SMArchS Urbanism
Master of Science in Architecture Studies
The Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) is a two-year program of advanced study founded on research and inquiry in architecture as a discipline and as a practice. The program is intended both for students who already have a professional degree in architecture and those interested in advanced non-professional graduate study.
SMArchS in Architecture and Urbanism
Architecture and Urbanism is a special program for students interested in the development of critical urban design, as well as its history and theory. Consciously locating itself in the contemporary debate about what constitutes good city form with expansive metropolitan regions and systems of cities, the program teaches students to develop articulate and intellectually grounded positions. Students are expected to interrogate current positions within the field in order to explore critical alternatives to existing paradigms of urbanism. The assumption is that design inquiry is an intellectual act with the capacity to yield both critique and alternative possibilities.
The program aims to nurture well-versed, intellectually-robust, and historically-conscious architects who understand the relationship between architecture and urbanism, not as a question of taste and fashion, but as form, process, and associated socio-culturalwith meaning. The program emphasizes a unique combination of both design and scholarship. Our students are unique in their capacity to relate to both. The particular interests of faculty and students may vary, but the goal is always the achievement of the most advanced and effective methods of shaping the form, sustainability, and social condition of the built environment. The design, theory, and elective subjects are also formulated in support of this goal.
The first year of the program builds a student’s foundation with a required sequence of two studios and two theory courses. All incoming students participate in an introductory urban design studio in the fall, and a choice of urban design studio options in the spring. A course in urban design theory is taught in the fall and theory of city form in the spring. In the fall of second year, students take a thesis preparation course and have the option of enrolling in a third studio course. All students complete a master’s thesis. Students may tailor their work to a diverse array of interests, and are encouraged to engage intellectually with surrounding disciplines.
People
Core faculty:
- Rafi Segal – Director
- Alexander D'Hooghe (Spring Semesters)
- Rania Ghosn
- Miho Mazereeuw
- Adèle Naudé Santos
- James Wescoat
- Michael Dennis - Emertius
Affiliated faculty:
- John Fernandez
- Sheila Kennedy
- Ana Miljacki
- Hashim Sarkis - Dean, SA+P
- Lawrence Sass
- Andrew Scott
- Anne Whiston Spirn - Joint with DUSP City Design and Development
Staff:
Current Students:
Workshops
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Spring 2018
Architectural Design Workshop — Rurbanism
Instructor: James Wescoat, Lorena Bello
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/spring-2018-4184
This joint architecture and planning workshop will focus on "rurbanism" in Gujarat, India. Conversion of rural to "Rurban" and "peri-urban" settlements is the most rapid form of urbanization in India and other historically rural areas of the world. Rurbanism has the progressive aim of bringing urban amenities to rural people and places, however there is a limited record of successful design accomplishments in this realm.In joint collaboration with the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat - India, the workshop will commence in Mumbai and will include twelve days of field research in rural coastal Gujarat.
The village sites lie in close proximity to the well-known Gir Forest and Lion preserve, which has seen rapid growth following the tourist industry and offering a great opportunity for rurban development. Positive impact of growth on housing conditions and quality of life are the biggest goals for the communities in coastal Gujarat. At the same time, villages in the coastal region face multiple natural and anthropogenic hazards, which will be addressed in the workshop.
IAP 2018
Architectural Design Workshop — Neighborhood Upgrading for Productive Public Space and Housing Improvements in Georgetown, Guyana
Instructor: Adèle Naudé Santos, Marie Law Adams
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/iap-2018-4182
The work during the IAP workshop is to assist the Central Housing Authority and Planning Authority (CHPA) of Guyana to meet the challenges for urban and housing improvement that is being supported financially by inter-American Bank (IDB). Our challenge is to work with international funding in a context where there are serious environmental proglems, given that most of Georgetown is below sea level and is subject to flooding.
The workshop will be focused in Sophia, a neighborhood located approximately three miles east from downtown Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana. As a former Dutch and British colony, much of Georgetown's land had been historically developed for agriculture, especially for sugar and rice cultivation.
