The development of cities and the built environment places enormous pressures on the natural world. As urbanisation continues at rapid pace, finding sustainable and adaptable solutions to these issues is becoming essential.

On this programme, we encourage a critical perspective of sustainable development and current practice in architecture and urban design.

The profile of this programme  — “beyond sustainability” — will place you right at the cutting edge of trends in the field, working with new knowledge, methods and perspectives to move beyond current practice, and shape the next step in sustainability.   ​​

We consider social, ethical, norm-critical and de-colonial questions and approaches throughout the education. We emphasise respect for the existing built structures in our environment as cultural as well as economic resources, interdisciplinary cooperation and the importance of research.

The educational approach takes the form of a series of design studios, developing your skills through complex design tasks in very different situations and contexts. This could include, for example, neighbourhoods and municipalities in Sweden, informal settlements in developing countries, and investigations into the diverse technical and social challenges of sustainable building and transformation.

This method challenges and develops your ability to analyse and situate local conditions in relation to broader contexts. The design studios offer experience-based learning, fieldwork, tailored lectures, literature studies, seminars, workshops, design project work, and exhibitions. The problems and potential solutions encountered will vary significantly, but what ties them together is the use of a systemic approach to tackling the issues.

Architectural studies at Chalmers take a humanistic view of architecture and emphasise an explorative and design-led approach. The ambition is to promote convincing future visions for the development of the built environment, preparing graduates to help shape the future of the spaces we live and work in.