MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE PROGRAMME DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

HO PUAY PENG Professor and Head of Department I am delighted to welcome you, either as new or returning students, to NUS Department of Architecture. This new academic year will be a great challenge to us all, not least due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the scattering of members of our facilities and studios. Regardless of the mode of teaching, we at DOA pledge to do our best to deliver an excellent learning experience to you as you journey through the year. The pandemic has led us to question a number of the essential values at the heart of how we operate in society, such as gathering, community, work and living patterns, nature, technology and digital capacity. These values are, and should be, expressed in spatial terms.

As we begin this education journey with you, we have worked to achieve better clarity in our studio direction and pedagogy. Our programmes focus on design, which we see as evidence-based problem solving that has the potential to transcend the confines of everyday experience. The required modules in our programmes open the door to different domains of knowledge, which in turn inform design decisions. The elective modules further expand and enrich students’ knowledge in their chosen topics of interest. By creating and navigating a path through the entire curriculum, you will then be empowered to pursue your own aspirations and interests in architecture. The values that we champion in our programmes relate both to architectural and spatial form, and pertain to current social conditions, environmental responsibility, well-being and health, urban liveability, memory and identity, and relationship with nature. At this moment, these issues are particularly relevant, poignant and ripe for reflection, research, re-affirmation and redefinition. A number of design studios planned for the new academic year are addressing these issues directly, and we await with anticipation the innovative answers and outcomes that they will generate.

We are turning the coming year’s challenges into opportunities for robust spatial responses to future conditions. Our programme, curriculum, module design and studio learning outcomes have been formulated and refined in order to achieve design excellence in this environment. I am confident we will rise above our challenges and work to create design solutions that will address pertinent issues of importance for current and future communities. My colleagues and I look forward to working together with you, and to bringing our passion, creativity and intelligence together with yours, to bear on these issues. I wish you an exciting and rewarding new academic year. ERIK G. L’HEUREUX Dean’s Chair Associate Professor, Vice Dean Master of Architecture Programme Director The NUS Master of Architecture programme is Asia’s leading design and research course for architecture. Our concurrent two-year professional degree programme cultivates a comprehensive and deep understanding of Asia and the equatorial region’s design opportunities and challenges. Students acquire knowledge as designers, intellectuals and citizens who can then go on to shape and influence the built environment.

The M Arch design studio is supported by a rigorous and expansive curriculum of graduate level electives and core professional modules. Conducted over a duration of four semesters, through the M Arch I Design Option Studios and the graduate level design thesis, this curriculum trains students to think critically and materially, and to produce independent work of individuality, rigour, and vision.

Directing their own learning experience, M Arch I students embark on a selection of options studios and aligned electives. During their second thesis year, students concentrate on independent and individual design trajectories, covering a wide variety of disciplines as well as cross-cultural dimensions. Core professional and technical modules support the student’s advanced learning.

The strategic objective of the M Arch programme is to prepare students for a professional career in architecture amid a rapidly changing global context, and to equip them with experiences developed from within Singapore and through regional and international perspectives. Facilitated by a world-class team of academics and practitioners, the M Arch programme focuses on research-driven thinking and methods through five research clusters: Research by Design; History, Theory and Criticism; Technologies; Urbanism; and Landscape Studies.

The programme allows students to expand design intelligence and creative practice research at an advanced level, and to further discourse within the discipline of architecture. A series of seminars, symposiums, guest lectures, internship opportunities, exchange and field research complement this advanced design programme.

With this, our graduates are poised to become design leaders for Asia, and for the world.