In this film, we follow the unfolding of SCI-Arc’s 2024 Graduate Thesis Exhibition, a culmination of a year’s worth of research, design, and speculative inquiry by 75 graduate students. The exhibition is a platform for critical engagement, where students articulate and defend their thesis work before a wide array of guest critics and 19 faculty advisors. Framed around three themes, “Matter Transformations,” “Technological Narratives,” and “New Cultural Forms,” the film offers a window into the ideas shaping the next generation of architectural discourse. Through glimpses of presentations, critiques, and the immersive exhibition itself, this film captures a moment of intense dialogue and bold proposition, set against the experimental backdrop of SCI-Arc.

Explore ‘Concepts in Play: SCI-Arc GT23 Part Two – Themes’ to see how SCI-Arc’s graduates creatively respond to today’s architectural challenges. This second film in the series showcases inventive uses of materials and technology, as well as unique approaches to blending digital and physical spaces. Each theme ventures beyond traditional practices, crafting spaces that engage with current social and environmental contexts. Discover how these emerging architects shape new architectural dialogues and envision innovative solutions for our world.

Explore architectural innovation in ‘New Ground: SCI-Arc GT23 Part One – Projects’. This film unveils the bold inquiries and pioneering designs of SCI-Arc’s graduates as they challenge conventional boundaries and redefine the future of architecture. From addressing climate change on intimate scales to reimagining the impact of design on mental health, these projects are not just visionary—they are transformative. Witness the next wave of architects as they craft solutions that blend technology, craft, and societal impact.

Highlights from the 2022 SCI-Arc Selected Graduate Thesis Exhibition. The show featured award-winning Graduate Thesis projects in the SCI-Arc Gallery. Graduate Thesis represents the culmination of the Graduate curriculum at SCI-Arc. Projects in the exhibition included the Gehry Prize winning thesis by Sopie Akoury and Sue Hang Mun Choi + Si Ian Wong, as well as projects by Merit Graduate Thesis Prize winners Charlie Allen + John Siu Lun Chan, Chris Biao Cao, Yujia Fang, Shuang Feng + Tianze We, Betty Ziyin Gu + Joy Xin Yi Ma, Jiaxin Li, Kait Cartmell, Jordan Micham, Camille Khanh Linh Thai and Jure Žibret.

In honor of SCI-Arc’s 50th anniversary SCI-Arc alumni and other members of the SCI-Arc community speak about the importance of thesis as a graduating student’s final project in school and the first project in their professional career. Several alumni describe their thesis projects and the transformative effect thesis had on their design work and practice.

SCI-Arc’s 2022 Graduate Thesis Weekend included reviews of the thesis projects with over 50 critics including SCI-Arc faculty and invited guests. Critics included John McMorrough, Michael Osman, Jerry Jenkins, Germane Barnes, Neil Denari, Margarita Jover, Abigail Coover Hume, Karen Lohrmann, Barbara Bestor, Galo Canizares and many others.

“Expanding the Archive” presents the work of SCI-Arc’s 2021 Graduate Thesis students. Emerging out of a time of crisis and transformation, the architectural projects featured in this film expand not only what is included within architecture, but also how to do the work of architecture in the present, how to speculate, how to engage in current issues, and how to communicate architecture’s purpose to the wider world. “Expanding the Archive” captures the planetary scope of architectural thinking at SCI-Arc, showcasing projects which have been conceived, developed, and shared across time zones, cities, and social contexts, linked by the collective act of imagining alternative futures while also engaging architecture’s past. The film features a broad spectrum of SCI-Arc projects, revealing the sheer diversity of ideas among the student body about what architecture is, who it can be for, and how it engages with design and the built environment as it is, and as it might be in the future. Together, these projects testify to the power of imagination to generate optimism out of crisis and reset the standards of what architecture can be.

Highlights from SCI-Arc’s 2020 Graduate Thesis Weekend. Complete with wall-to-wall livestreamed final reviews, SPIN Room commentary sessions throughout, as well as rich and engaging discourse and feedback from a wide range of experts in the field of architecture, this year’s graduating M.Arch 1 and 2 students took the virtual stage via Twitch and YouTube Live to present their final thesis projects. SCI-Arc Graduate Thesis Weekend is the school’s largest annual event, during which visiting critics, architecture professionals, as well as SCI-Arc faculty and leadership collectively review students’ graduate theses as they put forth their final proposals, which each year endeavor to generate new perspectives in architecture and design.

