architecture phd london

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Architecture

Working at the intersection of research and practice, key details.

• Full-time or part-time study

School or Centre

• School of Architecture

Next open event

• Watch Open Day recording

Application deadline

• 28 Jun 2024
• Still accepting applications

Career opportunities

• PhD study leads to a range of opportunities. You might become a lecturer or academic researcher, designer or consultant in industry, curator in leading cultural institutions worldwide, in international institutions such as NGOs and charities. It is an opportunity for you to investigate a research question or issue in depth, enabling you to take a more reflective, more innovative role in design.

Follow Architecture on social

The architecture research programme focuses on practice-led and interdisciplinary research with tangible public and social impact..

Working at the intersection of theory, research, media and critical-spatial-practices, the MPhil/ PhD programme in Architecture supports experimental practice-led and interdisciplinary theses aiming at tangible public and social impact. The programme fosters architectural research at the intersection of history and theory, critical ecologies, new materialism, and digital culture. The programme is investigating the diverse ways in which architects, artists, filmmakers, curators and other cultural producers have negotiated crises associated with globalization, migration and statelessness, the hauntings of empire and the colonial present, new digital technologies, and the growing biopolitical conflicts around ecology and climate change. We strongly encourage to think about the performativity of space, or architectural forms and practices in their interrelation to the climate crisis, social movements and institutional change. 

We support written academic research in the history and theory of architecture and new media of exploration and documentation. We are especially interested in practice-led research, which could involve an architectural project, a work of heritage preservation, community work, an artistic practice, an exhibition, or a film production. Our programme is relevant to diverse research careers in academia, spatial practice, curation, publishing and critical conservation. We encourage establishing real world collaborations with industry-based research groups, leading design practices, policymakers, social and environmental justice groups, human rights organisations and cultural institutions.

We particularly welcome research proposals aligned with the strategic areas of research in the School of Architecture: ‍ Climate Justice , ‍ Architecture & Social Movements , Institutional Forms & Practices Documentary Research, Heritage & Digital Materialities , Interior Architecture & The Culture of Care , Feeling, Fiction, Frame , Laboratory for Design and Machine Learning

All research themes encourage interdisciplinary research with new models of collaboration between postgraduate research students, as well as academic and non-academic institutions or partners.

Programme details

• PhD: 3–4 years (full time), 6–7 years (part time)
• MPhil: 2–3 years (full time), 4–6 years (part time)

Applications for the September 2024 intake are open and will be assessed on a rolling basis. Applications will close for applications when the maximum number of places have been awarded, or at the final deadline on 28 June, 12noon (UK time).

Explore further

Explore more work from current architecture postgraduate research students .

Catch the replays from our November 2022 online Open Day.

A Short History of the Elevator Pitch, Image Credit: Ines Weizman

Nico Alexandroff, Thesis Title: Indexical Ice. Evidencing and acting on the climate emergency via the index of Greenland’s ice. Image: Cryospheric Phenomena, by Nico Alexandroff

Benjamin Mehigan, Thesis Title: A Golden State Confronting the Definition and Mediatization of ‘Extreme’ Climatic Events in California. Image: Picturesque (2020) by Benjamin Mehigan

Francisco J. Quintana, Thesis Title: Urban Cold War. Development Politics of US Housing Operation in the Third World during the 1970s. Image: World Bank ‘Sites and Services’ self-help housing projects implemented in 37 developing countries by Francisco J. Quintana

Elisavet Hasa, Thesis Title: Infrastructures of Solidarity and Care in Athens (2010-2020) Social Movements, Protocol Systems, and Prototypical Designs. Image: Solidarity Pharmacy of Vyronas District in Athens by Elisavet Hasa

Maria Paez Gonzalez, Thesis Title: Supreme (In)formality. The Productive Mastery of Silicon Valley’s ‘Tech’ Corporate Architectures. Image: Steve Jobs sits in his Woodside, California home. Image Credit: Diana Walker, 1982

Dr Ines Weizman

Head of PhD Programme

Ines Weizman is the founding director of the Centre for Documentary Architecture (CDA), an interdisciplinary research collective comprised of architectural historians, filmmakers and digital technologists. Since 2022 she is also Professor of Architectural Theory and Design at the Academy of Fine Arts, Institute for Art and Architecture in Vienna.

The School of Architecture is based at our historic Kensington site.

Our studios are the heart of day-to-day activity for the School. Studios are purpose-designed for inspiration and interaction between students of different design disciplines. Shared workspaces are provided for all research students. In addition, you have access to wood, metal, plastic and resin workshop facilities, as well as contemporary digital fabrication equipment and a suite of bookable project and making spaces.

School of Architecture Studios, Photographer: Richard Haughton

More details on what you'll study

Find out what you'll cover in this programme

What you'll cover

What is a research degree.

At the RCA we offer both MPhil and PhD research degrees. Research candidates can study in part-time and full-time modes (subject to approval) and their research can be undertaken by project or thesis modes. The mode of research will be discussed in interview, and should be indicated in the application process.

A postgraduate research degree challenges you to complete a research project that pushes the boundaries of our understanding.

Unlike a taught degree, a research degree emphasises independence of learning and increased specialisation. You will manage your own research project in order to investigate your topic in depth and to produce new ideas, arguments and solutions.

A research degree will give you the subject matter expertise and transferable skills necessary for a wide range of senior roles in research and academia, as well as in business, industry and the cultural and creative sectors.

A PhD is awarded to students who produce a substantial piece of original research that makes a contribution to research in the field. This can take the form of a thesis (60,000-80,000 words) or by project (a body of work and thesis 25,000-40,000 words). If you’re a PhD candidate you’ll normally registered for three years full-time, with submission within four years, or six to seven years part-time. You must remain registered and pay an appropriate fee until submission.

An MPhil is awarded for original research and submission of a thesis. If you’re an MPhil candidate you’ll normally be registered for two years (full-time) or four years (part-time).

Our postgraduate community

We have more than 250 PhD students pursuing cutting-edge research and undertaking advanced training across the College:

• School of Arts & Humanities
• School of Communication
• Computer Science Research Centre
• School of Design
• Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design
• Intelligent Mobility Design Centre
• Material Futures Research Centre

The RCA is a world-leading postgraduate university and is ranked the most research-intensive university of art and design in the UK since 2014. Both our students and staff are drawn from countries across the globe. Overseas students play a vital role in ensuring that our College community benefits from a diversity of experience and skills.

Doctoral training programme

At the RCA, research students undertake training both at a cross-College level and within their Schools/Centres, offering rich and robust preparation and learning opportunities for their research degree progression. Many of these also offer opportunities to build a portfolio of experience for future careers.

All students are required to attend our Doctoral Training Weeks in September, February and July (pro-rata attendance by negotiation for part-time students). These are opportunities to participate in the broader research community at the RCA, but also to undertake timely training to support research progression. These intensive weeks include a range of professional development seminars, training and advice in writing, getting published, achieving impact, entering the academic job market and more, and opportunities for you to develop and present your research to your peers and staff.

Our Research Biennale, held every alternate February, offers a showcase of research to internal and external partners and public. The events include space for testing and experimenting with public facing aspects of research, extending and challenging frameworks and perceptions of what art and design research can be.

We are committed to ensuring that you are well equipped, not only to complete your studies but also to develop your future careers.

