Design teaching applies professional and technical skills within a process that is culturally and theoretically grounded. The design discipline is understood as a cultural practice that engages social, economic and political issues and as a critical tool of inquiry that integrates process with product and methodology with representation in a multidisciplinary manner.

Inquiry through design comes with an acute awareness of our existence in the region with its multitude of languages and cultures. There is also an awareness of our location within Beirut, which acts a source and a subject of study in studios and research projects. The city, with its exceptional physical fabric and cultural formats, serves as a topic of study that links the undergraduate and the graduate programs of study in Architecture, Graphic Design and Planning and facilitates for a close interaction between them and with the professional community. The discourse on the city is therefore intense and pluralistic, from the graphic images it generates to the physical environment it structures through the production of buildings and ensembles of buildings at the scale of the metropolis.

The curriculum is structured to ensure that students progress from basic skills and knowledge to advanced critical applications and independent thinking. It leads them from foundation courses to advanced thematic and interdisciplinary courses to an independent design thesis project. The distribution of the courses is designed to ensure both a solid training in the field and an appropriate exposure to related fields as well as fields of their own interest. The distribution combined with the multiple options offered, facilitate for the students to take part in molding their own education through selection of thematic studios, field electives, free electives and humanities and social science courses. The target is therefore twofold: a well trained professional and a well rounded independent thinker.