MArch GRADUATE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN Frédéric Migayrou
Deputy Director: Andrew Porter. Report Co-ordinator: Professor Stephen Gage. Research Cluster Staff: RC1: Alisa Andrasek and Jose Sanchez RC2: Marjan Coletti, Tea Lim and Guan Lee RC3: Professor Stephen Gage and Ruairi Glynn. RC4: Xavier de Kestelier and Jethro Hon. RC5: Andrew Porter and Luke Pearson. RC6: Daniel Widrig and Fulvio Wirz.
MArch G AD — pa g e 2 86 —
The Masters studio in Graduate Architectural Design is a 12-month full-time programme concentrating on advanced architectural design. This program offers the opportunity to be involved in the world of advanced speculative research and to develop the possibility of a personal involvement and implication in the challenging aspects of prospective architecture.
B A RT LET T 2012
For this academic year Professor Migayrou decided to open out the programme to offer a larger diversity of courses, in the form of Research Clusters, and focused on a better comprehension of heterogeneous language and the tools of production and fabrication which will radically change the shape of architecture, its social and economical role in the industrial world and its effectiveness as an active agent in the city. Through new developments such as the role of artificiality and simulation, the borders of many disciplines are more and more porous with emerging languages (computational and technological), which redefine the status and the territory of architecture, the understanding of the traditional architectural typologies and the mutations of urban morphologies. The six Research Clusters of the MArch GAD programme offer a large range of approaches to interrelated domains created by the dialogue between architecture and other disciplines (Biology, Physical science...) as well as structural mutations in industrialisation (Robotics, new materials, prototyping…). The notion of design is extended into the domain of these and other associated fields which are working with the same tools of production and conception. The programme opens a dialogue with a broad range of disciplines that will themselves become increasingly defined by such advanced design methods. The programme is structured so that the first three months introduce students to the theoretical concepts through lectures and initial design projects. During this period students confirm the subject of their thesis project and report and then work in specialist teaching groups. There is continuous discussion of work via tutorials and reviews. In a second period they develop their own projects individually or in small groups depending on the structure of each cluster. This allows the individual to discover his or her individual expression; it takes many forms from speculative projects through drawings, models, printed objects, to the construction of working prototypes.