This year's Master Thesis Reviews sees SAC once more hosting some of the best architectural critics there is at DAM (the German Architecture Museum). For the first time, SAC presents thesis projects - 17 in total - from the three specialisations that were introduced in 2010 for the Master degree. Introducing two new specialisations to the existing, Advanced Architectural Design, SAC aimed for a fuller academic offer with a stronger and more vital in-house discourse and production. The specialisation, Architecture and Performative Design, this year led by Guest-Professors Oliver Tessmann and Mirco Becker, addresses architectural design through material and constructional systems, reflecting the emergence of 'engineering design' in architecture. Architecture and Critical Spatial Practice, led by Guest-Professor Markus Miessen, engages with architecture in an extended discursive context.
The panel that will review the work includes Professor Mark Wigley, Dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Guest-Professor in theory at SAC; Beatriz Colomina, Professor Princeton University School of Architecture, its Director of Graduate Studies as well as the Program in Media and Modernity and a Guest-Professor in theory at SAC; Frank Barkow of Barlow Leibinger, Berlin; Peter Schmal, Director of DAM; Achim Menges, Professor and Director of the Institute of Computational Design at Stuttgart University; and, last but not least, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Professor and Dean of Princeton University School of Architecture, this year's Dean's Honorary Lecturer.