The Course of Advanced Studies in Architectural Design at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto is an initiative designed to make a Continuing Education new opportunity available within the instrumental and methodological field in the area of Architectural Design and the knowledge that it involves.

 

Contemporary challenges posed by the emergence of new technologies and instrumental settings, the profound changes underway in commissioning and the agents involved, together with the need for thinking out new strategies for intervention in the urban fabric and its built heritage, require the construction of new perspectives on the conceptual exercise of design and architecture.

 

The course is structured on the basis of two modules - Architectural Design and Construction & Structures - to which three other areas that address theoretical and historical training are linked – the History of Architecture; Theory of Contemporary Architecture; and Urbanism. A further group of three modules – Design; Photography of Architecture; and Cinema and Architecture - address conceptual and instrumental aspects of conceptualisation and representation processes under extended and transversal approaches.

 

Each semester during the course includes seminars led by internationally renowned personalities.

Objectives

The general objectives of the course are to provide students with:

a) The ability to systematically understand the relevant scientific, technical and methodological areas in the design and development of architectural solutions;

b) The competencies, skills and research processes associated with the field of constructive processes and systems;

c) The ability to communicate their conclusions, the knowledge and reasoning underlying them, whether to specialists or non-specialists in the field of construction of architecture and its importance in urban renewal.

 

 

Professional skills

a) To provide specialised training and the capacity to research in the area of inventive architectural and spatial solutions;

b) To give a quality response to the increasing requests from the labour market for the training of particularly skilled technicians in this area of ​​growing demand in the integration and coordination of wide-ranging disciplinary knowledge;

c) To provide an increased range of opportunities for a closer and more productive relationship between the University and national and international public or private institutions which, abroad, have the aim and mission to intervene in this problem area.