Housing and Urbanism MA/MArch

at Architectural Association School of Architecture

Programme Structure
 

Design Workshop - Terms 1, 2 and 3
 

Sitting at the core of the HU curriculum, this course teaches students to investigate, explore and respond to the urban process through design reasoning. Working in teams and in close collaboration with staff, students are introduced to a specific but complex set of challenges faced in London today. This provides students with an understanding of urban transformation, through which they learn to envision and initiate these principles within their own projects. We emphasise argument through design, building a capacity for comparison and evaluation. The course develops research, drawing and writing skills while encouraging collaboration, discussion and invention.
 

Critical Urbanism - Terms 1 and 2
 

This course establishes the conceptual and theoretical foundations through which architecture brings a capacity for critical synthesis to the urban process. We learn how architects incorporate lessons from a range of fields – from geography to politics and philosophy – and draw these lessons into a reflection on urban form. Through a series of case studies, we explore how the project comes to drive forward a critical response to the existing city and encourage evaluation and reflection.
 

Transnational Cities - Terms 1 and 2
 

There is a social and economic context to housing and urban change, and this course introduces students to the key themes and debates that the social sciences contribute to our understanding of this context. Placing emphasis upon policy, planning and urban governance, we enable students to understand how developments are shaped by transnational economic forces and the political debates corresponding to them.
 

Reshaping the Modern City - Terms 1 and 2
 

Projects today contain a history, and urban change is shaped by judgements and reactions to previous solutions. This course explores a series of ongoing debates through which we understand the evolving landscape of argument about our cities today. The material is organised around the specific themes and challenges of the Design Workshop research, enabling students to explore the broader disciplinary history of their areas of research and proposition.
 

Urbanity and Democracy - Term 1
 

Urbanism arose as a specific field of problems within the government of Western liberal societies. In this course, we introduce students to this deeper political history, which continues to play out in arguments about urban change. Each year, the course selects a theme to explore current challenges of democratic government related to the future of the city, and this year we will be exploring the tensions raised by the global pandemic around health, wellbeing and biopolitics. If our cities are changing in line with these tensions, architects and urbanists must be better prepared to understand the traditions of political thought linking our wellbeing to democratic action and decision-making.
 

Housing Form - Term 1
 

The last three decades have seen a renewed interest in architect-designed mass housing. While the exterior has become the major focal point for architectural design, the interior of dwellings has, by and large, been relatively neglected. Housing does not merely constitute an envelope for typical unit plans. Form and experience cannot be conveniently dissociated. To the contrary: the most committed architects conceive of housing form the interior outwards, as the source and guarantor of meaningful experience. This course will review in detail the best housing projects built in the last 100 years and consider what constitutes excellence in the field.
 

Domesticity - Term 2
 

The inner life of the dwelling is a scene of constant tension, speculation and evolution. While the ideal of the family continues to stand at the core of this turbulence, a broad and increasing range of alternative modes of living calls for attention today. New patterns of shared living, assisted care, serviced residences and beyond all demand design evaluation and development. In this course, we explore both the history and the contemporary challenge of housing design and transformation.
 

Urban Form - Term 2
 

Since World War II, the nature of cities has been a subject of growing confusion brought by changes in demography, technology and development. This uncertainty was matched by a prolific inventiveness on the part of architects. The course reviews seminal works from the last 70 years, not always well-known, which address the fabric of the city in which they are situated in polemical and memorable ways. The course, which complements the Housing Form seminar in Term 1, investigates the criteria for excellence in an architect’s contribution to the building of cities.
 

Thesis Seminar - Term 3
 

By the end of the second term, students will have decided upon their area of design research for the thesis. During Term 3, students present their initial research within seminars grouped around shared thematic interests. These seminars enable peer-based learning and collective discussion to complement directed and intensive individual research and design development.

The fees for Housing and Urbanism MA/MArch may vary from £37,000 to £47,000 annually for tuition fees. The fee's prices may get higher for International Students.