The History of Art and Architecture (HIAA) Department at Brown University started offering an interdisciplinary architecture concentration in 2016. It quickly grew in popularity: In 2021, the first graduating class had 8 students and, in 2024, 21 students graduated from the program.
But now, Brown University is terminating the concentration. And students, faculty, and alumni of Brown’s architecture program are trying to reverse course, and save it.
The architecture major will be “sunset” by 2028, HIAA says. The decision to end the concentration was “not an easy one,” HIAA stated. AN emailed Brown University for comment.
In 2022, architecture students and faculty moved into a custom-designed studio in Providence at 271 Thayer Street. Plans to phase out Brown’s architecture program were first rolled out in 2024, drawing immediate pushback from faculty, alumni, and students.
“While the concentration has been popular, it has also experienced significant challenges—most importantly a growing misalignment between the core humanities mission of HIAA and the pre-professional orientation of the concentration,” the HIAA website claims, without going into detail as to what the misalignments were.
The discontinuation does not mean Brown University will cease offering architecture courses, HIAA continued. The HIAA Department will still offer courses in architectural history. And the department will continue to offer one introductory-level architectural design studio in its course roster, it affirmed.
Students and faculty have started a petition to save the concentration. The architecture program “needs a new home on campus,” petitioners state. The petition proposes moving the architecture concentration into either Brown’s Urban Studies or Public Health programs, or possibly creating a new “stand alone program” in order to salvage it.
“We believe that architecture is a perfect Brown concentration, as it combines skills such as drawing, rendering, spatial thinking and model making with a strongly contextual approach and classes in the humanities and urban studies,” the petition affirms. “It is interdisciplinary and has social relevance.”
AN will continue to provide updates to this ongoing story.
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