, Art and Design college, if the full range of suggestions listed in the AAP’s strategic planning task force report are implemented.

Since 2008, the college has slashed its budget by 10 percent through the closing the Knight Visual Resources Facility, downsizing staff by 10 percent, centralizing operations, and through three faculty departures and three phased retirements. But it needs to cut its budget by an additional 5 percent in order to achieve a total reduction of 15 percent.

The school plans to shift its focus towards a more design-oriented and studio-based college with six restructured academic fields that will include architecture; art and new media; landscape architecture; city and regional planning and design; historic reservation; and real estate, according to an addendum to the task force report written by Dean Kent Kleinman. Currently, the AAP College has three branches: art, architecture and city and regional planning.

The most notable change is a shift to a design focus in what is now known as the department of city and regional planning. The retooled department would play a major role in strengthening the college’s focus in design and studio teaching. It would actively seek partnerships and collaboration with other areas of the University that are involved in design, according to the report.

Faculty members within CRP acknowledged that a strong design component is currently missing in its curriculum.

“Dean Kleinman’s statement [in the addendum] that CRP lacks depth in physical planning and urban infrastructure design is accurate,” Prof. Kieran Donaghy, city and regional planning, who chairs the department, stated in an e-mail, “The CRP faculty is aware of this weakness.”

Yet while Donaghy welcomed more design-focused teaching, he noted that designs could not be realized without planning and that a balance would need to be struck between the two.

“Planning — the process of determining what to do, when and where and by how much — consists in and requires bringing all the relevant pieces together in a comprehensive framework, not abstracting to just one dimension,” he stated in an e-mail. “And AAP, if it evolves more to the model of a school of design, will surely need the balance and context that the planning tradition provides.”

Associate Dean Barry Perlus, art, who chaired an “envisioning group” that served as the basis for the AAP’s task force report, also stressed the need to maintain important pieces of the college’s curriculum, as the new design focus was phased into the school.

“I have a little concern not to lose track of deep questioning, scholarship and self-examination, the question of the meaning of what we do, something that artists deal with and try to bring back into their work,” he explained, “but I’m very excited about the energy and the realization that design can be way more than a commercial or industrial process and that it can really go to the heart of reorganizing creativity.”

To help foster the new focus on design, the report calls for the creation of a new center within the college that would sponsor courses, lectures and projects in the areas of design and visual practices.

“A research center that would primarily be about visual practices and design would be an excellent endeavor for the college,” Perlus stated, “It would be a way to bring specialists and visitors to campus on a yearly or semesterly basis, something on the order of what the society for the humanities does.”

The college has also looked in recent years to increase the number of visiting and tenured-track faculty and reduce the number of tenured faculty. To this end, by the end of 2009-2010, the school will have three tenured faculty departures and three entering phased retirement. Perlus again, though, emphasized that a balance must be struck.

“My perception is that the college is fairly heavy in the area of tenured faculty and we would be in a better balance to have more faculty on the tenured track,” Perlus said, “There’s a value in visitors, an essential part of student’s education is having an influx of people with different world views and different life experiences … but, there’s also a need for stability and an anchor for the curriculum structure and that is accomplished with tenured faculty.”

Among other proposed changes, AAP will look to create deeper partnerships with the Johnson Museum and work to centralize operations in all of their departments in order to improve their efficiency and cut costs.

Kleinman could not be reached for comment.