About

The Center for Architecture, the public programming arm of AIA New York, runs a set of week-long and two-week summer courses for high schoolers (grades 9–12, based on the grade entered in Fall 2026) at its Manhattan home, 536 LaGuardia Place, with one flagship course held offsite. All are day programs, 9:00 AM–4:00 PM, Monday–Friday, non-residential, taught in small groups of 12–16 students with one teacher and one assistant per class.

Three distinct courses make up the current 2026 slate. Architectural Sketching (grades 9–12, one week) is a free-hand drawing course spent largely outdoors at notable New York City sites, teaching one- and two-point perspective and rendering techniques across graphite, charcoal, watercolor pencil, and dry pastel — built explicitly to generate portfolio-ready work, with participants expected to handle extended walking and subway travel between sites. Digital Design: Neighborhoods (grades 9–12, one week) has students use SketchUp to design and build a piece of an urban neighborhood informed by real NYC examples, assembling individual pieces into one shared class neighborhood by week's end; this course requires students to bring their own laptop meeting specific OS requirements. Architectural Design Studio (grades 10–12, two weeks) is the most substantive of the three: a first-year college-studio-level introduction where students respond to a project brief, study building precedents, conduct site analysis, and develop an independent design project from concept to final model, culminating in a review by a panel of practicing architecture professionals. For 2026, this course is hosted offsite by Lutron at its 979 Third Avenue location in Manhattan's Decoration & Design Building rather than at the Center for Architecture itself.

Tuition is $770 for either one-week course and $1,770 for the two-week Architectural Design Studio; there is no payment plan, and full tuition is due at registration except for scholarship applicants, who may delay payment until an award decision. Need-based partial scholarships are available with a May 1 application deadline (maximum one application per student). Registration is rolling and non-transferable; cancellations made at least four weeks before a program's start are refundable (minus a $100 administrative fee) only if the Center can fill the seat from its waitlist, and fees become fully non-refundable inside the four-week window. Applications have typically opened in the winter and filled on a rolling, first-come basis well before the summer — these courses are popular enough to sell out ahead of the season, so a family interested in a specific summer should plan to register early rather than wait.

These are among the more accessible entry points into architecture for a New York City-based student — day format, no residential commitment, priced well below multi-week residential design intensives — which makes them a strong fit for a student who wants a first, low-stakes taste of design thinking or portfolio-building without traveling or committing tuition on the scale of a program like UMass Amherst's Summer Design Academy. The two-week Architectural Design Studio is the more serious credential of the three for a student who already knows architecture is a likely major, given its studio-brief structure and professional review panel; the one-week Sketching and Digital Design courses are better suited to a student still exploring the field.