Designing your own path in the Master in Advanced Architecture

The first term, from October to December, is the same for everyone. It brings students from different backgrounds to a similar level in research, design and computation. At the beginning of December, the faculty presents the research studios and seminars of the second term, and students share their preferences before the Christmas break. The second term starts in January with each student placed according to those preferences. The research studio runs for two terms, from January to June, and the options for the third-term seminars are presented in March, a month before that term starts in April.

Students often arrive with a clear idea of what they want to study and discover other paths once they are exposed to the faculty, networks and projects at IAAC. Someone who came for urban design can take a seminar in robotic fabrication or physical computing, and the programme is built to allow it.

The research studios are the longest and most intense part of the first year, and each one works at a different scale:

• Urban Planning & Data Analytics works from the neighbourhood to the territory, using computation and urban data to identify problems and to predict and assess the impact of urban interventions.
• Self-Sufficient Buildings designs the building itself as a living organism, with a form that responds to the climate and to natural light, and experiments with new forms of energy generation.
• Digital Matter & Circular Design develops materials for the near future of construction, from bio-based materials to circular strategies that use waste as a primary resource, working with material scientists to scale solutions for industry.
• Robotics and Advanced Construction explores collaboration between people and machines, and how robots can learn from crafts and creative practices to open new ways of manufacturing.

Around the studios, elective seminars range from theory to computation and prototyping, with experts in fields such as biodesign, mixed reality and artificial intelligence, and a collaboration with the Sagrada Família in the seminar on Gaudí’s logics. Testing, and failing, is part of the method: students learn by making in every studio and seminar.

In the two-year programme, the second year is organised around thesis clusters, research lines led by IAAC faculty and experts from around the world. In 2026 the clusters included advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, computation and algorithmic design, advanced urbanism, digital urban landscapes, interactive architecture, robotics and advanced construction, 3D printing architecture and timber architecture. The clusters can change from one year to the next.

Alongside the thesis, students take applied research seminars on real pilot projects, advanced technology seminars and courses in theory and business innovation. Many IAAC research projects, including European co-financed ones, feed into the curriculum. The second year is also when students become closer collaborators of IAAC: some work as teaching assistants or join research projects, and internships usually happen in this year.

Computational design, digital fabrication and robotics are at the core of the programme, and the faculty treats them as tools in service of architecture’s critical questions. The programme frames these questions around the climate emergency, public health and social inequity, and around an architecture that leaves behind the extractive model of construction. One example from the webinar: material passports, certificates that record the life cycle and future value of a building’s materials, are expected to enter building regulations the way energy certificates did, and students are already trained to work with them.

The programme works with KUKA and ABB robots. It offers expertise in robotic fabrication for architecture, without certifications tied to a specific brand. Some students take their thesis towards architecture for extreme environments and space: IAAC has collaborated with NASA and the European Space Agency, and students have won competitions on 3D printing on Mars, though the programme’s main commitment is to solutions for the challenges on Earth today.

Arian Hakimi came to IAAC in 2010 and was among the first students of the two-year programme, graduating in 2012. He describes the experimental assignments, the constant feedback from tutors and the variety of seminars as the backbone of his career. After IAAC he joined Zaha Hadid Architects in London, where he worked from 2013 to 2021 and became Lead Designer, taking part in more than 26 projects, from master plans to residential, infrastructure, cultural and mixed-use buildings, including facade design and coordination between the design team in London and manufacturers in China.

In 2022 he founded Arian Hakimi Architects and Arian Hakimi Design in Tehran, working across urban design, architecture, design and art. His passion for patterns runs through every scale, from master plans to 3D printed ceramics, perforated stainless steel artworks and clutch bags. He also teaches, with 40 to 50 workshops held around the world, and keeps the conviction he took from IAAC: there should be no end to experimentation.

Firas Safieddine studied the two-year programme and now teaches at IAAC, where he leads the interactive architecture thesis cluster. His thesis started in the second year: the first year gave him the tools, and the idea came from a conversation with a member of the faculty in IAAC’s backyard. He chose the topic he knew least about, how space affects the brain and how the brain can become an interface with space, in 2016, when the field barely existed.

The project grew from early experiments, such as training software to type words with brain commands, into research he later continued with his students at IAAC, who built their own sensors and wearables, and into practice. He founded Spatial Forces, a spatial design agency working in research, urban design, architecture, immersive environments, objects, media art and education, across scales from the microcontroller to the territory and from the virtual to the physical. He is the author of the book Spatialization Takes Command: Metaverse Urbanism. For him, the first year is about tools and the second about specialising, and the culture and network around you matter as much as the skills.

Because each student builds a different path, graduates also take different directions. Alumni of the Master in Advanced Architecture have worked with Barack Obama and led social innovation in their countries, founded internationally recognised practices, led technology, sustainability and innovation departments in large offices, created startups and fabrication or computational design studios, and continued in academia through a PhD or research centres. Many combine practice, teaching and consultancy. Meet more graduates on the IAAC Alumni page (opens in a new tab).