From courthouses to cathedrals, from our private homes to our public squares, our built environment expresses our deepest convictions about God and creation, the human person and his or her place in the world.

At The Catholic University of America, architecture and planning are inspired by our belief that reality is holy. We believe, as the Psalmist said, that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament declares his handiwork (Psalm 19).  We believe that creation is a gift that humans are called to care for and respect. And we believe that architecture and planning provide a privileged way to participate in God’s creative work, to love our neighbor, and to care for our common home. In the School of Architecture and Planning we train students for this extraordinary vocation.

We have the only program in the country in Sacred and Cultural Studies, where students can explore architecture's connections to nature, culture, and the divine. In our Classical Architecture Concentration students encounter some of the greatest examples of church architecture in history and learn how classical forms conveyed divine meaning. In these programs students learn to see God’s presence in the world and to make this vision more manifest in our built environment.

In our sustainable design concentration students learn how to be good stewards of creation by immersing themselves in the theory and application of sustainable design.

And in all of our programs we emphasize the need to understand the nature of the human being in time, space, and culture in order to create inspiring contemporary designs and structures that express and honor the unique dignity of the human person.