The Master of Architecture program trains students to become leaders in the professional practice of architecture with innovative methods of design research and inquiry.
Students: Sophy Feldman & Rowan Price Instructor: Alexandra Barker SP23 Studio 4
Master of Architecture at Pratt
The M.Arch curriculum embraces an integrative approach to design that weaves together technical knowledge and creative practice, building science and environmental stewardship, and professional responsibility and equity. We actively engage the pressing climatic and social challenges of our era through rigorous inquiry. Through case studies that leverage the city as our classroom, students develop innovative design strategies that convey a thorough understanding of the way in which architecture shapes the built environment and its communities. As architects, our inquiry extends across all scales of the built environment, from individual buildings to neighborhoods, cities, and all the way to global systems and ecosystems. What connects our intervention across this broad range of scales is our deep commitment to design work that prioritizes the well-being and safety of all life forms.
The Master of Architecture (M.Arch) is a three-year NAAB-accredited, STEM-certified professional program. Our 84-credit, three-year track is designed for students who have completed a bachelor’s degree, including majors other than one of the architectural design professions. This program is also available in a 56-credit, two-year Advanced Standing track. Admission to Advanced Standing is highly competitive and merit-based. Candidates for Advanced Standing are selected by the Architecture Department’s Admissions Committee and the Chair of Graduate Architecture and Urban Design.
The M.Arch program is structured with a core curriculum of design, history-theory, technology, and media courses, followed by an advanced curriculum of applied research and elective courses. The entire curriculum is designed to equip students with the professional knowledge required for becoming a successful architect.
We believe in an integrative approach to architecture. Our curriculum is designed to provide students with a deep understanding of the diverse practices and modes of inquiry that converge in the architectural discipline and profession.
In the first three semesters, the core curriculum is structured to coordinate learning across design, technical, historico-theoretical, and media courses. In the fourth semester, this coordinated learning culminates in the Integrative Studio. Unique to the GA/LA/UD, the Integrative Studio combines the teaching of architectural design, building systems, and regulatory compliance into a single course. Collaboration is a fundamental aspect of the Integrative studio: students work on a single architectural project in teams, supported by GA/LA/UD faculty and a cohort of technical consultants from leading New York City firms. During the last two semesters, our M.Arch program further compliments the Integrative Studio with an advanced curriculum of studio and elective courses. In these advanced courses, students engage in directed research projects alongside a diverse group of faculty members from Pratt Institute and the architectural profession at large.
Our integrative approach begins, does not end, with our program. By integrating different modes of architectural knowledge and practice, and engaging audiences both within and outside the architectural professions, our M.Arch program equips graduates with the unique ability to intervene in the complex systems shaping the building and living environment.
Integrative Design:
Our M.Arch students are trained to make complex design decisions that integrate architectural ideas with structural, building, and regulatory systems. Their integrative thinking advances environmental stewardship, social equity, and community resilience in all aspects of design work.
Environmental Design Practice:
Our M.Arch students are trained to embrace their responsibility as stewards of the environment. Their work reflects a deep awareness of architecture’s impact on the living and building environments by integrating research on fragile ecosystems, ecologically responsive technologies, and sustainable materials.
Inclusive and Equitable Design:
Our M.Arch students are trained to view equity, diversity, and inclusion as an integral aspect of design. They understand their responsibility to consider diverse needs, values, and physical abilities in design practices, and act on that understanding by integrating an ethos of equity and inclusion in their architectural solutions.
Design Knowledge:
Our M.Arch students are trained to think critically about architecture’s role in the world. They use cutting-edge design methods, media, and technologies to advance architectural knowledge within the discipline and in culture more broadly.
Collaborative Design:
Our M.Arch students are trained to practice creative leadership that benefits their clients, communities, and society at large. Their design work builds relationships, from collaborations with consultants and industry experts to outreach with community partners and stakeholders.
Design Learning:
Our M.Arch students are trained to ask thought-provoking questions throughout their careers and their lives. They value forms of inquiry and collaborative exploration that deepen their understanding of architecture’s connections to complex systems, including bodies of historical-theoretical knowledge, socio-economic forces, environmental dynamics, and cultural contexts.
Take A Look At How Our Courses Advance Design Research And Thinking
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. Bringing different views, methods, and perspectives the faculty provide a rigorous educational model in which students make and learn. See all GA/LA/UD faculty and administrators.
Pratt’s department of Graduate Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design (GA/LA/UD) balances knowledge and understanding, enhancing your individual capacities to ask often difficult and challenging questions facing the profession and discipline, specifically through design and with audiences outside of architecture and urban design. This program is intended for students holding a four-year undergraduate, nonprofessional degree in any field.