Supervisors

All students are allocated supervisors upon registration; your supervisory team will have both subject specialism and experience of supervising to completion. Our of current staff index includes an overview of their research interests, recent research outputs and areas of expertise. These give an idea of the key areas of research that are covered at the RCA.

We are not able to guarantee allocation to a specific supervisor as we need to balance staff capacities and our research strategy. However, if there is a particular supervisor whose research aligns with your research proposal, please join us at one of our Open Days and we can talk with you about the possibilities.

Each student will have six supervisions per year (3 for PT students); these might be with the full supervisory team or with one supervisor. Students are expected to initiate these meetings, set the agenda and provide supervisors with pre-reading or other materials in an agreed timeframe for review.

Annual progress reviews

All research students have Annual Progress Reviews, which they must pass in order to progress into the next year of study. These are vital points where all candidates receive formal feedback not only from their supervisory team, but also from other members of the faculty.

There is a formal Confirmation Exam that takes place midway through the period of study to ascertain your readiness for PhD submission; if you who do not meet the requirements at this stage then you’ll usually be recommended to submit for MPhil examination.

Requirements

What you need to know before you apply

The programme welcomes applications from candidates from across the world and of all ages, including those with academic and professional backgrounds.

Applications are considered in terms of quality of proposal, quality of practice (where appropriate), readiness to undertake a research degree at this level and supervisory capacity.

What's needed from you

Portfolio requirements.

Your portfolio is a showcase of your work as an artist or designer and can be made up of images, videos or writing examples. Your portfolio helps us to better understand your application and allows you to show evidence of your ability and motivation to undertake a given programme.

Generally, we’re looking for you to demonstrate your:

• Creativity, imagination and innovation
• Ability to articulate the intentions of the work
• Intellectual engagement in areas relevant to the work
• Technical skills appropriate to the work
• Potential to benefit from the programme

Please submit a CV listing your academic journey, practice experience, writing projects and other information about yourself that you would like to have considered as part of your application.

Video requirements

Please present some background to the motivations for your research proposal (i.e. previous experience, research, a collaboration with an institution, the meaning of academic research for your work and research interest).

English-language requirements

If you are not a national of a majority English-speaking country, MPhil candidates will need the equivalent of an IELTS Academic score of 6.5 with a 6.5 in the Test of Written English (TWE). PhD candidates will need the equivalent of an IELTS Academic score of 7.0 with a 7.0 in the Test of Written English (TWE).

If you need a Student Visa to study at the RCA, you will also need to meet the Home Office’s minimum requirements for entry clearance.

Fees & funding

For this programme, fees for new students.

Fees for September 2024 entry on this programme are outlined below. From 2021 onward, EU students are classified as Overseas for tuition fee purposes.

Home: High residency

Home: low residency, overseas and eu: high residency, overseas and eu: low residency.

New entrants to the College will be required to pay a non-refundable deposit in order to secure their place. This will be offset against the tuition fees for the first year of study.

Overseas and EU

Progression discounts.

For alumni and students who have completed an MA, MA/MSc or MRes at the RCA within the past 10 years, a progression discount is available for Doctoral study. This discount is £1,000 per year for thee first three years of full-time study.

Continuation fees

Candidates who have completed the minimum three years of study (FT or 6 years PT) for PhD will be eligible to apply for Continuation Status. This is a period of study, for up to one academic year, during which a candidate will be focused upon revising and editing their thesis/project.

Scholarships

Rca scholarships.

Sir Frank Bowling Fund support is available for both MPhil and PhD students for 2024/25

The Sir Frank Bowling Studentship

For: full-time, three-year PhDs will be applicable (both high and low residency routes)

Eligibility criteria: UK students from Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage, or from mixed Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage

Eligible fee status: Home fee status

Value: Tuition fees for a three-year period of full-time study, a stipend of £20,622 per annum, and access to research training support.

The successful applicant must commence their PhD between September 2024 and October 2025.

How to apply: Applications closed on Friday 3 May 2024.

Successfully shortlisted candidates will be called for interview either in person or online.

• School of Architecture - [email protected]
• School of Arts & Humanities - [email protected]
• School of Communication - [email protected]
• School of Design/Research Centres - [email protected]

Sir Frank Bowling Scholarships

For: All programmes excluding PhD & short courses

Eligibility criteria: Black or Black British Caribbean, Black or Black British African, Other Black Background, Mixed - White and Black Caribbean, Mixed - White and Black African

Value: Full fees & maintenance

Applying for a scholarship

More information, mphil/phd fee bands.

The RCA is introducing two separate tuition fee bands for MPhil/PhD students with effect from the academic year 2023/24: Low Residency and High Residency. For more information about what the different fee bands entail, and for frequently asked questions on fee bands, visit:

Additional fees

In addition to your programme fees, please be aware that you may incur other additional costs associated with your study during your time at RCA. Additional costs can include purchases and services (without limitation): costs related to the purchase of books, paints, textiles, wood, metal, plastics and/or other materials in connection with your programme, services related to the use of printing and photocopying, lasercutting, 3D printing and CNC. Costs related to attending compulsory field trips, joining student and sport societies, and your Convocation (graduation) ceremony. 

If you wish to find out more about what type of additional costs you may incur while studying on your programme, please contact the Head of your Programme to discuss or ask at an online or in person  Open Day .   

We provide the RCASHOP online, and at our Kensington and Battersea Campuses – this is open to students and staff of the Royal College of Art only to provide paid for materials to support your studies. 

We also provide support to our students who require financial assistance whilst studying, including a dedicated Materials Fund.

External funding

With the Government's introduction of the new Doctoral Loan and the continued support available via the Arts and Humanities Research Council, there are more financial support options than ever before.

Tuition fees are due on the first day of the academic year and students are sent an invoice prior to beginning their studies. Payments can be made in advance, on registration or in two instalments.

Start your application

Change your life and be here in 2024. applications now open..

The Royal College of Art welcomes applicants from all over the world.

Before you begin

Make sure you've read and understood the eligibility requirements and key dates, check you have all the information you need to apply., consider attending an open day, or one of our portfolio or application advice sessions, please note, all applications must be submitted by 12 noon on the given deadline., ask a question.

Get in touch if you’d like to find out more or have any questions.

More opportunities to study at the RCA

Related programmes.

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We value and promote speculation, analysis, rigour and provocation through all aspects of interior design.

Master of Research RCA

An interdisciplinary research MRes by practice or thesis across art and design

Architecture Research (PhD)

Working at the intersection of theory, research, media and critical-spatial-practices, the MPhil/ PhD programme in Architecture supports experimental practice-led and interdisciplinary theses aiming at tangible public and social impact. The programme fosters architectural research at the intersection of history and theory, critical ecologies, new materialism, and digital culture. The programme is investigating the diverse ways in which architects, artists, filmmakers, curators and other cultural producers have negotiated crises associated with globalisation, migration and statelessness, the hauntings of empire and the colonial present, new digital technologies, and the growing biopolitical conflicts around ecology and climate change. We strongly encourage to think about the performativity of space, or architectural forms and practices in their interrelation to the climate crisis, social movements and institutional change.