Fall 2017
Architectural Design Workshop — India: Gujarat Disaster-Resilient Housing Revisited
Instructor:Lorena Bello, James Wescoat, Brent Ryan, Marie Law Adams
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/fall-2017-4184
The workshop will focus on settlement form, housing design and its relationship to disaster resilience twenty years after a first MIT-Gujarat workshop took place in 1996. The workshop will include 3 days orientation in Mumbai with AKAH, 14 days of field research, and 3 days of contextual reconnaissance through the charged historical territory of Gujarat. The site is very near the well-known Gir Forest, and students will be housed in an ecotourism camp on the grounds.
IAP 2017
Architectural Design Workshop — A New Neighborhood: Cartagena, Colombia
Instructor: Adèle Naudé Santos[, [#Debora Mesa
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/iap-2017-4185
A NEW NEIGHBORHOOD: An investigation into a livelihood based approach to the idea of HOME, where the neighborhood supports both living and working.
The NEIGHBORHOOD will be located in an undeveloped superblock in Cuidad del Bicentario, CARTAGENA Colombia. Fundacion Mario Santo Domingo, FMSD, is developing a community of 40,000 housing units for 200,000 people on the outskirts of the city. Each superblock will contain approximately 300 houses. Their important conceptual approach called DINCS (Sustainable and Comprehensible Community Development) is centered on building whole communities not just housing. Within this framework our neighborhood of 300 houses will include community facilities, work- spaces, a green industry, and a truly functional open space system.
Prefabrication of the houses and facilities will be proposed, working with POPLab. The short- term goal is to build a house prototype after the workshop.
Summer 2017
Architectural Design Workshop — Kigali, Rwanda: Village + Housing Prototype
Instructor: Rafi Segal
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/fall-2017-4182
The workshop will plan and develop of a low-cost village house prototype. Students will work with low-income families to explore an urban and architectural scale multi-programmed village housing model. Construction of the prototype house will take place during the trip to Rwanda by students together with the University of Rwanda and a local contractor. They will experiment with the use of various materials including bricks and dried straw panels.
Studios
1
Fall 2017
Urban Design Studio — Cities by Sea
Instructor: Rafi Segal, Alan Berger, Jonah Susskind
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/fall-2017-4163
Coastal areas have been urbanizing for centuries. The expansion, building and retrofitting of urban waterfronts must confront the urgent challenge of how to adapt to increasing floods, storms and sea level rise. In the age of sea level rise, the sea has become a threat or risk to citizens, a thing to protect and defend against, or retreat from. Waterfront urbanism now carries a heavy burden of damage, loss, and vulnerability. The studio will combine research and urban design around the theme of ‘rising seas in the age of climate change’ for the city of Boston and its surrounding neighborhoods. The first part of the studio is a collective research effort that will analyze selected cities and contemporary projects around the world that address these challenges.
Spring 2017
Urban Design Studio: Urbanism After Extraction — Housing, Landscape, and Infrastructure in the Katowice Agglomeration, Poland
Instructor: Rafi Segal, Marie Law Adams
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/spring-2017-4163
Despite the general decline in the industry, increased operational costs in old and deep mines, and an aging power plant infrastructure, Poland continues to be heavily reliant on coal for energy today. As the European Union and much of the world set targets for transitioning to renewable energy, Poland and the Katowice agglomeration in particular face a twofold challenge: how to reclaim a highly degraded post‐coal landscape for the future, and how to transition to a new energy paradigm. This urban studio addresses both the environmental and social aspects of this problem. We seek a comprehensive approach that calls to combine design projects and landscape strategies with processes of policy, zoning, financing and investment structures
Fall 2016
Urban Design Studio — Terra-Sorta-Firma: Urbanism in the C-11 Basin
Instructor: Miho Mazereeuw, Fadi Masoud
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/spring-2017-4163
With nearly 20 million residents, Florida is one of the country’s fastest growing states. Its ubiquitous suburban landscape is enabled by the continued manipulation of a dynamic estuarine environment and a pervasive real-estate-driven housing pattern. Thirty-five miles of levees and 2,000 hydraulic pumping stations drain 860 acres of water per day, resulting in the ‘world’s largest wet subdivision’ and $101 billion worth of property below sea level by 2030. Teams of students will design projects that cover many scales ranging from large-scale landscape infrastructural systems to the design of housing prototypes of varying densities. Students will work to develop a systemically driven approach that takes the hydrological extremes and ecological resonance of the context as the foundations of their formal proposition.
