Architecture is a specialist discipline and essentially a collective event. It confidently asserts its function to serve society and draws its energy and its inventiveness from the positive constraints imposed by this society and by its own material and spiritual characteristics.

Learning is not restricted to the mere accumulation of knowledge. Know-how and critical thinking are paramount, focused on an essential ethical dimension, with the aim of guiding students towards responsible and competent life skills.

To meet this requirement, discipline, creativity and technical know-how are, in their complementarity and indivisibility, the primary objectives of the training of our students.

In addition to fostering creativity, the ability to manipulate concepts and the ability to act independently and collaboratively, the course strengthens the acquisition of dual skill-sets:

• to build and develop, that is to say, to ground theory in reality;
• to adopt a forward-looking approach, which may lead to research.

Students benefit from an approach which encompasses all the aspects of the architectural discipline: artistic, intellectual, scientific and material.

The teaching methods used are based on a systematic and in-depth use of the foundations of architecture.

Focusing learning on contextual complexity, on increasing the magnitude of the challenges encountered in order to progress towards an improved mastery of solutions, and on adopting teaching practices which combine application, discipline and creativity, are characteristics that have shaped our identity.

In addition, the prime position of the architecture project as the centre of the training, as evidenced by the number of hours in the studio, is reinforced by the strong link between theoretical courses and the project, thereby leading to the integration of knowledge and the complementarity of the teaching.

The definition of clear, precise and regularly updated learning contracts also allows lecturers to situate their course and to coordinate their content and requirements. In the same vein, we recognise the importance of the presence of architecture professionals within the faculty in order to open up the course fully to responsible, current practice which is grounded in reality.