Binnenkort een nieuwe Nederlandse tekst.
Course’s Profile
The training at the Maastricht Master Architecture is international, project-based, flexible and made to measure the individual student. This is the trump of a relatively small institute in an internationally-oriented region. The training at the Academy has a idiosyncratic profile which it derives from its location in Maastricht, the oldest cultural city in the Netherlands, at the crossroads of various languages and cultures. To explore and research the history and potential of this place is an essential part of the design assignments given to the students. In this respect the Academy has set up a course that focuses on internationalisation and the cultural-historical. After all, every design assignment encroaches on what already exists.
At the Academy turbulent international architectural developments and its hybrid manifestations are critically considered. It establishes international cooperation, sets up student exchanges and project coproductions. It profits from its geographical location on the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, providing students access to practices in these countries.
Educational Concept
The design project is the basis of the courses. Design projects are developed during a six-month term in the design studios. Extensive analytical seminars and short-term workshops support these projects, focusing on specific aspects. The head instructors lead a team of four to eight instructors and guest lecturers that set up and thematically develop design projects together with the director of studies. The themes worked on in the studios and the daily programme – international lectures and workshops that all students are invited to attend and that take place in December/January – are always linked to current events.
Further, training consists of theory lectures and exercises in skills that are related to the canon of architecture and urban design.
General Make Up of the Course Programme
The course programme consists of four stages.
Stage 1: Spatial thinking
The senses are crucial to architectural research. It is all about haptic perception, transferring what is perceived into visual language and reading and interpreting images by means of perception, illusion and theory. Virtual and analogous techniques are studied and deployed. In this stage, the assignments are strongly contextual. This spatial thinking centres on the contexts of the landscape (nature) and the city (culture).
Stage 2: The concept of ‘dwelling’
The concept of ‘dwelling’ is key in the second year. Through the study of a private house philosophical concepts about dwel-ling are explored. The discipline of architecture is considered a language. Next, changing ideas about the architectural and philosophical concepts of complex space (the interior, the house, the city, the landscape) are critically studied and spatially developed. Students do not only study the private house but also mass housing.
The typology of mass housing, typical of the Netherlands, is central to social housing, urban housing, the nomadic dwelling and the phenomena of contemporary mass culture, consuming, leisure and tourism as current ways of using space. The second year centres on the modern European city. In this stage professional skills and knowledge are being developed.
Stage 3: Gaining in-depth knowledge within the context of a complex assignment
In this third stage the student is trained to draw up a research assignment of his/her own taking into account the international region and the networking culture. They have to design a large building. As part of that exercise, they have to develop para-meters for their (visual) research and research into the ‘other’ and the ‘exceptional’. The aspiring designer and architect have to be able to come up with a powerful and integral design despite the complex context and many contradictory factors. The design integrates and transcends the local conditions in an innovative way.
Stage 4: Graduating
In the final year, students show their insights, knowledge and skills in a final project of their own choosing. They have to show that they master all aspects of architectural design and have reached that level of competence that will allow them to professionally practice as an independent architect.