Architecture

Athugið að upplýsingar um umsóknar- og inntökuferli á alþjóðlegum meistaranámsleiðum eru eingöngu á ensku.

WHAT SHOULD ARCHITECTURE BECOME?

The challenges of our time call for new measures, measures that are radical, responsive, and revolutionary. In an environmental clinic for the man-made environment, we want to explore these dimensions, seek the next steps on a collective journey to a sound world. We invite you on that journey through a program that will be an ongoing melting pot of experiments, knowledge, ideas from theorists, thinkers, institutions, practitioners, specialists, artists, and other contributors.
 
We will use Iceland and its unique context as our laboratory, sitting inside a cultural harmonic that vibrates between the local and the global.
 
Each studio embraces three aspects of the design process:
  • Thinking Architecture explores the critical questioning of important local and global systems and the challenges, the responsibilities, and role of architecture in that context. Thinking architecture brings a diversity of thinkers and institutions into a dialogue with students and teachers for collective reading and discussion. Diverse analytical tools, design research methods and theories that are at the base of the architectural practice are being explored. Thinking Architecture provides a contextual framework that is able to feed, inform and challenge the entire design work.
  • Making Architecture is about translating theories, knowledge, and suppositions into informed-informative-reactive-sensitive design work. This translation includes: writing, strategizing, story-telling, diagramming, mapping, drawing, model making, digital visualization. Making Architecture is supported by radical thinkers, professional practicing architects, specialists in the fields of the built environment and beyond.
  • Engaging Architecture is a critical reflection of the studio's research work within a larger context and the translation and dissemination of the body of work towards a broader audience. This is done by exploring different media and settings as public events, exhibitions and publication series.
Each autumn semester starts with collective thematic research in studio 4 and studio 5 – Collective Research. The research relates to critical current agendas and can be a part of a larger research program. The themes chosen directs a selected line of inquiry in order to investigate and deepen understanding of a particular condition or phenomenon. Multiple lines of inquiries can be pursued, engaging in dialogue with diverse stakeholders and partners in the field. The teaching plan will orient and describe the different agendas, tasks and research processes undertaken whilst collaborative processes, individual and collective lines of inquiries pursued become further defined by students in dialogue with educators.
 
During the spring semesters and the Studios - Independent Propositions, the focus shifts from the collective thematic research to student’s personal projects. Students develop individual strategies and propositions of change which are supported and informed by the collective body of knowledge gained during autumn semester. Students further define their own projects regarding new insights gained during the research process in autumn. An important aspect of the independent project is for students to develop a sense of their own professional agency and spatial practice, and to build a network of agents capable of supporting the development of the design work: student learning oriented focus.

 

 
 
Open Q&A - MArch

 

Programme:
Architecture Degree: MArch
Units:
120 ECTS
Study length:
4 terms– 2 years

Themes:
2021-2022 TURF/EARTH
2022-2023 WATER

 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Opening of applications: January 9th 2024

Deadline: April 12th 2024

Application outcome: May 2024

 

APPLICATION

Electronic Application

CONTACT

hafdis [at] lhi.is (Hafdís Harðardóttir)
Departmental Coordinator

SHORT CUTS

Architecture on Instagram

IUA Rules

Tuition 

Course Catalog

 

Head of Architecture Department

The global population is at a turning point, faced with great challenges.  Environmental disasters, mass migration, pandemics, and injustice.  Architecture, like any other profession, must face its responsibility and act.  Architects must rethink, revisit, reuse, and reform their methods, focusing on justice for the environment and mankind.  This will only happen through conscience and bravery, with radical practice.  Great architecture of the future will certainly entail aesthetical design, but no architecture is good architecture without responsibility and responsible agency. 
In our study program, we seek to provide the tools, methods, and platforms to develop and mature that agency.  Students are invited to critically examine and strengthen their role as architects and designers.  We will analyze and experiment with our subjects to facilitate a well-informed design process. 
The focus of the BA-program in Architecture is twofold.  On one hand, we ask what architecture is, we investigate the language and basic tools of the profession, design processes and are introduced to architectural theories.  We open our minds towards abstraction, conceptualization, and critical analysis. On the other hand, students are invited to investigate their own tone and vocation, as agents, thinkers, and designers. Put briefly, the focus can be summarized by two questions:  What is architecture – and how do I go about it?
 
Massimo Santanicchia, Head of the Architecture Department