Harnessing the space between oversized architectures and undersized territories in increasingly more densely populated 21st-century cities, you will cultivate an understanding of urban design’s central role in addressing climate change and social inequity. Urban fabric registers, and in many cases contributes to the simultaneous increase of human population, temperatures, carbon and flooding. The MS Urban Design sequence asks the urban surface to demonstrate new formats, media and strategies for urban resilience.
Focused on the multifaceted architectural approach that includes landscape and architectural strategies, you’ll learn to design for denser 21st-century cities while preserving cultural, economic, and ecological resources. Seminars explore urban history and theory, 3D fabrication, data modeling and digital twin cities. New York City and Brooklyn-based urban design-directed research and interactive design critiques with students, faculty, and industry professionals will hone your theoretical and technical skills.
Student Work
Work by recent Urban Design graduates envisions near future cities able to harbor urban biodiversity and cultural diversity:
This program is an intense 3-term springboard into the practice of urban design with a culminating project and graduate thesis that offers a unique scaffolding for your vision of the future city. Class sizes of just 8-12 foster close collaboration with faculty and community partners, while the curriculum helps you frame and develop an individuated position for the resilient city. The Urban Design culminating projects are featured in an annual Fall Exhibition highlighting large scale physical models, immersive AR/VR models and thesis books and bringing your work into dialogue with a broad audience. Research opportunities include Climate Science workshops with Guerilla Science on Governors Island, presenting projects at Design Biennale (London, Barcelona, Venice) and contributing to the UN’s Designing Water and Policy.
Directed Research
Engaging at a scale larger than a building yet smaller than a city, your directed research addresses the most challenging questions facing the profession and discipline as we address the need for climate resilient strategies, equitable living conditions, and ecological building material at urban scales. Using Brooklyn and New York City as its laboratory, studio projects address questions of how we design and inhabit the urban realm as it continues to densify in the 21st century. Large-scale prototypes of urban blocks make use of GAUD’s fabrication labs LINK, while directed research is presented with faculty work at Pratt’s Research Yard in dialogue with the Center for Climate Adaptation.
Seminars, Lectures & Events
You’ll be exposed to relevant issues through urban theory and architectural media seminars, history-theory and architecture electives, and a dense array of lectures and events featuring prominent scholars. Complementing your studio experience, you’ll address topics of urban interiority, biodiverse cities, composite building typologies, and climate resilience, all with an emphasis on challenging conventional notions of adaptive reuse, infill development, and architectural and urban conservation.
Field Studies
The MS Urban Design is an intensely local program in its focus: field studies include close dialogues with New York community partners, office visits, and workshops in New York’s museums and archives. We work on sites in New York and Brooklyn with experts that range from forensic hydrologists to resiliency engineers; we have office visits with leading urban design firms in New York; and we meet with local community partners invested in our area of study.
Learning Resources
We develop disciplinary fluency in our program of study and we celebrate the interdisciplinary nature of design critical to address the plurality and complexity of the environments in which we operate. Learn about resources.
Our Faculty
All full-time and part-time faculty are practitioners and deeply engaged in building equity through their own work in the public, private and non-profit sectors and bring the commitment, and their experience, into the classroom. See all Graduate Architecture and Urban Design faculty and administrators.
Acting Assistant Chairperson; Adjunct Associate Professor – CCE
Person
Our Alumni
Pratt’s distinguished alumni are leading diverse and thriving careers, addressing critical challenges and creating innovative work that reimagines our world in leading urban design firms such as AECOM, GENSLER, and KPF, in leading urban research programs such as the Institute for Public Architecture and as faculty in prestigious national and international programs.
Where They Work
Urban Designer, AECOM
Fellow, Institute for Public Architecture (IPA)
Urban Designer, Gensler
Professor, Temple University
Lecturer, Wietzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
Lecturer, National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan
Join us at Pratt. Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.
You’ll find yourself at home at Pratt. Learn more about our residence halls, student organizations, athletics, gallery exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York and our Brooklyn neighborhood communities. Check us out.
"Benito Juárez Fights for Justice" by Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez, BFA Communications Design (Illustration) ’17, tells the story of Benito Juárez, a man who devoted himself to his country and became president of Mexico. Following Juárez from his childhood to his career in politics, the author has called her work “a story of hope and determination.”
Swipe through to see her beautiful and vibrant illustrations!
