Master of Architecture
The Master of Architecture program at Taubman College provides an unparalleled design-based education that prepares students for professional practice while fostering inquiry and experimentation. A vibrant community of renowned faculty and peers offers diverse approaches to research, representation, and making. Linking these different perspectives is a common set of values that prioritize the well-being of people and planet, in what we do as designers and how we design together. Graduates from our accredited M.Arch program have the technical proficiency, critical capacity and ambition to take on pressing matters facing architecture today and beyond.
Ambitious and intellectually agile, our students and faculty create a design community that actively explores new ways of thinking about architecture. We welcome everyone–not just those with an architecture background– including designers, creatives, scholars, activists, and those interested in shaping the built environment. Across our studios and classrooms, we work together to understand architecture’s impact on people and the planet. Spatial and material experimentation is a vehicle to ask essential questions, guide design inquiry and adapt to future scenarios. As a student in the architecture program here, you may shape biomaterials into prototypes for enclosure; work with a remote community to map water access; design housing for contemporary needs and lifestyles; and visualize environments using mixed-reality platforms. Taubman College’s vibrant learning environment instills curiosity and confidence, and our graduates go on to a variety of creative career paths, from architecture practice to media production, from design-build projects to academic research, from construction start-ups to non-profit work.
Studio is both a place and a culture. Our expansive third-floor studio houses spaces for students working individually and collaboratively, meeting areas for design crits, and resources to support printing, model-making, and digital media. Fundamental to the design pedagogy at Taubman College, studio is also a shared culture shaped by the creative and intellectual generosity of the faculty and students. We continually evaluate and challenge how the studio experience fosters inquiry, implementing new technologies and methods that empower students and encourage peer-to-peer learning. The evolving and wide-ranging explorations in courses and extra-curricular opportunities reflects the innovative research and design practices led by our discipline-leading faculty.
Architecture is inherently multidisciplinary, requiring an ability to understand and connect various domains of knowledge. The M.Arch curriculum is structured around core coursework that provides students a strong foundation in representation, fabrication, building technology, history, and sustainability. With a broad range of topics and methodologies, elective courses and advanced studios enable students to go deep within a particular focus area. A guided thesis is the culminating experience of the M.Arch program, where students develop focused research questions and design scenarios.
Learning at Taubman College also occurs through student and faculty engagement with diverse geographies and communities. Early studios build connections to the histories and cultures of local cities and the Great Lakes Region. M.Arch students also have the opportunity to travel within advanced studios or through spring and summer travel courses with destinations like Mexico City, Delhi and Paris.
Focus Areas
The Master of Architecture program offers students the opportunity to explore a broad range of topics. The focus areas listed provide guidance about elective courses a student could take to gain depth in a specific area.
M.Arch Degree – Two Tracks
M.Arch with Advanced Standing
(2-Year Degree)
M.Arch
(3-Year Degree)
Intellectually Diverse Faculty
Our program’s strength is rooted in its agility and intellectual diversity. You will learn from a faculty of award-winning architects, renowned scholars, and cutting-edge researchers with a wide range of expertise, methodologies, and ways of designing and theorizing architecture’s role in the world.
T+E+A+M is an architecture practice led by Thom Moran (Associate Professor of Architecture), Ellie Abrons (Director of the Digital Studies Institute in LSA and Associate Professor of Architecture), Adam Fure (Associate Professor of Architecture, and Meredith Miller (Director of Master of Architecture and Associate Professor of Architecture). Each member of T+E+A+M teaches courses on representation, digital culture, fabrication, and practice, as well as architecture design studios.
“We… have a commitment to the physical world as found, which often leads to reusing materials — from building components to post-consumer plastics‚ for new structures.”
Founded and directed by Kathy Velikov (Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice, and Professor of Architecture) and Geoffrey Thün (Associate Vice President for Research: Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, U-M Office of Research, and Professor of Architecture) RVTR is an experimental platform for architecture and urban design research currently embedded within Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
“Our work operates across scales to position design as an active agent in continually evolving ecologies: biotic, social, environmental, technological and cultural. Our projects range from the visioning of the urban futures of regional territories, to high performance building design, to prototype-based research in responsive envelope systems and the development and production of digitally crafted objects. These operational scales are tied together through a complex systems approach and a belief in the power of design to transform our world for the better.”
Space to Ideate and Innovate
Opportunities
Publications + Media
Our online academic journal for current conversations in architecture and urbanism at Taubman College and beyond.
Dimensions is the student-produced journal of architecture at the University of Michigan published annually since 1987.
It seeks to contribute to the critical discourse of architectural education by documenting the most compelling work produced by its students, faculty, fellows, and visiting lecturers.
Community and Connections
You will be well-supported by a large and inclusive community of students, faculty, and staff who are knowledgeable, curious, collegial, and just as excited about architecture as you are. They bring a variety of experiences and points of view. They will be your sounding board, your support network, and your friends.
We are one of the few architecture programs in the nation that offers a dedicated full-time career and professional development team. Through various programs and resources to help our students explore careers, secure positions, and continue skill development and management, Taubman architecture graduates enter their careers prepared to create a better, more just, and more beautiful built environment.
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