Spring 2016
Urban Design Studio — The Meadowlands Studio: Urban District around Regional Park?
Instructor: Alexander D'Hooghe, Alan Berger
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/spring-2014-4163
The Meadowlands is a large (former) marsh and flood zone just west of Manhattan. Over the last century, the basin has collected an impressive quantity of critical infrastructures (port, utilities), while partially crumbling under an increasing pressure for regular residential and urban development. As a result, the natural marsh system has been severely reduced. Most of the stakeholders agree that development and ecology should have the capacity to reinforce each other’s value. Recent efforts by the Meadowlands commission have stabilized the eco-system, but overall there is no vision about how to address the continuing pressure for further urbanization.
The studio will assume a pressure for 15,000 multi-story residential units, most often in proximity to a continuing (and growing) presence of distribution centers for logistics and supply chain; as well as near newly defined regional park Meadowlands. You will aim to arrive at a 2-3 distinct overall visions for the Meadowlands, elaborated at different scale levels. Because of the scope of the problem, we will recommend that groups will develop the proposals; there will be ample time for every student to design their individual contribution into the overall plan.
Spring 2016
Architecture Design Option Studio (D'Hooghe/Grauer) — Bogota, Colombia Studio: Designing Public Spaces and Urban Typologies based on flows of Water, People, and Goods as related to Infrastructure
Instructor: Alexander D'Hooghe, Oscar Grauer
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/spring-2016-4154
The objective of this studio is to reconceptualize the interrelation between water and mobility infrastructures in urban environments as a means to reshape urban development patterns, first by studying the logics of water and development at a territorial scale, and second, by focusing on the opportunities to achieve a more balanced, equitable, eco-friendly, prosperity-inducing development pattern. A deeper understanding of the relation between supply, distribution, and recycling of water and infrastructures fueling urban growth, will lead to a redefinition of urban infrastructure layouts, aimed at how to make the best use of existing bodies of water, how to maintain and replenish those in need, and to envision ecologically friendly means to treat used water.
Spring 2016
Urban Design Studio — RENACIMIENTO: Reviving Mexico’s Abandoned Towns
Instructor: Rafi Segal, Brent Ryan
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/spring-2016-4163
Mexico’s rapid urbanization of the past decades, housing deficit, and its ambitious housing policy to provide affordable housing to its poorer populations has led in many cases to the building of ex-urban isolated housing estates, some of which have gradually been emptied out. The building of affordable housing on cheap land outside the city boundaries, often lacking in infrastructure and public services, and disconnected from work places, has created a growing problem of families abandoning these homes. This joint urban design studio, will engage interdisciplinary, planning and design thinking to apply to this pressing urban problem, utilizing the lens of design to generate novel housing, infrastructural, and settlement forms that can be implemented in selected areas.
Fall 2015
Urban Design Studio — Terra-sort-Firma: Coding Resilient Urbanism in South Florida
Instructor: Adèle Naudé Santos, Alan Berger, Fadi Masoud
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/fall-2015-4163
With nearly 20 million residents, Florida is one of the country’s fastest growing states. Its ubiquitous suburban landscape is enabled by the continued manipulation of a dynamic estuarine environment and a pervasive real-estate-driven housing pattern. Thirty-five miles of levees and 2,000 hydraulic pumping stations drain 860 acres of water per day, resulting in the ‘world’s largest wet subdivision’ and putting $101 billion worth of property below sea level by 2030. The overall structure that defines Florida’s cities emerges from the combination of hard infrastructural lines, developer driven master plans, powerful reductive normative zoning, and rigid form-based codes. Taken together, they dictate everything from the use of the land, to its subdivision patterns, and from building heights, setbacks, densities, street widths, and open space ratios, all the way to roof pitch angles, and fence hues.
