School. of Architecture 2016/17

Transcription

1 School of Architecture 2016/17

2 The School of Architecture is committed to nurturing students as innovators, within their profession as well as outside it, producing graduates able to explore new roles for the twenty-first century designer and twenty-first century design. Susannah Hagan is Professor of Architectural Research in the School of Architecture and runs its AHRC and EU funded research projects on public space. She has taught and written extensively on the intersection between environment and design, nature and culture, in the context of architecture and urban design, and is founding Director of R_E_D (Research into Environment + Design), a European multidisciplinary research consultancy. Acting Dean of School Professor Susannah Hagan

3 The School of Architecture s two-year Master s programmes offer a unique depth of study into architecture and interior design. Our design studios are firmly set within contemporary international contexts, and invite informed speculation and counterproposal. What marks out the RCA as a distinctive environment for architects and interior designers are the opportunities it offers to realise live projects, and to work alongside designers and fine artists in a concentrated, postgraduateonly environment. Students from the School of Architecture are able to collaborate with students from the Schools of Material, Design and Fine Art, or participate in AcrossRCA projects, drawing upon the expertise and facilities of fellow students from programmes as diverse as Textiles, Design Products or Sculpture. Students on our programme benefit from the support of prominent practitioners from architecture and engineering, and are able to take part in industry-funded projects that can lead to production. The Live Project programme includes the Helix (Healthcare Innovation Exchange) Centre, a joint initiative between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. This pioneering centre, designed by RCA Architecture students, was built at St Mary s Hospital Paddington and provides a workspace pavilion for researchers to focus on cost-effective, high-impact, design-led initiatives that can transform healthcare. Some students are assisted with bursaries and prizes related to their activities as well as sponsored internships, work placements and research projects. Student work is frequently exhibited at the RCA, and in prestigious museums and galleries across London and abroad. Staff Programme staff consist of highly regarded professionals who bring their own innovative research and practice to their highly committed teaching. The Architecture faculty includes visiting staff who are largely but not exclusively practising architects, and highly respected in their fields. This includes visiting professors, who bring their own perpectives and expertise to the studios and School as a whole. For further information on staff, including research interests, exhibitions and publications, please visit: rca.ac.uk/staff School of Architecture

4 Applications are welcomed from Graduates with an excellent degree and an outstanding portfolio in architecture (RIBA Part 1) or an international equivalent degree or higher, and with an inclination and ability for making at all scales. Please note: Applicants are preferred, but not obliged, to have a least one year s experience working in a design office. For Interior Design, we also welcome graduates or experienced designers of related disciplines, such as (but not restricted to) product, furniture or transport design. These applicants may seek to change direction, enhance their skills or conduct specific research into the realm of inside. For College-wide and programme-specific requirements, please see: rca.ac.uk/entrance-requirements Alumni The Royal College of Art is rightly proud of its graduates achievements. Alumni from the RCA form part of an international network of creative individuals who have shaped and continue to shape the culture surrounding all of us from the landscape of our cities to the furniture and appliances in our homes, and from the clothes we wear and the films we watch to the work we experience in galleries. Architecture and Interior Design alumni are successful in many disciplines worldwide. Some examples include: David Adjaye, Maxwell Ayrton, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, Tom Coward, Daisy Froud, Andy Gollifer, Ben Kelly, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Kirsten MacKay, Sadie Morgan, Eric Parry, Julian Powell-Tuck, Alex de Rijke, Urban Salon, Geoff Shearcroft, Patrick Theis and Mike Tonkin. School of Architecture

5 Architecture Led by Dr Adrian Lahoud, Architecture at the RCA sets out to inspire individual design innovation. The programme expands the possibilities of architecture and its agency in the world by encouraging an independent and critical ethos among its students. The RCA s tradition of open-minded and experimental studio culture offers a stimulating space for students who are looking to develop a distinctive and innovative voice in the field. The two-year programme provides a rich set of experiences and opportunities for engaging with diverse aspects of architectural practice and architectural culture in general. Located in a world-leading art and design college, the programme also offers students a unique chance to collaborate with future leaders in disciplines including photography, sculpture, visual communication, information experience design and animation. Teaching on the MA programme revolves around the Architectural Design Studio. Each ADS is understood as a distinctive platform for design research, organised around important global challenges and opportunities such as ecology, housing, urbanism, new technologies and making. Complementing the design studios, the programme offers an intensive series of seminars, lectures, workshops and symposia that cultivate new and experimental approaches to the discipline. The programme culminates in the thesis project and summer show, allowing students an opportunity to present their work to the profession and the general public. architecture@rca.ac.uk rca.ac.uk/architecture

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7 MA Architecture: Show Photograph by Richard Haughton

