This year the AUTh School of Architecture completed 60 years of operation. As an integral part of the large academic institution of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, it adopted its progressive character, always remaining outward-looking and committed to a pluralist approach to architectural design. From the outset, the School’s curriculum has covered, and continues to cover, every scale of architectural design: from the scale of the region, the city and the landscape to that of the building and the interior, industrial design, building construction, and the conservation and reuse of buildings and ensembles. Visual arts, and the theory and history of architecture and art, frame the design studios, cultivating critical thinking and creativity and placing architectural composition within the historical, social, cultural and environmental context that shapes it.
The crisis of recent years significantly affected the operation of the School, which, despite the reduction of its teaching staff, kept all the subject areas of its curriculum as well as the character of a large school. Recognising and building on its historical identity as well as its dynamic and innovative profile, the School carried out a complete overhaul of its curriculum, first applied in 2014-15. Aiming to make the most of its people and firmly committed to preserving its distinct identity, it placed the architectural design studios at the core of the new teaching approach. Within these new, expanded studios, the cultivation of creativity, experimentation and critical thinking draws on and brings together all the knowledge offered by the curriculum. The School’s goal is to provide an architectural education that can meet the increased demands of today’s globalised, competitive professional reality in Greece and around the world. In a constantly changing global environment, spatial design today must respond to the major challenges of the environmental crisis, social inequality and new urban conditions. Design must also deal with the tension between global and local spatial models, exploring innovation in architectural practice as well as understanding and interpreting the historical moment.
The postgraduate programmes coordinated by the School of Architecture include two inter-departmental programmes, in “Protection, Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Monuments” and “Landscape Architecture”, the inter-university programme “Museology – Cultural Management” and two architectural design programmes, “Environmental Architectural Design” and “Advanced Design”. At postgraduate level, the School makes use of its place within a large university, fostering interdisciplinarity and synergies with other AUTh schools and offering specialisation in key areas of architectural practice. At doctoral level, the School also supports a large number of PhD students.
The School’s facilities include a well-organised and fully equipped digital design and fabrication laboratory, which can support students’ exploratory and innovative experiments in the design studios, and an important specialist architecture library that is part of the AUTh library network.
The quality of studies at the School is reflected in the high standard of the diploma projects presented at the end of the programme, as well as in the many distinctions its graduates achieve during postgraduate studies at major institutions abroad and in their professional careers.
To maintain all of the above, the School needs to be strengthened by increasing its teaching staff and filling the positions lost in recent years through faculty retirements. At the same time, the spaces of the Architecture Wing, which are currently exposed and unguarded, need to be redesigned and then protected. Finally, the School will monitor the implementation of the new curriculum and adapt it as needed, so that its broader goals are safeguarded and the quality of studies is maintained.
I wholeheartedly wish everyone a productive and creative academic year!
Anastasios Tellios
Head of the AUTh School of Architecture