Architecture MSci Design Studios

Architecture MSci, a Master in Science in Architecture with Honours (Part 1 and Part 2), integrates the development of architectural design skills with an understanding of the complex social and technical environments in which buildings are produced. Studying a design-based degree, students will have the opportunity to take part in design studios which foster creative flexibility and idea generation. 

Visit the online prospectus page for the Architecture MSci. 

Studio 2A

Sharing Space – My Building with Other Animals  

Abi Ashton and Laurence Blackwell-Thale

This year, Studio 2A will interrogate the role of architecture as an ecological mediator between human kind and the rest of the planet’s species. Humans are not the only occupants of buildings, however little consideration is given to the plethora of plants, fungi, animals and other non-human organisms which reside in our built environment. 

The Studio's architecture embraces material circularity, ecological integration, climate justice and building optimisation whilst creating proving grounds for testing possible inter-species interactions. As Caroline Till and Kate Franklin, the curators of the Barbican’s Our Time on Earth exhibition note: "envisaging a future in which all species can flourish is all about possibilities, not constraints". The studio's architecture promotes the exciting emerging realm of ecological spatial cascades, where inhabitation of built form uses inter-dependence and mutual benefit as guiding design principles. 

Speculating about the possible interaction of species requires a leap of faith into the unknown, a bold act reliant on a multifaceted ability to embrace risk and enjoy the unfolding situations. Ecological pioneers such as Rachel Carson used narratives and stories to help explain complex environmental interactions and the effects of human influence. The studio's architectural propositions continue with this precedent, allowing moments of ecological dialogue to be expressed through narrative visualisation and multi-scalar expression. London’s limits now directly abut farmland, creating drastic scale shifts between urban infrastructure, local community, and the ecological terrain. Within these sites, land is debatable, resources political, space held in tension between natural and artificial agents.  

Through selecting a dialogue between human occupants and other species, Studio 2A will examine the minutia of interactions from the micro to the macro, harnessing inter-species collaboration to create a new form of environmentally centric architecture. 

Image caption: Courtesy of Thomas Thwaites, ‘Goatman’ 

Studio 2B 

Weather Watchers  

Vita Rossi and George Bolwell  

This year Studio 2B will become experts in the weather, zooming into particular elemental nuances and site-specific natural phenomena around the Isle of Sheppey. The Studio will use weather as an architectural ingredient, and a key design tool. Studio 2B will consider differences between weather and climate, and will focus on time and scale as a factor for understanding elemental shifts in relation to our environments.  

"So many scales and levels of time determined by so many parameters in compartmentalised boundaries (biomes): time for butterflies or for bees... or for geysers to erupt; the speed and duration of currents and tides; the time for clouds to form." - Diana Agrest, Architecture of Nature.   

Despite many technological and scientific achievements of the 21st century, the weather still has the ability to surprise us. The Studio are interested in this anomalous and unruly behaviour. It is within these areas of uncertainty that the Studio challenge students to situate their projects. By observing, measuring and analysing the weather Studio 2B will expose its slippery and allusive nature, and draw parallels to other complex natural systems which continue evade our understanding.   

Studio 2B will look outside of architecture, to a range of other disciplines including meteorology, cosmology, oceanography and ecology; as well as art and fashion. Taking inspiration from instruments and methods of discovery that document and record the environment.  

The Studio encourage experimental and ambitious working methodologies. Students should develop individual methods of making and experimenting that establish a process-driven approach to design.  

Students will visit Venice for field trip, a place that shares parallels with the Isle of Sheppey. It too is an island that is constantly shifting with the natural environment and is predicted to be under water in 150 years. During the trip, students will visit a vast array of seminal art and architecture across the lagoon.   

Image caption: Halley Research Station in Antarctica, first opened in 1956 to study the earth's atmosphere – here showing Halley VI (2013) designed by Hugh Broughton Architects. 

Studio 2C

Roots and Scaffolds: Towards New Forms of Learning and Building 

Olivia Marra and Jane Wong

To a highly developed social-market economy like London’s, human knowledge in all forms is a fundamental asset. As higher education is increasingly privatised, this asset has become a valuable commodity. Universities thus play a central role in economic production. On one hand, this scenario made higher education more accessible and no longer exclusive to the ruling elite. On the other hand, it consolidated schools as ‘factories’ of knowledge producers directly catering to advanced capitalism.

Architectural education is currently an integral part of this scenario. Despite our efforts to make our school a free space for critical thinking and experimentation, it remains a gate to architectural industry and real estate. Practices, in turn, need architects with a predefined set of knowledge and skills to design typologies for equally predefined modes of living and working.

What would architectural education be like if learning and building were rethought as means without end? Is it possible to study architecture with the sole purpose of understanding the world? And what if we could learn architecture for life? Could new forms of living emerge?

