EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE

The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation offers a series of distinctive programs. The educational objectives of these programs deal in different ways with one open-ended field: urban society and its future. The presence of several areas of study within a single school enables a critical understanding of the forces that affect the building of spaces and the making of cities, so as to encourage appropriate formulation of original concepts, designs, and policies. In each degree program offered, the School aims to develop students’ artistic and intellectual abilities and to provide them, as future professionals, with the information and strategies necessary to deal responsibly and inventively with the issues challenging urban society today. These issues are approached in a non-doctrinaire way so as to yield both significant theoretical proposals as well as pertinent solutions that can be effectively implemented in the contemporary city. Each program with its related studios is structured to permit faculty and students to explore a range of approaches in respective fields, while constantly aiming at social relevance and programmatic innovation. Beyond its specific educational aims, the objectives of the School include basic research in the fields of architecture, planning, and preservation, exchange with other disciplines in the University, and the intensity of experimentation that makes the School part of broader international debates. Historically linked to the University’s world-renowned Avery Library, the School takes advantage of its unique location in New York City. It draws vitality from and contributes to the unsurpassed resources available through the city’s art and culture, its outstanding practitioners, scholars, and historians.

Bernard Tschumi, Dean

THE HISTORY OF THE GSAP
The fourth oldest architecture school in America, Columbia was established in 1881 by William R. Ware. A former student of Richard Morris Hunt (the first American to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris), Ware approached architectural education from a humanistic rather than a technical point of view. His appointment capped a distinguished career as a practicing architect, scholar, and teacher; it established the precedent, followed almost exclusively since then at Columbia, of entrusting the School’s direction to architects with sustained professional experience.
In its early years, Columbia’s was the leading preparatory program for would-be architects intent on studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. But by 1902 it had matured into a full-scale School of Architecture. Ware retired in 1903, to be succeeded by A. D. F. Hamlin. Hamlin stepped down from the position in 1912, when, with an enrollment of 140, the School moved into its new quarters, Avery Hall, designed by McKim, Mead, and White. Hamlin was succeeded by Austin Willard Lord (1912–1915) and William Harry Carpenter (1915–1919).
In 1931, William A. Boring, who had been the School’s director since 1919, became the first dean of what was then called the Faculty of Architecture. Under Boring and especially under his successor Joseph Hudnut, who took over in 1933, the curriculum was broadened dramatically. While the pre–World War I era had been dominated by the academic classicism of Ware, Hamlin, and such leading professionals as Charles Follen McKim, Thomas Hastings, and Henry Hornbostel, all of whom taught at the school, Boring and especially Hudnut encouraged the then nascent modernism and incorporated studies in town planning. Important studio critics, including the urbanistically inclined skyscraper architects Harvey Wiley Corbett and Wallace K. Harrison, joined the English town planner Raymond Unwin and the architectural historian Talbot Hamlin to create an environment in tune with the dramatic social and economic changes of the interwar years.

With Hudnut’s departure for Harvard in 1935, the School, under the new dean Leopold Arnaud, entered into a gradual decline that only began to reverse itself in the late 1950s when provocative studio critics Percival Goodman and Alexander Kouzmanoff, as well as the historian James Marston Fitch, gave the program new energy. Fitch’s courses in architectural history blossomed into a program in historic preservation, established in 1966 as the first at an American university. Despite the vagaries of the postwar curriculum and an ambiguous commitment to graduate-level architectural education, the School continually benefited from New York City’s prominence as a world capital and attracted many foreign students, some of whom would grow to professional prominence, including Romaldo Giurgola and Michael McKinnell.

