Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid

MACa is the first and only official university Master’s degree in Architectural Communication and Mediation offered jointly by the Complutense University of Madrid and the Polytechnic University of Madrid (a dual degree awarded by both universities). It is a 60 ECTS Master’s programme delivered over two consecutive semesters, spanning twelve months, with breaks at different times. Teaching takes place mainly in a workshop–laboratory classroom at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM), in the afternoon, to facilitate compatibility with students’ professional activity. The programme unfolds within a hypermedia space–time framework, conceived as an environment capable of hosting, enhancing, and structuring mediation and communication activities through words and images, across any medium, setting, and platform that enables the generation of knowledge in the architectural field. The teaching strategy supports project-oriented learning (Project Oriented Learning) and develops a sequential structure of specific actions linked to different formats, variables, and/or agents within the architectural communication process. These actions take place within seven courses in the Project Module, which develop real communication and mediation projects covering all phases of the process. One of them—the global project—will design, manage, and deliver an international event related to communication, to be held in June at ETSAM. The remaining courses in the other modules—the theoretical, methodological, and instrumental modules—run alongside the projects, and their content is incorporated as required by the progress strategy of each specific project and by the overall evolution of the Master’s programme. This guarantees fundamental knowledge of communication, mediation, and architectural design, as well as the ability to generate research processes linked to practice and to handle the tools necessary to carry them out. The Master’s Final Project (TFM), worth 12 ECTS, is conceived as a module in its own right—the TFM module—with its own dedicated time-space for developing the work. This period is extended by the summer break and intensified by a specific project applied to the communication of the TFM, as a particular objective of this Master’s programme. The Master’s programme also envisages linking the projects developed by students to educational innovation projects and research projects of different kinds, through the Hypermedia research group coordinated by Atxu Amann y Alcocer, in order to ensure dissemination and to foster continuity of activity around them. The research produced for the Master’s Final Project will provide the basis for its direct continuation as a doctoral thesis for those who wish to enter the UPM Doctoral Programme in Architectural Communication (DOCA).