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SCI-Arc

The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is an independent, accredited school of architecture in Los Angeles, CA. www.sciarc.edu
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It offers graduate and undergraduate degrees, public programs and lectures. Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is dedicated to educating architects who will imagine and shape the future. It is an independent, accredited degree-granting institution offering undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture. Located in a quarter-mile-long former freight depot in the Arts Distr

ict in Downtown Los Angeles, the school is distinguished by its vibrant studio culture and emphasis on process. SCI-Arc’s approximately 500 students and 80 faculty members, most of whom are practicing architects, work together to re-examine assumptions, create, explore and test the limits of architecture. SCI-Arc faculty and leadership have garnered more than 500 national and international design awards and recognitions, including Progressive Architecture awards, American Institute of Architects (AIA) awards, and the prestigious Jencks and Pritzker architecture prizes. SCI-Arc is ranked 1st in computer applications and 2nd in design in the 2013 America’s Best Architecture Schools survey from DesignIntelligence, and #1 graduate and undergraduate architecture school in Western U.S.

09/10/2026

Join us on Friday, September 18 from 10am-6pm for Playing Models: Artificial Intelligence, Architecture, Storytelling.

Playing Models: Artificial Intelligence, Architecture, Storytelling is a series of yearly symposia that began in 2022. It has developed into a cross-institutional collaboration between the University of Florida, ETH Zurich, Carnegie Mellon University, and Lawrence Technological University. Currently in its fifth cycle, hosted at SCI-Arc, the symposium aims to develop a platform to share thoughts on the mathematical, political, and philosophical shifts emerging with the spread of AI and its many faces.

Architecture as an intelligence of jointing and connecting seemingly disparate concepts, methods, and realms is situated at the core of our discussions, telling stories about the world while being firmly present within it.

For each cycle of the symposium, through lectures and sessions/discussions, the invited guests focus on particular themes within the larger umbrella of Playing Models.

This event is free to attend in person and will be broadcast live via YouTube: https://www.sciarc.edu/events/events/playing-models

09/08/2026

Please join us on Friday, September 11 at 6pm for a book lecture and lecture from Craig Hodgetts and Ming Fung: Reading Design – The Visual Language of Common Objects.

More information: https://www.sciarc.edu/events/lectures/reading-design

Design is a language, just like any other, except that sentences begin and end with pictures instead of words. “Reading Design – The Visual Language of Common Objects” is meant to be an interpretive guide bridging disparate design languages, historic eras, and critical discourse in order to promote a more inclusive, discerning, and informed appreciation of contemporary principles of design and architecture.

With a spirited visual format, Reading Design is the first book of its kind to feature images drawn from fashion, architecture, and consumer products upon the same pages, and dissect their common roots. With hi-rez illustrations and analytic text by architect Craig Hodgetts, it connects the dots between, for instance, the GMC Hummer and the Centre Pompidou or the punk fashion of Rick Owens and Frank Gehry’s line of furniture.

Craig Hodgetts is an architect, writer, and futurist best known for his illustrations for Ernest Callenbach’s “Ecotopia” and for the design of the Hollywood Bowl. Over the years he has written for popular magazines as well as professional journals. all while maintaining the architecture and design practice his wife and he have helmed for forty years.

Ming Fung is the former Director of Academic Affairs at SCI-Arc, and co-founder of Hodgetts+Fung. Together, they have designed everything from prize winning television ads, trade show installations and significant museum shows, most recently for “California Design” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Among their early projects are UCLA’s Temporary Library, and Blueprints for Modern Living, still acclaimed as the birthplace of Mid-Century Design, each project contributing to the development of their broad, inclusive overview of design matters.

09/07/2026

Project by M.Arch 1 student Floyd Emelife for Anna Neimark's Spring 2026 1GB studio.

Learn more about SCI-Arc Graduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/graduate/why-sci-arc

The focus for this 1GB project was the design of a mixed-use public building. By exploring concepts of oblique geometries and regular grid systems, my project was developed as a structural 'kit of parts'. This framework helped explore elements of passive cooling and a continuous circulation loop, while intentionally breaking the regular grid to test how an ordering system scales from the broader urban context down to interior details.

09/05/2026

Project by B.Arch student Emanuele Di Paola for Zeina Koreitem's Fall 2025 4A Studio.

Learn more about Undergraduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/undergraduate-program/why-sci-arc

SCI-Arc Extension

Not an addition. A recognition.

The project starts from the spaces at SCI-Arc that students already use every day. The Fishbowl, Spanish Steps, Thesis Pit, Library, Hallways, Long Bar Typology. It takes them seriously as architectural components. Rather than proposing something new, it asks what happens when you acknowledge that these spaces already work, and let that acknowledgment become the design itself.