We support written academic research in the history and theory of architecture and new media of exploration and documentation. We are especially interested in practice-led research, which could involve an architectural project, a work of heritage preservation, community work, an artistic practice, an exhibition, or a film production. Our programme is relevant to diverse research careers in academia, spatial practice, curation, publishing, and critical conservation. We encourage establishing real world collaborations with industry-based research groups, leading design practices, policymakers, social and environmental justice groups, human rights organisations, and cultural institutions. We particularly welcome research proposals aligned with the strategic areas of research in the School of Architecture: Climate Justice , ‍ Architecture & Social Movements , ‍ Institutional Forms & Practices , ‍ Documentary Research, Heritage & Digital Materialities , ‍ Interior Architecture & The Culture of Care , ‍ Feeling, Fiction, Frame , Laboratory for Design and Machine Learning .

All research themes encourage interdisciplinary research with new models of collaboration between postgraduate research students, as well as academic and non-academic institutions or partners.

Film: A Short History of the Elevator Pitch by Ines Weizman

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• Tom Joashi: Rethinking Urban Conflict Through the French Wars of Religion (1550-1572)
• Yasser M. Khaldi: Governing Renewable Energy Transition in Conflict Contexts: The Case of Palestine
• Mohamed Hesham Khalil: Architecting hippocampal plasticity through spatial complexity
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• Shanshan Xie: An investigation of heterogeneous commute mode choices to link travel demands to flexible working policies: using an Early Stopping Bayesian Data Assimilation
• Visiting Scholars
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• Professional Studies Advisors (PSA) overview
• Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Architecture - ARB/ RIBA Part 3
• MSt Architecture Apprenticeship
• MPhil in Architecture & Urban Studies (MAUS)
• MSt Building History

Course requirements:

Candidates accepted for this course will have a 1st class or a high 2i honours degree and, a Masters degree with 70% overall (or equivalent) in Architecture or a related discipline.

The University requires all applicants to demonstrate competence in the English language at a very high level before they begin their proposed course of study - adherence to this requirement is strict. You must be able to demonstrate that you are able to communicate in English at a level and in an idiom suitable to the subject. You will, therefore, need to provide evidence that you meet the University’s minimum requirements for competence in English. For further information see  Postgraduate Admissions Office .

How to Make an Application for the PhD in Architecture

If you do meet the course requirements, you are recommended to consult the list of our established University Teaching Officers (UTOs) and their research interests (see below for links to information about each of our UTOs). If one of our UTOs has relevant research interests to your own, please email them directly with a short research proposal of about 300 words, an example of your writing and a CV to determine whether they are potentially available to work with you as a supervisor before you make a formal application. See:

Dr Ronita Bardhan - Data-driven built-environment design, spatial analysis and climate change, Big data for sustainability in the built-environment, design for demand side energy management

Professor James Campbell - History of building construction, history of library design

Dr Ramit Debnath - Cutting-edge interdisciplinary domain of environmental data science, computational social science, and human-in-the-loop AI design to enable climate action. Applicants should be able to demonstrate excellent data science and quantitative research skills and a passion for interdisciplinary engagement

Dr Michal Gath-Morad  - Exploring how architectural design impacts spatial cognition, behaviour, and social dynamics in diverse environments, from healthcare and workplaces to complex urban settings. Proposals can encompass empirical studies, the development of digital simulation tools for human-centred design, or action research investigating the influence of evidence-based design tools on design cognition

Dr Felipe Hernández - Architectural and urban design, participatory design, social urbanism, history and theory

Professor Ying Jin – City planning, urban design, and urban modelling

Dr Irit Katz -  Socio-politics of architecture and urbanism; transitional spaces, camps and borderscapes; spaces of displacement, migration, and climate mobilities; ethnic and cultural diversity, exclusion and inequality; conflict and violence; housing insecurities; radical spatial and urban transformations; participatory architecture and urban design

Dr Antiopi Koronaki  - Computational design, architectural engineering and geometry, and design optimization principles. Potential topics may include, but are not limited to automation and design for disassembly, modular buildings and circularity in the construction sector, engineered timber construction, as well as advanced fabrication and robotics in architecture

Dr Michael Ramage – Designing and building structural masonry spans using traditional techniques and new materials

Professor Flora Samuel  - Affordable housing, participatory planning, community consultation, social value and mapping data with communities

Dr Darshil U. Shah  - Design and manufacture with biocomposites and low-carbon materials, Structure- property-processing relations in natural materials and structures, Biomechanics and biomimetics, History of natural materials & materials processing, and Design education and pedagogy

Dr Nicholas Simcik Arese - Social theory and urban planning, international development, property rights, youth, masculinity, migration, Middle East, Mediterranean, Mexico, legal geography, science and technology studies, anthropology of value, ethnography

Professor Emily So - Casualty estimation in earthquake loss modelling, risk in the built environment.

Professor Koen Steemers – architectural and urban implications of environmental issues ranging from energy use to human comfort

Dr Max Sternberg – architecture & philosophy, socio-politics of architecture, urban conflict, architectural history

Dr Minna Sunikka-Blank - sustainable building policies, thermal retrofit, energy use behaviour, aesthetics of sustainable architecture

Dr Matteo Zallio  - Interdisciplinary research on Inclusive Design for the built environment, product, and service design

You are recommended to only make a formal application via the University’s Graduate Admissions Office, once an established UTO has confirmed that they would be interested to consider a formal application.  Please note that an offer of admission to the University is subject to final approval by the University's Graduate Admissions Office.  Do not assume that you will be made an offer on the grounds that your prospective supervisor has suggested you make a formal application – this just represents the first stage of admission administration.

All applications must be made via the Applicant Portal available on the Postgraduate Admissions Office  website. It is important that you read through the information available on the Graduate Admissions Office website before submitting your application. If you are already a current graduate student at Cambridge you will be referred to as a ‘Continuer’ on the Graduate Admissions Office website.

You will need to arrange for the following documents to be submitted with your application:

• Academic Reference(s) 
• A Personal Reference will be required if you are applying for the Gates Cambridge Scholarship
• Evidence of Competence in English if English is not your first language
• Sample of Work - this could be a journal publication or a chapter from your undergraduate dissertation
• Research Proposal of 1000 - 1500 words should consist of a topic and a hypothesis, a literature review, a statement on method, and key references

Application Deadlines

The PhD in Architecture commences in October each year and applications for the course can be made from the preceding September. All applications must be made via the Applicant Portal available on the Postgraduate Admissions Office  website. It is important that you read through the information available on the Graduate Admissions Office website before submitting your application.

The final deadline for applicants seeking funding is 7 January 2020. Even if you are not seeking funding, we strongly recommend that you submit your application by 7 January, as no applications will be accepted once this competitive and popular programme is full.

If places are still available on programmes beyond this deadline; self-funded applicants will continue to be considered until the final deadline of 15 May 2020.  No applications will be considered after this deadline.

Course Fees

Information relating to the fee for this course is available from the  Postgraduate Admissions Office .   

If you are seeking funding for your course via one of the University’s main funding competitions, there are specific deadlines and eligibility criteria for each competition. Please check the Funding Section of the  Postgraduate Admissions Office  website for information and application deadlines.  

