First Term

During the first term at BTU students should successfully complete the two mandatory modules and two of the four offered elective modules which are as follows:

Mandatory Modules

  • Urban Design and Rehabilitation Project

On the neighbourhood level the module deals with problems of urban renewal and housing development or respectively city extensions via new developments or conversions. In alignment with the city layout building typologies are developed as well as analysed. In addition, at a wider scale urban design as a complex formation is further exercised and urban mechanisms in reaction to urban space interventions are recognised, evaluated and harnessed.

Based on the creative analysis of the location, the students develop general guidelines and a preliminary urban programme. While their conceptual ideas are developed based on identified strengths, later they are tested with alternative strategies and weighed against the background of conditions for urban development.

Depending on the study questions derived from urban structures and urban space on the architectural scale are also applied to building typologies. Thus, the architecture solutions developed are directly linked to the urban spaces and in return define the character of urban space in an aesthetically meaningful way.

  • Town and house

This module provides students with the theoretical basis and technical skills for the urban design project through seminars, group discussions, case studies and possible site visits and excursions. For that purpose, Town and House deals with morphological analysis of urban areas through studying the comprising urban elements and the relationships between those elements on different scales of study especially considering their historic transformations. Moreover, urban form and structure is investigated in relation to the shaping social, cultural, economic and political factors. During this class, students will be able to scientifically explore the city and its urban structure and further conduct urban mappings and site investigations as analytic tools to apply within their case studies. Finally, students will acquire a critical understanding on the mutual relation between the whole and the parts or town and house in order to reach a comprehensive and holistic image of the city.

Elective Modules

  • Experimental Urban Design 
  • Landscape Planning and Public Space Design
  • Urban Planning - Life, Work and Recreation in the Future
  • Conservation / Building in Existing Fabric