The UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design (AUD) will offer a bachelor of arts in architectural studies beginning in fall quarter 2007. The coursework for the new undergraduate degree begins in the junior year and is open to UCLA and transfer students. The department currently offers degrees at the graduate level only.

The admissions process for transfers and UCLA students begins in November 2006. More information about admission requirements is available at www.aud.ucla.edu.

The new B.A. will be the only program of its kind in the Southern California region. Other college-level institutions in the area offer five-year professional degrees (B. Arch) aimed at incoming high school graduates already planning to pursue a career in architecture. The UCLA program will be the only one to offer architecture as a major concentration of study within a larger liberal arts curriculum.

The program is expected to attract prospective students from Southern California as well as many from other states and countries who are drawn to Los Angeles due to its worldwide reputation as a unique center of architectural experimentation.

"Our goal for several years has been to expand the study of architecture and urban planning at UCLA to make it accessible to undergraduate students," said Sylvia Lavin, outgoing chair of the department. "Architecture is one of the most sought after fields of study, and UCLA receives a great number of requests each year from undergraduate applicants expressing the desire to study architecture."

The sequence of courses designed for the B.A. meets two objectives. The first provides an understanding of architecture and urban design as a humanist discipline, which engages cultural and social studies, as well as the history of architecture and cities. The second - at the same time - provides preparation for graduate studies for those interested in pursuing post-graduate studies in the field.
Students will experience the design process in a studio setting where projects explore the issues raised by the academic coursework. In studio students will develop the ability to think critically about their ideas and explore the creative process in architecture and urban design in relation to these ideas. The direct experience of design is crucial to an understanding of architecture and urban design and their relation to contemporary social, political and cultural events.

Department of Architecture and Urban Design
The UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design pursues issues confronting contemporary architecture and urbanism through a B.A. in architectural studies and four different graduate degree programs offering two professional degrees (Master of Architecture I and II) as well as the M.A. and Ph.D. in architecture. The primary focus on advanced design is accompanied by concentrations in technology and critical studies of architectural culture.

The department was the recipient of the 52nd annual Progressive Architecture Award for L.A. Now: Volume Three, a massive research and design study led by professor Thom Mayne and his UCLA students. The Progressive Architecture award - which recognizes unbuilt projects demonstrating overall design excellence and innovation - is considered by leading architects and critics to be an influential bellwether of emerging architectural design trends and talents. The award for L.A. Now: Volume Three was unprecedented in that it was the first time it was given to a university and to only one recipient rather than to several. Mayne, who joined the UCLA faculty in 1993, is one of America's most honored architects. He is the first American to win the international Pritzker Prize - considered the Nobel Prize of architecture - since 1991.

School of the Arts and Architecture
The School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA (UCLA Arts) is one of the world's premier centers for arts practice, teaching and scholarship. Internationally renowned faculty, acclaimed academic programs, innovative research centers and groundbreaking programs of public exhibitions and performances make UCLA Arts a major force in the world of contemporary arts and architecture. The school's standing is further enhanced by diverse interactions with the City of Los Angeles, which is a global center for culture, the arts and media.

UCLA Arts comprises six degree-granting departments: architecture and urban design; art; design | media arts; ethnomusicology; music; and world arts and cultures; and three internationally acclaimed public arts institutions: the Hammer Museum (incorporating the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden), the Fowler Museum at UCLA and UCLA Live, the performing arts program. The school is also a nexus for cutting-edge interdisciplinary research supported by its centers: the Art | Sci Center, the Art | Global Health Center, the Center for Intercultural Performance, the Experiential Technologies Center, and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.

As a great public research university, UCLA is a training ground for the cultural leaders of tomorrow, and the arts lie at the center of that mission. The arts are a medium of intellectual and ethical inquiry, a way of investigating the changing world around us, of exploring the meaning of memory and tradition, and of charting the inner, subjective surfaces of human experience. The subject matter taught at UCLA Arts and the way it is taught - a synergy between the intense
focus of the arts conservatory and the open intellectual horizons of the liberal arts university - produces individuals who are skilled at envisioning what's around the bend and at seeking practical solutions to complex problems.
UCLA
As a major research university, UCLA explores a broad range of subjects essential to creating real world advances in health care, education, science, commerce, the arts and culture, scholarship and community service. The wealth of cultural treasures and programs - museums and concert halls, theaters and dance studios, galleries and sculpture gardens, libraries and archives - makes UCLA a leading arts and cultural center of the West and the flagship arts campus of the University of California system.

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