Current courses

Upper Rhine Valley

+ explore cities and networks between France and Germany

+ design visions for dynamic transformation

+ imagine scenarios for increasing heat

Through free projects, this design studio explores the Upper Rhine Valley, at the border of France and Germany. We are interested in differences and characteristics of places, between the river and the mountains of Vosges and Black Forest, rich cultural backgrounds of overlayings, conflicts, and cooperation, diverse natural surroundings. The Upper Rhine Valley is a hotspot for the impact of climate change, as already a region with almost Mediterranean climate with increasing heat trajectories. How can cites and landscape respond to increasing heat? We want to explore this question in conjunction with addressing transversal challenges and chances of cities, linked to cultural creativity, economic and social innovation, new forms of tourism. In particular, the focus is on urban regeneration, activating places and communities and designing scenarios and processes for new living, working, and mobility models. Inspired by Circular Economy and Circular Design, we want to address re-use and transformation of urban elements and systems. The studio is asking for impact on larger networks and cooperation in the Upper Rhine Valley, about different frequencies and intensities of settlement, building on existing projects and initiatives. Methodologically, we will develop urban and territorial scenarios: activating and setting urban elements into new networks, starting new cycles, and exploring bio-innovation. For this, the studio work organised, as teamwork in groups of two, in 3 phases: (1) research phase, exploration of potentials, references, theories; (2) concept phase, choice and analysis of free projects in different cities; (3) design phase, design & development with a scale of urban projects (1:500/200), urban (1:2000) and territorial (1:50–200.000) network levels.

This course will be in English.

The excursion to Strasbourg is linked to this course, even if participation is not obligatory.

Athens is a Southern European city particularly impacted by heat as effect of climage change. How can architectural and urban concepts and strategies respond to this challenge? Focusing on the Agios Pavlos neighbourhood in central Athens, the workshop with students from Athens, Hannover, and Vienna will enhance knowledge and skills for innovative approaches towards resilient and adaptive cities. It highlights emerging initiatives of urban communities to deal with complex challenges, linking climate change to an extended range of urban questions. In the workshop, urban morphology, building typology and urban skins and surfaces will be examined in conjunction with social, cultural, and economic challenges and dynamics, in order to synthesise urban and architectural concepts and strategies for a heat-impacted neighbourhood.

The workshop is organised by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA, Architectural Technology), Prof. Eleni Alexandrou, in cooperation with Leibniz University Hannover (LUH, Territorial Design and Urban Planning), Prof. Jörg Schröder and MSc Anna Pape, and Technische University Wien (TU Wien, Urbanism), Dipl.Ing. Nela Kadić, and with the Municipality of Athens.

The workshop is part of the activities of the EULiST European Universities Alliance. It is funded as BIP Blended Intensive Programme through Erasmus+ by the European Union.

This course will be in English.

Creative approaches and interdisciplinary collaboration are crucial when dealing with vacant buildings. This is precisely what the LAB focuses on. Here, vacant buildings are not seen as a problem, but as a field of experimentation that harbours undiscovered potential and opens up new perspectives. As part of this project, students have the opportunity to work in interdisciplinary teams and jointly develop experimental installations. The LAB is a space for creative exchange, where innovative ideas meet practical solutions.

The project phase will begin with an online kick-off meeting on 18 September 2025 at 12 noon, followed by an intensive week of work from 2 to 9 October 2025. During this time, the focus will be on developing installations, tidying up the inventory and actively contributing. The tasks include documenting, creating detailed drawings and planning installations. These tasks not only enrich your own experience, but also create a new hub in Hanover – a place where new and innovative solutions can emerge.

Through practical expeditions and targeted exercises, dealing with the existing inventory becomes the core task: How can spaces be reinterpreted and transformed? The aim is to engage intensively with the location, develop circular solutions through dialogue, and learn practical methods from experts. The CiD LAB combines designing, making, and reflecting. The results of this intensive week will be presented in a joint exhibition.

The workshop is part of the activities of the CiD Circular Design Innovation Alliance, funded by the European Union.

This course will be in English.

+ reflect on status quo of discipline

+ explore own interest through mixed-methods approach

+ apply design thinking and artistic approaches

+ explore theory of architectural design research

+ develop new forms of visualization

What defines the practice and research in architecture and urban design today?

What perspectives and practices can be expressed in relation to the current discourse?

And what role do artistic approaches and design methods play in this?

In this seminar, we will explore how abstract themes and concepts can be made visible and discussable with the help of creative approaches. It serves as preparation for the CA²RE conference, which will take place at Leibniz University in March 2026. CA²RE, the Community for Artistic and Architectural Research, is a European network that explores how artistic activities and design as central thought and work processes can be better integrated into architectural and design research

.

The seminar combines theoretical reflection on current discourses with practical engagement: together, we will develop an installation that makes different positions, perspectives for agency and networks visible. Participants will develop individual contributions for this and make a concrete contribution to the conference.

