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
Join us at Pratt. Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.
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 final for studio taught by @genslernyc @oliverschaper Oliver Schaper and @aecom @laud.nyc @valecedillos Valeria Cedillos.
The “Tides of Transition” reimagines waterfronts with vertical urbanism, blending housing, public spaces, and resilient infrastructure to adapt to rising sea levels
Work by:
Mithila Patil | @mithilapatil_
Bhavya Prajapati | @bhavya_prajapati__
Pratt MS Urban Design final for studio taught by @genslernyc @oliverschaper Oliver Schaper and @aecom @valecedillos Valeria Cedillos
“The Mosaic” transforms the Brooklyn Marine Terminal into a resilient urban tapestry, uniting maritime legacy, community, and innovation for a sustainable future.
Work by:
Falguni Sakpal | @falgunisakpal
Dowon Kwon | @dodo._.works
Pratt MS Urban Design final for studio taught by @genslernyc @oliverschaper Oliver Schaper and @aecom @valecedillos Valeria Cedillos.
The ‘Historic Threads’ project revitalizes the Brooklyn Marine Terminal as a resilient waterfront, seamlessly blending natural systems with urban design to restore both its ecological and cultural heritage.
Work by:
Aisha Shaikh | @aishaikhx
Ann Abraham | @ann_abraham98
Renata Luna | @renataaluna
Pratt MS Urban Design midterm for studio taught by @genslernyc @oliverschaper Oliver Schaper and @aecom @valecedillos Valeria Cedillos.
Midterm work by: Ann Abraham, Renata Luna, Mithila Sunil Patil, Bhavya Prajapati, Aisha Shaikh, Falguni Sakpal & Dowon Kwon
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.
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.
