MSc in Architectural Design and History
Mantua, Italy
DURATION
2 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2025
TUITION FEES
EUR 3,898 / per year *
STUDY FORMAT
Blended, On-Campus
* tuition fees for Non-EEA students correspond automatically to the full contribution of 3898,20€; tuition fees for EEA students range from about 895,20 € to 3898,20 € per year
Introduction
The cities and territories in which an architectural designer works today are complex, strongly characterized and stratified, formed over time in different ways. The objective conditions of the environment we live in place design interventions on the built as primary and prevalent. The consumption logic applied until today has proved to be a waste of material and contents, supplying the need for an approach that places at its centre the assimilation of building, architectural and landscape heritage as resources to be protected and to which new centrality in the theory of sustainable design of the city and the territory, should be assigned.
This answers an ethic responsibility for architectural design which must correspond to the possession of specific technical and humanistic skills.
Curriculum
MSc Program in Architectural Design and History is in line with this attitude and offers a study plan characterised by an integrated disciplinary approach, clearly aimed at training an architectural designer who is educated and aware of history and, at the same time, able to face a complex and dynamic sphere like intervention in historical contexts and on built through appropriate and innovative methodologies.
Within this vision, the design of new on an urban and architectural scale is inserted and compared with the existing, with the building, the fabric and urban space, measuring the consistency and history, in its formal, typological-construction and technical contents, with specific details dedicated to safety in a seismic environment.
History, intended as knowledge and experience of the build and the urban space, recorded in the shapes and architecture of the city, places, and landscapes, is the cultural sublayer of the design proposal, and suggests the possible strategies: re-use, requalification and consolidation, completion or new insertion or preparation.
In the general layout and its articulations, MSc Program supplies advanced training in the field of architectural design, in coherence with the requisites demanded by European directives (85/384/EEC).
Subjects
1st Year
- Architectural Design Studio, History and Architectural Heritage, Mechanics and Design of Structures, Architectural Design in Historical Context Studio, Sustainability and the Built Environment.
2nd Year
- Planning in Historical Context Studio, History of Contemporary Architecture, Heritage Management, Final Workshop focused on "Ancient and New".
Language
English (the program is taught in English even though one of the elective subjects will be offered in Italian).
Admissions
Rankings
Politecnico di Milano is one of the top universities in Milan, Italy.
It is ranked #111 in QS World University Rankings 2025.
Program Outcome
Mission and Goals
The environment we live in nowadays is very complex and the architect is forced to work on the existing heritage paying particular attention to its sustainability and considering the environment together with the built heritage as a resource to protect. The new MSc program "Architectural Design and History" is offering a study plan based on this very attitude. Its mission is to train students to be cultured architects, well-aware of the historic and artistic context in which they work as well as of the other cultural fields. New designs shall be included in and compared to the already existing ones. The respect of the built heritage is the starting point for the new design to become a reutilization project, a requalification project, sometimes even completion and new integration.
Scholarships and Funding
Several scholarship options are available. Please check the institute website for more information.
Program Tuition Fee
Career Opportunities
Career Opportunities
Master of Science graduates - designers recognized by the European Union - have many different career opportunities: as freelance architects or in association with professional studios, they may work at new solutions in the field of architecture, a professional field which is undergoing many transformations; the wide set of jobs at a private and public level in institutions, companies, service and design companies, offers to the graduates the possibility to work in different positions with different expertise even at a high level of responsibility.
English Language Requirements
Certify your English proficiency with PTE. The faster, fairer, simpler English test, accepted by thousands of universities around the world. PTE, Do it worry-free!
Program Admission Requirements
Show your commitment and readiness for Grad school by taking the GRE - the most broadly accepted exam for graduate programs internationally.