Applicants classed as 'Home' or 'EU' for fees purposes and wish to research an AHRC approved research subject are eligible to be considered for an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP studentship. Applicants wishing to be considered for these awards need to check the appropriate box on the application form. Applicants will also need to ensure that they make their application by the funding competition deadline for Home/EU students. Please see the University's AHRC DTP funding website for more information: https://www.csah.cam.ac.uk/Education/ahrcdtp together with the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP website: https://www.oocdtp.ac.uk/

The Department sometimes offers EPSRC awards for students classified as 'Home' or 'EU' for fees purposes.  These awards are advertised on the Department’s website and other media during the Easter Term (Summer Term) if available.  Applicants who have already applied for the PhD degree will automatically be considered for these awards if they meet the criteria for them.

After your Application is Submitted

When the application reaches the Department, it will be considered by the Department’s Graduate Admissions Team. Applicants may be invited for an interview in Cambridge, or, via Skype if it is not possible to travel to Cambridge.  The Faculty’s Degree Committee will then consider the application and make a recommendation to the Graduate Admissions Office as to whether an offer of a place on the course should be made, and if so, with what academic conditions.

Please be aware that this process may take several months.  You can check the status of your application at any time via your Applicant Portal.

Full information about making your application, Colleges, fees and funding opportunities is provided on the  Postgraduate Admissions Office  website pages.

For further information on graduate admission to the Department of Architecture contact:  [email protected]

At a Glance

Course length and dates:

3 years full-time/5 years part-time, October start.

Examination:

A dissertation of not more than 80,000 words. 

Academic requirement:

A 1st class or a high 2i honours degree in Architecture or a related discipline, and a Masters degree with merit (if a merit category exists).

English language requirement:

See  Postgraduate Admissions Office . 

Applications accepted from:

The preceding September.

Application Deadlines:

The final deadline for applicants seeking funding is early January, please see  Postgraduate Admissions  for exact date. Even if you are not seeking funding, we strongly recommend that you submit your application by 7 January, as no applications will be accepted once this competitive and popular programme is full.

Course Fees:

Information relating to the fee for this course is available from the  Postgraduate Admissions Office .  

If you are seeking funding for your course via one of the University’s main funding competitions, there are specific deadlines and eligibility criteria for each competition.  Please check the Funding Section of the  Postgraduate Admissions Office  website for information and application deadlines. 

• Postal Address: Department of Architecture 1-5 Scroope Terrace Cambridge CB2 1PX Tel: 01223 332950
• Information provided by:     [email protected]
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Architecture, Planning and Landscape MPhil, PhD

We welcome MPhil and PhD proposals in any topic related to architecture, planning, or landscape.

You are currently viewing course information for entry year:

Start date(s):

• September 2024
• January 2025

We offer a flexible range of opportunities for postgraduate research.

We offer supervision for an MPhil or PhD in Architecture, Planning and Landscape in the following areas:

We conduct research into innovative teaching methods, the integration of theory and practice, and learn from related creative disciplines.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has funded research into effective skills transfer. This activity is strengthened through our involvement in the:

• European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE)
• Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP)
• European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS) including the Le NOTRE EU Network
• design-related aspects of construction and the use of buildings
• non-destructive testing
• measurement of energy
• environmental performance
• the changing relationship between utilities, the development, planning and management of contemporary cities
• culture and the built environment, including cultural change and transformation of the built environment
• architectural history
• architectural theory
• material culture

Environmental economics

• environmental economics
• benefit appraisal

Environmental management

Our research in this area covers environmental planning, management, impact assessment, sustainability, and Local Agenda 21 issues.

• social housing
• community development
• computer-based information search
• retrieval systems
• building product modelling with a philosophy of taking basic and applied research through to the end users
• landscape architecture theory, philosophy and environmental ethics
• sustainable landscape planning, design and management
• the history and development of the designed and cultural landscape

International urban development

• interpreting and managing change in diverse urban contexts
• improving the environment and quality of life in the cities of the developing world

Spatial analysis

• spatial change
• spatial statistics
• the use of GIS 

Planning processes and policy

• contemporary policy and practice issues in planning
• development and urban regeneration, in the context of theoretical developments and European experiences

Urban design

• city design and development
• design control
• urban public space
• public art in cities
• meaning in the built environment
• conservation
• urban regeneration
• urban design

More information about staff specialisms and the School's research can be found on the  School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape website.

Important information

We've highlighted important information about your course. Please take note of any deadlines.

Please rest assured we make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the programmes, services and facilities described. However, it may be necessary to make changes due to significant disruption, for example in response to Covid-19.

View our  Academic experience page , which gives information about your Newcastle University study experience for the academic year 2023-24.

See our  terms and conditions and student complaints information , which gives details of circumstances that may lead to changes to programmes, modules or University services.

Related courses

Qualifications explained.

Find out about the different qualification options for this course.

An MPhil is available in all subject areas. You receive research training and undertake original research leading to the completion of a 40,000 - 50,000 word thesis.

Find out about different types of postgraduate qualifications

A PhD is a doctorate or doctoral award. It involves original research that should make a significant contribution to the knowledge of a specific subject. To complete the PhD you will produce a substantial piece of work (80,000 – 100,000 words) in the form of a supervised thesis. A PhD usually takes three years full time.

How you'll learn

Depending on your modules, you'll be assessed through a combination of:

We offer a wide range of projects for the thesis. These will be provided by our academics. You can also propose your own topic.

Our mission is to help you:

• stay healthy, positive and feeling well
• overcome any challenges you may face during your degree – academic or personal
• get the most out of your postgraduate research experience
• carry out admin and activities essential to progressing through your degree
• understand postgraduate research processes, standards and rules

We can offer you tailored wellbeing support, courses and activities.

You can also access a broad range of workshops covering:

• research and professional skills
• careers support
• health and safety
• public engagement
• academic development

Find out more about our postgraduate research student support

Your development

Faculty of humanities and social sciences (hass) researcher development programme .

Each faculty offers a researcher development programme for its postgraduate research students. We have designed your programme to help you:

• perform better as a researcher
• boost your career prospects
• broaden your impact

Through workshops and activities, it will build your transferable skills and increase your confidence.

You’ll cover:

• techniques for effective research
• methods for better collaborative working
• essential professional standards and requirements

Your researcher development programme is flexible. You can adapt it to meet your changing needs as you progress through your doctorate.

Find out more about the Researcher Education and Development programme

Doctoral training and partnerships

There are opportunities to undertake your PhD at Newcastle within a:

• Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT)
• Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP)

Being part of a CDT or DTP has many benefits:

• they combine research expertise and training of a number of leading universities, academic schools and academics.
• you’ll study alongside a cohort of other PhD students
• they’re often interdisciplinary
• your PhD may be funded

Find out more about doctoral training and partnerships

If there are currently opportunities available in your subject area you’ll find them when you search for funding in the fees and funding section on this course.

The following centres/partnerships below may have PhD opportunities available in your subject area in the future:

ESRC Northern Ireland/North East (NINE) Doctoral Training Partnership

Your future

Our careers service.

Our award-winning Careers Service is one of the largest and best in the country, and we have strong links with employers. We provide an extensive range of opportunities to all students through our ncl+ initiative.

Visit our Careers Service website

Quality and ranking

All professional accreditations are reviewed regularly by their professional body

From 1 January 2021 there is an update to the way professional qualifications are recognised by countries outside of the UK

Check the government’s website for more information .

The School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape's facilities include:

• exhibition spaces
• seminar rooms

Fees and funding

Tuition fees for 2024 entry (per year), home fees for research degree students.

