Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2

Programme Directors: Julia Backhaus, Marjan Colletti

‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ asserts the wartime slogan devised by the British government in 1939, now a popular meme. This message has, however, rarely been more relevant than in 2020–21. Steadily, decisively and resolutely we carried on from the moment Covid-19 disrupted our lives. Last year we were antagonised by the unexpected, sudden and catastrophic. This year our vibrant school community faced a plethora of challenging and unnerving questions: Would we find the spirit to start the academic year with optimism? Would we have the stamina to cope long-term with the physical and psychological strain? Would we possess the critical ability and resilience to remain positive, agile and proactive? Would the incoming Year 4 students, many of them new to The Bartlett School of Architecture and London, manage to find the necessary momentum to start a postgraduate course, with unknown peers and tutors, and focus their study on the development of a comprehensive building project? Would graduating Year 5 students return to university with the necessary motivation to positively develop their thesis, intellect and career, since our final year – understood as the school’s pinnacle in research-based professional education – is driven by rigour, excellence and freedom? There have been far too many individual and collective crises. Yet, in the midst of enduring constraints – navigating our learning and teaching into abstract space; continuously shifting and rethinking our practices, conventions and pedagogies; endlessly e-conferencing and confined to our homes, mourning the physical space and the tangible instruments so essential to our discipline – we did not give up on our new and profound sense of online community, empathy and generosity. On the contrary, while global mobility, tourism and travel decelerated to unimaginable levels, students propelled themselves from the cockpits of their home offices into a brighter, more equal and diverse future. Together with their tutors, students spelt out new architectural grammars, augmented physical realities with new technologies, provoked established dogmas, set new agendas and extended the realm of architecture way beyond the physical. The students’ projects and essays provide indisputable evidence for their resilience as designers and architects.

The endless hours spent in front of the screen, sharing good and bad with local, yet distanced, friends and global audiences across time zones were not in vain. Never has a cohort embraced with more confidence, passion and conviction so many critical issues: old and new normalities, low-tech materials, hi-tech computational processes, affordable domesticity, adaptable building systems, resource efficiency, sustainable communities, environmental strategies, social inequalities, renewable energies, smart cities, cyclical ecologies, entrepreneurial practices, carbon footprints, building lifecycles, air pollution, soil contamination, fire safety and rising sea levels, amongst others. From behind our own walls, whole architectural universes were imagined and dreamt: nothing was too small to deserve our attention or too big to inhibit our design ambitions; no material was too simple to star in intelligent buildings or technology too complex to trigger our curiosity; and no subject matter was too intricate to be elaborated on in depth or hypothesis too ambitious to be rigorously and originally developed. In the past century the use of the term ‘resilience’ exponentially increased in popularity and frequency, up 2,370% until 2019 according to Google Books Ngram Viewer; a statistic that will surely be dwarfed in 2021. Our own numbers certainly need to be counted, as they all stand for resilience: One Master’s, two year groups, five modules, 14 units, 36 tutors and 229 students. Our infinite gratitude goes to all: Keep Calm and Carry On!