school Overview
At the MIT School of Architecture + Planning (SA+P), we believe that humanity’s toughest problems occupy the same ground as their solutions: the space between people and their environment. This is our territory. From the day MIT opened its doors and introduced Course 4 as the nation’s first academic program in architecture, our faculty, students, and alumni have explored the human landscape to discover—and deliver—better futures.
As one of MIT's five schools, SA+P is home to:
- The Department of Architecture
- The Department of Urban Studies + Planning (DUSP)
- The MIT Media Lab
- The MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE)
- The Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT)
- The Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU)
This potent mix of disciplines and departments fuels innovation and energizes MIT’s drive for meaningful progress. Whether our community is designing systems or cities, objects or structures, policies or technologies, we are committed to working every day, at MIT and around the globe, in service to a better world.
A Brief History
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SA+P is home to pioneering departments, labs, and centers. True to MIT's culture of pushing the boundaries of knowledge and imagination, most of these units are first of their kind or built to take advantage of MIT's distinctive strengths:
- 1868: MIT opens its doors with the first Department of Architecture in the U.S;
- 1933: MIT establishes the oldest continuous Department of Urban Studies and Planning;
- 1968: MIT forms the world-renowned Center for Advanced Visual Studies, progenitor to today's Program in Art, Culture, and Technology
- 1980: MIT launches the first university Media Lab, emerging from within the Department of Architecture;
- 1984: MIT creates the first academic Center for Real Estate to offer a professional degree;
- 2013: SA+P creates the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism to imagine the future of cities.
Degrees
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Architecture
Bachelor of Science in Architecture
Master of Science in Architecture Studies
Master of Architecture
Master of Science in Building Technology
Master of Science in Art, Culture, Technology
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Bachelor of Science in Urban Studies
Masters in City Planning
PhD in Urban Studies and Planning
Media Arts and Sciences
Master of Science in Media Arts
PhD in Media Arts
Center for Real Estate
Master of Science in Real Estate Development
Program in Arts, Culture and Technology
Master of Science in Art, Culture and Technology
Faculty
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Tenured and Tenure track: 78
Women: 29%
International: 25%
Professors of Practice and Lecturers: 39
Women: 31%
International: 1
Students
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Total enrolled: 622
Undergraduate: 36
Masters programs: 410
PhD programs: 176
Women: 47%
International: 39%
Financial Aid
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2014 Financial Aid: Over $19 Million
Research Funding
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2014 Research Funding: Over $45.5 Million
Sponsors: 72
Foundation: 9
Federal: 12
Foreign Federal Government: 1
Foreign Private Non-Profit: 3
Foreign Private Profit: 6
Institution of Higher Education: 12
Private Non-Profit: 11
Private Profit: 17
State: 1
Consortium Sponsors: 85
A Selection of Research Labs and Centers
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MIT Media Lab
SENSEable City Laboratory
Sam Tak Lee Laboratory for Real Estate Entrepreneurship
Center for Advanced Urbanism
Civic Data Design Lab
Community Innovators Lab
AgeLab
POPLab
Self Assembly Lab
Mobility Futures Collaborative
Notable SA+P Alumni
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Louis Sullivan, one of America’s most influential architects attended MIT in 1874.
Gilbert Cass, designer of the Woolworth Building, graduated MIT in 1880.
Sophia Hayden, first woman to study Architecture at MIT, graduated in 1890.
Robert Taylor, first African American professional architect, graduated in 1892.
Marion Mahony Griffin, was a long-time draftsperson in Frank Lloyd Wright’s office
and architectural partner of Walter Burley Griffin, graduated in 1894.
Rose Standish Nichols, Marion C. Coffin, Mabel K. Babcock, three women who
attended MIT’s Program in Landscape Architecture. They all went on to be well-known landscape architects and teachers.
John O. Merrill and Louis H. Skidmore, established Skidmore Owings and Merrill one of
the largest architectural firms in the US, graduated in 1922-23
I.M. Pei, winner of the 1983 Pritzker Prize in architecture, graduated in 1940.
Kevin Lynch, author of The Image of the City and seminal works in urban design,
joined the City Planning program in 1948. He graduated in 1947.