Unit 13 adopts a Cultural Studies approach to design, focusing on understanding the relationship between buildings and the everyday lives of their inhabitants. We view buildings as reflections of cultural values, personal experiences and historical contexts. We are interested in ‘building’ as both a verb and a noun. This year, we explored darkness. The initial primitive act of shelter building, by necessity, obscures the daylight, yet historically, architecture has been predominantly concerned with harnessing daylight at the expense of considering the potential of the dark. Our current culture’s fixation on productivity and visibility overlooks the atmospheric qualities of night. This bias towards illumination has limited architecture’s capacity to evoke a full range of human emotions, at the expense of more immersive environments. As such, we embraced gloom to explore psychological, sensory and political depths. Often associated with mystery and fear, we explored how darkness can create a sense of intimacy and wonder. By focusing on the perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers, we discussed how nightfall has been perceived as both a space of danger and opportunity and a realm where social hierarchies are disrupted. These ideas enabled our designs to explore how darkness has shaped culture, identity and urban experience. We considered the contemporary political factors surrounding darkness, such as themes of public safety, energy consumption, surveillance, night-time economies, the allure of illuminated cityscapes and light pollution.
Daniel Dream, Matthew Lenkiewicz and Ifigeneia Liangi
Harry Day
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.
