Keywords

1 Premise

Currently, the university curriculum for an architectural degree often follows the path leaning towards methodological training in which the working method acquired is even more important than the hard and soft skills developed. The training of an architect combines technical and intellectual knowledge and often requires specialization in specific themes and aspects that will be needed after graduation to navigate an open and constantly evolving market, connected not only to the world of construction [1].

Despite the belief that modern architectural training focuses on increasingly specialized segments [2], the need often emerges to combine multiple segments of knowledge and expertise in specific subjects. This need comes to the fore - confirmed by ARCHITECTURE'S AFTERLIFE project research consortium survey - [3], above all when the architect chooses not to operate directly in the architectural design or urban space fields but is tasked with addressing actions, policies, or business decisions in communities in which the architectural, urban space or territory and landscape planning is only part of the design process. This often happens when the architect is sent to work in unconventional social, territorial, and urban contexts, facing problems whose solution requires a combination of subjects and disciplines on very different scales. This aspect is, in turn, linked to the need for architects to adapt their knowledge and skills to demands that society, environment, and policies activated at various national and European levels pose with respect to the impact on architectural design on different scales. Choices are thus put in place after completing the university degree, and another level of education – postgraduate – appears on the horizon. This should dictate a highly specialized path, not least because of the need to activate and systematize the skills previously acquired during an architecture degree course that are attuned to approaches that are often multidisciplinary and go beyond the field of architecture.

Hence, the need arises for high-level postgraduate training in terms of quality of response and operational capacity, with a constantly increasing number of cases impacting the field of architecture. The objective is to find a way for trained architects who wish to broaden their professional opportunities or specialize not only in order to access adequate training opportunities provided by schools of architecture but also further training delivered by professional associations of architects. For example, the mission of the Council of Architects of Europe includes working towards an enabling practice for architects to guarantee the existence of a network and a community able to orient themselves and interact with the demands that EU policies and regulations impose on architecture [4]. As far as the innovation and culture promoted by the New European Bauhaus are concerned, with architectural design restored to its central role in the challenges of sustainability, beauty, and inclusiveness [5], the question arises of which skills – in addition to general abilities developed during first and second level university education – can be transmitted to those who intend to specialize in very different topics and scales of design embracing a broad transversal, cultural, technical, and economic dimension. The need to specialize or acquire adequate skills, in addition to knowledge, for handling the challenges posed by the EU Green Deal and the New European Bauhaus is thus a fundamental requirement to guarantee effective and continuing training over time for architects, to allow them to deal with the challenges of the future. When considering the traditional Bachelor's Degree and Master's Degree path, it is therefore increasingly necessary to think about activating subsequent higher-level training, like Executive Master courses formulated for architects already operating as professionals. Ongoing training after graduation poses another stumbling block in the architect's learning. It would be useful to activate a synergy for postgraduate training, too, between the European Association for Architectural Education and the Council of Architects of Europe, as had been proposed in 2015 through the Erasmus + project Confronting Wicked Problems: Adapting Architectural Education to the New Situation in Europe [6].

1.1 The Context

Observing the current scenario of Executive Masters offered by schools and universities in the field of architecture, we see a broad choice for postgraduate architect training addressing mainly architectural project management or the use of state-of-the-art technologies. Less frequently, there are Executive Masters that deal with architectural design innovation, especially in territorial or urban contexts, which require extensive multidiscipline and multiscale design approaches. Mountain or rural areas are emblematic of these settings and suffered from a critical problem of underuse, abandonment, and depopulation throughout Europe as there was a growing need to guarantee their resilience and preservation to safeguard residents and the cultural, historical, and architectural heritage they express. The Commission's communication to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee, and the Committee of the Regions states that rural areas account for almost 30% of the population and more than 83% of EU territory [7], of which about 30% is made up of rural mountain areas [8]. The same document illustrates a series of actions aiming to transform the EU's rural areas into stronger, more resilient, and connected districts by 2024 [9], enabling them to communicate with urban areas not in contrast but as an alternative model to metropolitan life. These actions impact the transformation of rural mountain space through new infrastructural works; regeneration of existing built heritage; achievement of energy and environmental sustainability; modernization of agricultural techniques for the economic and social evolution of the communities involved. With respect to these themes, there is a need to specialize architects – who usually operate in urban settings that are more robust in terms of resources and opportunities – to address the scales and themes that characterize rural districts, which are very different from those found in urban areas. Rural mountain districts have to combine architectural standards covering very different scales and disciplines, ranging from agricultural issues to energy, renewable sources, infrastructure, and community protection from natural risks such as floods, landslides, or earthquakes, not to mention those looming in the not-too-distant future deriving from lack of water resources. This long premise was required in order to illustrate the experience of the Mountain-Able: Planning and Design for Sustainable Development of Mountain project.

