Mar 19, 2024  
2020-2021 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2020-2021 Undergraduate Catalog [Not Current Academic Year. Consult with Your Academic Advisor for Your Catalog Year]

Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design



Office of the Dean 713-743-2400
General College Information 713-743-2400
William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library 713-743-2340
Student Services Office 713-743-3463
Internet Address http://www.arch.uh.edu/

Design reconciles conflicting visions and exploits all available technologies to shape and sustain a better world. Houston’s hot-humid environment, low-lying Gulf-Coast geography, and dispersed pattern of un-zoned metropolitan development presents designers with an extraordinary laboratory, full of challenges and opportunities. The proposals seeded in the vast urban sprawl of Houston are transmutable to cities around the globe.

The Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design offers its students a platform of integrated disciplines - architecture, space architecture, interior architecture, and industrial design - from which to negotiate the complexities of contemporary practice in a world that is grappling with diminishing economic and natural resources, the realities of post disaster re-construction, and, at the same time, continued, rapid urbanization. Faculty and students work together in a studio-centric curriculum, supported by a premier digital fabrication facility. Open studios seamlessly incorporate coursework into project-based learning through material investigations and applied research. At the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, making is not simply an action or a craft, but a form of critical thinking, calling forth innovative solutions for contemporary conditions. Our programs foster an environment where ideas find form, where practices that are socially equitable and fundamentally ecological establish a model from which to develop Houston’s future and to inform and shape design strategies globally.

We seek applicants to our programs that possess curiosity, commitment, initiative, creativity and a solid work ethic. We strive to graduate students who become reflective practitioners and leaders in their fields. The curriculum is designed to prepare our graduates for professional practice in architecture, industrial design or interior architecture, by equipping them with a depth of understanding of human needs and a command of a range of technologies that will enable them to shape their environments and the objects in them. We are keenly aware of our responsibilities toward our environment and our concentration on sustainable design has forged collaborative projects across the disciplines.