Advisors: Craig Barton, Dietrich Neumann, and Julian von der Schulenberg

The Architecture concentration introduces students to a broad understanding of concepts and methods for the planning and design of buildings and urban environments. It connects architectural education firmly to the humanities and provides a greater awareness of historical, global, environmental, social and economic issues in the built environment. This approach to the education of architects and urban planners aims to provide them with the tools needed in today’s fractured urban society. Apart from training careful observation, critical analysis and problem solving, students will acquire skills in sketching, drafting, model-making, and digital rendering. By combining a carefully selected range of classes in architectural design, the humanities, engineering and technology, and urban life and theory, students will acquire necessary proficiency for pursuing a graduate degree in architecture after Brown.

For an in-depth introduction to the program, please see the Architecture Handbook, edited by all program advisors. For samples of student projects, please see Selected Works. 

Interdepartmental & RISD Courses

Our program gives credit to classes taken in RISD’s Architecture, Interior Architecture and Landscape Architecture Departments, as long as they can work as substitutes for similar classes in our course sequence. Concentrators are also encouraged to take courses related to structural engineering in the engineering department.

Honors

Students in the concentration who intend to go to architecture school after graduation, typically expand on a project from their intermediate or Advanced studio for their honors project in their final semester. Others, who tend towards theory or history of architecture, may complete a year-long honors thesis.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of our Architecture concentration from Leyla Tara Suyabatmaz.