SCI-Arc

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SCI-Arc The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is an independent, accredited school of architecture in Los Angeles, CA. www.sciarc.edu
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It offers graduate and undergraduate degrees, public programs and lectures. Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is dedicated to educating architects who will imagine and shape the future. It is an independent, accredited degree-granting institution offering undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture. Located in a quarter-mile-long former freight depot in the Arts District in Downtown Los Angeles, the school is distinguished by its vibrant studio culture and emphasis on process. SCI-Arc’s approximately 500 students and 80 faculty members, most of whom are practicing architects, work together to re-examine assumptions, create, explore and test the limits of architecture. SCI-Arc faculty and leadership have garnered more than 500 national and international design awards and recognitions, including Progressive Architecture awards, American Institute of Architects (AIA) awards, and the prestigious Jencks and Pritzker architecture prizes. SCI-Arc is ranked 1st in computer applications and 2nd in design in the 2013 America’s Best Architecture Schools survey from DesignIntelligence, and #1 graduate and undergraduate architecture school in Western U.S.

Project by B.Arch students Lina FĂĽllemann + Anthony Curio + Finn Flanagan for Kristy Balliet's Spring 2026 3B Studio.App...
10/19/2026

Project by B.Arch students Lina FĂĽllemann + Anthony Curio + Finn Flanagan for Kristy Balliet's Spring 2026 3B Studio.

Apply now for Fall 2027! Learn more about Undergraduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/undergraduate-program

Embedded Volumes

Located in Mexico City, this proposal for a performing arts center explores the monolith as both a formal language and an organizational strategy. The building is conceived as a single solid mass, wrapped in a continuous metal-panel facade that filters light while reinforcing its unified form. Inside, that language shifts into an assembly of distinct volumes, where six floors of double-height spaces organize theaters, performance venues, and supporting programs.

The project rethinks conventional theater typologies through a secondary exterior theater that functions as a public plaza by day and a recessed performance amphitheater by night. Drawing from the adjacent park, its circular pathways and open spaces inform the landscape and public realm, while the recessed building creates a generous civic approach and encourages everyday use of the site.

Ultimately, the project proposes that architectural language can hold multiple meanings at once. What first appears as a singular object reveals itself as a collection of interconnected spaces, demonstrating how a building can remain formally distinct while drawing from and responding to its surrounding context.

Join us on November 11-13 at SCI-Arc for a series of special events celebrating SCI-Arc’s alumni community.Over the cour...
10/17/2026

Join us on November 11-13 at SCI-Arc for a series of special events celebrating SCI-Arc’s alumni community.

Over the course of three days, SCI-Arc will host alumni, visiting architects and guests for conversations, exhibitions, tours and public programs.

Take advantage of the opportunity to engage with alumni and distinguished practitioners.

More information: https://www.sciarc.edu/events/events/building-forward-alumni

🔳 Wednesday, November 11: Symposium & Exhibition Opening

Alumni Symposium & Panel Discussion
5:00-7:00pm | W.M. Keck Lecture Hall

Exhibition Opening
Something from SCI-Arc: Six Decades of Graphics for Public Programs
Curated by Kevin McMahon, Library Manager
7:00pm | Kappe Library

Reception
7:30-9:00pm | W.M. Keck Lecture Hall

🔲 Thursday, November 12: Tours + Lecture

Selection of Architectural/Museum Tours + Alumni Mixer
by Rachel Malkenhorst, Director of Development
11:00am-3:00pm | W.M. Keck Lecture Hall

Lecture
LOVE, PEACE & ICE CREAM
Wolf Prix, [Alumni] and Founder at Coop Himmelb(l)au (Vienna, Austria)
6:00pm | W.M. Keck Lecture Hall

🔳 Friday, November 13: Book Launch & Gallery Opening

Book Launch
With and Without Walls: The Origins and Progress of SCI-Arc by Benjamin Smith (M.Arch 1 ’07)
12:30pm | Kappe Library

Lecture
Creating With…
Architect’s Talk by alumni Brendan MacFarlane (B.Arch ’84) and Dominique Jakob, Founders at Jakob+MacFarlane (Paris, France)
6:00pm | W.M Keck Lecture Hall

Exhibition Opening
Living With… comes to SCI-Arc
Alumni Brendan MacFarlane (B.Arch ’84) and Dominique Jakob, Founders at Jakob+MacFarlane (Paris, France)
7:00pm | SCI-Arc Gallery

Graduate Thesis 2026 Merit Prize project by Ana Adams with advisor Jackilin Hah Bloom.Apply now for Fall 2027! Learn mor...
10/17/2026

Graduate Thesis 2026 Merit Prize project by Ana Adams with advisor Jackilin Hah Bloom.

