About the Department of Architecture

As part of the College of Environmental Design, the Department’s evolution has been nourished by social, cultural, and environmental values, reflected in our innovative teaching, scholarly research, critical design inquiry, and synthetic practice. Fifty years later, our founding principles remain a strong underpinning of our department, while supporting our continual exploration of emerging theory and knowledge in design thinking, innovative materials and technologies, digital design and fabrication, situated urbanism, and climate equity.

And these fundamental principles and values have never been more relevant. They are precisely what are needed most in our discipline today, and in our world at large, to help us tackle the complex challenges we face in profound and meaningful ways. Our programs foreground architecture as an instrument of change.

Our world-class, award-winning faculty bring both broad and deep intellectual diversity to our educational community. Our undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as our faculty’s research endeavors, cover fields of design and design theory, history of architecture and urbanism, building science and sustainability, structures and construction, social and cultural processes, environmental design in developing countries, digital design and virtual environments, urban design, and visual studies.

Rather than embrace a single conception of architecture, by intention, we welcome and value distinct views that broaden each of our own horizons through respectful debate. We are interested in the entire life cycle of the building process, from conceptualization, through design and representation, craft and construction, and the performance of both constructed and virtual environments.