OUR MISSION - The mission of the School of Architecture is to educate outstanding professionals with design creativity, social responsibility, historical perspective, technical competence, and global environmental consciousness.

why study architecture?

Architecture is truly a multidisciplinary profession, which involves artistic creativity, analytical reasoning, technical capability, social consciousness, and historical perspective. Architects work in a full breadth of careers that design and manage the built environment -from visionary and strategic urban design, to the design of concert halls with excellent acoustics; from engineering weather resistant construction materials, to developing and building affordable housing for the poor.

The study of architecture is a studio-based education with one-on-one intensive teaching. The School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University focuses on the fundamental knowledge bases you will need for an exciting multidisciplinary career dealing with the built environment. From products, to buildings, to cities, architects play a role in designing the future. Some of our graduates have chosen alternative career paths such as Graphic and Web Design, Historic Preservation, and Real Estate Management to name a few. These graduates have applied the problem solving and analytical skills learned in the design studio towards their new profession.

Why is an Architect important?

I think that architects have the potential to be leaders in society on many levels. That's a really important aspect of the profession; we can touch so many different parts of society.

Ideally, they bring some sort of empathy to what's being built because so much of what's built right now is not sensitive to human use. Architects create buildings that are more appropriate to the area (climate-wise and culture-wise), not a standard cookie-cutter building.

I think architecture is one of the few professions that interprets and portrays a time period. Everyone is surrounded by architecture and looking back through history, you can see what time is/was like through buildings. Architects are historians.

I think they have the responsibility of defining a culture, physical location, spiritual location and temporal location. They have an obligation to engage their creativity in solving a set of problems, dealing with the built environment.