Spring Semester Elective 2028

This course combines the study of architecture and art history with the practice of urban sketching. Set in the vibrant city of Barcelona, students will explore its rich artistic and architectural heritage, from the iconic works of Antoni Gaudí to cutting-edge contemporary design. The course includes guided tours of landmark sites, excursions to culturally significant neighborhoods, and hands-on sketching sessions that capture the essence of Barcelona’s urban landscape.

This course delves into the historical and contemporary role of technology in shaping artistic practices and consumption. It examines key technological innovations and their impact on how art is created, distributed, and experienced. Students will engage with
theoretical concepts, analyze case studies, and develop their own projects inspired by the fusion of technology and art.

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of Art Direction, exploring visual storytelling, branding, conceptual development, and the role of the art director in various creative industries. Students will develop a strategic understanding of visual communication and gain hands-on experience in crafting compelling visual narratives across different media platforms.

This course provides a comprehensive examination of the art market, exploring its economic structures and the multiple agents that shape it. Students will analyze the role of traditional players such as auction houses, galleries, and collectors, alongside the influence of curators, independent art spaces, and new digital platforms. The course will address the financial aspects of the art market, including valuation techniques, investment strategies, and the effects of globalization. Emphasis will be placed on critical discussions about market ethics, sustainability, and the evolving impact of digital technologies such as NFTs.

This course approaches graphic design with a focus on strategy and communication, making the most of design skills to create expressive projects and compelling narratives. Students will discover communication and conceptualization tools and will learn how to incorporate them in a project of their interest. The methodology can be applied in any graphic design project, ranging from brands and advertising to posters and editorial projects. This course will allow the students to engage projects with a broader perspective and methods, and to enter brading and advertising projects with improved confidence and integration in an interdisciplinary communication team.

This course introduces the principles and techniques of Graphic Design and Digital Art. It covers foundational topics such as composition, typography, color theory, branding, and digital illustration. Students will engage with industry-standard tools to create visually
compelling designs across various media, including print, web, and multimedia platforms. Through hands-on projects and critiques, students will develop their creative and technical skills while exploring contemporary design trends and digital artistic practices.

This course offers artists and creatives a practical introduction to the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for artistic expression. Students will explore how AI can be used to create, enhance, and inspire works of art across mediums. By engaging with cutting-edge software and platforms, participants will gain the technical and creative confidence to integrate AI into their artistic practice while critically examining its implications for the future of art and creativity.

Brands have settled in our physical and mental landscape to such an extent that it would be hard to understand this era without their presence. Some brands live among us like global giants, some are only known in the local neighborhood, some have lasted for centuries and some are born right now. But what do we really know about them? Why do snacks, cities and football teams need brands? What does it take to design one? Where do we start and how can it be done? This course approaches the topic of brand design by understanding the brand’s public image as the final result of a long process. That process involves different actors and functions, and depends on the context, the brand size and the desired positioning. There are many aspects to be taken into account and having a good idea is not enough. You also need to reinforce your individual and teamwork skills to gather information appropriately, act responsibly, plan strategically and think critically.

The aim is to understand the dynamics of product development and innovation. “Design thinking” is presented as a useful methodology for designing innovative products. The design thinking process is user-centred and prototype-driven. As a participant in design thinking, you will be part of a small multidisciplinary team and work through a hands-on innovation challenge from start to finish. You will walk away from the course with a strong understanding of the key tenets of design thinking and be able to execute them within your organisation.

Many courses on digital business are focused mainly or even exclusively on digital marketing and e-commerce. Those have been the areas where the most obvious changes have been taking place for the last decade, but they are not necessarily the areas where companies can expect the most radical transformations in the near future. To the traditional focus on Promotion and Place Ps in the conventional Marketing Mix we add consideration to another two Ps, Product and Price, in order to have the whole picture of the new Digital Business Marketing Mix. We also focus on other management areas equally affected by the new digital paradigm, as is the case of IT and organisational issues. In all cases, we look not just at transformations that have already taken place but also at those changes still to come with the potential of becoming key disruptions in the way businesses have been managed for decades.

The recent financial crisis and its impact in todays world underscore the importance of financial risk management. This course introduces financial risk management with a focus on practical implementation and application. Thus, the course provides the concepts and tools used to measure and mitigate risk for firms.

Coming soon

Marketing is needed to operate nationally, internationally, and worldwide. The principles may be the same, but there will be many differences when your company decides to start doing business at a global level. The people, the language, the culture, the way of life, and various other aspects could become obstacles for company strategy abroad. In order to use your marketing mix effectively in an international context, you need to adapt it completely to each local market. Global Marketing deals with how to work with consumers, channels, competitors and markets, bearing in mind the win-win principle. It is not just a matter of prices and products. It is much more than this and a good marketing manager has to know how things work. Summing up, Global Marketing is the process of doing business at a global level, promoting greater sales and customer satisfaction by gaining a better understanding of foreign consumers of goods and services produced by your company.

As an introduction to leadership and management skills, the aim of the course is to familiarise students with practical issues within the business world regarding effectiveness, organization, communication and ethics, by taking a look at the leadership role of both managers and collaborators in the organizations. During the course students will be required to work on their personal and interpersonal skills.Course objectives: To identify the roles of managers and leaders and their impact on businesses and society. To learn about topics such as management, leadership, effectiveness, organization, communication and business ethics. To develop management and leadership skills through a personal project. To develop teamwork skills and apply them in a group project. To develop analytical and creative skills in order to apply them in the projects.

