BSc in Urban Planning and Architectural Design

The Bachelor of Science in Urban Planning and Architectural Design provides an application-orientated education that qualifies graduates for various professions in the private and public sector. Urban planners and architects work in many different fields, and play a major role in shaping our social lives with regards to the built environment.
The focus of later professional work is on all scales of tasks of planning and building: in administrative and institutional sections of municipal, administrative and government organisations as well as in private sector design and construction consultancies.
Graduates are well prepared to work in the local industry, mainly because of the many practice-relevant courses and the mandatory six-week internship in the last study year. In seminars, they learn academic research methods, and excellent students are participating in research projects in the department, e.g. the Eco House project in which two graduates worked full time for two years.

Students are well prepared to pursue an academic career and a number of graduates have gone on to MSc programmes in Germany, UK and the US.

The generic attributes and skills that graduates are expected to develop during their undergraduate studies are:

• Ethics – The graduates have developed awareness and holistic understanding of their role as responsible citizens in an increasingly globalised context.
• Critical thinking and problem solving – The graduates are able to engage real-world problems in a theoretically informed, rigorous, and questioning manner. They are able to devise solutions, select the most appropriate one, implement it, and reflect on its performance.
• Creative thinking – The graduates are able to think laterally and develop creative ideas.
• Individual and team work – The graduates have the capability to work effectively alone or in a team, to be self-directed, and to show independent judgment.
• Communication – The graduates are effective communicators, using oral, written, and electronic communication skills. They can interact confidently in a variety of settings, with a range of people from both genders, individually and in team situations, from peers to the wider community.
• Life-long-learning – The graduates appreciate that learning is continuous and have the ability to continue learning throughout life. They have developed a variety of approaches to learning, including self-directed, collaborative and self-reflective processes.

Graduates from the BSc in International Business & Service Management will also have developed the following programme-specific attributes and skills:

• Scientific-theoretical and analytical skills. Graduates have developed scientific and analytical skills especially through the modules of history and theory, sociology, economy, law, planning and construction. The students need to acquire these skills in order to analyse specific situations.
• Method-based and problem-solving approach. Design exercises within the modules enable graduates to take a targeted approach to problem solving in their work. Depending on the exercise the students learn different methodologies that can be applied to various design tasks.
• Interdisciplinary and integral thinking. Graduates have learned to think in an interdisciplinary way in order to tackle diverse problem solving. The approach of integral thinking is taught especially in project-based courses where many topics and influences come together.
• Creative experience. Graduates have gained creative experience throughout the entire programme particularly in project-based assignments. This safeguards their own creative development in various contexts.
• Practical experience. Graduates are expected to gain practical experience by completing their internship during their time of study. This experience helps the students to understand a real-world application of their acquired skills.
• Communication skills. Graduates have developed communication skills during their work with other students and teachers as well as during the oral presentations of their project based courses.
• Computer literacy. Graduates have experience using computers as well as a good understanding of essential software used in urban design and urban planning (AutoCAD, GIS, Adobe CS, etc.)