a42.org is a postgraduate program focusing on architecture and urban research. The program lasts 2 years and the students will receive a Master of Architecture or a Master of Arts depending on their previous qualification (http://p1580.typo3server.info/61.0.html).

This is a research program.  It doesn't endorse any particular doctrine.

Over the 2 years the participants develop and explore their individual research as part of a collective project. Each research leads to a written thesis and a final project.

In order to support the research and project work, the program offers a series of seminars on architectural theory, art theory, philosophy, economic independency and the lectures series "Diskurskontinuum". The workshop "Transfer" puts emphasis on the exchange with other disciplines within the program. The chosen model of an alternating guest-professorship allows for a continuous renewal in the content of teaching. The program has a maximum of 20 students and provides an infrastructure which includes a networked working space, a 3D printer, a lasercutter, a plotter, a model workshop, and an exstensive library.  a42.org / master of architecture is the issuer of the series "Disko", which regularly documents the final work of the program's partecipants and the department's contributors.  

1. To build, one must think Pop.

The (post-)modern >> >> formal canon cannot be transformed from within. The current architecture practice generally operates within fading certainties, without creating >> popular values.

Meanwhile, the production of architecture, seen as part of the so-called 'high culture', is restricted to the branded, >> >> media compatible product of the few.

2. To think 'city', one must be 'society'.

Architecture more often than not seems to be a culturally irrelevant endeavour. Buzzwords like >> 'neo-liberalism', >> 'digital revolution' and >> 'market populism' mark a fundamental shift in paradigms.

Architectural practice contributes little, and is unable to cope with these radical changes that are having a fundamental impact on the physical space around us.

Everything changes architecture, architecture changes nothing. >> >> The production of buildings and the thinking about the built environment have been separated, as social discourses.

3. To be part of the world, one must 'compute'.

The possibilities generated by computer-aided design are far from exhausted. A series of scientific quantum leaps, inseparable from the exponential increase in computing power over the last decades, have become the source for new scientific >> thought models.

However within the architectural discipline this newly acquired power - apart from the occasional attempt to optimise the workplace or an approach to mass-customisation - is merely used >> >> generate complex bio morph space models by a quasi Avantgarde.

4. To 'compute', one must do research.

The production of architecture is subject to constant changes of demands, not only functionally and technologically but also culturally and economically. Equally the way we read the architectural surface is subject to shifting ways of >> perception and a changing iconography.

The mere >> reproduction of tested typologies reduces architecture to the provision of standardised solutions which generally won’t last. Architectural education subsequently cannot be tied down as the mediator for such >> preconceived solutions but must encourage systematical research.

5. To do research into the future, one must build.

If 'freedom of choice' wanted to be more than the anticipation and subsequent following of >> organised we would need the sovereignty of contemplation,discovery and knowledge. Problem-solving strategies will enable us to act, whilst continually scrutinising the rule set by the omnipresent >> 'preformatted’.