„Artistic Research adds a new feature to professional skills: it helps one to see one´s agency

 in relation to knowledge production and evaluation, to position agency within the context

of human goals and the human history  of concepts […]”

(Juha Varto, Artistic Research. What is it? Who does it? Why?, 2018)

There is no architecture without the city. Architectural work derives from the tasks and future of the societies and communities for which architects design and build; and architecture refers to the context of material, functional and meaningful space, in a variety of references and scales. When the professional practice and academic nature of the discipline argues its uniqueness and significance in cultural, political and economic discussions, it is today faced with an additional task: to explore and explain what city actually means. We go one step further: by territory we mean the built environment in larger contexts, especially in the interplay of country and city, in a vision of settlement as habitat. How has territory changed, which current and future changes can we name? How can we redefine the interfaces between architectural and urban planning with infrastructure, culture and nature, landscape, economy and society? What is the role and task of architecture not only for the design of buildings, but also for the articulation of spaces on a larger scale of the territory? Which concepts and design tools are necessary for this, how can they be communicated?

This course will be in German.

In the programme MSc Architecture and Urban Design, OPEN TOPIC can be used to work on research dossiers, especially in preparation for the master thesis. 

In the programme BSc Architecture, OPEN TOPIC can be used for research in preparation and support of an individual bachelor thesis in urban design.

Process design and communication in urban development and urban planning

This module deepens skills for the development of independent urban planning project work with regard to the design of urban development and urban planning processes and the communication of projects and strategies both in an interdisciplinary and public focus; understanding of the systems of thought, inclusion/integration and modes of action of different groups of actors in planning processes; development of spatial concepts in communicative and participatory processes.

Individual offers by arrangement.

Our ideas about sustainable mobility are strongly influenced by densely populated city centres and a city of short distances. Based on a joint (data) analysis, the prerequisites and possibilities for spatially differentiated courses of action are to be developed. In which urban areas does cycling make sense? Where should public transport be used? Where should cars be used, and in what form? And what road space is needed for these different solutions? The aim of the seminar is to develop a differentiated understanding of urban spaces and implementation-oriented mobility solutions for specific urban areas, and to contribute these to public and political debates wherever possible.

With case studies, concrete designs for integrated, target group-differentiated mobility infrastructures are developed. In addition to the question of the design of road cross-sections in relation to the urban space, solutions are also being developed for the integration of the traffic and parking space infrastructure into urban design and architecture.

The course is conducted by Henrik Sander, who as partner of the office orangeedge in Hamburg has extensive topical knowledge.

At the border between France and Germany, the city of Strasbourg is aiming to connect to the river Rhine and to imagine a new urbanity by transforming industrial and infrastructural sites near to the Rhine harbour and the Rhine bridge. With the urban design studio in this winter, we want to explore this large scale urban project, with its ideas and strategies of transformation and its innovative ways how citizens and actors are involved and engaged. This exploration is extended in the design studio with injections/interventions as pieces of a puzzle in different situations of the large urban vision – for understanding existing urban structures as resources, designing processes of transformation, working with novel concepts to connect housing, productivity, mobility, culture, and community, and envisioning new roles of nature in the city. In particular, water in the city, the different river branches and channels offer not only situative potentials but a vision of a new spatial network. Strasbourg‘s background in the dynamic cross-border region together with Freiburg and Basel, as seat of the European Parliament, and as university city invites to rethink urbanity – and how social and economic innovation can be connected to spatial inventiveness and the design of new urban networks. We want to foster adaptive, experimental and contextual views on boundary situations that can contribute to the dynamics of the city and its social and cultural openness.

Based on a jointly developed understanding of the city, of border situations, and the large urban project to connect with the Rhine, the urban design studio is methodically organised in three steps: 1) the techniques of finding three-dimensional transformation potentials and their representation, 2) the elaboration of contextual factors of the immediate contexts for activators of change, and 3) the spatial and programmatic conception of experimental interventions as spaces of possibilities.

The excursion to Strasbourg is linked to this course, even if participation is not obligatory

This excursion aims to get to know Strasbourg as a city in the Upper Rhine valley – between France and Germany – with its multiple cultural background and vibrancy, not at least through the large university and as seat of the European Parliament and the European Court of Human Rights. In fact, Strasbourg is a symbolic and active place for the alliance between France and Germany, for the united Europe, for a success story how a place of border situations and entangled history became a place of innovation and culture, projected towards the future. The excursion explores the role – and the potentials and trajectories – of urban space, in front of and in interaction with social, cultural, and economic topics, between the historic centre, the city quarters, water in the city and the river Rhine, and the large river harbour. A further perspective of the excursion are Strasbourg’s regional linkages and its centrality, to the Alsace region but also with Freiburg and Basel in the extended Upper Rhine Euroregion.

The excursion is linked to the courses Deux Rives in the Bachelor programme and Vallée du Rhin in the Master programme, but is also open to other students if places are available.

The session City & Landscape of the introductory module Interactions (Wechselwirkungen) is about first insights into concepts and working methods of urban design (Prof. Jörg Schröder, Dr.-Ing. Riccarda Cappeller) and landscape architecture (Prof. Christian Werthmann). In the two lectures and the exam exercise, design-oriented analytical basics are taught. Selected case studies are approached by different scale levels. The aims of the session are:

(1) To recognise interactions between the architectural case studies and their context and to be able to explain them,

(2) to develop a basic understanding of city and of landscape and the complexity and significance of their spatial forms and structures, 

(3) combined with the ability to synthesise spatial knowledge and to adequately explain it.