This one-year interdisciplinary post-professional degree program is tailored for advanced students and midcareer professionals. Students focus on research and design through mentored study and a range of elective offerings. The MAAD degree is STEM designated.

Three areas of concentration are offered that reflect the diversity of emerging domains within architecture, allowing for a rigorous course of study that has an advanced level of specialization, but is also highly cross-disciplinary.

The MAAD Architectural Ecologies concentration offers advanced training at the nexus of architecture, fabrication, and ecology. Leveraging CCA’s strengths in ecological research, building technology, and digital fabrication, the program explores how architects organize matter and energy towards the production of meaningful environments that can help mitigate and adapt to climate change.

• Explore the promise of alternative materials to generate novel spatial conditions.
• Learn to design passive, active, and regenerative energy systems that harness ambient microclimates for occupant wellness, environmental resilience, and climate change adaptation.
• Collaborate with local communities and institutions to advocate for equity and reciprocity among people, plants, and animals.
• Leverage interdisciplinary expertise and collaborate with science and industry to develop architectural strategies for addressing ecological challenges.
• Research how innovative digital fabrication technologies, materials, and computation can be integrated into environmental design.

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The Master of Advanced Architectural Design (MAAD) Digital Craft concentration focuses on contemporary digital design technologies and digital craft. It provides students with both broad and in-depth exposure to contemporary topics:

• parametric design and advanced computation
• digital fabrication and robotic technologies
• interactive technologies and responsive environments
• building information modeling (BIM)
• advanced simulation and visualization
• history and theory of digital design
• experimental and emerging technologies​​​​

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MAAD Urban Works offers advanced training in urban research, design, and scholarship that enables students to directly address the urban challenges of the 21st Century. Students lay the groundwork to join and form experimental practices that bridge client-driven work with municipal agencies, nonprofit advocacy, and entrepreneurial ventures.

• Learn innovative research and visualization techniques, GIS mapping and communications strategies, and contemporary urban theories and concepts.
• Develop design strategies to respond to demands for social justice, ecological vitality, and economic resilience within the contemporary city.
• Interact directy with city agencies, nonprofit organizations, and urban and architectural practitioners.
• Undertake a year-long design-research project that results in a final work, such as a book, exhibition, or app.

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The MAAD History, Theory, Experiments [HTX] concentration offers an intense year of advanced study in architectural and urban history, theory, and criticism, culminating in an independent research project based in experimental methods and digital platforms:

• Explore a research topic of your choosing on the built environment.
• Gain mastery of your chosen subject under the guidance of a thesis supervisor.
• Explore methods and platforms drawn from experimental and digital humanities.
• Develop your research into a publication, exhibition, website, or app.
• Prepare for a career in architectural teaching, curation, digital humanities (digital conversation and curation), criticism, journalism, or doctoral study.

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Professional degree in architecture, or equivalent. See submission requirements »