Course summary

The Advanced Architectural Design MSc provides the resources for international designers to gain further skills in architectural design Our MSc Advanced Architectural Design is aimed at international designers who want to enhance their design and research skills. This post-professional degree helps you consolidate your own identity as a designer. You'll develop your own distinctive specialisms through research-led design, with an emphasis on sophisticated representational techniques. Our aim is to help you become a leading architect in the profession. The course offers an innovative, absorbing, research-led pathway in advanced architectural design. It can be undertaken on either 1-year or 2-year pathways. 1 Year programme This pathway focuses on the dialogue and interconnection between architecture and urban regions. Each year we select an urban region in the UK, and study it through a critical, poetic and speculative lens. Recently, we’ve been looking at Newcastle and the wider North East region, and the complicated legacy of industrialisation. A specialism of this programme is our emphasis on experimental, creative representational tools and modes to explore architectural issues. We encourage students to work in a range of media, from hand-drawing and modelling, to 3D modelling, virtual and augmented reality tools, and installation practices. Our workshop helps facilitate the programme, and each year we work to a large-scale exhibition of work on campus. The pathway is structured with an intensive first semester, introducing you to a variety of representational techniques and tools, followed by a two-semester long ‘thesis project’, in which you are able to set your own frameworks, sites and explorations for an in-depth architectural study through a range of experimental techniques. 2 Year programme This two year programme extends the first year of the programme into a deeper advanced understanding of the mutual interrelationship between architecture and urban form through integration with modules from our M.Arch programme. After completing two semesters alongside 1-year programme students, you’ll join an M.Arch design studio in your second year, and take additional modules intended to expand your critical and theoretical thinking around architecture.