“You can lead the horse to water, but you can’t take the water out of the horse.”
Coined by journalist Lawrence Harrison in 1976, this hybrid phrase captures the strange logic of the malaphor — when two idioms collide to produce something unexpected, humorous, and revealing. This brief treats the malaphor as both concept and method, framing architecture as something that emerges through collision, negotiation, and adaptation.
The Lea Valley Gateway becomes the testing ground: a liminal landscape on London’s eastern edge where industry meets ecology, floodplains meet regeneration, and infrastructure cuts through wetlands. It is both connector and divider, frontier and backwater — a place where memory, use, and speculative futures overlap. The valley itself can be read as a malaphor: a hybrid of histories and possibilities, thresholds and contradictions inscribed into the land
Pravin Ghosh
Anna Nenasheva
The MArch Architecture is a two-year full-time or three-year part-time programme offering exemption from ARB/RIBA Part 2. It combines rigorous professional training with creative and speculative design exploration. In the first year, students join a themed design unit to undertake a creative building design project combined with a technical and professional report. In the second year, students pursue a comprehensive speculative architectural design project, and an in-depth theoretical thesis tailored to their personal interest. The programme fosters independent thinking, innovation, theoretical and technical excellence, preparing graduates for advanced architectural practice and ongoing professional development in a dynamic global context. See further details on our prospectus page.
