Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is a

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

architecture school This is a list of architecture schools at colleges and universities around the world. An architecture school (also known as a school of architecture or college of architecture), is an institution specializing in architectural education. Africa ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. Founded in 1972, SCI-Arc was initially regarded as both institutionally and artistically

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

and more adventurous than traditional architecture schools based in the United States. It consists of approximately 500 students and 80 faculty members, some of whom are practicing

architects An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

. It is based in the quarter-mile long () former

Santa Fe Freight Depot Santa Fe Freight Depot is a quarter-mile-long building in the industrial area to the east of Downtown Los Angeles, now known as the Arts District. The Southern California Institute of Architecture converted the structure into its campus in 2000 ...

in the Arts District in downtown Los Angeles and also offers community events such as outreach programs, free exhibitions, and public lectures.

History

SCI-Arc was founded in 1972 in

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...

Ray Kappe Ray Kappe (August 4, 1927 – November 21, 2019) was an American architect and educator. In 1972, he resigned his position as Founding Chair of the Department of Architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and along with a gro ...

, Shelly Kappe, Ahde Lahti,

Thom Mayne Thom Mayne (born January 19, 1944) is an American architect. He is based in Los Angeles. In 1972, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he is a trustee and the coordinator of the Design of Cities p ...

, Bill Simonian, Glen Small, and James Stafford, a group of faculty from the Department of Architecture at

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona, CPP, or Cal Poly"Cal Poly" may also refer to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in San Luis Obispo. See the '' name'' section of this article for more info ...

. The founders were frustrated with the treatment of students and faculty members by administrators at Cal Poly''SCI-Arc at Forty: The Original 'Alternative' Architecture School''
''SCI-Arc at Forty: The Original 'Alternative' Architecture School''
17 Aug 2012. Retrieved 26 Sep 2022., and wanted to approach the subject from a more experimental perspective than traditional schools offered. Originally called the New School, SCI-Arc was based on the concept of a "college without walls," and it remains one of the few independent architecture schools in the world. Initially, instead of academic hierarchies the School favored a horizontal relationship between professors and students, who took responsibility for their own course of study. Kappe, who had founded the Cal Poly department, became the new school's first director and served in that position until 1987. He was awarded the AIA/ACSA Topaz Medal for excellence in architecture education in 1990.''Volume5''

19 Sep 2007. Kappe was succeeded as director by

Michael Rotondi Michael Rotondi (born June 26, 1949) is an American architect and educator. He has been a member of two international practices (Morphosis from 1976-1991, and RoTo Architects 1991–present, which he founded). He attended the Southern Californi ...

, one of SCI-Arc's original students.

Neil Denari Neil Denari (b. Fort Worth, Texas September 3, 1957) is an American architect, professor, and author. Based since 1988 in Los Angeles, Denari emerged in New York during the 1980s with a series of theoretical projects and texts based on the collap ...

became director in 1997;

Eric Owen Moss Eric Owen Moss (born 1943 in Los Angeles) practices architecture with his eponymously named LA-based firm founded in 1973. Education Moss was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1943. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Califo ...

served as director from 2002–2015; Hernán Díaz Alonso was appointed Director and Chief Executive Officer effective Sept 1, 2015. Díaz Alonso has been a faculty member at SCI-Arc since 2001. He is known for championing the school's push toward a digital future and, prior to his appointment as Director, has served as the school's Graduate Programs Chair since 2010. Although SCI-Arc was once unaccredited and its finances unstable—Moss joked, "We used to be considered one step ahead of the

IRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

, one step ahead of creditors"—the school is now fully accredited, and its finances improved to the point that SCI-Arc was able to pay $23.1 million to buy its campus building in 2011. "The main thing is to figure out a way for SCI-Arc to keep growing without losing its character and pedigree," Díaz Alonso said in an interview following his appointment as director.

