Located in a quarter-mile-long former freight depot in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles, SCI-Arc has become an integral part of the emerging cultural hub of Los Angeles, a city with a strong tradition and history of architectural experimentation. The school is distinguished by the vibrant atmosphere of its studios and its advanced digital and analog facilities, providing students with a uniquely inspiring environment in which to study architecture and design.
Message from the Directors
Across our history, SCI-Arc has become a place where virtuosos train and thrive. Drawing on our legacy of seeking radically new responses to the changing needs and aspirations of our society, we are listening more deeply, playing more meaningfully, and remain dedicated to reimagining spatial and social environments for an everexpanding world.
SCI-Arc, like architecture, is forever a work in progress. Embracing the future requires confidence and humility in equal measure: confidence to believe that we can shape reality, and humility to understand that we are always learning. We don’t have all the answers—but we invite you to work together with us to discover them.
Hernán Díaz Alonso, Director / CEO
SCI-Arc is a place for students and faculty to explore ideas and concepts that are difficult or not quite ready for the general profession yet but will most likely manifest in the near future. SCI-Arc offers a protected environment where all voices are respected, heard, and encouraged to participate in an ongoing dialogue of what these futures might be.
John Enright, Vice Director / Chief Academic Officer
↑ John Enright, Thaxton and Associates Office and Retail Building, Los Angeles CA
SCI-Arc by the Numbers
250 undergraduate students
Number of countries represented: 91; out-of-state: 64%; in-state: 36%
200 graduate students
50 postgraduate students
A top-ten design school
An international community of more than 5,000 alumni
Average student to faculty ratio 12:1
$12 million merit-based scholarships awarded annually 90 professionally practicing faculty representing over 20 nations
Over 80% of incoming admitted students receive admissions scholarships totaling over $2.5 million
Three Pritzker Prize-winning faculty and alumni
Educational Goals
Design is a humanist venture
Over five decades, SCI-Arc has remained unequaled in its reputation for risk and excellence in architecture and design, with a pedagogy that emphasizes a liberal artsbased education, by practicing different modes of thinking across different fields of knowledge as a broad foundation for making architecture.
SCI-Arc’s Design Studios are hands-on, project-based courses where students build visual literacy, learn design skills, test ideas, and receive continuous, personal feedback on their work from studio faculty. Through Visual Studies, students gain not only the ability to technically document and visually communicate a building’s design, but also a deep and long-standing interest in applying cutting-edge tools for productive creative media. Applied Studies courses challenge students to investigate how our world is constructed, what constitutes an environment, and how architecture of the next century might respond to global change. History + Theory provides a rigorous immersion into architectural discourse where it intersects with philosophy, art history, music, literature, popular culture, and other forms of cultural production, equipping students to become leaders within an interdisciplinary, global context.
SCI-Arc's degree programs have been approved by the US government as official STEM-designated programs of study.
The Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) program at SCI-Arc is a five-year professional degree, accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), focusing on design intelligence, technological agility, and cultural awareness through a liberal arts-based education.
Through core and elective design studios, students build a robust set of skills and sensibilities for making and appreciating architecture. SCI-Arc’s B.Arch program produces confident designers and broad-thinking problem solvers, primed to become leaders of their profession.
Students emerge with sophisticated portfolios of work that make them highly competitive in the global architectural marketplace. B.Arch graduates are poised to establish their own practices and become licensed professionals, enter top international architectural offices, or continue on to higher education in the world’s most competitive graduate programs.
Bachelor of Architecture
Undergraduate Programs Chairs:
Kristy Balliet + Marcelyn Gow
SCI-Arc's pedagogy embraces the intersection of sociopolitical, cultural, and technological factors, prompting students to explore unconventional approaches in addressing discoursebased challenges. SCI-Arc actively promotes the amplification of marginalized voices, enabling crucial dialogues around critical issues involving race, gender, sexuality, disability, and others to be afforded a supportive and inclusive sanctuary for exploration and examination.
Malvin B. Wibowo, B.Arch ‘21
Santiago Alvarez + Malvin B. Wibowo, fifth-year project
→ Zane Mechem, fifth-year project
↓ Travis Du, first-year project
→ Shun Sasaki + Oliver Hu, third-year project
↓ Firdavs Yuldashev + David Aizenman, fourth-year project
SCI-Arc has taught me that architecture is so much more than designing buildings. It’s more about the future, the people, and the community around them.
