Although the discipline of architecture has a strong and complex knowledge base, its essential nature causes it to synthesize the knowledge produced in many other fields from sociology and history, to information technology and the performance of materials. This program is aimed at producing a context for advanced study and research between architecture and appropriate areas of science and engineering — and with the new technologies and methodologies that these disciplines are creating.

Design Research: Complementary to existing advanced degree concentrations in Architecture, the Built Ecologies concentration is a design research graduate program focused on developing integrated design responses that bear on the built environment. The development of systems will focus on their operation and potential in the context of the forces and phenomena at work in natural systems.