TOBB EKONOMI VE TEKNOLOJI UNIVERSITESI (TOBB ETÜ), Turkey

 

PELİN GÜROL ÖNGÖREN

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TOBB University of Economics and Technology (TOBB ETU) is a private non-profit foundation university founded officially in 2003 by ‘The Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey” (TOBB). It is the first and only university to offer cooperative education in Turkey. The university has 6 faculties, two institutes with over 5000 students.

TOBB ETU, despite its relative youth, is now one of Turkey's leading universities, with an acknowledged reputation for excellence in research and teaching, for innovation and for links with business and industry. Owing to its deep-rooted relationship with TOBB, which is the highest legal entity in Turkey representing the private sector, the links with business and industry is consistently and strongly maintained. The results of the 2014 “University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP)” indicate that among the universities founded after 2000, TOBB ETU ranked 1st overall in Turkey.

 

TOBB ETU Department of Architecture, founded in 2011, offers undergraduate and graduate programs. Undergraduate program lasts 4 years (11 semesters): 8 semesters of education at the university, 3 semesters of internship (cooperative education).  Each  year  is  divided  into  3 semesters. The  graduate  master program lasts 4 semesters. The department

accepts 45 undergraduate students and 6 graduate students per year. Based on students’ choice, TOBB ETU Department of Architecture ranks 4th among more than 90 departments of architecture in Turkey.

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Within complex, unpredictable and dynamic theoretical, technological and practical environments of the architectural discipline, the department was founded with the intention of creating an experimental curriculum structure, unique in Turkey.

 

Equipped with all digital production design, research, and presentation technologies, the Architecture Department aims to:

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• Offer an alternative education where students' choices are well considered;

• Educate architects who can design and conduct research and applications at international standards;

• Define and promote its institutional identity with contemporary educational politics.

• Offer a simple but at the same time strong curriculum, which endeavors to make an absolute individual autonomy and responsiveness, strategic perspectives and ability to construct new visions.

 

The Architecture Department acknowledges the key role of architecture between primary and applied sciences, the link between theory and application, the creativity that sails between science and the arts and the impacts that close the gap between the academic and real world. In this respect, the program promotes an educational model that is based on strong and continuous collaboration with all areas of design. The corollary is that the curriculum of the Architecture Department has been structured as a process with the aim to produce new creative knowledge and organize strategies where such knowledge can be applied to resolve real-world problems.

 

Our curriculum, therefore, consists of five principal modules: Architectural Design Studios; Architectural Culture, History and Theories; Architectural Design, Presentation and Research Methods and Techniques; Building Technologies; Elective subjects. The principal is to utilize the progressive and updatable characteristics of the modules and therefore keep the curriculum sustainable. The core curricular module at TOBB ETU, experimental, digitally augmented, and hybrid architectural design studios are vertically structured to create a common ground for the young ones to learn from the elder ones.