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Please note: This program has been transitioned to the Architectural Design studio minor for students entering MICA starting Fall 2024 of later. The information presented here is for current students completing the program as a major.

MICA’s AD department offers a bold alternative that integrates artistic sensibility and imagination with a rigorous design process and knowledge, breaking the mold of convention-based education offerings.

AD provides the creative foundation for designing the unimagined. Forging new ways of living in a time of environmental and social challenges, our student experience is exciting, challenging and varied as well as:

Unique - As one of the few architectural design programs in the country set in a college of art and design, students draw on a wide range of creative disciplines to inform their design work. Students in the Architectural Design department develop an understanding of space, three-dimensional form, and materiality. With these elements, they re-imagine our physical environment and its relationship to the body, the city and the landscape.

Personal and Multidisciplinary -  we encourage students to find their voice and develop their own creative process and always think in a multidisciplinary manner, in addition to giving students a practical toolkit of architecture skills. Our students reach an essential competency and go further to find their unique expression.

Design Process Informed - Design concepts are conceived through research and analysis in a creative exchange of components of the problem to be solved. This process is explored through drawing and model-making simultaneously. Students learn to be ambidextrous in hand-skills as well as digital skills.

High Achieving - Graduates of the program use their multi-faceted skill set allowing them to choose from a wide range of professional and academic options. Many develop their art as a studio practice, others continue to some of the most prestigious Architecture graduate programs in the country, and others develop their practice at the best architecture firms nationally and internationally. 

Future focused - Architectural Design is a unique opportunity for students to develop their design aspirations by investigating and reimagining the built environment. The program provides the core experience students need to become the next generation of Architectural Design professionals.

 

What Makes Us Unique

Why Architecture at MICA?

Today’s graduate schools, firms and clients are looking for architects who are independent thinkers who offer a creative vision and bring an imaginative perspective to design problems, who bring empathy and insight to clients and resident communities’ needs. These are exactly the strengths that the AD students develop. Our students intern at top firms in the city, such as Ziger Snead, PIKL and UDG; most often joining a firm straight after graduation. Similarly, our alumni are admitted to top graduate Architecture programs at Columbia, UPenn, RISD and others.

See Portfolios of Student Work

Architectural Design students post projects and portfolios on 'MICA Portfolios', be sure to visit the page and enjoy the work.

Weekly Lunchtime Lectures are open to all!

Guest speakers are invited to talk about innovative designs, solutions to pressing environmental problems, community initiatives and more. Join AD in listening to the speakers every Thursday noon till 1 pm.

State-of-the-Art Spaces

Dolphin Design Center

Dolphin Design Center was created specifically for designers in the 21st century, with state-of-the-art fabrication and design spaces that support the multidisciplinary ways creative makers work.

Housed on the top floor of the new Dolphin Center, the AD studio is the home base for MICA’s Architectural Design students. This is where studio courses are taught; where assignments are completed; where students mingle, get to know each other, and learn from one another. A community sense is nurtured thanks to our studio culture. For example, once a week we all have lunch together and listen to guest speakers as part of our lunchtime lecture series.

Set design for Brandon Brooks, Performance of Gender Requires Duality, 2018
Performance of Gender Requires Duality by Brandon Brooks + Enlarge
Artwork installation by Christina Stone
Circular by Christina Stone + Enlarge
Sculpture and installation by Claudia Chang
The Space Between by Claudia Chang + Enlarge
Artwork by Eun Byeol Cho
Construction Through Emotion: Semiology of Architecture by Eun Byeol Cho + Enlarge
Set design for Brandon Brooks, Performance of Gender Requires Duality, 2018

Performance of Gender Requires Duality

Artist
Brandon Brooks
Date
2018
Credit

Joseph Hyde

Artwork installation by Christina Stone

Circular

Artist
Christina Stone
Date
2018
Credit

Joseph Hyde

Sculpture and installation by Claudia Chang

The Space Between

Artist
Claudia Chang
Date
2018
Credit

Joseph Hyde

Artwork by Eun Byeol Cho

Construction Through Emotion: Semiology of Architecture

Artist
Eun Byeol Cho
Date
2017
Credit

Joseph Hyde

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