Program Overview

Harvard Undergraduate Architecture Studies

A Harvard College bachelor of arts degree program in Architectural Studies that teaches design thinking through making within the liberal arts context of Harvard College. Run in partnership with the Harvard College History of Art & Architecture department, students of the program receive a Harvard A.B. degree in History of Art and Architecture, Design Studies. Because this program is part of a degree-earning concentration, admission questions and processes go through Harvard College.

Overview

Harvard Undergraduate Architecture Studies is a bachelor of arts degree program that teaches design thinking through making within the liberal context at Harvard College. This program is collaboratively run by the Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences History of Art and Architecture Department. The four making-based courses of the program explore various scales and motivating agents of design by emphasizing architectural disciplinary specific things that can productively engage other disciplines across Harvard College. The design work produced within this program address a series of assignments that begin more abstractly, studying the relationship of material, form, effect and means of assembly and build up to applying discoveries made in these exercises to the design of an intervention for a physical site that accommodates various scales of registration of its context as well as the human body as an occupant of it. In this program, design is taught by Harvard GSD faculty and advanced degree students in ways that leverage intersection with the brightest minds and scholars from across Harvard. This is a non-professional degree program in Architectural Studies.

Program Summary

• 4 year non-professional track of study within the A.B. degree of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard College
• International audience of diverse Harvard College students, ages 18-22
• Instruction in thinking through making by Harvard GSD faculty and advanced masters and doctoral GSD students in relation to liberal arts context of Harvard College

Architecture Studies at Harvard

This track within the A.B. History of Art & Architecture concentration (or major) at Harvard College has its own focus on undergraduate design courses, student work, and faculty engaged with this program.

Student Testimonials

This course of study gives you the tools to begin seeing the world in a completely different way. This is such a rewarding course sequence as it pushes you to develop both theoretical and logical understanding of architecture while also providing you a foundation of modeling and construction skills. This is one of a select number of classes where it’s hard to imagine how much one has learned, because the progress is so monumental. This track of study is exceptionally rewarding. The Architecture Studies courses taught me about how to apply a design process and concepts in the real world. The studios were complementary to my other Harvard courses: an architectural history course, a robotic engineering course, and a biology class on plant architecture.