The second year of the Master of Architecture at WSA is organised around the Design Thesis as a student-led and research-led design proposition. Within a framework of eight Design Units, each of which sets out its own architectural agenda, each student is encouraged to explore an independent stance, proclaiming and defending an architectural position. As well as the Design Thesis, the student’s architectural position is informed by a written Dissertation and studies in the Practice, Management and Economics of architecture.
The Design Thesis begins with a research ‘primer’ as an individual or group study. Locating initial individual or group research within cultural, political, tectonic, environmental, historical, philosophical or other approaches defined by the Unit, students develop an individual thesis with a specific site, program, and research question emerging from the primer.
In 22-23, MArch2 Units explored local and regional - Carmarthen, Cardiff, Bristol, Welsh Valleys - and international - Calicut, Morocco, Milan - locales through lenses of food, value, liveable urbanism, dwelling, local adaptation, regenerative vision, low carbon approaches to heritage, and designing histories. Primers tested handmade and digital modelling and drawing methods, engaged with policy makers and community organisations in live projects and ran consultations and public exhibitions, mapped sunlight and cities, and critiqued readings, theory and precedents. Individual theses demonstrate rigour and care in tackling identified challenges – making use of overlooked spaces, advocating more equitable access to civic space and cities, advocating low carbon strategies from regional infrastructural scales to detailed material assemblies, proposing and testing new materials, manipulating software and analysing data, storytelling and speculating.
The 22-23 MArch2 theses demonstrate WSA’s commitments to sustainable, equitable, generous and thoughtful ways of approaching architecture, exploring independent critical positions and speculations which align to our ethos of grounded creativity and the collective pursuit of an ethical position towards architectural practice.