Want to Join the Architecture Program?

“I always wanted to be an architect.”
Benedictine College is the place… Is this your time?

Did you start your search here with the Program Description on our Architecture home page and did you like the Mission page?  We welcome you to visit our beautiful campus!

This is the program that you want as you have searched the web for “Catholic,” “Christian,” “Architecture,” and “College” or “Academic.”  You seek to study architecture in a community that is as committed as you are to recovering the unity of faith and reason for the present and in your future career.  Studying architecture at Benedictine recovers, too, the wisdom of communities built for our human flourishing where we aspire to build the beauty in what is good and true.  Aristotle writes that a city comes into being for the sake of life but exists for the sake of living well. Whether a home, a church, or a city, architecture is not about building in order to survive, rather, it is about building in order to thrive.  Classical architecture re-emerges time and again as can mean the highest standard of beauty in our Western language of architecture.  Being able to communicate a building’s meaning appropriately dignifies everyone in places as diverse as East and West, global north and south, cities, towns, and villages.

That unity of faith and reason at Benedictine means that we keep our eyes squarely on an education to character formation, what the Greeks called a liberal arts education.

Is this the best place for you to learn?  Our faculty are committed first to you finding your way.  Better than a research university, research here is often our endeavor with you.  We learn to identify see problems of nature’s harsh realities that the built environment might  soften or soothe; we see where the beauty of a church or a courthouse might raise our thoughts and discussions concerning matters of   the highest importance. Scholars write about such things; we work to envision these buildings and places.

Benedictine College is right-sized: you can know this community and you will be known as a person,not a number.  Our program benefits from class sizes where you will learn with your professors daily. We have small student to faculty ratios.

Maybe you have a good idea that the education you are seeking is a complement of head and hands.  The best way to learn the making of beautiful buildings is a hands-on education. An architecture student learns making at a variety of scales, dimensions, and media.  We explore what is appropriate and beautiful with our hands and eyes: we sketch at our desks and in the field, and we draft with precision when the time is right. We watercolor in field sketching to communicate the impression we take from being in a place and looking at a building; we use watercolor to render a design that communicates persuasively the qualities of the building that we have moved from our imagination onto the paper in front of us.

Is this the place and time for you?  Reach out, we can help.