Master of Architecture
The School of Architecture offers a three-year, NAAB-accredited* first professional Master of Architecture (MArch) degree for those holding a bachelors degree in any field. Applicants must have completed a calculus course with analytical geometry, as well as a year-long survey in art history or architectural history, prior to enrolling in the program.
Advanced standing into the second year of the MArch program is considered for those who hold a recognized four-year, pre-professional degree in architecture and whose design and technical skills are demonstrated to be at a level commensurate with accelerated placement in the program.
The studio-centered curriculum is supported by required and elective coursework in architectural technology and theory. The typical three-year course of study proceeds roughly through the following stages:
1. Incorporate the knowledge, techniques, methods and manners of the discipline;
2. Apply disciplinary means to frame and respond to the given problems and requests of external situations;
3. Expand the discipline by conducting advanced design research that identifies and addresses concerns that have yet to be recognized.
Year 1: Discipline
The first year studio sequence introduces the knowledge and experience of architectural discipline. Discipline establishes identity and enables variation: the set of concepts, techniques and modes of operating that constitute the field at any point in time, and the manners of unfolding its historical potentials and contemporary opportunities in alternative ways. Discipline is established through repetition, the source of both significance and newness in architecture. As an instigator of qualities and an organizer of quantities, the architectural discipline is an exercise in both control and power.
Fall: control of qualities
Introduction to architecture as a function of technique and geometry, beginning with an understanding of scale, proportion, and formal organization.
Spring: power over quantities
Introduction to architecture as a function of polemic and scenario, beginning as a confrontation with size, number and activity.
Year 2: Conditions
The second year subjects the disciplinary techniques and approaches of the first year to a set of external contexts and conditions of particular importance to the School: the city and technology. As a corollary to this work, one objective across the year is to develop the ability to communicate with diverse audiences: both distilling and projecting information and identity from multiple programs and publics (fall), and issuing instructions and specifications to contractors and collaborators (spring).
Fall: synthetic design (urbanism)
The studio addresses the issue of contemporary collective space through the development of a large, mixed-use complex on an urban site.
Spring: comprehensive design (technology)
Integrating design and architectural technology, this housing studio takes building codes, structural and mechanical systems, and material lifecycles as generative design parameters to achieve the scale of detail development and the representational level of construction documents. Students may also choose to participate in the traveling housing studio in Barcelona, Spain.
Year 3: Position
While the first year projects are largely abstract and the second year sited in Chicago, the third year transports disciplinary lessons and opportunities elsewhere. Specific design and research agendas of current significance are explored with distinguished visiting faculty (e.g., the Greenwald Visiting Professor) and defined as the result of a year-long course of study (consisting of a fall seminar and spring studio) in a research cluster geared toward publishing its findings and proposals.
Fall: topic studios
These option studios provide the opportunity to work on a contemporary architectural problem through the lens of an internationally-recognized instructor.
Spring: research project
Individual and collaborative design-research that addresses concerns at the edge of the contemporary discipline and results from a year-long course of study.
*Required text from NAAB:
"In the United States, most state registration boards require a degree from an accredited professional degree program as a prerequisite for licensure. The National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), which is the sole agency authorized to accredit U.S. professional degree programs in architecture, recognizes three types of degrees: the Bachelor of Architecture, the Master of Architecture, and the Doctor of Architecture. A program may be granted a 6-year, 3-year, or 2-year term of accreditation, depending on the extent of its conformance with established educational standards.
Master's degree programs may consist of a preprofessional undergraduate degree and a professional graduate degree that, when earned sequentially, constitute an accredited professional education. However, the preprofessional degree is not, by itself, recognized as an accredited degree."
