Student to faculty ratio: 12:1. Student population: 425. International students: 50%
SCI-Arc
About
Located in downtown Los Angeles, SCI-Arc is a center of innovation and one of the nation’s few independent architecture schools.
78%
Graduation rate
83%
Admission rate
9:1
Student-faculty ratio
Source: US Department of Education
Located in downtown Los Angeles, SCI-Arc is a center of innovation and one of the nation’s few independent architecture schools.
Message from the Director
SCI-Arc is always expanding and raising its ambitions. In our globalized era, design matters like never before, and we have the capacity to astonish the world by demonstrating all the different ways in which design can transform it.
Mission Statement
SCI-Arc’s mission is to reimagine the very edges of architecture, educating architects to engage, speculate, and innovate.
History of SCI-Arc
SCI-Arc was founded in 1972 in Santa Monica by a group of faculty and students who wanted to approach architecture from a more experimental perspective than traditional schools offered.
People
SCI-Arc’s leadership, faculty, and staff come from diverse backgrounds and countries, reflecting the globalism of the institution and its student body.
Accreditation
The undergraduate and graduate professional degrees awarded by SCI-Arc are accredited by both the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).
Support the School
SCI-Arc relies on philanthropic support from alumni, parents, and friends to sustain our world-renowned educational programming.
Careers
SCI-Arc takes pride in recruiting and retaining the best and brightest candidates for a career at SCI-Arc and is dedicated to creating a culturally rich, artistic, diverse work environment.
SCI-Arc's campus occupies a quarter-mile-long former freight depot in downtown Los Angeles' Arts District — itself the city's first reinforced-concrete building — and gives students an integrated, hands-on suite of resources for making architecture, not just drawing it.
Robotics, Analog, and Digital Fabrication
At the core of the campus is a 12,000-square-foot fabrication complex that unites three connected facilities into one of the largest and most advanced production environments at any architecture school in the country.
- Robot House — A double-height, 1,000-square-foot lab built around a five-robot work cell of large Stäubli robotic arms, plus an adjoining Robotics and Simulation Lab with an additional Stäubli TX40 unit. Programmed in real time through platforms like Rhino Grasshopper and Maya, the robots let students go beyond conventional digital fabrication — including additive freeform construction with advanced composite materials — making Robot House a genuine testing ground for the future of architectural production, not just a display of automation.
- Magic Box — A two-story, 4,000-square-foot digital fabrication lab housing 3D scanners, ABS and powder printers, laser cutters, and CNC machines, where students can 3D print, laser-cut, or vacuum-form models in materials ranging from wax and plastic to metal.
- Fabrication Shop — A 6,000-square-foot analog shop equipped with a full range of metal- and woodworking machinery, supporting the physical, material side of building that complements the digital tools next door.
Together, these three spaces mean a student can move a single idea from hand-built model to robotically fabricated prototype to CNC-milled component without ever leaving the building.
Beyond Fabrication
- Kappe Library — The largest academic library in Southern California dedicated to architecture, open to both SCI-Arc students and outside researchers.
- SCI-Arc Galleries — The only cultural institution in Los Angeles committed exclusively to exhibiting experimental work by contemporary architects, giving students direct, continuous exposure to the field's leading edge.
- Print Center and Store — On-campus printing services and an architecture-supply store, so the tools of daily studio work are always within reach.
SCI-Arc receives applications from students all over the United States and around the world. The Office of Admissions is committed to working with individual applicants to navigate the application process.
SCI-Arc’s admissions process carefully evaluates academic accomplishments and genuine interest in architecture and design. Each applicant’s academic record, portfolio, personal statement, school profile, and list of achievements are thoroughly reviewed. The goal is to admit students who have the potential to thrive in SCI-Arc’s dynamic and collaborative environment, where they can push boundaries and realize their creative abilities in shaping the future of design and architecture.
For more than 50 years, SCI-Arc has offered one of the most experimental architectural educations in the world — and one of the only independent, single-purpose architecture schools left anywhere. Our pedagogy is built on a simple premise: architects should teach what they practice. Faculty across our undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate programs are primarily working architects, theorists, and technologists who bring live professional practice directly into the studio, giving students pragmatic insight into the field alongside rigorous critical and theoretical grounding. Programs culminate in an individual thesis, challenging students to define a disciplinary position, test it through design, and defend it publicly — training that produces independent thinkers, not just technicians. Studios are supported by more than 12,000 square feet of advanced fabrication space, including six robotic arms and additive and reductive manufacturing technology, giving students hands-on command of the tools shaping architecture's future.
That pedagogy translates into results. SCI-Arc has ranked in the top 20 nationally across DesignIntelligence's survey categories for a decade, with top-10 placements in design theory, design technology, construction methods and materials, and research at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Our B.Arch and M.Arch programs are NAAB-accredited, enabling graduates to pursue licensure in the United States, and our alumni are recruited by leading global firms, including Morphosis, Gehry Partners, Gensler, SOM, and Zaha Hadid Architects. For international students specifically, several SCI-Arc degrees — including the undergraduate B.Arch and all four EDGE postgraduate M.S. programs — are federally STEM-designated, qualifying graduates for up to 36 months of extended Optional Practical Training in the U.S.
Finally, location matters. SCI-Arc sits in the heart of downtown Los Angeles' Arts District, a former industrial neighborhood transformed into a walkable cultural hub of galleries, museums, and studios, within reach of MOCA, the Broad, Hauser & Wirth, and the offices of many of the firms our graduates go on to join. It's a campus embedded in a living, working design economy — not adjacent to one. Combined with a faculty and student body drawn from around the globe, SCI-Arc offers international students a genuinely global architectural community, in a city with an unmatched tradition of architectural experimentation.
SCI-Arc's academic reputation is measured both by independent accreditation and by ongoing recognition from the architecture profession itself — two distinct, complementary signals of quality that international applicants should understand clearly.
Accreditation
SCI-Arc as an institution is regionally accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission, the accrediting body recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for institutions throughout California, Hawaii, and the Pacific. This institutional accreditation confirms that SCI-Arc as a whole meets rigorous, ongoing standards for educational quality and is certified for student eligibility in federal programs, including financial aid.
Within that institutional accreditation, SCI-Arc's two professional degree programs — the B.Arch and the M.Arch (offered through both the M.Arch 1 and M.Arch 2 tracks) — are separately accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), the sole agency authorized to accredit professional architecture degrees at U.S. institutions. NAAB accreditation is what allows graduates of these two programs to pursue architectural licensure in the United States. SCI-Arc's postgraduate EDGE programs carry the same WASC institutional accreditation and are federally STEM-designated.
Recognition
Each year, DesignIntelligence surveys architecture professionals, deans, department chairs, and recent graduates to rank U.S. architecture programs, and SCI-Arc has placed in the top 20 across multiple categories for the past decade. In the most recent survey, SCI-Arc's undergraduate and graduate programs ranked in the top 10 across nearly every focus area evaluated, including:
- #2 in Design Technologies (undergraduate)
- #3 in Design Theory and Practice (undergraduate)
- #3 Most Hired From, across both undergraduate and graduate programs
- #5 in Communication and Presentation Skills (undergraduate and graduate)
- #3 in Research (undergraduate)
- California
960 East 3rd Street Los Angeles, CA 90013, Los Angeles
