Harnessing the space between oversized architectures and undersized territories in increasingly more densely populated 21st-century cities, you will cultivate an understanding of urban design’s central role in addressing climate change and social inequity. Urban fabric registers, and in many cases contributes to the simultaneous increase of human population, temperatures, carbon and flooding. The MS Urban Design sequence asks the urban surface to demonstrate new formats, media and strategies for urban resilience.
Focused on the multifaceted architectural approach that includes landscape and architectural strategies, you’ll learn to design for denser 21st-century cities while preserving cultural, economic, and ecological resources. Seminars explore urban history and theory, 3D fabrication, data modeling and digital twin cities. New York City and Brooklyn-based urban design-directed research and interactive design critiques with students, faculty, and industry professionals will hone your theoretical and technical skills.
Student Work
Work by recent Urban Design graduates envisions near future cities able to harbor urban biodiversity and cultural diversity:
This program is an intense 3-term springboard into the practice of urban design with a culminating project and graduate thesis that offers a unique scaffolding for your vision of the future city. Class sizes of just 8-12 foster close collaboration with faculty and community partners, while the curriculum helps you frame and develop an individuated position for the resilient city. The Urban Design culminating projects are featured in an annual Fall Exhibition highlighting large scale physical models, immersive AR/VR models and thesis books and bringing your work into dialogue with a broad audience. Research opportunities include Climate Science workshops with Guerilla Science on Governors Island, presenting projects at Design Biennale (London, Barcelona, Venice) and contributing to the UN’s Designing Water and Policy.
Directed Research
Engaging at a scale larger than a building yet smaller than a city, your directed research addresses the most challenging questions facing the profession and discipline as we address the need for climate resilient strategies, equitable living conditions, and ecological building material at urban scales. Using Brooklyn and New York City as its laboratory, studio projects address questions of how we design and inhabit the urban realm as it continues to densify in the 21st century. Large-scale prototypes of urban blocks make use of GAUD’s fabrication labs LINK, while directed research is presented with faculty work at Pratt’s Research Yard in dialogue with the Center for Climate Adaptation.
Seminars, Lectures & Events
You’ll be exposed to relevant issues through urban theory and architectural media seminars, history-theory and architecture electives, and a dense array of lectures and events featuring prominent scholars. Complementing your studio experience, you’ll address topics of urban interiority, biodiverse cities, composite building typologies, and climate resilience, all with an emphasis on challenging conventional notions of adaptive reuse, infill development, and architectural and urban conservation.
Field Studies
The MS Urban Design is an intensely local program in its focus: field studies include close dialogues with New York community partners, office visits, and workshops in New York’s museums and archives. We work on sites in New York and Brooklyn with experts that range from forensic hydrologists to resiliency engineers; we have office visits with leading urban design firms in New York; and we meet with local community partners invested in our area of study.
Learning Resources
We develop disciplinary fluency in our program of study and we celebrate the interdisciplinary nature of design critical to address the plurality and complexity of the environments in which we operate. Learn about resources.
Our Faculty
All full-time and part-time faculty are practitioners and deeply engaged in building equity through their own work in the public, private and non-profit sectors and bring the commitment, and their experience, into the classroom. See all Graduate Architecture and Urban Design faculty and administrators.
Acting Assistant Chairperson; Adjunct Associate Professor – CCE
Person
Our Alumni
Pratt’s distinguished alumni are leading diverse and thriving careers, addressing critical challenges and creating innovative work that reimagines our world in leading urban design firms such as AECOM, GENSLER, and KPF, in leading urban research programs such as the Institute for Public Architecture and as faculty in prestigious national and international programs.
Where They Work
Urban Designer, AECOM
Fellow, Institute for Public Architecture (IPA)
Urban Designer, Gensler
Professor, Temple University
Lecturer, Wietzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
Lecturer, National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan
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You’ll find yourself at home at Pratt. Learn more about our residence halls, student organizations, athletics, gallery exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York and our Brooklyn neighborhood communities. Check us out.
