Welcome to Architecture

In such unprecedented and challenging times, we have an ever-urgent responsibility to support and prepare the next generation of architects for the challenges that lay ahead. Architecture must continue to remain relevant to the time in which it is produced, balanced with a respect for its inheritance and a duty of care for its legacy gifted to future generations. This implicit responsibility must equally be shared by the institution that educates, informs and prepares young architects for entry into the profession. The function of this catalogue is to articulate a cross-sectional journey through our professionally accredited Architectural programmes within the School of Design at the University of Greenwich. Traditionally this is produced as a companion guide to the annual public exhibition of student work. This year, given the global Covid-19 pandemic, the university moved online: as did the summer exhibition. This catalogue stands as a true testament to the exceptional dedication and collective achievement of our students, tutors and school community alike. The pace of adjustment was profound – simple measures such as allowing students additional time to prepare for the move online, and developing a remote render farm for image production, provided students with the framework and supportive toolkit for a truly exceptional year. This catalogue follows the established simple structure, guiding the reader vertically through our programmes, across the interconnected modules of Design, Technology, Histories and Theories. Our architecture programmes are presented as a unified whole, collectively seen through a single pedagogical lens from Year 1, through MArch, to Postgraduate Diploma in Architectural Practice. Design practice is placed firmly at the centre of everything we do, with Technology and Histories and Theories operating as parallel strands of creative, design-focussed critical thinking. The subject of Architecture is in the first instance a discipline that gathers together these complex trajectories of thought, before putting them into practice. Programme structures should have inherent simplicity, as they need to provide contingency and opportunity for invention and surprise. Curriculums should be invisible at the point of delivery – imbedded seamlessly into an intuitive teaching interface. A supportive studio-based culture is at the centre of the School of Design, where students are taught in the unit-based design studio system. We ask our students to be speculative, therefore we as staff have a parallel obligation to provide an environment that encourages, supports and enables this speculation to take place and evolve. Within this model, Architecture has the potential to develop powerful ideas for addressing the unknown, unlocking new uses and new meanings, new possibilities for yet-to-be-discovered futures.

“Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village. . . a simultaneous happening.” —Marshall McLuhan