Architecture BA/MArch

30 credits

Through drawing, modelmaking, reading and writing, you will learn to study architecture with accuracy, curiosity, and critical awareness. You will visit sites and develop the habit of looking closely to understand how societies express values through built form.

The module introduces basic principles of climate, biodiversity and building physics, helping you recognise the environmental and material factors that influence construction and use. You will gain confidence in research skills, including credible sourcing, clear referencing and academic integrity.

Studio work emphasises collaboration and inclusive participation, supporting you in communicating insights through drawings, models, captions and short written studies.

By the end of the module, you will be able to observe, analyse and describe architecture within its wider contexts, and communicate your findings clearly, responsibly and collaboratively.

30 credits

Every building exists within a wider environment: social, physical and regulatory. You will learn how to study these conditions and use them to shape your design thinking.

All buildings are made from materials that affect how they perform, how they look, how much they cost and how sustainable they are. You will explore how material choices influence a building’s function and character and how availability differs from place to place.

Architects create meaning by combining practical constraints with cultural understanding. Restrictions are not obstacles but often the drivers of strong design. In this module, you will learn to interpret these conditions as a kind of design language and use them to develop your own architectural proposals.

30 credits

This module introduces the core skills needed to observe and understand how humans experience space, forming the foundation of early architectural thinking.

You will study real environments through sketching, surveying and experiential recording. You will learn to identify spatial qualities and recognise how observation informs design decisions. The module emphasises iterative making: you will explore simple spatial ideas through analogue drawings and physical models, testing, refining and evaluating responses to a design brief.

Clear communication is central to architectural practice. You will develop fundamental representational skills, including orthographic drawing, basic three‑dimensional studies and introductory climate‑ and material-awareness. These tools will support you in expressing design intentions effectively.

By the end of the module, you will be able to observe, generate and communicate early architectural proposals with increasing confidence, establishing a strong base for further design work.

30 credits

Architecture is a collaborative profession, but it begins with personal responsibility. This module introduces the foundational values that shape professional conduct – ethics, integrity, accountability and respect for others. You will explore how architectural decisions affect people and places, and how duty of care guides behaviour, both in studio and on site.

Through case studies, group tasks and reflective exercises, you will develop skills in communication, inclusive teamwork and constructive peer exchange. You will also gain an early awareness of regulatory and safety considerations, including planning, Building Regulations and CDM duty‑holders, learning how these shape small‑scale design decisions.

This module will introduce you to Future Skills through engagement with Navigate, helping you build global citizenship, ethical awareness and commercial understanding. You will begin your Professional Development Plan (PDP), using reflection to understand your strengths, ambitions and areas for development as an emerging practitioner.

By the end of the module, you will understand the ethical and regulatory responsibilities of the architect, collaborate effectively with others and reflect critically on your skills as you begin to form your professional identity.

30 credits

In this module, you will deepen your understanding by exploring themes and regions in detail. Architecture is both a way of reading and a way of making, and this module foregrounds the dialogue between the two. You will study how ideas move through time and space, and how climate, material, ritual and social structure shape the built environment through comparative case studies. Alongside this, you will experiment by testing ideas through drawing, modelling and iterative design exercises, with an emphasis on tectonics and materiality, where construction and expression intersect.

You will be asked to move from description to argument: to compare and justify interpretations with sources, to prototype structural and environmental intentions at scale, and to situate decisions within relevant standards and constraints. By the end, you will translate concepts into artefacts with greater material and environmental awareness, and articulate coherent, referenced arguments that pave the way for integrated precedent and tectonic analysis.

30 credits

Making a place for someone to live might be the most complex thing an architect can do. Towns and cities are mostly made of places for people to live – and we know that there is as rich variety of types of home as there are people in our society. In this module you will think about the range of functions that make a home and the architectural implications that come from these.

Each home must support practical tasks. In this module you will learn how to size spaces appropriately and how to interlink spaces to allow comfortable movement, interconnection and privacy. You will think about light, ventilation and how these are essential to making beautiful spaces.

Each building we make must be safe. In this module you will think about how to design can protect people in their day-to-day life and in emergencies.

Each architect brings their own cultural history with them and yet has to make work that operates for people they will never meet. In this module you will learn how you can build from personal observations and critical readings to design intentions of broad utility and individual delight.

30 credits

Design is a process of discovery – an immersive act where ideas emerge through making. You will work to propose individual and accomplished design proposals and share these in a resolved and considered way.

You will explore how representation, both analogue and digital, becomes a tool for thinking, testing and communicating architectural ideas. Through drawing, modelling and iterative exploration, you will engage with the skilled play of the designer, where imagination meets material and spatial intention.

Architecture is not only a response to human needs but a way of shaping our relationship with the world, through construction, context and use. Here, climate, comfort and environment are not external conditions but formative forces. You will investigate how climate informs material choices and spatial strategies, and how comfort – thermal, sensory and psychological – defines the lived experience of architecture. Environmental responsiveness will be central, encouraging you to design proposals that dwell responsibly within their ecological and cultural settings.

You will use physical models and drawings to describe the project and present its thinking by verbally elaborating how it functions and what inspired it.

30 credits

In this module, the focus shifts to collective responsibility. Architects shape human habitats, which places us in a position of trust and influence. You will explore the frameworks – legal, regulatory, and ethical – that govern architectural practice, from planning law to sustainability standards. Working in groups, you will debate and articulate your ethical stance, considering duties to clients, communities and future generations. This module strengthens your ability to collaborate inclusively and critically, while continuing PDP to refine your professional direction. The Future Skills Explore Learning Outcomes are delivered in this module, broadening your understanding of practice through mentorships, site visits and industry networks.