2 The Mountain-Able: Planning and Design for Sustainable Development of Mountain Executive Master

We will focus on one particular experience in this contribution, linked to the development of the “Mountain-Able: Planning and Design for the Sustainable Development of Mountain” Executive Master, put in place by the Polytechnic of Milan's Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. The project came to be in a specific scientific and training setting, relating to the Excellence Project developed by the aforementioned Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU). The Department is one of one hundred and eighty in Italy to have received the Ministry of Research award as a department of excellence in the approach to issues of territorial fragility for the five-year period 2018–22 and for the five-year period 2023–27. The DAStU conducts research, design experimentation, and didactic instruction in architectural and urban design, territorial planning and land governance, urban policies, conservation and intervention on the built and natural heritage, historical interpretation and criticism of architecture and the city [10]. As part of the research venture, the need emerged for training architects to be specialists in issues related to emergencies, which is ever more typical of fragile areas like rural and mountain districts, often given scant consideration in research and teaching.

The objective of the Executive Master, therefore, is to specialize architects in the themes of design and planning for mountain and rural areas, focusing on the various sectors of fragility, from marginalization to abandonment of built and agricultural heritage, from prevention of natural risks to the decline of cultural memory. The Master was devised for architects and public administrators working for regional, provincial and municipal government, consortiums, institutions, subsidiary companies, etc., as well as all those professional profiles engaged in various ways in complex contexts and in charge of architectural design in rural and mountain territories. In these settings, the architect often serves as a social facilitator and as the organizer of procedures and actions shared with the community, which then flow into the regeneration project. These are, therefore, professional figures who activate processes seeking qualitative development of space, environment, and territory in complex factor combinations [11].

In Italy, it is not unusual to find professional figures being asked to assess the quality of a project despite having no specific technical or multidisciplinary skills or awareness of the interactions between the project's various components. Their task is often to verify the correctness of the procedural process; less frequently, they may express opinions on the quality of architecture in terms defined by the New European Bauhaus. Conversely, some architects are unfamiliar with the scales and needs of rural and mountain districts and struggle to bring forth adequate projects in terms of quality and sustainability. Architectural, urban space, and landscape design in rural and mountain communities include multiple cultural, technical, legislative, and economic aspects expressed on many scales. In these areas, the architect's role is often to build visions and perspectives for the regeneration and enhancement of the places and the communities that represent them. This vision must take into account the relationship established with the assortment of elements making up rural and mountain territories, which are road, hydroelectric, and sports infrastructure. But also, what is found in the agricultural landscape – small buildings for storing equipment or sheltering livestock, crop terraces, tiny, inhabited centres, and historical and architectural monuments that bear witness to a past rich in art and culture. A further factor is that of maintenance and management of the territory, increasingly impacted by the effects of climate change with the consequent repercussions on resident communities who are then forced to live with the impact of the loss of public services, abandonment of built heritage, depletion of environmental resources, and loss of memory.

These factors revolve around the decreasing number of communities, which must become part of a regeneration process as a shared system. So, what comes to the fore is the need to train both architects who operate not strictly in the construction field but who want to address projects for the transformation of space as a complex process in which policy, space, community, financing, anthropological, social and cultural aspects all play a role. But also, architects who intend to deal with the design of architecture and urban or landscape space in contexts characterized by fragilities like loss of services, abandonment, natural risks, depopulation, and demise of identity located, nonetheless, in precious natural and environmental settings. The former can operate through specific training to become the bedrock for these territories’ harmonious and sustainable development. At the same time, the latter, with other figures, will undertake projects on different scales, addressing different specialist themes.

