City College of New York
Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture
The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York is the flagship public school of architecture in New York City. The Spitzer School is committed to social and sustainable concerns in design and practice, as well as to providing access to the finest education in the art, history, and technology of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design to the broadest and most diverse student population. Spitzer continually evolves to include more of the culture and history of our student body; this diversity refocuses and tests tradition, emboldening new directions in design education and the design fields.
http://ssa.ccny.cuny.edu/
Setting
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Emsi (now Lightcast) puts at $1.9 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. This year, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself.
School Philosophy
The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture is deeply committed to creating a just, sustainable, and imaginative future for a rapidly urbanizing planet. Through innovative research and interdisciplinary collaboration, the degree programs in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, and Sustainability in the Urban Environment seek to educate a diverse student body to become engaged professionals, both reflecting and enriching the complex communities of local and global environments. The School acts in the spirit of the City College of New York’s historic Ephebic Oath: “To transmit the city, not only not less, but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”
Programs
Architecture Programs Mission:
Our mission is to prepare students to design for the betterment of our shared global community. At the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, the only public school of architecture in New York City, our professional B.Arch. and M.Arch. programs are shaped by the diversity of our students, the inventive research of our faculty, and by multidisciplinary collaborations. We prepare students to become engaged designers and to apply an expansive set of skills to address pressing social, cultural, environmental, and professional challenges. With a rigorous foundation in the core competencies of building design, history, theory, and technologies, and with an emphasis on agile thinking, the Architecture programs aim to educate the next generation of innovators redefining the role of the architect in the twenty-first century.
Landscape Architecture Program Mission:
Landscape architecture plays an essential role in connecting justice to environmental design and the ecological infrastructures of the urban realm. The mission of the Master of Landscape Architecture Program at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, is to prepare students to be leaders in the field of landscape architecture through innovative research and practice in urban ecological design, planning, and policymaking. The program aims to reimagine and rethink the profession’s current and future challenges through the lens of social, environmental, and multi-species justice, including rapid urbanization, resource extraction and management, the interface of nature and technology, ongoing species extinctions, and the climate emergency. The curriculum engages critical thinking about complex and indeterminate systems, empowering students to implement actionable change across multiple scales of the urban landscape.
Urban Design Program Mission:
The Graduate Program in Urban Design is dedicated to the creation of sustainable, equitable, and beautiful cities. Knowing that no single discourse can account for the urban, we seek to work at the convergence of many. Our goal is to give our students – all citizens of this exponentially urbanizing planet – tools that will enable them to expand the forms, means, and understandings vital to the design and flourishing of cities new and old.
of Focus
1. Digital Fabrication & Technology
2. Building Technologies
3. Community Design
4. History | Theory | Criticism
5. Cross-Cultural Contexts | Human Experiences
6. Urbanism
7. Design/Build
8. Sustainability & High-Performance Built Environments
Opportunities
Cross-disciplinary experience
Summer Program
Study Abroad
Facilities
Large-format Printer
Laser Cutter
Woodshop
3D Printing
Metalshop
CNC Milling
Fabrication Lab
Robotics Lab
Policies
Transfer Policies
Most associate’s degrees allow applicants to transfer all general education requirements to their record here at CCNY. This leaves five years of studio and architecture requirements, which it may be possible to complete in four years. (6 general education credits must be taken at CCNY and are required for any student in this situation.)
