PG Architecture Unit 09 Postgraduate Architecture – Units

Unit brief

Our profession, indeed the entire industry of which we are a part, is in the midst great change.

The job of an architect today is in many ways very different to that of an architect some decades ago. Diverse issues and far-reaching considerations compete for the Architect’s, and clients’, priorities: 

• How to reconcile environmental concerns whilst working within a high carbon industry
• How to keep pace with fast-moving technological innovation, of producing information through new or upgraded software and the ensuing reality of Artificial Intelligence
• How to make sense of, and take a position on the economic, moral and political conflicts that all communities face in the provision of affordable homes within a global market economy where property exists as commodity

These are just some of the factors Unit 9 will be talking about during the academic year 2024/2025 but alongside these and running throughout the year we will be talking about THE VISUAL PLEASURE OF BUILDINGS.

Because, above all else - beyond the many considerations an architect must engage with from communities and context to construction and cost - we are visual people, our job is one of creative practice enhancing the experience of Architecture: ‘THE ART OF BUILDINGS’

Over the two semesters we want you to find joy in the act of creating Architecture. We want you to get excited about it, to delight in the process of designing, the composition of a facade and the spatial arrangement of a plan. We encourage you to look closely and carefully, to draw inspiration from the world around you and take pleasure in the art of ‘form making’ in your emerging projects.

Sites and program

One of the great challenges for the UK’s new government is in the provision of affordable housing within our towns and cities as well as our rural areas. During the academic year 2024/2025 Unit 9 in collaboration with other units in the school will engage with this subject. We will share research on typologies, history and regulatory standards, and we will hold common cross-unit reviews throughout the year.

We will explore the theme of adaptive reuse through the lens of a series of sites located within London’s South Shoreditch neighbourhood. All of them contain existing buildings that will be repurposed for housing, require substantial remodelling, thermal enhancement as well as re-engagement with their urban context.

Elements of Architecture

We will begin the first semester with a study of some of the elements of Architecture that we most commonly experience. Understanding spatial components and their sequence and relationships: Doors, and porches, and the part they play in describing thresholds of public and private space - from interior to exterior: windows and shutters, and their means of opening, closing, shading or protecting the interior and as artful elements of a façade, their public role in talking to the street.

Too often such elements are reduced to ‘catalogue products’ with scant attention to either their part within an architectural whole or as a specific experience of a building’s fabric.

These elements will form the basis of the larger second semester design project where they will be deployed and adapted to enrich and reconfigure our chosen sites. We will seek to uncover the underlying qualities of what already exist and explore the idea of layering to create a palimpsest which brings together new and old.

Study trips

In search of ideas and inspiration towards these things we will make a series of day trips to cities like Bath to study its domestic Georgian buildings. During the November study trip week we will go to Venice and delight in the many examples of its public and private thresholds.