ARCHI.MEDES project is an experiment. It is an initiative to (re)consider, through the collaboration among schools of architecture, professional bodies and interdisciplinary teams, the education of the architects in the Mediterranean and European South (MEDES). Taking into account the competitive internationalization of higher (architectural) education, the project has as its main aim to develop strategies and policies for sustainable academic and professional growth, enhancement of quality and excellence, based upon local strengths and particularities. Four interdependent parameters motivated this initiative: The threat of European diversity due to the ways European policies on higher education were implemented by institutions leading to their homogenization rather than to the expected harmonization. The fast changes happening in our interdependent societies making the profile of the architect unpredictable for the near future raising important responsibilities to schools of architecture who continue to educate architects according to what an architect is today. The financial crisis which ruthlessly affected the countries of the European South and created very frustrated conditions for architectural education and high unemployment in professional practice. The significant changes happened in the way we understand learning and teaching shifting from a teacher-based to student-based education, an input-oriented pedagogy to an output-oriented one, from knowledge-based priorities to competences-based priorities, from a problem-based to a project-based education. ARCHI.MEDES project is planned to be an experimental laboratory for strategies and policies for architectural education in the MEDES Countries aiming at: -raising awareness of the need for specific graduates' profiles knowledge breadth, creative skills and competences appropriate to local demands and needs so that their graduates can be more flexible and creative both in the local and international labour market. -supporting, elaborating and providing teaching approaches and specific pedagogies able to assure creativity and other learning outcomes appropriate for the local needs and demands. -elaborating incentives to support a diversity of strategic choices for curricula development through which partner SA could be able to develop regional hubs of excellence and eventual specialization. -encouraging partners to reveal and to intensify efforts on their individual strengths. -enhancing the relevance of available human capital through structures of staff development. -strengthening the collaboration among SA encountering similar problems, demands and needs. The development of the project is based upon four main (hypo)theses: 1. There is not a single excellence model. 2. It is a mistake nowadays to educate architects on the basis of what an architect today is. 3. Schools of architecture must expand the existing spectrum of learning outcomes. 4. The definition of the expected profile of the graduate is a necessary condition for a sustainable academic growth of the School. The proposed methodological approach states that this must be done through two different and simultaneous paths. The one is a bottom-up path which is looking towards the local conditions and needs and tries to structure architects' profile based upon what the local society needs or expects from a graduate architect as to what he/she must know, be able to do and be competent to think. The second is a top-down path, which starts upon what is conceived, at European level, (policies, associations, previous programs) as the appropriate profile of the architect. An experiment of a limited number of partners aiming, through its activities and initiatives, to encourage the establishment of a new culture among schools of architecture, the profession and society in MEDES Countries. The project will run inquiries, consultations and data collection as well as processing in order to define architectural profiles appropriate for the particularities of MEDES Countries. It will elaborate teaching approaches and pedagogical strategies assuring these profiles. The project will also organise student workshops and staff training seminars as well as international conferences on the above issues. ARCHI.MEDES project wants to nourish a collaboration Culture between education and practice, a strategic development culture by the institutions dealing with architectural creation, creativity culture encouraging innovation and lateral thinking, and a quality culture conceived as emerging from an interdependent world.