The Jim Vlock First Year Building Project is the hallmark design-build program of Yale’s Master of Architecture program, Each spring, over the course of nearly two decades, the Building Project Studio was organized to explore the conception and construction of dwelling space in the city, culminating in the design and technical documentation of an affordable house for two households in New Haven. Through a semester-long process of collaborative research, analysis, design and technical documentation, students examined the specific relationship of the human body to its environment, the elemental concerns of inhabitation and the social relationships it might engender, and the physical, spatial and technical formation of building. A series of iterative analytical design exercises, conducted at a range of scales and using various analytical tools and design media, addressed the building’s site, its system of enclosure and its apertures, its interior surfaces, fixtures and fittings, and examined their roles in mediating one’s experience of private and social space, of weather, and of climate. In the final weeks of the semester, student teams engaged in an intensive process to develop design proposals that were evaluated by the client, the studio faculty, and guest reviewers. The winning scheme was built during the subsequent summer by the students in the studio.