Architectural Design MArch Research Clusters

Architectural Design MArch students work collaboratively within teaching groups called Research Clusters, which allow them to pursue a rigorous approach to architecture within a speculative and creative environment. 

Visit our online prospectus for more information about the course. 

RC1

Monumental Wastelands

Déborah López and Hadin Charbel

Research Cluster 1 explores the imminent nature of the Anthropocene under the lens of ubiquity, examining the production of data, raw material, logistical processes and their impacts on contemporary scenes.  Focusing on two strands of research topics, 'Cli-migration' and 'Autonomous Ecologies', speculations will be put forward that challenge current profit driven models, arguing for decolonisation, decentralisation, automation and participation, to collapse human and non-human perspectives.  

A methodology of preservation through adaptation, referred to as 'decoding' and 'recoding', deploys a combination of machine learning, generative algorithms and video game engines, moving away from a nostalgic return, and instead embracing the uncertainty and possibilities through practical yet sensitively tuned, contextualised strategies.  

This year the cluster is moving outside of the Arctic Circle, below the 66° line and into Europe, using Climate-Fiction (Cli-Fi) as a vehicle for these imminent realities to be researched, experimented with and projected. 

Image: Gaming Consensus by Junyi Du, Beiyuan Zhang, Xiayi Zheng and Bingchuan Jiang

RC2

Robotic Architecture

Valentina Soana

This year, RC2 explores emerging design possibilities of autonomous systems. It investigates the role of robotics in architecture beyond their use as fabrication and construction tools, moving towards a novel concept of architectural robots.

For a long time now, designers have envisioned building systems that can respond and adapt to multiple human, environmental and structural conditions. Recent technological advancements in robotics enable machines to be self-aware, plan and react to undetermined circumstances. The integration of robotic solutions into material systems can create novel structures that are able to self-form, reconfigure and achieve multiple states, operating and interacting at architectural and human scale.

The cluster focuses on the development of novel material-machine-kinetic systems where robotic operations are embedded within material systems and controlled in real-time by a cyber-physical network. Behaviours emerge, in turn, through negotiation between human, designer, material and machine interaction.

Image: Elastic Choreographies by Shahram Minoee Sabery, Cephas Bhaskar and Yelay Bayraktaroglu

RC3

Living Architecture Lab: AI and Autonomous Architecture 

Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu and Philipp Siedler

Research Cluster 3 interrogates the notion of 'living architecture' as a coupling of living systems with the continuous assembly and reformation of architecture.

The research focuses on developing autonomously reconfigurable buildings with situated and embodied agency, facilitated variation, and artificial intelligence. The studio develops experimental design models embedded with the ability to self-organise, self-assess, and self-improve using deep learning to train assembly systems to improve at negotiating shifting architectural objectives. In parallel, the cluster develops architectural robotics and intelligent simulation models in a tightly coupled feedback loop for an architecture that is self-aware. The studio reappraises linear building life cycles holistically, learning from living systems extraordinary scalable efficiencies of adaptive construction with simple flexible parts. 

This year, RC3 will rethink notions of “Home”, “Work” and “Factory” as separate building typologies. Projects will investigate new socio-economic models and scalable platforms that enable the formation of emergent communities through novel distributed living, working, and production models aligned with autonomously adaptive architectural systems.

RC4

Architecture and Automation: Matter, Home, Platform

Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Gilles Retsin and Kevin Saey 

From tiny bits of matter to territorial-scale housing platforms, this year RC4 continues its agenda on housing and automation. Students will look to find “Home”, as a condition emerging somewhere in between these vastly diverging scales. The cluster will develop the imagination, tools and thinking to enable mission-driven, non-extractive, distributed and scalable platforms for housing, for a more equal, sustainable and inspiring build environment.  

Mindful of the social and political consequences of automation, students will learn from emerging tech platforms to develop community-driven alternatives for homes and housing. RC4 will look at everyday automated workflows set in the present, while being invested in radical spatial and aesthetic agendas for the future. RC4’s research will investigate new narratives for community, work, life and domesticity in an increasingly automated world; and question topics ranging from life with autonomous entities, robots and artificial intelligence, mobile robotic mini-factories to viral platforms, primitive materials and activism.  

This Research Cluster is affiliated with Automated Architecture Labs. 

