The Architectural Studies Program emphasizes not the techniques of architecture, but rather the ideas behind it. Students choose among courses in areas such as sustainable design, urban planning and architectural history, theory and criticism.
Architectural Studies is among the newest majors on campus, and it is one of few undergraduate programs in the nation to bring the study of architecture into the liberal arts curriculum.
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Our majors develop an individualized, interdisciplinary course of study. In effect, they plan their own curricular path through the major.
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Amherst students who major in Architectural Studies earn their B.A. from Amherst while taking courses at three colleges: Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire.
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We encourage majors to take advantage of the numerous opportunities to study abroad during all or part of their junior year.
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Amherst has a long history of graduates who became architects, architectural historians, urban planners and architectural critics.
Learn MoreSurvey the architecture, painting, sculpture, textiles, decorative arts and photography of the Indian subcontinent from 2300 B.C. to the present
Explore key tenets of sustainable design discourse and how they materialize in practice. Then examine sustainable design in relation to issues such as inequality and marginality.
Discuss critical, theoretical and compositional approaches to a broad range of 20th-century European performance phenomena, and develop performative projects of your own.