School of Architecture
Los Angeles
Shaping the Future of Design
Located in the San Fernando Valley, the Woodbury University campus sits in the Verdugo foothills near the Angeles National Forest. The school straddles the dividing line between Los Angeles and Burbank, providing students the opportunity to explore both cities. This edge condition between urban and suburban landscapes is a frontier for critical research and development for a new breed of architects and designers.
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Programs
BArch
The Bachelor of Architecture program offers a five-year course of study leading to a NAAB-accredited professional architecture degree. Our program provides students with the knowledge and skills required for a career as a professional architect, as well as a more general understanding of the profound social and cultural agency of design at local and global scales. The rigorous grounding provides our graduates with a framework of professional knowledge applicable to a range of fields including architectural practice in a large or small firm; advanced studies in graduate school; policy or government; and software or game design.
BFA Interior Design
Interior design is the art of creating a memorable experience of the space that surrounds us. The four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design at the Los Angeles/Burbank campus provides students with the analytical, design, and technical skills necessary for success in the interior design professions. Our students become part of a prolific community that includes recipients of prestigious student awards, such as the $30,000 Donghia Foundation Scholarship, the Carnegie Mellon UDream Scholarship, and the Gilman International Scholarship. In addition, the Nick Roberts and Nielsen Scholarships enable students to join one of our annual study away programs.
MArch
Our Master of Architecture program embodies a fresh approach to architecture, Southern California, and global urban conditions. Within an intimate and immersive program, our innovative coursework encourages students to engage in the architectural discourse of the city, making connections between their work, new technologies in both representation and realization, and built and natural environments. Our MArch students consistently win design awards from public agencies and private groups, including American Institute of Architects (AIA) Pasadena/Foothills, Los Angeles Business Council (LABC), Association for Women in Architecture + Design (AWA+D), and many others.
MID
Our Master of Interior Design program offers an education in critical spatial inquiry that elevates and reinvents the discipline of interior architecture by mining and imagining human conditions in our built environment. In doing so, the program adds criticality to the profession, cultivating scholars, academics and critics, while generating emerging and alternative professions. Students who possess baccalaureate degrees in any discipline can enter the MID three-year track, while students who possess baccalaureate degrees in interior architecture, interior design, environmental arts or architecture are eligible to enter the MID two-year track.
MSArch
Our 1-year post-professional Master of Science in Architecture program is offered for those students with a professional degree in architecture. The MSArch degree serves as an armature for independent research within the context of academic infrastructure. This degree is offered at both our Los Angeles and San Diego locations, with different featured topics available at each.
Faculty & Staff
Faculty & Staff
Our faculty are architects, designers, academics and policy makers practicing in Los Angeles, San Diego and Tijuana. This internationally recognized and award-winning group works closely with students, teaching the skills required to push the limits of practice and explore disciplinary possibilities in both theoretical and professional arenas.
Dedicated staff members bring their professional expertise to students throughout the student experience. Through individual attention, we foster close mentoring relationships between faculty, staff and students.
Research
Julius Shulman Institute
The Julius Shulman Institute (JSI) celebrates groundbreaking photography of the built environment. Our annual Excellence in Photography Award is given to a photographer who honors Shulman’s legacy by challenging the way we look at physical space. Awardees include Iwan Baan (2010), Catherine Opie (2013), and James Welling (2016). Julius Shulman’s groundbreaking skill as an architectural photographer helped create an audience for California modernism around the world. The Institute hosts and curates critically acclaimed design and architecture exhibitions as well as the annual award exhibit at WUHO.
Visiting Faculty Program
Form Work is the culmination of a yearlong design research project by Yasushi Ishida as the visiting faculty at Woodbury School of Architecture. Form Work was exhibited at the WUHO gallery in Hollywood in September 2016 showcasing the work produced during the 2015/16 academic year in collaboration with the students. The work consists of a series of experiments with flexible sheet formwork for concrete to create a variety of structures. Ishida aims to discover novel aesthetic potentials of the flexible sheet formwork technique and aspires to invent a design process that is informed by material behavior. Find Yasushi Ishida on Facebook and Instagram.
Visiting Scholar Program
Woodbury University’s Master of Interior Architecture Program teams up notable scholars from the extended field of Interior Architecture with each year’s senior cohort. The scholars support the specific research of each graduating student, critique their work, and create workshops. The 2016/17 scholars are British designer Faye Toogood, Billie Tsien AIA from TWBTA, Metropolis publisher and editor-in-chief Susan S. Szenasy, and award-winning journalist and architecture writer Edward Lifson. The 2015/16 scholars included filmmaker and photographer Nils Timm and Woodbury University alumnus Craig Tolliver.
sofA Journal
The name of our journal, sofA, is an extension of the acronym for Woodbury University School of Architecture. The work that is presented is not intended to convey all that is happening in our school, but may bear witness to a few conversations that are ongoing. The name, of course, is also the name of a piece of furniture and one that is ubiquitous in architecture studios. It’s a casual place for a late night conversation to begin and lead to new ways of thinking. It’s a place to lie down for a bit; to sleep (and to dream). It’s communal. Anyone can sit on it. There is room for everyone at some point or another. And, if you care to look, you might find a treasure hidden in the cushions.
