Resource Efficient and Sustainable Building
M.Sc.
Overview
Solving global challenges such as climate change, the destruction of the environment, resource rivalries, demographic change and urbanisation, as well as the challenges that these pose for our societies, are among the central questions of our time. A vital role is played here by the construction industry when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions, adapting our towns and cities, neighbourhoods and buildings to climate change, reducing the use of resources (e.g. land, material and water), and adjusting the built-up environment to rapidly-changing economic and societal circumstances.
Over and above this, roughly 66 hectares of land are approved as housing and traffic development zones in Germany every day , making them unavailable for other uses such as food production, ecological compensation areas, recreation areas or water storage. These are alarming figures given the current size of the global population’s ecological footprint, and in light of the fact that we are overtaxing our planet by more than 1½ times its biocapacity, which can already be felt today. Against the background of ongoing, rapid global population growth and the consequences which this has for equally rapidly rising CO2 emissions and resource consumption, there is an urgent need to place the management of the construction industry on an exclusively sustainable footing.
Which further expertise and skills will I acquire?
The Master Resource Efficient and Sustainable Building programme graduates are to be able to think holistically and offer their services in resource efficient, sustainable construction as particularly well-qualified engineers, architects and planners. Given their broad-based specialist skills and their interdisciplinary thinking and working, they will help amongst other things to implement the stipulations of national and international law with regard to resource efficient construction. To this end, they will develop constructional design solutions for climate protection, which will continue to be urgently needed, and will help satisfy the increasing need to adjust buildings and neighbourhoods to face the advance of climate change.
To this end, the M.Sc. RNB programme graduates will have the necessary skills in drafting and planning at the scale levels of buildings, neighbourhoods, towns and cities as well as regions. They will also have detailed knowledge of the skill areas of construction physics, building services engineering, structural design and life cycle analysis that are relevant to resource efficient, sustainable construction. They will be familiar with the interactions and synergies of these fields, and will be able to apply the knowledge that they have gained in planning and implementing resource efficient buildings and neighbourhoods.
As "interface specialists", they have both the necessary abilities to optimise the resource requirements, taking account of aspects that are relevant to sustainability such as ecology, economics and sociocultural factors, as well as being able to communicate both with creative architects and planners and with analytically- and technically-orientated engineers, and to communicate their knowledge in a goal-driven and effective manner. The abilities to optimise building and neighbourhood concepts in a resource-driven, quantifiable manner on the basis of engineering methods and to effectively integrate the knowledge that they have gained into the planning process, taking the entire life cycle into account, constitute special qualifications of graduates from this programme.
The Master’s programme in Resource Efficient and Sustainable Building (RNB) creates an independent activity profile of a sustainability expert in the construction sector who is able to close the gap between classical civil engineers, environmental engineers, architects and building services engineers. Graduates from the Master’s programme in Resource Efficient and Sustainable Building will be able to analyse connections and insights related to all aspects of sustainable design and building in order to develop solutions that implement resource efficient, sustainable buildings at the interdisciplinary interface between man, buildings, infrastructure and the environment.
Which professional opportunities can I take up with this qualification?
The following career choices are open to graduates:
- architects’, engineers’ or other planning offices,
- public authorities (e.g. building and planning offices, approval authorities),
- experts, consultants,
- construction companies,
- industrial production,
- trade and commerce,
- research and teaching, and
- further training and development.
Structure
The first semester of the degree programme serves above all to provide fundamental knowledge in the four skill areas :
- Architecture, city and landscape
- Building services engineering and renewable energies
- Building physics and energy efficiency
- Building technology and life cycle engineering
The obligatory and elective modules offered here ensure that all of the programme’s graduates have the core skills forming the basis for resource efficient, sustainable construction. In preparation for the interdisciplinary project, graduates of the Bachelor’s programme in Architecture attend the module entitled “Physical principles of energy-efficient construction”, and graduates with a Bachelor’s degree in engineering attend the module entitled “Aspects of sustainable urbanism”.
The above core skills are expanded upon in further obligatory modules in the second semester of the degree programme. The central element of this programme is the “Interdisciplinary Project”, in which the skills obtained so far are implemented and expanded in teams with an interdisciplinary composition (e.g. B.A. AR, B.Sc. BI and B.Sc. UI) in a design-orientated project. The focus here is placed on the interaction between the analysis, for instance of the life cycle-based resource consumption of alternative solutions, and on the synthesis in the context of the design-orientated development of energy concepts in the energy retrofitting of existing buildings and construction of new ones. In this context, the obligatory module entitled “Application of a life cycle analysis” is also part of the second semester of the degree programme, which is directly connected with the application-orientated development work carried out in the “Interdisciplinary project” (IDP). The work carried out in the IDP is highly practical in its orientation. In addition to expanding specialist skills, imparting social skills (e.g. teamwork and team leadership, visual, verbal and non-verbal communication, etc.) in preparation for the IDP is a major element of the first semester of the degree programme and, along with the project, also forms a component of the second semester.
Because of the long list of options available, the third semester of the degree programme offers students the opportunity to expand their specialist knowledge in a targeted manner. Moreover, the third semester offers an opportunity to both obtain and contribute specialist knowledge while spending time at other Universities abroad.
The fourth semester of the degree programme focuses on the Master’s thesis and the Master’s colloquium.
Costs
Tuition
HK$97,347.36
(international)
HK$0.00
(home)
Funding
Admissions
Qualifications
Selection takes place through an aptitude assessment procedure. Aptitude assessment is a two-part procedure after the submission of an official application to a program. In this procedure, the TUM school or department determines whether you meet the specific requirements for its master’s degree program.
In the initial stages, the grades you obtained during your bachelor's program, as well as your written documents, will be evaluated using a point system. Depending on the amount of points accumulated, applicants are either immediately admitted, rejected or invited to an admissions interview.
Language requirements
TOEFL
88
DSH
2