Architectural and Urban History and Theory MPhil/PhD

UCL (University College London)

This course allows students to conduct an exhaustive, original and creative piece of research into an area of their own selection and definition. The range of research topics undertaken is broad, but most explore the history and theory of architecture and cities between 1800 and the present day. The Architectural and Urban History and Theory MPhil/PhD addresses the histories and theories of architecture, cities and landscape. It encompasses how these are affected by intellectual, social, economic, political and environmental contexts over time. The course’s purpose is to educate candidates in history and theory, not as supplementary discourses to architectural, urban and landscape design, but as integral parts of these fields of knowledge, in past, current and future issues facing society. Candidates use a range of methods from field work and archival research to ethnographic and qualitative tools. They draw from the multi-disciplinary environment of The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment and UCL’s departments, including, but not limited to, anthropology, political science, forensic science, literature, the fine arts, history of technology, environmental history and ecology. Students are expected to be independent thinkers, in order to make an original contribution to knowledge and expand the disciplinary discourse in their field of inquiry. They should be reflective within the shifting boundaries of their discipline and the rapidly changing nature of the architectural profession, and aware of how these are affected by societal and institutional challenges.

Bartlett School of Architecture