Architecture and Urban Design University of Cambridge

Overview

The Architecture and Urban Design programme from the University of Cambridge is designed for mature students that join the programme with a distinct area of interest and provides guidelines to their research, access to specialists of various fields relevant to their studies, and a matrix of deliverables that foster an informed body of work underpinned by a sophisticated set of design and presentation techniques.

This two-year course uniquely combines a professional course – that is, an ARB/RIBA Part 2 course – with a Cambridge Master of Philosophy degree. It provides advanced teaching, research and practice opportunities in environmental, social, political, historical, theoretical and economic aspects of architecture, cities and the global environment.

This is a course that enables each student to identify a unique thesis topic and to test the possibilities of using a set of design proposals as a research methodology. This course provides a platform for bringing together the research interests in Cambridge with its studio objectives. 

The means by which this happens is continually evolving and places the debate about the relationship between research and design at the center of the school. Each project is an individual exploration of contemporary issues in the built environment consolidating months of research, discussion and interdisciplinary collaboration in a design proposal.

The course is structured in two parts: the residential period dedicated to the intensive study of the cultural, theoretical, and technical factors shaping each thesis topic, explored through a rigorous set of design tests and culminating in a full written thesis and project portfolio; and the second, a fieldwork period (after two terms of study) in which the implications of outline proposals are examined on site, or within a professional context. These components provide an opportunity to explore distinct design approaches in various settings while offering a sound framework to pursue meaningful research.

Key facts:

• The course provides an opportunity to explore distinct interests within various settings, while offering a sound framework to pursue meaningful research. It delivers intensive teaching in the qualitative and quantitative aspects of architecture and urbanism, in parallel with supervised design development, case study analysis, and essays in cultural and technical aspects of the subject.

• During the fieldwork period, students will have engaged in a rigorous research exercise and produced a well-resolved and argued design at strategic, building and detail design scales.

• Contemporary issues in architectural research and its relationship to practice, relating to the thesis topic is captured in a "project implementation" essay submitted at the end of the fieldwork period.