Academic Programs: Architectural Studies

General Information

The Architectural Studies program at Tufts teaches students understanding of the built environment from multiple perspectives through the development of basic skills in analyzing, interpreting, engineering, designing, and engaging imaginatively and actively with the current and historical built environment. The built environment is defined broadly, from stage scenery and interior design to civil engineering and urban planning, in order to reflect historical and contemporary experience and to encompass the richness of the Tufts curriculum.

The objective of the Architectural Studies program is to enable students to think critically, historically, and as broadly as possible about the built environment and in so doing uniquely enrich a lifelong engagement with the built environment, be it as practicing professionals or as broadly-informed inhabitants of the human-made world.

Multidisciplinarity is the signature of Tufts' architectural studies program, representing a liberal arts approach to architecture and distinguished by the concentration's requirement that students take classes in multiple disciplines from architectural history and studio design to engineering, the humanities, and social sciences. This multidisciplinary curriculum takes full advantage of Tufts' unique assets for a liberal arts college, including the university's engineering school, its graduate department in urban and environmental planning and policy, and its affiliation with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. As a capstone senior majors in their final semester complete a senior integrative project, either as an independent research project or an internship in a professional office.

Students successfully use the Architectural Studies program to prepare for graduate study in architecture and related areas. But even a greater number of majors find careers outside architecture in education, business, law, medicine, and other varied fields. In this, as in its curriculum and general outlook, architectural studies at Tufts exemplifies the liberal arts approach to higher education.

The Architectural Studies major and minor program in the Art and Art History Department of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts was officially established in 2000. The number of majors is typically between 40 and 50, with 15 to 20 seniors graduating each year with a BA degree in architectural studies. The program is directed by the art and art history department's historian of modern architecture, Associate Professor Daniel Abramson, who can be contacted at daniel.abramson@tufts.edu.

Tufts' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering has its own architectural studies major, directed by Professor Masoud Sanayei, based upon the art history department's but with fewer electives and a greater emphasis on math and science coursework for the BS degree. Students should choose between the two programs based on their affinity for either an engineering or liberal arts education; both prepare students with comparable success for graduate study in architecture. Learn more >

The student-run Tufts Architectural Society organizes events, produces its own website, and liases with the department's director of architectural studies.