Master of Advanced Architectural Design (MAAD)
We will not be accepting applications to the MAAD program for this admissions cycle.
If you are seeking opportunities for advanced architectural inquiry, and hold a five-year professional bachelor of architecture degree (BArch), we encourage you to apply to our two-year MArch program.
We are integrating expanded opportunities for ongoing research into the MArch curriculum, providing diverse options for you to collaborate closely with a range of UC Berkeley faculty. We look forward to welcoming a strong cohort of students with varied experiences and enhancing the connections among innovative research, critical thinking, and impactful design.
About the Master of Advanced Architectural Design
The rotating UC Berkeley MAAD curriculum theme, centered on a novel building material and/or construction technique, is set by the program director, who is joined by a team of faculty from the Department of Architecture and the College of Environmental Design.
Students who complete the program receive a Master of Advanced Architectural Design (MAAD) degree, which is not accredited by the National Architectural Accreditation Board (NAAB).
About the College of Environmental Design
When the College of Environmental Design was created in 1959, it was the first in the nation to unite the disciplines of architecture, planning, and landscape architecture, leading the way toward an integrated approach to analyzing, understanding, and designing our built environment. The college emphasizes environmental design as a profoundly ethical practice, inseparable from social, political, economic, and cultural contexts and co-produced through dynamic engagements with diverse communities.
Current MAAD Curriculum: Forest — Fiber — Frame
In the context of the global climate emergency — which demands a renewed interest in wood building – you’ll be immersed in the question of how a shift from “stick” building to “mass” assembly might change architectural design in the coming decades. Over the course of two semesters, you’ll explore how wood processes, structures, and assembly systems can support a reciprocal relationship between forest management and building design.
With California as a point of departure, you’ll investigate wood construction as a material practice, extending from forest management to manufacturing, construction, and waste reclamation. Using the College of Environmental Design’s state-of-the-art fabrication shop, you’ll develop and test novel techniques and materials and fabricate studies and full-scale constructions.
Forest — Fiber — Frame, the ACSA Timber Education Prize–winning MAAD curriculum for 2024–2025 and 2025–2026, is led by Assistant Professor Philip Tidwell.
Previous MAAD Themes
Past MAAD cohorts have investigated earth architecture, with Ronald Rael, and lignin, with Maria Paz Gutierrez.
- Earth Architecture
- Lignin and Lining
- Abiotic-Biotic Corporations (ABC) for Indoor Health,
2023–2024, Faculty Director: Ronald Rael
Soil, a mixture of geological and biological ingredients, is also humankind’s oldest, and most widely used building material. In this year-long research studio, students will explore earth as an ancient, traditional, contemporary, and future material for the creation of buildings, particularly through computational design and additive manufacturing. Participants in the course will explore the fundamental tools for the manipulation of clay based materials and develop workflows that employ parametric modeling techniques in Grasshopper to speculate on how the humble material beneath our feet can result in surprisingly novel forms of architectural innovation. California is the ideal testbed for this experimental studio as there is a long tradition of building with earth in the state, as well as the larger region. Field studies will allow students to engage directly with examples of the forces that have shaped earthen architecture as well as the forces that have instigated its decline in the past century. The primary objective of the studio is to explore how earth can reassert itself as a material that responds to contemporary issues and technologies today.
2022-2023, Faculty Director: Maria Paz Gutierrez
Plants undergo various protocols that inhibit decomposition. Strategies can range from the secretion of plant resins to mineralization. Vegetal resin secretion is generated to protect from pathogens including fungal deterioration particularly in woody species. Depending on the plant, protection mechanisms can also be accompanied by morphological changes in their tissue, producing encapsulation. Additionally, plants can undergo mineralization processes, including wood petrification inhibiting aerobic decomposition.
In the petrification process of plants, the bulk of the organic matter decomposes, but lignin remains. The unique material and structural defense strategies of plants are multifold, spanning from resistance to microbial deterioration, harboring pathogens, to preventing water permeation. Along with researching plant microbial protection mechanisms, scientific investigations have recently focused on beneficial synergies of plant tissue with bacteria and fungi for phased degradation and water sorptivity, detoxification, and energy generation. Can defense strategies and intentional incorporation of bacteria and fungi in plant tissue including woods lead to unprecedented material functionalities in the built environment?
This studio will explore new architectural enclosure strategies stemming from this inquiry. Students will explore the design and prototyping of enclosures with plant microbial defense mechanisms and synergy with bacteria and fungi for detoxification, water management, and energy generation. Through it, the studio will foment new models of lignin-based architecture and healthy environments.
2021–2022, Faculty Director: Maria Paz Gutierrez
Focusing on new frontiers in the abiotic and biotic processes of indoor microbiomes, occupants, and health, this studio explored the deep technology and design of abiotic-biotic processes as potential cooperation, having natural material invention at its root. In collaboration with HOK (Paul Woolford- Design Principal), it emphasized the relevance of rendering natural materials innovation that is translatable into practice, as required by pressing health, environmental, and cultural challenges.
