Program Overview

Master of Architecture Program

The Master of Architecture program at Columbia GSAPP is a three-year accredited professional degree program that is regularly ranked one of the top architecture graduate programs in the country. At GSAPP, architecture is understood as a form of knowledge inextricably linked to a broader context of environmental and global action—one that is oriented not towards what architecture is but towards what it could be.

Overview

The program pushes this understanding of architectural experimentation and re-invention forward, with faculty and students weaving together critical discourse with technological skill, disciplinary expertise with expanded modes of practices, and design speculation with engagement in the issues of our time. Building on the School’s recent commitment to advancing architecture alongside more global and contemporary perspectives, GSAPP’s Master of Architecture program has focused on expanding its design capacities, building practices, and discursive potentials.

Curriculum

The Master of Architecture program is centered on the Architecture Design Studio and the three curricular sequences that orbit it: History and Theory, Visual Studies, and Building Tech. While the sequences run in parallel, they are also designed to be brought together at critical junctures: through the intersection of specific exercises and through broader project integration. Supplementing these main pedagogical tracks is an Elective sequence and a required Professional Practice course.

Core Design Studios

The Core Design Studios introduce students to architecture through an inclusive understanding of history, cities, typology, and performance. Today, students engage the world through the increasingly global information on buildings, materials, structures, digital processes, media, and communications. These digital processes and networks that were once theorized have become a commonplace part of our contemporary world. As a result, architecture is less and less of an exclusive and autonomous profession.

Advanced Design Studios

The Advanced Studios build on the ideas and skills developed in the Core Studios, and bring together students in the Master of Architecture and Master of Sciences in Advanced Architectural Design programs. These studios, which take place during the students’ final two semesters at the School, have always explored the future of architecture in a diversity of ways. Each studio creates its own world—with its own intersection of social, cultural, formal, material, economic, and environmental concerns—and students have almost 20 worlds to choose from.

Building Tech

The Building Tech sequence is founded on the belief that the realities of building technology are integral to design exploration and experimentation, especially as computational power and data have become ubiquitous, and changes in manufacturing, materials, and information technologies are shaping new modes of thinking and making. Recognizing how performance—its measurement and verification—has become not only a primary function of architectural “solutions,” but also a generator of architectural concepts, the sequence aims to encourage critical and creative approaches to data and measurement and the discovery of new design opportunities and paradigms.

History and Theory

The History and Theory of Architecture curriculum at Columbia GSAPP aims to develop a critical, historical consciousness among students preparing for diverse forms of architectural practice. Central to this is a worldly understanding, in depth and in breadth, of a complex cultural, social, ecological, and technological past. The bearing of that past on contemporary debates and practices is an important focus, as is the relation of architectural history to other disciplines.

Computation and Representation

Visualization is never just presentation—it is a way of thinking, designing, and drawing spaces at all scales. In a series of courses across all programs, the Computation and Representation sequences expose students to a wide range of tools and techniques and foregrounds both their uses and their limits. The sequences seek to initiate interdisciplinary dialogues across the school and address the dynamic nature of our visual culture.

Fall 2025 Courses

• ARCH4001‑1: Core Architecture Studio I
• ARCH4003‑1: Core Architecture Studio III
• ARCH4023‑1: Architectural Drawing & Representation I
• ARCH4101‑1: Architecture Studio I
• ARCH4103‑1: Architecture Studio III
• ARCH4111‑1: TECH I: Environments in Architecture
• ARCH4113‑1: TECH III: Materials + Assemblies
• ARCH4114‑1: TECH IV: Integrated Building Systems
• ARCH4348‑1: Questions in Architectural History I
• ARCH4560‑1: Professional Practice
• ARCH4005‑1: Advanced Studio V
• ARCH4105‑1: Advanced Studio V
• ARCH4050‑1: Arch Elective Internship
• ARCH6784‑1: Conservation of Brick, Terra Cotta & Stone
• ARCH6900‑1: Research I
• ARCH4341‑1: Traditional American Architecture
• ARCH4385‑1: Arab Modernism(s): Experiments in Housing, 1945-present
• ARCH4388‑1: (Re) Inventing Living: Modern Experiments in Latin American Housing
• ARCH4427‑1: Architecture Apropos Art
• ARCH4441‑1: Interlaced Existence: Death, Life, Liminality
• ARCH4442‑1: If Buildings Had DNA
• ARCH4469‑1: The History of Architecture Theory
• ARCH4597‑1: Extreme Design
• ARCH4625‑1: Tensile/Compression Surfaces in Architecture: Tactile Methods for Architects
• ARCH4715‑1: Re-Thinking BIM
• ARCH4845‑1: Generative Design I
• ARCH4866‑1: Modernism + The Vernacular
• ARCH4874‑1: Construction Ecologies in the Anthropocene
• ARCH4892‑1: Data Visualization for Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities
• ARCH4894‑1: Spatial UX
• ARCH4987‑1: Architectural Photography: From the Models to the Built World
• ARCH4988‑1: Coding for Spatial Practices
• ARCH6510‑1: Neighborhood Preservation and Zoning
• ARCH6682‑1: Subject+Object
• ARCH6756‑1: Make
• ARCH6768‑1: Conservation of Architectural Metals
• ARCH6801‑1: Structural Daring & The Sublime In Pre-Modern Architecture
• ARCH6830‑1: Difference and Design
• ARCH6917‑1: Seed Bombs: Technologies in Ecological Design
• ARCH6921‑1: AI for Existing Buildings
• ARCH6930‑1: Women, Gender + Modern Architecture
• ARCH6934‑1: Traditional Building Technology
• ARCH6938‑1: Rendering Systems
• ARCH6939‑1: GIS for Design Practices
• ARCH6941‑1: Architectural Acoustical Ecology
• ARCH6942‑1: Daylight, Metabolism
• ARCH6953‑1: Invis-abilities: Enhancing Accessibility in Design for Mind and Body
• ARCH6962‑1: Environment, Built: Episodes from an Elemental History of Architecture
• ARCH6964‑1: Information Richness: Architecture, Media, Politics
• ARCH6967‑1: Cities of Knowledge: Orientalizing Manhattan
• ARCH6988‑1: Fortifications and Other Infrastructures of the British Empire
• ARCH6814‑1: New Towns After Smart Cities
• ARCH6840‑1: Archives of Toxicity
• ARCH6861‑1: Environments of Governance
• ARCH6927‑1: Architecture, Technology & the Environment
• ARCH6929‑1: The Reimagining of Lower Manhattan Post-Sandy
• PLAN6272‑1: New York Rising: How Real Estate Shapes a City
• PLCE4444‑1: The Future City: Transforming Urban Infrastructure

Dual Degrees

• Master of Architecture & M.S. in Historic Preservation
• Master of Architecture & M.S. in Urban Planning
• Master of Architecture & M.S. in Critical, Curatorial & Conceptual Practices in Architecture
• Master of Architecture & M.S. in Real Estate Development

Other Programs

• M.S. Advanced Architectural Design: A three-term program that provides outstanding young professionals who hold a B.Arch or M.Arch the opportunity to enter into an intensive, postgraduate study.
• M.S. Computational Design Practices
• M.S. Critical, Curatorial & Conceptual Practices: A two-year, full-time course of intensive academic study and independent research.
• Ph.D. in Architecture: The doctoral program addresses the development of modern architectural form and ideas as they have been affected by social, economic, and technological change.
• New York / Paris: A one-year intensive liberal arts program with a strong studio component, focused on the design issues of these two cities.
• Intro Program: A summer pre-professional program