The Burbank | Los Angeles campus of Woodbury University School of Architecture offers three graduate degree options :
_ a three-year professional Master of Architecture for students with no prior degree in architecture,
_ a two-year professional Master of Architecture for students with a pre-professional degree in architecture, and
_ a one-year post-professional Master of Science in Architecture for students with a professional degree in architecture.
After several years of preparation, Woodbury University (Burbank | Los Angeles) has launched three graduate architecture degrees that embody a fresh approach both to architecture and Los Angeles. As the youngest and most flexible program participating in the architectural discourse of the city, an innovative coursework trains students to make clear-eyed connections between their work, new technologies in both representation and realization, and the parallel contexts of both conceptual positions and of surrounding built and natural environments. The endeavor, then, is to produce architects who are ‘self-conscious’, meaning both conscientious and creative, about what they build – from theoretical constructs to community-based projects.
Above all, this is a small program that is serious about making architecture that is in and of, evolved from action in and observation of, place. Using the concept of fieldwork, the program, first, immerses students in the built culture of Los Angeles exploring the region through experimentation and critical analysis towards proposition. Then, in the professional programs, a diverse offering of fieldwork | study away option studios offers students a culminating opportunity to concentrate on architectural culture in cities like Nanjing, Medellin, and Ahmedabad. Or, in the post-professional program, students specialize towards either a constructed or defined expertise in an accumulating body of faculty interest projects. The regional fieldwork combined with the juxtaposed exposure to either alternative or focused ways of living and making architecture comes to fruition through student translation, independent capstone research projects that reveal the depth of the tools conveyed for understanding and contributing to the built ecology.
Barbara Bestor, AIA
Graduate Chair of Woodbury University School of Architecture (Los Angeles) and Visiting Faculty
