The Graduate Architecture Landscape Architecture and Urban Design (GALAUD) program at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture is a progressive design environment for advanced architectural research located in New York City. The program proposes speculative debate and experimental architectural production based on a relational construct among theoretical inquiry, computational research, digital de
sign, and technological investigation. To this end, Pratt Institute’s GALAUD seeks to formulate a contemporary approach to architecture that is “ecological” in the sense that it provides collective exchanges which are both trans-disciplinary and trans-categorical. This ecological approach encourages feedback relationships among architecture, landscape, urbanism, technology, software programming, industry, manufacturing, political agencies, theoretical studies, and other categories and disciplines that are newly emerging in contemporary culture. This approach seeks to productively intensify heterogeneous interests and agencies. In addition, the program sees architectural innovations in both the theory and practice of architecture and the interconnected phenomena out of which it emerges. Recent courses at Pratt Institute’s GALAUD have investigated such topics as iterative processes, fluid systems, emergent phenomena, logics of organization, complex urbanisms, globalization and politics, computational logics, material performance, and speculative fabrication.
