M.S. Critical, Curatorial & Conceptual Practices

The Masters of Science in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (CCCP) offers advanced training in the fields of architectural criticism, publishing, curating, exhibiting, writing, and research through a two-year, full-time course of intensive academic study and independent research. The program recognizes that architectural production is multi-faceted and diverse and that careers in architecture often extend beyond traditional modes of professional practice and academic scholarship, while at the same time reflecting and building upon them.

The CCCP program is structured to reflect this heterogeneity and the multiple sites and formats of exchange through which the field of architecture operates while at the same time sponsoring the ongoing critical development and interaction of such a matrix of practices and institutions. The program’s emphasis is thus on forging new critical, theoretical, and historical tools, and producing new and rigorous concepts and strategies for researching, presenting, displaying, and disseminating modern and contemporary architecture and closely related fields. The program is aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at those with a background in architecture who wish to advance and expand their critical and research skills in order to pursue professional and leadership careers as architectural critics, theorists, journalists, historians, editors, publishers, curators, gallerists, institute staff and directors, teachers, and research-based practitioners.

Students might be seeking further academic training or specialization after a professional degree or years of teaching, or even at mid-career. They might also have worked in a related field and be seeking an academic forum to develop additional specializations in architecture. The program also provides the highest level of preparatory training for application to PhD programs in architectural history and theory.

The domain of architectural work is multi-faceted, as are the multiple forms of practice and knowledge that reflect back upon it. In this sense architectural expertise appears in many formats, media, and institutional frameworks that extend beyond, while often informing, the discipline’s role in the production of buildings. This heterogeneous field incorporates periodicals, books, exhibitions, installations, research institutes and labs, pedagogy, criticism, manifestos, historical scholarship, posters, films, videos, performances, conferences, and much more. These many architectural modalities, as well as their institutional and mediatic interfaces, or forms of dissemination, have each, in distinct ways, played important roles in the conceptualization and transformation of the discipline.

The seminar will approach contemporary critical discourse through the filter of documents and documentation. In specific historical examples, and with a range of theoretical texts, the status, definition, use and authority of documents for architecture, architectural history, architectural exhibitions and architecture’s other media practices will be examined and assessed. Through the question of the document the seminar will survey a range of methodologies and approaches that have served to define, demarcate, or redirect the stakes of the discipline over the last decades.

In addition to the required colloquia and thesis courses, CCCP students have the opportunity to take a range of courses offered at GSAPP and elsewhere in the University. Relevant courses within GSAPP are found primarily within the offerings in history and theory, and include lectures and seminars and, when relevant, can take the form of an independent study under the supervision of a faculty member. Some of these courses have been designed specifically for the CCCP program, others are part of the broader history and theory curriculum at the school. Students are also able to enroll in Visual Studies courses, as well as non-studio based offerings in the Planning and Preservation departments. Students have also enrolled in courses offered by Art History, Anthropology, and in the Schools of Law and Journalism, as well as taking foreign language classes.

The second year of the CCCP program is dedicated primarily to the research and writing/production of a final thesis.This can take the form of: a written thesis on a historical or theoretical topic; a portfolio of critical writings; a print-based demonstration and visualization of rigorous, original research, or; it could involve the conceptualization, design, and a detailed prospectus and documentation for, or when feasible the production of, an exhibition, publication, institute, major event, web-based initiative, time-based project, etc. Regardless of format, it must contain evidence of substantive research and conceptual rigor, and involve a written component and other materials that can be submitted in the form of a bound document in its final presentation. Each student conducts his/her research independently, under the supervision of a faculty advisor, as well as participating in mid-term and final reviews each semester.