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.