For 2024-25 entry, we have aligned our standard Home research fees with those set by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) . The standard fee was confirmed in Spring 2024 by UKRI.

If your studies last longer than one year, your tuition fee may increase in line with inflation.

Depending on your residency history, if you’re a student from the EU, other EEA or a Swiss national, with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, you’ll normally pay the ‘Home’ tuition fee rate and may be eligible for Student Finance England support.

EU students without settled or pre-settled status will normally be charged fees at the ‘International’ rate and will not be eligible for Student Finance England support.

If you are unsure of your fee status, check out the latest guidance here .

Scholarships

We support our EU and international students by providing a generous range of Vice-Chancellor's automatic and merit-based scholarships. See  our   searchable postgraduate funding page  for more information.  

What you're paying for

Tuition fees include the costs of:

• matriculation
• registration
• tuition (or supervision)
• library access
• examination
• re-examination

Find out more about:

• living costs
• tuition fees

If you are an international student or a student from the EU, EEA or Switzerland and you need a visa to study in the UK, you may have to pay a deposit.

You can check this in the How to apply section .

If you're applying for funding, always check the funding application deadline. This deadline may be earlier than the application deadline for your course.

For some funding schemes, you need to have received an offer of a place on a course before you can apply for the funding.

Search for funding

Find funding available for your course

Entry requirements

The entrance requirements below apply to 2024 entry.

Qualifications from outside the UK

English language requirements, admissions policy.

This policy applies to all undergraduate and postgraduate admissions at Newcastle University. It is intended to provide information about our admissions policies and procedures to applicants and potential applicants, to their advisors and family members, and to staff of the University.

Download our admissions policy (PDF: 201KB) Other policies related to admissions

Credit transfer and Recognition of Prior Learning

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) can allow you to convert existing relevant university-level knowledge, skills and experience into credits towards a qualification. Find out more about the RPL policy which may apply to this course

• How to apply

Using the application portal

The application portal has instructions to guide you through your application. It will tell you what documents you need and how to upload them.

You can choose to start your application, save your details and come back to complete it later.

If you’re ready, you can select Apply Online and you’ll be taken directly to the application portal.

Alternatively you can find out more about applying on our applications and offers pages .

Open days and events

You'll have a number of opportunities to meet us throughout the year including:

• campus tours
• on-campus open days
• virtual open days

Find out about how you can visit Newcastle in person and virtually

Overseas events

We regularly travel overseas to meet with students interested in studying at Newcastle University.

Visit our events calendar for the latest events

• Get in touch

Questions about this course?

If you have specific questions about this course you can contact:

Marian Kyte Postgraduate Research Secretary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 6014 E-mail:  [email protected]

For more general enquiries you could also complete our online enquiry form.

Fill in our enquiry form

Our Ncl chatbot might be able to give you an answer straight away. If not, it’ll direct you to someone who can help.

You'll find our Ncl chatbot in the bottom right of this page.

Keep updated

We regularly send email updates and extra information about the University.

Receive regular updates by email

Chat to a student

Chat online with current students with our Unibuddy platform.

• How You'll Learn
• Your Development
• Your Future
• Quality and Ranking
• Fees and Funding
• Entry Requirements
• Open days & events

• Students, Staff and Alumni
• Search Students, Staff and Alumni
• Course finder

International

Mphil/phd research architecture, course information.

Visual Cultures

3-4 years full-time or 4-6 years part-time

Course overview

This MPhil/PhD programme is aimed at practitioners of architecture and other related spatial practices who would like to develop a sustained multi-year practice-led research project.

• It allows you to produce intensive, rigorous, and scholarly research as well as further elaborate your own practice.
• The programme is structured around an annual series of two-day long seminars, which take place each month during the Autumn, Winter, and Spring terms.
• The seminars are organised as a Roundtable discussion of student research projects as they progress each year. Each of the Roundtable seminars is supplemented by invited guests who bring relevant scholarly knowledge or practices into the Centre. Student and guest presentations, along with assigned readings, provide the common conceptual ground for discussion of work and ideas.
• Visual Cultures assessment are 100% coursework. Normally this consists of essays, sometimes accompanied by creative projects, group projects, multi-media projects, presentations, symposia, reviews, and studio work.
• Find out more about  research degrees at Goldsmiths . 
• Find out more about the Centre for Research Architecture .

Contact the department

If you have specific questions about the degree, contact Dr Susan Schuppli .

What our students say

Angela melitopolous, ways of meaning: machinic animism and the revolutionary practice of geo-psychiatry.

Based on audio-visual research and an archival survey, this thesis addresses questions regarding the possible relations that could be established between artistic practice, geo- psychiatry, politics, resistance, pursuing an updated cosmic thinking in which “soul” and “machine” exist everywhere simultaneously, in order to deal with the notion of multiplicity intensified by the proliferation of machinic social relations.

The underlying investigation follows Félix Guattari’s interest in animist cosmologies and practises that can be seen as models of subjectivity production that can be folded into our contemporary existence. Guattari was convinced that animism, far from being a return to irrationalism, is a way to overcome and to neutralize the ontological dualisms of modernity that have become the main sources of many of the contemporary political, ecological, social, scientific, and aesthetic problems.

Anselm Franke

Ariel caine.

See more profiles for this programme

Entry requirements

You should normally have (or expect to be awarded) a taught Masters in a relevant subject area. 

You might also be considered for some programmes if you aren’t a graduate or your degree is in an unrelated field, but have relevant experience and can show that you have the ability to work at postgraduate level.

International qualifications

We accept a wide range of international qualifications. Find out more about the qualifications we accept from around the world.

If English isn’t your first language, you will need an IELTS score (or equivalent English language qualification ) of 6.5 with a 6.5 in writing and no element lower than 6.0 to study this programme. If you need assistance with your English language, we offer a range of courses that can help prepare you for postgraduate-level study .

Fees, funding & scholarships

Annual tuition fees.

These are the fees for students starting their programme in the 2024/2025 academic year.

• Home - full-time: £4786
• Home - part-time: £2393
• International - full-time: £18560

If your fees are not listed here, please check our postgraduate fees guidance or contact the Fees Office , who can also advise you about how to pay your fees.

It’s not currently possible for international students to study part-time under a student visa. If you think you might be eligible to study part-time while being on another visa type, please contact our Admissions Team for more information.

If you are looking to pay your fees please see our guide to making a payment .

Additional costs

In addition to your tuition fees, you'll be responsible for any additional costs associated with your course, such as buying stationery and paying for photocopying. You can find out more about what you need to budget for on our study costs page .

There may also be specific additional costs associated with your programme. This can include things like paying for field trips or specialist materials for your assignments.

Funding opportunities

Find out more about postgraduate fees and explore funding opportunities . If you're applying for funding, you may be subject to an application deadline.

AHRC studentships .

How to apply

You apply directly to Goldsmiths using our online application system. 

Before submitting your application you'll need to have: 

• Details of  your education history , including the dates of all exams/assessments
• The  email address of your referee  who we can request a reference from, or alternatively an electronic copy of your academic reference
• Contact details of a second referee
• A  personal statement – t his can either be uploaded as a Word Document or PDF, or completed online

           Please see our guidance on writing a postgraduate statement

• If available, an electronic copy of your educational transcript (this is particularly important if you have studied outside of the UK, but isn’t mandatory)
• Details of your  research proposal

You'll be able to save your progress at any point and return to your application by logging in using your username/email and password.

