SCI-Arc

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.

06/02/2026

Spending the Day with Emine Part 1

walks us through school, where she spent the last 5 years studying.

Filmed & edited by

Please join us on June 6 + 7 at the SCI-Arc campus for LITLIT: The Little Literary Fair.LITLIT is a free, public celebra...
06/02/2026

Please join us on June 6 + 7 at the SCI-Arc campus for LITLIT: The Little Literary Fair.

LITLIT is a free, public celebration of independent presses, literary organizations, and book makers from across the West Coast. Over two days, attendees can explore a wide range of publications, meet editors and publishers, and engage with programming that highlights the richness of contemporary literary culture.

SCI-Arc's ONRAMP 8 publication returns with the thesis work from 2024/25 graduating class, engaging AI, climate, fabrication and material futures. Pick up your copy during LITLIT.

Publications by SCI-Arc faculty will also be available for purchase at the SCI-Arc Retail Store throughout the event including Puzzling assemblies, by Dwayne Oyler + Jenny Wu and City as a Technical Being: On the Mode of Existence of Architecture, by Peter Trummer.

Don't miss the Sunday, June 7 panel at 1pm: Archiving Los Angeles: Art, Community, and Infrastructure featuring Pierce Myers of the Resilient Futures Task Force at SCI-Arc.

More info: https://www.sciarc.edu/events/events/litlit

Project by B.Arch student Timothy Moon for Matthew Au's Spring 2026 1B Studio.There's still time to apply for Fall 2026!...
05/29/2026

Project by B.Arch student Timothy Moon for Matthew Au's Spring 2026 1B Studio.

There's still time to apply for Fall 2026! Learn more about Undergraduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/undergraduate-program/why-sci-arc

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

05/29/2026

Coordinator Florencia Pita introduces the Master of Science in Synthetic Landscapes, a one-year, three-semester postgraduate degree program focused on emerging problems in contemporary ecological design.

Learn more and apply: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/postgraduate/synthetic-landscapes

SCI-Arc’s Synthetic Landscapes program tackles the urgent realities of climate change by introducing a new approach to design that merges architecture, urbanism, ecology, and landscape. Recognizing that the built and natural worlds are now inseparable, the program asks students to rethink how humans coexist with the environments we shape and inhabit. Led by faculty and visiting experts, Synthetic Landscapes explores the aesthetic, technological, and ecological implications of our planetary condition while preparing students to imagine new forms of practice and new modes of living within an already-altered world. Applicants must hold a bachelor’s degree, with priority given to backgrounds in architecture, landscape architecture, and related fields.

05/28/2026

Coordinator Florencia Pita () introduces the Master of Science in Synthetic Landscapes (), a one-year, three-semester postgraduate degree program focused on emerging problems in contemporary ecological design.

Learn more and apply at the Postgraduate Programs 💡 link in bio.

SCI-Arc’s Synthetic Landscapes program tackles the urgent realities of climate change by introducing a new approach to design that merges architecture, urbanism, ecology, and landscape. Recognizing that the built and natural worlds are now inseparable, the program asks students to rethink how humans coexist with the environments we shape and inhabit. Led by faculty and visiting experts, Synthetic Landscapes explores the aesthetic, technological, and ecological implications of our planetary condition while preparing students to imagine new forms of practice and new modes of living within an already-altered world. Applicants must hold a bachelor’s degree, with priority given to backgrounds in architecture, landscape architecture, and related fields.

05/28/2026

What does it mean to study architecture at a school that refuses to define it in only one way? In this film, Nathan Hume, Chair of Graduate and Postgraduate Programs at SCI-Arc, reflects on what sets the school’s graduate programs apart and why this moment in the discipline calls for an education like the one SCI-Arc offers.

Watch the full film on SCI-Arc Channel: https://channel.sciarc.edu/browse/built-for-change-nate-hume-on-sci-arc-s-m-arch-programs

05/27/2026

What does it mean to study architecture at a school that refuses to define it in only one way? In this film, Nathan Hume (), Chair of Graduate and Postgraduate Programs at SCI-Arc, reflects on what sets the school’s graduate programs apart and why this moment in the discipline calls for an education like the one SCI-Arc offers.

Watch the full film at the SCI-Arc Channel link in bio.

Project by M.Arch students Gabriella Vitela + Ana Adams for Jackilin Bloom and Damjan Jovanovic's Spring 2025 2GBX Studi...
05/26/2026

Project by M.Arch students Gabriella Vitela + Ana Adams for Jackilin Bloom and Damjan Jovanovic's Spring 2025 2GBX Studio.

Apply now for Fall 2026! Learn more about SCI-Arc Graduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/graduate/why-sci-arc

Aquapod is a theater that integrates water systems as part of a sequential theater experience. Our concept began with a series of pods, which would become sequential theaters. A shell then wraps and begins to lightly take on the form of the pods within. What is enclosed inside becomes expressed on the exterior shell, giving the mass a bubbly form. The building integrates two independent water systems. Both of which are represented in our sequential theater pods that add to the theatrical story. One system being rainwater harvesting for water screens and on a larger scale the direct ocean capture system as a method of extracting carbon dioxide. Actively improving the environment. Lifting off from street level, our building opens the ground to public plaza space. This draws the community in to engage with our building and use the public plaza space and gives hints of the water processes above. Spatially, the pods become floating in space per say, creating moments where users orient themselves in space and get to experience a rhythm of moving between theater to back in the open atrium of the shell. All together this creates a system of movement to promote the waterfront of Seattle's urban environment.

SCI-Arc M.Arch ranks consistently in the Top Ten Programs:
#4 in
#5 in and Skills
#5 in Studies
#6 in Design and Practice
#6 in
#7 in Materials and Methods
#8 in and
#8 in Across A/E/C
#10 in Practice
#10 in Built /

Project by M.Arch students Eduardo Cortazar Cuilty + Ashely Ku for Jenny Wu’s Fall 2025 2GAX Studio.There's still time t...
05/22/2026

Project by M.Arch students Eduardo Cortazar Cuilty + Ashely Ku for Jenny Wu’s Fall 2025 2GAX Studio.

There's still time to apply for Fall 2026! Learn more about SCI-Arc Graduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/graduate/why-sci-arc

The project explores formal complexity and off grid systems within the context of an adaptive reuse intervention of the Lincoln Heights Jail.

The formal process stems from compositions of modular arrangements of various wood trims arranged in orthogonal and freeform compositions. These were subsequently reinterpreted as architectural elements of space, void and skin. Through these elements, the existing concrete structure is expanded, covered and carved away.

SCI-Arc M.Arch ranks consistently in the Top Ten Programs:
#4 in
#5 in and Presentation
#5 in
#6 in Design and
#6 in
#7 in Materials and Methods
#8 in Project and
#8 in Across A/E/C
#10 in Practice Management
#10 in / Designs

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90013

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