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The Weitzman School of Design is launching a Master of Science in Design with a concentration in property development and design. This one-year post-professional program offers architects, landscape architects, and other design professionals the quantitative skills and vocabulary to lead as well as contribute to real estate ventures. In an interview, the program’s director, architect Rossana Hu, and associate director, architect Richard Garber, talk about the gaps in architecture education. Hu is the Miller Professor and chair of the Department of Architecture and co-founder of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office. Garber is co-founder at GRO Architects. Applications for the inaugural MSD-PDD cohort are due January 7, 2026
What do wish you knew as a young architect, in terms of working with developers as clients?
Rossana Hu: The most important thing for students to know is how powerful design is, and how much developers need architects with creative minds to build their business. One of our first projects was working for the Mandarin Oriental chain of luxury hotels. Very early in our career, the founder of the Oriental came to us and said, “We have a project for you.” He flew us to Thailand and wanted us to renovate their Chinese restaurant. After some interaction, he put his trust in us to do everything: Can you help us design the uniform? And then what about the makeup or the hostess? What about the graphic design on the menu? What about naming the restaurant and some of the dishes and the music and the jewelry? I realized what he was looking for is just the total immersion, this idea of total design which is very much an architectural concept founded first in music and then borrowed by Gropius at the Bauhaus. This idea of total design is very much what I think every developer is looking for, because it’s what brands the project. It’s what makes people pay to go to the restaurant at the Oriental and it’s what people pay to buy the $3 million or $6 million Manhattan loft in Tribeca. From that project, I realized, “As designers, we really have a lot of power to shape and create projects of desire for developers.”
Richard Garber: In addition to that, what many developers think is that they’re going it alone. They see themselves as these singular characters. It’s more like a task-based way of thinking. Yet we train students in total design, where we are imagining branding that might go along with space. We’re imagining detail, even hardware and furniture, that can follow these kinds of logics. I don’t think that architects have done a very good job impressing upon developers that we have the capacity to do this.
When I was coming out of school, I loosely knew that there was something called building permits. I knew that somewhere somebody had to look at an architect’s construction drawings so that a building could get built. But there’s so much more to that. So, in my practice, we had to back into understanding zoning, how to talk with clients about finance and how projects were financed—how to spend their money in a way that was cost-effective holistically. Maybe there’s 20% or 30% of the design where we could really go for it, which becomes something special. But you figure out ways of negotiating or maneuvering to find ways to be design-forward and expressive at the same time.
Rossana Hu: The importance of finance is huge. You don’t realize—until you start working, until you start interfacing with clients, until you start having your own firm—that you can actually be creative with finance in ways that business people are not trained to. As architects, we have very creative minds. If you can find a way to be creative with finance the way that you are creative with space, then you can do really interesting projects.
Rosanna Hu and Richard Garber
What opportunity does studying real estate in a department of architecture offer students?
Rossana Hu: Creativity. Finding new ways of thinking about things from concepts, to formulas, processes, operations, to financial models and typologies. We started using design thinking and project-based models of education way before business schools started. But recently, business school started to work on an interactive, case study methodology of education. We’ve been doing that since day one. Imagine if you built aspects of business into a studio course? I think that could be really powerful. Very few real estate programs live in the architecture department. We are looking to offer the best creative thinking program.
Richard Garber: Design training allows you to make connections that aren’t necessarily apparent to others. We want students to come out of this program thinking not only creatively about building and form, but also the financial and capital mechanisms that allow those things to happen. Working on projects that really allow students to see connections between financial models and architectural or geometric models is going to be critical to the success of the program and of our candidates.
What makes this program a good fit for international students?
Rossana Hu: I am a firm believer of having a global outlook in everything you do. We’re not looking to be the best in the country or the state. We want to be the best program in the world. We want to be able to apply different principles from regions into the program so students can learn the essence of real estate, so that the skill sets that they learn here will be applicable anywhere. We will look at case studies in the United States, including Philadelphia and New York, but also major cities in the world. A lot of government regimes right now in different countries are shifting back to becoming more isolated. But we are still connected.
Richard Garber: There are building practices that are consistent through the world. Buildings have foundations that are usually made out of concrete, and so people know how to pour concrete the same way everywhere. But there are also cultural norms that might translate into building or development which are a little bit more nuanced. Land development, construction, and zoning are treated differently procedurally in different parts of the world, and a sensitivity to these things will be very important to our students. And that’s what we do as architects. When you land somewhere for the first time for a new project, you begin understanding how to design and build in different cultures.
Rossana Hu: Yes. What’s exciting about architecture is that you are always balancing the right and the left side of your brain. It’s at the same time a science and it’s an art, and that’s what’s really truly magical. Business also is very much a science and an art. I would not know that if I wasn’t very deeply immersed in the business world as an architect, as a creative, for 20 years. Everything about business I learned intuitively—but business is also a very intuitive discipline. The market is organic, it’s like nature. Bringing that balance of left-brain and right-brain thinking into a subject matter like real estate—it’s powerful.
“Bringing that balance of left-brain and right-brain thinking into a subject matter like real estate—it’s powerful.”
What are the goals and aspirations you have for graduates of this program?
Rossana Hu: One way of looking at it is just filling in the gaps in an architecture education. Whether it’s a recent graduate, someone who’s been working for a few years in the field, or someone who hasn’t graduated but is projecting themselves into a career in architecture—many students are unsure of themselves. Other students foresee the gaps because they’re hearing from people who graduated before them. Filling in the gaps means, other than the traditional trajectory of starting your own firm or entering as an intern in a traditional architectural practice, you can work for a development company. Or do consulting or other aspects of real estate development or creative projects.
The other goal comes from my own experience running a firm. It’s learning to speak the language of your clients and the owners of properties. Whether it’s a hospitality or industrial or office project, you are interfacing with people who have very different sensibilities, a very different focus, and mostly they’re profit-driven. It took me 10 years to understand their world and speak their language. But you’ve got to make that connection with your client.
Richard Garber: Whether students want to go work with developers, or work in a real estate firm, or just understand the kinds of constraints that architects have to work within in executing any project, this program is for them. It’s designed for the state of professional practice and the world that we are in right now.