College of Architecture

College of architecture, planning, and design

The big picture

The disciplines of architecture, interior architecture and product design, landscape architecture, and planning are united in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design. Our students regularly win national design awards, and practitioners from across America say K-State graduates are among their best employees, placing our degree programs in the top 10 in the United States.

Bragging rights

Here’s why the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design is a great place to earn your master's degree.

K-State ranked third in interior architecture and design, third in landscape architecture, and sixth in architecture programs, according to a 2010 nationwide survey taken by architecture and design professionals. The survey, conducted by the journal of Design Intelligence, the Almanac of Architecture and Design, and the Design Futures Council, asked firms to name the design schools that have provided them with the best employees in the last five years.
Ninety-eight percent of 2006-2007 bachelor's degree recipients were employed in their field of study within a few months of graduation.
K-State landscape architecture students have won 48 awards through the American Society of Landscape Architects national student design competition. That's more awards than any other school.
For more than a decade the college has hosted a day of on-campus mock interviews that brings students together with reps from national architectural and industrial design firms.
Architecture major Nicole Anderson won a national design competition sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders. The challenge: to renovate six rowhouses to accommodate a diverse population, including senior citizens. Her project utilized universal design, which promotes products and facilities that are usable by all people.
Fourth-year interior architecture and product design student Heather Wise claimed first out of 86 entries in the Institute of Store Planners' annual student design competition. Wise's design was called "In Motion," a children's retail space that promoted activity and movement.
Oz, a nationally acclaimed design journal, is edited and produced by K-State students. Practicing design professionals, faculty, and students contribute work that explores the intellectual boundaries of design.
The Rhodes Scholarship, the most prestigious and oldest international fellowship, is intended to bring outstanding students from many countries to the University of Oxford. Architecture major Clemente Jaquez-Herrera was selected as a finalist, one of two K-State students up for the scholar award.

What’s a college?

K-State’s colleges, like the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design, are the organizing units of the university’s academic offerings. See a complete list of our colleges.

Extreme assignments

Students in our college learn by doing. Studio projects will challenge you to apply technical design knowledge along with drawing and model-making skills to tackle challenging assignments. You’ll push your creative skills, whether you’re designing a resort hotel in Mexico, a lamp in the style of your favorite architect, or a collapsible desk that could be mass-produced. Here are some projects our students have executed in the last few years:

Project: Extreme Makeover, Home Edition

About 200 students and faculty from the college volunteered for the residential portion of an "Extreme Makeover" project. Six students and four faculty members had a special role on the show: design and build a chicken house and chicken run. The team had only a couple of weeks to design the house and procure materials. Both the chicken house and outdoor run consisted of a thick layer of foam stiffened by strand board. Inside the chicken house were wooden cubicles for 16 hens, roosts, and a rooster box.

Project: Participate in a design charette

What's a charette? It's an intense effort to solve a design problem in a short amount of time. And that's just what a group of 125 students, faculty, and staff did, along with landscape architecture and engineering professionals. The group generated ideas to reduce stormwater runoff and improve water quality of local streams. The design collects rooftop and surface runoff to reuse in a perennial garden at the K-State International Student Center. This project was more than just ideas, the project was built by landscape architecture students and faculty.

Project: Greensburg cubed

The small town of Greensburg, Kansas, was devastated by an F-5 tornado on May 4, 2007. The city is working to be the first green community in the nation, and K-State architecture students and faculty have been there to lend a helping hand. Architecture students designed, built, and donated complexes to help educate community members on creation of sustainable and environmentally friendly homes, offices, and buildings. Each 10-by-10-by-10 foot mobile cube or pavilion provides information on different aspects of sustainable living.

Project: Solar energy demo homes

Design and construct an 800 square-foot demonstration home that runs entirely on solar energy. Two K-State professors were awarded a $100,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Energy to compete in the 2007 Solar Decathlon. Twenty-eight students in architecture and interior architecture and product design built the 800 square-foot home and and transported it to Washington, D.C., for judging.

Project: Gates of Kabul University
Second-year landscape architecture students were challenged with designing the primary entrance to Kabul University in Afghanistan. K-State students met with Afghani students studying at K-State to learn more about Kabul University and the site. The landscape architecture students produced design ideas to help create a welcoming gateway to the university.

Project: Re-imagining a Manhattan landmark

Interior architecture students helped the owners of a downtown Manhattan landmark shape its transformation into an entertainment destination. The owners envisioned a renovation that will combine an intimate piano bar with a wide-open, high-ceiling space that will retain their reception business. Students were challenged to incorporate a piano bar that could be opened up to be a music center and events space into the existing reception space. Proposals included one for translucent, pivoting screens to display vintage film clips, and another called for flat-storing panels to add color and absorb sound when the space opened.

College culture

Our college is a close-knit community. All students begin with a year in environmental design studies before entering one of the three professional degree programs: architecture, interior architecture and product design, or landscape architecture. Here are some glimpses into our one-of-a-kind college culture:

Each semester you'll be assigned to a design studio. The cluster of students in your studio will collaborate on projects, share feedback on design ideas, and forge friendships over a 2 a.m. pizza.
You can be an ambassador or a mentor beginning in your second year. As an ambassador you can share the college's projects and accomplishments with the public. As a mentor you'll build relationships with first-year students as you help them adjust to life in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design.
You can join the college's annual treks to significant urban areas such as Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. You can spend a week touring each city's landmark buildings, studying its urban design, and visiting its top design firms.
In your fourth year you'll spend a semester working as intern in a professional office or studying abroad. The college's study abroad program allows students to study in Denmark, Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic. The internship program has placed K-Staters in offices across the country: planning golf courses in California, designing pro sports stadiums in Kansas City, working on plans for new hotels at Disney World, and more.
You can see your work displayed in a gallery. The Chang Gallery features architecture and design exhibits by practicing professionals and the best student work from the college. Every fall a special exhibit highlights the projects of students who completed internships or studied abroad. A student delineation and photography competition is held each spring.
You can join the student chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students and help host the college's annual Beaux Arts Ball.

Areas of study

You'll graduate with a master's degree in five years. Here’s a list of the areas of study available through the college:

Architecture
Interior architecture and product design
Landscape architecture
Regional and community planning

Contact us

Office of Admissions
Kansas State University
119 Anderson Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-0102

1-800-432-8270 (toll free) or 785-532-6250.
E-mail: k-state@k-state.edu

Kansas State University