HafenCity University Hamburg

The HCU Hamburg - University of the Built Environment and Metropolitan Development was founded by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in January 2006. With its approx. 2,200 students, HCU is a small university with a focus on addressing current and future issues facing our towns and cities. Our professional excellence is based on the four disciplines which cover the spectrum from house to city: architecture, civil engineering, geomatics, and urban planning. Our reality is changing more rapidly than ever.

New solutions for metropolitan problems therefore demand disciplinary excellence as well as openness to neighbouring disciplines such as social sciences, humanities and metropolitan culture. Our goal at HCU is to foster lifelong learning and the continual search for new solutions. The Studium Fundamentale and the study projects at HCU encourage students to diverge from the usual ways of thinking, develop their ability to reflect as well as to use their powers of judgement in the complex and changing challenges of the future.

The HafenCity University Hamburg was founded by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg on January 1, 2006 as a university for architecture and spatial development through the merger of four departments from three Hamburg universities. 

We started a public debate on the pressing questions, which relate to development, design and the future of our built world so that the opportunities offered by the foundation of such a specialised university can really be benefited from. We want to get to the bottom of the education and research topics of our specialist fields, develop our own strengths within these specific fields, define innovative topics and methods for our future interdisciplinary orientation as well as develop interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education and research fields. Together we want to develop new approaches to the problems of our cities in the 21st century.

The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany, with its 1.8 million inhabitants is the second largest city in Germany. Economically and culturally, Hamburg is also the centre of all Northern Germany. 3.5 million people live in the metropolitan region of Hamburg - for them, Hamburg is a shopping and cultural metropolis. With 755 square kilometres, the city area is seven times larger than Paris and two and a half times larger than London. Up to 14% of the city area is made up of green spaces and recreational areas.

Hamburg boasts 31 theatres, six music halls, 10 cabarets and 50 state and private museums. They range from the Kunsthalle Art Museum and the State Opera to music clubs on the Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn, known not only to sailors world-wide as the "Sin Mile", has numerous bars, cafés and discos as well as many other interesting sites not to be seen elsewhere. The "Kiez", as the natives call it, even gave the Beatles their start in the early 1960s.

The programme coordinators as well as the International Office can provide information needed for obtaining a visa, etc. Additionally, student "Welcome Buddies" will be of assistance in all practical matters upon arrival.