It is open to graduates and young professionals from the fields of architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture and regional planning as well as to graduates with other Bachelor degrees and with relevant professional experience. Our philosophy is based on transnational learning exchange between students with different regional backgrounds applied to a specific urban reality. Our joint IUSD Lab´s experiential learning hubs are based in Egypt (IUSD Lab Cairo) and Germany (IUSD Lab Stuttgart) and embedded into a network of international partner institutions and universities around the world.

Teaching at both universities is based on interdisciplinary teamwork and on site-specific projects in cooperation with local communities and with different stakeholders, organizations and institutions, locally and internationally. IUSD students acquire reflective and practical skills to develop integrated and transdisciplinary solutions for planning, managing and designing landscapes, cities and buildings.

The IUSD program has been jointly developed and established since 2011 by the two partner universities University of Stuttgart and Ain Shams University, Cairo. The double-degree program with the first year in Stuttgart University and the second year at Ain Shams University in Cairo serves as its backbone and is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) through the program “Development-Related Postgraduate Courses”. The double-degree program is supported by a high-profile advisory board and by various German, Egyptian and international organizations, including UNHabitat, GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH), and CEDARE (Centre for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe). These partnerships offer IUSD students numerous opportunities to test and develop skills in challenging and complex applied contexts.

Starting in 2016, both universities also offer the IUSD as a single degree program in both locations, with different study and exchange opportunities.