With twofold principles - the rethinking of architectural knowledge against technology as a question and not merely an answer, and the resignification of material leftovers in alternative building processes (e.g. retrofit, maintenance and repair) - the Studio seek to speculate on radical alternatives to the realities of the architectural project today.

Image caption: Teatro Oficina in São Paulo, Brazil, by Lina Bo Bardi (1991–93). Photograph courtesy of Pedro Kok, 2012.

Studio 3A

Divisions and Margins

Murray Fraser and Michiko Sumi

Stuart Hall, the Jamaica-born sociologist and cultural theorist, once said that the fundamental purpose of Cultural Studies was to try to understand why human societies are so insistent on creating division and inequality – and then to come up with ideas and strategies which might help mitigate these problems. Divisions are inherently dangerous as they separate those who have more from those who have less, thus playing a crucial role in the production and maintenance of inequality.

Linked directly to division and inequality is the social exclusion that leads to marginalisation, and which typically – but not only – affects ethnic minorities, refugees, single mothers, children, people with disabilities or those of non-binary gender identity or sexual preference. The myriad forces that are producing marginalisation include state power, municipal power, economic policies, global markets, media structures, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and so on. Marginalities hence affect every community, every city, every district, every neighbourhood and indeed inside every household.

Particularly relevant in the architectural field is the role that space plays in processes of division, inequality and marginalisation. The idea of a community that is relegated to the margins, the peripheries, the fringes, is a common metaphor for scholars in disciplines like sociology which are not usually conceived spatially. Yet that kind of spatial metaphor reveal comparatively little when examined through an inherently spatialised discipline such as architecture. Therefore, it becomes a key task to examine divisions and margins in their three-dimensional realities, as well as tracing them over time.

The topic links to ‘Reducing Inequalities’, UN Sustainable Development Goal No.10. Greater precision in spatial analysis is the key contribution we can provide to theories and studies of division, inequality and marginalization. Studio 3A's field trip will visit Cyprus, the country with Europe’s last remaining divided city, Nicosia.

Image caption: The ‘Tokyo Toilet’ designed by Shigeru Ban Architects, featured in Wim Wenders, Perfect Days (2023)

Studio 3B

The Pleasures and Potentials of Obsolescence

Nat Chard and Emma-Kate Matthews

This year, Studio 3B is exploring the concept of obsolescence as a catalyst for discovering new architectural possibilities. Paradoxically, by examining what’s rendered outdated, we engage with a creative tradition of reinvention. Just as photography liberated painting from literal representation, allowing new artistic realms to flourish, obsolete design methods can free architecture from certain conventions and stimulate innovation.

Digital technologies have reshaped design and production, often prioritising convenience, and efficiency. However, whilst these tools unlock new avenues, there is a question about their ubiquity and value beyond pure practicality. The goal is not to dismiss the digital but to explore the renewed potential of traditional, obsolete processes now liberated from past roles. Both Emma-Kate and Nat, who work extensively in digital media, encourage students to consider how these forms align with their design intentions.

This year’s projects will explore obsolescence through three phases: an introductory phase for identifying each student’s focus, speculative research that repurposes outdated media to match individual ideas, and architectural research that revisits superseded materials and methods to enhance ecological and conceptual depth. Framed by the overarching MSci theme, 'reducing inequality', these projects will examine how architecture can foster inclusivity across public and private realms.

During this year's field trip to Prague, students will study architectural examples that combine innovative ideas with both modern and obsolete techniques. Through these projects, the Studio aims to help students discover the nuanced intersections between outdated methods and contemporary needs, bridging the obsolete and the new for richer architectural expression. The brief invites students to consider obsolescence not as a limitation but as a wellspring of inspiration for their work.

Image caption: Panamarenko, ‘Thundercloud’ (2020; wood, aluminium, fabric, plexi).

Studio 3C

And the walls became the world all around

Kirsty Badenoch, Daniel Dream and Ifigeneia Liangi

Studio 3C works with a foot in the magical and a hand in the practical. This year, the Studio will frame its design research around the garden as a construct, and its cultural, ecological and architectural relationships.

The garden is an architectural cornerstone of Eastern and Western civilisations. Initially conceived of as a walled estate, the garden has evolved into a space adjacent to a dwelling, often used for cultivating plants, fruits and vegetables. During the evolution of society, as communities started to settle in fixed locations, the defining of boundaries in nature would occur alongside the building of homes. As woodlands and greenlands were domesticated as a part of this process, so too was society. Walled gardens would often become a space for researching alternative conceptions of nature to the one outside, with the word ‘garden’ having its origins in ‘geard’, meaning enclosure or fence. Throughout this history, the garden has been a place for scientific study, an oasis for solitary reflection and a place of storytelling and entertainment. The garden is a meeting place between civilisation, nature and the imagination - spanning from the wild to the domestic, it can be a place of experimentation as much of conservation. As such, gardens oscillate between the loam of the world and our ideas about it. The garden is transient, continuously collecting, rooting and dispersing, not abiding borders, always on the move.

