Architecture Studies

Both these programmes are designed for students of architecture and related disciplines who wish to carry their academic and intellectual skills beyond the requirements of their professionally recognised qualification. The programmes offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary learning and research experience, engaging students from different backgrounds in a critical approach to architecture. Architecture is explored and redefined in its wider sense, drawing from a variety of disciplines that include critical theory, visual arts, social and urban studies, and architecture: its theories and histories, its discourses and techniques.

While working within multidisciplinary research teams, students develop a personal focus and independent research within the programme.

In the Architectural Studies programme the research aims to enhance criticality in architecture and produce a theoretical research (written dissertation) that questions architecture and its practices in an informed critical way.

Content

• Reading Seminars - Discusses different cultural and architectural contexts through critical readings and argumentative debates on recent movements, positions and schools of thought in architecture.
• Design and Research Issues - A series of workshops introduce students to research in architecture and explores the issues of writing on and in architecture.
• Critical Thinking - Introduces methodologies for research in different fields, placing architecture in a wider context and supporting an open debate between different disciplines.
• Research Methods - Introduces a range of research tools and their applications to particular fields, including Architecture, Project Management, Real Estate.
• Influences, Theories and Techniques in Architecture - Offers a series of lectures and seminars on the theoretical and critical discourse in architecture, and opens up an interdisciplinary dialogue in the field of architecture, the arts, critical theory, and related disciplines.
• MScAS Dissertation - Promotes a critical understanding of the current cultural context of architecture, and the critical reassessment of established theories and practices in architecture. Students produce a written dissertation that addresses contemporary positions and theoretical issues in architecture.
• Critical Representations - Redefines "presentation" and "representation" as critical components of research and guides students in the communication and critical reassessment of their work (dissertation or portfolio) through the use of architectural techniques, modelling, new media, film and advanced graphics.
• Elective courses - Students choose one or more elective courses from a wide portfolio of postgraduate and undergraduate courses offered by the School and the University (subject to approval by the Programme Leader)

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