Directed Research
In your final two semesters, the advanced curriculum is focused on Directed Research studios and electives. Among the studios, you might apply to participate in the Studio of Experiments, which is an opportunity to work closely with a visiting faculty member on a directed research topic set by the department chair. Learn more about Directed Research.
Integrative Studio
Unique to the GA/LA/UD, the Integrative Studio is a combined design and integrative building-systems course and brings together a number of related disciplines into a single project, which students develop in teams. An ensemble of technical consultants from world-leading firms in New York City work directly with GA/LA/UD faculty and students on their design projects engaging in facade design, structural design, energy design and more.
Seminars, Lectures & Events
Immersive seminars, lectures and events accompany each semester. They explore contemporary issues in architectural practice and research, and foster discussion between students and prominent scholars. Exhibitions spotlight exceptional faculty and student work, and the student publication offers students opportunities to engage in theoretical, editorial, and writing activities.
Study Abroad
Immersing yourself in another culture is an incredible experience that can extend the boundaries of creativity. Study abroad programs are an integral part of the university experience, and Pratt has deep connections with university partners around the world. In the first, second, or third year, students may elect to participate in one or both of our international programs. See where you can go.
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 Alumni
Pratt’s distinguished alumni are leading diverse and thriving careers, addressing critical challenges and creating innovative work that reimagines our world.
Career Opportunities:
Graduates from the M.Arch program go on to work in leading architectural firms and other creative fields, both nationally and internationally. Take a look at where some of our recent graduates work:
Where They Work
Architect – Morphosis
Junior Designer – BIG Bjarke Ingels Group
Architectural Designer — Foster + Partners
Director – KPF
Senior Associate – SHoP Architects
Architect – Woods Bagot
Lead Designer – Zaha Hadid Architects
Architectural Designer – UNStudio
Assistant Chair, Interior Design – Pratt Institute
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.
IMMERSION STUDIO
Instructors: Olivia Vien and Brook Boughton
This architectural fundamentals course is taught by the Graduate School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design faculty; and is geared toward professionals and students interested in attending graduate architecture school while also focusing on a toolkit for attendees to develop new professional skills.
Through a series of studio sessions, lectures, and technical workshops, the studio introduces students to a series of design approaches to conceptualize architectural investigations using the most current techniques in visualization and methods of remote fabrication. Students typically receive one-to-one technical instruction on digital modeling, drawing representation, rendering, CNC milling, 3D printing, laser cutting, and robotics.
The work culminates in a design exhibition with invited Pratt faculty and documented in an individually developed portfolio that prepares students to apply for graduate architecture school.
Original Model Photography by Michael Ballou
@vienolivia @brook_boughton
#prattinstitute #prattsoa #prattschoolofarchitecture #prattgalaud #prattmarch #prattmsud #prattmsarch #prattmla #masterofarchitecture #architecture #architecturephotography #architecturelovers #archilovers #architecturedesign #photography #architecturemodel #physicalmodel #modelphotography #modelmaking #fabrication #architectureschool #architecturestudent #archistudent #archstudio #designstudio #studiolife #designeducation #studioculture #studentdesign #futurearchitects
PRATT SESSIONS: JOHNSTON MARKLEE Tuesday, September 23rd 6:15 - 8:00 pm, Higgins Hall Auditorium
Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee will join GA/LA/UD Chair Andrew Holder to present a canonical project from their practice as part of the Department’s series of Pratt Sessions. Johnston MarkLee was one of the first American practices to turn away from formal complexity toward the generic, shape, and a broadly inclusive appetite for the history of Modernism. As their work grows in scale and complexity, the office confronts new challenges to discourses that initiated their early career. If JohnstonMarklee projects at the scale of houses combined exterior shape with interior organization to great effect, how do these traits survive the translation to much larger plans and cultural programs?
Pratt Sessions are a format for discourse at the Department of Graduate Architecture, Landscape, and Urban Design. The sessions seek to refine and intensify the event-structures commonly found in the design academy. Whereas lectures desire general audiences for broad overviews or introductions, Pratt Sessions focus on just one piece of work by a single author or practice. Whereas juries convene faculty to critically engage student work at the end of a project, Pratt Sessions gathers colleagues to support the intellectual project of a figure we mutually admire. @johnstonmarklee #pratt #prattinstitute #prattSOA #prattGALAUD #JohnstonMarklee #SharonJohnston #MarkLee #architectureschool #architecturelecture #academiclecture #lecture #prattsessions #higginshall
MS ARCH / MS UD | Fall 2024 - Summer 2025 | Instructors: Alex Tahinos, Fabian Llonch, Erich Schoenenberger, Oliver Schaper, Valeria Cedillos, Pinar Araci, and Peter Trummer The Master of Science in Architecture program prepares students to become leaders in the field by employing innovative design research tools and methodologies to address the social and environmental challenges confronting modern cities. The MS Urban Design sequence asks the urban surface to demonstrate new formats, media and strategies for urban resilience.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.
