It's a big, diverse, multi-stakeholder village that can include architects, contractors, developers, homeowners, brokers, planners, engineers, and attorneys.

Extensive land development and construction can require primary contracts, subcontracts, leases, loans, insurance, and other agreements. A working understanding of those sometimes complex legal relationships is essential to practitioners of both law and architecture.

To help both law students and architecture students understand and navigate those complexities better, the University of Idaho's College of Law and College of Art and Architecture offer an interdisciplinary course listed as Architecture and the Law in the law curriculum, and Situational Prototyping: Architecture and Law Professional Practicum for architecture students. The graduate-level course was introduced at the university in Moscow, Idaho, in 2008.

"What is beneficial for the different parties in the transaction, from a class such as architecture and the law, is the eye-opening education that each side learns from the other," says Michael Satz, an associate professor of law who co-teaches the course.

The course covers basic contracting: Law students learn to tailor a contract to protect and fit the needs of the architecture students, and architecture students learn the importance of the language of contractual agreements.

The course is team taught. Satz offers an attorney's perspective, and Romn Montoto, associate professor of architecture, teaches from the architect's point of view.

Once the interdisciplinary student teams develop an understanding of their professional roles, Satz and Montoto throw situational obstacles in the way of student projects. Those problematic scenarios might include a subcontractor not meeting a deadline or a project site found to contain hazardous waste.

"We use the actual terminal project that the architecture student is working on as the vehicle to facilitate learning," said Satz. "In this way, the law students actually learn about the architecture profession and the architecture students learn that there is a lot more at stake in this commercial transaction than simply the planning and design of a project."

Montoto's and Satz' practical experience gave rise to the course, and continues to shape it.

Satz earned a juris doctor degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School, in 2001. His experience in private practice since then has included two years of practice focused on bankruptcy and commercial litigation, and four years of practice focused on business formation and structure, including incorporation, commercial and private contracts, commercial law, real estate law, and deceptive trade practices.

Montoto studied art history and criticism in preparation for the study of architecture at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in art history and criticism, a bachelor of science degree in architectural studies, and a master's degree in architecture. His experience in professional practice ranges from small chapels to high-rise office, mixed-use, and residential buildings and corporate office campuses.

"I think the reason Mike Satz and I first began discussing the possibility of this course hinged around the fact that we both had professional practice experience and understood that the complexities of real-world situations were often difficult to demonstrate and use as an instrument for teaching in an academic setting," Montoto says.

"The series of obstruction exercises given to the students, for the most part, directly reference situations Mike and I dealt with in our own professional practice experience," he says.

The University of Idaho program is unique in its focus.

"Many schools have different interdisciplinary offerings," Satz says, "but I am not aware of another offering that blends the professional programs of law and architecture in such a commercial and practical manner."

Founded in 1889, the University of Idaho is the state's land-grant institution and its principal graduate education and research university.