Course summary

The PhD Architecture by Design programme is intended for graduates who wish to pursue a rigorous, in-depth study of a specific topic where design methods familiar to architectural practice (such as drawing, surveying, modelling) are developed as research methodologies. As part of ESALA's suite of postgraduate programmes, it affords the opportunity for you to pursue design-led research in architecture at the highest level, combining inquiries conducted by design with knowledge gathered and advanced through writing. The programme will support you as you develop an awareness of the methods and theoretical frameworks that shape the ways in which architects (as practitioners and researchers) engage with contemporary concerns. It will enable you to develop your own interpretive experiments, fieldwork, design work and arguments in the pursuit of a research project. The subject of any PhD project is driven by individual fascinations. What connects the various projects in the PhD Architecture by Design programme is a concern for design as a way of conducting research. The words ‘by design’ in the programme title do not refer to the outcome of the research (a design), as much as to the mode in which the research is conducted, produced and framed. We welcome prospective students with a strong idea of what they want to research, an awareness of why this might be of contemporary relevance, and a developed understanding of how they might carry out that research. A knowledge of the field of architectural research-by-design and research-by-practice is desirable. The willingness and capacity to engage with primary source material and to interpret this both through design and textual methods are essential attributes.