Sustainable Intervention in the Built Environment

About the institution

The Technical University of Catalonia (Catalan: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC), currently referred to as BarcelonaTech, is the largest engineering university in Catalonia, Spain. UPC’s objectives are based on internationalization, as it is one of Europe’s technical universities with the most international PhD students and the university with the largest share of international master’s degree students.

About the program

The one-year MSc programme “Sustainable Intervention in the Built Environment” focuses on the city in order to identify, criticise and diagnose its metabolism – with specific tools for conceptualisation, measurement, and evaluation – and to propose sustainable transformative interventions. This process involves recognising material flows, spaces on which they act and conditions in which they operate to generate a critical discourse. The aim is to develop the capacity to intervene strategically in the city, to propose new socially acceptable models through responsible intervention in its spaces. This work is specific to the field of architecture, at the different scales of buildings, neighbourhoods, urban spaces, and territorial relations.

The programme is taught in two tracks. In English, open to students from all over the world, with a language competence equivalent to European B2. In Spanish/Catalan, as part of the double degree with the Master’s programme in Architecture, MArq, and restricted to students with a Spanish Bachelor’s degree in architecture of 300 ECTS. The program can be studies as a double degree along with Master’s degree in Sustainability Science and Technology.

This program takes 12 months to complete, studies are divided into two semesters. Each application is evaluated according to the academic record and established weightings based on personal motivation, professional experience, applicant’s training, and proficiency in English.