8 MA Interior Design: Design for a Maggie s Centre, Katalin Kristof

9 Interior Design Led by Head of Programme Graeme Brooker, the MA Interior Design programme engages its participants in exploring emergent ideas and issues concerning distinct aspects of the design of the interior. This incorporates research, practice and making work that explores the diversity of human occupation in numerous environments, extending from the room to the city. The programme encourages the view that the interior is an interface between its occupants and the built environment, and supports the notion that the interior is an agent for social change. The programme values speculation, analysis, rigour and provocation with regards to the thinking and making of all aspects of design of the interior. It challenges its participants to formulate their own rigorous, critically independent responses to these fundamental concerns. This is often undertaken via the reworking of existing structures, the creation of temporal installations and the formation of permanent interventions, all involving the construction and communication of particular spatial identities using space, objects and materials. The two-year Interior Design programme is located in the School of Architecture. Work is undertaken in its design studio and is supported with lectures, seminars, group work and theory work. Talks are given by researchers, academics and practitioners from related disciplines set design, architecture, branding, digital design, engineering and installation art, among others. These are offered in the unique RCA context of interdisciplinary, studio and workshop-oriented, speculative advanced study. There are opportunities for live projects in conjunction with specific industry partners. The programme is delivered by leading academics, well-known practising designers, architects and theorists, all of whom are internationally renowned and innovators in their fields. Graduates from this programme will exemplify the responsive and tenacious thinking and skills that will enable them to challenge their own practice and form a dynamic, world-class, high-profile interior design profession of tomorrow. interior-design@rca.ac.uk rca.ac.uk/interiordesign

10 Research in the School of Architecture is led by Research Professor Susannah Hagan and Coordinator Roberto Bottazzi. In both research and pedagogy, the School of Architecture advances the theory and practice of critical design at all scales, from the interior to the city. In keeping with an institution that values innovative practice as well as academic research, design-led research is integrated with more conventional text-based enquiry. The digital and the material are viewed inclusively, as extensions of each other, and researchers move between the two domains, in the interests of conceptual innovation and impact in the world. Staff research pursues this integration in collaboration with internal and external research partners in two main subject areas: [Pre] Fabrication, which includes digital fabrication, prefabricated housing, advanced timber components and sustainable construction; and Applied Urbanism, which includes digital, ecological and floodzone urbanism, and typological innovation. Projects The School of Architecture started its first major research projects in 2014: Public Spaces and the Role of the Architect: A comparative study of influential Modernist and contemporary examples in London and São Paulo RCA Architecture and the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). The project takes advantage of the complex and often spectacular legacy of architectural Modernism in both cities, and examines the public spaces in and around seminal examples of large-scale Modernist architecture in both cities. TRADERS (Training Art and Design Researchers in Participation for Public Space) RCA Architecture, funded through an EU Marie Curie training programme. The project funds six early career researchers at the universities of six European partners in Belgium, Sweden, Holland and the UK. It aims to explore new ways of working with different actors and stakeholders in public space contexts in two very different neighbouring towns in Belgium, and develop a set of participatory art, architecture and design methodologies that can help urban dwellers, social organisations and local businesses be actively involved in the development of public spaces and services.

11 Research Students: MPhil and PhD The Doctoral programme in the School of Architecture specialises in MPhil and PhD by practice, enabling research students to reflect critically on their practice, and to extend that practice in new directions. Practice currently includes photography, urban design for flood-prone cities, and Big Data mining for public space design. Increasingly, applications are being sought that complement the School s research subjects public space, advanced timber construction, and digital and ecological urbanisms but students are also welcome to pursue their own research interests, which range from the digital democratisation of the UK planning system to ghost buildings. In response to the diversity of subjects, supervisors are appointed from the School s staff, from the College and from industry. Monthly resurgeries (workshops and research seminars open to Master s students) are run by the research students themselves with a series of events directly related to architectural issues. There is competitive funding available for prospective students, and the School continues to benefit from AHRC studentships and sponsorship by the Interiors Group, as well as a three-year doctoral scholarship by the architecture firm Aedas, which enables the recipient to focus on questions of cultural identity and design pedagogy from the point of view of practice in China and the UK. architecture-research@rca.ac.uk rca.ac.uk/architecture-research Research in the School of Architecture

12 Research: Southbank Centre, Jane Hall (PhD Candidate, Architecture)

13 At the heart of day-to-day activity for the programme is the Architecture and Interior Design Studio. The studio is a purpose-designed environment for inspiration and interaction between students of different design disciplines. It is a spectacular open-plan space on the sixth floor of the Darwin Building, offering one of the finest wrap-around views in London, equipped with a computer suite with necessary software and applications for largeformat printers and small digital cutters. Additionally, the Darwin workshops are shared with the School of Design and facilitate 1:1 fabrication in steel, wood and plastics. RapidformRCA is a rapid-prototyping bureau based at the College that enables precisely detailed models and prototypes to be created from CAD files. This cutting-edge facility is at the disposal of students and graduates from the School of Architecture and enables a designer to realise concepts quickly. Facilities

14 Facilities: Student in the Architecture Studio, Photograph by Richard Haughton

15 Admissions Royal College of Art Kensington Gore London SW7 2EU +44 (0) rca.ac.uk School For more information about the School please go to rca.ac.uk/school-of-architecture

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