Apply now for Fall 2027! Learn more about SCI-Arc Graduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/graduate

After Preservation

Contemporary preservation practices often prioritize the continuity of a building's image, treating historic structures as complete artifacts to be maintained over time. This thesis challenges the assumption that preservation requires completeness and wholeness. Instead, it proposes preservation as a process of selective retention, translation, and replacement, in which architectural elements are evaluated according to their cultural significance rather than their material completeness. By reframing building preservation not as a matter of freezing whole buildings in history, but as an act of systematic partiality, fragmentation, and selective intervention, preservation becomes a framework for what culturally must remain, and what can be evolved.

The landscape of the failed 710 Freeway Extension conditions coinciding with Markham Place Historical District in Pasadena provides a testing ground for this approach. These conditions expose preservation not as a static act, but one of negotiation of memory, history, evolution, and future use. Through a series of architectural interventions across the corridor's "ghost houses," the project develops a methodology for fragmentary preservation in which culturally significant elements are retained while others are transformed, translated, or replaced.

Don't miss your chance to see the exhibition Levers Long Enough to Move the World: Sketches in Contemporary Architecture...
10/16/2026

Don't miss your chance to see the exhibition Levers Long Enough to Move the World: Sketches in Contemporary Architecture at the SCI-Arc Gallery. Exhibition ends Sunday, October 25 at 6pm.

More information: https://www.sciarc.edu/events/exhibitions/levers-move-the-world

Levers Long Enough to Move the World is an exhibition of architectural sketches at SCI-Arc, originally exhibited at the Pratt School of Architecture featuring the work of more than 50 contemporary practices. It is organized around a question and theory. First, what is the sketch today? Second, as a proposed response, that sketches are levers. They are a way of asserting architecture’s physicality in an ever-less material world, and of exerting the force of this physicality entirely out of proportion to their smallness, quickness, and humility.

Curated by:
Andrew Holder, Chair, Graduate Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design, Pratt Institute; Principal, The Los Angeles Design Group

With Co-Curators:
Alex Tahinos, Adjunct Assistant Professor
Inmo Kang, Visiting Assistant Professor
Fernando Garrido Carreras, Visiting Assistant Professor

Photos from the October 2 Opening Reception and Artist Talk.

Graduate Thesis 2026 Merit Prize project by Drew Hart with advisor David Eskenazi.Apply now for Fall 2027! Learn more ab...
10/14/2026

Graduate Thesis 2026 Merit Prize project by Drew Hart with advisor David Eskenazi.

Apply now for Fall 2027! Learn more about SCI-Arc Graduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/graduate

That's Enough

That’s Enough works with familiar forms and systems of assembly to produce a highly specific structure from a limited set of means. The gable and the wood truss are developed through separate rules and brought back together at an almost monumental scale. Their combination allows ordinary materials, forms, and methods of assembly to take on an unusual degree of scale, density, and formal presence.

The altered gable begins with a paper massing study. Standard sheets are folded and accumulated without removing material, allowing the limits of the sheet and the operations performed on it to inform the resulting form. A similar attitude carries through to material, labor, and color. The 1:16 model is assembled from more than 1,500 members, each cut to the same 18.75-inch length, corresponding to 25 feet at full scale. Discarded wood and foam were collected and standardized into these members using a table saw and chop saw. Every connection is made with the same lap joint, keeping the act of assembly direct and repeatable. Existing differences in color and tone are organized into clouds and gradients across the structure, giving another order to the accumulation of members.

At the scale of the whole, the structure begins to suggest a typology of its own. Barns, sheds, and bow-truss buildings offer a useful comparison, repetitive structural logic, large open volumes, and a loose relationship to program and location. The project takes on some of these same qualities, allowing different forms of occupation while maintaining a strong architectural presence. It is interested in the knowledge already held within familiar forms, materials, and ways of building. Through specific interventions, their established logics are extended into forms and effects that begin to exceed their common expectations.

Curious about life at SCI-Arc?Join us for Open House 2026 on Saturday, October 24 at 10AM. 🔗➡ Register today: https://ww...
10/12/2026

Curious about life at SCI-Arc?

Join us for Open House 2026 on Saturday, October 24 at 10AM. 🔗➡ Register today: https://www.sciarc.edu/events/events/open-house

Step into the world of SCI-Arc where bold ideas, experimentation, technology, and architecture come together. Explore our studios, tour the school, meet faculty and leadership, connect with current students, and get a firsthand look at what it’s like to be part of the SCI-Arc community.

Whether you’re pursuing undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate study, come see where your ideas could take you.

Project by B.Arch student Sophie Hohmann for Matthew Au's Spring 2026 1B Studio.Apply now for Fall 2027! Learn more abou...
10/11/2026

Project by B.Arch student Sophie Hohmann for Matthew Au's Spring 2026 1B Studio.