Pratt MS Urban Design studio visited ‘Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph’ at the MET—the first major exhibition dedicated to his pivotal contributions to Modernist architecture. Grateful for this experience as part of our eco-critical pro-seminar class with faculty Xenia Adjoubei. @pratt_galaud @arianelourieharrison @artaslabour @paulrudolphfoundation @metmuseum
An concept on Untested Urban Typologies by MS Urban Design 2023 graduates Nilufer Haciosmanoglu @niluferhos for studios with Valeria Cedillos @aecom , Ariane Harrison @harrisonatelier , Oliver Schaper @gensler_design , and Eric Schoenenberger @schoenenberger_su11 at @prattgaud @prattsoa
MetaBolic Urbanism : Untested Urban Typologies
An idea by @jinayjain8 and @archana_.b6 to develop a socio-culturally resilient community that will heal migrants to site to become a part of the socio economic ecosystem of New York City.
Led by @artaslabour and @valecedillos for Urban Design Spring 2024 at @prattgaud @prattsoa
Urban data redesigned by Pratt MS Urban Design cohort under the guidance of Sara Hodges @prattsavi , LiRo Group's Lennart Andersson and @harvardgsd Seok Min Yeo. From QGIS maps and LIDAR scanned chunks of Red Hook, Brooklyn to Revit site sections and Grasshopper geoformings.
Work by Samiksha Chavan @_samikshachavan_ from final review for UD 993, Urban Data Design taught by Sara Hodges, Lennart Andersson and Seok Min Yeo.
The course highlights @prattsoa interdisciplinary approach: Pratt's Spatial Analysis and Visualization Initiative @prattsavi + Pratt's @prattcmfmrep + Pratt landscape research at @prattgaud , @prattinstitute
Introducing the diverse faculty leading the MS.UD Program at @prattgaud @prattsoa
Xenia Adjoubei @artaslabour
Xenia is an urban designer and researcher in emergent technology, climate resiliency and community engagement. She is a Fellow at the Inclusive Ecologies Incubator, where she leads the FIELD bioarts project. She is also Lead Researcher in the Global Free Unit, a network for education through live projects in contexts of rapid economic and political change.
Prior to moving to New York, Xenia ran a London-based architecture and urban design practice, Adjoubei Scott-Whitby Studio, specializing in public realm, climate justice and territorial modelling.
Introducing the diverse faculty leading the MS.UD Program at @prattgaud @prattsoa
Mor Segal @segal_mor
Mor Segal is a designer and a visiting professor at the Pratt Graduate Architecture and Urban Design Department. Committed to addressing the complexities of our changing world, Mor focuses on areas such as the circular economy, sustainable materials, and community development. She believes that as architects and designers, we have a responsibility to shape people's experiences in the built environment. Through her designs, Mor aims to develop innovative solutions that meet the needs of various users and clients. Previously, she worked on shared workspaces at WeWork and on high-end residential projects in New York. Currently, she serves as a seminar professor for Mediums and instructs Core and Directed Research studios alongside senior faculty at Pratt GAUD.
Introducing the diverse faculty leading the MS.UD Program at @prattgaud @prattsoa
Cynthia Davidson @log_grams
Cynthia Davidson is an architecture editor and critic based in New York City. She is the founding editor of Log: Observations on Architecture and the Contemporary City, a tri-annual journal begun in 2003, and editor of the Writing Architecture Series books published by MIT Press. Both publication programs are projects of the Anyone Corporation, a nonprofit, architecture think tank she has directed since 1991. She was the founding editor of the architecture tabloid magazine ANY (1993–2000) and of the “Any” book series, which documented ten international architecture conferences that she organized in the 1990s on the condition of architecture at the end of the 20th century. Ms. Davidson has also written for a number of periodicals, including Architectural Record in New York and Arquitectura Viva in Madrid.
Introducing the diverse faculty leading the MS.UD Program at @prattgaud @prattsoa
Erich Schoenenberger @schoenenberger_su11
Erich Schonenberger holds the position of Adjunct Associate Professor with CCE at Pratt Institute School of Architecture. He has been serving as the Core Program Coordinator for the GAUD MArch program over the past five years and prior was directing the Urban Design Program at Pratt GAUD for one year. Over the past years, Erich has taught Design Studio in all levels of the Pratt GAUD programs, MSArch and UD program as well as seminars in the Mediums and History/Theory sections.