One of the industries with fastest development in all around the world is the luxury one. Luxury does not suffer crisis and it is demonstrated that during crisis the sales of this kind of products (from houses, watches to jewels), increases qualitative and quantitative with no problems.

Barcelona is without a doubt one of the most active cities in Europe today and is an ideal setting for the fashion and design industry: international competitiveness, marketing trends, consumer behavior and cool hunting. The city meets all the necessary conditions to allow designers and creators of all sectors to compare ideas, trends, and projects, with the fashion industry as a meeting point for them all. Big fashion labels (such as Zara, Bershka, Mango, Desigual, Custo, Springfield) and young fashion designers are already pushing this advantage and the Barcelona label is positioned as a symbol for creativity. The designers of the future will need to understand and create for the contemporary fashion system and its industry using marketing tools appropriately.In order to develop a marketing and communication plan for the fashion industry, students will combine technical and theoretical knowledge of marketing with creative development and cultural knowledge.

The objectives of the course are:- To understand the basic psychological processes involved in human communication, as well as the different psychological theories and paradigms of interpersonal, group and mass communication.- To be able to analyze and understand the underlying processes in persuasive communication (propaganda, publicity and advertising) and its effects.- To analyze the influence of the culture of the mass media in society and in the development of personal and group identity.- To acquire applied knowledge related to oral, textual, visual and audiovisual languages in mass communication.- To be able to develop a complete communication plan.- To defend the communication plan by means of a presentation including oral, textual and audiovisual communication.

Retailers today must make complex decisions about selecting the appropriate target market and locations, determining what merchandise and service to offer, training and motivating retail employees, and deciding how to price products and present merchandise. The objective of this course is to enrich learners understanding of retailing. To survive and prosper in the retail jungle, retailers must build a path based on well-developed strategic plans and use state of art information and distribution systems to implement them. Thus, learners are exposed to well established retail strategic framework and relevant research encompassing various areas of retailing. An applied perspective is adopted whereby learners are encouraged to apply concepts and perspectives learned in the course.

This course is aimed at understanding the entrepreneurship processes and operations. Starting a company requires multidisciplinary skills on business management. In this course students will be exposed to both the fundamentals of business, and the practical aspects of identifying and evaluating business ideas and moving them forward. The contents will be delivered combining multiple methodologies like case based learning, project based learning, invited speakers and problem based learning.

This course introduces students to cybersecurity in embedded and industrial systems, focusing on
protecting connected devices, industrial control infrastructures, and cyber-physical environments.
Students learn security principles, threat landscapes, and protection mechanisms for industrial control
systems (ICS), SCADA platforms, and Industrial IoT ecosystems. Emphasis is placed on secure
architectures, industrial network protection, risk assessment, incident response, and resilience
strategies in real-world critical infrastructure scenarios.

This course provides an introduction to statistical data analysis with a focus on managing, modeling,
and analyzing datasets. Students will learn fundamental statistical techniques to work with large
datasets and extract meaningful insights. Emphasis is placed on exploratory data analysis, statistical
inference, regression, classification, and machine learning methods applied to real-world data.

This course provides students with an introduction to principal concepts and methods of
thermodynamic Systems and processes, heat transfer and fluid mechanics. Topics covered in the
course include fluid properties, pressure, hydrostatics and control volume analysis, mass and
momentum conservation.

This course introduces engineering students to the principles of innovation, entrepreneurship, and
technology commercialization. It equips students with the skills needed to transform technical ideas
into viable products, services, or startups.
The course explores innovation processes, creativity techniques, design thinking, and lean startup
methodologies. Students will learn how to identify opportunities, validate ideas, design business
models, and pitch technology-driven ventures.
The course combines theoretical frameworks with practical exercises, case studies, and project
development. By the end of the course, students will have developed and presented an innovative
engineering solution supported by a basic entrepreneurial strategy.

This course provides an in-depth introduction to sustainable energy systems and high-performance
green buildings, with a focus on the engineering principles that drive energy efficiency, renewable
integration, and decarbonization. Students will explore energy conversion technologies, distributed
generation, storage systems, and smart grid integration alongside the physical principles governing
building thermal performance and HVAC systems.

Emphasis is placed on quantitative analysis of energy demand, heat transfer, system efficiency, life-
cycle carbon assessment, and economic feasibility. The course examines renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind, battery storage solutions, and microgrid architectures, as well as
building envelope design, passive strategies, and advanced heating and cooling systems.
Students will also analyse green building certification frameworks, net-zero energy design strategies,
and resilience planning for climate-adaptive infrastructure. Through engineering-based case studies
and applied system modelling, the course develops the technical competencies required to design,
evaluate, and optimise sustainable energy and building systems in real-world contexts

This course provides students with training in the development of web applications using Internet-
based client–server architectures. It covers the functioning of these architectures as well as the tools and methodologies required to develop scalable, agile, and sustainable applications. Different server-
side frameworks, client-side MVC tools, and cloud technologies are introduced.