Study programme

Are you interested in the interplay between architecture, design and digital technologies? Do you have an affinity for digital applications and methods and would like to implement innovative approaches? With its experimental and practice-oriented fields of research, this inter-faculty degree programme offers exciting new fields of activity and project-oriented studies.

There is hardly an area of our living environment that is not affected or even challenged by digitalisation. Architecture and design are therefore faced with massive challenges. On the one hand, design concepts, methods and practices are increasingly permeated by new digital technologies and are changing them from the ‘inside out’. On the other hand, questions arise about the disciplinary self-image, the social dimension and ultimately about the transformation of the living environment as a whole.

While the ‘predecessor’ degree programme MediaArchitecture focused on media technologies and the mediality of architecture, ‘Digital Technologies in Architecture and Design’ (DTAD) is aimed directly at the influence of digital technologies on design practice. The degree programme is designed to be application-oriented and taught by professors of multiple faculties. Thus, it focuses on gaining a deeper understanding of innovative digital technologies and their interaction with social developments, discourses and needs (cultural, political, economic, ecological, etc.).

Graduates will be able to deal with new digital technologies, analyse them and apply them in an interdisciplinary manner. This includes developing digital innovations in the areas of construction, planning, media and design and linking them with curatorial or administrative areas. The programme integrates scientific and economic perspectives that aim to drive innovative digital concepts through to the founding of companies in the areas of sustainability and transformation.

The 4-semester full-time Master's degree programme is taught in English, has an international focus and starts every year in the winter semester. The core of the programme is team-based and application-oriented project work. To this end, students dedicate themselves to changing topics on new digital technologies from different areas of research and application for interdisciplinary design and implementation processes. In doing so, they develop basic digital and design competences and skills, individual modes of expression and design approaches (digital literacy). In addition, there are further practical discourse and methodological offers for the critical localisation of the innovations studied. Media, experimental, transformative, sustainable and social aspects are of particular interest. Current topics such as: (i) creative digital explorations, (ii) transformative technologies, (iii) collective experiences, (iv) intelligent sys- tems, or (v) digital sustainability play a role here.

The degree programme is based at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Institute for Experimental Architecture (bauhaus.ifex), whose profile is especially dedicated to experimental and application-oriented research. Thanks to the significant involvement of the Faculty of Art and Design and the Faculty of Media, the degree programme offers a high degree of interdisciplinarity. Accordingly, professors from all three faculties teach and contribute their specific specialist, methodological and didactic skills to the degree programme, thus forming an open, collective and interdisciplinary study culture.

Find out how to apply for the DTAD-Master here.

Some of the aspects covered during the studies 

Theory and History of modern Architecture:

• General application of the media theoretical discourse on architecture
• Architecture as mixed medium: Perception machine, body technique, semiotic tool, physiology and performativeness in space
• Architecture in the media: Medial impression as defining power of architecture
• Immersion spaces: Metaphors, language and structure for order and navigation of knowledge

Design and Building Form Studies:

• The “scenical”: Dramaturgy and direction as process examples for the architectural design process
• Process-oriented perspectives in (architectural) design/ functional processes in architectural space
• New level of freedom for perceptive space: Synchronisation of the site relationship of the architecture and the time relation of the medial event
• Light as a medium (spherical parameters of architecture)
• Physiological architecture

Presentation Methodology:

• Projective synchronisation and connection between technically different presented real and virtual, medial and architectural spaces (drawing, photo, rendering etc.), geometrical analysis and construction process
• Modelling, presenting simulating
• Image-based virtual worlds (IVR and QTVR) – Areas of use, types, production, tools

Interface Design:

• Perception, effect and functional aspects of “intelligent” spaces
• Interaction concepts in space
• Distributed, site-dependant information and entertainment offerings
• Conception, production and distribution of multimedia interactive contents
• Dramaturgy of the interaction in space
• Design concepts of the media in “real” buildings (architecture, temporary constructions, theatre)

History and Theory of culture techniques:

• History of graphical operations
• Media of architectural design, media of planning
• Corridors, channels, thresholds: From urban spaces all the way through to film architecture
• Topography of the biopolitical – Space of human existence

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI):

• interdisciplinary team work to develop a functioning system
• technical aspects of MediaArchitecture with correlation of software, tangible and embodied interaction and architecture
• prototype development of ´physical computing´ objects, interactive spaces or videomapping
• public presentation of projects in urban space and social context with user study research