The BA Technologies unit is undertaken as a 30 credit unit with a common structure in each year. Like the Humanities unit, technologies acts to create an independent academic discourse. This discourse is structured to enable students to contextualise, inform, inspire and justify their design propositions on the basis of the experience and expertise of the architectural discipline.
BA2 is a critical year in undergraduate design studies, especially in technologies where analogue and digital methods of enquiry and expression are explored and developed. Students study Construction and Environment where they develop a factual understanding and body of knowledge through experiments, model making and diagramming. The Construction lecture course focusses on themes of construction logic, structural systems, systems and assemblies integration and detailed studies of specific building envelopes. The Environment lecture course develops a core understanding of practices and principles of active and passive sustainable design across all climatic zones, adopting a holistic approach to modern and traditional vernacular technological philosophical and strategic approaches. Students are encouraged to analyse the strategic and tactical approaches of exemplar environmentally sound buildings across a range of scales and programmes. This is followed by a Part B, the Case Study component where students synthesise their knowledge so far, critically examining precedent case studies from a holistic perspective. Finally the BA2 Technologies course concludes with Part C, where students have the opportunity to apply their skills through aspects of their own design and analysis through a residential retro-fit design project where they are encouraged to analyse and critique their own design intervention using the knowledge and skills developed in Parts A and B, preparing them for BA3 with a comprehensive body of knowledge resources and skills.
