Architecture B.Sc.

 

Architects plan rooms and design spaces – rooms, buildings, municipalities, cities, or even landscapes. They take into consideration all of the technical, aesthetic, and social aspects, that guide their planning to defined goals.

Buildings should look nice, but they should also be functional, sustainable, reasonably priced, and be stable for the long term. Old structures should be preserved and integrated. Public space not only serves transportation, but also housing, economies, and recreation. Thus it must also offer a harmonious balance between private and public spheres as well as good connections. In order to consider so many factors at once, architects learn to systematically determine the different dimensions of a design tasks.

In the architecture studies at RWTH, demanding design tasks promote students' creativeness and the acquisition of professional implementation techniques. They guarantee solid training in drawing and design, which makes it possible to later sketch and discuss complex designs without preparation. Solid training in drawing, design, and construction skills teaches future architects to sketch, discuss, and further develop designs, even ad hoc.

The course focuses on design projects that have different focal points, from the scale of the city to individual buildings and constructive detail. Students work on tasks of increasing complexity that challenge their creativity as well as their drawing, construction, and design skills.

As they work on projects, students continuously reflect on and optimize their architectural and urban planning concepts, applying the specialist knowledge learnt from lectures and exercises. Theoretical subjects such as the history of architecture and art as well as architecture and planning theory are part of the course and provide the orientation framework for the design and project work.

The six-semester degree thus provides a solid foundation for the four-semester M.Sc. Architecture and M.Sc. Urban Planning.

The subdisciplines structural engineering for high-rise structures and urban and landscape planning are also represented at RWTH:

• The architecture specialization focuses on the design and construction of individual buildings.
• The urban planning specialization particularly focuses on the development of neighborhoods, cities, and regions.

 

Degree Content

The first year guides you into the subject by giving you an overview of the basic activities of architects and urban planners. In the second year, the topics will be taught in greater depth, while the third year offers opportunities for a first individual profile with the option of a semester abroad. In each semester, varied, practice-oriented tasks supplement the theoretical basics and enable students to test and expand their creative abilities. In addition, you will complete various exercises and design projects by yourself or in groups of up to six students.

An eight-week construction internship, which must be completed during your degree, offers insights into the building construction trades. The faculty recommends gaining at least some practical experience in this area before starting this course.

Curriculum

History, Theory, Design	Technical Knowledge	Projects/Design
Cultural and historical foundations History of architecture Theory of architecture Monument preservation Art history Designing and depicting Drawing Sculpture Descriptive geometry Computer-aided architectural design	Construction Building planning Structural design Building technology Urban and landscape planning Social, economic, and legal bases Digital construction processes and methods	Semester 1: Introduction to design Semester 2: Housing+ Semester 3: Integrated Project City and landscape Semester 4: Integrated Project Architecture and construction Semester 5: Free design Semester 6: Bachelor's thesis

You can find a more detailed course of study layout and an alternative description of the course of study on the Faculty's website. Please always select the most current Bachelor examination regulation in the navigation.

Elective Subjects

Elective subjects offer the possibility to advance students' knowledge in all areas of the Faculty and the entire University to help them sharpen their individual profile.

Programs Abroad

Future architects will find fields of work worldwide – especially wherever a building boom is being observed. For this reason, the Faculty of Architecture expressly supports student mobility. Students have many possibiliies of gaining experience abroad: in the mobility window in the third year of your degree, you can study at 41 different universities in Europe on the EU mobility program ERASMUS+. International summer universities and internship stays in other countries are also on offer.

Students profit not only from the Faculty's own study abroad programs but also from the University's strategic partnerships with international universities. For example, while completing their final project or paper they can complete a brief stay at one of the IDEA League universities. These stays abroad are partially funded by RWTH financial aid.

All of RWTH's cooperative programs are presented on the webpages about study abroad. The Faculty's subject-specific offers can be found on the Reiff international office page.

