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MAS ETH EPFL in Urban and Territorial Design

This description is only available in English.

  • Autumn Semester

    Start

  • 1 year

    Duration

  • Lausanne, Zurich

    Location
  • English
    Tuition language

  • 01.01–​31.03.2025

    Application period

  • CHF 15,500

    Programme fee

In brief: The MAS ETH EPFL in Urban and Territorial Design

The MAS offers innovative urban and territorial design education at ETH Zurich and EPFL addressing sustainability challenges within cities and across wider landscapes and territories.

Structure and content

Programme description

The MAS ETH EPFL in Urban and Territorial Design (MAS ETH EPFL UTD) embraces the ecological and socio-​economic transition as a field of critical and imaginative investigation. Engaging with notions of transformation, reuse, regeneration, reparation, and transition of habitats and ecologies, students will deploy the urban and territorial project as the crucial field of knowledge production across scales. Design is explored as a tool for synthesis in an expanded environment of transdisciplinary exchange.

Objectives

The programme's aim is to raise participant's awareness and capacity to deal with radical scenarios of social and environmental change under planetary urbanisation. The MAS will serve as a laboratory and a forum where participants develop design skills for shaping resilient urban territories and propose concrete agendas, design strategies and governance models. Both Swiss and international case studies will be investigated with intensive, ethnographic explorations and in situ workshops.

Professional perspectives

Integrated research and design training develops participants conceptual, analytical and communication skills. Participants are prepared for interdisciplinary, site-​specific work at all urban-​territorial scales and engagement with communities, local actors, NGOs and governance bodies. This responds to professional perspectives offered by design offices and public authorities, but also to international career opportunities in academic work or within institutions such as UN Habitat.

Structure and format

The programme entails two analogously structured semesters at EPFL and ETH Zurich, articulated around a Core Design and Research Studio integrating fieldwork and representation disciplines. Interdisciplinary Courses will underpin the studio work, together with a set of Urban Theory Sessions.

Additional information

A continuation of the highly successful MAS in Urban Design directed by Professor Marc Angélil, which addressed urban design in a globalised world, the new MAS is embedded within the broader context of ETH's LUS Institute, the FCL Global project New Urban Agendas and EPFL's Habitat Research Center. It initiates a hallmark collaboration between ETH Zurich and EPFL assuring an outstanding environment of expertise and teaching resources. The curriculum brings together urban studies, postcolonial thought and the Anthropocene, and offers a deeper understanding of cultural and ecological dimensions of territories, urban and landscape ecology, sustainable construction, and low carbon mobility.

Tuition language(s)

English

Credits

60 ECTS credits
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Target group and admission

Target group

The programme is addressed to national and international architects and other professionals in the spheres of both built and unbuilt environments with prior master’s degrees who intend to strengthen their research and design competences in Swiss/European as well as international contexts.

Requirements

Master's degree acknowledged by ETH or equivalent educational qualifications in architecture, urbanism/planning, landscape architecture, architecture-​engineering, civil and environmental engineering, or city management.

Required language skills

English: C1 – external page Show proficiency scales

Language(s) of performance assessment

English
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Dates and venue

Start

Every Autumn Semester

Duration

1 year full-​time; 900 hours of contact

Application period

01.01–​31.03.2025 (rolling admission)

Location

EPFL (Autumn Semester) and ETH Zurich (Spring Semester)
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Fees

Programme fee

CHF 15,500

Application fee

CHF 50 for persons with a Swiss university degree, CHF 150 for persons with another university degree (non-​refundable, credit card payment only)

Withdrawal fee

  • Within 30 days after the admission date: free of charge 
  • More than 30 days after the admission date: CHF 4,000
  • After the start of the semester: CHF 6,000
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Application

Questions about the application

ETH Zurich, School for Continuing Education, HG E 17–18.5, Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zurich, Tel. external page +41 44 632 56 59, E-mail

Recommended procedure for a successful application

Application documents

Additional application documents

  • MAS programme: A portfolio, CV, letter of motivation and reference letters
  • ​Scholarship: The programme offers one scholarship to cover tuition to the amount of CHF 12,000. The objective of the scholarship is to foster participant diversity and inclusivity in terms of ethnicity, race, gender and socioeconomic backgrounds. The scholarship will be offered on the basis of academic merit and the motivation statement. In addition to the documents required to apply to the MAS programme, the candidates wishing to be considered for the scholarship should submit a 1–2-​page letter, stating the foreseen impact of the scholarship on their educational development during their MAS studies.
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Organiser

Programme management

Professor Milica Topalović
ETH Zurich D-​ARCH, LUS, Architecture of Territory
Professor Milica Topalović
Professor Paola Viganò
EPFL ENAC-​HRC, LAB-​U
Professor Paola Viganò

Contact

Nancy Couling
MAS UTD Programme Coordinator

ETH Zurich
Professorship Milica Topalović, Architecture of Territory
Neunbrunnenstrasse 50
ONA G41
8093 Zurich

Responsible body

  • ETH Zurich D-​ARCH, Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS), Architecture of Territory
  • EPFL ENAC, Habitat Research Center (HRC), Laboratory of Urbanism (LAB-​U)

Further information

MAS ETH EPFL in Urban and Territorial Design
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