Schools

School of Architecture and Art

The school of Architecture and Art, Central South University, was founded in 2012. The School is merged by former College of Art and former College of Architecture and Urban Planning. It is a comprehensive school which includes art education, scientific research, design practice and artistic performance. It is a new-type school with the conceptions of “Comprehensive Art”, “Synthesized Design” and “Diversified Creativity”. The school has 117 teaching and administrative staffs, including 16 professors, 30 associate professors, 65 lecturers and 2 assistant lecturers. Among the academic staffs, 9 are granted doctoral advisors and 50 are granted master’s supervisors. The school is composed of 7 departments and 10 research centers, which are: Department of Architecture, Department of Urban and Rural Planning, Department of Industrial Design, Department of Visual Communication and Digital Media Design, Department of Environmental Art Design, Department of Music and Dance, Department of Fine Art, Research Center of Architecture and Urban Studies, Research Institution of Urban and Rural Planning, Research Center of Industrial Design, Research Center of Regional Music and Dance Culture.

The school is multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary based, including 7 first-level discipline subjects, 5 authorized first-level discipline master’s degree subjects: Architecture, Urban and Rural Planning, Landscape Architecture and Gardening, Artistic Theory, and Design Science; and 1 authorized second level discipline master’s subject: Fine Art. Besides, there are 3 authorized Professional Master’s Degree subjects: Architecture, Urban and Rural Planning, and MFA. Cooperating with the school of Civil Engineering and the school of Literature, the school is authorized to the following two doctoral degree subjects: Civil Engineering Planning and management, and Philosophy of Art. Among all the subjects of the school, four of them are selected as key disciplinary areas of the university level, which are: Architecture, Urban and Rural Planning, Artistic Theory, and Design Science. In addition, the subject of Fine Art is appointed as preliminary key discipline of the university. At the undergraduate level, the school offers 6 subject areas: Architecture, Urban and Rural Planning, Industrial Design, Art Design (including Visual communication Design, Environmental Art Design, and Digital Media Design), Music Performance (including Music Instrumental Performance and Vocal Music Performance), and Dance Performance. Among the 6 undergraduate subjects, 4 are assigned as key subjects of the university level: Architecture, Urban and Rural Planning, Industrial Design, and Art Design. Moreover, our undergraduate architecture and urban and rural planning programmes are fully accredited by the education ministry of China and the academic degrees committee of the state council. There are all together around 1700 students in the school, including 1300 full-time undergraduate students and 400 post-graduate students. The school attaches much attention to its education quality, and commits itself to cultivate elites in the area of architecture and arts, with solid knowledge and creative minds. The students of the school have already achieved abundant awards of both domestic and international competitions. In the past 20 years, more than 5000 students who graduated from the school have contributed to different levels of the community.

The school attaches great importance to international communication with the academic community worldwide. It has established cooperative relationship with universities and institutions in 10 different countries, e.g. USA, UK, Germany, ect. The school has also developed a “3+1” program with some universities and institutions abroad to offer opportunities for the outstanding students of the school to either pay short-term visit, or pursue higher level education in the target universities and institutions.

Now with the strong academic reputation and sufficient resources support from the CSU, the school is growing steadily and rapidly. The whole staff of the school is devoted themselves to practicing the motto of the school ‘To seek virtue and worship beauty, to learn for practice’. The school will further exploit its superiority in inter-disciplinary subject system, and based on the education concept of Baohau develop at full-speed to pursue the goal of becoming one of the top schools in the relative field of the world in the near future.