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The Institute for Architecture & Urban Studies is a non-profit Architecture Studio & think-tank located in Manhattan, New York, USA.

History
The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies re-opened after being closed for nearly 20 years in 2003 due in a large part in the 9/11 renewal awareness in the critical impact of built form—how it is experienced, mediated, remembered and imaged—on our daily lives. The New Institute purports that this new awakening in the power and role of architecture exposed a need for an independent, multidisciplinary think-tank, or pedagogical “free speech zone”, in which to question, provoke, debate, experiment, explore and rethink the future of the metropolis at all scales.

Mission Statement
The new Institute’s goal is to keep alive the improvisational spirit that made the old Institute at its apogee a mecca for young architects and critics like Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Aldo Rossi, Charles Gwarthmey, Frank Gehry, Diana Agrest, Mario Gandelsons, Rafael Moneo, Robert Stern, Bernard Tschumi, Michael Graves, Richard Meier, Kenneth Frampton, Manfredo Tafuri and Anthony Vidler, among others. While the original Institute helped shape much of the autonomous theoretical discourse that dominated architectural culture in the last 30 years of the 20th century, the new Institute concentrates more on applied theory and research utilizing new technology, cross-disciplines, materials and methods.

While there are other architecture organizations in New York like the Architecture League, and the Van Alen Institute, they are primarily places for exhibitions and lectures. They provided little in the way of debate, criticism, multidisciplinary experimentation, progressive education, improvisation and applied theory. While schools of architecture like Columbia, Cooper Union, and Pratt have better success at creating greater intellectual friction and stimulation than the above mentioned private organizations, they are to a great degree hampered by the requirements of professional accreditation. Over the past 30 years there has been only one independent organization that combined all the qualities of critical experimentation, and multi-disciplinary education- The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (1968-84).