Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS)

The Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS), a two-year program of advanced study beyond the first professional degree in architecture, is founded on research and inquiry in architecture as a discipline and as a practice. Emphasis is on inquiry into contemporary problems of architectural design and practice in the US and around the world.

The SMArchS program is inquiry-oriented and is shaped around topics of direct interest to faculty and students. These include such topics as design at the urban scale, study of the form of cities, investigations of architectural theory and design methodology, the exploration of the potential of computation, and study of the relationships between architectural form and culture. Areas of special study include housing and settlement forms in developing countries, and design in non-Western cultures.

The SMArchS program may be pursued in one of five areas:

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
Architecture and Urbanism
Building Technology
Design and Computation
History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art Arch and Art

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture is for students interested in pursuing research on architecture and urbanism in the Islamic world. Faculty interests include Islamic architectural and urban history and historiography, strategies for preservation, and the critique of contemporary design in Islamic countries.

Architecture and Urbanism
Architecture and Urbanism focuses on the design of cities and other human settlements. Areas of faculty interest include theory of urban form and urban design strategies linked to the institutions that effect urban change. more...

The central discipline of urbanism is architecture and most SMArchS students enter with professional qualifications. Teaching and research concentrates on three linked aspects of city design:

a) Design of urban places and systems, including the description, modeling and shaping of such environments, and the understanding of their relationship to the institutions which affect their form

b) Knowledge of the processes by which cities are changed and the ways in which changes can be implemented

c) The theory and history of the physical and social form of cities, including the analysis of what cities are and propositions about what they ought to be.

Recent faculty research and publication include comparative studies of urban resilience; current and historical techniques of city image creation; housing morphologies; permanence, transience and memory in city form; communications technology and the form of cities; community participation in landscape design; landscape and photography; and the analysis of contemporary performance standards in cities.

SMArchS students in Architecture and Urbanism are required to take at least one studio subject. Two recent studios done as research projects in conjunction with Cambridge University have worked on the spatial interaction of high-technology industries and the university. Other past studios, commissioned mainly by city authorities, have designed higher densities in central Tokyo and in Singapore, a new plan for Chandigarh, new transportation infrastructure for Miami and Barcelona, housing types and reconstruction in Dresden and Sarajevo, city center proposals in Taiwan, housing and site developments in Beijing, harbor reuse projects in Boston, low-income housing and waterfronts in Washington, and a campus plan in western Thailand.

Architecture and Urbanism faculty guide students as junior colleagues towards individual study and research tracks contained within the framework described above. Students are encouraged to extend their studies into other areas of study in the program. Students also work within the Joint Program in City Design and Development where they associate with both master's and doctoral students in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Center for Real Estate. Some students choose to follow a sequence leading to the Urban Design Certificate obtained with their degrees; others choose to extend their study period to seek dual degrees.

Building Technology
Building Technology explores ways to use design and technology to create buildings that contribute to a more humane and environmentally responsible built world. Research addresses innovative materials and assemblies, low-energy strategies and structures.

Design and Computation
The mission of Design and Computation is to promote new approaches to technique in relation to architectural form, as well as to challenge conventional distinctions between physical and virtual environments. Research focuses on new means for describing, representing and generating architectural form; for modeling physical processes; and for facilitating communication.

History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art
SMArchS students in History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art work alongside doctoral students in the study of Western architecture (of the 19th and 20th centuries) and of methodological issues that inform or link historical and practical work.

In all these areas, related subjects are available in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, in other departments at MIT, and at Harvard University.

About 60 percent of the students in the SMArchS program come from outside the US, which encourages the exchange of ideas across cultures.

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