Highlights from the 2019 SCI-Arc Selected Graduate Thesis Exhibition. The show featured award winning Graduate Thesis projects in the SCI-Arc Gallery. Graduate Thesis represents the culmination of the Graduate curriculum at SCI-Arc.

SCI-Arc’s 2019 Graduate Thesis Weekend included reviews of the thesis projects with over 50 critics including SCI-Arc faculty and invited guests. Critics included Ellie Abrons, Frances Anderton, Johan Bettum, Edward Eigen, K. Michael Hays, Thom Mayne and Amanda Reeser-Lawrence among others.

SCI-Arc’s Gehry Prize is awarded annually to Graduating students in the school’s M.Arch programs for the Best Graduate Thesis. The prize, established in 2012, is generously endowed by Frank Gehry, FAIA. Five recent recipients of the Gehry Prize speak about how the prize was instrumental in launching their careers as young professionals in the field of architecture.

Brett Steele discusses the architectural thesis project with Hernan Diaz Alonso. Steele begins with a survey of significant projects from the past, arguing that these projects are more interesting for their new ways of making an argument than for their designs.

Elena Manferdini moderates a discussion between Eric Owen Moss, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Jeffrey Kipnis, and Peter Eisenman regarding the relevance of thesis in architecture school.

Todd Gannon proposes five general guidelines to graduate students embarking on their thesis:

Privilege Difference Over Similarity Avoid Cliché Making Privilege How Over What Develop New Vocabularies Enfranchise New Constituencies

SCI-Arc students Connor Covey, James Kubiniec, Sasha Tillmann, and Nithya Subramaniam present drafts of their in-process graduate thesis proposals. Stan Allen, Florencia Pita, Marcelyn Gow, and Todd Gannon critique the proposals.

SCI-Arc’s 2018 Graduate Thesis Weekend included reviews of the thesis projects with over 60 critics including SCI-Arc faculty and invited guests.

Highlights from the 2018 SCI-Arc Selected Graduate Thesis Exhibition.

Watch highlights from SCI-Arc’s 2017 Graduate Thesis Weekend

Join Graduate Programs Chair Elena Manferdini and Graduate Thesis Coordinator Florencia Pita for an in-depth look at SCI-Arc’s Selected Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2017, a juried exhibition of exceptional thesis projects by 2017 graduates.

Watch highlights from SCI-Arc’s 2016 Graduate Thesis Weekend. The weekend’s events included reviews of the 81 thesis projects with over 50 critics including SCI-Arc faculty and invited guests.

Graduate Programs Chair Elena Manferdini and Graduate Thesis Coordinator Florencia Pita give an in-depth look at SCI-Arc’s Selected Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2016, a juried exhibition of exceptional thesis projects by 2016 graduates.

Grad Thesis Weekend, the school’s biggest annual event, is a culmination of up to three years of study and coursework leading toward Master of Architecture degrees.

Eric Owen Moss opens the 2014 exhibition of selected thesis projects, encouraging current students to view the work not as models but as starting points for new explorations. Faculty advisors comment on the three Gehry Prize-winning projects: Moss on”Puzzling” by Hannah Pavlovich (M.Arch 1), Hernan Diaz Alonso on”Glass House” by Jeffrey Halstead (M.Arch 1), and Elena Manferdini on”I Am Out of Focus” by Mustafa Kustur (M.Arch 2).

After Elena Manferdini explains the history and format of the symposium, six students present their thesis proposals: Taryn Bone, Scotty Zane Carroll, Mustafa Kustur, Hannah Pavlovich, Julian Ma, and Yu Li. To begin the panel discussion, Manferdini reviews some of the key ideas that have shaped thesis at SCI-Arc over the last eight years. Marcelyn Gow, Hernan Diaz Alonso, and Andrew Zago debate what is needed now to keep thesis at SCI-Arc relevant, the crucial transition from thesis research to design, and plausibility.