Department of Architectural Engineering

Overview

Architecture creatively combines art and science to design buildings and spaces for people. Any structure from a room to a building complex can be architecture; it may be new construction or the adaptation of an old building for a new use. Our architecture tells us who we are and who we can become. The built environments we design respond to physical context, time, social attitudes and environmental issues.

The Department of Architecture at Birzeit University aims to observe a mix of pragmatism and theory, and we pride ourselves on keeping a balance between the richness and variety of local Palestinian culture and the growing cosmopolitanism of the world. We consider that design cannot be treated as a superficial decorative exercise but must be disciplined and devoted to a purpose in context.

The goal of the department is to produce conceptual thinkers, versed in the skills, history, theory, and science of their field. The program is oriented toward developing the student's ability to deal creatively with architectural problems on analytical, conceptual, and developmental levels. The sequence courses in design, consisting of studio work augmented by lectures and seminars dealing with theory and history, are the core of the program. Sequences of studies in culture and society, environmental sciences, structures, and building technology provide a base for the work in design.

The intention has always been to instruct architecture students in issues of basic, as well as more sophisticated, formal principles, developing in them an aptitude for functional and programmatic accommodation, structural and technological integration, energy-conscious design, and materials and methods of construction. Rather than train architects who think of building as autonomous objects frozen in an assigned ideology, our goal is to produce architects who are capable of making independent judgments rooted in an ever-changing context of architectural thought.