1-5: Bhavya Prajapati, Falguni Sakpal, Mithila Sunil Patil | ARCH 806 - Peter Trummer and Pinar Araci
6-7: Bhavya Prajapati and Falguni Sakpal, Ann Abraham and Renata Luna | ARCH 813 - Jeffrey Anderson
@bhavya_prajapati__ @falgunisakpal @mithilapatil_ @ann_abraham98 @renataaluna
#Architecture #MLAStudents #MArchStudents #MSArchStudents #MSAUDStudents #PrattMArch #PrattInstitute #Design #StudentWork #PrattGALAUD #PrattSOA #architecturemodel #tower #relief #modelmaking @archdaily @archinect @next_top_architects @superarchitects @designboom @dezeen @architecturefactor
PRATT SESSIONS: NADAAA Thursday, September 18th 6:15 - 8:00 pm, Higgins Hall Auditorium
Nader Tehrani will join GA/LA/UD Chair Andrew Holder to present a canonical project from his practice NADAAA as part of the Department’s series of Pratt Sessions. For over two decades, Nader’s work has led the effort to integrate complex geometric and computer-based fabrication into he core of Architecture’s age-old concerns with organization, tectonics, and aesthetics. Recently, though, he has accepted a number of cultural commissions in historic buildings that tend to suppress exactly the complex visual signatures with which the firm has long been identified. The session will take up a close reading of NADAAA’s project “Villa Varoise” to clarify the continuing concerns of his practice, changes in the architectural milieu, and the possible ways that design might respond.
Pratt Sessions are a format for discourse at the Department of Graduate Architecture, Landscape, and Urban Design. The sessions seek to refine and intensify the event-structures commonly found in the design academy. Whereas lectures desire general audiences for broad overviews or introductions, Pratt Sessions focus on just one piece of work by a single author or practice. Whereas juries convene faculty to critically engage student work at the end of a project, Pratt Sessions gathers colleagues to support the intellectual project of a figure we mutually admire.
@nadaaainc @nadertehrani47
#pratt #prattinstitute #prattSOA #prattGALAUD #NADAAA #nadertehrani #architectureschool #architecturelecture #academiclecture #lecture #prattsessions #higginshall
PRIMER 1
Representation is a critical skill for architects to utilize in all parts of the building process - from concept development, formal designing, or construction documentation. Architectural Mediums Primer is an intensive 2 week workshop that aims to expose students to a variety of representational tools through multimedia explorations from form making, material application, and fabrication. These investigations began with studies of figures and relief that culminated in a final product of a site and a massing hybrid. Students scan through a selection of shapes in a catalog and begin overlapping, scaling, and aggregating these shapes into a confrontation hybridized from. Through these explorations, students honed techniques of representation. These techniques spanned a wide range of architectural platforms and tools from computational processes to drawings, orthographic sections to 3 dimensional objects such as models. Students are then equipped with a representational skill set that allows them to realize complex, layered ideas that can be more easily deployed onto the mental understanding of their colleagues and onto the physical landscape of built architecture.
Student Work: Gabriella Pontoriero, Peter Hamlin, and Andrew Striegl | Instructors: Olivia Vien and Sandra Nataf
@vienolivia @sandra_ntf
@gabriella_pontoriero @peter.hamlin @striegl.design
#Architecture #MLAStudents #MasterofLandscapeArchitecture #MArchStudents #MasterofArchitecture #PrattMArch #PrattInstitute #Design #StudentWork #PrattGALAUD #PrattSOA #relief #reliefmodel #cnc #landscape
Mexico City and Oaxaca: Field Work
May 28th - June 11th, 2025
Instructors: @hartmarlow @vienolivia @alexandrabarker
GALAUD students spent two weeks in Mexico City and Oaxaca this summer studying their architecture and infrastructure. The students were exposed to material practices specific to the region, and documented their visit through drawing, photography, and photogrammetric scanning.
