Humanities in year 3 presents a series of electives. These more detailed studies allow students to develop advanced skills in architectural research, specialising on in-depth study, following their own interests, and engaging directly with current research from our world leading team of lecturers at MSA.

BA3 Electives

Social architectures in South America

The course focuses on the emergence of a new wave of social and political architecture in South America. Looking at different actors, from social movements to official planning agencies, NGOs, and architectural collectives, the sessions examine what is distinct about these material manifestations: how they are organized, financed, and what spatial programs they seek to instantiate. The course uncovers how the focus on the production of social infrastructures and the logistics surrounding the building process, actualises the role architecture and the moment of construction play in contemporary forms of urban struggle and politics.

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Contemporary Conditions of Architectural Practice

The Contemporary Conditions of Architectural Practice course invited students to explore the material and social conditions of architectural practice. Themes addressed in the course included the relationship between the architectural profession and the market, the collective nature and politics of design, the epistemic role of representational tools, and the impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic on the profession. By introducing ethnography as both a research method and as a genre of representation, and undertaking a critical reading of several recent ethnographic studies of architectural and engineering practices, students were provided with the methodological tools to undertake their own (virtual) ethnographic studies of practices of their own choice.

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Landscapes of Post-War Infrastructure

This elective is associated with a research project directed by Prof Brook and Dr Csepely-Knorr, funded by the AHRC and focused on the value and significance of architecture and landscape of post-war British infrastructure. Students learned about the historic and contemporary settings for design professionals in the delivery of infrastructural schemes, between 1945 and 1980. At this time huge public investment in new motorways, power stations, reservoirs and telecoms signalled the modernisation of Britain. Designers worked collaboratively, often with the landscape architect as lead consultant. Students explored the post-war period, the nationalisation of industry, the planning and legislative contexts and how design was advanced and informed by these conditions.

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Environmental Histories of Architecture

This elective frames architectural thought and practice through notions of environment, i.e. nature used, abused, or impacted upon. Revisiting episodes in modern architectural and urban history up to the present in a transdisciplinary perspective, the course investigates aspects of the environment, understood as fossil-fueled, polluted, climatized, controlled, toxic, and posthuman, providing students with a historical and environmental literacy. Informed by the environmental, as much as the energy, humanities, each topic operates at different scales—starting from Manchester, via Europe and North America to the Global South, Africa and the Middle East, South-East Asia, and Latin America. These present specific political and social contexts, in which new strategies of architecture and the environment could emerge.

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Slow Time in Creative Processes

Slow Time in Creative Processes invites the students to deepen the concept of time, and its relationship with creative processes. In the current architectural debates, the concept of acceleration is becoming more and more present. However, there is evidence of the importance of finding “another time”, a time of different quality, that appears to be essential in the design process. Using an interdisciplinary approach, linked to literature, music, philosophy, and fine arts, the course is organised in 3-hour sessions that start with a lecture, continue with an excursus on an architectural case-study, followed by a short session on research methods.

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User-centred Design

In our modern, capitalist society, architects rarely have the opportunity to engage with those who will occupy their buildings. Architects’ clients are often building contractors, speculative developers or public bodies, rather than individuals who will inhabit the completed buildings. This can make it difficult for architects to understand building users’ needs and aspirations. This elective lecture course explored strategies for understanding the spatial requirements of unknown users, who might differ from the architect in terms of age, gender, class and ethnicity. These strategies were set in historical context, and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach examined.

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Anthropology of Home

Anthropology is a study of the various possible ways we have of being human. This elective challenges the assumptions we carry with us about the world around us. It is not enough as architects to simply presume we know a place and how it is used: we need to ask better questions. This course alternates between anthropological theories and alternative ways to practice architecture, producing knowledge through maps, diagrams, notations and drawings. The aim is to establish a graphic anthropology as a method equivalent to participant-observation or ethnographic film. Work begins as a series of fieldwork exercises investigating the home; a site rich with associations, alienations, and attachments.

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