Campus

The open nature of SCI-Arc's program is reflected in the series of industrial buildings that have housed the school, where students are encouraged to design and construct their own studio environments, and occasionally full-scale projects. The school has been based in three locations—the first (1972-1992) a small industrial building in Santa Monica and later moved into the second, a much larger (architecturally unique concrete post & beam) industrial building (1992-2000) in

Marina del Rey Marina del Rey (Spanish for "Marina of the King") is an unincorporated seaside community in Los Angeles County, California, with an eponymous harbor that is a major boating and water recreation destination of the greater Los Angeles area. The p ...

. In 2001, it moved to its current home, the 60,000-square-foot 1907

Harrison Albright Harrison Albright (May 17, 1866 – January 3, 1932) was an American architect best known for his design of the West Baden Springs Hotel in Orange County, Indiana. Biography Born in the Ogontz neighborhood of North Philadelphia, Pennsylvan ...

on the eastern edge of

Downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers . A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is ...

. When SCI-Arc arrived, the building was a stripped-down concrete shell. Today the building is on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

and the school has become an anchor for the city's Arts District. The school conducts design projects that engage with under-served members of the community. To these ends, SCI-Arc has been awarded a $400,000 grant by ArtPlace to develop two on-campus public performance/lecture spaces, as well as development for a third public venue in the surrounding arts district. Across the street, "One Santa Fe," a 438-unit apartment complex designed by

Michael Maltzan Architecture Michael Maltzan is the principal architect at Michael Maltzan Architecture (MMA), a Los Angeles-based architecture firm. He received a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University and both a Bachelor of Architecture degree and a Bachelor ...

(MMA) opened in 2014.

Academics

SCI-Arc offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs accredited by the

National Architectural Accrediting Board The National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), established in 1940, is the oldest accrediting agency for architectural education in the United States. The NAAB accredits professional degrees in architecture offered by institutions with U.S. r ...

and the

WASC Senior College and University Commission The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) was an organization providing accreditation of public and private universities, colleges, secondary and elementary schools in California and Hawaii, the territories of Guam, American Samoa ...

, including a five-year Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) program, a 3-year Master of Architecture (M.Arch 1) open to applicants who hold a bachelor's degree or equivalent in any field of study, and a 2-year Master of Architecture (M.Arch 2) open to applicants with a prior undergraduate degree in architecture. In addition to its undergraduate and graduate programs, SCI-Arc offers four one-year postgraduate programs in fields including architectural technologies, entertainment and fiction, design of cities, and theory and pedagogy. SCI-Arc's undergraduate and graduate programs culminate in two public events in which students present their thesis projects to renowned critics from around the world, including

Peter Cook Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937 – 9 January 1995) was an English actor, comedian, satirist, playwright and screenwriter. He was the leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishme ...

Greg Lynn Greg Lynn (born 1964) is an American architect, founder and owner of the Greg Lynn FORM office, an o. University Professor in the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and a professor at the UCLA School of the Arts a ...

, and

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...

recipient

. "SCI-Arc has long been one of this country’s best experimental labs in which designers speculate about the future of the human-made environment, and its thesis projects are its calling cards."

Public programs

A recent program and exhibition, "LA in Wien/Wien in LA," investigated the architecture of Los Angeles and

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and their respective influences on one another in over the last century. It brought together six esteemed international architects—Hitoshi Abe,

, Eric Owen Moss,

Peter Noever Peter Noever (born 1 May 1941) is an Austrian designer and curator–at–large of art, architecture and media. From 1986 to 2011 he was the artistic director and CEO of MAK— Austrian Museum of Applied Arts and Contemporary Art in Vienna. Li ...

, and Wolf Prix of

Coop Himmelb(l)au Coop Himmelb(l)au (A pun meaning ''Coop Sky Building'' and ''Coop Sky Blue'') is an architecture, urban planning, design, and art firm founded by Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky, and Michael Holzer in Vienna, Austria in 1968. History Coop Him ...

—to share their perspectives and experiences in a discussion led by Anthony Vidler. The full scope of SCI-Arc public programs includes lectures, exhibitions, faculty talks and other opportunities for interaction between the school and the community.

Notable faculty

The following list contains both current and former faculty: *

Ann Bergren Ann Bergren (7 October 1942 – 10 May 2018) was Professor of Greek literature, Literary Theory, and Contemporary Architecture at University of California, Los Angeles. She is known for her scholarship on Ancient Greek language, gender, and contem ...