After the short and vital but stormy tenure of Charles Colbert (1960–1963), Kenneth A. Smith, an engineer, was appointed dean, and in 1965 the School was organized along divisional lines, with planning and architecture each having its own chairperson. Charles Abrams was the first planning chair and Romaldo Giurgola the first for architecture. Abrams, with his wide experience in New York real estate and social planning, and his deep humanity, forged a program that balanced statistical analysis with compassion and earthy pragmatism. Giurgola built upon the design strengths of Kouzmanoff and Goodman, bringing into the studios as first-time teachers such bright young architects as Gio Pasanella, Jacquelin Robertson, Robert Kliment, and Ada Karmi Melamede.
The School’s students played a central role in the protests that engulfed the University in the spring of 1968. While the tumultuous campuswide demonstrations of that watershed year were triggered by a concern for America’s role in international affairs, the architecture students played a particularly strong role in focusing the debate on the University’s relationship to its neighbors in the Morningside Heights and Harlem communities. In addition, the students challenged the University’s lackluster building program, protesting the construction of Uris Hall and the proposed gymnasium for Morningside Park.
In 1972, James Stewart Polshek became dean. With strong professional connections with designer-architects, preservationists, and planners, Polshek tapped the School’s inherent strengths and refined the graduate program while healing the wounds left over from the previous decade. He reshaped the design faculty and enriched the School’s offerings in architectural history and theory, which were under the leadership of Kenneth Frampton, who also came to Columbia in 1972. As important, Polshek extended the School’s reach both within and beyond the University, establishing a strong program of public lectures featuring leading architects, planners, and politicians; creating special programs for undergraduates in Columbia and Barnard Colleges; and helping establish the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture in 1983. Under Polshek and his faculty, including especially Frampton, Giurgola, and Robert A. M. Stern, Columbia became an important focal point in the postmodernist debate.
In 1988 Bernard Tschumi became dean, and the School’s architecture programs, reflecting changing concerns in design, became more theoretical as they began to take on a more international flavor, capitalizing as never before on New York’s status as a world city.
FACILITIES
The School
 The School is located in its own building, Avery Hall; in the adjacent building, Fayerweather Hall; in the Avery Extension, which connects the two; and in Buell Hall, directly south of Avery Hall. This complex houses design studios, classrooms, computer studios and computer labs, lounges, exhibition galleries, a carpentry workshop, audiovisual facilities, a slide library, a photography darkroom, a three-hundred-seat auditorium, and a seventy-seat lecture hall.
Avery Library
 The resources of the world’s leading architecture library, the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, are located in Avery Hall and the Avery Extension; they are available to the students of the School. Founded by Samuel Putnam Avery in 1890 as a research collection of books on architecture and the related fields, it has since grown into what can be called the national library of the profession. It is ranked by scholars from all over the world as the outstanding international research center on the history of architecture. Its holdings consist of more than 240,000 books and periodicals on architecture, urban planning, art history, historic preservation, archaeology, the decorative arts, and a broad variety of related background material. The contents range from the first published book on architecture, L.B. Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria (1485), to a comprehensive collection of books on contemporary architectural movements. In addition, the library has more than 300,000 original architectural drawings, collections of prints, and rare photographic material and archives. Avery Library also houses the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, the most comprehensive periodical index in the field. It is now available on-line as well as in print form.
The Ware Memorial Library is designed as a circulating branch of the library for everyday use by the students. It contains more than eight thousand books on architecture and planning from the United States and Europe and is located in the Avery Library.
The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture
 The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, located in Buell Hall, was founded in 1982 to advance the understanding and interpretation of American architecture, landscape, and urbanism. To achieve this goal, the Buell Center has embarked on an ambitious program of fellowships and study programs designed to engage professionals, scholars, and the general public. These rich and varied programs make the Buell Center one of the world’s most important focal points for the study of American architecture.
