Overview
Year two of this MArch Architecture master's degree course comprises a year-long integrated design thesis (CDT) as a celebration of the Department’s essential academic position, which is about the essence of building in specific physical and cultural settings.
The pedagogic model is less about teaching as it is about engagement with specialists from the building professions, through a self-motivated process that readies you rigorously for practice. With a site anywhere in the world and a brief initiated by you to suit your own interests after deep research in year one, the CDT comprehensively demonstrates your abilities across the multi-stranded demands involved in the creation of a building project.
The final year also includes Practice, Management and Law (PML) in preparation for participation in the profession and anticipating part three. It is intended that the overall portfolios should be published as books at the end of the course.
Practice Management and Law (30 credits)
Covers knowledge of the management and legal framework required for professional architectural practice at RIBA Part 2. Using input from built environment consultants, and synchronized with the Comprehensive Design Thesis, it includes: roles of professional bodies, RIBA Plan of Work, RIBA + ARB Codes of Professional Conduct, International Ethics Standards, BIM, technical drawing layer conventions, professional contracts and frameworks, PII, the methodologies, economics and businesses of building development practices and entrepreneurship, project procurement, office organisation, consultants and constructors, planning and building control and related regulations, building contract types, and business management.
The module concludes with a report undertaking a substantial investigation to address current and near future issues concerning methodologies of project development and procurement within the systems of appointment in relation to demand and resource and skill availability.
Comprehensive design Thesis (90 credits)
This is the final, year-long, design project in the course, before you register as an architect (after part three in the UK). You will demonstrate your ability to integrate the broad range of knowledge and skills required to imaginatively design a complex building project. It forms the principal content of your portfolio.
The CDT is an integrated design project in which you comprehensively research and design a building project. You propose a brief and site and show evidence of your research that led you to the project type and location. You will undertake an in-depth study of site, client/user, planning context, social context, climate, new technologies, new live issues needing research, and of precedents related to programme and site. The guidelines are highly flexible, allowing maximum choice from refurbishment to master planning, but ensuring that the RIBA/ARB Criteria are addressed and employability interests met.
The design process reflects real-world practice by following the RIBA Plan of Work. Submissions include: a full planning application and attendant information, partial detailed structural, environmental and constructional design, and final high-level presentation of the completed project. This is accompanied by a reflective report on the process in which evidence of research study around the subject area for each of the stages is shown, as well as a commentary on how the new and experimental proposals address live issues.
Together, the design proposal and the reflective report, as well as the Dissertation, form a research thesis, which, possibly along with your other work on the course, will be arranged for publication as a book. It is intended that not only should this document provide compelling evidence of your employability, but also give you the basis and option for further research leading to PhD and beyond.
To complement your own research, client and user interviews etc, teaching includes representation from industry with masterclasses from leading architectural practitioners, along with lectures and tutorials by visiting practicing specialist consultants on strategic planning, means of escape, structures, environment and construction, so that you learn how to manipulate these standard relationships in the profession, which will enrich your design. Leading architectural practitioners will also be involved in interim and final reviews.