Stella Buckmann, B.Arch ‘22
↑ Manqui Jian, second-year project
← Junhyeong Lee, third-year project
↑ Anqi Wang, third-year project
↑ Eric Swanson, third-year project
← Holland Seropian, third-year project
Bachelor of Science in Design
The Bachelor of Science in Design (BS Design) program at SCIArc is a four-year, non-professional degree preparing visually sophisticated, spatially informed, and technologically literate students for creative careers in cinema and production design, gaming, and data-based urban planning, using architecture as a platform for exploration.
BS Design is a liberal arts-based program organized into a two-year foundation sequence, followed by a two-year track during which students have the option to focus on Data, Film, or Interactive Design. The foundation sequence culminates in a concentrated case studio, where students learn analysis, visualization, and design workflows that integrate environments, media, and urban infrastructures across multiple scales.
*Pending WSCUC approval (2023–24)
Undergraduate Programs Chairs:
Kristy Balliet + Marcelyn Gow
SCI-Arc's M.Arch 1 is a three-year, seven-semester program leading to a Master of Architecture degree accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). An M.Arch 1 degree allows graduates to access the architectural licensure for professional practice in the United States.
Central to M.Arch 1 is a firm commitment to design excellence, achieved through a comprehensive course of study that provides students with a solid intellectual base and understanding of the history, theory, technology, and professional practice of architecture.
Open to students who hold an undergraduate degree in any field of study, the M.Arch 1 program at SCI-Arc is where applied research and cross-disciplinary experience are synthesized to inform architectural production.
M.Arch 1
Graduate
Programs Chair: Elena Manferdini
SCI-Arc is more than a school of architecture, it’s a school of architectural thinking, where nothing is off limits, and the goal is to challenge what we conceive of as architecture. Being a student at SCI-Arc has deepened my love for architecture and design and helped me to discover how I can contribute to the discipline through my own interests.
Aminatou Fall, M.Arch 1 ‘19
← Charles Allen + John Chan, Merit Graduate Thesis Award
↓ John Chan, first-year project
→ Sue Choi + Ian Wong, Gehry Prize, thesis project
SCI-Arc’s M.Arch 2 is a two-year, five-semester program leading to a Master of Architecture degree accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). An M.Arch 2 degree allows graduates to access the architectural licensure for professional practice in the United States.
Open to students who hold an undergraduate degree in architecture, the M.Arch 2 program at SCI-Arc propels speculative design exploration, while advancing formal experimentation that expands the boundaries of contemporary architectural practice.
The M.Arch 2 program is designed for students looking to focus their architectural education on cutting-edge tools and techniques, and to expand their experience in digital design, formal exploration, real time simulation, environmental stewardship, AI, AR/VR fabrication, and critical thinking.
← Felix Reyes + Matthew Schultz, second-year project
Graduate Programs Chair:
Elena Manferdini
↑ Ian Fennimore + Arnar Skarphedinsson, first-year project
← Camille Thai, Merit Graduate Thesis Prize
I have always been extremely drawn to the attention to detail that the visuals produced by SCI-Arc students entail, and I wanted to learn how to do the same. I chose to attend SCI-Arc because I knew that it would push me beyond my limits as a designer. I feel like the creative process I’ve learned at SCI-Arc is something that I will bring with me throughout the rest of my architectural career.
Julia
Arnold, M.Arch 2 ‘19
↑ Austin Jeffrey Lightle, thesis project
↑ Shuang Chu, first-year project
→ Felix Reyes + Matthew Schultz, third-year project
SCI-Arc’s masters programs are obsessed with reimagining the ways architects work in a world increasingly characterized by restless fluctuation. No one knows what the future will look like, but we choose—with relentless optimism—to pursue a future which makes room for each other, and the beautiful stories we hope to bring to life.
As a student at SCI-Arc in the mid-to-late 1990s, I embraced the school’s creative freedom to reshape and re-envision architecture. Decades later, as faculty, I’m excited by renewed interest at the school to push at the boundaries of the discipline. By looking to new technologies like VR and AI, multicultural futurisms, or exploratory media and material practices, there’s a possibility to reposition architecture as central, even in a time of political volatility and climatic crisis.
We call it EDGE because we want to probe the limits of how we understand architecture today, and define new models of what might constitute an architectural career in the twenty-first century. How we define architecture has always been influenced by experiments pushing its limits. Explorations at the frontier always have enduring effects on what we eventually understand as normal. We want to tackle the most difficult problems that test our expertise and imagination and develop entirely new possibilities for a very old discipline.
