Profile Description
The Faculty of Architecture at Delft
University of Technology has five Master
tracks: Architecture, Urbanism, Landscape
Architecture, Building Technology and
Real Estate and Housing. The faculty
provides education and conducts research
at an internationally competitive level of
excellence. Education and research are
closely interconnected and are influenced
by social relevance.
The faculty has a global reputation and
offers students, lecturers and researchers
an intellectually stimulating
environment.Delft University of Technology
is the oldest and largest university of
technology in the Netherlands from which
the faculty of Architecture derives its
reputation.
Structure of the Curriculum
The faculty offers academic education and
carries out research in Architecture,
Urbanism and Building Sciences. In
September 2002 the faculty introduced a
Bachelors/ Masters model, consisting of a
broad three years Bachelors course (six
semesters) followed by a two years Master
courses (four semesters) in (1)
Architecture, (2) Urbanism, (3) Building
Technology, (4) Real Estate and Housing
and (5) Landscape Architecture.
The leading language of the master course
is English. The content of the curricula is
not exclusively determined by the
demands of professional practice but also
by innovative insights of a research driven
programme.
Research Programme
The specific characteristics of the faculty's
research are referred to by the concept of
'design-oriented research'. Central to the
discussion on 'design-oriented research' is
the level of scientific rigour of the design
activities. These activities involve building
theory, appropriate research methods,
communication patterns, scientific critique,
and so on. This scientific rigour, however,
has to be balanced with specific contextual
demands of this field such as reflection
and creativity in the design process. The
concept thus encompasses a broad
typology of research activities situated on
an imaginary axis ranging between intuitive
design on the 'art' side of the axis towards
optimizing scientific research on the
'science' side of the axis. This broad
typology is reflected in the various ways in
which the concept of 'design-oriented
research' is defined by the different