Breda University of Applied Sciences

Bachelor in Built Environment

7 December 2023

Year 1

In your first year, you will explore all aspects of the field of Built Environment and start building your knowledge and skills base, before you choose a field to specialize in. In semester one, you will take a course to introduce you to the field of Built Environment, providing you with sufficient insights and inspiring examples from around the world. You will learn the theory and practice of people and society, how cities work, and how you can research them, analyze them, and (re-)design them. A field trip is usually also part of each semester and you will visit urban projects and organizations that operate in the field. You will observe how your future profession literally shapes society!

You will choose one of the following specialization areas that you will start in your second semester:

• Urban Planning
• Mobility
• Urban Design

In the second semester, there is a lot of focus on how to play a role in projects from your own specialism together with other specialists.

Year 2

In your second year, you will start developing your own individual profile in addition to your specialization area. You will develop and fine-tune your own role within projects by broadening or deepening your knowledge within the field of Built Environment. You can choose courses that we offer, or you can work on research projects that we have running at the academy. Just think of options such as philosophy, sociology, 3D design, Virtual Reality, traffic modeling, or self-driving cars as topics you can add to your own individual profile.

You will apply all this knowledge and all these skills on a continuous basis to come up with even better solutions and designs, presented in a professional manner. You add such products to your portfolio in which you display your own personal and professional development.

In the second year, you will also go on field trips, one of which will be longer and further away in Europe.

Year 3

The third year starts with a half-year placement at a company, organization, or government authority of your choice. Based on your portfolio, you will look for a company and assignment that fits your profile. Of course, this placement can also take place abroad, which enables you to also learn more about different cultures (and often also about yourself!). Completing a placement abroad is something that we strongly encourage you to do.

Instead of a placement at a company, you can also choose to use that half year to work on research projects within the Research and Business Innovation (RBI) program of our academy at BUas. In what we call ‘Learning Communities’, we design innovative solutions and work on the future of urban life in close collaboration between students, lecturers, and professionals from the public and private sectors.

The second half of the third year centers around a large integral, multidisciplinary, and complex project. From your own specialization area and personal profile, you will join a team of other specialists and you will need to bring everything you have learned to the table, working on creating a sustainable and liveable urban society. Your practical experience from the placement enables you to act as the future professional that you are, and allows the team too, together and independently, find solutions to the complex issues at hand.

Year 4

In the first semester of year four, you will take part in a minor program of your choice. This can be diving deeper into your area of specialization, or you may choose to broaden your horizon to areas outside of your own field of study. During the second semester, you will work on your graduation project. As with your placement, the graduation assignment will be at an international company in the Netherlands or abroad.

Some examples of possible graduation assignments are:

• researching travel time estimations in traffic jams with the help of GSM signals;
• designing for a better quality of life in spontaneous settlements;
• research into leisure-related traffic in spatial development;
• planning for water management in coastal cities.

Any topic within Built Environment fitting your own individual profile is possible. You will write a thesis on your findings and defend it in your final exam presentation session.

Pre-master's

BUas offers its own pre-master's program Strategic Business Management and Marketing (SBM). If your academic results are good, you will be offered the opportunity of attending this pre-master’s program in your fourth year. Successful completion of this track will give you direct access, after Breda University of Applied Sciences, to various Master of Science programs in business-related studies in management and marketing at several partner universities. A few examples are the universities of Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam. In this way, it will be possible for you to earn an academic master's degree within five years' time or, after having completed an accelerated three-year track, even within four years' time.

After your fourth year, you can also opt for a pre-master’s program at a Dutch research university to gain direct access to their master’s programs.

Study load

The average hours of study are 32 hours per week. How many hours a week you actually spend studying depends greatly on how motivated you are and how challenging the subject matter is. The study load also differs per week. The last weeks of a term and the examination weeks are relatively busy.

As a bachelor of Built Environment, you are trained to optimize living environments and to design functions and accessibility of areas or locations on the international market. Career examples are strategic designer, urban planner, and manager of sustainable urban mobility at international companies and organizations. Possible employers are multinationals, government services, and consultancy agencies and you will likely be working on urban development challenges in multidisciplinary teams.

Get a job

Accessibility, liveability, safety, sustainability, and social equality are important themes within Built Environment. The work you can do is very diverse but often has to do with the (re)design of a street, neighborhood, region, or even country. But they also involve devising mobility concepts and systems for moving people and goods safely and comfortably.

You can work for municipalities, water authorities, provinces, project developers, research institutes, and consultancy and design firms in positions such as traffic manager, mobility manager, urban manager, strategic planner, area developer, or urban designer.

• Unique and integral combination of mobility, urban planning, and urban design
• Real-life practical assignments in an informal learning community
• Small-scale education with one-to-one coaching