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Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning

This program is ideal for individuals wishing to enter teaching and advanced research careers in the history and theory of architecture, architectural technology, landscape architecture, and urban form from antiquity to the present or the analysis and development of the built environment from a social, economic, technological, and ecological standpoint.

Students in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning are enrolled in and receive their degree from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, even though they may work primarily with faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

This program is ideal for individuals wishing to enter teaching and advanced research careers in the history and theory of architecture, architectural technology, landscape architecture, and urban form from antiquity to the present or the analysis and development of the built environment from a social, economic, technological, and ecological standpoint.

Program cohorts are small, enabling close one-to-one contact with faculty. In this interdisciplinary program, you will interact with a wide range of Harvard departments including History of Art and Architecture, Art Film and Visual Studies, Anthropology, American Studies, and the History of Science as well as the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Projects former students have worked on include Constructing Classicism: Architectural Theory, Practice, and Expertise in Paris (1670-1720); Prehistory of the Digital: Architecture becomes Programming, 1935-1990; Private Projects, Public Ambitions: Large-Scale, Middle-Income Housing in New York City; The Well-Fed Subject: Modern Architecture in the Quantitative State, India (1943-1984); Britain’s Imperial Prospects and the Aesthetic Origins of the Scenographia Americana.

Most graduates have gone on to secure faculty positions at schools such as Columbia, Bard, Yale, MIT, Northeastern, UC Berkeley, Emory, and University of North Carolina and abroad at the University of Toronto, McGill University, The Courtauld, University of Basel, and Sweden Royal Institute of Technology.

Additional information on the graduate program is available from the PhD Program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and requirements for the degree are detailed in Policies

Admissions Requirements

Please review admissions requirements and other information before applying. You can find degree program-specific admissions requirements below and access additional guidance on applying from the PhD Program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning.

Academic Background

A professional degree in architecture, landscape architecture, or urban planning is recommended but not required. Applicants are required to indicate a proposed major subject of study that is congruent with the interests and expertise of at least one member of the PhD standing committee.

Writing Sample

A writing sample is required as part of the application and can be a paper written for a course, journal article, and/or thesis excerpt and no longer than 20 pages. The writing sample should focus on a subject related to architecture, landscape architecture, or urban planning.

Please note: Unless a specific justification is provided by the applicant, design portfolios are not typically considered as part of the application.

Standardized Tests

GRE: Not Accepted

Theses & Dissertations

Theses & Dissertations for Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning

Faculty

See list of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning faculty

APPLICATION DEADLINE

Degrees Offered

CONTACT

Questions about the Program?

Margaret Moore de Chicojay
Programs Administrator