Course offer summer semester

A holistic vision towards sustainable urban environments: This course provides students with the tools to understand the complexities and interdependencies of the built environment. While keeping a comprehensive view of the challenges, an ambitious vision for the future, and the ability to establish synergies to maximize the impact of their actions. 

Wellbeing, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and resource consumption as transversal topics. 8 neighbourhoods in Munich as case studies. How to transform a city in an urban environment that can provide a good quality of life for all inhabitants while respecting the environmental boundaries of the planet?

The course provides a general overview of the history, definition and strategies of sustainability. Based on the understanding of the concept of sustainability, the objectives of different planning areas in the field of sustainable building are explained (life cycle consideration, energy and climate-optimised planning and building). This is done by addressing individual topics in sustainable urban, neighbourhood and building planning (energy generation and renewable energies, sustainable supply and disposal, electromobility, materials). Furthermore, the sustainable development of the building sector is dealt with on a national and international level.

The module provides a general overview of essential aspects of ecological building. Based on the understanding of the concept of sustainability, students are made aware of the importance of meeting human needs and their impact on the earth's ecosystem. Based on the knowledge gained, students are taught the principles of an ecological handling of resources, such as energy, material and soil. Moreover students learn about certification systems and more advanced methods such as life cycle assessment and life cycle analysis, students are enabled to independently assess the advantages and disadvantages of different planning scenarios in terms of resource consumption and CO2 emissions. This is done by addressing individual topics in sustainable urban, neighbourhood and building planning (renewable energies, sustainable supply and disposal, electromobility, materials). Furthermore, the sustainable development of the building sector is dealt with on a national and international level.

The interrelationships between building design, building use and energy demand are conveyed. A broad overview of the possibilities of energy supply and energy saving in buildings is given, whereby the concepts are always in the context of life cycle assessment. This means that upstream and downstream processes are also included in an assessment and concept development. In addition, general challenges and solutions for sustainable development in relation to buildings and settlement structure are addressed.

On a concrete project (for Master RNB students this is the Interdisciplinary Project, for Master BI and UI it is a separate project), the life cycle phases of production, operation and end-of-life are analysed. In parallel with the development of the project, life cycle assessments are carried out with varying scopes of investigation and increasing levels of detail, as a basis for decisions on material and design variants.

This module is expected to be offered again in the summer semester 2023.

In this seminar, presentation and communication techniques are taught, which are practiced practically through interdisciplinary work using the Interdisciplinary Project. The social and the technical/professional competences play an essential role.

The Interdisciplinary Project (IDP) forms one of the central courses of the Master's program Resource Efficient and Sustainable Building (RNB). It is designed to prepare students for challenges of real-life planning situations and to provide them with the essential process knowledge and tools to cope with the task in a planning team of approx. 6-8 interdisciplinary students. The students are supervised by four chairs of the Technical University of Munich:

• Energy Efficient and Sustainable Design and Building (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lang)
• Building Technology and Climate Responsive Design (Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Auer)
• Timber Structures and Building Construction (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Winter)
• Building Physics (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sedlbauer)