Studio
All studios at Rensselaer are unique in creating fully integrated studios where the best of tradition and technology meet. It's a model of the new workplace-joining the mobile student, the digital desktop, the drawing board, and the most powerful new computer technologies in one multi-modal environment. Interdisciplinary collaborations are encouraged, using both electronic and traditional tools, and advanced information resources. At RPI the studio model is set up to give students the digital infrastructure to explore in depth the most complex of designs, while enabling them to critically question any biases of the underlying technologies.
 
Technology Fabrication Work Shop
Specialized facilities and equipment that enhance school activities include a Fabrication Center located in the heart of the design studios. This center is committed to acquiring and providing the latest technologies available for fabrication and prototyping of design work at all levels, and includes the most sophisticated 3-D printers, CNC equipment and laser cutters available.
 
Computing & Visualization
Rensselaer believes that giving students full immersion in the latest visualization technologies gives them freedom to explore their designs from every aspect as they develop. Design, planning, formal programming, modeling and animation, and virtual reality programming are all offered in the Computing & Visualization Laboratory. The studies are integrated into the design studio so that students learn and apply technical knowledge within the context of their own design projects.
 
The Lighting Research Center
The Lighting Research Center (LRC) is the world's largest university based research and education institution dedicated to lighting. It employs an expert faculty and staff of more than thirty-five researchers, educators, designers, and scientists dedicated to "advancing the effective use of light and thereby creating a legacy of positive change for society and the environment."
 
The LRC is the only independent lighting research laboratory accredited by the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) to test lamp and lighting equipment. This ensures the LRC's equipment calibrations are traceable directly back to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) These facilities and existing equipment represent one of the best-equipped university-based lighting laboratories in the United States.

Acoustics Research Lab
The laboratories for the Acoustics Program are split between the Greene Building and Gurley Building in downtown Troy. In Greene there is a semi-anechoic chamber for virtual sound-field reproduction, as well as computer laboratories with room-acoustics computer modeling tools, acoustical scale models, room-acoustics measurement systems, and other state-of-the-art audio/acoustics equipment such as a laser Doppler vibrometer. The Gurley Building houses the NYSTAR Virtual Acoustics and Telepresence Laboratory, a two-room cross-modal (visual/auditory) research space equipped with video projectors and real-time audio processing hardware and software suitable for immersive sound-field rendering. Acoustics courses are open to undergraduates.
 
RPI Campus
Rensselaer is situated on an attractive 260 acre campus in Troy, New York about 160 miles north of New York City, 180 miles east of Boston and 230 miles south of Montreal. Along with Albany, Schenectady, and Saratoga Springs, Troy comprises the capital region of New York, a metropolitan area with a population of nearly one million. These historic cities and the surrounding countryside provide the attractions of both urban and rural life. Rensselaer, on the edge of upstate New York's vacationland, is within one hour's drive of the Adirondack, Berkshire, Catskill, and Green mountains.
 
"Most Wired" Campus
Rensselaer's pervasive digital network has earned repeated national praise as a, "Most Wired Campus." The School of Architecture participates in this network with wired and wireless access to Campus resources as well as the Internet. In addition, there is specialized networking to facilitate collaboration and multidisciplinary design exploration between Architecture, iEAR, and EMAC.
 
Rensselaer's Career Development Center (CDC)
Offers a comprehensive program of career development, co-op, internship, and job placement activities to both undergraduate and graduate students. Rensselaer students have 24-hour access to many career service and resources via RedHawk Joblink, our online system. All Rensselaer students are encouraged to register with the CDC during their job search. In addition, the CDC coordinates a campus-wide career fair for students held in February of each year. The Architecture Career Fair is held annually each spring. The School of Architecture has an extensive and diverse network of alumni in the United States and around the world. This resource in invaluable to our students in their employment.
 
Student Life
Rensselaer helps educate "leaders of tomorrow" by providing a robust set of student life programs and services designed to:

• facilitate academic success
• offer education and practice in leadership and followership
• encourage fitness for a lifetime of growth
• connect students to careers and the world of work
• build maturity, an appreciation of cultural diversity and expression, and a set of personal and professional goals and values