We live in times where nimbleness and flexibility are key to project success. This program is structured to enhance the knowledge base for recent graduates as well as mid-career professionals so that they are agile – within their firms, projects and the communities they work in – to successfully initiate, develop, and administer a design project. We provide you with the education to become successful developers, design-build firm owners, project managers, non-profit organizers, and leaders in architecture and design-related industries.
This twelve-month, three-semester program is delivered through a hands-on studio-based format. Using Los Angeles and the greater Southern California context as your laboratory, you will learn how social, political, and environmental issues affect architectural context at a transnational level. You will work with architects who have been successful as developers, construction managers and project managers, through innovation and the invention of strategies to address financial and policy challenges. Your coursework takes full advantage of the opportunities in this rapidly growing, complex, and diverse region, drawing from and responding to its urgent demands.
In the first semester case study design studio, you will formulate your project. You will research existing similar projects, and consider alternative management, financing and/or development models for these existing projects while becoming familiar with and manipulating the specific business plans or pro formas of your project. Industry professionals – including bankers, contractors, building officials, lawyers, market analysts, and sales representatives – contribute to associated professional seminars. Their presentations are tied to case studies that integrate specific learning outcomes with real-world examples.
In the second semester, with the direction and advice of industry professionals who continuously participate in the learning process, the model of parallel professional seminars and design studios continues. In the design studio, you will survey possible alternatives for your project and identify a specific project proposal for your culminating project, one with the potential to be successfully pursued after graduation.
The MSArch: Management & Development program culminates in the production and public presentation of a real-world proposal. A public review of the projects brings together students, faculty, and Southern California architects and management and development professionals for a discussion of project viability within the current context.
ARCH 691: Graduate Studio 5: Focuses and Topics (6 units)
Alternate to above: ARCH 491: Design Studio 5A: Contemporary Topics
ARCH 680: Graduate Thesis Preparation (3 units)
ARCH 554: Criticism 1: Fieldwork Los Angeles (3 units)
Alternate to above: ARCH 5702: Contemporary Issues (3 units)
ARCH 692: Graduate Thesis Studio (6 units)
ARCH 5702: Contemporary Issues (3 units)
ARCH 681: Graduate Thesis Studio 2 (6 units)
ARCH 450: Professional Practice III
ARCH 565: Visualization 4: Evolving Media
ARCH 620: Practice 1: Architectural Professionalism
ECON 203: Macroeconomics
ARTH 3736: Public Art & the Public Sphere
INAR 252: Space Planning
WMBA 500: Financial Accounting
WMBA 501: Managerial Accounting
WMBA 503: Quantitative Methods for Business Decisions
WMBA 504: Managerial Economics
WMBA 507: Managerial Finance
WMBA 512: Corporate Finance
WMBA 514: Investment Analysis
WMBA 531: Govt. and Nonprofit Accounting
WMBA 558: Entrepreneurship
WMBA 505: Managing and Leading Organizations Ethically
WMBA 506: Marketing Concepts and Strategies
WMBA 513: Management Communications
WMBA 530: Management of Global Enterprise
WMBA 518: International Marketing
WMBA 582: Strategic Management Consulting
URBS 301: Urban Theory
URBS 311: Urban Ecology and Los Angeles
URBS 312: The Infrastructural City
URBS 321: Environmental Urbanism
URBS 322: The Global Metropolis
The program will deliver outcomes that touch on the following key areas:
– Design thinking and Innovation
– Systems engineering and the holistic approach to design
– Designing for resilience in a 21st century context
– Culture and the global market
– Organizational Management – managing change, within and without
– Strategy and competitive advantage
– Stakeholder engagement and relationship building
– Sustainability – designing for the shared and circular economies
– Project finance – mechanism such as public-private partnerships, bonds etc.
– Contracts and Negotiations