MARCH ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES

Bourdon Building, 4 students

The Master of Architectural Studies is research and project driven providing multi-disciplinary input through a series of specialist pathways which include Urban Building, Urban Design, Creative Urban Practices, Digital Creativity, Energy and Environment, Zero Energy, Mass Customised Housing and History and Theory of the City.

The programme begins with a series of core lectures and seminars, balanced by focused reading of key literature related to the six specialist areas of enquiry. This enables all students to gain a multi-disciplinary perspective and provides a context for shared discourse.

Students are encouraged to work within the City of Glasgow and its environs, as these offer an ideal laboratory for studying architectural and urban design. The city is a living resource, bearing the characteristic morphological imprints it shares with its European counterparts but also those of the ubiquitous gridiron planned cities of North and South America. The varied legacies of the city’s medieval origins, 18th century extensions, dramatic 19th century expansion and post war decline together with the initiatives taken to secure its present recovery have all endowed the city with a wealth of not only source material for investigative study, but also in the diverse range of circumstances it offers for speculation on the future city.

The Individual Research Project is a culmination of 3 semesters work where students develop an architectural response to a self defined research question. Each body of work evidences the gathering, organisation, analysis, synthesis and deployment of data, research and theory, thus generating an original intellectual position, and a creative, responsive architectural proposal.

Students are expected to operate with professionalism, independence and self-direction in preparation for the start of their architectural career.

In 2022-23 the Masters student cohort consisted of 22 students across 5 pathways.

commercial room view

from Habitable Clyde Edge

This method is used to allow water into the city or to ‘make room for water’. This is one of the best-recognized methods for flood adaptability as the public spaces on the edge allow the temporary expansion of the river by allowing it to flood them. A small element of this is the water squares in Rotterdam and the morocco plaza of Ha-fen city. To introduce this, a decision was made to add circular reservoirs which let the water flow in an outwards direction towards the city and help the circulation of water in a loop as it slows down the speed. These reservoirs were placed in such a way that the total area of the newly formed edge above is equal to the area of the old/ existing Clyde Bank and creates an interplay of water in these “pools” to come nearer to the city.

from Habitable Clyde Edge

The flooding conditions here as depicted as pre and post-flood where the rooms that are used for activities embracing the river, get flooded in the future and offered back to the river for it to expand on and flow.

from Habitable Clyde Edge

Bringing people closer to the water by adding "rooms" and creating active " frontages" on the streets.

from Habitable Clyde Edge

As Glasgow has always been in the SHIPBUILDING industry we see through these images that the bank earlier was used to have these ‘shed-like structures which were used for goods storage and were accessible through both sides. These ran parallel to the river and had widths ranging from 10m wide to 25 m. We can also see that the proportions of the buildings around Clyde were of human scale ( ranging from ground to + 3 floors ) which added to the picturesque town in age. This forms the base for what is being proposed as a habitable wall infrastructure ahead.

from Habitable Clyde Edge

from The Funeral Parlour On the Hill

from The Funeral Parlour On the Hill

from The Funeral Parlour On the Hill

from The Funeral Parlour On the Hill

from The Funeral Parlour On the Hill