Master of Architecture FI

The second cycle enables students to acquire critical thinking skills, to master the practice of design, on increasingly complex issues. It responds to ambitions to professionalize and internationalize training. It places students at the heart of their training, with appropriate pedagogical support.

Targeted skills

• conducting an innovative approach, an autonomous project
• conducting a project within a collaborative framework
• conducting scientific research

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Fiche RNCP Diplôme d'État d'architecte - DEA

Training objectives

Training location

ENSAL

3 rue Maurice Audin 
69120 Vaulx-en-Velin

INSA Lyon

20 Av. Albert Einstein
69100 Villeurbanne

Courses are organized over 4 semesters worth a total of 120 European credits (ECTS).

Program structure

The Master's cycle is structured into:

• 4 teaching blocks corresponding to specific teaching modalities

• 6 fields of study, thematic supports stemming from the school's scientific axes

4 teaching blocks

They correspond to a specific teaching modality and teaching time.

The project/design block, structured around an architectural problematic aimed at a personal production, analyzed and criticized as part of a collective and in-depth work, is under the responsibility of a practicing architect teacher.

The knowledge/cultures block is made up of lessons in the history and theories of architecture, construction (ecology, energy, materials...) and social sciences, with an introduction to research methods.

The experimentation/innovations block concerns lessons in representations (observational drawing, descriptive geometry, computer graphics...The situations/professional environment block includes internships (2-month project management internship and 2-month internship in another structure or in research), professionalization courses (project management, law) and English language courses with a view to obtaining level B2.

6 master-DEM fields of study

• Architecture, Resources and Resilience- A2Res

• Architectures Latérales Théorisées -ALT

• Expérimentations Collaboratives En Architecture-EXCO

• GeoArchitecture By Design-Geo-Arch

• Heritages, Theories and Creation-HTC

• Inhabited Landscapes: architectures in situation-PHAS

A double curriculum with a new Ville Environnement Urbain master's degree from DEM Géo-Arch;

Hybridizations between the Projet de fin d'études-PFE and the travaux de fin d'études commun avec l'INSA by a pair of architecture students and an INSA student. The scenario can be deployed with all ENSAL's teaching partners.

Assessment methods

Assessment combines continuous assessment and final assessments. The second cycle ends with the public defense of the final project, an architectural or urban project accompanied by a "dissertation" presentation report, which is a personal work of study or research dealing with an issue of its own or related to the project.

Resources

The Architecture, Resources and Resilience - DEM A2Res - master's field of study questions the consequences of transitions in architectural practice. It trains future professionals capable of thinking and designing architectures in the face of the multiple changes underway and to come, of which the climate is often both initiator and revealer.

What new articulations for architecture, between meaning and techniques? How can architectural design draw on the heterogeneity of situations, temporalities and upheavals? The framework associates architectural design with a systemic approach to social, economic, political and environmental processes. The aim is to strengthen students' ability to build their own analytical and critical posture through theoretical teaching combined with practice in workshops, multidisciplinary seminars and in relation with professional players. 

The A2Res DEM offers ways of generating "doing together". These can be established between students and teacher-researchers from different curricula, or between learners, decision-makers and professionals from the construction sector or housing environment.

Attention to the vital link between doing and thinking permeates the entire DWS. In design workshops, the architectural question catalyzes the necessary relationship between spatial and constructive choices. The aim is to train students in a fruitful dialogue between the design and construction of a project, and to establish the conditions for a cultural resourcing of constructive thinking. The iterations specific to design, leading from intention to verification of various kinds, including experimentation and fabrication, are fueled by an introduction to research exploring processes. Apprehending the complexity of situations is a necessary step in the intelligence of the responses developed, leading to the study of themes such as risk, the technicization of the environment, resilience, resources, food, care, biodiversity.

The Theorized Lateral Architectures - DEM ALT master's field of study explores the specificities of architectural practice, the dynamics of evolution of the architectural profession and its scholarly definitions in a world ever more rapidly subject to mutation.

It invites us to take hold of contemporary alternatives and emergences, to question the zeitgeist, the uncertainties linked to crises, to question established theories and knowledge, to feed off otherness by borrowing from the fields of art, science, the living, techniques and the digital. This willingness to "step sideways", questions the project, current professional practices, their teachings and modes of production, but also dogmas, instituted knowledge, architectural research, artistic avant-garde, orthodox or alternative, and their massive or shifted modes of production.

Students are encouraged to develop their own Master's project, which in Master 2 takes the form of an individual, autonomous final year project and dissertation, chosen in conjunction with the teaching staff, who are members of research laboratories, preferably at the school, or under joint supervision. Beyond themes or spatial scales, DEM ALT is based on a maieutic pedagogy that dispenses with overhanging knowledge and postulates a questioning of presuppositions in order to set up and accompany, on the basis of diverse skills, processes specific to each situation.

The Collaborative Experiments in Architecture-DEM EXCO master's degree program brings together a multidisciplinary group of teaching researchers specializing in experimental practices and committed to the quest for a social, frugal and resilient architecture.

The pedagogies blend the design and research processes to train future professionals capable of opening up to the plurality of professions and building the renewal of architectural practices.

In response to social and environmental changes, the aim is to learn how to co-produce architectural projects "on the ground" and in collaboration with the many professional players (clients, companies, sectors, manufacturers, local authorities, experts) and users. To train students in peer-to-peer cooperation and collaboration with other professions, courses benefit from partnerships with professional and academic networks that have already been set up and are being developed by the teaching team.