2.1 Structure of the Executive Master

It took two years of teamwork by the Director, Professor Emilia Corradi and Deputy Directors, respectively Professor Annunziata Maria Oteri and Professors Paolo Bozzuto, to develop the Executive Master contents. The structure of the Executive Master had to act simultaneously on two mutually integrated aspects, which were then merged into the didactic platform. The first aspect of managing the Master involved administrative procedures and the accreditation process for the recognition of the qualification acquired; the second aspect concerned learning and scientific content. With regard to administrative procedures, the Master had to take into account both the regulations outlined by Italy's Ministry of University and Research, which govern and normalize higher-level training, and the Polytechnic of Milan's indications for the accreditation of Level I and Level II master's degrees. This was a requirement for obtaining legal recognition of the Executive Master, based on compliance with Ministerial Decree 270/2004 conditions, specifying a duration of at least one year for these courses, equal to 60 ECTS, or at least 1,500 student hours [12]. A further administrative aspect to be taken into account was the budget calculation, verifying that it was financially workable to complete the planned activities, with a projection of a hypothetical number of enrollees. It is crucial to decide how many faculty members to involve, based on their skills and qualifications, because it is an aspect that a candidate who intends to enrol in and attend an Executive Master course will consider very carefully. These elements, in turn, made it possible to identify a format for the Mountain-Able Master, contributing to the definition of its didactic and formative contents.

Looking at the didactic and scientific structure, the first step to developing the Master's was to outline the central theme of sustainable development for mountain districts with regard to the research and teaching standards established by Polytechnic of Milan's DAStU and AUIC (School of Urban Architecture and Construction Engineering). This first step was followed by a benchmark analysis of the executive masters on offer in Italian and European architecture schools. The study contributed to estimating the potential of the proposed Mountain-Able Executive Master's didactic and scientific configuration. Results confirmed the need to establish a master's degree that would deliver integrated and multidisciplinary planning for mountain locations with reference to both national and European policies and programming. This process significantly impacted pinpointing the international dimension of themes connected to the potential application for the qualification obtained by students. Subsequent research was conducted to identify the target audience who would be interested in the Executive Master. During this phase, a significant role was played by a series of meetings and interviews undertaken with public offices like the Ministry of Culture or Lombardy regional authority, tasked with mountain district planning and policies, and also with representatives of national, regional, and local associations or institutions, as well as with businesses and companies operating in mountain districts.

The phase led to setting up the scientific committee and opening the Executive Master to sponsors and partners who support it in various capacities. The final step was to develop the didactic platform, whose primary objective was to provide a training and specialization path that focused at all times on the role of architecture as a process and outcome of the transformation of places as the way to serve residents and the community. The planned didactic contents develop mainly around an operational framework for achieving the general training objectives previously indicated and summarized in the diagram below (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

© Emilia Corradi.

Executive Master Mountain-Able. Planning and design for sustainable mountain development: topics and objectives, Milan 2023.

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2.2 Didactic Structure and Contents with Respect to Learning Objectives

From a learning perspective, the didactic structure does not intend to train a professional who embodies every single skill. The objective is to train a problem-solving figure to develop a specific awareness of the fact that the creative process is a fundamental part of learning about the themes and problems of mountain districts. The creative process is reinforced by the technical and cultural learning acquired during university studies and stimulated by the Master. From the standpoint of the didactic content of learning objectives, the teaching structure comprises two macro-scales: projects and policies on the territorial scale and projects and policies at the local level. The former address issues like accessibility, organization of social and health services, as well as concepts inherent to the environmental sustainability of state-of-the-art economic activities and socio-economic interaction and partnerships with metropolitan districts. The latter address issues, projects and policies at the local level, which can be summed up as strategies for transforming and enhancing communities’ physical and cultural heritage through recovery and development actions. This learning structure integrates typical architectural planning disciplines with telemedicine, economics, law, anthropology, geography, and art history to provide adequate tools for contributing to the sustainable transformation of complex mountain districts. The platform considers the project's centrality to be a creative and technical process serving as a pedagogical foundation and fusion of the spatial, landscape, technical, cultural, environmental, economic, legal, and procedural dimensions that affect the development and regeneration of mountain and rural territories and communities.

