February 16, 2026
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Summary of approved PhD theses

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Innovative approaches to passenger transport design
Mgr. art. Ondrej Dóci, ArtD.

This dissertation, titled “Innovative approaches to design in the field of passenger transport”, examines new ways, techniques, and methods how to design both a car as a whole and its parts separately. Carmakers have been following the same rules in car development over the decades. Unlike in the past, new user activities, higher demands and different needs of users as well as those of designers and engineers call for new approaches in designing a car as an industrial product. Mixed reality plays an important role in updating the design processes and tools, which not only provide designers with a more realistic view of a product during the working process, but they also generate financial and time savings. With the help of various software programmes, used by the game industry, it is possible to observe the behaviour, capture a movement of users in the car and include it in the process of interior and user experience designers. The workshops on this topic with design students of both bachelor and master’s degrees were organised in the course of the work, where the discursive and speculative design methods were verified. Discursive design became a methodological base for leading the process. Based on the results gained at the workshops the applied methods were incorporated into the proposed creation process of a vehicle as both an industrial and utility product. The results and benefits of this dissertation have been demonstrated on a workflow case study as well as the author’s virtual concept of a Škoda car.

Applications of virtual reality in automotive design
Mgr. art. Miroslav Truben, ArtD.

Digitisation, connectivity, and evolving autonomous driving are changing not just user experience in the interiors of contemporary vehicles, but simultaneously they are ever more changing the way we design them. The goal of the project is to research the formation of digital design tools in the field of automotive interior design, with the focus on interactive and experimental testing of design proposals in virtual reality from the initial phases of the projects. The outcome of the theoretical part of the project will be the documentation of use case studies from the development of interior designs, which are being made in cooperation with students of the Faculty of Architecture and Design, Slovak Technical University. Based on them the doctoral student will evaluate the potential and suitability of these new evolving technologies of extended reality in different phases of the designing process. Practical part of the project should be the author’s autonomous interior design of a vehicle, by which the doctoral student will showcase the findings and their application in the design process. The project is a part of the research project Virtual architectures and the building of interior automotive simulator, working with elements of virtual and mixed reality. Projects are made in cooperation with Škoda Design.

Pretoria: Architecture and town-planning conceptions of Modernism and a traditional town
Cornelius van der Westhuizen, MTech.

Cities are the most complex of human creations. These habitats simultaneously represent the most noble of aspirational and representative national identities of their individual parts—as well as often encouraging the absolute worst aspects of human nature to manifest. Accordingly, there are cities that have greatly contributed to advancing our understanding of spatial practices and the radical development of urbanisation and its associated planning principles, whether through well-documented and broadcasted education, or by conquest and domination. Conversely, there are cities that exist on the periphery of the global stage, often neglected and overlooked when describing their greater territorial networks and therefore mischaracterised. This dissertation is concerned with the latter type of habitat. The dissertation aims to establish a narrative to document the story of urbanism in South Africa. This is done through tracing the origins of planning regulations and their influence, then confronting the discussion and current knowledge of the transformation of the physical urban landscape within the capital city, Pretoria. Unlike colonial cities in other parts of the “Global South”—the South African urban structural idiom presents a unique transformation of typical planning conditions and the application of their associated foreign influences. This research into the planning and architectural history of Pretoria is not a new specialisation; it does, however attempt to establish a more coherent and collected narrative of the previously researched themes through a hybrid research methodology. The focus of this dissertation involves the state of the traditional town and historical Central Area of the city and is divided into two sections: the first part introduces the historical context, presented as a timeline of events, and the second part analyses the historical narrative, identifies key moments in the history and then develops the argument further. The primary aim of the research into Pretoria is thus to bring to the foreground the most significant influences that effected and affected change in the approach to planning and architecture in the South African landscape. Accordingly, a necessary historical context was first established to track the inherently indigenous Afrikaner perceptions and interpretations of space making and planning, which was further subdivided into similarly grouped themes that described the “zeitgeist” and phenomenological identities. This historical context was constructed from the well-established existing academic knowledge, with special attention given to Pretoria, and the associated state of the art for the architectural and urban structural context. Several key urban types were accordingly identified that represent the characteristics, or the image, of the city. Additionally, these urban types further describe and provide evidence pertaining to the transformation of the traditional town into a modern city. It is the intention of the research document to develop an appropriate tool for investigating urban transformations in the South African urban structures with a clearly delineated framework. By employing strategic investigative practices and methodologies from Europe and North America, and further adapting established urban morphological research from these contexts, this dissertation aims not only to introduce an important African urban site, but also to establish an academic framework for further, future investigations.