Architectural History, Theory and Interpretation (MA)

Overview

This course is committed to understanding architecture through direct experience as well as through formal histories and theories. An interdisciplinary approach aims to link architecture to the rest of culture. The investigation of buildings, streets and landscapes – every kind of inhabited space – is a feature of the course, which is offered by a lively architecture department in the middle of one of the world’s great cities. In this department, theory never becomes divorced from practice, from the processes of design, construction, use and interpretation. The course will appeal to graduates who want challenging and adventurous study. It is also intended for architects who want to strengthen their cultural or intellectual base by reading, thinking and formulating ideas about architecture, its history and potential.

Architecture and Spacial Design

www.londonmet.ac.uk/architecture/

Applying and entry

PLEASE NOTE There is no official closing date for this course, but you are advised to apply as early as possible as we will only consider your application if there are places available on the course.

Tel: 020 7133 4202
Email: admissions@londonmet.ac.uk

An Honours degree in architecture, design, humanities or social science or equivalent experience.

Course contents

Course structure
Introductory modules set out various methodological frameworks, always grounded in built examples and exemplary texts. The core modules include:

• Histories
• Theories
• Interpretation

Read more details about the modules

Later options allow the exploration of more specialised areas, including urban theory, architecture and film, the question of technology, and poetry and architecture.

See also Course Website

Assessment

Assessment is through coursework and a written dissertation. The core staff (a strong, diverse team of international repute, with an outstanding record of interdisciplinary activity and publication) will supervise the dissertation.

Careers

Career opportunities

The spatial thinking that the course encourages would be good training for those planning to enter a wide range of creative fields from architectural journalism, television, theatre and publishing to museum and gallery work.

Staff

Professor Colin Davies is an architect, historian and writer. Former editor of the Architects’ Journal, he is the author of many books, including the standard work on High Tech Architecture, and monographs on the work of Norman Foster, Michael Hopkins and Nicholas Grimshaw, and a wide ranging treatment of architectural prefabrication. He writes regularly in architectural magazines on both sides of the Atlantic.

Professor Robert Harbison is the author of many books including Eccentric Spaces; Deliberate Regression (primitivism in 19-20th century art and thought); The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable; Thirteen Ways, Reflections on Baroque and Travels in the History of Architecture. He has lectured widely in Britain, the USA and Europe.

Helen Mallinson is a principal lecturer and has taught design, history and theory. She has completed a cross-disciplinary doctoral thesis on the architecture of ventilation at the London Consortium, an organisation that includes Birkbeck College, the Architectural Association, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Tate Gallery.

Student profiles

What the students say
Read a student profile: Aleks Catina
Read a student profile: Jenny Wyness