The School is one of the follow-up institutions of the former Academia de San Carlos, the other one being the School of Arts and Design. The Academia de San Carlos offered studies in architecture since 1791, under control of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico. In 1910, Porfirio Diaz's government grants autonomy to the university, thus the academy was reorganized as the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura and the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. In 1954 the architecture school moved to its current facilities in Ciudad Universitaria as Facultad de Arquitectura. The first postgraduate studies in both architecture and urbanism were opened in 1968. In 1969 the school opened its undergraduate program in industrial design, and in 1985 the undergraduate programs in urbanism and landscape architecture and postgraduate studies in industrial design.
Staff and organization
The School is run by a dean, currently B.A. Marcos Mazari Hiriart. He is aided by a Technical Council, composed of professors and student and administrative representatives, which makes decisions regarding curriculum, school calendars and schedules, among other tasks. The school includes the four undergraduate programs, and the graduate, specialization and research programs. In addition, the school holds its own architectural office, which develops projects both for the University and for external clients; and a cultural division that manages cultural events, exhibits, publications, lectures, etc. The undergraduate program in architecture is organised within five branches: project; urban-environmental; technology; theory, history and research. Furthermore, the program is spread among 16 partially independent studios or workshops which offer all the mandatory courses. These studios are physically located in eight two story buildings. These workshops originally were conceived to perform long-standing projects and focus on experimentation of different architectural conceptions, depending on the staff that the studio had, the profile of the students was formed. The workshops are mostly named after Mexican architects or architects that had contributed to Mexican architecture:
The School is located in Ciudad Universitaria in Mexico City, near the School of Engineering, UNAM. It is spread in two separate building complexes; the largest of which houses the undergraduate programs in architecture and landscape architecture, the architecture library, a cafeteria, the Carlos Lazo theater and the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes, as well as the main administrative offices. A separate building houses the graduate programs and the undergraduate programs in industrial design and urbanism, two libraries specializing in industrial design and in doctorate-level research, and a cafeteria.
