Course summary

The new Conservation and Reuse programme (MA/PG Dip) approaches working with existing things from the perspective of climate change, driven by an urgent need to cultivate the careful use and reuse of materials and spaces – from the cathedral to the car park. This is central to a set of school-wide strategies at the AA that ask how innovation in materials and fabrication can address problems of relative value, resource conservation and cultural significance. The programme’s emphasis reaches beyond buildings to include landscapes, environments and wider material culture, both tangible and intangible. Its curriculum explores historical and theoretical frameworks of conservation, encouraging students to engage with questions of value and heritage from a critical standpoint and grounding their work in awareness of the ‘spheres of implication’ in which objects and buildings are embedded. This enquiry takes place alongside practical investigations into new and established construction techniques for making and remaking, and a focus on developing practical skills. The programme fosters future-orientated practice by considering how regulatory frameworks, commercial attitudes and practical actions could be transformed by a better understanding of the factors that influence what we choose to conserve, and how we do so. Students synthesise theoretical, technical and practical knowledge in a design thesis targeting a situation of their choice, taking responsibility for a rich existing environment and exploring how it could change. The AA sees the need to equip a new generation of practitioners with the ethical, critical and technical skills to tackle a complex world, and to put design at the centre of responses to questions of value. This new programme will nurture practitioners who are able to work with existing things, make beneficial judgements about design and bring about change with precision, optimism and grace.