The Berlage

Architecture is created through buildings and words, polemics and practice, exhibitions and publications. Since its founding thirty years ago, the Berlage has connected leading practitioners and thinkers, with students eager to develop their own strong visions and keen to position themselves to act effectively within the discipline. As part of the TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, the Berlage fosters a space of interaction between a select international group of students and a diverse shifting team of designers and cross-disciplinary team of experts.

Application Information

LENGTH OF STUDY
The Berlage’s post-master program consists of a year-and-a-half full-time, academic study divided over three terms. Each term encompasses 30 ECTS credit points for a total 90 ECTS credit points to obtain the degree. Study begins once a year in September and concludes a year later at the end of January. The incoming 2024 cohort will start on August 26, 2024 with the introduction week, and will graduate on January 30, 2026.

APPLICATION PROCESS
The application process for the Berlage post-master program consists of the following steps: Applicants should register with Studielink and submit their application, through TU Delft’s online application system, Osiaan. The application process is completely online, you should not send us hard copies or originals. Please visit TU Delft’s website for more information. The application deadlines is June 1, 2024. Selected applicants will receive an interview invitation by email from The Berlage. Applicants will receive a final decision from TU Delft's Education Service Centre. After acceptance applicants will receive a letter from The Berlage with payment details and a request to submit a non-refundable deposit fee. Applicants need to make the full-tuition fee payment before the deadline of July 1, 2024. Non-EU applicants also need to include an additional living costs amount. Please note that these payments are part of the admissions process. TU Delft will finalize your enrollment to the program, after full payment is received on our account before the payment deadline. TU Delft’s housing and visa services only start after the complete payment of the tuition fee, the living costs (for non-EU applicants), and payment of a visa and housing service charge.

INTERVIEWS
After reviewing your application, the admissions committee may invite you to an interview. Interviews are by invitation only and conducted by a member of the admissions committee, who will have thoroughly read your entire application package. The invitation will be sent by email. Interviews are conducted via Zoom or, when logistically possible, held in person in Delft. Following the interview, students will either be accepted or rejected to the program. The application process is based on rolling admissions so that applications are reviewed as they are completed.

APPLY IN TIME
After being admitted to the program, you will receive an admission letter and a payment letter, which helps you to arrange funding through a scholarship or study loan. In order to arrange it in time, you should allow yourself at least one month to do so. Payment of the tuition fee (payment deadline is July 1, 2024) is part of your enrollment to our program. Currently there is a shortage on affordable student accommodations. TU Delft’s housing services uses your enrollment date as placement on their waiting list for housing. The sooner you are enrolled the higher you are on the waiting list.

TUITION FEE
The 2024–2026 tuition fee for the post-master program is €27,000 in total; or €9,000 per semester.

ADDITIONAL STUDY COSTS
There will be extra individual costs for printing, presentation materials and a contribution for the fieldwork trips. The estimated costs for the three semesters are about €3,500.

MORE DETAILED INFORMATION
Admission Requirements
Admission Documents
Application Process
Evaluation Criteria
Terms of Payment

2024–2026 Call for Applications

Architecture is created through buildings and words, polemics and practice, exhibitions and publications. Since its founding thirty years ago, the Berlage has connected leading practitioners and thinkers with students eager to develop their own strong visions and keen to position themselves to act effectively within the discipline. The Berlage fosters a space of interaction between a select international group of students and a diverse shifting team of designers and a cross-disciplinary team of experts.

FALL 2024: PROJECT NL
Project NL is the Berlage’s long-standing design-research project that seeks to examine global phenomena in the Netherlands in order to gain a more precise understanding of their local spatial consequences. In its current iteration, the course is organized in collaboration with TU Delft Library and Allmaps, a platform of open-source tools for curating, georeferencing and exploring digitized maps. Working with an open-source digital platform to relate map collections and archives, students will document the transformation of the landscape to ultimately speculate on its future.

