The Master’s programme, Cultural Heritage, Transformation and Restoration concentrates on how to develop the world in which we live: how to further develop the structures, buildings, towns and cities that already exist and, figuratively speaking, how to learn from the building culture that evolved across the ages. We build inside, outside, around, on top of and next to something already there. We are interested in vestiges, memory, atmosphere, gravity, density and presence. We believe that an understanding of materials and tectonics, and knowledge of architectural theory and history are inextricably linked with the concept of sustainable architecture.

While architecture creates the setting for ways of life, ways of life also make their mark on architecture. This is a mutual, yet complex relationship, by which the novice student is often unconsciously stimulated. In the encounter with architecture, this phenomenological experience must be qualified and cultivated conceptually, and made operational in forward-looking production. In order to fabricate sustainable architecture, which promotes the best living conditions, one must constantly study, dissect, reconstruct and optimise its many components and forms of expression: its anatomy.