The Center for Preservation Research
 The Center for Preservation Research was established in 1983 as a technical research facility of the Historic Preservation Program. Specializing in advanced studies and postgraduate education, it focuses on fundamental technical and theoretical research on the conservation of the built environment. The primary goal is the development of practical, scientific, and philosophically sound solutions to the long-term and emergency conservation of our world heritage of historic buildings, monuments, and sites. The Center provides an intellectual and practical environment for fostering collaboration between academic and professional resources in North America and internationally.
The Center operates a complex of laboratories in Schermerhorn Hall and is closely linked with the Historic Preservation Program and its parent body, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Collaboration also exists with other schools and institutes both within and beyond the University.
Columbia Headquarters for Japanese Architectural Studies and Advanced Research
 The Columbia Headquarters for Japanese Architectural Studies and Advanced Research, located in Buell Hall, was established in 1989 to advance the cause of serious research in the history and theory of Japanese modern architecture and urbanism. It serves as a center for academics and architects from around the world. The headquarters’ plans include the following: (1) courses in Japanese architecture at the advanced level, (2) a special subset of books and periodicals on Japanese architecture organized in Avery Library, (3) fellowships for young scholars, and (4) funds for recognized scholars to reside on campus and pursue advanced research in history and theory.
Computing Activities
 The School has embarked on an ambitious campaign to incorporate state-of-the-art digital technologies in the design curriculum. The Paperless Design Studio is the most visible sign of this change, but there have been many other dramatic improvements in facilities and electronic infrastructure for research, teaching, presentation, and general computing at GSAP. The general computer resources provided by the University have been substantially upgraded as well, and all students receive free e-mail accounts and World Wide Web home pages.
In the Paperless Design Studio on the seventh floor of Avery Hall, the drafting tables have been replaced by a complete range of digital design tools, including high-end 3D modeling, rendering, animation, and multimedia software. In the Combined Media Studios on the sixth floor, drafting tables are arranged around clusters of Macintosh and Silicon Graphics (SGI) hardware. There are also three separate computer facilities in Fayerweather Hall: an SGI lab, a Macintosh lab, and the Urban Planning GIS Lab. The renovation of Room 114 Avery has provided the School with an “electronic theater,” a location for digital events, Paperless Studio reviews, and computer-related teaching. The School has also invested in a Digital Output Center for high-resolution and large-format color output as well as a numerically controlled milling machine for 3D rapid-prototyping output. The current CAD-workstation count was over 150 in 1997 and will continue to rise as additional computers are installed in Avery Hall in 1998.
The key to the School’s digital infrastructure is the network of over 150 high-speed Ethernet connections that make possible the use of central servers to distribute files and software programs to students at any machine in the School. This wiring also makes possible remote printing, access to library and other on-line resources, video conferencing to other Columbia University labs, and multiple simultaneous connections to the Internet. Output of the “paperless” studios now includes significant quantities of video animation, “live” computer-generated demos and flipbooks, World Wide Web sites, and interactive multimedia documents. The computer-aided design curriculum has been upgraded to reflect these new trends, with expanded introductory and advanced CAD classes offered every semester, as well as seminars in Web and multimedia authoring.
Publications
 The School maintains a series of publications to foster the exchange of information and ideas between it and the architecture, planning, preservation, and real estate development communities. Newsline is a periodical that contains information and essays regarding the School’s programs, faculty, and alumni as well as calendars and reviews of New York area events. It acts as a platform for current debates in architecture and urban issues. It is distributed to students and alumni. Abstract is the yearly journal that documents the School’s programs and student work and offers students the opportunity to have their work published for wide distribution. Abstract is distributed to students and is available for purchase in bookstores. D (Documents) is a documentation of events, lectures, and symposia at the School. It is published twice a year. Studio Work covers work and research produced in selected studios in the School. In addition, the School publishes catalogs of exhibitions it organizes as well as a series of books titled Columbia Books of Architecture (CBA), covering a variety of issues of the built environment, theory, and history.