Erich is a founding member and director of su11 Architecture + Design. Su11 operates on multiple design fronts ranging from building design to interiors, installations and exhibitions and product design and has completed projects internationally. Su11 has been widely recognized as a leading design firm of its generation and their work and projects have been exhibited in venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, PS1, Walker Art Center, Pasadena Art Center College of Design, Vitra Design Museum, Artists Space NY, Archilab New Orleans, the Beijing and Istanbul Biennials, Art Basel, among others.
Erich received his Bachelor of Environmental Design at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and his Master of Architecture from Columbia University in New York.
Introducing the diverse faculty leading the MS.UD Program at @prattgaud @prattsoa
Oliver Schaper @oliverschaper
Oliver Schaper is an inter-disciplinary design director whose expertise is in developing holistic, civic-minded, and sustainable places. As principal and global practice area resilience leader for Cities & Urban Design at Gensler, Oliver leads Planning and Urban Design projects, strategies, and communication tools at every scale.
His work includes master plans, city-wide sustainability frameworks, advisory on urban resilience challenges, circular city strategies, and targeted innovations to improve health, wellness, and experience within urban environments.
Oliver leads Gensler’s partnership with UN Habitat’s Cities Investment Facility, a platform run jointly with UN Habitat and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) to advance sustainable development and impart positive impact on communities around the world through investment, consultation, and implementation advisory.
Oliver’s recent work includes a comprehensive resilience framework with strategic recommendations for affordable housing, gentrification, city-wide carbon accounting, urban density, and vertical public realm for one of the world’s largest new urban developments.
The 33-credit, three-semester, fully encapsulated (fall, spring, summer at Pratt’s Brooklyn campus only) post-professional program aims to expand a student’s previously established professional education by imbuing them with the disciplinary and technical precision to engage in evolving forms of advanced design research, thinking, and practice. Its specific focus is on the multifaceted reformulation of architectural context, an area of research that explores the ways in which urban design activates context and 21st-century cities as they become increasingly more populated and dense, and as they grow inward and accumulate on top of themselves to conserve resources that are cultural, economic, and ecological. The program centers on cultivating an understanding of architecture and context that is fundamentally premised on the design of urban qualities for a dense city. The curriculum embraces an intertwining of architectural design, landscape architecture, urban design, interior design, and architectural/urban conservation.
At the pinnacle of Graduate Urban Design Directed Research, studio projects engage scales larger than a building yet smaller than a city. The goal of immersing students in directed research is to enhance their individual capacities to ask often difficult and challenging questions facing the profession and discipline, through design and with audiences outside of architecture and urban design. Specific to this program are questions of how we design and inhabit the urban realm as it continues to densify in the 21st century, using Brooklyn and New York City as its basis of study and projection.
Open to students holding a five-year (BArch) or equivalent (MArch) degree in Architecture, the program helps students cultivate specific interests in architecture and urbanism through a precise disciplinary framework. All students are exposed to relevant issues through rigorous urban theory seminars, through architectural media seminars introducing contemporary methods of big-data information modeling, through history-theory and architecture electives, and through a dense array of lectures and events, including the participation of prominent scholars. This ensemble of learning complements and reinforces the studios where the understanding, comprehension, and integration of design methods, and theoretical and technical knowledge is tested, pushed to its limits, and discussed in a critique format with faculty, guests, partners, and the Urban Design critic at large. Studio subjects engage an array of topics including, but not limited to, urban interiority, composite building typologies, and alteration, all with an emphasis on challenging conventional notions of adaptive reuse, infill development, and architectural and urban conservation. The broader strokes of this area of Urban Design Directed Research shifts its discourse away from “architecture and the city,” and away from its semiological and/or quantitative performance-based understandings of design toward one which conceives of context as a qualitative endeavor, requiring a ferocious curiosity and committed imagination to engage the inhabitability of contemporary and future cities.