SPRING 2025: PROJECT GLOBAL
Project Global engages with logistics, and the way this shapes the environment. Urged by recent disruptions in global supply chains and related tendencies towards deglobalization, it aims to explore contemporary shifts in the global production and distribution networks. The project bases its investigation in the European Union, and the current Core Network Corridors it has defined to strengthen its internal market. Focusing each year on one corridor, it explores regional roles within cross-national supply chains, and the ways these are affected by policy and planning. Students will look at chains from raw materials to manufactured products—located fully or partially within the territories of study—and all the storage, transportation, transhipment and material handling facilities along the way from the site of production (or extraction) to the consumer. They will study rail, road, sea and air transportation routes, and the intermodal hubs that connect them

FALL 2025: PROJECT THESIS
The semester will be framed by the Berlage’s three-year multiformat research program entitled "Fertile Ground," embarking on growing new perspectives, seeking to define settings, places, and contexts in which new ideas of progress for advancing sustainability can be produced. After explorations into present-day’s aspiration and prosperity (The Good Life, 2013–2015), urgencies and austerities (Bare Necessities, 2016–2018) and equilibrium and extremities (Carrying Capacities, 2019-2021), Fertile Ground embraces the need to find new paradigms of growth firmly rooted in ecology, it embraces the current day necessity to engage with the volatility and unpredictability of future developments in order to be able to speculate on a better future. Students will be encouraged to be highly experimental and speculative, adopt a position between theory and practice, while creating visually compelling and intellectually rigorous design-research projects, which can serve as starting points for further PhD research or initiating an independent architectural practice.

PROSEMINARS
Throughout the first two semesters, in conjunction with their designed-based courses, students will engage in a succession of architectural theory and history proseminars taught by leading scholars and practitioners. During the fall semester, Léa-Catherine Szacka will lead a proseminar using oral history to trace the multiplicity of postmodern discourses. In parallel, a proseminar taught by Olaf Gipser will consider architecture as an intellectual discipline that is grounded in the reflection of its own history, the history of cultural ideas, and the dialogue between these two spheres. In the spring semester, the two proseminars will be taught by Vanessa Grossman and Amy Thomas.

MASTER CLASSES
Twice a year, students will work with world-renowned architects, designers, and thinkers in an intensive workshop setting to analyze a relevant issue in the built environment, experimenting with alternative formats of representation and dissemination. Recent master classes have been led by Barry Bergdoll, Francesca Hughes, Bêka & Lemoine, Theo Deutinger, Hans Kollhoff, and Felicity Scott.

PUBLIC PROGRAM
Each semester, a public program will foster a climate of intellectual rigor and deliberate inquiry that challenges the traditionally conceived discipline of architecture. Recent lecturers include Barozzi Veiga, Bruther, Christ & Gantenbein, Keller Easterling, Frida Escobedo, Grafton Architects, Rahul Mehrotra, Joan Ockman, Carlo Ratti, Peter St John, Marina Tabassum, Francesca Torzo, and Mark Wigley.

TEACHING STAFF
The Berlage offers a diverse teaching staff of practitioners, designers, scholars, and researchers, including Jean-Louis Cohen, Salomon Frausto, Filip Geerts, Stephan Petermann, Michiel Riedijk, Martino Tattara, and Nathalie de Vries. Recent guest critics include Grafton Architects, Penelope Curtis, Dick van Gameren, Christine Hawley, Francesca Hughes, Kees Kaan, Sébastien Marot, Alessandra Ponte, Daniel Rosbottom, David van Severen, and Thomas Weaver.

2024 Berlage Dutch Scholarship

Each year, the Berlage awards a scholarship to an outstanding Dutch graduate from one of the universities or academies in the Netherlands. The scholarship is established to support Dutch students who demonstrate academic excellence and wish to join the Berlage's international, one-and-a-half-year English-language Post-Master of Science degree program in architecture and urban design. The scholarship waives the full tuition fee for the degree program from September 2024 to January 2024.Applicants should be graduates from a Dutch master's program in architecture or urbanism and must have achieved excellent study results. As an indication, the student will be among the top 10% of the master's program that was followed. Students can only apply for the scholarship if they meet these criteria.

APPLICATION PROCESS
The following applications materials for the 2024–2026 scholarship should be sent electronically to info@theberlage.nl no later than July 1, 2024:

1. a motivation essay of 1,500 to 2,000 words;
2. two authorized English-language recommendation letters by the graduation supervisor and/or employer(s);
3. an extensive curriculum vitae;
4. a portfolio showing representative examples of design work (academic and/or professional), publications, awards etc.;
5. a certified copy of grade transcript

A proof of English proficiency is not required for graduates from a master taught in English.

Applicants will be informed of the selection committee's decision by half July.