David Ruy, Postgraduate Programs Chair
← Cate Evans + Zane Mechem, MS Design of Cities
Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture
Postgraduate Programs Chair: David Ruy
The Master of Science in Architectural Technologies is a oneyear, three-semester program focused on contemporary and near-future design technologies. The program formalizes connections between advanced theoretical topics in technological research with the practical study of rapidly developing innovations in platform applications, game engines, machine vision, and AI.
The Architectural Technologies program actively engages new models of entrepreneurship to maximize student involvement with multiple forms of technological expertise and systematized workflows in order to bring disruptive ideas into reality, while investigating how new platforms are fundamentally transforming the way we inhabit and experience the world.
↗ Sanghyun Suh, MS Architectural Technologies '21
Architectural Technologies
Coordinator: M. Casey Rehm
We are not interested in training a generation of software operators; our students will graduate with design knowledge, a business plan, and a technology platform to accelerate the future of architecture.
M. Casey Rehm, Architectural Technologies Coordinator
↖ Jimmy Cheng, MS Architectural Technologies '22
Design Theory and Pedagogy
The Master of Science in Design Theory and Pedagogy is a one-year, three-semester program that addresses the growing ambiguity between practice and academia and prepares students for a new kind of hybrid career that has emerged in architecture: the architect-theorist-educator.
The Design Theory and Pedagogy program at SCI-Arc examines the history of architectural education, its current pedagogies, and encourages the development of unconventional design research that uncompromisingly expands the scope of traditional programs of advanced architectural scholarship to construct a new apparatus for the production of design theory.
← Richard Mapes, MS Design Theory and Pedagogy '22
Coordinator: Marcelyn Gow
At SCI-Arc, the idea of community is a group of individuals dedicated to architectural thinking as a means to reimagine the world and shape new futures. Students in the Design Theory and Pedagogy program experiment with new forms of architectural scholarship, receive hands-on teaching experience within the remarkable studio culture of SCI-Arc, and develop an intellectual framework that can sustain life-long theoretical projects in architecture.
Marcelyn Gow, Design Theory and Pedagogy Coordinator
→ Matthew Ridgeway, MS Design Theory and Pedagogy '21
↓ Carlo Sturken, MS Design Theory and Pedagogy '21
Fiction and Entertainment
The Master of Science in Fiction and Entertainment is a oneyear, three-semester program in which students work with world-renowned professionals in the entertainment industry to develop expertise in worldbuilding, storytelling, film, visual effects, and video games to build new forms of creative practice.
Deeply embedded in the entertainment industry of Los Angeles, SCI-Arc’s MS program in Fiction and Entertainment provides the opportunity for students to learn the techniques of popular media as well as employ a broad range of digital tools to imagine, visualize, and produce provocative worlds that critically examine emerging conditions of contemporary life.
Coordinator: Liam Young
← Rick Farin, MS Fiction and Entertainment '19
We are at an interesting moment where the technologies of filmmaking, visual effects, AI, VR, and video games are collapsing together—it is urgent to widen the breadth of architecture and design beyond just buildings alone. The entertainment industry is now focused on building immersive worlds and SCI-Arc is uniquely positioned to train students in these new practices of spatial storytelling. Our students can work on the next Hollywood blockbuster, virtual reality environments, video games, viral videos, or political campaigns.
Liam Young, Fiction and Entertainment Coordinator
↑ Kordae Henry, MS Fiction and Entertainment '18
→ Meryem Lahlou, MS Fiction and Entertainment '20
The Master of Science in Synthetic Landscapes is a one-year, three-semester program focused on advancing knowledge and developing expertise in the emerging topics of ecological design. Responding to the current climate crisis is likely the single most important design challenge of the twenty-first century. Synthetic Landscapes emphasizes a planetary design perspective to examine how artificial and natural systems can co-evolve, forming new synthetic relationships between the human and the non-human, uncovering new forms of beauty, and making possible new ways of feeling in the many worlds we inhabit.
↗ Yutao Fang, MS Synthetic Landscapes '22
Synthetic Landscapes
Coordinator: Enric Ruiz-Geli
↖ Kazuki Masaki, MS Synthetic Landscapes '22
Design Immersion Days ↑
Design Immersion Days (DID ) is an immersive four-week summer program that introduces high school students to design and architecture experimentation. It is intended to inspire curiosity about the world of design, introduce basic design knowledge and critical thinking skills, and familiarize students with the expansive architecture and design culture of Los Angeles.
