They say death is the only true constant. For us mere mortals of flesh and bone this may be true, we are arguably just small specs of dust floating across this ever-changing planet, yet we leave behind a legacy of cultural relics, some good, some bad and many that are forgotten entirely.
In recent history, immeasurable traditions such as festivals, song, dance, languages, crafts, and other cultural customs steeped in our ancestral heritage have been lost. Architecture, like culture, adapts to change, and with the disappearance of cultural practices comes the disappearance of architectural typologies that once embodied these traditions. Simply put, the death of these cultural entities leads to the death of the architecture that was born from them.
This year we invited our students to look to the past, or to a past of their choosing to rediscover what has been lost or forgotten. We asked them to seek, re-examine or re-imagine the crafts and methods lost to memory and to celebrate the entangled vernacular architectures that are traceable to a specific place or time.
Through this form of cultural resurrection, their architectures hoped to breathe new life into these dormant traditions, giving them a wonderous new meaning, a rebirth of imaginative and speculative splendour that created new and exciting architectural worlds for us all to inhabit.
Pascal Bronner and Thomas Hillier
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.
