Due to the demographic changes and financial hardship of the past few years, large-scale and long-term urban development strategies have become obsolete. As Western cities change character seeking new organizational systems for their deteriorated or redundant structures, small-scale and short-term urban interventions become more and more urgent on a global level. Seizing the opportunity to address urban challenges with architectural means, operations that engage buildings and objects acquire urban effects. The new signification and programming of the currently redundant, informally and in many cases randomly assembled building mass constitutes a particular archaeology: the deserted city as a contemporary ruin corresponds to an architectural opportunity for re-inhabitation.

The postgraduate curriculum employs cutting edge architectural developments in order to challenge existing frameworks of urbanity, at the same time organizing a critical stance towards these developments. Reconfigurations of the existing building mass provide an opportunity for the redefinition of the architect’s professional expertise through alternative intervention strategies. Detail studies for the modification of urban interfaces -both in terms of paving and vertical partitioning systems- ‘smart’, environmentally sensitive building envelopes, ecological practices, contemporary urban furniture and the immediacy of small implemented schemes; all interventions concern the existing available urban resources.

The postgraduate curriculum intends to integrate all individual research and design production into a ‘Manual for Deserted City Centres’. The Manual offers alternative ideas for small scale DIY urbanism, in addition to precise descriptions of the kinds of architectural interventions that benefit the given, existing buildings. While its outlook is urbanity its operations are architectural. The curriculum aspires to the development of a critical discourse parallel to design operations, supported by theory seminars.

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