By recognizing that it is exactly in the process of physical planning and design that we may be the most operative and strategic agents, this Urban Design Studio puts front and center the agency and efficacy of urban designer’s tools as they deal with issues of 21st century urbanism. It starts by accepting the “third condition” as a space for urban development. The “third condition” refers to the constantly influx hydrological state — that is neither wet nor dry but always shifting — as the starting point of a novel and contextual “process-based” language for coding the future of Floridian urbanism.
Fall 2015
Introductory Urban Design Studio
Instructor: Miho Mazereeuw
https://architecture.mit.edu/subject/fall-2015-4162
Project-based introduction to urban observation, research, analysis, and design. Focuses on urban elements, urban and architectural interventions, and landscape in existing cities. Emphasizes city form, sustainability, and social conditions. Projects require both conventional and digital techniques.
Admissions for SMArchS Urbanism
1
Applicants compete each year for the approximately 25 places available in the SMArchS program. An admissions committee made up of both faculty and SMArchS students evaluates applicants individually. There is no specific "type" of applicant.
Graduate Programs Admissions Requirements (for all graduate applicants)
The Application Deadline for 2021 has been extended to January 6, 2021 due to staff break between December 23, 2020 and January 3, 2021. We will be unable to respond to emails during that period but will do so beginning January 4. Application material must be submitted by the deadline. Late applications will not be reviewed. It is the responsibility of the applicant to be sure that the application is completed. Applications will be reviewed using the information provided by applicants. Please do not call or email to check if official test scores have arrived. We will contact you if we do not receive them. Be sure to watch the application for notifications of application errors between December 31 and January 10. We will also email applicants if we notice something wrong with the application.
Three letters of recommendation. Letters from instructors are preferred unless you have been working for several years, in which case supervisors may be included. The application can be submitted on the deadline with fewer than three letters, but be sure to remind your instructors to complete their letters before January 10. Review the instructions for letter submission in the "Letters Status" section of the application system. Applicants will send prepared emails to the recommenders containing a secure link to the recommendation form. We prefer that letters be submitted through the online application, and not a third-party letter distributor.
Transcripts for all relevant degrees, official or unofficial, must be uploaded to the application system. PDFs must be clearly readable and oriented correctly on the screen. Only those applicants who are accepted for admission will be required to send a hard copy of an official, sealed transcript (with English translation) from each school attended. Please do not have official copies of transcripts sent to our office unless you are admitted. Certificates, study abroad, and community college transcripts do not need to be sent unless the courses are not also listed on your primary college transcripts. Non-English transcripts must be translated into English, and if necessary, signed by a licensed notary and accompanied by the original version. If you have taken studios, indicate this on the Test Scores/Experience/Electronic Portfolio section.
IELTS or TOEFL Score.
Applicants whose first language is not English are required to submit either an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score (Academic test) or a Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The admissions committee regards English proficiency as crucial for success in all degree programs. In order to meet the admissions deadline, it is recommended that candidates take the IELTS or TOEFL on the earliest possible date. NOTE: Official scores do not need to be sent unless you are admitted, and intend to enroll.
Admitted applicants must request that an official copy of their test results be sent directly to MIT by IELTS International or Educational Testing Service. IELTS and TOEFL Scores must be no older than two years as of the date of application. To avoid delays, please use the following codes when having your TOEFL scores sent to MIT:
- Institutional Code: 3514
- Department Code: 12
The minimum score required for the IELTS is 7 and the minimum TOEFL score is 600 (250 for computer-based test, 100 for Internet-based test). While either test score is accepted, the IELTS score is preferred. (HTC PhD requires a TOEFL score of 115.)
All students whose first language is not English are required to take the English Evaluation Test (EET) prior to registration at MIT. Even students who satisfy the IELTS/TOEFL requirement for admission may be required to take specialized subjects in English as a Second Language (ESL), depending on their EET results. These subjects do not count toward the required degree credits.
Curriculum Vitae, uploaded to the system.
A portfolio of work, uploaded to the application. See program-specific instructions for portfolio requirements.
An Essay of one or two pages must be uploaded to the application system. Indicate why you are applying, and describe your qualifications for the degree.
A non-refundable Application Fee of $75 USD. You will need to submit a credit card number on the Architecture Graduate Application to process this fee. If you have a financial hardship, you may apply for an Application Fee Waiver: http://gradadmissions.mit.edu/feewaiver
Submission of completed application form by the application deadline.
