Spitzer School Mission

The Spitzer School of Architecture, the flagship public school of architecture in New York City, is committed to creating a just, sustainable, and imaginative future. Through innovative research and interdisciplinary collaboration, the distinguished faculty educate the diverse student body in degree programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, urban studies, and urban sustainability. Students are invited to design, to build, and to dream; they weigh in on (and intend to solve) the crises of our time; they learn the fundamentals of the craft of the professions of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. As designers, builders, developers, public servants, leaders, and innovators, graduates of the Spitzer School reflect and enrich the complex communities in which they live, practice, and work; they become skilled, committed, and engaged professionals who advocate for a better city, a better country, and a better world.

The Spitzer School acts in the spirit of the City College of New York’s historic Ephebic Oath: “To transmit the city, not only not less, but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”

Architecture Programs Mission

Our mission is to prepare students to design for the betterment of our shared global community. At the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, the only public school of architecture in New York City, our professional B.Arch. and M.Arch. programs are shaped by the diversity of our students, the inventive research of our faculty, and by multidisciplinary collaborations. We prepare students to become engaged designers and to apply an expansive set of skills to address pressing social, cultural, environmental, and professional challenges. With a rigorous foundation in the core competencies of building design, history, theory, and technologies, and with an emphasis on agile thinking, the Architecture programs aim to educate the next generation of innovators redefining the role of the architect in the twenty-first century.

Landscape Architecture Program Mission

Landscape architecture plays an essential role in connecting justice to environmental design and the ecological infrastructures of the urban realm. The mission of the Master of Landscape Architecture Program at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, is to prepare students to be leaders in the field of landscape architecture through innovative research and practice in urban ecological design, planning, and policymaking. The program aims to reimagine and rethink the profession’s current and future challenges through the lens of social, environmental, and multi-species justice, including rapid urbanization, resource extraction and management, the interface of nature and technology, ongoing species extinctions, and the climate emergency. The curriculum engages critical thinking about complex and indeterminate systems, empowering students to implement actionable change across multiple scales of the urban landscape.

Urban Design Program Mission

The Graduate Program in Urban Design is dedicated to the creation of sustainable, equitable, and beautiful cities. Knowing that no single discourse can account for the urban, we seek to work at the convergence of many. Our goal is to give our students – all citizens of this exponentially urbanizing planet – tools that will enable them to expand the forms, means, and understandings vital to the design and flourishing of cities new and old.

CCNY Mission

Dean’s Advisory Council Members (as of April 2024)

Joseph Fleischer, B.S.  ’65, B.Arch  ’66, co-chair
Carlos Cardoso, B.Arch  ’92, co-chair
Venesa Alicea-Chuqui, B.Arch  ’05
John Cetra, B.Arch  ’76
Alan Hantman, B.S.  ’65, B.Arch  ’66, MUP  ’79
Edmund Hollander
Joan Krevlin
Carol Kurth, B.Arch  ’81
Fern Lan Siew, M.L.A  ’15
Jonathan Marvel
Nancy Ruddy
Frank Sciame, B.S.  ’74
Adi Shamir-Baron
Charles Shorter
Claire Weisz