Curriculum

Urban Studies classes comprise collaborative research, site visits, fieldwork, and project-based creation, as well as lectures, seminars and skill-based classes. The instruction prioritizes small-group, student-led learning activities, with close support from tutors. The curriculum facilitates engagement with communities of humans and non-humans through installations, interventions and other initiatives, while reading and writing practice is centred in the programme to unlock curiosity and critical thinking. Students’ journey to rethink and reshape the urban mainstream is through a variety of outputs ranging from academic essay and creative, collective writing, to critical map-making and site-specific action, and experimental formats such as audio walks and self-organized workshops.

During studies students will be immersed in Tallinn’s diverse neighborhoods and infrastructural hinterlands. Field trips—recent destinations include Berlin and Lima —complement this experience with an emphasis on urban justice and everyday reproduction. A key concern is geographical difference and positionality: the programme helps students develop, individually or as a group, non-extractive engagement with geographically wide-ranging communities. This philosophy is especially important in the thesis phase. Examples of recent thesis projects: anti-gentrification movements in Lisbon, urban river regulation in Vienna, the management of post-disaster recovery in Turkey, how coastal fishing communities in Latin America grapple with development pressures. See a sample of student projects.

The Urban Studies curriculum comprises 120 ECTS credits. Overview of main subjects by semester: 

Semester 1
Studio 1: Urbanization (8 ECTS)
Urban History and Theory 1 (6 ECTS)
Creative Urban Methods (4 ECTS)
Debates in Planning (2 ECTS)
Urban Geography (2 ECTS)
Drawing (2 ECTS)
Computer Software (2 ECTS)

Semester 2
Studio 2: Urban Futures (8 ECTS)
Urban Models (4 ECTS)
Ecology in the Expanded Field (4 ECTS)
Housing: Design and Politics (3 ECTS)
Urban History and Theory 2 (3 ECTS)
Model Making (1 ECTS)

Semester 3
Studio 3: Production of Urban Space (8 ECTS)
Urban Design Studio (8 ECTS)
Master’s Thesis Seminar (5 ECTS)
Contesting the City (2 ECTS)
Observing the City (1 ECTS)
Practice (1 ECTS)

Semester 4
Master’s Thesis Studio (30 ECTS)