You may apply to two different programs within the Department of Architecture. If you are considering two programs, discuss your plans with our admissions staff to save yourself unnecessary fees. Multiple applications are allowed, but are not necessary in many cases. The link to apply to the Master of Architecture program is https://gradapply.mit.edu/architecture_ma/apply. For every other program, the link is: https://gradapply.mit.edu/architecture/apply.
Be sure to review the Application Instructions.
The application deadline for 2021 has been extended to January 6, 2021 due to staff break between December 23, 2020 and January 3, 2021. We will be unable to respond to emails during that period but will do so beginning January 4.
SMArchS AD-Specific Admissions Requirements
Graduate Record Examination
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is not required for SMArchS applicants.
Portfolio
A portfolio is required of all SMArchS Urbanism applicants, including those who do not have a previous architecture degree or background.
The portfolio should include evidence of recent creative work, whether personal, academic or professional. Choose what you care about, what you think is representative of your best work, and what is expressive of you. Work done collaboratively should be identified as such and the applicant's role in the project defined. Your name, and program to which you are applying should also be included. We expect the portfolio to be the applicant's own work. Applicants whose programs require portfolios will upload a 30-page maximum), 15MB (maximum) PDF file to the online application system. The dimensions should be exported for screen viewing. Two page "spreads" are counted as one page.
Interviews
Interviews are not required for SMArchS applicants. All prospective students are welcome to visit the Department. If you would like to visit the campus for a student tour of the Department, please contact in advance of your trip:
arch@mit.edu
Decisions and Notifications
Applicants will be notified by mail of the Department's decision by April 1. Decisions cannot be given by telephone.
Degree requirements for SMArchS Urbanism
1
The following information applies to SMArchS degree programs in all disciplines.
Residency
The minimum required residency for students enrolled in the SMArchS program is two full academic years, to be completed in four consecutive semesters of enrollment.
Faculty Advising
A faculty advisor from the Department of Architecture is assigned to each SMArchS student at matriculation. The advisor weighs in on the student's initial plan of study and on each subsequent term's choice of subjects. This individual should be a faculty member with whom the student is in close contact. The advisor monitors the student's progress through completion of the degree.
Subjects and Credit Units
The SMArchS degree is awarded upon satisfactory completion of an approved program of at least 96 graduate units, and an acceptable thesis.
Students, with their advisors, construct individual programs of study focused on their particular interests. Subjects that must be taken include:
- 4.221, Architecture Studies Colloquium (1st term)
- One or two core subjects in methods from the list below depending on the student’s area of study (1st and/or 2nd semester):
- Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture: 4.619 Historiography of Islamic Architecture and 4.621 Orientalism and Representation
- Architectural Design: 4.130 Architecture Design Theory and Methodologies
- Architecture and Urbanism: 4.228 Contemporary Urbanism Proseminar: Theory and Representation, and 4.163J Urban Design Studio
- Building Technology: 4.481, Building Technology Seminar
- Computation: 4.580, Inquiry into Computation and Design
- History, Theory and Criticism: 4.661, Theory and Method in the Study of Architecture and Art (HTC students are required to take this subject both fall terms of their residency)
- Six subjects within the student’s area of interest; in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, one additional required subject is 4.612 Islamic Architecture and the Environment; in Architecture and Urbanism, two of the subjects must be 4.241J Theory of City Form and one approved option design studio
- 4.s14 SMArchS Architectural Design Pre-Thesis Preparation, 4.286 SMArchS Urbanism Pre-Thesis Preparation, 4.587 SMArchS Computation Pre-Thesis Preparation, 4.686 SMArchS AKPIA Pre-Thesis Preparation, 4.688 HTC Pre-Thesis Preparation, 4.288 Preparation for SMArchS Thesis for SMArchS AD only (2nd term)
- 4.288, Preparation for SMArchS Thesis; SMArchS AD students register for 4.ThG Graduate Thesis (3rd term)
- 4.THG, Graduate Thesis (final term)
Download a chart of required courses here.
