Master of Interior Architecture

Adaptive Reuse. Exploring Spatial Potentialities & the Poetics of the Existing

The faculty of Architecture and Arts welcomes applications for an innovative international master’s program in interior architecture with a strong focus on adaptive reuse.

It is safe to assume that (interior) architects will have to deal increasingly with the transformation and adaptation of the built environment. Today, the role of architecture is being redefined due to demographic, economic, and ecological challenges. Transition and reuse take center stage in the practice and theory of the profession. This academic master’s program is innovative as it considers preservation through the act of adaptive reuse instead of mere conservation and restoration.

Rather than relying on an archaeological perspective, it emphasizes a designerly approach to give new and unexpected energy to buildings. Therefore, the program seeks to train students who explore and activate the rich potential of existing sites through design supported by research and theory.

Ideally positioned in a region full of historical sites with various identities (cultural, artistic, religious, and industrial), the faculty is in close geographic proximity to a rich laboratory of potential cases that span 600 years. Students are taught to conceive of these sites as palimpsests rather than monuments. Subsequently, they are encouraged to explore the beauty, memory, hidden qualities, and broader potentialities of the sites handed down by our predecessors.

Finally, the master’s program departs from the conventional understanding of the ‘interior’ as a quantifiable spatial category by underlining its richer artistic and ethical dimensions as Public Interior.

Hasselt University is a young, dynamic centre of expertise for teaching, research, and service provision. It regards it as its social responsibility to contribute actively to a sustainable and innovative region. It aspires to be a hub in this innovation web. Hasselt University, therefore, attaches great importance to cooperation with other centres of expertise, companies, government agencies and organizations in Limburg and beyond.

As one of the drivers of regional innovation, Hasselt University focuses specifically on:

• educating students so that they become highly skilled, employable professionals;
• conducting applied and fundamental research in specific fields and encouraging practical applications from that research;
• spreading its knowledge and expertise through collaboration with industry and other external partners;
• developing foreign partnerships.

Basic principles in the implementation of these key roles are academic and scientific freedom, social engagement, attention to ethical standards and awareness of wider implications – without ideological discrimination.

For Hasselt University, the development of the human potential of all its students and staff comes first.

Facts and figures

6.433 students

604 doctoral students (of which 43% international students)

1.400 members of staff

• independent academic staff
• assisting academic staff
• administrative and technical staff

2 campuses

• Diepenbeek Campus
• Hasselt Campus

17 Bachelor programmes

30 Master programmes (5 English taught)

6 faculties + 2 school

• Architecture and Arts
• Business Management
• Medicine and Life Sciences
• Engineering Technology
• Law
• Rehabilitation Sciences
• Sciences
• • School of Transportation Sciences
• • School of Educational Studies

4 Research institutes + 3 Researh Centres

• Biomedical Research Institute (BIOMED)
• Data Science Institute (Censtat)
• Institute for Materials Research (imo-imomec)
• Institute for Environmental Sciences (CMK)
• Expertise Centre for Digital Media (EDM)
• Transportation Research Centre (IMOB)
• Limburg Clinical Research Centre (LCRC)