arch2.jpg

About Architecture and Urban Design

Mission

  • Graduate architects and urban designers that are equipped to face the challenges of the contemporary city and bring people back to the forefront of their considerations.
  • Fulfill the designers’ role from the design of one room to the design of parts of cities, rehabilitation of historic cores or revitalizing a waterfront.
  • Breed architects are capable of initiating a paradigm shift in architecture practice to become more integrative, utilizing ICT technology to better consider social, psychological, and cultural dimensions of design and meet the needs of current and future generations.
architecture

Description

The Architecture and Urban Design (ARUD) program is a 5-year undergraduate program towards a B.Sc. in Architecture and Urban Design within the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nile University. The program is developed through an EU Commission-funded project; IMPAQT ( Integrated Multidisciplinary People-centred Qualification and Training ) which consolidates European and Egyptian expertise to ensure the development and transfer of required knowledge, skills and competencies to ARUD graduates.

The program adopts a multidisciplinary, people-centred approach that interrelates various specializations (architecture, urban design, construction, building ecology, human behaviour, and contemporary city issues) in planned coordination among courses. It also utilizes up-to-date technology to assist in integrating the spectrum of disciplines that form the foundation of architectural education. To increase the effectiveness of the learning process the program incorporates a blended learning approach that emphasizes practicum and real-life case studies in a well-integrated curriculum. Advancements in architectural education necessitate adopting an integrative approach to the learning process. An approach that empowers students to root their design thinking in scientific research, to enable them to build bridges across the spectrum of disciplines that forms the knowledge base of architecture and urban design, and finally to design with deliberation and awareness that meets the requirements of practice.

The set of skills that ARUD students will acquire are:

Graduates of ARUD are qualified to work as architects, urban designers, and 
researchers in the fields of:

  • Sustainable architectural design
  • Urban design 
  • Housing, and neighborhood design 
  • Design and planning of city extensions 
  • Upgrading of informal areas and slums 
  • Adaptive re-use of buildings 
  • Urban regeneration 
  • Historic conservation 
  • Rehabilitation of historic areas
  • Densification of new cities

The graduates will have skills that are scarce yet in demand in the employment market such as:

  • Building performance simulation and BIM
  • Architectural and urban research
  • VR tools utilization
  • Architectural programming and POE
  • Participatory design

Graduate Attributes:

Graduating students would acquire essential knowledge and skills to be able to:

  • Create a user-sensitive design from single building scale to part-of-a-city scale drawing upon understanding the interaction between people and their built and natural environment.
  • Address challenges facing contemporary cities and propose interventions integrating different scales (architecture, urban design, landscape, city planning, regional planning) based on understanding the complexity of cities.
  • Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of environment-behavioral studies taking into consideration cultural diversity, social differences, and the impact of a built form on people’s daily life and community identity.
  • Conduct multidisciplinary empirical research triangulating quantitative and qualitative methods.
  • Apply an ecological approach to building systems.
  • Design appropriate, affordable, and adaptable housing.
  • Design adaptive reuse of buildings.
  • Participate in urban upgrading and urban regeneration projects.
  • Conduct and utilize participatory processes in design.
  • Conduct architecture programming and post-occupancy evaluation.
  • Conduct architectural and urban research and discern lessons learned from practical experience.
  • Utilize multiple ICT-based and digital design tools needed in professional environments.