Civil engineering works are sited in the landscape. The landscape in turn is an ideal focus for understanding public works in their physical and environmental medium and appraising the feel, meaning and socio-cultural significance of the built culture.

Notionally, the landscape stems from our relations with nature: when afforded meaning, territory becomes cultural landscape. In this course place is viewed as territorial experience. The emphasis is on ecological functionality, restoration of the environment where works are located and participatory planning and management. The landscape is analysed from the vantage points of perception and experience and the cultural evolution of the conceit are introduced. Its representation throughout art history and culmination in land art and contemporaneity are addressed. The civil engineering landscape is built in response to an essential urge to inhabit the world: to expand with roads, straddle with bridges, heighten with structures, mitigate with waterworks, protect with harbours, energise with power and co-exist in cities.

The subject is graded not on the grounds of exams, but of term papers and class participation. The individual and group tasks proposed, which call for analysis, representation and communication, entail using sources of information on public works and the landscape (literature, collections, archives) as well as analytical and representational tools (computer software, mobile apps and new technologies). Three complementary activities are involved: formulating an analytical and representational interpretative map; drafting a text using scientific article or congress paper format, with the respective elements –title, abstract, keywords, illustrations, citations, references; and oral presentation of the paper in the classroom. Taken together, students' papers are regarded as a collaborative endeavour embracing the combined effort deployed by all the participants. A database is built from the whole, including the various contributions with their respective identification and georeferenced location. The system involves more than the mere organisation and storage of the respective papers: it helps students to directly and effectively understand the territorial importance of civil engineering and its configuration through collaboration in which participation, with the concomitant contributions and meanings, shapes the identity of the very place where they are sited.

This cross-curricular subject on the cultural and technological value of public works introduces students to the history of civil engineering, its major works and authors, materials and construction processes. The works, set in their historic, cultural and technological context, serve as a basis for critical discourse broaching territorial, social, heritage-related, creative and aesthetic considerations.

The course reviews construction from the ancient world to today, analysing works in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome; Medieval Romanesque and Gothic; the Renaissance; eighteenth century industrialisation and iron and steel-based engineering; and nineteenth century engineering with its intrinsically revolutionary impact. It addresses the origins of concrete, the widespread acceptance of its reinforced version and the invention of the prestressed material, while devoting particular attention to today's engineering in connection with dams, harbours, high-speed trains, bridges, buildings and skyscrapers. Outstanding authors and engineers are discussed, including historical figures such as Betancourt, Perronet, Smeaton, Telford, Brunel, Stephenson, Paxton, Eiffel, Maillart, Torroja, Nervi, Freyssinet, along with highly reputed contemporaries such as Manterola and Schlaich.

The subject reinforces both knowledge per se and communication in civil engineering. It encourages students to convey discourses, messages and ideas in writing, orally and via multimedia. Voluntary work, performed individually or in teams, develops analytical and communication skills. Course assignments vary in type and format: documentary, bibliographic or biographic texts; videos; scale models or machine mock-ups; inventions and works; maps and representations; photo albums; plays; murals and any other proposal that enriches discourse. The works, presented in the classroom orally and recorded on video to document analysis, are exhibited in a collective showing in the School of Civil Engineering vestibule.

This core subject of the teaching unit, which integrates cultural and humanistic values into civil engineers' training, has been present in the School's curriculum from the outset. It connects with the tradition of outstanding former professors (Vicente Machimbarrena, José Antonio García-Diego, Carlos Haes, Santiago Castro Cardús, José Antonio Fernández Ordóñez and Miguel Aguiló) and other engineers (José de Echegaray, Idelfonso Cerdà, Arturo Soria, José Antonio García-Diego, Ángel del Campo, Juan Benet and Carlos Fernández Casado, to name a few) who, in close association with the School of Civil Engineering's teaching unit on Art, have been distinguished as bearers of such values.

This cross-curricular subject addresses design methodologies applied to the idea of civil engineering works. The course stimulates students' creativity based on an understanding of types and historic and modern references to similar endeavours.

The subject runs parallel to student progress in design and conception. All enrolees must design a work of civil engineering in a specific geographic place, which varies from one academic year to the next (New York in 2015, Sydney in 2016, London in 2017). The projects, chosen by students in keeping with their professors' guidelines, involve a wide spectrum of specialities: transport infrastructure (roads, railways, bicycle paths), waterworks (canals, dams, weirs, tanks, supply and drainage), coastal works (beaches, seaside promenades, corrective works, docks, wharfs, dikes, backwalls, maritime terminals), structures (bridges, footbridges, towers, distinctive architecture, stadiums, roofs, airports, stations) and urban projects (squares, streets, boulevards, parks, car parks).

The guidelines for the various specialities are established on the grounds of a common understanding of the chosen site (personality, history, scale, needs), highlighting differences and common characteristics. Conception, which stems from place and type, is followed in consecutive order by a study of alternatives, the conceptual approach to be adopted, critical analysis of references, choice of the solution, formulation of the project brief and preparation of graphics on DIN A-1 panels. The process is monitored through shared tutoring guided by course professors. Students' design, graphic expression and communication skills are enhanced through project preparation and presentation in different stages.

The subject is closely associated with real-life professional practice and draws its greatest potential from its cross-curricular approach by teaming students from across the full range of specialities.