Keck Hall is the pulsating heart of SCI-Arc. Everything in the building orbits it. Reviews happen there, juries gather there, the energy of the school concentrates and disperses from that single volume. The extension treats Keck as the center of gravity it already is and mirrors the existing bar outward from it, extending the organizational logic of the school symmetrically along the same spine.

A long span steel truss roof carries the full width of the program while service elements anchor each end. The rhythm of the structural bays dictates the spacing of the windows, giving the facade its measured repetition. Corridor, critique space, studio, and gathering all fall back into place. The program does not invent new relationships between spaces. It inherits them.

The circulation follows SCI-Arc's own strategy. Each main floor pairs with a mezzanine, layering the section the same way the existing building does. What the school already figured out in section, the extension simply continues.

Even the skin comes from the building as it is now. You walk the length of the bar every day, and over time you develop a sensibility for its walls, for the way light dims and softens through the mesh blinds overhead. The metal mesh exterior facade carries that feeling forward, turning an everyday atmospheric condition into an architectural decision.

An architecture that listens before it builds.

📐 Ground Plan + Section at 1/32" · Model at 1/16" Los Angeles, 2025.

09/04/2026

With over 40 guest critics in attendance along with dozens of SCI-Arc faculty, last week’s 2026 Graduate Thesis Reviews investigated 48 M.Arch 1 and M.Arch 2 students’ inquiries into architecture’s future.

Graduate Thesis marks a pivotal moment in the culmination of a year of research, experimentation, and architectural production. Across this year’s work, architecture emerged as a practice of transformation: working with existing buildings, materials, and systems to imagine a new tomorrow.

Visit the 2026 Graduate Thesis Exhibition on view at SCI-Arc through Friday, September 11. More info at the link in bio.

09/03/2026

09/02/2026

Courses in architectural representation help students turn design ideas into tangible artifacts that others can see, feel, understand, and appreciate. In this film, Anna Neimark, Visual Studies Coordinator at SCI-Arc, explains that VS seminars in representation provide students with the tools to make their ideas visible, translating intuitive thinking into a spatial language that can reach a broad audience.

Watch the full film at SCI-Arc Channel: https://channel.sciarc.edu/browse/sci-arc-s-visual-studies-curriculum

Neimark describes an “all of the above” pedagogical approach that introduces students to an array of techniques in visualization: geometric line work, physical and digital modeling, material fabrication, scenic rendering and animation. In the core curriculum, students juggle software and workflows; they move deeper into select topics in elective seminars; and they author their own sequences of techniques in their thesis projects, developing bespoke recipes for fabrication and visualization.

09/01/2026

Project by M.Arch 2 students Jonathan Kadau + Jacob Lehrer for Jenny Wu's Fall 2025 2GAX studio.

Learn more about SCI-Arc Graduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/graduate/why-sci-arc

Transforming the former Lincoln Heights Jail into a porous metabolic engine, this project utilizes net-zero infrastructure as its primary aesthetic driver. The architecture rejects hidden mechanical systems, instead exploding a new steel-timber hybrid structure off the original concrete frame to celebrate its own visible infrastructure. By lifting the massing to scoop air from the Los Angeles River, the design creates a naturally ventilated core that shifts circulation to the exterior, slashing the conditioned floor area by nearly 100,000 square feet. The ground floor is then turned into an open air street market inspired by the local Avenue 26 night market that closed in 2021. The envelope is reimagined as an active, occupiable skin where solar panels and mechanical systems replace traditional finishes to harvest both light and thermal energy. The formal result is a relentless synthesis of performance and tectonic expression. It is an autonomous civic ecosystem where the machine and the garden function as a singular, regenerative apparatus.

08/30/2026

Project by B.Arch student Adele Avenoso for Jackilin Hah Bloom's Fall 2025 2A Studio.

Learn more about Undergraduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/undergraduate-program/why-sci-arc

Bridge Street Elementary School in East Los Angeles is reimagined through a series of physical models, precedent studies, and program organization. The building program of LAUSD remains rigid and universal. By challenging these constraints, the school is developed into an open-air building to create an expansive and inviting learning environment.

SCI-Arc B.Arch ranks consistently in the Top Ten Undergraduate Programs:
#2 in
#3 and
#3 in
#3 From
#5 in and skills
#6 in
Top 10

Address

960 E 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA
90013

Opening Hours

Monday	10am - 6pm
Tuesday	10am - 6pm
Wednesday	10am - 6pm
Thursday	10am - 6pm
Friday	10am - 6pm
Saturday	10am - 6pm
Sunday	10am - 6pm

Telephone

+12136132200

Website

http://www.sciarc.edu/portal/about/resources/supplystore.html

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