Welcome to the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning
A message from the Dean
I would like to welcome you to the University of Sydney and to introduce you to the range of programs offered in the faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning. We are committed to improving the quality of designed environments, both digital and physical, by providing you with a high-level education to help you gain professional and intellectual insight into the vital and current debates in the future of environments in which we live, work and play.
The faculty offers a leading range of undergraduate, coursework and research degrees dealing with the designed and built environments. We have always had a strong presence in the field of architecture and architectural sciences, urban planning and urban design and, in recent years, established ourselves as the leading centre for the design of digital environments.
Currently we have close to 1300 full-time and part-time undergraduate, postgraduate coursework and research students, post-doctoral fellows and visiting scholars studying and working with us. We welcome your decision to join us. There are a number of different paths you may take on your way to several possible fields of practice.
The faculty offers professional qualifications in architecture through the accredited contiguous Bachelor of Design in Architecture/Master of Architecture degrees. In these degrees you may wish to choose a stream in allied arts in architecture, digital architecture, urban design or planning. Alternatively you may wish to pursue studies in the design of digital environments in the Bachelor of Design Computing. We encourage the best in these programs to undertake the honours program and to pursue further research qualifications. Your study towards these degrees can be supplemented by units from another faculty to broaden your intellectual experience.
If you wish to specialise after your undergraduate studies, our coursework master's degrees, graduate diplomas and graduate certificates are offered in a wide range of programs: architecture, audio design, building, building services, interaction design and electronic arts (IDEA), facilities management, heritage conservation, illumination design, sustainable design, urban design and urban and regional planning. Graduates of these programs have become leaders in their fields throughout Australia and the Asia Pacific region.
The faculty also offers the opportunity to pursue research degrees, both MPhil and PhD, in four disciplines: architecture and allied arts, architectural science, design computing and cognition, and urban and regional policy and planning.
You may elect to study in any of these fields, or to pursue interdisciplinary coursework or research studies in a combination of fields within the faculty or between the faculty and elsewhere in the university. We support these degrees with a wide range of resources, including extensively-equipped laboratories and comprehensive workshop facilities. My colleagues in the faculty include world-renowned researchers and educators, ready to assist and mentor you in your learning.
I look forward to welcoming you as you join our academic family.
Professor Warren Julian
Dean
Our aspiration
We aspire to be the leading faculty in the Asia Pacific region that broadly addresses the creation of sustainable designed environments to enhance the collective human experience.
Our faculty will develop research and deliver programs which foster critical and creative thinking, preparing graduates to be agents of ethical and effective change in a local, national and global context. This will be achieved through a community of research active staff and the provision of excellence in teaching, both in underlying theoretical concepts as well as application through design and supported through collaboration across disciplines within the University. We will benchmark our activities internationally to contribute to the University's goal of 1:5:40, the name for Sydney's aspiration to achieve the following:
- clear leadership as Australia's premier university
- acknowledgement and ranking as one of the top five universities in the region; and
- recognition and ranking in the top forty universities around the world.
To this end we have identified goals for four core aspects of our activities.
Research and innovation:
To place research at the centre of our scholarly activities.
Learning and teaching:
To develop and articulate research led teaching to engage students in knowledge discovery.
Effective management:
To provide management support to the faculty in a responsible and transparent manner.
Community, professional and industry engagement:
To communicate and demonstrate our value to the communities in which we engage.
Short history
The Faculty of Architecture, the first in Australia, was established in 1919 to conduct an undergraduate professional Bachelor of Architecture program. In 1948, the Department of Town and Country Planning was founded within the faculty and in 1989 was renamed the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. A Chair of Architectural Science was created in 1954, around which the Department of Architectural Science developed. In 1989, the department was renamed the Department of Architectural and Design Science.
The Tin Sheds Gallery and Art Studios became part of the faculty in 1990, having previously been a central academic service unit which developed from resources provided by the faculty in the 1960s. In 2002, the faculty was restructured, with a faculty-wide school overseeing the disciplines created from the old departments. In 2004 the school itself was set aside for a flat structure of one faculty, with four loose disciplines defining areas of research and teaching activity. The faculty changed its name to the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning in 2006 to reflect the evolving diversity of its academic activities.
Since 1984, the faculty has been housed under one roof in the purpose-designed Wilkinson Building and includes the Tin Sheds Gallery and the largest and most advanced centre for design computing in Australia. It is located adjacent to the brand new SciTech Library which contains an outstanding architecture and planning collection. The faculty also has three research centres: the AHURI Housing and Urban Research Centre, the Ian Buchan Fell Housing Research Centre and the Planning Research Centre.