The challenge for students of architecture, at the end of their Master’s course, is to integrate and develop in autonomy the various skills required to analyse, assess and to devise architectural projects. Fully aware of their responsibilities, they will be able to make choices in order to structure the places which are inhabited, invested and produced by local authorities and individuals.
During these two years of study, students have an opportunity to further their knowledge in specific areas such as landscaping, urbanism, heritage, architectonics or sustainable development… The skills gained in architecture school will be assessed by external scholars and practicing architects invited to participate in their evaluations, and our graduates’ training will open doors to the field’s multiple dimensions.
The skills needed to enter the profession, introduced over the course of study, will be put into practice and completed by a post-graduation professional internship.
The Master’s degree also opens access to various fields of specialisation thanks to bridges towards complementary Master’s programmes in heritage, urbanism, design… Finally, our faculty’s graduates interested in research can also undertake doctoral work.
On successful completion of this programme, each student is able to :
Design a project
When faced with a complex question of architecture, to choose, analyse and bring together various component elements of an emerging reality. From this, to formulate hypotheses to use when choosing how best to reshape space
- Sensibly bring together and develop with a controlled logic, natural and artificial environments (landscape, urban, buildings) within a framework of basic parameters
- Express and prioritise the aims of the projects so as to be able to make choices
- Understand, test and bring together the organisation of the space through an architectural project
- Analyse, consider and invent artistic practices through drawings and models
- Adopt approaches which are methodical, creative, metaphorical, perceptive, collaborative etc.
Test an artistic approach
Faced with a given situation, to imagine and implement an idea capable of triggering a process of questioning
- To capture the “spirit of the time” and identify the means which will enable it to be revealed
- To test and extend the limit of the imagination
- To reformulate, assimilate a question and explore various possible avenues to respond to it
- To imagine drivers which can transform the perception of what is real
- To take a deliberate step from an uncertain beginning by assembling pre-existing concepts that are both first diffuse and heterogeneous, to reach a proposal that others can comprehend
Build knowledge of architecture
Be familiar with and understand written, drawn or built references which form the foundation of the discipline
- Be familiar with and analyse the discipline’s basic references
- Be able to use given references which, by analogy, can lead to other interpretations of the context
- Develop knowledge and become an active participant in the learning process
Place the action
Observe, analyse and interpret with rigour the various material, social, cultural components of the prevailing situation in which the thinking is elaborated. Show the potential of this situation through the impact of the architectural project
- Recognise, observe and produce critical assessments of the targeted environments and contexts
- Identify and analyse the paradigms on which the study is based according to various given methods and starting from various points of view
- Formulate questions relating to the development of the context being studied to make working hypotheses
- Experiment with the possibilities of transforming a context
Make use of other subjects
To be curious and adopt a cross-disciplinary approach to consolidate the basis of what has been learnt
- Seek out other approaches, exchanges of views and ways of enhancing thinking about architecture
- Interpret and synthesise the knowledge of other subjects
- Make strategic use of other subjects to put into question the design and implementation of an architectural project
- Bring all this back to the original discipline
Use the technical dimension
Be familiar with and recast technical and scientific knowledge of building so as to use it as a driver in designing architecture which is highly efficient and sustainable
- Be familiar with and interpret the main technical principles of construction
- Observe and assess the main construction principles that give architecture a formal, material and temporal dimension
- Be able to apply the various basic technical principles in producing a work of architecture
- Acquire an instinctive understanding of structures to use in producing a creative and/or innovative work of architecture
Express an architectural procedure
Use traditional and artistic methods to explore, discover, design, reveal a reality, a design or a project
- Be familiar with, understand and use the codes for representing space, in two and three dimensions
- Convey the experience of spatiality in all its complexity by observing it and posing questions
- Identify the founding elements of a hypothesis or a proposal to express and communicate them
- Test and use relevant means of communication in relation to the intended audience and the target objectives
- Express ideas clearly in oral, graphic and written form
Adopt a professional attitude
Act as an aware player, ready to test out interaction with the stakeholders in construction
- Organise, plan, develop and bring together the different strands of individual or collective work
- Listen to and identify the different needs and points of view of the different stakeholders to be able to bring these together in respect of the desired objectives
- Act as an independent player able to understand the framework of his/her mission, and the responsibilities towards third parties as well as his/her legal obligations
- Test and observe the framework of professional practice and to architectural knowledge through independent involvement
Make committed choices
Demonstrate responsible engagement in a situation, with a thoughtful approach to issues of society and culture
- Activate and develop an ethical sense through approaches to architecture
- Develop awareness of the political meaning of the work of an architect and his/her responsibility towards society
- Make links between different methodological and epistemological perspectives
- Understand the merits of an idea which can lead to the objectives to be achieved by the project; follow through with determination, even by means of a modest intervention, the implementation of this idea and the achievement of these objectives
- Imagine ambitious proposals which could call into question the choices made by society