Master of Architecture I program open house

Learn about the Spitzer School’s Master of Architecture program, an accredited professional degree program that is open to students from all undergraduate backgrounds. This evening event will include studio visits, a welcome by Dean Marta Gutman, a program overview by Acting Director Frank Melendez, a panel discussion with faculty and recent graduates, Q&A, and an opportunity for feedback on your portfolio materials.

The MArch I program invests in the project as the vehicle of thought, learning, and change. First is a foundation year of skill-building, followed by two vertically integrated, comprehensive, year-long studies, each working closely with two or three faculty members. Other consultants collaborate and tutor at different times throughout the year.

Many students come into the program driven by questions they are seeking to address. Our project-focused format provides a place—a scaffold—to engage these questions within the context of an architectural studio and the discipline of a project. The time we give to these projects promotes a dialogue among professors and classmates, where the ambition is for all of us to learn to ask better questions.

The project covers the conventional areas of architecture and emerging architectural research topics including— design, history, theory, critical thinking, structures, technology, material assembly, and building science—and also allows for the professors’ interests and the student’s interests to commingle.  Projects are substantial and cross-disciplinary because of the time we allocate to them—a rehearsal for the practice of architecture that so many of our students engage in upon graduation. New York City serves as our open library, our lab, our inspiration, our call to change, and our call to keep up with change. The city invites us to participate, perhaps to lead, but mostly to contribute to the discussion of what our world is and how better we might live in it.

Spitzer School grad programs share a teaching, research, and design environment known as the unit system. Within year-long, team-taught, vertically integrated design studios, upper-level students and professors work together to define questions and propose design solutions. Just like in the professions, students synthesize diverse skills and subject areas into their projects. Check out this year’s design studio topics as well as student projects and work from previous years.

Admissions
All undergraduate backgrounds are welcome in the MArch I program; its prerequisites are one semester of both college-level precalculus and physics. Our next deadline is in January 2023 to begin studies in fall 2023. Please see the instructions on our Master of Architecture I applications instructions page.

Accreditation
The Master of Architecture I program is NAAB accredited. 

STEM Designation
The MArch I program is listed within the US government’s official STEM fields list and is therefore eligible for the STEM OPT extension for F-1 students. 

About the Spitzer School
City College’s Spitzer School of Architecture, a public school predicated on access to excellence, is one of the most diverse architecture schools in the United States; the students at the Spitzer School are the future of architecture, “an acre of diamonds” in the words of one alumnus.

Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change.

At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity, and scholarship.