English Proficiency Requirement
All students whose first language is not English are required to take the English Evaluation Test (EET) prior to registration at MIT. Even students who satisfy the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) or the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) requirement for admission may be required to take specialized subjects in English as a Second Language (ESL), depending on their EET results. These subjects do not count toward the required units but will be necessary for students who need to develop the language skills suitable for a written thesis.
Policy on Incomplete Subjects and Thesis Semester
SMArchS students may have no more than one incomplete in a required subject when they register for thesis (4.THG). This incomplete can be no older than one term (received the term prior to thesis registration).
Students who have incompletes from several subjects or incompletes from earlier terms will be denied registration until those subjects are finished and graded. This policy applies to incompletes in subjects required by the degree curriculum or needed for units toward the degree.
SMArchS Thesis Preparation and Thesis Schedule
Thesis Preparation
Students enroll in Preparation for SMArchS Thesis (4.288) their third term of registration.
By Week 7, students finalize selecting a thesis advisor. The result of this 9-unit subject is a well-formulated thesis proposal and a department-scheduled presentation of the thesis proposal at the end of the term. By Week 14, students must submit a signed copy of the thesis proposal form and thesis proposal to the degree administrator for master's programs in the headquarters of the Department of Architecture. Once the SMArch Committee has approved the thesis proposals in consultation with the thesis advisor, students are permitted to register for thesis the following semester. Any student who is not able to produce an acceptable thesis proposal by the end of the term will be given until the end of IAP to produce a thesis proposal. If the proposal is still not acceptable, the student will be required to retake Preparation for SMArchS Thesis (4.288) their fourth term of registration.
The SMArchS thesis committee is composed of at least two and no more than three members. The thesis advisor must be permanent member of the Department of Architecture faculty. The first reader must be a permanent faculty member of the Department of Architecture or a related department at MIT. The third member (second reader) may be any member of the MIT faculty or research staff, an outside professional or a faculty member from another institution.
Co-thesis supervision is permitted as long as one of the advisors in a permanent member of the Department of Architecture faculty. The other advisor may be any member of the MIT faculty or research staff, an outside professional or a faculty member from another institution.
Thesis
SMArchS students who have an approved thesis proposal are required to register for 36 units of thesis (4.THG) in their fourth and final term.
During Week 7 (before Spring Vacation), each discipline area will schedule the thesis review for its students. At the review, students will submit a draft or prototype or complete conceptual design of the thesis to his/her thesis committee, and reviewers from across the discipline areas will attend the reviews. If a student's progress is not satisfactory, the student will not be permitted to present at the final review.
During Week 11, SMArchS students will submit one copy of the thesis book to their thesis committees and meet with their thesis committees to formally defend the thesis.
NOTE: The Week 11 defense is a penultimate review. Presenting at the final review is seen as a privilege, not a right. Faculty is under no compunction to pass inadequate work. If a student's work is found wanting, s/he will not be allowed to present at the public final review. The committee may decide not to pass the thesis, or alternatively, pass it only after the student undertakes additional work to meet targets set by the committee, on a date agreed on by the latter. An extension beyond the academic year will only be granted in response to a written petition by the student concerned. The petition must be addressed to the SMArchS committee, upon which the committee will reach a decision in consultation with the thesis advisor.
By Week 14, students will submit two copies of the final approved, archival-ready thesis to the headquarters of the Department of Architecture by the Institute deadline for master's theses as published in the MIT Academic Calendar. Consult the SMArchS Degree Administrator to confirm the thesis submission deadline. Students must adhere to the Specifications for Thesis Preparation published by the Institute Archives.
The SMArchS thesis final presentations are scheduled by the Department during the last week of the term (Week 15). These presentations, also known as final reviews, are made to the Department of Architecture community, faculty, students, and invited external reviewers. A copy of each thesis book submitted during Week 14 will be available at the reviews.
The SMArchS degree is awarded after all the degree requirements have been met, and after two copies of the approved, archival-ready thesis have been submitted to the headquarters of the Department of Architecture by the Institute deadline for master's theses as published in the MIT Academic Calendar. Consult the SMArchS Degree Administrator to confirm the thesis submission deadline. Students must adhere to the Specifications for Thesis Preparation published by the Institute Archives.