This year, Studio 3C will delve into how gardens serve as constructs that challenge the relationship between designing and making. The Studio will examine gardening as a method for cultivating the wildness of reality and its symbolic use in fiction. In doing so, Studio 3C will explore what it means to be a gardener - to observe, to care and to nourish - both within the walls of their own worlds and beyond their limits.

Image caption: Jia Qi Chan, ‘The Conserved Theatre’, MSci 3C student 2023-24

Studio 4A

Origin

Matthew Springett and Johan Hybschmann

Architecture is a slow game. Designing and making buildings takes time. The resultant spaces typically have longevity and outlive their designers and makers. With this characteristic endurance comes a responsibility to make marks and design based on informed decisions. Architects should all aim to improve the cities with architectural interventions that are positive contributions to their given context. But how should they do this? Build without ego and for a future that will change beyond expectation; beyond their predictions and abilities to understand the directions our societies may take? Can architects project these futures by learning from past decisions?

Studio 4A will explore the idea of ‘Origin’ in the context of designing for the greater good. The Studio will pursue routes to better futures and encourage the exploration of innovative and radical ideas, investigating how the past can inspire the future. Studio 4A will discuss ideas of legacy, ego and prediction within architecture. The studio wants to emphasise the cultural, social, and environmental complexities of working with existing, buildings, infrastructures, and communities. The Studio wants to look at how building typologies conceived through a personal agenda can promote more generous architecture and public spaces for us all. The Studio wants to foster altruistically designed buildings that improve their context and the lives of the people of inhabit them. The Studio wants to see if it can learn from the deep past to design for the deep future and the myriad of possibilities that this might entail, and the studio wants the buildings to deal with the themes of ‘congregation’, in whatever scale this relates to.

Visit Studio 4A Instagram.

Studio 4B

IN TRANSIT

Nuria Alvarez Lombardero and Maurizio Mucciola

As a global city, London has recently experienced an increased floating nomad population over permanent residents, such as students, migrants, refugees, day labourers, tourists, seasonal workers, digital nomads, etc. This situation demands a continuous negotiation with and incorporation of plural contingencies and suggests a new paradigm of housing in the city, one that we would call ‘in transit’. This condition has put the existing housing models into crisis, asking for new ways of understanding the design of the home. Short-term lodgements are more and more necessary as an alternative to lifelong homeownership. So far, these needs have been accommodated in the existing housing stock, which, however, does not cater appropriately for the needs of transient populations. In response to this context, this Studio proposes to speculate on new temporary housing models in London by designing transient dwellings that foster a sense of permanence and stability for its inhabitants.

The Studio challenges the way these new typologies are built for living in transit with a non-extractive approach. In recent years, there have been calls for a moratorium on new buildings and to focus on adaptive reuse instead of building new architectures as a possible response to an over-extractive construction industry. This approach demands a new way of imagining spaces, buildings, and ways of living toward a non-extractive future for architecture. Can the demand for new houses be met by creatively transforming the existing building stock without perpetuating destructive practices of extraction? The Studio will work on the basis that no new construction is allowed, and the use of virgin materials for construction should be limited to the minimum, only where no alternatives are possible. Students will explore the reuse of materials and re-consider the concept of spolia, which involves reusing elements of past buildings into new architectures.

Visit Studio 4B Instagram.

Studio 4C

Step Inside the Tarmac Ride

Francesca Romana Dell’Aglio and Rory James Sherlock

It is easy to see the value in grand edifices and heroic architectural objects. They are, after all, held up as beacons of aspiration, quality and resolution for a reason. But this exceptionalism also keeps them at a distance; removed from day-to-day life. They are, for the most part, untroubled by the lives of those who move through them or idolise their image. While largely taken for granted, though, the spaces of the everyday are no less interesting. If typically considered banal or unworthy, perhaps this is just an indication that they deserve to be treated with a little more care and intelligence.

This year, Studio 4C will look deeply and recursively at the unloved and overlooked spaces that serve as the essential waypoints of and backdrops to everyday life for the occupants of the contemporary city. By applying straightforward processes of nuanced observation, translation and representation - principally drawing, document-making and photography - the Studio will uncover, investigate and demonstrate the latent value in parts of the city that normally go unnoticed and cultivate diverse spatial projects that critically reflect on, engage with and inform, shape or resist the systems that govern the multiple and diverse practices of daily life.

The Superloop bus route will be used as the basis of our investigations, since it operates as both a fundamental locus of everyday, habitual actions and a territorial device that provides a contextual link between distinct areas of London. An infrastructural network that is both peripheral and central, it threads together many of the essential spatial components of the city that tend to fly under the radar - the gaps, buffers, edges, stops and in-betweens - that frame the reality of normal, day-to-day existence and operate as the containers for and mirrors of the large majority of urban citizens today.