Post-Professional Master of Science, Advanced Architectural Design
Cornell's post-professional Master of Science, Advanced Architectural Design program (M.S. AAD) is an intensive, advanced architectural design research program open to individuals holding a B.Arch. or professional M.Arch. degree. The program offers a critical framework for investigating pertinent design concerns, practices, and technologies in 21st-century architecture and urbanism. Three- and four-semester options are available, both starting with a summer semester in New York City and continuing at the Ithaca campus.
The M.S. AAD is designated as a STEM program in Architectural and Building Sciences/Technology (CIP code 04.0902) making international graduates eligible to extend their F-1 visas for up to three years to work in the United States.
Territories of Investigation
In both three- and four-semester options, students take core and advanced topic studios along with elective classes, which allow them to pursue trajectories of inquiry within one of four interrelated territories of investigation:
Architecture and Discourse: Theory, criticism, publishing, cultural production, design research, history, and contemporaneity
- Participating faculty: Esra Akcan, Lily Chi, Val Warke
Architecture and Ecology: Sustainable practices, soft infrastructures, materials research, environmental simulation, computational design, digital fabrication, performance-driven design
- Participating faculty: Timur Dogan, Jenny Sabin, Sasa Zivkovic
Architecture and Representation: Emerging technologies, drawing fields, digital and generative design, new cartographies, media spaces, architectural publications and exhibitions, theories of representation
- Participating faculty: Lily Chi, Luben Dimcheff, Timur Dogan, Jenny Sabin, Andrea Simitch, Sasa Zivkovic
Architecture and Urbanism: Urban geography, typological studies, urban theory, networks, infrastructures, urban imaging, ecological urbanism
- Participating faculty: Esra Akcan, Lily Chi, Timur Dogan, Val Warke
In the three-semester option, students take elective classes in their selected territory of investigation during the fall and spring semesters. In the four-semester option, students take elective classes in their selected territory of investigation during the fall semester and take elective courses in their minor concentration — consistent with their territory of investigation — during the final spring and fall semesters.