The depletion of material and energy resources is leading societies to question dominant construction practices. Architects are led to "innovate" or "retro-innovate" by integrating the logics of artisanal and industrial channels, enabling them to understand the material and the actors associated with it.

From guided practice through to autonomy in "doing", courses train students to conduct design and research processes through experimentation envisaged from "la main à la pâte" and taking multiple forms (spatial, material, constructive, social, scientific) by means of material objects, prototypes, models or demonstrators. Students analyze the knowledge produced for their project, which is then capitalized on within DEM in the form of an annual publication.

The GeoArchitecture by Design - DEM GeoARCH master's field of study proposes to work on an epistemology of the architectural project in its material dimension, characterized by a river geography. Open to all architecture students, the program offers two diplomas: Architecte Diplômé d'État and a Ville et Environnements Urbains (City and Urban Environments) master's degree. The VEU master's degree, supported by the École urbaine de Lyon and the Labex Intelligence des mondes urbains-IMU, offers students an excellent opportunity for professional or academic integration, leading to a doctorate. It offers multidisciplinary training in territorial sciences (geography, anthropology, engineering, etc.) as well as an international study trip each year (Canada, Berlin, etc.)

While the primary function of architecture remains the design of tangible forms of dimensions close to the building, taking into account the geography of a territory cannot be sidestepped, as the project is intrinsically transcalar. This interweaving of scales takes on new meaning today, in the face of the challenges posed by the Anthropocene. By establishing a dialectical relationship between architecture and geography, GeoARCH aims to clearly assert the heart of the discipline through the complex exercise of the architectural project. The projects are nurtured by courses on American regional planning, Russian de-urbanism and organic architecture - movements that need to be reinterpreted in the face of the current environmental crisis. Specific approaches to the project workshop, such as Research by design, Learning by doing and Visual thinking, are also developed, sometimes in the form of workshops. DEM GeoARCH offers architecture students the challenge of demonstrating that the architectural project -even in its material component of constructive thought- is capable of defining the urban forms of human settlements in the 21st century.

GeoARCH proposes to diversify the pedagogical forms that complement the "split workshop": voyage initiatique, research residency, project hackathon, sensitive surveying, Acklab workshop (models, maps-relief, prototypes), silent criticism. Through a reflexive attitude, students demonstrate the critical thinking skills that lead to their projectual autonomy.

The Héritages, Théories et Création-HTC master's program is conceived as a laboratory for the study and forecasting of architectural and urban projects in their dialogue with theoretical and material heritages, their potential and operativity for the project.

The construction of a sustainable future requires the design of project practices that respect the existing and preserve and economize material resources, soils and energy sources. In view of these environmental and human challenges, a major part of current and future professional practice is focused on intervention on the existing. This means thinking of legacies as the project's primary resource, considering issues of memory, reuse, recycling, mutation, transformation, repair, reproduction, analogy, evolutivity, adaptability, reversibility, but also indeterminacy and obsolescence.

The teaching of the DEM HTC aims to emphasize the essential quality of history: that of highlighting the fruitful relationships between analysis and project, particularly within the framework of the dissertation and the research specialization; the project asserting itself as one of the privileged places for exploration and experimentation of heritage. The DEM HTC is a continuation of the EVS-LAURe thematic axis, with an emphasis on multidisciplinarity; the challenges of preserving and enhancing architectural and urban heritage reflect contemporary societal values (heritage, memory and identity building, regional and national...), as well as the political and economic issues that govern city building and regional development (urban marketing, tourism and cultural development...). As part of the "Architecture, Heritage and Creation" scientific network, the DEM HTC is developing its expertise on a regional scale through numerous partnerships with heritage, conservation and urban management players, while also developing international relations in Europe (Italy) and beyond (Turkey, Armenia), notably through workshops.

The Paysages Habités: architectures en situation-PHAS master's field of study considers architecture from the point of view of the diversity of scales and situations in which it is involved and which it contributes to transforming.

The DEM PHAS intends to question the oppositions between the built and the living, the edifice and the territory, the metropolis and its distant surroundings. Architecture is thus approached through the plurality and transversality of the scales and interactions that constitute it: spatial and temporal, objective and subjective, collective and individual, measurable and non-measurable. Considered both as a situated construction and as a transcalar process of transformation, architecture questions diverse situations that each time require redefining the limits of the project (between near and far) and the architect's missions (between drawing, problematization, action and interaction, piloting or fabrication).

In the age of the Anthropocene, landscape reminds future architects of the need to rethink the relationship between humans and their environments, and the urgency of reassessing our relationship with nature. It invites us to think together about aesthetics, experience and figures, as well as the visible and the invisible, from the ground to the horizon. It also allows us to reinterrogate resources (materials, know-how, energies, cultures, economies...), ecology, biodiversity, the living (environments, edges and bangs), public space (links), the common and the limits of intimacy. Because it is always "inhabited", the landscape refers to otherness and the ability of future architects to interact with other points of view. It is also a vector for rethinking projects' relationship to time, by including uncertainty and the uncontrolled as decisive parameters.

The territory challenges the material and immaterial boundaries of architecture. It frees us from categorizations and closed perimeters (the metropolis, the urban, the rural...) to explore the more complex and sometimes unmappable interrelationships to which project situations are subject. It invites us to problematize the project and to engage the responsibility of future architects in the transformation of inhabited landscapes.

"After learning the basics of architectural practice during the Bachelor's degree, the Master's degree enables students to specialize in the themes and issues that particularly interest them, through 6 Areas of Study. This formula enables greater personalization of the academic pathway, leading to the samedegree for all students"

Arnaud Berenghier, M2 student.