Architecture Degrees Online

The Architecture Department offers a Bachelor of Architecture degree. This degree program, accredited by the National Architecture Accrediting Board (NAAB), is a five year “first professional degree” program, a pre-requisite for licensing as a registered architect in most states. Architecture epitomizes the “learn-by-doing” pedagogy that is fundamental to Cal Poly. The program is rigorous, lab oriented, and sequential in nature and reflects a balance and integration of design and technology – the theoretical and the pragmatic. The fourth year offers qualified students the opportunity to study off-campus. The fifth year is a selected year long project and final exhibit that salutes the architectural creativity of each individual’s extended research and design.

The administration, faculty and staff are committed to the program and its primary emphasis on teaching excellence at the undergraduate level. The unusual size of the program and the diversity of faculty interests and accomplishments offer a vast palette of directions, concerns and issues as backgrounds for studio work.

The location of the program within the College provides cross-disciplinary opportunities in the areas of Landscape Architecture, Construction Management, City & Regional Planning and Architectural Engineering.

In July 2008 the Masters of Architecture Program was formally granted a three-year term of initial accreditation, effective January 1, 2008. Following the initial three-year term, at the next scheduled review in 2011, the program may receive a six-year term. CCA’s undergraduate Architecture Program is fully accredited.

In the United States, most state registration boards require a degree from an accredited professional degree program as a prerequisite for licensure. The National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), which is the sole agency authorized to accredit U.S. professional degree programs in architecture, recognizes three types of degrees: the bachelor of architecture, the master of architecture, and the doctor of architecture.

A program may be granted a six-, three-, or two-year term of accreditation, depending on the extent of its conformance with established educational standards. Master’s degree programs may consist of a preprofessional undergraduate degree and a professional graduate degree that, when earned sequentially, constitute an accredited professional education. The preprofessional degree is not, by itself, recognized as an accredited degree.

Architecture Podcast
In spring 2006, students in On the Air, Jordan Geiger’s interdisciplinary studio course, worked with two types of technology that involve air in architecture: pneumatics (construction) and broadcast (representation).

Their work resulted in full-scale inflatable structures and this podcast.