This MA in Architectural Design is an experimental, advanced, and distinctive post-graduate program that focuses on the multiple facets and relationships between design and research. By pursuing the MA in Architectural Design, the students gain the necessary skills for becoming sophisticated and innovative design-research thinkers and practitioners.

The program focuses on design-led research tools, techniques, and methods to inform their research explorations via their architectural production. Students develop their existing design skills by focussing on how design thinking might address current global challenges. This approach offers an intense and lively forum for the exploration and discussion of codesign issues. This is why we place particular emphasis on using design as a means to conduct research. Researching through design is a creative activity that closely integrates the process of designing with the act of researching, so that they can mutually inform each other. Problems can be explored by making and testing design propositions, introducing and developing established knowledge as and when required.

Students have the option to develop their design thinking in a range of topics related to the School’s diverse topics of research and scholarship.

The work is done in Design Research Units under the guidance of a Unit Leader, an experienced tutor in the multiple links between research and architectural design. Independent work is also completed in order to develop a design-research approach to the studies. This requires the questioning and evaluation of grounded evidence and thinking creatively, experimentally, and iteratively. Emphasis is placed on individual discovery and personal reflection as a learning process.

Dr Federico Wulff, MA AD Programme Leader