Postgraduate 
Degree Show 2023
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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.

Sushrut Shankar

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

The existing conditions of the river Clyde are quite disappointing when it comes to the question of accessibility along the south bank of Clyde. As seen in the map there is no connection to the southeast bank for pedestrians and no visible connection from Ingram Street to the south. With the presence of a lot of empty plots on the east and northwest banks, there are very few places that animate activities on the Clyde Bank. The discontinuity in the urban fabric is very well visible in the form of the grid pattern break and the enormous height difference between the buildings on Custom Quay and Carlton Place which additionally makes the river edge visually distinct and diminishes the experience of it when traversing from north to south. The north bank has limited crossings for people to cross the road to reach the bank with railings running along the center of the 4-lane road near the IFSC center. The blank canvas of the edge not only fails to stimulate activities it restricts the users to mostly people strolling or jogging along the Clyde with very less mixed-aged users. As opposed to the amount of area the edge already has and the potential to change these challenges into solutions we take a look at the historical context of “what river Clyde once was as it might hold the answer for what it might become”

from Habitable Clyde Edge

Continuing the pool intervention, the next step was to create flood-able spaces of the future which will be used currently and be part of the place-making goal of this project. Hence the creation of ‘rooms’ which sit ‘3.5 m to 4 m below the upper edge and provide an opportunity for the public to approach the river more physically and visually. A similar example of this can be seen in the ‘Chicago River Walk’ where different rooms open up to the river with different activities for the public to engage in. Each of these rooms has a unique identity responding to the context of “2 urban blocks” of the river. For example, the ‘cafe room ‘ (the room with all the cafes and restaurants) sits right outside of the IFSC district as it will receive people at different times of the day and night.

from Habitable Clyde Edge

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

from Habitable Clyde Edge

This method of building a fence or a wall along the river is the most known and followed across the world. Though this is not considered the safest means of flood adaptability, it restricts the water well enough for years with a slight risk of everything failing once the wall is breached. It is also called dykes in Denmark where it had been used traditionally. Though this last step of making a wall for ‘restrict’ gives the idea of a plane single wall running straight along the river’s edge, here the interplay of the wall being part of an ‘urban infrastructure’ takes place. The wall takes its width and placements from the historic ‘sheds’ Glasgow used to have in the early 20th century for storage of goods. This in turn provides courts on the upper edge for more engaging activities and a raised walkway sitting 3.5m above the street level for unbridled views of the river and the skyline.

from Habitable Clyde Edge

Tianyu Zhang

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