Making+Meaning →
Open to creative individuals, inspired professionals, and current college students and graduates, Making+Meaning is a four-week career exploration and portfolio building summer studio program that introduces students to architectural experimentation and transformative design techniques in a unique and lively studio setting.
DID approaches this time of change through a lens of optimism while exploring the possibilities of creative experimentation in the city of Los Angeles within the context of play and fun.
Angelica Lorenzi, DID Coordinator
Summer Programs
Whether you are looking for a career change or a journey into creative discovery, Making+Meaning provides a medium that introduces the participants to cutting-edge tools that indulge curious minds—all while experiencing design at SCI-Arc.
William Virgil, Making+Meaning Coordinator
Faculty
A practicing faculty of leading educators
Representing some of the most dedicated and future-focused thinkers in architecture, culture, history, and technology, SCI-Arc faculty are actively shaping the global discourse and consistently receive recognition for their contributions to education and the field of architecture.
← Liam Young, Planet City, film still, 2021
↓ Darin Johnstone/SCI-Arc/Habitat for Humanity, IVRV House, Westmont CA, 2016
→ Damjan Jovanovic, Discovery, video game still, SCI-Arc Gallery, 2022
↓ Margaret Griffin, Luxe Lake Villas, Chengdu, China, 2019
SCI-Arc is unique because it is the only school in the world devoted exclusively to innovation and forward thinking, refusing any nostalgia and doing away with all cynicism. It is an honest, exciting, and tough place of wild experimentation and technical mastery with its eyes firmly directed towards the future.
Damjan Jovanovic, Design Studio + Visual Studies
↑ David Ruy, Another Manhattan, project using AI-based methods to imagine an agricultural future for Manhattan, 2022
↗ Elena Manferdini, KAIDA Center of Science and Design, Dongguan, China 2019
SCI-Arc is expansive. It exceeds the rectangular volume that holds the acronym. I love that I do not know the edge. It is a place where the vast and transparent display of skill is a constant reminder that it is paramount to capture and define a territory of expertise. It challenges how we define architecture.
Kristy Balliet, Undergraduate Programs Chair
→ Thom Mayne, Entry atrium, Orange County Museum of Art, 2022
There is no other architectural institution or creative environment quite as unique as SCI-Arc. It is vast in its ideas and innovation, with a wide reach that attracts a dynamic global student body. Yet, it maintains an intimate atmosphere, deeply committed to nurturing the growth of each individual student as a designer and architectural thinker. With its talented faculty and supportive staff, the institution continuously fosters novel ways of thinking, teaching, and learning. Architectural knowledge, whether historical, cultural, social, or environmental, is transformed into uncharted territories of architectural discovery.
Jackilin Hah Bloom, Graduate Thesis Coordinator + Design Studio
SCI-Arc has remained this amazing place that is explicitly and implicitly focused on innovation, research, rethinking, and understanding the role of architecture within formal and social terms. It has a collective energy that is quite contagious, which is very unusual in a school that has run for 51 years. SCI-Arc has maintained that energy which has only increased in its sophistication—and it continues to evolve.
Thom Mayne, Founding Faculty
The so-called history of architecture is a retrospective of invented moments. But at SCI-Arc, we’re less concerned with history as a study of what’s past, and more concerned with the history our students will make in the future.
Eric Owen Moss, Distinguished Faculty + Design Studio + History + Theory
← Eric Owen Moss, (W)rapper, Los Angeles CA, 1997-2023
Alumni
Global leaders expanding architecture into new fields
SCI-Arc graduates are part of a community of more than 5,000 alumni working across the globe while representing SCI-Arc’s unique mission and values.
SCI-Arc graduates are heavily recruited by top architecture firms including:
Morphosis Gehry Partners Shigeru Ban Architects
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) UNStudio
Kengo Kuma + Associates Snøhetta MAD Architects
Zaha Hadid Architects Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)
Neil M. Denari Architects Gensler Toyo Ito & Associates
AECOM
SCI-Arc alumni are also equipped to explore diverse career paths and are employed by such leading companies as:
Google NASA JPL Tesla Motors Apple
Samsung Nike Tik Tok Meta
Amazon Music Adidas Hood by Air HBO
← Viviano Villarreal-Buerón, MS Design Theory and Pedagogy '19, Farmacias del Ahorro HQ, Monterrey, Mexico, under construction
Architects can and should collaborate with planners, city officials, politicians, and policymakers to tailor zoning to new uses and new ways of living. Making connections between disparate elements to create a comprehensive whole is what we do. Design can promote social change.
