Program Overview

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Overview of the M.S. Architecture and Urban Design Program

The Urban Design Program is a three-semester degree in the multidisciplinary study of cities, regions, infrastructures, and ecosystems. The program focuses on the city as an agent of resilient change and on the role of design in redefining the twenty-first century urban landscape, advancing new paradigms of research, practice, and pedagogy to meet the challenges of climate change, rapid urbanization, and social inequality.

Program Description

The MSAUD program encourages students to critically confront planetary urbanization via applied and on-site research that advances the idea of urban design as an inclusive, activist, tools-based project for specific sites and communities and as a critical project examining urban form, knowledge, and research processes. A sign of the program’s success is its strong, catalytic alumni working globally and across disciplines, institutions, and communities to help create robust and equitable places to live.

Admission Criteria

• All applicants must have an undergraduate degree from an accredited college or university by the time they start the MSAUD program.
• The MSAUD program is open to both pre- and post-professional students, and encourages applicants from a range of backgrounds who are focused on the questions and possibilities of the changing field of urban design.
• Please note that the MSAUD is not a professional architecture degree and does not in itself qualify for licensure.

Curriculum

The Urban Design program’s curriculum balances the need for shared and specialized knowledge with individual student research interests. The core of the program is the three-semester sequence of studios:

• Summer Studio I is foundational and addresses the experimental, representational, and constructive aspects of urban design as a process.
• Fall Studio II expands in scope to consider the city-region, examining large scale interdependencies, interactions, and conflicts.
• Spring Studio III takes on problems of global urbanization, extending previous studio work to include the challenges and scales of the climate emergency, examining physical and social infrastructures, new visions of programmatic intervention, and robust community, governmental and NGO partnerships.

Degree Requirements

The MSAUD program is a designated STEM program eligible under the CIP (Classification of Instructional Programs) Code 04.0902: Architectural and Building Sciences/Technology.

Faculty and Research Areas

The program is led by a diverse and accomplished faculty, including:

• Kate Orff, Program Director
• Thaddeus Pawlowski, Faculty Lead
• Noah Chasin, Assistant Director
• Research areas include urban design, architecture, urban planning, and related fields, with a focus on sustainability, social justice, and community engagement.

News and Events

Recent news and events related to the MSAUD program include:

• Faculty and alumni achievements in urban design and related fields
• Research projects and publications on topics such as climate change, urbanization, and social inequality
• Lectures, conferences, and exhibitions on urban design and architecture

Other Programs at GSAPP

Other programs at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation include:

• M.S. Urban Planning
• Ph.D. in Urban Planning
• Master of Architecture
• M.S. Advanced Architectural Design
• M.S. Computational Design Practices
• M.S. Critical, Curatorial & Conceptual Practices
• Ph.D. Architecture
• M.S. Historic Preservation
• Ph.D. Historic Preservation
• M.S. Real Estate Development

Fall 2025 Courses

The following courses are offered in the Fall 2025 semester:

• ARCH 6820-1: Urban Design Studio II
• ARCH 6888-1: Climate Crisis & Housing Crisis
• ARCH 6940-1: Designing Climate Corridors
• ARCH 4050-1: Arch Elective Internship
• ARCH 6900-1: Research I
• ARCH 4341-1: Traditional American Architecture
• ARCH 4385-1: Arab Modernism(s): Experiments in Housing, 1945-present
• ARCH 4388-1: (Re) Inventing Living: Modern Experiments in Latin American Housing
• ARCH 4427-1: Architecture Apropos Art
• ARCH 4441-1: Interlaced Existence: Death, Life, Liminality
• ARCH 4442-1: If Buildings Had DNA
• ARCH 4469-1: The History of Architecture Theory
• ARCH 4597-1: Extreme Design
• ARCH 4625-1: Tensile/Compression Surfaces in Architecture: Tactile Methods for Architects
• ARCH 4715-1: Re-Thinking BIM
• ARCH 4845-1: Generative Design I
• ARCH 4866-1: Modernism + The Vernacular
• ARCH 4874-1: Construction Ecologies in the Anthropocene
• ARCH 4892-1: Data Visualization for Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities
• ARCH 4894-1: Spatial UX
• ARCH 4987-1: Architectural Photography: From the Models to the Built World
• ARCH 4988-1: Coding for Spatial Practices
• ARCH 6510-1: Neighborhood Preservation and Zoning
• ARCH 6682-1: Subject+Object
• ARCH 6756-1: Make
• ARCH 6768-1: Conservation of Architectural Metals
• ARCH 6801-1: Structural Daring & The Sublime In Pre-Modern Architecture
• ARCH 6830-1: Difference and Design
• ARCH 6917-1: Seed Bombs: Technologies in Ecological Design
• ARCH 6921-1: AI for Existing Buildings
• ARCH 6930-1: Women, Gender + Modern Architecture
• ARCH 6934-1: Traditional Building Technology
• ARCH 6938-1: Rendering Systems
• ARCH 6939-1: GIS for Design Practices
• ARCH 6941-1: Architectural Acoustical Ecology
• ARCH 6942-1: Daylight, Metabolism
• ARCH 6953-1: Invis-abilities: Enhancing Accessibility in Design for Mind and Body
• ARCH 6962-1: Environment, Built: Episodes from an Elemental History of Architecture
• ARCH 6964-1: Information Richness: Architecture, Media, Politics
• ARCH 6967-1: Cities of Knowledge: Orientalizing Manhattan
• ARCH 6988-1: Fortifications and Other Infrastructures of the British Empire
• ARCH 6814-1: New Towns After Smart Cities
• ARCH 6840-1: Archives of Toxicity
• ARCH 6861-1: Environments of Governance
• ARCH 6927-1: Architecture, Technology & the Environment
• ARCH 6929-1: The Reimagining of Lower Manhattan Post-Sandy
• PLAN 6272-1: New York Rising: How Real Estate Shapes a City
• PLCE 4444-1: The Future City: Transforming Urban Infrastructure

