Architecture and the Built Environment (MArch)

Cardiff University

Progress in your journey to become a qualified architect, and produce innovative and integrated designs that address the challenges posed by a competitive and changing world. Our two-year MArch in Architecture and the Built Environment will take you to an advanced level of architectural design in order to develop innovative design ideas and methods to address contemporary challenges. You’ll explore the full range of skills and specialist knowledge required to be an architect, while focusing on developing your personal and professional outlook. You will choose and develop a specialism in one of the school’s key built environment research areas. Whilst the programme covers the full breadth of what is needed to become an architect, you will have the opportunity to shape your learning and focus on areas that are of particular interest to you. Your studies will be shaped by exposure to world-leading teacher-practitioners and researchers who will encourage you to develop new critical and creative approaches to design. You will be able to choose from a series of optional modules and studios, allowing you to engage with the school’s key research specialisms that will inform your design studies. We encourage you to practice ‘grounded creativity’ your design studies across both years will involve imaginative engagement with real-world issues and global challenges such as climate change and the UN’s sustainable development goals within localised contexts. You will further your understanding of how architecture is made and how it performs, reflecting on how your technological choices and the way these are integrated in the design process can support the wellbeing of present and future generations. To prepare you for the demands of the architectural profession, we build on and extend your existing understandings of the historical, theoretical, cultural, political, and geographical dimensions of the architectural discipline. With a focus on innovation, professionalism and commercial awareness, you’ll be encouraged to reflect critically on the wider significance of personal decisions and actions as an architect. The design studio is at the centre of our community, a place where you’ll mix with students, staff, and industry practitioners and other partners from outside the school to address ethical, global, climatic and professional issues. The studio environment provides the ideal space for you to take your studies in a direction that reflects your own interests, through a process of creativity and discovery. You’ll be encouraged to develop innovative knowledge by experimenting with design, take creative risks and expand your thinking. Following graduation from the programme you will need to complete a Part 3 programme, for example our Postgraduate Diploma in Architecture: Professional Practice, if you intend to become a registered architect in the United Kingdom. Alternatively, the skills you develop on this module would provide you with a strong grounding to undertake a postgraduate research programme, leading to a PhD or MPhil.

Welsh School of Architecture