Walead Beshty Walead Beshty (born London, UK, 1976) is a Los Angeles-based artist and writer. Beshty was an associate professor in the Graduate Art Department at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and has taught at numerous schools including University of ...

* Aaron Betsky * Mike Davis *

Benjamin H. Bratton Benjamin H. Bratton (born 1968) is an American Philosopher of Technology known for his work spanning social theory, computer science, design, artificial intelligence, and for his writing on the geopolitical implications of what he terms "planetar ...

Hernan Diaz Alonso Hernán Díaz Alonso (Buenos Aires, 1969) is an Argentine-American architect. He is Director/Chief Executive Officer of SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, and Founder and Principal of Los Angeles-based design practice HDA-X(formerly Xefirotarch). He is an ...

Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are considered ...

Graham Harman Graham Harman (born May 9, 1968) is an American philosopher and academic. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the developm ...

Laurie Hawkinson Laurie Ann Hawkinson (born March 25, 1952) is an American architect. She worked at Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and is a partner at Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects. Hawkinson is also a Professor of Architecture at Columbia Uni ...

Kahlil Joseph Kahlil Joseph (pronounced ''"Kha-leel"'') is an American film, television and stage actor and teacher of performing arts. He has worked extensively in the United States and India. Joseph is based in Los Angeles. Early life Joseph was born in ...

* Shelly Kappe * Elena Manferdini *

* Lucy McRae *

David Mohney David Mohney FAIA is an American architect, urbanist, writer, and dean at Kean University and Wenzhou-Kean University. Biography He is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, holds a M.Arch from Princeton University School of Architect ...

Timothy Morton Timothy Bloxam Morton (born 19 June 1968) is a professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. A member of the object-oriented philosophy movement, Morton's work explores the intersection of object-oriented thought and ecolog ...

* Marcelo Spina * Michael Stock * Tom Wiscombe * Liam Young * Mimi Zeiger

Notable alumni

Barbara Bestor Barbara Bestor (born 1966) is an American architect based in Los Angeles, California. She is the principal of Bestor Architecture, founded in 1992. Examples of her work include the Beats Electronics Headquarters in Culver City, Blackbirds, small l ...

Shigeru Ban Biography
, The Hyatt Foundation, retrieved 26 March 2014 is a Japanese architect, known for his i ...

* David Randall Hertz *

Sue Courtenay Sue Courtenay (born c.1966) is a Belizean architect who was selected as the first female president of the Federation of Caribbean Associations of Architects and served from 2012 to 2014. She is an advocate of regional building standards and mutua ...

* Wanda Dalla Costa * Jon Drezner * Jeffrey Eyster *

Gordon Kipping Gordon Kipping (born 1966) is the founder and principal of G TECTS, a New York-based architectural firm. Kipping has taught at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and has assisted Frank Gehry in teaching design studios at the S ...

Ola-dele Kuku Ola-Dele Kuku (8 August 1963 – 11 October 2021) was a Nigerian architect and artist of Yoruba people, Yoruba origin. He lived and worked between Nigeria and Belgium. Formation and career Ola-Dele Kuku studied at (SCI-Arc), the Southern ...

Cara Lee Cara Lee is Korean-born American Shopper and co-founder of the firm Lee + Mundwiler Architects based in Los Angeles. Bio Originally from Korea, Lee studied architecture at Kent State University from 1992 to 1994. She then attended the interna ...

* Karen M'Closkey *

David Montalba David Montalba, FAIA, SIA, LEED AP (born 1972 in Florence, Italy) is a Swiss-American architect based in Santa Monica, California. He is the founding principal of Montalba Architects, established in 2004. Early life and education Montalba was b ...

* Abinadi Meza * Rocio Romero * Mimi Zeiger

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Southern California Institute Of Architecture Architecture schools in California Universities and colleges in Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles 01 Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Educational institutions established in 1972 1972 establishments in California History of Santa Monica, California Architects from Los Angeles Art in Greater Los Angeles Organizations based in Santa Monica, California Private universities and colleges in California Southern California Institute of Architecture alumni