Department

From the Integrated Master in Architecture — MIA — emerge each year professionals sought after by the top architecture offices and agencies in Portugal, across Europe, and around the world. But the program also produces researchers of the highest academic caliber, recognized as such by their peers. Likewise, some of our former students can be found teaching and conducting research in the most prestigious international academic environments. In fact, it was precisely our initial establishment within the university — and the close relationships it enabled — that fostered the development of architectural research at DARQ from the very beginning, and in a very intense way.

Today, this school, founded thirty years ago, is far more than a center for training architecture professionals. Created in 2008 and taught in active collaboration with the Department of Informatics Engineering at FCTUC, the undergraduate and master’s programs in Design and Multimedia — LDM and MDM — stand out as innovative for the way they intersected and converged two previously separate fields of knowledge. They train computer scientists to excel in design creation, or designers to master computer science, depending on the approach.

Within fields related to architecture, and designed to develop specific and contemporary skills, the school also offers the Master in Integrated Urban Rehabilitation — MRUI — and the international Erasmus Mundus Master in Architecture, Landscape and Archaeology — ALA — the latter in partnership with the Technical University of Athens, Roma La Sapienza, and Naples Federico II.

Finally, the Doctorate in Architecture — CoimbraStudio — represents the advanced research hub at DARQ. It attracts both national and international students and researchers and integrates them into research activities. The doctoral degree it awards spans a diverse range of knowledge areas in architecture, highlighted through its three main seminars: Culture and City Design; Cultural Studies and Architecture; and Theory and History of Architecture and Urbanism. It develops a global network of relationships at the highest level and maintains partnerships with leading international centers of architectural culture.

Indeed, in 1988, DARQ was the first architecture school created within a university. Today, it is a school in continuous and dynamic activity. The learning of architectural and urban practice, the history and theory of architecture and the city, construction sciences, and design all intersect and develop in often unexpected ways, in a healthy and inclusive respect for all scales and values — from classical to contemporary, local to global, and social and human to scientific and technological.

DARQ is housed in the Colégio das Artes building, and its doors are always open.

Department of Architecture
Faculty of Science and Technology
University of Coimbra
Colégio das Artes
Largo D. Dinis
3000-143 Coimbra, Portugal

Phone: +351 239 851 350

Email: secretaria_darq@uc.pt