MASTER STUDIES
Building on the basics of urban design taught in the Bachelor's programme, the Master's programme deepens knowledge - particularly in current problem areas - and supports the acquisition of experience in urban design on the basis of comprehensive and complex tasks.
The compulsory lecture Urban Development gives a broad as well as an in-depth overview of current developments in urban planning and the applied implementation strategies in a national and international context.
In the studios, the interdisciplinarity characteristic of urban design is ensured by the obligatory coupling with project- or problem-related special subjects and project exercises. Thus, an optimal bundling of problem-solving strategies, planning methods and in-depth experience regarding project presentation and expert knowledge is achieved in an exemplary area of focus.
In addition to the courses in the compulsory subject area, interested students are offered personal in-depth knowledge in specific subject areas such as theory, research, history, digital city models, current international developments, local and regional spatial planning, infrastructure, transport, geodata, sociology and much more by means of a catalogue of choices from seminars and lectures.
Integral Design Studios
Designing in the Master's programme is carried out in the form of a "Integral Design Studio". Designing is project-based learning that builds on scientific, technical, cultural and artistic knowledge; and at the same time reflects and expands this knowledge in creative debate. The result of this discussion is a design process, in which students position themselves within the discipline by addressing social issues and climatic, economic and cultural challenges in our field using both traditional as well as new methods of planning and implementation. A successful design process finds solutions to current social, economic and ecological issues of building and attempts to address these issues in a constructive manner.
Basically, the Institute of Urban Design offers two main areas of content:
1. the planning of neighbourhoods or urban districts, with a focus on restructuring transformation areas in the urban fabric. The formation of traffic networks, the disposition of different uses and the conception of urban spatial quality in the sense of sustainable urban development form the main teaching objectives.
2. the design of urban spatial situations in context with a focus on additions to and reinterpretation of existing or future urban spaces. The quality of public space in its shaping as well as its design ("civic design") form the focal points.
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Integral Design Studios
City and Landscape
The lecture module "City and Landscape" addresses the interdependence between the built object and its surroundings and presents the interaction between the different scales of this relationship: Landscape, urban design and the built object. The specific discourses of the participating institutes (Institute of Architecture and Landscape, Institute of Urbanism, Institute of Design in Existing Structures and Architectural Heritage Protection, Institute of Housing, Institute of Buildings and Energy) are linked and expanded by this common frame of reference.
The relevant idea for us here is that city and landscape can act as a unifying framework for us designers, in which the most diverse tasks, realities and dependencies can be discussed at different scales and the design development can be negotiated. Within this framework, the encounter of interests, differences and juxtapositions of different positions can be understood as a unifying and creative teaching, which embodies the connections between the institutes involved in the course with their specific and, in the overall picture, heterogeneous topics.
Lecturers
Matthias Castorph, Brian Cody, Lichtblau Andreas, Loenhart Klaus, Eva Schwab
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City and Landscape