Director
Xavier Costa
Head of Studies
Suzanne Strum
Guest Faculty
Antoni Muntadas
Ole Bouman
Santiago Cirugeda
Reinhold Martin
Program Faculty
Xavier Costa
Suzanne Strum
Antoni Luna
Diego Ferrari
Ernest Ferré
Gonçalo Furtado
Kathrin Golda-Pongratz
Armando Montilla
Rafael Gómez-Moriana
Martí Peran
Alexander Pilis
Juan Carlos Sánchez
Coordination
Germà Sebastià
Paula Miquel
Founding Academic Committee
Ignasi de Solà-Morales
Hubert Damisch
Kurt W. Forster
Rosalind Krauss
Tomàs Llorens
Rafael Moneo
Werner Oechslin
Joseph Rykwert
Carl E. Schorske
Georges Teyssot
Eugenio Trías
Anthony Vidler
Photography
© Jordi Bernadó. Dubai Brand. (Ed. Actar) 2008.
Graphic Design
Estudi Carme Vives / Carolina Vignola
The Metropolis Masters and Graduate Program in Architecture and Urban Culture is conceived as a collaborative project between the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. It was created over seventeen years ago by Ignasi de Solà-Morales, its founder and directing force, as a laboratory of research and production on the subject of the contemporary city. During its existence, our Program has brought together a multidisciplinary viewpoint. Architects, urbanists, geographers, artists, designers, and critics are invited to look into the present-day condition of cities, to open up a debate and a productive structure for graduate students.
The primary aim of the Metropolis Program is to stimulate and guide our students’ research and design work. Each student develops an individual two-year long project that is directed by the Program’s faculty, and benefits from the Program’s academic activities: seminars, lectures, visits, workshops, and the Metropolis master class. Our graduates are thus enabled to undertake further professional and academic responsibilities with the strengthening experience of having conceived, designed and developed a research project that challenges our understanding of all the complex forces that come together in the new urban spaces and present-day demands in our cities.
The Program intends to support a diversity of contributions.
Our student population is drawn from different countries, a special strength of the program that, together with its recent Alumni Association, reinforces the partnership between the growing network of its graduates all over the world.
The city of Barcelona has led the international debate on the future of our cities in different ways – at the theoretical level, as well as in its realized projects. Our Program has played the role of an academic and research laboratory in this context, offering a space for advanced study on the relationship between the social, cultural, and architectural conditions of the cities where they develop.