1. Biblioteca Vasconcelos, Alberto Kalach 2. Casa Estudio Luis Barragán, Luis Barragán 3. Rain Harvest Home, JSa and Robert Hutchinson Architecture 4. Rectoría de la UNAM, Mario Pani 5. La Fábrica de Hielo, JSa 6. Casa Gilardi, Luis Barragán 7. Teotihuacán 8. Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Juan O’Gorman 9. Casa Wabi-Sabino, Alberto Kalach 10. Pedre, JSa 11. Parque Quetzalcóatl, Javier Senosiain
Images Credit: 1,4,9: @adrianmramon 2,5,6,8: @ashleymyrenegray 3,10: @matt1499 7,11: @kerryrichardsonn
#pratt #prattinstitute #prattgalaud #prattstudyabroad #studyabroad #barragán #mexicocity #cdmx #oaxaca #architecture #architecturephotography #architecturestudents #UNAM #mariopani #casawabi
NCKU NY
The four-week National Cheng Kung University x Pratt CCA NY Summer Program explored adaptive reuse and climate-responsive design in the context of Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, an industrial waterfront site increasingly vulnerable to sea-level rise. Studio groups engaged with buildings 313, 269, or 131, addressing compound threats through strategies of climate adaptation, adaptive reuse, and programmatic studies within the New York Archipelago. Projects emerged from collective research, site analysis, and speculative design, reimagining the adapted buildings as mixed-use programs. The final proposals emphasized resilience, material performance, and the integration of adaptive reuse as a critical framework for contemporary architectural practice.
Program Leadership: Cheng-Luen Hsueh, David Tseng, David Erdman
@nckuhsueh @david_erdman_hk
Instructors: Poyao Shih, Danielle Kemble, Han Ning Tsai, Wai Tat Cheng
@poyaoshih @daniellekemble @hanningts @justin_cheng
Students Images 1-3: Eva Lee, Allen Chen, Andy Hsu, Chloe Wang
Images 4-6: Stan Lee, Mimi, Winnie, Seal Ke
@nckuarch_newyork #pratt #prattinstitute #prattgalaud #prattsoa #architecture #architecturephotography #archmodel #nckuarch #ncku #climate #adaptivereuse #design
Franklin D. Israel: A Life in Architecture. Presented by the Author, Todd Gannon Thursday, September 11th 6:15 - 8:15 pm Location: Higgins Hall Auditorium
Todd Gannon is a professor of architecture at The Ohio State University’s Knowlton School, where he was head of the architecture section from 2017 to 2022. He has held the Robert S. Livesey Professorship at the Knowlton School and the Cass Gilbert Visiting Professorship at the University of Minnesota. He also has taught at Otis College of Art and Design, UCLA, and SCI-Arc, where he coordinated the History + Theory curriculum from 2011 to 2017.
His new book, Franklin D. Israel: A Life in Architecture, examines the life and legacy of Franklin D. Israel, an influential member of the Los Angeles school of architects. Acclaimed Los Angeles architect Franklin D. Israel (1945–1996) created innovative residential projects and office interiors that made him one of the most talked-about designers of his generation. In this vivid account, architectural historian Todd Gannon draws on archival resources, analyses of Israel’s buildings, and recent interviews with the architect’s colleagues, clients, and contemporaries, including Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Robert A. M. Stern. Gannon traces Israel’s development from his early years and career on the East Coast to his formative world travels and residence at the American Academy in Rome. The author guides readers through the Los Angeles architectural context, Israel’s influential teaching at UCLA, his dalliance with Hollywood, and the personal motivations behind his architecture and design work—all aspects of an influential career that was cut short by his death from AIDS-related complications at the age of fifty.
3. Tisch / Avnet Offices 4. Snellhouse 5. Goldberg-Bean House 6. Snellhouse 7. Dragerhouse 8. UC Riverside Arts Building 9. Mid-Atlantic Toyota Headquarters Building
@toddngannon
#pratt #prattinstitute #prattgalaud #prattsoa #architecture #lecture #toddgannon #franklindisrael #LAArchitecture #architecturelecture
PRIMER 2
Architectural Mediums Primer 2 is an intensive 2-week studio workshop that investigates concepts of advanced architectural representation and model making. Beginning with historical drawing precedents, students meticulously document, transcribe, and understand the drawing systems to develop a catalog of detailed architectural assets. These assets are used to develop a new representational narrative which is inserted back into the context in which it originally existed. The work is presented as an exhibition of architectural assets based on a historical topic students develop their own method of presentation to include how the final project is viewed, held, and positioned.
Student Work:
1. Courtney Masters | Instructor: Alex Tahinos
2. Harsh Panchal | Instructor: Alex Tahinos
3. Wonhee Cho | Instructor: Alex Tahinos
@tahinos @court.masters @harsh_panchalll @o._.neee_
#Architecture #MLAStudents #MasterofLandscapeArchitecture #MArchStudents #MasterofArchitecture #MSArchStudents #MasterofScienceinArchitecture #MSAUDStudents #MasterofScienceinUrbanDesign #PrattMArch #PrattInstitute #Design #StudentWork #PrattGALAUD #PrattSOA #houses #modelhouse #firstarchitectureproject