Through the pedagogical teaching model based on the driven design path, the training approach integrates theory with practice applied to learning by doing. In this respect, the Master opted for a credit structure that supports this didactic approach, dedicating many of the 1,500 student hours of engagement – required by law – to seminar activities, including an international workshop and internships in public administration, agencies, companies, and institutions that are partners in the Master. In a certain sense, this decision influences the didactic and pedagogical structure, especially with regard to the need to integrate theoretical and hands-on training aspects and the understanding of operational procedures.

The Mountain-Able Master is set out as theoretical modules, thematic design laboratories, workshops, seminars, internships, and degree theses. The theoretical modules award 16 ECTS and include a package of 20 modules whose contents address the different themes in a multidisciplinary manner (Fig. 2). Professors provide the theoretical lessons and exercises, but also expert professionals brought on board from the mountain world and public administrations, or companies operating in various capacities in this complex reality. There are economists, experts in co-design and participatory processes, experts in energy communities, territorial planning, jurists, archaeologists, art and architecture historians, experts in climate change, risk, communication, and marketing, and experts in territorial and community policies and management. The theoretical modules help define the field of problems within which the professional must move, both as a designer and as a facilitator.

The three thematic design laboratories provide a total of 15 ECTS. The thematic design laboratories are structured to include experts who illustrate best practices and, with the participants in the Master, identify their methods of application in several areas based on the themes and scales chosen, especially landscape scale, urban scale, and architectural scale. Thematic design laboratories will be able to apply the knowledge acquired in the theoretical modules thanks to an integrated project that considers different scales and spatial, social, participatory, and cultural components, considering extant material and immaterial heritage.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

© Emilia Corradi.

Executive Master Mountain-Able. Planning and design for sustainable mountain development: didactic structure, Milan 2023.

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The workshop awards 12 ECTS and is implemented in a mountain area where Master faculty and participants reside for a week. Stakeholders, administrators, experts, and residents are also present, as are international counterparts who can illustrate experiences in similar contexts. The latter aspect is considered extremely important as comparison with other European experiences can be helpful in understanding how to activate partnerships and structure exchange networks in the context of European projects for participation in calls for funding or international cooperation.

The internship awards 12 ECTS and consists of a period of practical experience hosted by institutions, public administrations, or agencies connected to the theme of the Master. It aims to offer an understanding of procedural and operational practices in a workplace setting.

The final thesis for 5 ECTS is when the Master comes together, each student developing their own paper. The thesis involves drafting a critical essay illustrating each candidate's specific topics of interest, describing a design or procedural path through the knowledge and skills acquired.

3 Conclusion

The path of inductive research developed as the underpinning of the Mountain-Able: Planning and Design for the Sustainable Development of Mountain Executive Master allowed us to spotlight the themes and problems addressed, beginning with a wide range of data. The specific training path suggested for multidisciplinary and multiscale themes inherent to a series of fragilities required the development of a highly specialized learning platform to ensure participants received adequate practical and technical training and were also open to contributions from other disciplines.

The ongoing relationship with stakeholders fully highlighted the possible synergies that can be activated between schools of architecture and players in the territorial transformation process. The result is the chance to implement a dynamic form of training capable of responding to social changes and fully integrating with community policies and strategies. The topic of continuing higher education represents a significant opportunity to improve the educational prospects offered by architecture schools and think about specific shared paths that allow architects to implement a proactive approach appropriate for future challenges. At the same time, continuous learning models must be defined for professional practice also, allowing the figure of the architect to adapt to the changes required by the professional market at increasingly fast speed. Professionalizing Master's degrees can be a positive way of offering extremely effective educational models quickly. These can represent an interesting way to combine education, research, and professional skills, above all because, through a learning-by-doing approach, they can specialize as professionals so they can meet job market demands. At the same time, they also represent a multidisciplinary education model that can overcome sometimes inflexible protocols implemented by state education systems.

The other aspect of executive masters is that they can activate effective synergies not only with the Architects’ Council of Europe but also with administrations, companies, and operators in the various sectors, narrowing the gap between academic training, research, and professional practice in the field of architecture [13]. In this respect, it would be appropriate to launch a European-wide survey of executive masters within the EAAE, assessing learning in and updating the architect's professional practice. The survey could facilitate the circulation of models and good practices to be shared in architecture schools and introduce ways to evaluate the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary but also a hybrid path, navigating theory and professional practice and bringing professional résumés up to speed.