BACHELOR

Design Studio: Raum

The studio Raum begins by inviting students to rediscover their everyday routines and their everyday environment as interlocking actions and experiences of making space and appropriating space. The seemingly familiar disappears in favor of again-to-be-discovered and redesigned spaces of possibility. Routiniers become discoverers and designers of the surprising in everyday life.

With mandatory excursion
Appointment: Mo-Fr, 14:00 – 17:30, R127 (Building 11.40)
First meeting: Fri. 24.10.25, 14:00, R127 (Building 11.40)
Excursion: 28. – 30.11.25
Submission/Exam: Wed, 12.02.26
Event type: Presence
Language: German/ English

Seminar: Grundlagen der Entwurfslehre 

As accompanying exercise to the lecture series «Grundlagen der Entwurfslehre» selected buildings are analysed. The aim of the exercise is to study concrete architectural buildings from different times under specific aspects such as spatial structure and functional structure and to present them with drawings and models.

Regular appointment: Wednesdays,  10:00 - 11:00, 20.40 Grüne Grotte
First meeting: Wed, 29.10.2025,  11:30 - 13:00, 20.40 Fritz-Haller Hörsaal (HS37)
Submission/Exam: Wed, 21.01.26 - Wed, 28.01.26 - Wed, 04.02.26 , 09:45 - 11:15, 20.40 Hörsaal 9
Language: German/ English

Seminar: perFORMance

Architecture is influenced by many forces; climate, as context as well as architectural effect, is one of them. Since architecture today does not only have to address a specific existing climate but instead consider alternative future conditions, the relation of climate, form and materialization gains critical importance (again). 
The seminar investigates seminal architectural precedents using climate as a key generator of architectural form and materiality. 
We approach each precedent twice: first we analyze spatial and material strategies in relationship to the climatic ambitions, then we simulate their climatic performance based on the physical implications of their architectural manifestation. 
By confronting form with data, the seminar seeks to reveal the relationship of architectural intention and environmental performance.

Appointment: Wednesdays, 11:30-13:00
Submission: Wed, 11.02.26
Number of Participants: 15

MASTER

Design Studio: Back to the Future?

Flexibility, participation, spatial freedom, long-term adaptability - these are today´s architectural buzz-words. Looking back into architectural history, we realize it was the very same set of promises that drove the discipline half a century ago.  Looking back fifty years - from the then imagined self-determined and flexible future – it is our conviction that we cannot just repeat the same mantras. Instead, we need to be aware of the broken promises and understand their inherent contradictions. Our studio focuses on exactly this déjà-vu. Few architects embodied the above-mentioned ideals as rigorously as Hermann Hertzberger.
His Centraal Beheer project - modular, open, democratic - was imagined as a proto-city, a collective framework for freedom and adaptability. Yet its spatial reality reveals deep paradoxes. A building designed as a city turns inward and is disconnected from its context; a flexible grid becomes monotonous, disorienting and rigid. Structural coherence from the architect’s perspective undermines spatial legibility by its users. The non-hierarchical plan, meant to empower, introduces forms of control.
The building has been sitting empty for twelve years. Today, half a century after its realization, the project stands as both promise and paradox.
Our studio neither seeks to restore nor to preserve Hertzberger’s project. 
Instead, in a first step the students will carefully analyse it. Based on the in-depth unterstanding they will reformulate its original promises and develop programmatic and architectural strategies for its renewed occupation. Will it be a place of self-determination and long-term resilience? If so: what are the architectural strategies supporting this promise? 

Appointment : Thursdays
1st meeting : Thu, 29.10.25, 14:00
Submission/Examination : TBD
Final critic : TBD
Number of participants : max 15 students
Language : English 
Excursion : Amsterdam

Seminar: perFORMance

Architecture is influenced by many forces; climate, as context as well as architectural effect, is one of them. Since architecture today does not only have to address a specific existing climate but instead consider alternative future conditions, the relation of climate, form and materialization gains critical importance (again). 
The seminar investigates seminal architectural precedents using climate as a key generator of architectural form and materiality. 
We approach each precedent twice: first we analyze spatial and material strategies in relationship to the climatic ambitions, then we simulate their climatic performance based on the physical implications of their architectural manifestation. 
By confronting form with data, the seminar seeks to reveal the relationship of architectural intention and environmental performance.

Appointment: Wednesdays, 11:30-13:00
Submission: Wed, 11.02.26
Number of Participants: 15

Impromptu design: (Inhabiting) Unplanned plans

As part of the research project Typologische Resilienz, we are exploring the potential of converting vacant office buildings into residential spaces. Previously, suitable dwelling types were translated into machine-readable grammars, enabling the development of a software that can now generate various apartment layouts based on predefined rules regarding surfaces, accessibility, apartment types, and more. Within the Inhabiting Unplanned Plans Stegreif, we critically analyze and test the inhabitability of these computer-generated apartments. Can we refine the machine-generated floorplans into livable spaces? What are the limitations of the software, and where do we still need to intervene spatially? The outcome of this Stegreif will be a set of (overdesigned) floorplans that highlight both the potential and the limitations of software-generated layouts.

First Meeting: Wed, 07.01.2025, 11:30
Consulation 1: Mon, 12.01.2026, 09:45 
Consulation 2: Wed, 14.01.2026, 09:45
Consulation 3: Wed, 21.01.2026, 09:45
Hand-In: Fr, 23.01.2025, ILIAS 
Number of Participants: 15
Language: English