UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is a leading player on the international stage of contemporary architecture. Working with world-class faculty from established Pritzker Prize winners to the upstarts of tomorrow, our students integrate the most creative approaches to design, advanced developments in technology, and rigorous approaches to architectural thought available today. Using Los Angeles, one of the world’s greatest 21st century cities as model, laboratory and provocation, innovative programs give students the means and the vision to enter contemporary design culture as architects, urbanist thinkers and critics.
Degrees
B.A. in Architectural Studies
M.Arch. I
M.Arch. I / MA in Urban Planning
M.Arch. II
M.A.
Ph.D.
Fields of Study
Design
Our unsurpassed faculty in design has developed a curriculum that focuses on formal research and experimentation and insists that architecture and urban design respond proactively to the always-shifting contemporary world. Students engage in the thoughtful investigation of form as socially, politically, and technically determined. Emphasizing the relationships between form, technique, manufacture, environment, and context students learn to discern the underlying principles of organization. Courses in new types of building construction, computational design, and theories of architectural and urban form are all brought to bear on studio work. Advanced studios explore special topics in digital design, contemporary urban form, emerging technologies, and other issues.
Critical Studies
Critical Studies explores the history, theory, criticism, and visualization of architecture and urbanism. Drawing on significant transformations in academic scholarship in recent years, the program is fundamentally interdisciplinary. Developments in visual culture, cultural studies, intellectual history, urban studies and critical theory have all been incorporated into the program, creating a dynamic and evolving curriculum. A broad range of courses stress the relationship of architecture and urbanism to their cultural, social, political, and technological milieus. Students are encouraged to understand their historical and theoretical work in relation to the current professional, technological and social concerns of architecture as well as to contemporary design debates.
Technology
Emerging technologies for visualization and fabrication are vital to contemporary architectural practice. UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design continues to set the scholastic standard for the integration of cutting-edge technologies into the overall academic curriculum. Our Technology Center provides two large-format mills, two laser-cutters, two 3D printers, and a large-scale vacuum former for student use. Technology seminars and studios focus directly on applying emerging technologies to contemporary design problems using the equipment intensively throughout the quarter.
Faculty
CHAIR: Hitoshi Abe, Design & Technology
Dana Cuff, Critical Studies, Urbanism
Neil Denari, Design
Diane Favro, Critical Studies, History
Craig Hodgetts, Design
Sylvia Lavin, Critical Studies, History, Theory & Criticism
Greg Lynn, Design & Technology
Mark Mack, Design
Michael Osman, Critical Studies, Theory & Criticism
Thom Mayne, Design
Barton Myers, Design
Jason Payne, Design
Ben Refuerzo, Design
Heather Roberge, Design & Technology
1317 Perloff Hall
Los Angeles , 90095-1467
