M ARCH PROGRAMME OVERVIEW

I am delighted to welcome you, either as new or returning students, to NUS Department of Architecture (DOA). With the pandemic still raging, this new Academic Year (AY) will continue to be disruptive and a great challenge to us all. Renovations of SDE3 are still on-going, and hopefully we will be able to move back to SDE3 towards the end of AY2021/22. In the meantime, our studios will continue to be scattered with hot desking arrangements. I hope we can persevere and adapt to the studio condition with COVID-19 safety guidelines and measures. Regardless of the disruption, we at DOA, pledge to do our best to deliver an excellent learning experience for you, as you journey with us 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 gatherings, community, work and living patterns, nature, technology, and digital capacity. These values are, and should be, expressed in spatial terms, which you shall explore this year.

AY2021/22 also marks the beginning of a common curriculum structure for the undergraduate degree, designed for the School of Design and Environment and Faculty of Engineering. This new approach to undergraduate education aims to focus on interdisciplinary learning and allows students to craft multiple pathways in their education and future careers. Architecture education has often been interdisciplinary; however, the new curriculum will usher in a structural approach to undergraduate education to prepare you for a fast-changing world in the future. You will be exposed to fundamental modules that will offer exposure in professional skills, values, methodology and pedagogy in design and engineering. In the upper years, you will also be able to pick up some minors or a second major, which will enhance your career resilience. While the new curriculum is applicable to first year students, we will also take the opportunity to assess our curriculum, and make changes to the structure and learning outcomes of different modules. 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 skills that has the potential to transcend the confines of everyday experience. The required modules in our programmes open doors 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. However, we are also mindful of the mental challenges the coming year might bring to your studies. We care about your well-being and we are open to meet and help you, should you face stressful situations during your studies. I invite you to come talk with me and we can face the issues together. I am confident that 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 bringing our passion, creativity and intelligence together with yours, in this education journey. I wish you an exciting and rewarding new academic year.

HO PUAY PENG Professor and Head of Department The NUS Master of Architecture (M Arch) 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’s 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 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 semester of M Arch II, students concentrate on independent and individual design thesis, covering a wide variety of disciplines as well as cross-cultural dimensions. Core professional and technical modules will 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 knowledge and experiences developed from within Singapore and through regional and international perspectives. Facilitated by a team of world-class academics and practitioners, the M Arch programme focuses on research-driven thinking and methods through six research clusters: Research by Design, History, Theory and Criticism, Technologies, Urbanism, Landscape Studies, and Design Education.

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 work, complement this advanced design programme.

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

ERIK G. L’HEUREUX Dean’s Chair Associate Professor, Vice Dean Master of Architecture Programme Director