United StatesThe Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) offers students not only expertise in the current state-of-the-art in architecture but also the capacity to change the field and redefine it, acting as a laboratory for testing new ideas about the roles of designers in a global society.
The curriculum stresses the necessity of analyzing and challenging the underlying history, premises, and future directions of the design professions, while preparing students to become accomplished practitioners in their respective fields—architecture, urban design, historic preservation, urban planning, or real estate development.
For undergraduates, the Barnard and Columbia College architecture major establishes an intellectual context to interpret the relation of form, space, program, materials and media to human life and thought. Through the curriculum, students participate in the ongoing shaping of knowledge about the built environment and learn to see architecture as one among many forms of cultural production, complementing the liberal arts mission of expansive thinking.
