Master of Architecture 2 (Two Year)
Graduate Program in Architecture
Southern California Institute of Architecture
Los Angeles, California
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Southern California Institute of Architecture - Master of Architecture 2 (Two Year) - Overview
Overview
SCI-Arc is a center of innovation and one of the nation's few independent architecture schools, offering undergraduate and graduate programs. The school is dedicated to educating architects who will imagine and shape the future.
Located in a quarter-mile long former freight depot in the intensely urban artist's district in the heart of Los Angeles, SCI-Arc is distinguished by the vibrant atmosphere of its studios, providing students with a uniquely inspiring environment in which to study Architecture.
An integral part of the emerging cultural hub of a city with a tradition of architectural experimentation, the school is devoted to finding radically new responses to the real needs and aspirations of today's world.
SCI-Arc offers students a unique experience as they pursue undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate degrees. The school's approximately 500 students and 80 faculty members -- most of whom are practicing architects -- work together in a fluid, nonhierarchical manner to re-think assumptions, create, explore and test the limits of architecture.
- The school examines everything about the built environment -- from design and materials to culture and experience.
- The school asks provocative questions to provoke new thinking and prompt new theoretical constructs.
- SCI-Arc is the home of international leaders in creating the future of architecture; its students and faculty come from throughout the world.
- The school invites the community into the school, to take its classes and ideas into the community; SCI-Arc is a nonprofit cultural center that is woven into the fabric of Los Angeles.
- The school creates designs that change how people interact with each other and their environment. SCI-Arc understands that the power to change lives is at our fingertips.
The Graduate Program
SCI-Arc's graduate studies foster the institute's open-ended spirit of inquiry, responding to shifts in society, technology, and culture with a constantly-evolving learning environment. Faculty members and students work together to advance the next generation of the architectural discipline. The programs are led by a faculty full of practitioners and scholars actively engaged in contemporary architectural discourse and production worldwide. The graduate curriculum is continuously and dynamically shaped in a manner only available to an institution entirely devoted to architecture.
Recently SCI-Arc's graduate architecture program was ranked second in the nation for Design and for Computer Applications by Design Intelligence.
The MArch 2 Program
SCI-Arc's MArch 2 program is a NAAB-accredited, two-year, five-term, professional Master of Architecture program, open to applicants with a minimum of a four year degree in Architecture, or its equivalent abroad. This program is similar to the MArch 1 program, but is shorter in length and available only to students with a prior undergraduate degree in architecture.
The aim of the MArch 2 program is the reappraisal of architecture, and is specifically designed to build upon and reconsider knowledge gained from a prior undergraduate degree in architecture. Students are introduced to an advanced critical perspective on contemporary architectural issues as a tool with which to examine the complex and shifting relationship between architecture and cultural, political, economic and social change.
The program investigates the contemporary architectural platform and operates as a laboratory to identify new possibilities for the integration of emerging techniques and technologies. Students learn the latest developments in fabrication and gain an understanding of design methodologies and their historical and contemporary contexts. Upon completing the three term core sequence, students are able to choose from vertical studios and elective seminars that either continue the focus of their core studies or broaden the scope of their educations.
Students complete their studies with presentations, in public exhibitions, of their thoroughly researched independent architectural theses.
SCI-Arc's faculty members and guest lecturers are worldwide recognized leaders in the field, and include architects Eric Owen Moss, Ming Fung, Thom Wiscombe, Andrew Zago, Elena Manferdini, Peter Testa, Florencia Pita, Marcelyn Gow, Jeff Kipnis, Michael Rotondi, Wes Jones, Marcelo Spina.
Notable SCI-Arc alumni include architects Jennifer Siegal, who is leading the field in prefabricated housing; Brendan MacFarlane and Shigeru Ban, who have gained worldwide recognition with their innovative work; and most recently Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues, the 2007 winner of the Museum of Modern Art/P.S.1 Young Architects Program Competition.