M.Arch - Research Groups

Graduate students engage in research as a fundamental part of their curriculum through participation in our five Graduate Research Groups:

Master of Architecture students in the 3 1/2 year track begin their exploration of the Graduate Research Groups at the start of their third year in the program, and must enroll in courses from at least one of the GRGs during their last three semesters. Students in the 2-year track enroll in GRG-affiliated courses immediately upon entering the program.

  • Ecological Practices
    10/8/24
    The built and natural environment are a complex web of interconnected parts, constantly exchanging energy and resources. This group critically engages environmental systems and examine the role that architecture and urbanism play in harnessing and stewarding them.
  • Inclusive Design
    10/8/24
    Develop environments, products and systems for a wider range of people, especially those in underserved populations. One of the most important design movements of our era, inclusive design is based on the values of non-discrimination, social justice, equal opportunity, and personal empowerment.
  • Material Culture
    10/8/24
    Projecting forward from Buffalo’s legacy in material innovation, this group explores constructive sensibilities and investigate how our culture is deeply embedded in material artifacts. Pursue design, production, and potential materials through full-scale fabrication, assembly, and installation.
  • Situated Technologies
    10/8/24
    There is no digital architecture anymore—just architecture. Consider architecture in the expanded field of technologies and mediated environments. Complex assemblages of code, people, space, material, infrastructure, practices, and processes—each are technologies unto themselves as is their gathering in architecture.
  • Urban Design
    10/8/24
    Urban design works at the confluence of the scale of buildings and the scale of cities. Straddle the fields of architecture and planning to critically examine parameters of contemporary urban form, including political, economic, environmental, social, and cultural forces.