M.S. Advanced Architectural Design

The Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design program starts in the summer semester. Considered the core of the program, the summer semester consists of the Advanced Design Studio—offering up to eleven design studios each year—and two required courses that establish the critical and historical coordinates for the program: Transscalarities, that explores how the capacity for architecture to impact societies and ecosystems result in the way design operates ecologically across scales of space and time; and Arguments, which explores contemporary theory in a unique combination of coordinated seminar sessions taught by current Architecture PHDs and guest lectures.

The summer 2023 Arguments Lecture speakers included world-renowned architect Junya Ishigami; seminal land artist Chip Lord of Ant Farm; architect Rachaporn Choochuey of all(zone) architects; artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan; architects Cruz García and Nathalie Frankowski of WAI Think Tank; environmental scholars Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass; and architects Fuminori Nousaku and Mio Tsuneyama. All invited speakers are collectively engaging with transdisciplinary ways of addressing climate via situated, material, and social-economic and political means in the making of societies.

In the fall and spring semesters, Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design students are joined with the third-year Master of Architecture students for the Advanced Studios. Like the Master of Architecture curriculum, Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design students must take a minimum of four elective courses in the History and Theory, Visual Studies, and Technology distributions.

At the same time, the various students and faculty of the Advanced Studios engage in a shared discussion about the most interesting research, practice, ideas, and design of the built environment. In the fall of 2018 this shared discussion focused on the theme of “Global Practice,” and during the following spring it focused on “Architecture and Environment.” Global Practice covered design as the distinctive tool of architects in contributing to the construction of the future. It investigated the field’s extraordinary accumulation of essays and research that can be considered a cross-section of the present. Architecture and Environment built on the hypothesis that climate change is ground zero for a shared discussion about architecture’s engagement with the world. Responding to climate change involves not only technical aspects (such as energy consumption and carbon footprint) but also social and political aspects (such as inequality and public policy). In this context, the Advanced Studios were framed as a unique opportunity to address climate change at the scale of the building and to address climate change through design.

Throughout each semester, studio-wide sessions involve a series of conversations and resources for the studios to draw on, including external guest lectures, faculty project talks, and paired studio exchanges. This concludes with a Super-Crit session during which each studio shares a single student project and guest critics respond to the studio-wide themes and issues.