Images reposted from Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez @beatriz_beatriz_beatriz
#LatinxHeritageMonth #HispanicHeritageMonth #PrattInstitute #PrattAlumni #LatinxIllustrators
🍂 Check out our stylish students' incredible Fall fashion. We caught up with some trendsetters and had to ask, 'What's your current read?
Students featured: Apollo, BFA Digital Art '27, from Baltimore, currently reading "Shady Hollow" by Juneau Black; Rebecca, MArch '26, from Houston, currently reading "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; Bodhi, MFA Fine Arts (Painting) '25, from Boston, currently reading "Factotum" by Charles Bukowski; Ruthie, MFA Fine Arts (Painting) '24, from Baltimore, currently reading "Women, Race and Class" by Angela Davis; Abi Snyder, BFA Communications Design (Illustration) '27, from Collegeville, PA, currently reading "A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas; Ruby, BFA Film '27, from Seattle, currently reading "I Laugh Me Broken" by Bridget van der Zijpp
Photography: Kerry Richardson, MArch '26
#PrattStudents #PrattInstitute #BrooklynStyle #StudentStyle #NewYorkCity #Brooklyn #ClintonHill #Pratt
Charlotte Böhning, MID ’23, is this year’s US winner of the @JamesDysonAward for her graduate thesis project, the Gutsy port!
Current Ostomy bags are mostly single-use and disposable, and the design hasn’t been updated for 70 years. Ostomates go through an excess of bags (and expenses). Current pouches are also one-size-fits all and must be “cut-to-form,” often fitting poorly and leaking, while users also have little autonomy over when their stoma releases waste into the pouch.
The Gutsy port is custom fitted to each stoma, acting as an artificial sphincter of sorts and offering reprieve from the bag. Optimizing fit reduces both painful leakages and time spent creating a strong “seal.” Gutsy controls the flow of waste for hours at a time and takes a prosthetics approach, meaning the design supports reuse.
@char_bo13, @PrattIndustrial @Pratt.MID
#OstomyAwareness #Ostomate #IndustrialDesign #JamesDysonAward2023 #JamesDysonAwardNationalWinner #MedicalDesign #Sustainability #StudentCompetition #IndustrialDesign
Double Cultura is an award-winning short film from @PrattFilm_Video graduate Yessenia Sanchez. The film follows 12-year-old Marisol as she navigates the English-speaking world, acting as translator for her Spanish-speaking mother. This overwhelming responsibility climaxes when Marisol must be the bearer of bad medical news.
The film will screen on @HBO Max for Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month.
Yessenia(she/her/ella) is a Mexican-American filmmaker from Northern California. She received her BFA in Film at Pratt Institute (2021) where she was awarded the 2020-21 Horn Art and Design Award for notable creative achievement in filmmaking.
Recently, Yessenia was a finalist for the 2022 American Cinema Editors Internship program, and is currently working as an Assistant Editor at @Media.Monks based in Los Angeles. Her independent projects aim to redirect fictional narratives to reflect non-fictional moments we live through. By focusing on the complexities of Latine/x experiences, she plans to share the vibrancy of multiculturalism, the versatility of language, and the heart of what it means to be more than one thing.
Video courtesy of @yessenia.sanchez21
#LatinxHeritageMonth #HispanicHeritageMonth #LatinxFilmMaker #MexicanAmericanFilmMaker
“the oceans are rising and so are we!” Repost from @nypirg_pratt at the Climate Week NYC March to End Fossil Fuels.
Over 75,000 people joined the protest, the largest since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
#ClimateWeekNYC #PrattInstitute #NYPIRG
Pratt Industrial Design Alumni Chen Chen and Kai Williams (@ChenandKai) share their insights with @Rarify in the new series "How to Collect."
@PrattAlumni @PrattIndustrial
#Design #IndustrialDesign #ProductDesign
There is no denying that hats are a defining feature of Beyonce's Renaissance World Tour and many of these stand-out toppers are from the custom millinery shop of Pratt alumna Sarah Sokol (@SarahSokolMillinery). The 2011 interior design grad discovered her love of the craft after taking a millinery techniques course at Pratt. Her eye-catching chapeaus have graced the heads of icons from Billy Porter to Mary J. Blige, and are a defining feature of Cardi B. and Megan Thee Stallion's latest video for "Bongos".
#Repost @Beyonce
@PrattInteriors @PrattAlumni
Congrats to @PrattFashion senior @Malek_Rasmussen on winning the Featured Designer Golden Shears Award at @OmahaFashionWeek!