Before you apply for a research programme, we advise you to get in touch with the programme contact, listed above. It may also be possible to arrange an advisory meeting.

Before you start at Goldsmiths, the actual topic of your research has to be agreed with your proposed supervisor, who will be a member of staff active in your general field of research. The choice of topic may be influenced by the current research in the department or the requirements of an external funding body. 

If you wish to study on a part-time basis, you should also indicate how many hours a week you intend to devote to research, whether this will be at evenings or weekends, and for how many hours each day.

Research proposals

Along with your application and academic reference, you should also upload a research proposal at the point of application. 

This should be in the form of a statement of the proposed area of research and should include: 

• delineation of the research topic
• why it has been chosen
• an initial hypothesis (if applicable)
• a brief list of major secondary sources

When to apply  

We accept applications from October for students wanting to start the following September. 

We encourage you to complete your application as early as possible, even if you haven't finished your current programme of study. It's very common to be offered a place conditional on you achieving a particular qualification.  

If you're applying for external funding from one of the Research Councils, make sure you submit your application by the deadline they've specified. 

Selection process 

Admission to many programmes is by interview, unless you live outside the UK. Occasionally we'll make candidates an offer of a place on the basis of their application and qualifications alone.

Find out more about applying .

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MA Research Architecture

The MA Research Architecture is for graduates from a range of disciplines who want to examine how architecture can engage with questions of contemporary culture, politics, media, ecology and justice and question whether spatial practice can become a form of research.

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Accommodation

Everything you need to know about student housing, private accommodation, how to apply and more

Open days, tours and country visits

The Phd Research Programme at the Architectural Association

Vitruvius translator – and the missing source text.

Sokratis Georgiadis

MA HCT & PhD Debates: History in Translation. Marina Lathouri and Guest Speakers

Thursday 12 March | 4:00pm | 32 Bedford Square (First Floor Back)

In portraying the architecture of the temples, which make up the contents of Books 3 and 4 of Vitruvius’ “Ten Books on Architecture” and can be considered the core of this work, its author makes no secret of his dependence on Greece. But which were his sources? In the preface to his 7th book, he himself gives the names of more than 20 Greek architects who have written about their art before him; these writings, the oldest of which date back to the 6th century BC, are all lost today. Which of them he knew and used and to what extent we do not know. Nor is it likely that the Roman theorist and author of the “Ten Books” knew first-hand the architecture of which he wrote, not even the Greek architecture of southern Italy and Sicily. The source text Vitruviusʼ, is therefore not secure and this is a problem for his theory, but above all for its reception, i.e. the more than two-thousand-year-old tradition of European Vitruvianism.

Image : Delphi ex-Cnidienne. Photography by Sokratis Georgiadis

Graf, Fritz, “Pompai in Greece – Some Considerations about Space and Ritual in the Greek Polis,” in: Robin Hägg (ed.).  The Role of Religion in the Early Greek Polis , Stockholm 1996. 55-65.

Biography : Sokratis Georgiadis, born in 1949 in Thessaloniki (GR), studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin and received his PhD from the University of Stuttgart. In the years 1987-1994 he held a research and teaching position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), he also held temporary teaching posts at the Universities of Zurich and Bern. In 1994 he became Professor for Architectural Theory and Design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Berlin-Weissensee and, shortly after, Professor of Architecture and Design History at the State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart where he taught until 2018. He lectured widely in Europe and North America, wrote articles for numerous architectural magazines and organized architectural exhibitions. His research interests include architectural history and theory in the 19th and 20th centuries and, more recently, Greek architecture of the archaic period. His studies on Sigfried Giedion include book publications (An Intellectual Biography 1989 [engl.1993], The Project of a New Tradition [co-editor of the exhibition catalogue, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, 1989 / German], Introduction to Giedions’s “Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete” in the Text & Documents Series of the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Epilogue to the German reprint of the same book [2000]) and numerous articles. He is presently working on the edition of the papers of Giedion’s unfinished book-project “Die Entstehung des heutigen Menschen” (1929-1938, The Growth of Contemporary Man).

Empathy and the Phenomenological Ethnography of Space

Thursday 30 January | 4:00pm | 32 Bedford Square (First Floor Back)

This lecture will address the Debates’ theme of history ‘in-translation’ in terms of an inquiry into three interrelated phenomena:  empathy ,  corporeity , and  spatiality . We will draw primarily on contemporary scholarship on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein on empathy ( Einfühlung ), and Jan Patočka and Maurice Merleau-Ponty on embodiment, in dialogue with the architectural theory of the late Dalibor Vesely. Beginning with this initial sketch of the philosophical problems, we consider concretely the question of the sense perceptual and empathic basis of the experience of the historical horizon of an ‘Other’s’ world, in terms of the expressive and communicative structures of corporeity and spatiality. The concrete, exemplary event that will guide our inquiry is a ritual practice of an Afro-Brazilian religion—called a Candomblé  caboclo reunião  of Tupikinim—situated in the periphery of the city of Salvador in the Brazilian Northeast. Our access to the ritual will be primarily through ethnographic descriptions of its spatiality, and thus implicated in our considerations is the question of the status of ethnography as a method and descriptive practice. Following the critiques of philosopher Valentin Mudimbe, we will foreground the ethical implications of the hermeneutic sense of empathy ( Einfühlung ) for ethnography. Mudimbe’s empathic thesis derived from hermeneutics, I propose, bears a certain affinity with anthropologist

Marilyn Strathern’s methodological grounding of ethnography in the concrete conditions of fieldwork and its ‘effects’. We will thus explore the question of the status of spatiality for ethnography in Strathern in relation to Mudimbe’s critique of ethnography’s historicity. The problems raised through a consideration of the above phenomenological and anthropological relations will guide us in investigating the tensions in the understandings of the relationship between historicity and spatiality for the shared, embodied experience of the ritual as exemplary, and its more general implications.

Image :   Caboclo  figurine on the ritual table. Salvador 2010. Photography by Tao DuFour

Marilyn Strathern, “The Ethnographic Effect I”, in  Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things  (London: The Athlone Press, 1999), pp.1-26.

Klaus Held, “Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Life-World”, in  The New Husserl: A Critical Reader , edited by DonnWelton (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp.32-62.

Dermot Moran, “Edith Stein’s Encounter with Edmund Husserl and Her Phenomenology of the Person”, in  Empathy, Sociality, and Personhood: Essays on Edith Stein’s Phenomenological Investigations , edited by Elisa Magrì and Dermot Moran (Dordrecht: Springer, 2017), pp.31-47.

Tao DuFour, “Toward a Somatology of Landscape: Anthropological Multinaturalism and the ‘Natural’ World”, in  Routledge Research Companion to Landscape Architecture , edited by Ellan Braae and Henriette Steiner (London: Routledge, 2019), pp.156-170.

Valentin Mudimbe, “The Patience of Philosophy”, in  The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge  (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp.135-186.

Biography : Tao DuFour   is Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture at Cornell University. His work explores the overlaps between architecture, anthropology, and philosophy, building on his research on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. His current research is concerned with the question of architecture’s embeddedness in environmental histories. He holds a PhD and MPhil in the history and philosophy of architecture from the University of Cambridge, and a BArch from The Cooper Union. He is the author of  Husserl and Spatiality: Toward a Phenomenological Ethnography of Space  (Routledge, forthcoming 2020).

