Architecture, B.Arch.

Bachelor of Architecture (B. Arch.) Curriculum

In the United States, most registration boards require a degree from an accredited professional degree program as a prerequisite for licensure. The National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), which is the sole agency authorized to accredit professional degree programs in architecture offered by institutions with U.S. regional accreditation, recognizes three types of degrees: the Bachelor of Architecture, the Master of Architecture, and the Doctor of Architecture. A program may be granted an eight-year term, an eight-year term with conditions, or a two-year term of continuing accreditation, or a three-year term of initial accreditation, depending on the extent of its conformance with established education standards. Doctor of Architecture and Master of Architecture degree programs may require a non-accredited undergraduate degree in architecture for admission. However, the non-accredited degree is not, by itself, recognized as an accredited degree.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, School of Architecture offers the following NAAB-accredited degree programs:

Bachelor of Architecture (B. Arch.), 172 credits
Next accreditation visit: 2025

Master of Architecture (M. Arch.)  (non-pre-professional degree), 100 credits
Master of Architecture (M. Arch.)  AP, (pre-professional degree), 67 credits
Next accreditation visit: 2025

This five-year undergraduate professional program is a first professional degree accredited by the National Architectural Accreditation Board [NAAB]. The program is for a limited number of qualified students committed to the study of architecture. These students are admitted directly to the professional degree program and begin studies in architecture in the first year.

The School of Architecture’s (SoA) curriculum includes required courses in Design, History / Theory, Technology, Ecology / Environment & Professional Practice, while encouraging innovative approaches to architecture education and professional preparation through elective courses, study abroad programs, and the All -Institute ARCH program. Additionally, BArch students are required to complete electives in HASS (20 cu), MATH (8 cu), Science (8 cu) and Free electives (8 cu). Through a combination of curricular and extra-curricular activities the SoA curriculum meets or exceeds the following Program Criteria learning outcomes and Student Criteria learning outcomes as defined in the NAAB 2020, Conditions for Accreditation.

PC.1 Career Paths—How the program ensures that students understand the paths to becoming licensed as an architect in the United States and the range of available career opportunities that utilize the discipline’s skills and knowledge.

PC.2 Design—How the program instills in students the role of the design process in shaping the built environment and conveys the methods by which design processes integrate multiple factors, in different settings and scales of development, from buildings to cities.

PC.3 Ecological Knowledge and Responsibility—How the program instills in students a holistic understanding of the dynamic between built and natural environments, enabling future architects to mitigate climate change responsibly by leveraging ecological, advanced building performance, adaptation, and resilience principles in their work and advocacy activities.

PC.4 History and Theory—How the program ensures that students understand the histories and theories of architecture and urbanism, framed by diverse social, cultural, economic, and political forces, nationally and globally.

PC.5 Research and Innovation—How the program prepares students to engage and participate in architectural research to test and evaluate innovations in the field.

PC.6 Leadership and Collaboration—How the program ensures that students understand approaches to leadership in multidisciplinary teams, diverse stakeholder constituents, and dynamic physical and social contexts, and learn how to apply effective collaboration skills to solve complex problems.

PC.7 Learning and Teaching Culture—How the program fosters and ensures a positive and respectful environment that encourages optimism, respect, sharing, engagement, and innovation among its faculty, students, administration, and staff.

PC.8 Social Equity and Inclusion—How the program furthers and deepens students’ understanding of diverse cultural and social contexts and helps them translate that understanding into built environments that equitably support and include people of different backgrounds, resources, and abilities.

SC.1 Health, Safety, and Welfare in the Built Environment—How the program ensures that students understand the impact of the built environment on human health, safety, and welfare at multiple scales, from buildings to cities.

SC.2 Professional Practice—How the program ensures that students understand professional ethics, the regulatory requirements, the fundamental business processes relevant to architecture practice in the United States, and the forces influencing change in these subjects.

SC.3 Regulatory Context—How the program ensures that students understand the fundamental principles of life safety, land use, and current laws and regulations that apply to buildings and sites in the United States, and the evaluative process architects use to comply with those laws and regulations as part of a project.

SC.4 Technical Knowledge—How the program ensures that students understand the established and emerging systems, technologies, and assemblies of building construction, and the methods and criteria architects use to assess those technologies against the design, economics, and performance objectives of projects.

SC.5 Design Synthesis—How the program ensures that students develop the ability to make design decisions within architectural projects while demonstrating synthesis of user requirements, regulatory requirements, site conditions, and accessible design, and consideration of the measurable environmental impacts of their design decisions.

SC.6 Building Integration—How the program ensures that students develop the ability to make design decisions within architectural projects while demonstrating integration of building envelope systems and assemblies, structural systems, environmental control systems, life safety systems, and the measurable outcomes of building performance.

SoA Study Abroad Programs

Architectural Minors: 

Architecture Minor  
Architectural History Minor  
Architectural Acoustics Minor  
Lighting Minor  
Environmental Design Minor  

Professional Electives

The School of Architecture offers a range of professional elective courses in technology, design, history / theory, practice and the built environment. Elective courses are open to students in 3rd – 5th year. Course elective listings and the faculty offering electives are subject to change. Please note that some electives are offered only as part of the SoA study abroad programs.

TROY, NY

Architectural Acoustics 1 & 2
Art of Structure
Artificial Intelligence Imagining Architecture
Ceramic Upholstery
Ceramic Assemblies
Duchamp Seminar
Deep Viewing- Hitchcock
Human Factors in Lighting
Intense 3d printed Ornament
Lighting Design
Lighting Technologies and Applications
Lighting Workshop
Projecting Light
Sentient Spaces
Skin Deep
Structural Anatomy of Buildings
The Architecture of the Screen

CASE NY*

Urban Data 1
Geo Actors 1
Urban data 2
Geo Actors 2
Design Programming
Advanced Design Scripting & Parametrics
Building Information Modeling
Environmental Parametrics
Built Ecologies 1
Built Ecologies 2
*limited enrollment for upstate students

LATIN AMERICA only

Local Technologies & Systems
Exploratory Drawing
Latin America Arch /Urbanism
Travel Narratives

ITALY only

Global Changemakers
Architecture Of The City
Renaissance & Baroque Architecture in Rome
To Rome With Love
History Of Italian Design
Fashion & Architecture
Introduction to Restoration of Historic Buildings
Elementary Italian
Modern & Contemporary Rome
Environmental Parametrics
Spolia, Archive of Roman Singularities

The five-year B.Arch. program concludes with a year-long individually developed and comprehensive final project in the context of optional research studio and thematic contexts provided by faculty. The first semester of the final project integrates a research seminar. An integrated design research phase continues throughout the first and the second semesters.

The final project is an opportunity to develop a point of view about architecture and its place in the world; to question conventions, habitual responses, and routine approaches to architectural design; and to investigate issues that the student sees as significant to architecture.

A sample template of the B.Arch. curriculum structure is provided below. Please note that special circumstances such as participating in a semester abroad or a semester at CASE in New York City may involve some variation from this template.