Malek competed with over 40 professional independent designers at the nation's fourth-largest fashion week, presenting looks from his Junior thesis collection. Now in its fifteenth year, Omaha Fashion Week is a nonprofit that aims to nurture emerging designers in partnership with local fashion educators.
Swipe through to check out selections from his winning collection.
Designer: @MalekR_Official
Photography: @HeatherAndJameson
Models: @DevelopModels
#PrattFashion #PrattInstitute #Pratt #FashionWeek
Announcing Pratt>Forward 2024! The upcoming edition of the @PrattFineArt program for emerging artists offers studio space and a month of intensive collaboration in partnership with @SilverArtProjects.
Pratt>Forward is a monthlong program that connects emerging artists with leading practitioners and thought leaders in the field and offers opportunities for professional development, community building, and creative exploration.
Pratt>Forward ’24 will take place in March, in partnership with Silver Art Projects at the World Trade Center. Ten participants, five of whom will be Pratt Fine Arts alumni, will be selected via an open call and receive a full scholarship and a $2,000 stipend.
Pratt>Forward is co-directed by Mickalene Thomas, BFA ’00, and Fine Arts Chair Jane South. Core mentors for 2024 include Pratt Trustee and alumnus Derrick Adams, BFA Art and Design Education ’96; arts organizer and Director of Company Gallery Elizabeth Lamb; curator, art educator, and Director of Communications and Education at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center Emily McElwreath; artist José Parlá; and curator, activist, and Project for Empty Space Founder Jasmine Wahi.
Apply: Please see the link in bio.
Deadline: 5 PM, October 20
Program Dates: March 4–29, 2024
Pratt>Forward is grateful to Lilly Robicsek, director, Silver Art Projects, for her collaboration and to Silverstein Properties for their support. Thank you also to our amazing core mentors @derrickadamsny #ElizabethLamb @emilymcelwreath_art @companygallery @thebrantfoundation @joseparla @browngirlcurator and to @mickalenethomas without whom #PrattForward would not be possible #ThankYou.
📸 Mickalene Thomas by Tropical Cream, Jasmine Wahi by Dario Calmese, and WTC by Joe Woolhead
@prattinstitute @soartpratt
The 33-credit, three-semester, fully encapsulated (fall, spring, summer at Pratt’s Brooklyn campus only) post-professional program aims to expand a student’s previously established professional education by imbuing them with the disciplinary and technical precision to engage in evolving forms of advanced design research, thinking, and practice. Its specific focus is on the multifaceted reformulation of architectural context, an area of research that explores the ways in which urban design activates context and 21st-century cities as they become increasingly more populated and dense, and as they grow inward and accumulate on top of themselves to conserve resources that are cultural, economic, and ecological. The program centers on cultivating an understanding of architecture and context that is fundamentally premised on the design of urban qualities for a dense city. The curriculum embraces an intertwining of architectural design, landscape architecture, urban design, interior design, and architectural/urban conservation.
At the pinnacle of Graduate Urban Design Directed Research, studio projects engage scales larger than a building yet smaller than a city. The goal of immersing students in directed research is to enhance their individual capacities to ask often difficult and challenging questions facing the profession and discipline, through design and with audiences outside of architecture and urban design. Specific to this program are questions of how we design and inhabit the urban realm as it continues to densify in the 21st century, using Brooklyn and New York City as its basis of study and projection.
Open to students holding a five-year (BArch) or equivalent (MArch) degree in Architecture, the program helps students cultivate specific interests in architecture and urbanism through a precise disciplinary framework. All students are exposed to relevant issues through rigorous urban theory seminars, through architectural media seminars introducing contemporary methods of big-data information modeling, through history-theory and architecture electives, and through a dense array of lectures and events, including the participation of prominent scholars. This ensemble of learning complements and reinforces the studios where the understanding, comprehension, and integration of design methods, and theoretical and technical knowledge is tested, pushed to its limits, and discussed in a critique format with faculty, guests, partners, and the Urban Design critic at large. Studio subjects engage an array of topics including, but not limited to, urban interiority, composite building typologies, and alteration, all with an emphasis on challenging conventional notions of adaptive reuse, infill development, and architectural and urban conservation. The broader strokes of this area of Urban Design Directed Research shifts its discourse away from “architecture and the city,” and away from its semiological and/or quantitative performance-based understandings of design toward one which conceives of context as a qualitative endeavor, requiring a ferocious curiosity and committed imagination to engage the inhabitability of contemporary and future cities.
