Transatlantic Architectural Discourse

TAD is initiated by a team of faculty members, staff and students in the Department of Architecture at Technical University of Darmstadt. Our partners include universities, cities, design and planning firms and funding bodies based in Germany and the United States. We are planning to extend this network to other actors involved in shaping the built environment and from further countries in Europe and the Americas. Our vision is to reflect on strategic development of cities through Transatlantic perspectives, and inform city planning and architectural design through strategic partnerships and between selected city regions and urban agglomerations.

The prototype project Comparative Urbanism , started in 2021, is a collaboration between the Department of Architecture at TU Darmstadt and the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech. Students from both departments participated in the transatlantic course in which they designed and developed research projects to identify similarities and differences in urban design in the United States and Germany.

The results of the seminars were summarized in online publications: Public Life Studies , 2021 / The Healthy City , 2022

This website informs on TAD’s past, ongoing and future activities.

The collaboration “Comparative Urbanism” is funded by the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) through the IVAC program (International Virtual Academic Collaboration) on the initiative of the International Office at the Department of Architecture (IO(A)), which also organizes the project. IVAC aims to enhance the academic collaboration between German Universities and international partners through the exploration of digital tools and platforms that facilitate the collective learning experience. The cooperation with Virgina Tech is a test run for future collaborations of our department.

^{International Office at the Department of Architecture
Dipl.-Ing. Arch. Valentina Visnjic Lang}