The working approaches of the international teaching body are diverse, documenting the complexity of contemporary architectural production in research, teaching and practice – beyond styles, schools of thought and fashions. Enabling an experience of heterogeneous and controversial perspectives on urban themes, matters of public space and architecture is a declared aim of training at Berlin University of the Arts. Collaboration between technical, theoretical and artistic subjects in project work is a binding aspect of this aim.
After a two-year foundation course, students in architecture are free to select their own planning emphases. Here, training concentrates increasingly on the development of independent authorship in artistic planning.
The city is developed through its smallest unit, the single resident's space. At the same time, quality of life, density, relationships, neighbourhood, individual and communal space need to be integrated into the developmental process. Here, the emphasis of design projects is therefore on housing and the relations between individual and communal space, and the quality of the individual room, apartment, building and so of the city.
Working with concepts of thought/action, place/scale, material/space, representation/perception, structure/construction, function/casing, nature/artificial, here teaching and learning is seen as experimenting, as strategic action within the design process.
The Department of Digital and Experimental Design investigates the conceptual, spatial and constructive influences of digital tools and models of thought on contemporary design practice.
Art in the study programme Architecture does not view itself as merely acting in a supportive function. Instead, we consciously represent artistic design in this context as an autonomous discipline. Artistic production is an essential catalyst to the exploration of personal motivation – and building on this, it helps to boost the individual's positioning in the world.
The basis for any design and theoretical engagement with urban space is the question of its conditions of production and thus of ownership. In order to make their spatialization comprehensible and imaginable otherwise, it is necessary to consider not only the dichotomy of public and private, but also common and/or seperate spaces as a usage-based category.
Teaching in the Garden Culture and Landscape Architecture unfolds around theoretical and practical reflections on the intersection between architecture and landscape design, which is seen in the – personal in each case – assignment of creating space.
We are particularly interested in the links between programmatic content and the architectural structures it results in. We believe that new architecture can only be generated through new content.
Teaching architecture means understanding oneself and the students as a research team: setting out together on a voyage of discovery in planning, questioning what already exists, teaching responsible, non-hierarchical lateral thinking, trying out and inventing something new.
Interested in the multidimensionality of spaces, we aim to frame (or construct or understand) architecture as an aesthetic, political, social and procedural design. Working with questions based in concrete and therefore complex urban situations, we enter these situations and seek to develop within scenarios for their possible futures. The city is a community formed from potentials and ambitions. If architecture can be seen as a product of spatial and urban practice, we want to critically question its conditions and search for new agencies in spatial production.
The department follows a transdisciplinary concept in teaching and research. The aim is to convey integral starting points in architectonic design and their realization in research and development assignments.
The Department of Building Physics and Building Services Engineering (VPT) teaches building physics, and building services design and technology in both its Bachelor and Master programmes in architecture.
Five aspects of art and cultural studies define teaching and research in this department: history and theories of culture, fine arts, media and technology, spatial theories, and general aesthetics.