The Barnard Architecture + Design Summer Institute

The Barnard Architecture + Design Summer Institute Summer 2024

The 2024 Barnard Architecture + Design Summer Institute explores how design impacts the built environment through hands-on design projects, field trips, and opportunities to meet designers and makers throughout the city.

The Barnard Architecture + Design Summer Institute is a three-week summer architecture intensive for local high school students. Led by Barnard architecture faculty and supported by Barnard and Columbia College architecture majors, you will explore architecture and design in New York City, engaging with professional practitioners and developing your own design projects. Your time is divided between field trips to buildings, design offices, and exhibitions; class discussions and workshops in the Design Center and the Digital Architecture Lab; and design work. The program is capped off with a public exhibition of your work.

The program supports up to 15 high school participants per year. You should have an interest in architecture and/or design and a desire to learn through making. The program introduces you to architecture and the design process through project-based learning, field trips, and opportunities to meet designers. You will produce drawings and models, working both by hand and with digital tools. No previous experience in architecture is required. High school students (rising 10th, 11th, and 12th grades) will be selected through a simple application process that will prioritize the following criteria:

• Proximity to our local community
• Interest in architecture, the built environment, or related design fields
• Enthusiasm for exploring design ideas through making

The program is free for all participants. Materials, travel, lunch, and other related costs are all included. Additionally, each participant receives a Certificate of Completion and a $1,000 stipend upon successful completion of the course. 

Faculty Director: Karen Fairbanks
Summer 2024 Dates: Monday, July 1, 2024 – Friday, July 19, 2024

Summer 2024 Application Instructions:

1. Create an account or log into your existing account
2. Select "Start New Application"
3. Select "2024 Special Programs"
4. Select 'Barnard Architecture + Design Summer Institute 2024 (NYC Residents Only' from the dropdown menu
5. Complete the application and submit it 
 

B+C | A
About Barnard and Columbia Architecture:
The Barnard College Architecture Department is the home of undergraduate architecture at Columbia University. Students study with renowned faculty who are dedicated to the unique opportunities of teaching architecture within the liberal arts while they are pursuing research and creative practices of extraordinary breadth and depth. Alumni of our Department are leaders in the architecture profession, in academia, in related fields, and sometimes in fields very different from their undergraduate major. They are designers and activists using their unique education and skills to actively engage in shaping the world and imagining new futures. 

Acknowledgements:
The Barnard Architecture + Design Summer Institute has been made possible through the generous funding of the IDC Foundation.

Learn more about the Barnard Pre-College Summer Program.

The Barnard Architecture + Design Summer Institute Summer 2023

Faculty Director: Karen Fairbanks
Faculty Coordinator: Lindsay Harkema
Faculty: Elsa Mäki CC’17
Course Assistants: Georgia Dillane BC’25, Hazel Lu CC’24, Sebastian Bango CC’23
Campus Partner: The Barnard Design Center