Angela Brooks, M.Arch 1 '91
↑ Barbara Bestor, M.Arch 1 ‘92, Ashes & Diamonds, Napa CA, 2017
↓ Angela Brooks, The Six Disabled Veteran Housing, Los Angeles CA, 2017
SCI-Arc was really the beginning of my whole entire career. My architecture has a big influence from [my] education [at] SCI-Arc. I found SCI-Arc a very exciting school… it was a great opportunity.
→ Shigeru Ban, B.Arch, Nine Bridges Golf Club, South Korea, 2009
SCI-Arc opened a world of new approaches to creation and fabrication. Working on projects with partners and/or a group during my SCI-Arc days really fortified my skills being on a creative team and pushing with others in a similar direction while still advocating for my own creative intentions. I learned how to cultivate “staying curious” throughout the lifetime of a project.
Aja Zarrehparvar, M.Arch 2 ’18, Shoe Designer at Nike
↑ Aja Zarrehparvar, Waffle One, Nike, 2021
Workflow-oriented design thinking benefited me a lot for all the professional roles I have been taking after leaving SCI-Arc. By spending time playing with different workflow procedures and thus forming a knowledge of combining different digital tools strategically and wisely, I was able to unleash unexposed talent or insights not obtained otherwise.
Our students come from all over the world, representing over 50 nations, as well as a wide range of academic, professional, and cultural backgrounds —all possessing a shared passion for architecture.
Expanded Opportunities for Students
The Student Union (STUN) administers student activities and helps to support the student community at SCI-Arc. It helps to fund student-built work, student exhibitions, and student publications, as well as purchasing supplemental tools for departments such as the shop and computer resources, and sponsoring competitions and special projects.
The Peer Mentorship program fosters connectivity within the SCI-Arc student community. Student Peer Mentors are knowledgeable guides and advocates who support and encourage new student success at SCI-Arc.
Culture Clubs are groups for SCI-Arc community members with a shared background or interest to convene for mutual support, understanding, special events, and a sense of belonging.
Background: Astha Kapila, MS Architectural Technology '22
While much of the architecture school experience unfolds within SCI-Arc’s design studios, conversations often extend beyond the school, animating the many restaurants, cafes, and galleries in the surrounding Arts District.
Los Angeles
Cultural Immersion in the Heart of Los Angeles
SCI-Arc’s proximity to the rapidly developing Arts District and downtown LA enables a dynamic cultural exchange between the school and a neighboring burgeoning design economy.
SCI-Arc houses advanced facilities for research, production, and experimentation.
Facilities
Within its quarter-mile-long campus, SCI-Arc is proud to offer one of the most advanced fabrication facilities of any architecture school. Students have access to more than 12,000-square feet of fabrication facilities, including the SCI-Arc Shop, Robot House, and Magic Box, which feature the latest comprehensive technologies, additive and reductive manufacturing machinery and programs, and six state-of-the-art Stäubli robots. The latest addition to its robot family is the Robot Annex, home to SCI-Arc’s new ABB 6700 robot.
The only academic library in Southern California focused on architecture, the Kappe Library supports architectural research, teaching, and learning at SCI-Arc, with a concentrated collection maintained by experienced and knowledgeable staff.
↓ Robot House
↑ Kappe Library
↓ Analog Fabrication Shop
Groundbreaking Research
The SCI-Arc R*Search department is dedicated to expanding ongoing research initiatives, identifying new territories for design's engagement with urgent topics, and experimenting with emerging technologies to ensure more inclusive and justice-oriented spatial practices. Partners include The Getty Foundation, Google AMI, Epic Games, and the United States Forest Service.
↑ Housing research workshop with students from Abaarso Tech University in Somaliland
Public Programs
SCI-Arc’s public programs invite the community into the school to foster debate and understanding of architecture and design’s capacity to transform the world.
The SCI-Arc Gallery is the only cultural institution in Los Angeles committed to exhibiting experimental projects by contemporary architects.
SCI-Arc’s renowned lecture series features an eclectic selection of lecturers from multiple disciplines, including architects, artists, filmmakers, engineers, theoreticians, and performers.
↓ SCI-Arc Gallery
International Initiatives
Engaging with the international architecture community, SCI-Arc provides students with the opportunity to expand their practice and education beyond Los Angeles. The school collaborates with institutions and organizations around the world to expand its global reach and to offer students an education as wide-ranging as design itself.
SCI-Arc engages the global dialogue surrounding design through satellite initiatives, as well as study abroad and exchange programs in Mexico, India, China, Colombia, and more.
