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These Are the 10 Best Architecture Schools

By Eric Eng

By Eric Eng

Top view of an architect working on an architectural project.

These Are the 10 Best Architecture Schools

Architecture is something everyone benefits from and relies upon on a daily basis without thinking about it. If this intriguing field piques your interest, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the best architecture schools in the country.

These dynamic and highly esteemed schools will provide you with a comprehensive curriculum that will prepare you for a successful career in the field. No matter what kind of professional life you want to enter into as an architect, you’ll have the foundation you need to go far.

Here, we’ll take a closer look at what these best architecture schools have to offer to help make your decision easier. With spending less time researching, you can focus your efforts on improving your applications.

1. Princeton University Princeton, NJ

Princeton’s undergraduate program presents a chance for extensive study of architecture. The program accentuates the sophisticated relationship between architectural form and culture considered via a comprehensive study of urbanism, building technology, history of architecture, and design. Much focus is paid to the political and social facets.

Blueprint of an architectural design project.

The program is four years long with deep attentiveness in architecture. Apart from the history of architecture and architectural design, undergraduates learn many disciplines which are instrumental in an architect’s vision and knowledge, such as architectural analysis, computing, innovations, and representation.

Such a comprehensive package also prepares the students for a graduate program within the architectural field and other related disciplines, including civil engineering, landscape architecture, and art history. Additionally, this architectural program is offered via the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

It is important to note that the program focuses on art and design, digital design and visualization, materials and constructions, digital fabrication and technology, urbanism, building technologies, history, theory, and criticism of architecture.

2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Cambridge, MA

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commonly known as MIT, the architectural department presents two undergraduate majors providing a deep and extensive undergraduate education within the architectural sector.

Course 4 leads to the BSc. in Architecture, and Course 4-B leads to the BSc. in Art and Design. These programs stress the interconnected relationship between designs, architecture, technology, and the history and theory of architecture. Within a context, learners create individual programs of study well-matched to their desires.

Course 4-B is offered to learners whose intellectual commitments lie within the architectural department, but their academic aims transcend departmental bulwarks. Hence, it is considered among the best architecture schools in the US.

MIT’s architectural design studios program emphasizes design procedures connected by material elements and site concerns. Also, the institution goes out of its way to harmonize learning in design with topics in visual arts, building architecture, and architecture studies.

The department’s wide-ranging offerings highlight the pledge to the built environment’s social, political, environmental, and technological challenges and the art and design training as a form of familiarity and artistic practice.

Devoted to a deep and comprehensive approach, both courses push the learners to be imaginative, resourceful, and accountable leaders within the field.

Lastly, the curriculum is planned to teach crucial fundamentals in several disciplines and offer suppleness for exploration. And the programs are gradually developing to encompass new methods of thinking about art, design, and architecture.

3. Wellesley College – Wellesley, MA

The Wellesley College is recognized among the best architecture schools globally because of its world-class program, which inspires learners to acquaint themselves with a wide range of social sciences, humanities, and sciences units.

Learners may elect courses in mathematics, physics, and art, which makes one love and appreciate the basic techniques of architecture and design principles. The major may be more inclined towards studio investigation, architectural history, or a perfect blend of the two.

Close-up shot of an architect's hands making a house model.

Learners contemplating a major in Architecture are advised to work with a mentor within their area of focus to develop a good study program.

If you major in Wellesley’s architectural program, you will acquire knowledge of the economic, cultural, political, and historical frameworks, which have shaped architecture and urban form over time and in different cultures and geographies.

You will also get to showcase an understanding of geographically and historically detailed design and construction techniques and apply interdisciplinary methodologies ethical codes to construing architecture form.

The Architecture major in Wellesley College comprises 11 units that might be weighted towards studio investigation and architectural history. And for one to qualify for the Wellesley architectural program, you are required to have done these courses including; the power of images:

Art and Its Histories, Drawing and Three-Dimensional Design, and at least one of these, including Architecture and Urban Form, Modern Architecture, Architecture and Urbanism in North America, and Spatial Investigations.

