Strategy 2035 - Department of Architecture and Planning
Strategy 2026-2035
The Institute of Architecture and Planning (IAP) develops knowledge and solutions for understanding, shaping and managing the built environment. Our disciplines – architecture, urban and regional planning, real estate and facilities management – together address the full lifecycle of buildings, places and cities: from design and democratic decision-making, through development and construction, to long-term stewardship and transformation.
IAP’s disciplines represent key sectors of the building industry and the built environment. We complement other branches of NTNU with critical competences that position NTNU as a complete and highly influential provider of knowledge to the built environment sectors, relevant institutions and policymakers.
IAP works across scales – from the individual building to the neighbourhood, city, region and global context – and engages with urgent questions of climate adaptation, social justice, demographic change, urban-rural transitions and the governance of the built environment. We collaborate closely with cities, societal actors, our sectors, and academic partners.
Our research and innovation activities, groups and centres orientate our knowledge development and networks in Norway, Europe and world-wide.
These include our Smart Sustainable Cities activities, which connect us with cities, municipalities and societal actors across Norway and Europe in collaborative innovation for sustainable urban development, and our Centre for Real Estate and Facilities Management, which provides a national platform for knowledge exchange with key actors in the built environment sector.
We pursue complementary forms of knowledge creation through scientific research, practice and artistic development work. This holistic approach enables us to generate insight that is at once rigorous, actionable, and imaginative – responding to the complexity of the societal challenges our fields address.
Together with the Institute of Architecture and Technology (IAT) we provide NTNU’s five-year master’s programme and PhD programme in architecture. IAP contributes expertise in urban history and theory, urban design, housing, and complex and public buildings. We provide a two-year master’s education in Urban Planning, a two-year master’s programme in Real Estate and Facilities Management, and a part-time master’s programme for professionals in Real Estate and Facilities Management.
Content
Related resources
Ambition 1: A leading role in the built environment
IAP will strengthen its position as an internationally recognised centre for research, education and innovation across the built environment. We will build on what makes IAP distinctive: the combination of architectural, planning and management disciplines with scientific, practice- and artistic-based research traditions within a single department.
This integration gives us the capacity to address the built environment as a connected system – and to produce knowledge that is both disciplinarily deep and transdisciplinarily relevant. We aim to equip and empower our students and professions to skilfully and critically engage with an increasingly complex built and natural environment and to create desirable and liveable buildings, cities and landscapes for the well-being of our planet and society.
Our educational programmes will reflect and advance this positioning. We aim to have highly attractive and future-oriented educations that prepare graduates to be leaders that renew their fields, pioneer transformation and navigate complexity and uncertain futures. We will innovate pedagogies that develop professional excellence through profound encounters with practice, research, societal challenges, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
We will strengthen our global partnerships and networks by collaborating with leading universities and research and innovation partners, and we promote participation in national and international research and innovation projects, and educational collaborations.
Across our fields, we aim to develop internationally outstanding research that addresses sustainable urban transformation, climate-responsive planning and design, social justice and inclusion in the built environment, property lifecycle management, and critical and experimental architectural practice. Our institute will develop holistic understandings and approaches in the wider built environment sector. To facilitate this, we aim to align our disciplines around cross-cutting fields of knowledge.
To support these developments, we will integrate and explore the implications of emerging technologies for our fields - such as artificial intelligence and digital tools - as subjects of critical inquiry, as tools for research and education, and as forces reshaping professional practice and the governance of the built environment.
Ambition 2: Shaping the future built environment
IAP will be a driving force for knowledge-based transformation of the built environment in response to the climate crisis, demographic change, social inequality, urban-rural transitions and shifting governance landscapes. We take seriously that our disciplines are consequential – the knowledge we produce and the professionals we educate directly shape the physical conditions of people’s lives and the ecosystems they depend on.
Through research and education in climate adaptation, circular transformation, energy-positive environments and sustainable land use and transport, we will generate knowledge and solutions that respond to the urgency of the climate and nature crises. We will address social sustainability, health and well-being by engaging with the lived realities of housing vulnerability, demographic transitions, urban-rural inequalities and the inclusion of marginalised communities in planning and design processes. Our work on urban governance, resilience, and preparedness will strengthen the capacity of cities and regions to navigate uncertainty and compound crises.
IAP will form coalitions with key urban transition enablers – cities, communities, industry, societal and academic partners - at local, national and international level. Through collaboration we will co-produce knowledge and solutions that shape the way that built environments are created, used, maintained and governed. Cities and places serve as living laboratories where research, education and practice intersect in real-world validation and innovation.
IAP aims to shape a societal understanding of our disciplines and the crucial issues facing the built environment. Through our partnerships, we work for systematic change – creating value and informing the development of curricula, practices and policy.
Our graduates are our most important contribution to societal transformation. Through research-connected, practice-engaged education, we will prepare architects, planners and property professionals who understand the interdependencies of their fields and who can work across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries to create built environments that are just, sustainable, beautiful and of high quality.
Ambition 3: An open community for knowledge development and exchange
IAP will be a department where staff and students choose to be because they find a professional environment characterised by intellectual ambition, mutual respect, creative energy and genuine collaboration across disciplines and knowledge traditions.
We will strengthen our culture as a community that values the diversity of its competence, experience and perspectives, and that actively cultivates dialogue, curiosity and creativity. The quality of our work depends on the sharing of knowledge through intense and respectful academic discourse. We will build the organisational conditions and collegial practices that make this possible.
We will recruit staff with high academic, professional and creative competence, and offer development opportunities that reflect the breadth of contributions our community makes – in research, education, artistic practice, innovation, public engagement and organisational life. All staff, regardless of role, should experience professional growth, recognition and belonging.
Our students will experience a learning environment that connects them to ongoing research and to the societal questions that drive our disciplines. They will develop as independent, critical and creative professionals within programmes that emphasise interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical awareness and the integration of theory, practice and experimentation. As graduates, they will be ambassadors for IAP and valued partners for continued collaboration. We see knowledge exchange and education as a continuum and will promote lifelong, intergenerational learning and interactions where students, graduates, PhDs, practitioners, alumni, and academics exchange knowledge across their whole careers.
IAP will be an active and generous partner – within the Faculty of Architecture and Design, across NTNU, and with the networks and communities that sustain our work. We will contribute our distinctive perspectives on the built environment to NTNU’s broader interdisciplinary ambitions, and we will draw on the university’s strengths in science, technology, the social sciences and the humanities to enrich our own research and education.