The Female Body Politic: Re-modelling The Book of the City of Ladies

Penelope Haralambidou

Thursday 13 February | 4:00pm | 32 Bedford Square (First Floor Back)

The paper will present my practice/drawing-led research, which focuses on two works by French late medieval author Christine de Pizan:  The Book of the City of Ladies , 1405; and  The Book of the Body Politic, c .1404-07. Conflating the act of writing a book – a thesis against institutional misogyny – with the construction of an imaginary city, the first work,  The Book of the City of Ladies,  has been seen as a proto-feminist manifesto. Although widely studied in terms of its literary significance, I focus on the under-researched architectural and urban allegory depicted in the text, which imagines a Utopia inhabited solely by women and constructed for them by a woman (de Pizan herself), as well as its accompanying illuminations (miniature illustrations) displaying three different stages of the foundation and physical construction of the city. Inspired by Aristotle’s  Politics  and revisiting the ancient Greek metaphor, by which a state or society and its institutions are conceived of as a biological human body, in the second work,  The Book of the Body Politic , de Pizan offers her version of a medieval political theory, which I attempt to connect with her allegorical city.

Image : Photograph by Andy Keate

Penelope Haralambidou (2016). ‘With-drawing Room on Vellum: The Persistent Vanishing of the Architectural Drawing Surface’. In Allen, L., Pearson L. (Eds.).  Drawing Futures: Speculations for Contemporary Art and Architecture  (pp.82–89). London UCL Press

Sandra L. Hindman. ‘With Ink and Mortar. Christine de Pizan’s Cite des Dames’. In:  Feminist Studies , Vol. 10, No. 3 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 457-483

Earl Jeffrey Richards. ‘Where are the men in Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies. Architectural and Allegorical Structures in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la Cite des Dames.

Biography : Penelope Haralambidou   is Associate Professor and Director of Communications at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She coordinates MArch PG24, where she promotes a highly innovative research-based teaching methodology that uses digital film and immersive environments to re-think architectural design through time. Her research employs architectural drawing, model-making and digital film as investigatory tools to analyse ideas and work, not only in architecture, but also visual representation, the politics of vision, art and cinema. Her work has been exhibited internationally, she is the author of the monograph  Marcel Duchamp and the Architecture of Desire  (London: Routledge, 2013), and she has contributed writing on themes, such as architectural representation, allegory, figural theory, stereoscopy and film to a wide range of publications. Her solo show, ‘City of Ladies’, presenting her practice-led research of Christine de Pizan’s proto- feminist text  The Book of the City of Ladies , 1405, was hosted by DomoBaal gallery in January–February 2020.

Animals, Architecture, and the Critique of Modernity

Kostas Tsiambaos

Although the representations of animals in architecture since 1900 receded, as positivism and functionalism prevailed, one can still notice various representations of animals in the work of modern and postmodern architects. From the goat in Hans Poelzig’s  Porzellanpavillon  (1922), and the pack-donkey in Le Corbusier’s  The City of Tomorrow  (1929), to the horse in Superstudio’s  Atti Fondamentali  (1972), and the dog in Lina Bo Bardi’s  Intermezzo per bambini  (1984) the animal, as a symbolic representation, comes to serve a critical-interpretive function. In my talk, I will focus on a few case studies in which the animal comes to question the form and content of architecture by pointing towards a meta-architectural future.

Image :  Massimo Scolari, The Solitary Sparrow, 1974

Spyros Papapetros,  The Birth of Design https://www .e-flux.com/architecture/superhumanity/68709/the-birth-of-design/

Boris Groys,  Romantic Bureaucracy: Alexander Kojeve’s post-historical wisdom  (in: Radical Philosophy 196, March/April 2016)

Efthymia Rentzou,  Animal  (Columbia University Press, 2016)

Biography : Kostas Tsiambaos is Assistant Professor in History & Theory of Architecture at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University in Athens (NTUA). He is Chair of do.co.mo.mo. Greece. He studied in Athens (NTUA) and New York (GSAPP Columbia University). His research has been published in international journals ( The Journal of Architecture ,  ARQ ,  Architectural Histories, AΡΕΝΑ JAR ) and international collective volumes. His recent books include  From Doxiadis’ Theory to Pikionis’ Work: Reflections of Antiquity in Modern Architecture  (London & New York: Routledge, 2018) and  Ambivalent Modernity: 9+1 texts on Modern Architecture in Greece  (Thessaloniki: Epikentro, 2017 – in Greek). He has also co-edited the exhibition catalogue  The Future as a Project: Doxiadis in Skopje  (Athens: Hellenic Institute of Architecture, 2018). In the fall semester of the academic year 2019-2020, he was a Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Fellow at Princeton University.

Geo-aesthetics of the Anthropocene

Thursday 23 January | 4:00pm | 32 Bedford Square (First Floor Back)

This seminar will explore aesthetics as central to the various issues debated today under the rubric of the Anthropocene. It will do so especially by attending to the ways in which the environment is aestheticised as part of political projects and by asking how these aestheticisations in turn engender, encourage and legitimise particular environmental interventions. In terms of its critical analytical objectives, the seminar aims to complicate flattening notions of humanity and universality that continue to characterise mainstream approaches to the Anthropocene in architecture and related disciplines.

Image :  View of a Coal Seam on the Island of Labuan  (engraved by L.C. Heath & lithographed by C.W. Giles, 1847)

Dilip da Cunha,  The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Ganga’s Descent  (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

Kathryn Yusoff,  A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None  (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2018)

Timothy Mitchell,  Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity  (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002)

Biography : Eray Cayli, PhD (University College London, 2015), studies the aesthetics and geographies of political violence in Turkey anthropologically. His current research concerns with how these legacies shape and are shaped by contemporary discourses and practices around disaster and resilience. Eray is Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow (2018-21) at London School of Economics and Political Science where he also teaches the postgraduate course ‘Imaging Violence, Imagining Europe’. He is currently completing a monograph tentatively titled  Victims of Commemoration: The Architecture and Violence of ‘Confronting the Past’ in Turkey , co-editing the volume  Architectures of Emergency in Turkey: Heritage, Displacement, Catastrophe , and guest-editing a special issue of the  International Journal of Islamic Architecture  themed ‘Field as Archive / Archive as Field’. Eray is a co-founder of Amed Urban Workshop, an independent academy for critical spatial research based in the city of Amed (officially known as Diyarbakır) in Turkey’s Kurdistan, where he also undertook a residency at the artist-run space Loading in summer 2019.

The Ecological Superblock

Aiman Tabony Supervisors: Michael Weinstock, George Jeronomidis

The rapid undergoing and coming climatic and ecological change coupled with rapid acceleration in population growth, raise doubts and concerns regarding the ability of the existing urban systems to adapt to the future change. Although, these changes represent key opportunity for using ecological based design superblocks. The research departs from a critical reflection on the work of Hilberseimer’s “Decentralized City “and Soleri’s “Arcology”, who considered the city and the superblock to be a single and unified ecological system. It contextualizes the research within the larger scope leading the focus to the investi- gation of ecology and its subfield, the ecosystem. This brings the study down to three dominant areas of research: ecology, computational ecology and urban design. Through the integration of System Dynamic modelling method in the design process, the research investigates the Implantation of ecological parameters coupled with morphological and metabolic parameter and process. The design methodology is proved by the development of a computational design model which integrates System Dynamics model And Evolutionary Design model. The model was examined through a set of design experiments of a superblock that is integrated with the flow of the dynamics of the climate and ecologi- cal system. The output of the design method is a multi-dimensional da- tascape, opening up new possibilities in the field of urban design and planning that are more robust to changes in the environmental context. 

