Architecture - BA/MA

The Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, ESALA, understands Architecture as the discipline responsible for the design of the built environment. It is both a celebration of our cultural inheritance and a statement of our cultural ambitions. Therefore, we could describe our activity in ESALA as the research and exploration of contemporary society, philosophically, historically, technologically and culturally through the medium of Architecture.

While studying for an Architecture BA or MA at ESALA, you will acquire the necessary knowledge and understanding of how buildings are made and, in the pursuit of this, acquire skills of observation, analysis, creative thinking and design. You will learn about the significance of the architectural past, engage critically with contemporary architecture, and apply your skills and knowledge to the formation of built environments of the present and future.

The creation of Architectural propositions - as modest as a dwelling or as grand and complex as a city scale intervention - is, for the architect, a matter of neither formula nor chance, but of reflection, negotiation and adaptation to material, social and cultural contexts. Architecture therefore comes into contact with other disciplines concerned with buildings and their relationships such as engineering, construction, urban planning, environmental science, sociology and history.

Through a carefully-designed series of courses, ESALA will introduce you to all these disciplines and reveal how they are complicit to the central discipline of Architecture. We consider Architectural Design as a unique mode of thought and practice, combining the skills of logical analysis, critical judgement and creativity that produce buildings.

The theme, which underpins our approach to architectural education, is that everything you do will be a process of enquiry and as such enables you to discover and develop your own process of design and position within architecture.

ESALA offers two Degree Programmes at Undergraduate level, both are accredited by the RIBA and lead to the Professional Qualification of Part 1 upon graduation.

The Architecture (MA Hons) Degree is taught over four years allowing you to study a broad selection of subjects, with an integrated and credited placement period taken during the third and fourth years of study. An opportunity for a period of study abroad during the third year of the Architecture (MA Hons) exists through the Erasmus International Exchange Programme. Available through internal application, previous students have studied in Madrid and Copenhagen.

The Architecture (BA) degree is taught over three years offering the opportunity for an accelerated pathway towards a Part 2 degree either at ESALA or at another institution involving a placement year post graduation.

ESALA Degree Programmes deliver architectural education in the core sub-disciplines of architectural design, technology and environment, architectural history, architectural theory, professional studies and skills in architectural communication.

We also offer a rich range of outside subjects, in the form of electives in year two and four, drawn from across Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh in such diverse areas as history of art, drawing and painting, visual communication, sculpture, digital media, modern languages, sociology, engineering and construction management, architectural history, conservation and landscape architecture.