Structure
The programme structure is organised around a full-time, two-year interdisciplinary curriculum with the final semester being dedicated to a semester-long thesis project. The programme combines a traditional, studio-based set up of architectural education with an interdisciplinary environment of design and scholarly research. The estimated student workload corresponds to 120 ECTS. The Master is divided into four semesters and structured around eight modules:
- The first three modules are about project work dealing with architectural and urban design. Each design studio will put emphasis on a different aspect: the first will focus more on analytical tools and on research aspects on the European and global scale; the second one on urban and landscape aspects; and the third on constructive and technical skills approaching the building scale.
- Module four is about globalisation. Courses examine the economic aspects of globalisation, the restructuring of the world economy and the relation with patterns of world urbanisation city; and the ecological aspects of globalisation, and world urbanisation as exemplified by the influential concept of the Anthropocene.
- Module five deals with European urbanisation. It offers courses on the theory and history of European urban and spatial planning; on urban and landscape design within Europe and on regulatory frameworks.
- Module six deals with architecture. Courses are focused on history and theory of architecture and its relation to the city, cultural and visual studies, as well as on research methods on architecture and urbanism. The module also offers courses connected to the engineering disciplines, dealing with issues of energy, structural and material performance of buildings, and technologies and methodologies for reconstruction.
- During the third semester students can orientate their curriculum according to their personal interest. In module seven they may choose among seven different seminars, ranging from design to urban studies research, and from technical and engineering, or managing and administrative branch aspects of the discipline.
- The fourth semester is exclusively dedicated to the final master thesis, which corresponds to module eight. The thesis has an academic character with a research-based component. It can be either a textual work or a research-based design.
Students have to undertake an internship during the study programme. Before the beginning of the third semester of the Master in Architecture at the University of Luxembourg, students must provide evidence that they have accomplished at least two months of internship at an architecture office.
