The first year of the MArch explores the relationship between architecture and the city.

This year, following an established multi-year itinerant pedagogical framework entitled Remote Discovery, the studio focused on the Italian city of Milan. In particular, the studio operated in the context of ongoing debates and policy frameworks addressing the city’s ongoing housing crisis.

The studio was structured through a series of interlinked modules.

The first semester started with an exercise of bibliographic research and re-drawing of eminent case studies of Milanese residential architecture; this was followed by the in-depth analysis and physical modelling of a series of inner-city sites currently occupied by abandoned military barracks — focusing on the historical stratification of urban plans and architectural pre-existences (Arch401). Finally, students developed socially and environmentally sustainable strategies of urban densification, through innovative mixed-use housing typologies (Arch402).

In the second semester, such buildings were brought to full architectural resolution (Arch403). This was done by focusing on the architectural composition of structural, circulation and fire safety, and environmental strategies. The Arch403 module concluded with the detailed definition of an interior space of choice. In the final Arch404 module, the buildings were developed in their full technological, material, and environmental components.

Amber Potts

Each studio addressed the relationship between housing and the city through a different lens:

Studio1, Standard, Non Standard, Luxury, led by Pietro Pezzani and Johanna Muszbek, questioned the way in which domestic rituals, lifestyles and aspirations are inscribed in legal codes and real estate markets, and how architecture can negotiate the threshold between the absolute necessary and the utmost desirable;

Studio2, The Ideal City,led byMarco Iuliano, Valentino Capelo and James Jones, sought to rediscover the fundamentals of architecture and urban planning, reconfiguring the relationship between humans and nature in search of a contemporary ‘ideal city’;

Studio3, Urban Fertilities, led byJocelyn Froimovich and Francesca Piazzoni, used the critical lens of fertility to address future domestic and urban conditions of cohabitation, and to explore new social and spatial arrangements which would allow cities to flourish;

Studio4, Narrative Space, led byRichard Koeck, focused on the intersection of space and narrative as a mean to create meaningful places at the architectural and the urban scale, by adopting a cross-disciplinary approach at the intersection architectural design, digital moving images and creative arts/communication.

Throughout the four modules, student attended classes and received tailored tutorials on Environmental Design (Spyros Stravoravdis), Structural Design (Carlos Medel Vera), and Detailing (Valentino Capelo).

The study trip to Milan, strategically placed on week 4, enriched and fine-tuned the students’ knowledge of the city, allowing them to test their initial assumptions.

Alongside the studio, taught modules in Urban Design Theory (ARCH406, Junjie Xi), Practice Management & Contract Law (ARCH405, Jack Dunne), and Sustainability in Practice (ARCH410, Stephen Finnegan), provided further support to students’ academic development, while Research Methods in Architecture (ARCH480, Barnabas Calder) prepared the ground for the writing of their dissertation in the second year of the programme.

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