Course content

The course provides knowledge necessary to develop large buildings in an urban context, as well as to further develop an understanding of sustainability and ecology. Architectural design is emphasized, with a focus on synthesis and the methodological application of the following sub-aspects.

URBANISM: Site analysis and contextual understanding. Application of the given context.

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: Program, functionality, idea, concept, and expression. Building structure and elements. Ethics, environment, and resource use, with particular emphasis on circular solutions. Materiality, aesthetics, and scale. Digital and manual design tools.

TECHNOLOGY: Structural principles, material knowledge, and technical infrastructure.

FORM AND COLOR: Morphology, color, materials, and composition. Project presentation and graphic representation.

Learning outcome

Knowledge:

• Basic knowledge of sustainable buildings in an urban context, and organizational principles in buildings.
• Basic knowledge of building typologies and relevant reference projects.
• Basic understanding of how buildings, urban form, and planning interact within a European and Nordic urban context.
• Basic understanding of how the use and design of buildings and cities exist in a dialectical relationship.
• Basic understanding of architectural design.

Skills:

• Can create architecture at a basic level through artistic and scientific investigation, idea development, and architectural design focused on buildings in an urban context.
• Can master the discipline’s working methods, tools, and forms of expression at a basic level, and apply these in architectural design in a targeted, exploratory, and experimental manner.
• Can apply basic knowledge about the natural, societal, cultural, and technological conditions of the discipline in architectural design.
• Can apply fundamental aesthetic, bodily, and ethical experience in architectural design.
• Can produce architectural drawings and design in digital 3D tools.

General competence:

• Can communicate own architectural work through drawings, descriptions, and models at an approximately professional and academic level.
• Takes independent responsibility for own learning and professional development, and can apply acquired knowledge to new fields.
• Ability to critically reflect on own work, create new frameworks of understanding, and break from convention.
• Ability to experiment with and challenge existing concepts and paradigms within architecture.
• Can reflect on and position own professional contributions in relation to ethical questions in practice and broader societal concerns.

In this course, architecture and urban development will be discussed in light of sustainability, and current and future challenges and opportunities.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures, seminars, and workshop exercises, in parallel with the student’s continuous sketching and preparatory work. Teaching will largely consist of group-based supervision with shared reviews. The course will be conducted in collaboration with AAR4467.

Excursions may be included as part of the course. At the start of the semester, the course coordinator will inform students whether planned excursions are mandatory or voluntary. Mandatory excursions are free of charge for all students, while students participating in voluntary excursions must expect a personal fee. Students who do not participate in voluntary excursions will be offered an alternative learning arrangement.

Compulsory assignments

• Compulsory exercises

Specific conditions

Required previous knowledge

AAR4300 Architecture 1, AAR4415 Architecture 2, AAR4416 Architecture 3, AAR4436 Architecture 4 and AAR4366 Architecture 5, or equivalent, must normally be passed before admission to Architecture 6. The course must be taken in the same semester as AAR4467.

Course materials

Written and digital material, scientific texts.

Credit reductions