Mission
History
A department of architecture was first established in the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1916 with Everett Victor Meeks as its first chair. In 1959, the School of Art and Architecture was made a graduate professional school. In September 1963, a new Art and Architecture Building, designed by department chair Paul Rudolph, was opened. Yale soon became well-known as a center of architectural discourse, with faculty members and the student-edited journal Perspecta setting the tone for conversations on architecture nation-wide. In 1967, Rudolph’s successor as chair, Charles Moore, created both the Master of Environmental Design program and the Yale Building Project, both of which would come to be deeply influential in delineating a participatory and interdisciplinary method for architectural education for years to come.
In 1969, the faculties of Art and Architecture were constituted separately, each with their own dean; the Schools formally split in 1996. The Art and Architecture Building was restored in 2008, with a renovation accompanying the construction of the Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art, designed by Gwathmey Siegel, the firm of Charles Gwathmey (M.Arch. ’62). It was renamed Paul Rudolph Hall, in honor of its designer.
In the twenty-first century, the Yale School of Architecture has continued on the path of excellence, bringing the most celebrated architects from around the world to teach advanced studios, adding to our renowned in-house faculty. The School is bolstered by the Yale Urban Design Workshop and the Center for Ecosystems in Architecture, which respectively contribute planning expertise to cities and conduct materials research. New initiatives bring pedagogical focus onto issues of environmental justice, new technical requirements for a more sustainable building and construction industry, and advanced technologies, all while continuing to teach essential subjects in the fundamentals of design like hand drawing, three-dimensional representation, and model-making.