About the DSD
The Delft School of Design (DSD) was formally instituted in 2002 as a laboratory for emerging research and experimentation concerning doctoral research within the faculty’s departments of architecture and urbanism and building technology.
Since its founding, the DSD has provided both an academic and public platform for events such as lectures and debates, conferences, colloquia, seminars and workshops. The DSD platform brings together architects, historians, theoreticians, urbanists, and structural designers; additionally, we also bring together economists, geographers, social and political scientists, neuroscientists and philosophers, comparative literature scholars, film makers and artists . Whilst each has detailed and extensive specialized knowledge in their chosen field, the goal is to organize seminars, meetings and debates around various mutually relevant themes. These encounters, while respecting the diverse disciplines coming to the table, are productive and generative of fresh approaches to the complex sets of problems engaging professionals, academics, and emerging doctoral researchers and scholars today. The DSD thus provides for the exploration of interconnected frameworks of knowledge, detailed problem analysis, and technical methodologies.
In the past years much of the focus of the DSD has turned to the complexity of the contemporary urban condition. Consequently, the DSD has developed a strategy, or a field of inquiry, in order to map out new means of approaching the city, which include but are not limited to the following: the complexity of the object of study; the complexity of the condition, or the state, of architectural knowledge; and, the necessary methodologies, both incumbent and innovative, with which to approach the former two. This problématique urbaine has been approached through investigations ranging from in depth historical studies - dealing with both a material and immaterial socio-cultural constructed past; theoretical considerations – interrogating both the specific and the general conditions by which objects and subjects are reflexively produced and, at times, spontaneously emerge; to urban and architecture research – investigating both case study objects and over arching methodologies by which the very modes of thinking and producing the city and its objects become possible. What they hold in common is the demand for a reassessment of traditional models and a readiness to grasp the emerging condition of architectural knowledge in both an academic context and professional practice.
In 2007 the DSD began procedures for initiating a full Graduate School in Architecture and Urbanism, thus extending our doctoral and advanced research programs to include a Masters Program - offering a full thesis year curriculum, and a PhD program -organized in a 2 + 2 year education + dissertation structure. In 2007 the DSD also had the privilege of welcoming Winy Maas, founding partner of the internationally renowned architecture firm MVRDV, as a new professor of architecture and urbanism. The Masters Program began in the Autumn of 2007 and the PhD program is currently accepting applicants for Autumn 2009 entry.
All research carried out at the TU Delft is held under what is referred to as a departments ‘Research Portfolio’ ; the DSD holds all research collectively under the title of FUTURE CITIES. Thus, all courses offered in the DSD Graduate School programs as well as all advanced research carried out by DSD Faculty and Research Staff members investigate issues which can be found under the DSD_FUTURE CITIES Research Portfolio. Additionally, the DSD has the privilege to include the participation of an international network of renowned scholars and practitioners as well as affiliated institutions in all levels of its education and research programs.
We encourage you to survey the DSD website for more detailed information.
Arie Graafland
Founding Director Delft School of Design
