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THE ARCHITECTURE CONCENTRATION AT BROWN UNIVERSITY
This website is part of a broad effort to keep the architecture concentration at Brown alive. Its aim is to demonstrate the concentration's success and record its history. For detailed information about concentration requirements and current faculty, please refer to the website of the Department of the History of Art Architecture.
LINK TO: SAVE BROWN'S ARCHITECTURE CONCENTRATION!!!
Above: Bernard Tschumi's keynote at the April 2015 conference on Architecture and the Humanities. RISD Auditorium.
Brown University's Architecture Concentration was launched in collaboration with the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in April 2015 with a symposium on "Intersecting Pedagogies: Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities." (keynote speaker: Bernard Tschumi). Speakers were Thomas Kelley (UIC), Hansy Better (RISD), Dennis Crompton (Archigram, London), Matthias Sauerbruch (Berlin), Kent Kleinman (Cornell), Nader Tehrani (MIT), Martha Thorne (IE University Madrid), Stan Allen (Princeton), Amale Andraos (Columbia) and Bernard Tschumi (architect, Paris/New York, Dean Emeritus Columbia).
During Covid the tight integration with RISD's architecture school ended, but students are still encouraged to take classes at RISD, which count towards our studio requirements. Since 2022 we have our own custom designed studio upstairs at 271 Thayer Street.
The concentration distinguishes itself through its central commitment to connecting architectural training firmly with the humanities and providing a greater awareness of global, environmental, social and economic issues in the built environment.
In 2023, a majority of faculty members of the Art History Department voted to phase out the Architecture Concentration (until 2028), as training in design was considered not central to the mission of an Art History Department. Since then, efforts have been under way to find a new home for the Architecture Concentration in collaboration with Urban Studies, Engineering or Public Health. See an article about the concentration's termination in the Brown Daily Herald here. (A subsequent letter to the editor here.) Please sign the petition!
SAVE BROWN'S ARCHITECTURE CONCENTRATION!!!
METHODS AND PHILOSOPHY
The Concentration combines courses in the history and theory of architecture (four are required) with studio-based classes, which introduce the student to the essential elements of architecture and tools of the architect. We require at least two studio courses and two courses for technical skills of representation and analysis. Two electives in social sciences and engineering/sciences should meaningfully complement your course selection and have direct relevance to architecture (see separate lists of sample courses).
Both the studios and ‘technical courses’ (Projections and Architectural/Structural Analysis) will emphasize learning from precedent and focus on solutions for real world problems, rather than on abstract formal exercises. While abstraction always forms an important element in any architectural training, we hope students will also learn to see and observe deeply, to read, measure, analyze their environment, develop opinions about what works and what doesn't, find out how light flows and changes, which spatial sequences function well and which don’t, etc. The training includes the understanding of materials with their strengths and capabilities, in particular given the urgent need for
more sustainability in the building industry.
We emphasize craft, process and the importance of an architectural idea. Rigorous, analytic thinking paired with free, intuitive exploration shall help students produce architectural designs of profound conceptual clarity and emotional depth. Architecture is understood as a rational ‘thinking construct’ that - once built in form, material and light - ultimately produces spatial experiences and sensual atmospheres.
Good architectural solutions transcend stylistic fashions. They simply provide frames for a slice of life to unfold - as comfortably and inspirational as possible. Good solutions can be found as easily in vernacular, contextual or historicist buildings as in modern constructions.
While training in digital representation has to be part of any architectural education today, we also want to emphasize the value of learning to sketch and draw, of the craft of making models by hand rather than ‘3D-print’ them. Our ties and occasionally shared studio space with the Department of Theater Arts and Performance Studies encourages thinking about the role of narrative in architecture, a notoriously underdeveloped subject in architectural education. How do spaces generate action, facilitate or prevent certain functions?
Above: Studio preparations for reviews.
Below: Students present their work to Prof. Thomas Chung from Chinese University of Hong Kong and Boston-based architect Bill Wilson during final reviews in the Advanced Design Studio, Fall 2024.
Above: Dinner with New York architect Thomas Phifer, students, alumni and faculty at Prof. Dietrich Neumann's house.
Below: Packed Auditorium for the annual Spear Lecture by Thomas Phifer on his work in 2025.
Exhibition of student works at the List Art Building by Philip Johnson.
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