Apply now for Fall 2027! Learn more about Undergraduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/undergraduate-program

A pool house and pool design proposal for Los Angeles's Elysian Park.

By studying the gestural qualities within artistic swimming, we discover a balanced play between the sharp dynamics of gliding and the soft, fluid elegance of graceful movements through the water.

These relationships are reflected through fusing, harmonizing, and establishing tensions between fundamental geometries to form specific hybrid shapes.

When applying texture and materiality to these unique geometries and forming multiple grounds and datums, tensions intensify, curves and peaks are highlighted, revealing figures that can play different roles.

Next, the midterm explorations evolved the abstract movements into a singular geometry with the potential to reveal completely new relationships through the act of “slicing” the form.
Taking in all these learnings, the final model reveals a new perspective:

An entirely silver exterior facade, featuring a range of reflective, glistening, concise textures in contrast to soft, diffuse pink, blue, and yellow interior qualities. All aiming for a unique juxtaposition between the interior and the exterior, an apparent collision between the sharp and the soft. Furthermore, the relationship between the house and pool is harmonious, reading as a continuous gesture rather than one that is rigid or static.

Visitors are able to easily access programs from multiple ends on the site, and experience two pools: one above ground and the other below ground.

The total form and figuration always remains unexpected and avoids feelings of familiarity. The experience of the poolhouse is to give way to new emotions that bring about a unique appreciation for the art of swimming.

Graduate Thesis 2026 Gehry Prize project by Alex Borger with advisor Jackilin Bloom.Apply now for Fall 2027. Learn more ...
10/10/2026

Graduate Thesis 2026 Gehry Prize project by Alex Borger with advisor Jackilin Bloom.

Apply now for Fall 2027. Learn more about SCI-Arc Graduate Programs: https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/graduate

Inherited Earth

Extraction is an architecture of access. A well makes accessible what geology had kept beyond reach. Around that opening, an entire territory is reorganized: roads are cut, power is distributed, pipelines are laid, and machines are maintained so that material beneath the ground can continually be brought to the surface.

Across California’s Kern River Oil Field, this process has accumulated for more than a century. Yet the productive life of a well is considerably shorter than the consequences of opening one.

Inherited Earth begins with this discrepancy.

The project imagines a future in which extraction has ended. Infrastructure once constructed to guarantee access to the subsurface is given an opposite responsibility: to guarantee its inaccessibility.

Former wells are sealed but not erased. Selected openings are enclosed by permanent structures that mark what remains beneath them. Residual subsurface pressure is collected and transferred into responsive membranes. As pressure changes, thousands of thin whiskers shift position, allowing an otherwise invisible geological condition to register above ground.

These structures are not monuments to oil, but instruments of long-term stewardship. They weather, are repaired, become overgrown, and are inherited by generations increasingly distant from the culture that produced them.

Through film, drawing, field documentation, and architectural artifacts, Inherited Earth asks what architecture becomes when its responsibility is no longer to facilitate extraction, but to maintain a boundary and what it means to inherit that responsibility long after its origin has disappeared from living memory.

Please join us on Wednesday, October 14 at 6pm for a lecture from RamĂłn Saturnino: Pre, Post.More information: https://w...
10/09/2026

Please join us on Wednesday, October 14 at 6pm for a lecture from RamĂłn Saturnino: Pre, Post.

More information: https://www.sciarc.edu/events/lectures/pre-post

RamĂłn Saturnino (b. 1999, San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, Mexico) is an artist whose installations, sculptures, and photography transform devices of social and territorial ordering into abstract forms. Saturnino's recent solo exhibitions include AquĂ­ No es AsĂ­ (Lodos, Mexico City, 2025) and 5 fotografĂ­as por RamĂłn Saturnino (Jet Lag Taxi, Guadalajara, 2024). His work has been included in the group exhibitions Vasos Comunicantes (G.A.M., Mexico City, 2025), Columna Rota (Museo de la Ciudad de MĂ©xico, Mexico City, 2025), Manual Intuitivo (Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, 2025) and La Casa Ideal (Proyectos MultipropĂłsito, Mexico City, 2024). His work has been recently acquired by ColecciĂłn Jumex, among other private collections.

Saturino will present a historic revisionism of how western vanguards and art movements are reinterpreted in Mexico, utilizing the first examples of postmodern architecture in Mexico as the starting point, drawing a line between the digestion of vanguards in the country and their continuity in art. Examples from his personal work and other contemporary art in Mexico will be shown to dissect their influences and how they are contextualized in the country.

Address

960 E 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA
90013

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 6pm
Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 6pm
Friday 10am - 6pm
Saturday 10am - 6pm
Sunday 10am - 6pm

Telephone

+12136132200

Website

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