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M.S. Advanced Architectural Design

Overview
The Master of Science degree in Advanced Architectural Design is a three-semester program aimed at providing outstanding young professionals—who already hold a Bachelor of Architecture or Master of Architecture—the opportunity to conceptualize design as a critical practice that shapes the world’s technological, relational, and environmental evolutions. The program is viewed as a framework for exploring both academic and professional concerns through a set of inquiries and premises: architecture and its design practices are critical in addressing contemporary challenges; architectural specificity is the result of transdisciplinary cooperation; architecture’s future agency lies in the discipline’s capacity to mobilize realities across different scales and time frames. These ideas are explored through innovations in representational tools and the embrace of new probationary artifacts, inviting students to shift away from the specialized mastery of specific scales towards methods of “interscalarity.” By aligning new models of response to new architectural modes of practice, the Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design program strives to empower graduating students in the face of unknown future scenarios.

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 Core Studio—offering up to eleven design studios each year—and two required courses that establish the critical and historical coordinates for the program: Metropolis, which focuses on the twentieth-century city, and Arguments, which explores contemporary theory in a unique combination of coordinated seminar sessions taught by current Architecture PHDs and guest lectures. For example, the summer 2019 Arguments Lecture speakers included architect Neeraj Bhatia of The Open Workshop; artist Amie Siegel; artist Andreas Angelidakis; designer Simone Farresin of FormaFantasma; aritsts Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen of Revital & Tuur; engineer and theorist Lydia Kallipoliti; and architect, urbanist, and writer Keller Easterling.

These lectures work in dialogue with the Core Studio throughout the summer to question the boundaries of architecture and to actively reshape architecture’s intellectual and cultural commitments. 

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.

The M.S.AAD is a designated STEM program eligible under the CIP (Classification of Instructional Programs) Code 04.0902: Architectural and Building Sciences/Technology. Learn more about STEM designation.
Advanced Design Studio
The Advanced Studios bring together students in the Master of Architecture and Master of Sciences in Advanced Architectural Design programs. These studios, which take place during the fall and spring semesters at the School, have always explored the future of architecture in a diversity of ways. Each studio creates its own world—with its own intersection of social, cultural, formal, material, economic, and environmental concerns—and students have almost 20 worlds to choose from. After selecting a studio, students conduct experiments and develop projects through concepts and massings, programs and forms, drawings and models, materials and atmospheres, metrics and narratives.

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.

Arguments LectureS

This ongoing series brings together a diverse group of speakers whose work addresses today’s most pressing challenges⁠—environmental, political, and social and beyond.

AAD Arguments
Frida Escobedo
July 20, 2022

AAD Studios
Summer 2019

Current Faculty
Laura González Fierro
Maurizio Bianchi Mattioli

Summer 2023 Courses

Course Semester Title Student Work Instructor Syllabus Requirements & Sequence Location & Time Session & Points Call No.
A4402‑1 Summer 2023
Transscalarities: Arenas of Design
Bart-Jan Polman
113 AVERY
F 1 PM - 5 PM
FULL SEMESTER
3 Points
10662
A4488‑1 Summer 2023
Arguments (Assembly)
Xiaoxi Chen
113 AVERY
W 11:30  AM -1:30 PM
FULL SEMESTER
3 Points
10663
A4853‑1 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Elias Anastas, Yousef Anastas
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10665
A4853‑2 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Nerea Calvillo
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10666
A4853‑3 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Marco Ferrari , Elise Hunchuck
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10667
A4853‑4 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Uriel Fogué
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10668
A4853‑5 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Cruz Garcia, Nathalie Frankowski
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10669
A4853‑6 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Dan Wood
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10670
A4853‑7 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Anupama Kundoo
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10671
A4853‑8 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Corneel Cannaerts, Michiel Helbig
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10672
A4853‑9 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Fuminori ​Nousaku, Mio Tsuneyama
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10673
A4853‑10 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
Michael Loverich, Antonio Torres
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
10674
A4853‑11 Summer 2023
Advanced Architecture Tutorial
David Eugin Moon
600N + S AVERY
M, W + TH 2 PM - 6 PM
FULL SEMESTER
0 Points
13189
A6853‑1 Summer 2023
Advanced Architectural Design Studio
Xiaoxi Chen
600N + S AVERY
FULL SEMESTER
9 Points
10664
A4050‑1 Summer 2023
Arch Elective Internship
Karen Cover
FULL SEMESTER
1.5 Points
10657
A6805‑1 Summer 2023
Mapping and Data
George Verghese
5/30 - 7/3
0 Points
10772
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