Mr Ziad Akl (Directeur)
Dr. Hassãn Bitar (Directeur Adjoint)
Dr. Nabil Menhem
Mr Bachir Moujaes
Mrs Paula Samaha

Mission

At the end of the training, master students in urban design are able to:

- Analyze sites and territories as well as the various technical, morphological and ideological aspects governing the formation inhabited environment.

- Study the evolution, structure, form and nature of streets, public spaces, neighborhoods and urban agglomerations.

- Recognize and define issues related to urban design.

- Synthesize ideas, knowledge and skills from a range of city-related disciplines to apply to urban projects.

- Participate in the design, management and monitoring of innovative and responsible urban projects at different scales, from furniture to street, building, site, neighborhood and city.

- Design urban spaces, urban environments and public spaces that respond to economic, social, political or environmental considerations.

- Intervene in urban areas targeted by regeneration and requalification projects.

- Collaborate effectively with communities and public and private organizations.

- Master knowledge of urban design issues and issues related to public decision-making.

- To understand the different economic, social and cultural movements of urban and regional growth as well as those of planning, equity and social justice.

- Evaluate in a relevant way the urban design programs, the proposals and the construction of the works.

- Use the research tools needed to collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data in a prospective approach to the needs of cities and populations.

- Work in multidisciplinary teams in the fields of architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture.

- Appreciate cultural differences and work across national boundaries.

- Present urban projects in an objective, relevant, innovative and realistic way.

- Hold a degree in architecture, landscape architecture or urban design (8 semesters / 240 ECTS credits), with a cumulative overall average of 80/100.

- Hold the DELF B2 French Language Diploma. This certificate does not include holders of a French baccalaureate or a license obtained in French.

- Conduct an interview during which a file including personal projects or worked as a team will be presented and discussed.

Pedagogy is built around the notion of the permanent workshop, the crucible of formation. It is fed by the intervention of different specialists in urban planning, urban design and other disciplines related to urban matters, and will govern the time and contribution assigned to each specialist. The philosophy induced by this teaching is to create a multidisciplinary workshop of reflection where the project is not determined by a dominant discipline, but rather by sets that constitute a methodology of continuous work. It consists in integrating, throughout the training, the knowledge necessary for the design of the project so that all the acquired knowledge flows and converges to skills.

Thus, the proposed curriculum includes courses and seminars directly related to the problems announced at the beginning of the course. This approach ensures the optimization of theoretical learning in the context of the permanent workshop, and gives the skills approach its full weight. Its structure is built around eight axes.

Each includes a set of four courses and seminars that revolve around the permanent workshop.

Axes 1, 2 and 3 focus on the morphologies of the city, its manifestations and its regulations. They are taught in the first semester, with the exception of the urban morphology course. Axes 4, 5 and 6 deal with urban governance, examples of projects carried out and design tools. They are taught in the second semester.
Axis 7 develops visual representation tools and extends over the first two semesters. Axis 8 brings together the practice, including the permanent workshop and the end of studies project. The permanent workshop, core of the training, is spread over the first two semesters, and its problem is defined at the beginning of the cycle. It synthesizes all the lessons and knowledge, correlates them and realizes the extent of their interactivity.
This approach of teaching around a workshop also allows teachers to be confronted with each other, thus breaking down the compartmentalization of each discipline. As for the end-of-studies project, it was developed during the third and fourth semester, with a two-phase structure (preliminary design and detailed design), inspired by the end-of-studies project. 'School of Architecture. This final project allows a jury to make a judgment on the candidate and on his / her aptitude to receive the master's degree in urban design, in addition to the assessments and knowledge checks established by the teachers of each course and seminar.

The theoretical learning is mainly focused on the intensive teaching of the seminars, to the detriment of the lectures. The latter, numbering five, are shared with the School of Architecture. Their initial structure is maintained in particular in number of credits. As for the seminars, there are 23 of them. Each seminar is equivalent to 25 hours divided between 10 hours and 15 hours of personal work. The 10 hours are limited to one week, 2 hours per day. The advantages of this grid are multiple:
Each seminar lasts only a week and deals with a theme. It is a week of intense learning for the student, and its application is done directly in the permanent workshop.
This structure has the advantage of offering a flexible calendar. Each seminar is programmed according to its usefulness within the workshop, but also according to the availability of the teacher. This makes it possible to target active professionals who have limited availability since their intervention is concentrated on a week.
This matrix allows for greater diversity in the seminars, and therefore a more comprehensive training that better targets the professional part of the training.
The pace of a seminar per week creates a work dynamic that is much more dynamic than that of a weekly course that is repeated over a semester.

- Validate the total number of credits required (120 ECTS credits).
- Obtain an overall average of 80/100.
- Present and support a graduation work in front of a jury, half of whom are professionals from outside Alba. The jury is chaired by a representative of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.