UCLA Arts: Architecture and Urban Design

Building a Foundation for the Future

Los Angeles is a city beaming with possibility. As home to UCLA, an expanding and culturally diverse population, and new businesses in virtually every industry, our city is rife with new opportunities for innovation and change in its urban infrastructure.

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is a champion of ideas and their articulate expression. Our exceptional faculty teach students to engage the world around them, to see ideas as productive forms of response, and to leverage design and writing as expressions of newly curated perspectives. These ideas are grounded in a critical engagement with the history and theory of architecture and the future contingencies of contemporary culture. Through rigorous inquiry, we interrogate contemporary urban issues and propose possible futures with equal measures of expertise, optimism, and vision.

Our vision is to champion and expand the influence of architecture in society. We don’t simply train architects and urban designers; we train educators, scholars, curators, and artists. Our students produce compelling projects and impact culture broadly across the intersecting vectors of design, media, technology, and urbanism.

The tools and curriculum of architecture and urban design are rapidly transforming research, design, and construction in all aspects of the built environment. Your generosity helps to support scholarships, improvements in technology and digital fabrication, student travel, and more.