4. Middlebury College – Middlebury, VT

Since time immemorial, architecture has allowed the human race to make spaces that convey their personal beliefs concerning their lives. Middlebury’s College Architectural Studies blends a rigorous series of studio programs with history and theory of architecture taught by licensed architects to ensure that the creative juices that propelled our forefathers never fall short.

Extra vantage points come from celebrated architects in the Cameron Visiting Architects program. While some people undertake Architectural Studies as a gratifying open-minded arts course, for others, it functions as a foundation within the architectural sector.

As pointed out, architectural studies at Middlebury are usually augmented by the Cameron Visiting Architect Program. Distinguished architects help enrich the institution’s studio courses that work directly with learners, giving them supplementary exposure and vantage to the actual architectural practice.

Many people believe that this program elevates Middlebury to rank among the best architecture schools in the US. As if the Cameron Visiting Architect Program is not exciting enough, the institution also offers Island Design Assembly, which brings together a group of learners and architects for a week to live in a secluded location while coming up with a project for an island community.

Middlebury College demands 11 courses, including modern architecture, Introduction to Architectural Design, and Global History of Pre-Modern Architecture, among many more, to qualify for these majors.

5. California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo – San Luis Obispo, CA

California Polytechnic which ranks among the best architecture schools has several programs in architecture; hence, their learners can concentrate on a particular area of interest to you.

The institution also brags of having one of the biggest architecture departments in the US, and about one in every five architects in California graduated from this institution.

A man holding a pen and ruler as he works on the design project.

The five-year bachelor of architecture presents many opportunities for both self-directed and prescribed studies. The program’s size ensures that scholars get a varied perspective on design, immersed in a tradition of incorporating practice, structures, and environmental design with the studio format.

The institution’s quarter system caters to three distinct design lecturers within the first four years. This range of lecturing methods, all pledging to common educational objectives, eradicates a one-design approach and assists learners to begin crafting their individuality. California Polytechnic is fundamentally a teaching institution, with roughly all classes taught by lecturers.

The final year concentrates on a self-chosen thesis dealing with multiple issues, which become an important point in the education process, an entry to graduate studies, or several career alternatives.

A good number of graduates try to find employment within the profession. As part of the CAED, learners can partake in interdisciplinary studies and projects and learn and love their peers’ work ethics in interconnected disciplines.

6. Columbia University – New York, NY

Columbia University is quite popular due to its quality in the liberal arts; thus, elevating it among the best architecture schools in the world. Liberal arts in architecture are highly valued within academia.

Columbia’s curriculum is weaved in such a manner that makes students confront and deduce complicated social, ecological, and political processes that lace through urbanism and architectural design. Hence, students get to learn how to see the universe through architecture.

The Architecture curriculum brings on board design on several scales, recognizing that incorporated design thinking is great for problem-solving. Learners experiment with full-scale devices and installations, create small-scale models from which they deduce, and develop a new solution of inhabitation.

The course deliberately balances the conventions of hand-made representation with the ever-changing digital technologies of architectural design. The major complements and properly uses the institution’s setting.

With access to great libraries, research centers, and plenty of intellectual resources, letting students have the chance to follow their artistic instincts too deeply—architecture students at Columbia study with peers from foreign countries in the world’s most diverse city. Many of the students grow their education by interning in architecture.

Columbia University’s degree in architecture is generally focused on Community Design, Digital Design & Visualization, History, and Theory of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism, among many more.

7. Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art – New York, NY

Cooper Union has produced some of the country’s top architects for more than fifteen decades. Hence, scholars can rest assured that they will get a great education here since they are schooling in an institution ranked among the best architecture schools in the country.

The institution does this by specializing in engineering, architecture, and art. Since they concentrate on a slim set of interconnected disciplines, Cooper Union presents its apprentices with a comprehensive program of study, which teaches architecture as a blend of artistry, technological improvement, technical expertise, and cultural awareness.

Top view of an architect's hands using a compass for measurement.

The Institution’s School of Architecture offers a five-year course culminating in a B. Architecture degree. The program is meticulously structured to aid the learners in grasping the principles of architecture and analyze program, site, and building tech in a wide-ranging and cohesive curriculum.

