FA joined the Athens programme

In November 2021, the Faculty of Architecture joined the international programme of intensive week-long courses Athens for the first time. At the Department of Urban Design, under the guidance of Jana Zdráhalová and Kateřina Čechová and with the contribution of Jan Bittner, Vít Rýpar and Alena Štíchová, thirty international students of technical disciplines immersed themselves in the discovery of the city using the tools of urban analysis.

The intensive workshop called Urban Palimpsest combined guided tours, theoretical lectures and analytical work. It was structured with non-architectural fields of study in mind, so that the participants became familiar with the basic ways of reading and analysing the urban structure on the basis of its characteristic features. The course directed their attention to the neighborhoods that emerged as suburbs of Prague during the Industrial Revolution. In addition to the various site-specific modifications of the block urban structure, students analyzed traces of earlier development layers as well as modernist and contemporary building inputs; part of the analysis also focused on the way public spaces are used. We believe that the course participants became more conscious observers of the built environment in which they move on a daily basis during their time in Prague.  

What is ATHENS?

The ATHENS (Advanced Technology Higher Education Network, Socrates) programme was launched in 1997 with the support of the European Commission. It brings together 16 major European technical universities. It is mainly ParisTech (an association of the 10 most important Parisian Grandes Ecoles d'Ingemieurs, namely ENGREF, ENPC, ENSAM, ENSCP, ENSMP, ENST, ENSTA, Ecole Polytechnique, ESPCI, INAGP), CTU in Prague, TU Delft, KU Leuven, INST Lisboa, UCL Louvain-la-Neuve, UP Madrid, NTNU Trondheim, TU Budapest, TU Wien, Politecnico di Milano, TU Munich, TU Warsaw, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Istanbul Technical University and University Politehnica of Bucharest.

Within the framework of the ATHENS programme, these universities provide week-long intensive courses in modern disciplines and technologies at the cutting-edge scientific level to senior students of the partner technical universities. The technical part of the courses is taught in English, French or Spanish for 30 hours. It is complemented by a cultural programme of 12-15 hours, in which students have the opportunity to get to know the culture and environment of the country in question. It is common for many students to apply for further study at the school after completing such courses.