Image: With / Without by Argyrios Delithanasis, Ghanem Younes, Santiago Del Aguila and Andrea Terceros Barron

RC5 & 6

Ordinary Material

Adam Holloway, Guan Lee and Daniel Widrig

How can non-ordinary uses of material play a role in architecture and design experiments? What makes a material ‘ordinary’? How are the conflicts in use and design of material be considered ordinary in different situations? Do surprising outcomes in material use arise because of the ‘misuses of material’ or unexpected results must be attributed to ‘new material’?

One can argue that each material has an ideal expression based on the material’s property and innate quality and ability to be. As we depart further away from the naturalness of a material, do we necessary arrive at innovative materiality? How do we measure the performance of such inventiveness without appropriate use?

RC5 & 6 does not advocate the disregard of pragmatic concerns in material use, but rather a closer examination of different roles in which context can play above and beyond practicality. Ordinariness is not ordinarily ordinary. Materiality is not materially stable. RC5 & 6 encourages design and making within a critical framework that is anything but ordinary.

This Research Cluster is affiliated with Material Architecture Lab.

Image: Hempstack, 2021, Material Architecture Lab 

RC7 

Biospatial Assemblies

Richard Beckett

This year Research Cluster 7 will progress its agenda on biodesign and architecture, with a specific interest in the role of AI and machine learning for the conception of living buildings and the development of novel biofabrication technologies.

Considering the contemporary understanding of the human as a holobiont along with shifting modes of biopolitics, students will develop novel spatial assemblies for multiple living agencies across a range of building typologies. Projects will seek to provide new narratives for urban living alongside radical solutions addressing issues including urban growth in the age of the Anthropocene, smart buildings and healthy urban environments. Topics and themes this year will include bio-augmented design, resilient infrastructure, novel architectural tectonics and large-scale fabrication.

Image: More Than Human by Christopher Whiteside, Zhan Xu and Yi Sui

RC8 

Fused Space and Continuous Lifecycles

Kostas Grigoriadis

Research Cluster 8's main research focus is multi-material design, and the wider implications that the use of multi-materials will have on architecture and building construction. RC8 explores new procedures of designing and building with material gradients, aiming to rethink component-based assembly and the standard practice of twentieth century mechanical connectivity.

In previous years, the Cluster investigated the use of robotic fabrication for the in-situ 3D printing of building facades and the fusion of materials such as metal and glass to generate component-less, materially continuous envelopes. This year students will research into the origins of the materials that make up larger multi-material topologies from recycled sources, and the end-of-life strategy of the buildings and structures that will be deployed across London.

Image: Recycled Plastic Lattice by Sai Feng, Huiyin Pan, Gaojie Zhang, Sen Wei

RC9 

Architecture for the Augmented Age

Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez and Igor Pantic

As we immerse ourselves into rapidly developing Extended Realities (XR), the barriers between humans and machines are becoming increasingly blurred, with portable devices augmenting our perception of the environment. XR have the capability to assist processes, enhancing human labour with data previously exclusive to machines while enabling seamless inclusion of intuitive decision-making and experience, often absent from automated construction processes. XR technologies can also radically change how one interacts with and experience the built environment, enhancing or altering or adding a new layer of information to the surrounding environment.

Research Cluster 9 explores how XR technologies can change ways of designing, building and interacting with the environment. Ideas like augmented manufacturing, gig economy or digital platforms for multi-player design and distributed manufacturing, as well as immersive experience and interaction with the built environment and the metaverse, will therefore actuate as the central core for all the research streams.

Image: by Team LaminAR: Yiguan Liu, Laizhen Wu, Xinlu Chen, Zheshun Liang, Architectural Design, RC9

RC10

Ecocentrism

Barry Wark

RC10 is motivated by ecocentrism, giving value and consideration to all matter in the creation of an ecological architecture. 

The research uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to remove anthropocentric bias through procedural design tools. To achieve this, RC10 develops methodologies which integrate environmental information and consider nonhumans within its processes, resulting in a bio-diverse, built environment.  

Students will explore ecological aesthetics, considering how architecture can move beyond the sweetness and control of ‘nature’-design towards qualities that question the interconnectedness of artefacts with the atmosphere and other ecological agents.  

The cluster conceives buildings as open and adaptive, operating over large timescales with multiple lives and post-lives of occupants and fragments. In doing so, students imagine new forms of inhabitation in urban spaces that foster ecocentric values. RC10 investigates the methods, means and production that would allow for such an architecture to be realised in the world, encompassing digital fabrication, assembly, and novel materials. 

Image: Hempcrete 

Credits