The design series evolves from an introduction to the fundamental elements to sophisticated established design challenges within an urban framework, ending in a year-long report, which showcases the learner’s ability to produce an all-inclusive comprehension of impressive architecture in society.

The traditional and important skills of modeling, drawing, and design development are supplemented by an entire examination of digital innovation’s critical and analytical uses. The study of urbanism and global architecture is expanded by comprehending individual cultures, ecological and technological challenges at all scales.

The program’s theory, both past and present, is analyzed via the close analysis of crucial texts. It is linked to the theory and practice of other arts, including video, film, and public art.

8. Yale University – New Haven, CT

This institution is recognized among the best architecture schools globally due to its world-class undergraduate program. Yale’s architecture undergraduate major is only open to learners who went to Yale College.

As with other majors, courses need to be done in the first and second years. Learners can study in two tracks: Criticism of Architecture or Spatial Language in Design. The required courses create a foundation for practice and professional education and for advanced research in backing a scholar’s interests and objectives.

Elective courses are vital elements of a professional education since they allow students to interact with experts within the architectural sector.

The major is organized around a wide curriculum, world-class resources, and several programs and events to nurture design exploration, crucial discourse, and visual analysis.

The curriculum presents studios in labs and design in urbanism, combined with workshops and lectures within the following subjects classifications: structures and computations, history and theory of architecture, landscape and urbanism, and materials and technology.

The curriculum is supplemented by many events and activities that encompass scholar travel, studios, and exhibitions of learners’ projects. Yale University’s degree in architecture generally focuses on Digital Design and Visualization, Art and Design, and Design.

9. SUNY College of Technology – Alfred, NY

The Architecture Department in Suny College of Technology offers a five-year professional B. Architecture degree, Associate of Applied Science in interior design, and a BSc in architectural technology.

These degrees are made to serve the changing demands in the architectural profession. The Associate of Applied Science degree in interior design gives learners a basic understanding of entry-level jobs. The faculty, the scholars, and the courses reinforced the department’s insistence on making great design for social good.

And this is what ranks it among the best architecture schools in the world. The department’s main aim is teaching instructions, which make crucial life-long connections with learners and have an effective expert influence.

An architect working on a blueprint using a pencil with a compass and laptop near him.

Professors come carrying a combination of advanced architectural education, practical experience, expert credentials, and academic inquiry into the lecture halls, making them distinctly competent to train scholars in production, design, and poetics of construction.

Plus, all features of construction tech and sustainable building practices are incorporated into the course’s design studio series via the BIM computer program found in the digital fabrication continuum.

This enables learners to make artistic designs grounded and sound in the realities of specialized practice; thus, preparing them well for the needs of the place of work.

Suny’s degree in architecture generally focuses on Construction Technologies, Human Experiences, Art and Design, Historic Preservation, Material and Construction, and Industry Partnerships.

10.University of Pennsylvania – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The architectural undergraduate program was established at the beginning of the millennium to create chances for undergraduate students wishing to study architecture on various levels of engagement ranging from a Freshman Seminar and a Minor in Architecture to a Major in Architecture with three concentrations.

One graduates with a degree in Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Architecture. The Major in Architecture is a studio-based liberal arts course giving two areas of focus in studying architecture. The Concentration in Design demands a three-year series of design studios blended with programs in history and theory of architecture.

The Criticism Concentration encompasses a two-year series of programs in art history blended with extra coursework in history and theory of architecture, other related topics, and design studios.

At the University of Pennsylvania, scholars state their Major in Architecture once they are done with ARCH 202, taken during the second year.

And the admission into the Concentration in Design relies on a learner getting a minimum 3.0-grade point mean in ARCH 201 and 202. Once they graduate, the students are given a non-professional degree.

The University of Pennsylvania’s architectural degree mainly concentrates on Art & Design, Criticism, Construction Technologies, Design, History Conservation, Materials and Construction, Sustainability and High-Performance Build Environments, and Building Technologies. And with these areas of concentration, the institution is automatically elevated to the level of other best architecture schools in the country.

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