Urban Design Publications

Recent publications related to the MSAUD program include:

• Water Infrastructure: Equitable Development of Resilient Systems
• Summer 2023 Urban Design Newsletter
• Summer/Fall 2022 Urban Design Newsletter
• Fall 2021 Urban Design Semester Update
• Spring 2019 Urban Design Semester in Review
• Fall 2018 Urban Design Semester in Review
• Summer 2018 Urban Design Semester in Review
• Spring 2018 Urban Design Semester Update
• Fall 2017 Urban Design Semester in Review
• Summer 2017 Urban Design Semester in Review
• Spring 2017 Urban Design Semester in Review
• Fall 2016 Urban Design Semester in Review

Current Faculty

The MSAUD program is led by a diverse and accomplished faculty, including:

• Emanuel Admassu
• Lee Altman
• Donnal Baijnauth
• Molly Burhans
• Liz Camuti
• Samuel Carter
• Ankita Chachra
• Noah Chasin
• Adriana Chavez
• Lucas Coelho Netto
• Nina Cooke John
• Dilip da Cunha
• Cesar Delgado
• Sebastian Delpino
• Ana María Durán Calisto
• Sagi Golan
• Andrew Haas
• Miriam Harris
• Claudia Herasme
• Jesse Hirakawa
• A.L. Hu
• Christin Hu
• Ziad Jamaleddine
• Leah Kahler
• Christopher Kroner
• Kaja Kühl
• Laura Kurgan
• Chris Landau
• Daphne Lundi
• Nadine Maleh
• Sandro Marpillero
• Candelaria Mas Pohmajevic
• Grant McCracken
• Geeta Mehta
• Justin Moore
• Deborah Helaine Morris
• Julia Murphy
• Kate Orff
• Galen Pardee
• Thaddeus Pawlowski
• Zarith Pineda
• Frank Ruchala, Jr.
• Austin Sakong
• David Grahame Shane
• Ivan Shumkov
• David Smiley
• Katie Swenson
• Regina Teng
• Claudia Tomateo
• Mario Ulloa
• Gabriel Vergara
• Nans Voron

News

Recent news related to the MSAUD program includes:

• Frankie Liu ’07 MSAUD, founder and principal of Atelier Glow Limited, receives an award at the 2025 World Architecture Festival in Miami for Reviving Rice Culture and Enhancing Rural Development Project
• Faculty Ziad Jamaleddine presents "15 Degrees of Uncertainty: The Case for the Contemporary Mosque" at Drury University Hammons School of Architecture
• Faculty Lola Ben-Alon presents at the Copenhagen Architecture Biennial, introducing “Speak to the Earth” and leading the panel “Femme Lineages of Slowness.”
• Faculty Galen Pardee’s firm CoPa receives Honorable Mention in the 2025 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Practice Awards
• Dean Andrés Jaque and faculty Kate Orff featured in The Guardian’s review of More than Human at the Design Museum, London for new architectures designed to tune into more-than-human life
• Faculty Ziad Jamaleddine’s L.E.FT Architects awarded Azure’s Merit Award for Djerba: Prototype 366 at the Islamic Arts Biennale
• Faculty Mario Gooden presented the Architectural League’s 2025 President’s Medal, alongside remarks by the larger GSAPP ecosystem including faculty Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood '12 MSAAD
• Faculty Ziad Jamaleddine delivers lecture, “The Mosque After Typology” at the Arabia Interrotta Symposium at the School of Architecture, UIC
• Faculty Thaddeus Pawlowski leads "Resilience by Design: Building Future-Ready Cities Today" a session at the South Summit in Brazil
• Justin Garrett Moore '04 MSAUD M.Arch named one of "The Curious 100," a celebration of 100 courageous leaders and creative minds across the US presented by the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity

Other Programs at GSAPP

Other programs at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation include:

• M.S. Urban Planning
• Ph.D. in Urban Planning
• Master of Architecture
• M.S. Advanced Architectural Design
• M.S. Computational Design Practices
• M.S. Critical, Curatorial & Conceptual Practices
• Ph.D. Architecture
• M.S. Historic Preservation
• Ph.D. Historic Preservation
• M.S. Real Estate Development