Architecture

Contents

Course length

Full-time: MArch: 12 months; PGDip: 6 months

The Advanced Architectural Design Module (80 credits) represents the core of the learning experience.

Project–based learning is used in a studio environment to individually and collectively explore architectural design problems. The design studio tutors will set the specific design problem and methodology employed. It is envisaged that several parallel studios may be established, numbers permitting, each led by separate studio tutors with different agendas, programmes and methodologies. However, the learning outcomes will be shared in common. Initially, there will be only one studio, The David Greene and Andrew Holmes Studio, which will be organised as follows:

The first semester is always a rigid organised fabric of reviews, workshops, tutorials and deadlines with students working both individually and in groups. Within this framework students engage in two strands of investigation:

* an in-depth research into the tectonic possibilities of a new material/s
* the analysis of a real site with the aim of generating a series of questions that demand an architectural response.

By the end of the semester each student is expected to present to a jury of invited critics a catalogue both conceptual and material, from which they will make a project, in a coherent manner using appropriate media. This jury provides formative feedback for students on their learning.

The first semester design studio is complimented by a series of challenging, group and individual based workshops, Urban Cultures, on drawing, model making and movie making, run by the tutors. Students are expected to engage in questioning and debate with the lecturers and are required to produce a series of responses in drawn and written forms, which contribute to their design portfolio, around a theme related to the lecture series.

Spread over the second semester there is a further series of lectures on Architecture and the City given by external academics and practitioners. Students are expected to engage in questioning and debate with the lecturers and are required to produce a series of responses in drawn and written forms to exercises set by the visiting lecturer. The results are to be bound into a book, which contributes to and supports their design portfolio, around a theme related to the lecture series.

The second semester design studio focuses on the architectural implications of bringing the two apparently dissimilar strands of the first semester’s investigation into surprising conjunctions. Students are asked to approach the possibilities created by these apparently disconnected procedures in an entirely logical way.

At this stage the studio places emphasis on the importance of developing students’ ability to demonstrate conceptual clarity, to locate their ideas in the spectrum of current and past architecture and to maintain a strong link between concept and product.

Students are also encouraged to explore a wide range of media and technique and to develop a rationale for selecting appropriate techniques for the representation of particular kinds of architectural ideas. Students are required to present their design projects to an invited group of invited critics close to the end of the semester. This proves formative feedback for students.

The final module mark is generated from a portfolio-based assessment held at the end of the second semester involving a panel internal staff. This system will ensure parity of marking when the module consists of multiple design studios.

Students also undertake a Research Methods in the second semester that prepares them for their dissertation project. A set of generic postgraduate school-wide lectures on research paradigms, methodology and research tools is followed by master's specific seminars in which students develop a synopsis for their dissertation’. The module is assessed by means of a review of a relevant past master's dissertation and a synopsis proposal.

The MArch programme concludes with the Dissertation Project in which individual students work with a supervisor on projects that have developed from the work of the design studio or appropriate Special Route. Students are expected to produce original, relevant and valid projects. The dissertation can take a written or design based form. In the latter case a written commentary is expected as part of the dissertation submission. Students submit their dissertation projects at the end of the summer vacation and are expected to hold an exhibition of their work in the school or elsewhere as agreed.

As our courses are reviewed regularly, course content and module choices may change from the details given here.