30 credits

In this module, you move beyond interpretation to formulate your own position within architectural discourse. Architecture is shaped by complex cultural, political and environmental forces. You are invited to engage with these conditions through rigorous research and close reading of precedents. You will investigate how buildings, landscapes and cities respond to their contexts, how structural, material and environmental strategies express ideas across different cultures and histories, and how local legislative and regulatory frameworks reflect cultural attitudes and priorities, shape designs and generate ideas.

Learning takes place through careful site study, analytical drawing, modelling and comparative analysis. You will strengthen your ability to think critically about how architecture operates and how it might be reimagined. Emphasis is on integration – drawing together history, theory, context and tectonics so that design propositions emerge from a well-considered intellectual stance.

There is no single viewpoint to adopt. Instead, you are encouraged to challenge assumptions, construct arguments, and articulate a perspective that is both personally meaningful and grounded in evidence. By the end of the module, you will be able to move fluently between analysis and design, producing work that is responsive, situated and critically informed.

30 credits

Architectural practice is incredibly diverse. Practices differ by scale, by type of work and more. Architects too, are very varied in what they love about the subject. Some excel at managing jobs on site, others in consultation and community engagement.

Our masters’ studios are set up as a world of practices for you to engage with and learn from. You will be navigating this and developing into a professional architect with a clear idea of your position in the world and how you will pursue your career thereafter.

In this module you will learn how to deploy all your skills of design and communication and to set up a work method that allows you to critically reflect and advance your work week to week. You will learn diverse ways to engage with the design task, and how to research each stage and advance your work with conviction.

30 credits

As architects develop, they specialise – you will use this module and subsequent modules to reflect on your own relationship with this. Drawing on the rich and unique range of practitioner skillsets you will select studios which allow you to fully inhabit how some of the talented architects in London are working and researching.

The creative process is always entangled with doubt and uncertainty. At the heart of design lies a paradox: architects are asked to create something that does not yet exist and yet they must begin somewhere. Design is a process of projecting forward into the unknown, a space where language often falls short and only making and doing can carry us forward. This module invites you to inhabit that space of discovery.

Rooted in the Kingston School of Art (KSA) ethos of thinking through making, you will explore with your hands and bodies, working with freedom and openness while engaging with the interdisciplinary landscape of KSA. Through iteration, debate and reflection, you will refine your ideas and develop an understanding of design as a process of discovery through action.

15 credits

By your third year, professionalism becomes embedded in design practice. You will examine how competence – technical, managerial and ethical – shapes the delivery of complex projects. This module relates to your thesis design work, requiring you to integrate statutory compliance, climate responsibility and socio-cultural considerations into your proposals. You will articulate your professional ambitions and explore how architects operate within the construction industry and wider society. A strong grasp of tectonics and construction principles will underpin your design decisions. In this module, you will prepare for employment by developing CVs, portfolios and networks.

15 credits

This module provides you with a dedicated opportunity to develop your Future Skills Graduate Attributes that will set you apart from other graduates and enhance your employability and confidence. At the start of the module, you will be supported to self-assess your current skills profile and determine which attributes you need to develop to support your career ambitions. 

Taught sessions will give you the opportunity to have coaching conversations with students from across the University, supported and facilitated by the Module team. Outside of these taught sessions, you will engage in activities from a menu of opportunities to develop your Graduate Attributes. 

The menu of opportunities allows you to self-select activities such as hackathons, masterclasses and taster sessions, short online learning courses, and study abroad. In your taught classes with students from across the University, you will be encouraged to reflect on the activities you undertake to develop your graduate attributes and work towards the final assignment, a portfolio.

30 credits

This module is a period of independent, advanced inquiry, bringing together the skills and knowledge developed throughout your studies. The module is centred on discovering meaning in architecture – meaning that informs creative practice and emerges through sustained engagement with buildings, landscapes, histories and theories. Reading architecture becomes an act of interpretation and authorship, where you define the questions that matter to you and pursue them with clarity and depth.

You will immerse yourself in research, critical reflection and analysis, shaping a line of investigation that leads to a substantial researched project. This process involves crafting arguments, developing visual and written material, and refining your voice as a thinker and designer.

The module gives space for intellectual autonomy while fostering scholarly discipline. You chart your own course, supported by dialogue and critique, developing a sophisticated understanding of architectural ideas and their implications. By the end, you will not only read architecture with nuance – you will contribute meaningfully to its ongoing conversation through original, reflective and well composed work.

60 credits

Architectural practice is an endlessly rewarding and fascinating territory. The architect is constantly in negotiation with the world and reflecting on their own evolving place it. In this design studio, you will operate as a practitioner and reflect on your work to date. You will set out your own goals and work to deliver a fully described project, which you can use to portray all the skills you have acquired to this point.

It will take place in two parts –  the first part will allow you to sample a studio brief and a second part will allow you to choose work to develop and fully resolve. Throughout, you will be supported by our unique team of leading practitioner academics to articulate and advance your position as an emerging professional.

You will work with experts in aligned areas such as engineering and more to advance your work. You will situate your work within the professional stages and take it to a detailed level of resolution. You will research, develop and represent tectonic and spatial ideas as part of a resolved proposal and comprehensive Portfolio.

30 credits

In this module, you will adopt a critical position as a professional. Architecture is not only about design but also negotiation, judgement and risk management.

This module deepens your understanding of legislation, contracts, fees and business operations, alongside ethical and social responsibilities. You will critically engage with your thesis project, showing compliance with UK codes and awareness of the social impact of your decisions. This is where professionalism becomes holistic – combining technical knowledge, ethical reasoning and strategic thinking.

By the end of the module, you will be ready to enter practice with confidence, integrity and a clear sense of your role in shaping the built environment.