STAGES 3 AND 5 Dissertation

This Module is taught with a correspondent Dissertation module offered to Stage 3 students (Part 1). In these two joint modules, BA and MArch students are supervised in mixed groups and are asked to investigate a particular topic that can be related to architecture, urban design and planning or to any other area that students wish to research. It is a module through which students refine their research and critical analysis skills. These are skills that help structure any investigation, including design-led investigations, hence being invaluable in practice and in the rigorous development of design projects. Importantly, this is a module very much informed by the research developed within KSAP. In fact, supervisors are all skilled researchers in their field, and students are assigned to supervisors depending on the topic chosen, to match their topic with relevant academic expertise. Supervisory sessions are not only necessary to progress the dissertation, they are also occasions to stimulate informative conversations and sometimes opportunities to transfer knowledge generated with recent or ongoing research projects.

This year students developed thought-provoking dissertations on topics such as women in architecture and the analysis of spatial typologies of architecture schools (including KSAP) using Space Syntax methods (Fig. 1). Other dissertations were accompanied with notable illustrations such as the one representing Jeddah’s Rawshan towers (Fig. 2), taken from a dissertation focusing on heritage architecture and climate.

Silvio Caputo Module Convenor

Like for the Dissertation module, this module too is delivered in parallel with a dissertation / artefact module for Stage 3 students (Part 1). In this module, students must demonstrate not only their research skills but also maker skills. The final output is an artefact and a report documenting a rigorous process through which a particular issue is unpacked and understood through model making, or any other form of making. Clearly, model-making which is so important in the architectural profession, is one of the most common ways for students to assemble and deliver the final artefact, although not the only one. Over the past years, students have produced artefacts that include films, installations or even digital artefacts. In any format chosen, the artefact becomes an opportunity to capture some key reflections on a particular topic. In this module, students receive formative and summative feedback through crits in which their models are displayed, presented and discussed, similar to design modules. In these crits, the focus is on assessing the process leading to the design of the artefact, with its merits and limits, together with the maker skills.

This year students developed amazing artefacts ranging from a tool made from tin cans to purify water for those in need of safe drinking water (which was successfully tested) and a perfect reconstruction of Robin Hood Gardens (Fig 2)

Silvio Caputo Module Convenor