2018

Call for Applications

Deadline:
June 1, 2018
The Berlage Post-Master Program in Architecture and Urban Design Program

2018 Call for applications

Deadline: June 1, 2018

The Berlage announces its call for 2018 applicants to its post-master program, which
consists of three semesters of full-time study after which students receive a Master of
Science in Architecture and Urban Design degree, accredited by Delft University of
Technology. The Berlage encourages its students to operate disruptively within the
mainstream, to adopt speculative positions that generate provocative, personal, original,
and relevant architectural projects. The Berlage seeks applicants who are imaginative and
self-motivated, who are prepared to work both individually and collectively across a series
of design-based projects, proseminars, fieldwork excursions, and master classes, and
who are eager to participate in a rich and diverse public program.

Bare Necessities
From 2016–2019, the Berlage is structured around a multiformat thematic program called
“Bare Necessities,” revisiting the preoccupations of architectural modernism (commerce,
housing, leisure, transportation, and work), examining their sources, processes, and
legacies, and assessing their influence on contemporary practice.

Fall 2018 semester: Cultures, Methods, and Instruments

For the first semester, entitled “Material Matters,” students will examine building systems
in the Netherlands as part of the Berlage’s long-standing Project NL study program. From
figures and tools to space, buildings, and their territories, students will relate these
materials to changes in profession, technology, supply chains, tooling, taste, plasticity,
political shenanigans, labor practices, building types, spatial innovation, truthfulness, and
precision. A number of public lectures, excursions, and workshops, will discuss matters of
materiality in depth. By examining their historical trajectories, students will be able
speculate on their future role and application within the endless transformation and
calibration of the Dutch built environment.

Spring 2019 semester: Societies, Environments, Economies

For the second semester, entitled “Smart, Smarter, Smartest” students will critically
examine smart city sloganeering as part of the Berlage’s long-standing Project Global
study program. Students will develop counter-proposals and anti-theses to “smart”
master plans for Buenos Aires and London, projecting sites of real technological
innovation for both cities. A parallel public lecture series from leading scholars and
practitioners will present pioneering adventures and misadventures with technology in
historical and contemporary master plans and building projects. Students will participate
in fieldwork excursions to Buenos Aires or London, in order to meet and work with local
experts and stakeholders. In turn, these local experts will lead a series of week-long
design charrettes and review sessions in the Netherlands.

Fall 2019 semester: Final Thesis

During the second semester, a series of thesis preparation workshops will generate
research hypotheses and design directions that will guide their third and final thesis
semester. Based on tools, positions, and preoccupations refined during in the first two
semesters, this final term of study is dedicated to developing student’s own thesis project
in detail, under a collective framework. Students will be encouraged to be highly
experimental and speculative, engage in wide-ranging and multidisciplinary research,
adopt a position between theory and practice, while creating visually compelling and
intellectually rigorous projects.

Proseminars
Throughout the first two semesters, a succession of proseminars will engage students in
bridging speculative and actual architectural production, along with issues related to the
transformation of the contemporary built environment. Recent proseminars have been led
by Tom Avermaete, Salomon Frausto, Filip Geerts, Olaf Gipser, Francesca Hughes, and
Thomas Weaver, on subjects such as the role of the architect, the interrelations between
research and project, precision and measurement, and the interrelations between
centrifugality and centripetality.

Master classes
Additionally, twice a year students will work with world-renowned architects, designers,
and thinkers in an intensive workshop setting to analyze a relevant issue in the built
environment, experimenting with alternative formats of representation and dissemination.
Recent master classes have been led by Assemble, Beatriz Colomina, OMA/AMO, Rural
Urban Framework (RUF), Herman Hertzberger, and Madelon Vriesendorp.

Public program
Each semester, a public program will foster a climate of intellectual rigor and deliberate
inquiry that challenges both the traditionally conceived discipline of architecture, and the
production of the built environment at large. Recent lecturers include Kunlé Adeyemi,
Tatiana Bilbao, Tom Emerson, Pol Esteve, Anne Holtrop, Francesca Hughes, Louisa
Hutton, Joan Ockman, and Jonathan Sergison.

Teaching staff
Regular teaching staff include Tom Avermaete, Ido Avissar, Salomon Frausto, and
Thomas Weaver. Recent guest critics include Alessandra Ponte, Atelier Bow-Wow, Jean-
Louis Cohen, Sébastien Marot, Lars Lerup, Martino Tattara, and David van Severen.

About the Berlage

Founded in 1990 as the Berlage Institute, the Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in
Architecture and Urban Design, located in Delft, educates architects in a highly
collaborative and experimental setting, characterized by independent study with guidance
and input from and exchange with leading and emerging designers and scholars. Since
2012, students have benefitted from the world-class facilities of TU Delft, as well as close
exchange with its academic staff and students.