A New Traditional Architecture as a force for good

We consider our pedagogy’s goals, content, and methodological rigor, as well as its commitment to both substance and change, as part of a legitimate campaign to restore architecture to its millennial role: generating the most diverse possible human habitat with reason, beauty, intelligence, justice, and peace in mind.

Our programs encompass the ecological, the urban, and the architectural at the entire constructional range of the built world: from buildings, streets, gardens, and parks to neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Our students are exposed to the best design and building traditions of our country and of many others throughout the world, especially those where architects and builders have generated notable places over time. They are taught to consider these stellar accomplishments of past global cultures as foundational precedents and to use them wisely in their cultural sphere as ingredients in current architectural practice. The strictly artistic or technical dimensions of an architectural education cannot be divorced from the ideological ones.

At the School of Architecture at Notre Dame, we are committed to the ethical formation of our students.

We teach them to direct their aspirations, skills, and imaginations to do good in the world through their projects and practices. We guide them to discover the standards of design excellence of our discipline and to ensure that they understand the rules and virtues necessary to act within their context.

We pursue these teaching goals within a Catholic university — a community dedicated to the discovery, exploration, and service of truths. The Catholic social mission of the University of Notre Dame illuminates every aspect of our pedagogy: protecting the dignity of all human beings, engaging in community building, practicing solidarity with those in need, and subsidiarity in democratizing decision-making across the board. We consider this set of values and obligations to be universal and essential in ensuring a civilized, empathetic, peaceful, and prosperous world. It is this understanding of the true, the good, and the beautiful that allows our academic community to also recognize these truths wherever they may encounter them during their academic journey, including in other religious or philosophical traditions and in the experience of civic and everyday life.

Architecture and urbanism do more than provide the shelter where we live; they shape the public and private realms and therefore the way in which we inhabit our planet and develop our cultures, economies, and futures.