The Master of Science in Architecture program furthers the knowledge of students with previous professional degrees in architecture through advanced research and experimental prototyping.
Vatsal Patel, Class of 23’
Master of Science in Architecture
The MS.Arch curriculum offers an intensive post-professional education grounded in advanced research. The program places particular emphasis on design research that promotes new dimensions of thought and practice around climate change. Through rigorous inquiry and experimental projects within various New York City sites, students deepen their understanding of life systems and gain new skills in visualizing, modeling, and fabricating architectural ideas in ecologically complex contexts.
MS.Arch Plan of Study
Our Faculty
Our faculty are leading practitioners, scholars, and educators, including a distinctive cohort of PhD candidates from top universities who share a common desire to develop each student’s potential and creativity to the fullest. See all MS.Arch faculty and administrators.
Stories:
Alumni:
- Editor in Chief, The Funambulist and Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence
- Studio Instructor, Pratt Institute BARCH program
- Principal, Valle Cornejo Architectos, Santiago, Chile
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Social Media
John Lin’s thesis project “Extended Care” utilizes a biomeiler — woodchip compost pile sustained by an extended period of aerobic decomposition (of the carbon-rich mulch shredded from Christmas trees in NYC) as the primary heat source throughout the winter months for the proposed doula center. Furthermore, John proposes the use of hollow clay blocks to construct a trombe wall — the thermal mass of the blocks and their internal air cavities heat up during the day and are released throughout the night, around the mock delivery room. The interior temperature environment is further augmented through the heated water from the biomeiler running through the base of the blocks. His prototype explores the novel use of robotic 3D printing to construct the hollow blocks, balancing their load bearing and high insulation capabilities. By creating this relationship between the functioning of the house and the waste produced elsewhere as its resources, care and maintenance are extended beyond the surface qualities of the house —maintenance is no longer only about cleaning the exterior or trimming the hedges but also about how much electricity or heat can be generated from waste or how much greywater can be reused.
#islandexhibition #governorsisland #evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers
6 months ago
In his thesis titled “Legitimate Kin”, John Lin argues that the Asian American male figure and the queer figure are best understood in an active phase of becoming rather than as a static figure caught between boundaries or pathologized with irreconcilable identities. John investigates the becoming of San Francisco’s Chinatown against the backdrop of enduring discrimination and othering, and compares it with the construction of queer worlds, characterized by Andrew Holder as “made of parts arranged with a logic that has nothing to do with a shared point of origin, (instead) are bound together by their protagonist’s sheer cunning and force of will… forged into existence from base material that is indifferent to an authentic or organic relationship between the means of its construction and the ends it is intended to achieve.” John builds on Lucas LaRochelle’s Queering the Map, José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, John Wei’s concept of “stretched kinship” and Sara Ahmed’s “potentiality” in the “queer uses” of land, and proposes a futurity of Governors Island as a place of extended care, forged into existence by the increasing needs for reproductive and regenerative processes.
#evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers
6 months ago
Architect’s Newspaper reviewed Adaptation(s) at the Pratt House on Governors (“The Nut”) Island, in which the MS. Arch students work was a major part. Link in bio. https://www.archpaper.com/2023/10/ia-islanding-adaptations-at-the-pratt-house-on-governors-island-co-curated-by-so-ils-jing-liu-is-a-laboratory-of-future-urban-living/
#islandexhibition
#evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers
6 months ago
Three info sessions in the coming weeks. 10/18,11/09, 11/29.
#evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #infosession #prattinfosession #prattnewcohort #prattgaud #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers
@prattgaud @prattsoa
6 months ago
Alessandro Orsini teaches first studio module in the fall semester and thesis seminar in the spring semester in the MS. Arch. program. Alessandro is an architect and co-founding partner of Rome and New York-based research and design practice Architensions. His investigations focus on architecture’s political, social, and environmental spatial networks with specific interests in the commons and the definition of new modes of collective living. His practice and research are intertwined with teaching, expanding collaborative modes of inquiry to respond to new definitions of ecologies and spatial ontologies.
#evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers #prattfaculty #prattprofessor #prattgaud #prattmentorship #mentors #pedagogy #prattpratt #prattbrooklyn #prattbrooklyncampus
6 months ago
Nima Shiva’s thesis brings together a few investigations: voided and abandoned spaces in the urban environment, problems of waste management on an isolated island, and passive environmental strategies through space use. Nima brings these seemingly disconnected topics through his love for beer. Nima imagines the under-utilized roof surfaces of the houses becoming storage for empty bottles, abundant on the island from the F&B activities and have to be carried off the island via ferries. But through a bespoke dynamic rack system, they also function as skylights that bring filtered daylight into the center of the house, and rain collectors in the rainy days. Rigorous study of sun orientation and glass colors led to his joyous and sculptured prototype that gave abandoned spaces and objects new purposes.
@nimaashivaa
#evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers
6 months ago
From a gathering and fishing site for the Lenape people, to the logging camp and transit stop for the colonialists, to the dumping ground for large urban infrastructure projects, to the defense training and hospital ground for the US military, this highly visible small patch of land floating between Brooklyn and Manhattan, surround by the waters of New York harbor, has been permanent home to no one. Walt Whitman imagined the island to “be a place to cultivate and indulge in sensory experience and delight—to experience the salt air, fresh air, sunlight, waves, wind and white noise of nature.” Against the recent rezoning and push for development by the Trust for Governors Island, critics like Justin Davidson protests—“this on an island that rising seas appear determined to swallow; the climate center can study its own drowning.” The conflicted past, present and future of the island led Sandhra Sajeev to think hard about what can be born from not abundance, but scarcity. Her project introduces a columnar grey water filtration system developed from materials available on site for a doula center—a place of birth, nurture and leisure. The system utilizes a biopolymer composed of oyster shell flour, charcoal, and plastic as an additive. It consists of seven stackable models that sequentially filter water through three distinct types of infill medium, ensuring effective water purification. The luminous, flower-shaped tower also creates an aesthetic outcome, generating an alluring visual interest for the nurturing environment.
@sandhra_s__
#evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers
6 months ago
MS. Arch. academic coordinator, Jing Liu, is an architect, educator and co-founder of the award-winning design firm Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu (SO-IL) in New York City. Jing has been practicing architecture for more than 15 years working on a wide range of projects both in the US and abroad. Through building practice and interdisciplinary research projects, Jing brings an intellectually open, globally aware, and locally sensitive perspective to architecture. Jing is a recipient of the Vilcek Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the United States Artists Fellowship. She currently serves on the board of the Urban Design Forum and previously the Van Alen Institute.
#evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers #prattfaculty #prattprofessor #prattgaud #prattmentorship #mentors #pedagogy #prattpratt #prattbrooklyn #prattbrooklyncampus
6 months ago
Jing Liu, coordinator of the MS. Arch. program presented the work of the 23’ cohort at “Island(ing) Adaptations,” on the occasion of the UN SDG Summit and NY Climate Week. Pratt Institute, its Center for Climate Adaptation and their partners at Pace University and Singapore University of Design and Technology convened at the panel that brought together cross cutting representation from high level government officials to innovative designers, financial leaders and policy makers. The title is intended to be a play on “AI” and denote the intelligence of how land scarce/water scarce, island-based habitats could inform future urban development on islands as much as the “(ing)” is intended to insinuate an active role in exploring the above subjects/themes. Panelists included:
Clare Newman – President Trust for Governors Island (NYC)
Tai Lee Siang – Fellow, Center for Livable Cities, Ministry of Development (Singapore), Head of Pillar Architecture and Sustainable Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design
Kai-Uwe Bergmann – Principal, Bjarke Ingels Group: BIG (Copenhagen/NYC)
Sergio Campos – Head of Water and Sanitation Inter-American Development Bank (Washington, D.C.)
Jing Liu – Founding Partner, SO–IL (NYC), Academic Coordinator, MSc. Architecture Program, Pratt Institute
Leanne Burney – Program Officer, UN Water Technical Advisory Unit (NYC)
#evaporativecooling #architectureprototype #clayprinting #ceramic3dprinting #3dprinting #pifabrobotics #pifabceramic #prototype #energyefficiency #coolingsystem #sustainabledesign #sustainablesystems #prattsoa #prattgaud #pratt2023graduates #prattmsarch #prattarchitecture #prattarchives_soa #prattarchitectureinstitute #prattresearchlab #archilovers_facades #archilovers #prattfaculty #prattprofessor #prattgaud #prattmentorship #mentors #pedagogy #prattpratt #prattbrooklyn #prattbrooklyncampus
6 months ago
