The Architecture and Design education is about opening the doors to a new world. This is not only an environment of professional training. Here, the structure of thinking that steers your life will take shape. In addition to architecture’s past and present; all of the formations, experiences, products, the materialized / immaterialized, utopias and manifestos regarding the socio-cultural, technological and artistic history of humankind are among our areas of interest.

Design as the only competition tool of today can be conducted under the administration of a mind that can form relationships, is interested in and curious-suspicious-excited about the above topics. Creativity is not the skill of drawing but of problem solving; and design, similar to mathematics, is one of the human brain’s elegant solutions and a reflection of intellectual energy. For this reason, if the necessary science score is acquired, without any doubt, the architecture-design education would be successfully completed.

The architecture-design education is a two directional activity. The student continuously and actively designs. Instead of the guild-like or master-apprentice understanding of education inherited from Bauhaus, Maltepe University Faculty of Architecture and Design aims to realize an approach based on a horizontal, interactive and mutual relationship that takes the student out of his/her passive position. For this reason, the foundation of our understanding of education is formed upon “teaching the student how to be an architect-designer” instead of simply teaching-transferring the contemporary architecture-design knowledge. In our field, which is at the intersection point of societal and technological formations, young designers educated this way will always be successful with their own evaluation capacity.

In summary, our institution is not grounded on raising students who repeat approved information but aims to raise intellectuals (designers) with ethical values who are capable of producing the specific knowledge necessary for the unknown conditions and locations of tomorrow. Therefore, the basis of our education is to motivate and encourage the student with experiences, to strengthen their self-confidence and to pave the way for the student. In short, our university environment is where the students as thinking-creative and ethical individuals will transform their comprehension of the world into an active and creative production, that is, into productions of “architectures” in various fields.

Architects-designers design and construct streets, cities, buildings, open spaces, circulation areas and tools. However, there are many architects-designers who can work outside these fields, in different scales and areas of production such as text, image and criticism. That is why, our education is beyond professional education, perhaps even more, and organized as “an intellectual education field”.

We are hoping for your contribution, thinking that curious and enthusiastic young minds to whom we will tend to and motivate by paying attention, value and responsibility, will make us a better architecture and design faculty.

Prof. Dr. Ferhan YÜREKLİ

Dean