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‘The School of Architecture is a rich and expansive setting for the pursuit of design experimentation and research, producing generations of graduates that lead practice in their chosen fields.’

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Dr Adrian Lahoud is an architect, researcher and educator. Prior to being appointed Dean of the School of Architecture, Adrian Lahoud was Director of the MArch Urban Design

at The Bartlett School of Architecture and served as Director of the MA programme at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths.

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The School of Architecture’s one-year MRes pathway, two-year MA programmes, and MPhil/PhD programmes offer an unparalleled interdisciplinary context to pursue design research in the spatial disciplines.

Located in the RCA’s Kensington campus, across the road from Hyde Park and adjacent to a variety of important museums and institutions, the School of Architecture provides a stimulating and vibrant cultural context for study in one of the world’s leading cities. The distinctive College environment offers students the opportunity to realise live projects and to work alongside designers and fine artists in a concentrated, postgraduate-only environment. This context allows students in Architecture and Interior Design to push their material, conceptual and technical skills beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries – expanding the potential of future practice while forming friendships and creative partnerships that last a lifetime.

We see the design studio as providing a supportive and critical platform for the cultivation of distinctive forms of practice upon graduation. The studio-based learning environment is supported by historical, theoretical and technical seminars where students are introduced to a wide range of design research methods and approaches. Within each programme, opportunities for live projects and field work are provided in line with the pedagogical ambitions of studio leaders.

Staff — Programme staff consist of highly regarded academics and professionals who bring their own innovative research and practice to teaching. For further information on staff, including research interests, exhibitions and publications, please visit: rca.ac.uk/staff

Applications are welcomed from — – For MA Architecture, graduates with a degree and outstanding portfolio in architecture (RIBA Part 1) or an international equivalent. – For Interior Design, we also welcome applications from graduates or experienced designers of related disciplines, such as (but not restricted to) product, furniture or transport design. 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, Oliver Wainwright, Tom Emerson and Stephanie MacDonald, 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.

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Architecture Led by Head of Programme Beth Hughes, 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 MA 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.

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Interior Design Led by Head of Programme Professor 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..

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MRes RCA Architecture Pathway Led by Dr Sam Jacoby, the MRes Pathway in the School of Architecture offers training in practice-based research methods for critical studies of spatial design. Unique to the MRes Architecture Pathway is the offer of three specialisms that support a range of interests seen as essential to contemporary architectural and urban research: Architecture & Media explores the use of new forms of media and data to interpret, represent and produce the built environment, including remote sensing, scientific visualisation, social media aggregation and planetary photography. Challenging some prevailing disciplinary assumptions of urbanism and urban design, City Design sets out to explore new methods for urban, architectural and spatial research, and to critically understand the increasing role of computation with respect to design, fabrication and practice. Recognising social movements as manifestations of social innovation, Social Movements proposes to challenge existing practices of state planning or community-based activism. Through a focus on militant research methods and live projects, this specialism sets out to catalyse the architectural, urban and territorial creativity of social movements.

The pathway not only supports traditional academic research, but also strongly emphasises practice-led and experimental research, preparing graduates for diverse career opportunities in academia, leading architectural and urban design practices, human rights organisations, NGOs, as well as social and environmental coalitions. The MRes RCA Architecture Pathway recognises a demand for a new type of graduate and a new type of research training, acknowledging that architectural practice has become increasingly research-led with a proliferation of industry-based research departments. In the context of large-scale social and environmental concern, professional innovation and spatial research acquires a profound importance, suggesting new models of collaboration between academic and non-academic institutions. This has led to a growing need for architectural knowledge outside traditional disciplinary domains; in response, this pathway is organised around a series of collective and individual ‘live projects’, in which students collaborate with an external network of partners.

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Research in the School of Architecture is led by Dr Harriet Harriss. The School of Architecture is committed to design and research that has impact in the world by formulating critical positions on the challenges confronting the built environment and the role of the architect in relation to them. In both research and pedagogy, the School 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, alongside academic research, creative and experimentation-driven design-led research is integrated with more conventional text-based enquiry.

We offer various research pathways, including design-led, by practice, by thesis, professional and by publication.

Research Students The School of Architecture’s research programmes are pedagogically configured to help researchers create impact at local, national and international levels, working at the intersection of conceptual and applied research. We also support and supervise partnerships between researchers and business – from consultants for leading brands, cultural organisations, design practices, manufacturers, public sector agencies, charities and community groups – with a view to helping to develop

and implement design-driven sustainable strategies that result in tangible, real-world outcomes. MPhil and PhD students join us as fellow researchers, some working directly to the School’s research themes informed by research staff expertise, others pursuing their own research interests, from the subversion of the UK planning system to the aesthetics of Italian transport infrastructure. Supervisors are drawn from the School’s staff, from the College and from industry in response to the diversity of subjects, and there is competitive funding available for prospective students.

Funded Student Research Case Study 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.

MPhil/PhD Architecture offers a range of critically informed, spatial research strands, situated within the Royal College of Art, a world-leading art and design institution. All research strands encourage interdisciplinary research projects in collaboration with other Schools and external partners. Both MPhil and PhD programmes support traditional academic research, but also strongly emphasises practice-led and experimental research, preparing graduates for diverse career opportunities in academia, leading architectural and urban design practices, human rights organisations, NGOs, as well as social and environmental coalitions. We welcome unique and innovative research proposals, and offer the option of aligning with the thematic specialisms within the school of architecture, including Architecture & Media, City Design, Social Movements, Display Cultures, Urbanism, Emergent Pedagogies.

MPhil/PhD Interior Design welcomes applications from innovators who are interested in using design-led and/or ‘practice-tested ’ research to explore the future of interior design through one of several different thematic lenses: Display Cultures, Interior Urbanism, Material Matters and Adaptive Re-use, Domesticity, Gendered Space, Emergent Pedagogies, Cognition and the Sublime, Narrative Environments, and Ornamentation. We are keen to consider proposals that examine the future of the interior in relation to sustainable strategies, cognition, transitioning domesticity, ornamentation, material matters, ecologies of waste, and wellbeing or social innovation as their investigative enquiry. Both the Architecture and Interior Design research programmes welcome cross-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary and interdisciplinary proposals – provided the core focus is on examining the future of interior design.

architecture-research@rca.ac.uk rca.ac.uk/architecture-research

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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 large-format printers and small digital cutters. Additionally, the Darwin workshops 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.

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