 

Prerequisites

Personal Prerequisites

Architecture students are shapers. They intensively work on the topics shape, function, and feasibility. This means, they require creative talent, organizational and technical undersanding, and spatial imagination and thinking. Many different projects are assigned during studies, which students must then conceptually implement, draw out, and then build on a smaller scale. Materials for models are wood, paper, cardboard, and metal materials. It is extremely important that students are read to work with their hands, carefully and precisely. Other students and lecturers evaluate the different approaches using reasonable criteria, that contribute to improving the designs. Thus, students learn how to describe and optimize creative processes using certain scientific - and justifiable - criteria. The workload lies mostly in the designs, depictions, and building the models. This takes a lot of time and requires a lot of curiosity and openness to criticism. Prospective students should have good resilience a high level of tolerance for frustration, in order to muster up motivation again and again for the design process.

Enrollment Prerequisite

RWTH Architecture Self Assessment

 

Decision Aids

Interest in creative work is the basic requirement for architecture studies. Students are not artists, who design without purpose – their goal is to find realistic and useable solutions for the demands of a design. Whoever is looking to primarily examine or workth with "pure" art or art history, should consider art courses of study at another university as an interesting alternative. However, in contrast, those who are primarily interested in the technical side of building, should find out more about the civil engineering course of study. School students can gather initial impression from the Schüleruni or sample studies.

 

Media Library

Do you want more perspectives? Use the diverse resources we have available! You can find our recommendations in the media library.

 

Career Prospects

The content and qualification goals of the RWTH Aachen Faculty of Architecture courses of study and modules use the standards of professional associations for archictects and urban planners and the standards of European and international educational guidelines as minimum standards.

Bachelor's studies end with an initial career-qualifying degree. A Bachelor's enables graduates to assist with instructed planning and design tasks in architecture offices or other providers of creative services.

Once they have a Bachelor´s and a Master's degree and two years of professional experience, RWTH graduates have the possibility of being accepted into the Architects' Guild. Then, they are allowed to use the title of "architect" or "urban planner" and possess authorization to present building documents.

Due to their comprehensive education graduates of RWTH work in all fields of the building and planning sector. They plan buildings and urban neighborhoods, and supervise construction. Aside from these classic fields of work additional professional opportunities are available in the fields of project development and management, design, interior design, the construction of exhibition stands, landscape architecture, and more. Architects are often seen as problem solvers in consulting. They use their creative potential and ability to analyze to solve complex problems.

Find out more about this topic at Bund Deutscher Architekten or Architektenkammer NRW. There is also a good description of the classic career fields for architects.

 

Master's Degree Prospects

Graduates of the Bachelor's program can choose between two consecutive Master's programs offered in German:

• Architecture
• Urban Planning

The Faculty also offers a Master's course of study in English: Transforming City Regions

All programs offer a great deal of flexibility. They enable independent, individual work and offer students the chance to be included in the research and design focuses of the RWTH institutes.

The Faculty's diverse activities make it possible to tailor your program to your own interests and abilities.

 

Module Handbook and Examination Regulations

The module handbook provides a description of all modules of a degree program and offers a comprehensive insight into the program contents.

The examination regulations are comprised of legally binding provisions on learning objectives, prerequisites for study, the course structure and processes, and examination procedures.

Regulations that generally apply to all Bachelor's and Master's degree programs, including information on language proficiency requirements, can be found in RWTH's General Examination Regulations. These general regulations are further specified and complemented by the subject-specific examination regulations.

If two examination regulations are valid for a degree program during a transition phase, the most current version shall apply to students enrolling in the program for the first time.

Please note that only the German examination regulations are legally binding.

Module Handbook
Subject Specific Examination Regulations
RWTH's General Examination Regulations

 

Faculty

The Bachelor course of study in Architecture is offered by the Faculty of Architecture . It has made history over many decades: renowned architects from Aachen like Gottfried Böhm, Volkwin Marg, and Peter Kulka strongly influenced contemporary architecture. Architecture studenets profit from the creative atmosphere, great workshop facilities, and the proximity to research in engineering and technical innovations.