Architecture - MA

This module, carried out within the context of a design unit, develops design skills and understanding along with an ability to critically engage in design research.

This module is the culmination of the Master’s programme. It allows the student to articulate an extended field of self-directed design research into an ambitious and rigourous proposition.

Module code: AR7017
Module title: Design: Concept and Proposition
Description: This module, within the context of an industrial design unit builds upon skills and
knowledge developed through design research and established within a design
project.
Semester: Autumn/Spring

Techniques (analogue and digital) in architectural design, representation and
production continually and rapidly evolve. The module does set a specific set of software tools.
This module will present a variety of digital techniques relevant to a wide range of design
agendas. It will also discuss the potential relationship of these techniques within their applicability
to architectual design. The student will be asked not only to master their techniques but to
demonstrate a critical understanding of the context of their research and its value as a resource
within their own work in related design modules.

Architectural Publication and Journalism.

By undertaking Changing Places students will acquire the knowledge and skills to enable them to facilitate both individuals and communities in the transformation of the places and spaces in situations of scares resources and rapid culture and technology change.

Film can often reveal a hidden, poetic truth that even though inherent in reality, is at times not apparent, except through the lens of a camera. Thus, the module aims to introduce film as an alternative form of study of the city and architecture.

AR7045 Concepts of Space.

This module emphasises the social and political perspective of space making at the scale of the city. It is an introduction to key concepts in urban history and theory from the 19th century until the present. It addresses historical and contemporary processes of migration, issues of politics, mapping, architecture and urban regeneration. Episodes of architectural and urban theory are placed in the context of political and cultural transformations, and in particular in the context of the changing geopolitical conditions by which the contemporary city is shaped. The module also investigates how different urban practitioners (rebels, soldiers, politicians, architects, artists, users and dwellers) intervened in the transformation of the city. It presents examples of new strands in current urban practices, particularly those focused on ‘design as research’. The focus is particularly on developing a cultural and political critique of planning practices, aiming to open an interdisciplinary debate, but also to assume the tools to form a position regarding existing planning strategies.

The module investigates contemporary uses and tools of digital media in relation to architecture.
Semester: Autumn
Prerequisite: None
Assessment: 30% 2D Representation, 30% 3D Representation - Diagraming, 40% 3D Representation Rendered/Animation

This module covers the basic principles of environmental sustainability and comfort in housing and non residential buildings in a range of climates. It introduces simple methods of surveying comfort preferences together with field measurements, and statistical interpretation of results.

The module offers a critique of the theories of modern perception rooted in ocular-centric concepts of space. The ‘forgetting of air’ refers to alternate ways of approaching the materiality of space through interrogating the overlooked medium of the air and how it is understood through the body and by the mind in different contexts.

This module examines the relationship between buildings and history. It questions the simple chronology of time or period and looks at how architects use history to both quarry and validate ideas. The module examines architectural history through direct encounters with its objects, and the history of architectural history through texts, both contemporaneous and contemporary.

This module's main task is to assist students in developing a creative skill in interpreting the built and lived world. It engages with the interpretation and representation of complex objects like London through the art of writing.

Media Voices.

The course examines the critical application of poetic ideas to architecture in order to construct an alternative discourse.

The module examines historical and philosophical ideas that deal with architecture as a means of cultural dialogue and discourse since the Enlightenment.

The module explores the relation of the broader intellectual context of technology to architecture.

AR061 The Soundscape of Modernity.

The module examines the work of thinkers within and beyond architecture, relating these ideas to the experience of architecture and to the making architecture.

This module reviews the main ways of writing about architecture, using a wide range of texts by outstanding practitioners to exemplify each type. Students will practice the various modes themselves.