Lectures and Exhibitions
 The School offers an array of lectures, exhibitions, and events that reflect the diversity and interests of its programs. The Wednesday Evening Lecture Series brings internationally prominent practitioners, historians, and theorists to speak on issues of architecture, planning, development, and urbanism. In addition, the Architecture, Planning, Preservation, and Real Estate Programs maintain their own special lecture series that are open to the School community. Speakers in the programs have recently included: Tadao Ando, Jean Baudrillard, Thomas Beeby, Marshall Berman, Mario Botta, Santiago Calatrava, Robert Caro, Nigel Coates, Beatriz Colomina, Peter Cook, Jacques Derrida, Rosalind Deutsche, Elizabeth Diller, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Romaldo Giurgola, Zaha Hadid, John Hejduk, Coop Himmelblau, Hans Hollein, Denis Hollier, Arata Isozaki, Philip Johnson, Fay Jones, Rem Koolhaas, Barbara Kruger, Sylvia Lavin, Daniel Libeskind, Richard Meier, Rafael Moneo, Jean Nouvel, Gaetano Pesce, Renzo Piano, Carme Pinós, James Stewart Polshek, Christian de Portzamparc, Peter Rice, Richard Rogers, Aldo Rossi, Adele Naudé Santos, Alvaro Siza, James Stirling, Anthony Vidler, and Todd Williams/Billie Tsien.
In addition, the School and its programs sponsor special symposia and conferences that draw together faculty, prominent guests, and students to discuss issues of timely and historical importance. Recent conferences and symposia include: “Robert Moses’ New York,” “Currents in Contemporary Architectural Theory,” “The City and the Edge,” “Cyberspace, Hyperghetto,” “Light Construction,” “Conceptual Art and Architecture,” “Visualizing Architecture,” and “The New Times Square: Global, Local.”
Exhibitions occur frequently at the School each term. With the opening of the Arthur Ross Architectural Gallery in Buell Hall, the School will become a focus for exhibitions concerning design. Recent and planned exhibitions include: “Building: Machines,” “New Schools in Catalonia,” “Emerging European Architects,” “The Works of Santiago Calatrava,” “Raum Plan vs. Plan Libre,” “The Architecture of Albert Frey,” “The Filter of Reason—Paul Nelson,” “The History of History,” “The Drawings of Iacov Chernikhov,” “Kazuo Shinohara,” “The International Style (MOMA 1932),” “The Weissen- hofsiedlung,” and “Alvaro Siza.”
New York City
 The City of New York is in itself a principal resource for the student, who benefits from its urbanism and endless variety of excellent examples of historic and modern buildings.
New York’s institutions are another significant advantage. Alumni and faculty members of the School are in positions of major responsibility in various organizations. This has helped the School to open up unique opportunities for students. A partial list of these organizations includes the Museum of Modern Art (Department of Architecture and Design), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the South Street Seaport Museum, the Architectural League of New York, the Institute for Fine Arts (New York University), the New York City Planning Commission, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, the Parks Council, and the Municipal Art Society.
William F. Kinne Fellows Traveling Fellowships
 The School is the beneficiary of a considerable bequest in honor of William F. Kinne Fellows that has as its purpose the enrichment of the student’s education through travel. A number of fellowships for the study of architecture and related fields are awarded annually to graduating students. Applications from members of the graduating class are considered for postgraduate travel and for travel during the summer preceding the final year of study. Specific requirements and guidelines are announced during the academic year. Students apply in the spring term of each year.
The Paul Milstein Professorship of Urban Development
 In 1983 Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Milstein endowed the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation with a professorship named in honor of their brother Paul Milstein. The Paul Milstein Professorship of Urban Development provides the opportunity to focus in depth on issues of interest by inviting senior professionals or scholars to teach for one or two terms each year in the Master of Science in Real Estate Development Program. It is the intention of the professorship to encourage a deepening interest in the forces that have and will shape urban development in America.
Mathews Lecture Series
 The Mathews Lectures began in 1935 with an endowment from Charles T. Mathews (Class of 1889). Among the lecturers who have participated in the series are as follows:
 

Professor Joseph Hudnut (1935)

 

Professor Leopold Arnaud (1937)

  Professor Talbot Hamlin (1939)
  Professor Meyer Schapiro (1946)
  Professor John Mundy (1965)
  Professor Henry R. Hitchcock (1971)
  Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1972)
  Professor Alfred K. Frazer (1974)
  Professor Spiro Kostoff (1976)
  Professor Vincent Scully (1977)
  Professor George Collins (1979)
  Professor Neil Levine (1981)
  Professor Helen Searing (1983)
  Professor Georges Duby (1985)
  Professor Stephen Murray (1990)