Fieldwork & Study Away
Fieldwork is a philosophy and a curriculum that sends students out into the world as design anthropologists to do research within the complex and fertile regions right outside our doors and at diverse locations around the world, from Tokyo to Istanbul to Buenos Aires. Out in the field, students apply knowledge from the studio, and return to the classroom informed by experience gained in the field. Fieldwork readies students for the cultural, economic and physical challenges of contemporary practice in the global economy. It is a way to explore the world, to engage design and to make an impact.
Facilities
WUHO
The Woodbury University Hollywood gallery is a center for experimental exhibitions and multi-disciplinary collaborations. Located on the iconic Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame, WUHO provides a venue for emerging designers to exhibit and experiment. Programming supports the study and practice of design and the dissemination of architectural knowledge, particularly as it is conceived, practiced and taught by Woodbury faculty, students and alumni. WUHO offers free programming throughout the year.
Wedge Gallery
Residing in a sliver of the School of Architecture on the Woodbury campus, the Wedge Gallery is the exhibition venue for the Los Angeles location. The small gallery space presents multiple shows per semester, each fitting into an overarching theme. The space exhibits student work, giving students the opportunity to learn from their classmates’ drawings and models, as well as work by invited architects, artists, and faculty members. Exhibits usually include a workshop or discussion component to create a more robust exchange between the exhibitors and participants. Wedge Gallery is open while classes are in session, during the Fall and Spring semesters.
Making Complex
At Woodbury University we believe that making is a critical part of the study of architecture and interior architecture. Analog and digital fabrication are fully integrated into our curricula and facilities. The great flexibility of these tools allows them to serve both intellectual exploration and real-world problem solving. Our goal is to help students learn to experiment and to produce. The students take control of these tools so that their outputs exceed the limitations of the methods and materials involved and realize results that are genuinely new and revolutionary.
Library
The Library on the Los Angeles/Burbank campus is dedicated to enriching the life of the Woodbury community through the expansion of knowledge and creativity. We seek to build and preserve resource collections that meet current and future curriculum, research, intellectual, creative and professional needs of the University. In pursuit of this mission the Library strives for excellence in the quality of programs, services, and resources. Students can take advantage of the library’s mobile-friendly services offering features like an events calendar and the ability to book a librarian for research help.
Advanced Material Testing Laboratory
The new Advanced Material Testing Laboratory advances our mission to provide environments to model, fabricate and test design ideas. A range of equipment for hands-on education and cutting-edge research in material science allows the observation of material performance under various environmental conditions. In this lab, students manipulate the interior space of the experimental environment with various materials and test the results against the control environment to determine how color, surface textures, shading devices, and lighting systems change the climate, atmosphere and perception of space.
Intelligent Lighting Laboratory
Our Intelligent Lighting Laboratory allows students to simulate lighting scenarios and experientially explore the effects of light on materials and space. Through hands-on experimentation, students question the status quo of lighting design and develop innovative ways of designing with light. New technologies are tested and the equipment and support staff help with the investigation of new ideas and the impacts of lighting applications on both the experience of human users and energy consumption. This Laboratory is connected to the Material Library, which holds a large collection of physical samples and online resources.
Student Organizations
IIDA Campus Center
The IIDA Campus Center is a student organization that connects students to the Interior Architecture profession. As part of the International Interior Design Association (IIDA), it provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and knowledge between students, faculty, administrators and alumni. The Campus Center organizes and facilitates events on and off campus, and sponsors competitions and scholarships. Members also attend national conferences and events where they meet with students from other schools.
AIAS
AIAS Woodbury is a branch of the national group of the American Institute of Architecture Students serving both as a professional organization and as the official voice of architecture students within the school. AIAS Woodbury promotes excellence in architecture education, facilitates training and practice, fosters an appreciation of architecture and related disciplines, enriches communities through a spirit of collaboration, and organizes students and their efforts towards the advancement of the art and science of architecture. At Woodbury, AIAS is dedicated to maintain collaboration between students, community, and professionals in order to give members limitless opportunities by promoting Woodbury University as a vital contributor to the greater Los Angeles and San Diego area.
CLEA
The Council of Latin American Architecture Students (CLEA) believes in the untapped resource that is Latin America. As an international organization, CLEA is rooted in the exchange of knowledge that is uniquely Latin American in order to progress a cultural and design sensibility not yet widely recognized. Members of CLEA question existing variables of the built environment ranging from economic and gender inequality to systems of social sustainability. These investigations lead to new and potentially challenging positions against the norms of contemporary architecture with hopes to make an impact on pedagogy and culture.
Career Services
We Help You Transition Into The Profession
We provide architecture career advising within the School of Architecture. A dedicated staff member with knowledge of architectural practice and scholarship provides both workshops and individual assistance, including help with creating a professional resume, letter writing and interviewing skills, as well as portfolio development or work samples to include with job applications. Other services include on-campus job fairs, a job board, and consulting on the path of obtaining architectural licensure. Students and alumni may make an advising appointment by contacting the School of Architecture.
Visit Our LA Campus
Go behind the scenes with a campus tour led by our student tour guides and experience why students love our campus. During this hour-long tour you will get a firsthand feel for Woodbury University’s outstanding facilities and beautiful Southern California grounds. See our design studios, digital fabrication lab, metal shop and wood shop. Visit our library and computer labs, and explore on-campus gallery spaces.
Reservations are required for all tour times. Sign up online to schedule your campus tour.