Program and structure

• Common Courses

  Theoretical courses are, for the most part, included in the first year of the programme, leaving more time later in the course for the dissertation.

  The architectural and urban composition course is the foundation of the course.

  In the architectural design course, students will choose one of the following four thematic routes to give their project a particular focus:

  Four optional courses are offered to students:

  • Architectures and Heritage
  • Architectures – Territories – Strategies – Landscape
  • Data, Territories and Parametric Architectures
  • Resilience, Mixity Laboratory.

   

  Students in both years of the MA, who are registered on the same specialist focus, are grouped in the same workshop. They work on the same projects – sometimes in groups, sometimes individually.  The level of difficulty varies according to the year of study. The students’ projects are presented before a board made up of teachers from the Faculty and external members, including architects and specialists of the proposed subject.

  Specialist Focus on Urban Planning 

  Nowadays, the teaching of urban planning, a multidisciplinary discipline since its creation, refers to many broad disciplines, but we have not yet reached the point where there is a sufficient form of “urban action”. Indeed, urban planning must integrate design methods, decision-making mechanisms, and project processes in order to produce intelligent territories.

  Faced with this failure, where project planning remains unexplored, the FA+U of UMONS is expanding its course to train architects in the art of building cities and territories in light of the many questions of sustainable development. Through our course, attention is also given to the evolution of urban and territorial issues, such as the rise of reflections on urban renewal, the adaptability of cities and territories, and many others.

  This Master’s degree focuses on the analysis of actors’ dynamics, as well as the multi-disciplinary nature of the subject matter, to fully understand the building of innovative projects conditioned by their environment.

  This course, which is project based, is structured around four themes:  Heritage, Landscape, Data and  Resilience. The workshops are designed with an active teaching approach dedicated to projects that are developed under control conditions.  They are designed to enable students to acquire urban design methods based on technical and societal issues.

  The Faculty intends to train its students to master all aspects of project planning, intelligently considering the dimensions of a space, reaffirming the need for any intervention to be strictly contextualised and territorialised. In other words, our students will come away knowing that projects must be designed to be integrated into their different contexts (physical, climatic, functional, socio-cultural, human and constructive).

  In addition, our teaching makes it possible to collaborate with the research centre, U.R.B.A.In.E,  which acts as an interface between teaching and research, questioning the relationship of higher education to “urban action” in the broad sense where projects also become “producers of knowledge”.

Credits repartition

Teaching profile

The programme description defines the expected learning outcomes at the end of the cycle (Bachelor's, Master's, etc.). The programme description defines the expected learning outcomes, i.e. what the student should know, understand and be able to achieve at the end of a learning activity, a teaching unit or a study cycle (Bachelor's, Master's, etc.). Learning outcomes are defined in terms of knowledge, expertise and soft skills.

At the end of the Master's, students will be able to:

• Address a question on urban planning
• Develop an identified spatial response
• Interact with all stakeholders
• Make choices

For more information, consult the programme description for this study cycle below (in French).

PROF-ENS-M2-FINURB.pdf (umons.ac.be)

Opportunities

The increasing complexity of building processes, construction-related tasks and new urban and environmental challenges offer new architecture graduates a wide range of professions.

The course leads to many occupations in the construction of urban and suburban buildings, town planning, regional planning, heritage restoration, and energy, to name but a few.

These opportunities concern new constructions, urban planning, the expanding market of renovation, redeployment, and reconversion.

Many of our alumni have been hired in these different areas.

Graduates may also embark on a PhD at UMONS or another university.  The research areas and supervision developed by the FA+U constitute a favourable framework to carry out this work.