Biography : Aiman Tabony is a researcher and the second generation architect in Dr Tabony Architects. An architecture and engineering office founded in Nazareth in the 1960s by his father. During the last two decades, Aiman has been the leading architectural agenda of the practice, building an extensive curriculum in the design of public buildings. From 2012 to 2013 Aiman was teaching in the Technion-Haifa, as member of the computational design group. Aiman moved to London in 2014 to continue developing his curriculum in architecture, computation and ecology as a PhD researcher at the Architectural Association in London. He develops his Thesis under the supervision of Dr. Michael Weinstock; founder and leader of the design research group Emergent Technologies EmTech at the Architectural Association, London. His research concentrates on the implementation of computational methods for design and fabrication of ecological architecture and urban design. Departing from the city understood as a dynamic complex system his work focuses on the development of dynamic system models for cities and how the development of these systems influences the architectural discourse at the scale of the urban block.

Lola Lozano Lara

Supervisors: Pier Vittorio Aureli, Maria Giudici

The thesis considers the notion of vicinity, observed within the historic and legislative context of housing in Mexico City. A  vecindad  in Mexico is a building typology that allows a group of households to share domestic facilities through a central street.  Vecindad  translates to neighbourhood, stemming from the Spanish  vecino  which in English means, both,  neighbour  and  close , alluding to proximity, a relationship of close distance. 

The thesis is an investigation of domestic space and the relentless and unplanned accumulation of itself in the metropolitan city, focusing in Mexico City as a model of this condition, highlighting the state of living in extreme vicinity and raising the question of sharing what is perceived as a finite resource in the metropolitan city: housing. The existing housing stock in Mexico City does not satisfy the volume of the population. The number of inhabitants is a factor, and yet it is not the root of the problem. The crisis is engrained within a political system of reigning bureaucracy, resulting in a way of life where misfortune is inevitable and normalised.

The study looks closely at the architecture typologies in which inhabitants have been housed within the city, paying close attention to how these result in the redistribution of space and services through necessity and commodification, rather than through design. The investigation traces the history of Mexico as a newly sovereign state, autonomous since the consolidation of its first Constitution in 1821, and provides an understanding of its initial housing legislation and the instrumental reforms that will follow to enable its current ruthless and futile development of real estate. The research responds to the need of finding ways to contain the population in metropolitan areas of unlimited and unstoppable physical growth, where a perception of scarcity is promoted in relation to space, wealth, infrastructure, and time – in turn, fostering the image of an unsolvable problem and justifying the dissolution of a possibility for domestic space.

Biography : Lola is a practicing architect working in London and Mexico City. She graduated from the AA Diploma, having previously completed her Bachelor studies at Newcastle University. Alongside her architectural practice, Lola is enrolled as PhD Candidate at the AA and teaches at various UK universities. She is Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University co-leading DS7 on the MArchD course; Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster MA Interior Architecture; and collaborates with the BA Technical Studies and Professional Practice courses at the Bartlett and the AA.

Language and Sound: The Oracle of Delphi

Dorette Panagiotopoulou

Supervisors: Mark Cousins, Doreen Bernath

The thesis explores the space between voice, speech and writing though a study on the oracle of Delphi, an oral culture that is then transcribed and codified into written text. The manifold life of  sign  and  sound  (of language itself) as well as that of the  author  and the  receiver,  are attached by the material they share:  writing , a currency always in the throws of exchange. An ideology of writing and receiving, the relationship between sound, silence, and voice, is like all relations, about power. Does the voice have to submit to the written word? Was writing more like an act of  re-writing  or what we may call editing in the early period of the adoption of writing to speech, rather than a whole new way of representing language? The relationship of writer and receiver, sound and silence is one of domination but also – sometimes – one of commonality. 

Within the study of oracular statements and inscriptions at the temple of Delphi, I am developing a central question which concerns the tension between the narratives which describe it as an utterance by the Pythia and the oracle’s appearance, circulation, and dissemination in textual form – the tension here being between the spoken and the written word. The question of the oracle’s dissemination is a crucial one, as it presents a form of language or rather a cultural phenomenon that combines both literacy and orality. Even the Pythia’s language itself, emerges as neither deceptive nor crystalline, falling thus somewhere between the written and the illusory. There is one main concept that seems to link the two studies, specifically, inscription. The analysis of the letter “E” in Plutarch’s dialogue “On the E at Delphi”, leads to an understanding of inscription as something that acts as a lure or an invitation to investigate. The letter “E” takes the form of a pure symbol of judgment that evokes both the acts of interpretation and intuition in relation to truth. The Delphic inscription, mediated by Plutarch, has become a classic instance of the problem of interpretation. Not unlike oracular formulations that neither conceal nor reveal but indicate, inscription appears as both formal and hermeneutic. It entails the ability to say and to represent at the same time, while revealing the division or even blurring the lines that separate sign, form, and word. The very thing that is both seen and read is muted in the vision, and concealed in the reading. Thus, inscription bears a “not yet to say” and a “no longer to represent” that leads to the search for that force that produces a full meaning – one beyond the grasp of the linguistic – that utters the unspeakable through the “space” of emptiness and silence. 

Image : Juxtaposition of film still and the Temple of Apollo (Tacita Dean: Landscape, Portrait, Still Life, RA)

Biography : Dorette Panagiotopoulou has obtained a Masters degree in  Cultural and Intellectual History  at the Warburg Institute after having completed her Undergraduate Studies at the AA, from which she graduated in 2013 from Diploma unit 14. She is currently undertaking a PhD that examines the subject of the Delphic Oracle, under the supervision of Mark Cousins and Doreen Bernath, while teaching in the AA History and Theory Studies courses as a seminar tutor. She has previously worked at  Hopkins Architects  in London, as well as in the  Re-Activate Athens  project – a research and design initiative led by Urban-Think Tank studio based at ETH in Zürich in collaboration with the Onassis Foundation in Athens. She has also briefly worked on the report “ Rafah: Black Friday”  at Forensic Architecture based at Goldsmiths University. She is currently collaborating with a of group professors and architects from the Polytechnic School of Athens (NTUA) on a large project aimed to be realized in 2021 in Eleusis.

Towards Jerusalem: The Architecture of Pilgrimage

The thesis explores the ritual of sacred travel to the city of Jerusalem. It studies pilgrimage as a project in which the pilgrim, as a subject who is led by spiritual orientation, contributes to the appropriation of the cities and landscapes that he or she is perpetually crossing. While pilgrimage is indeed acknowledged as a journey in pursuit of a religious objective, it will nevertheless be studied, in this thesis, as a powerful social and cultural vector that often destabilized the economic, civic, and political conditions of the places of worship. The thesis will expand the definition of pilgrimage to Jerusalem by including a variety of analogous ‘Jerusalems’ that proliferated around the world as pilgrimage sites in their own right. As such, it will place the ritual of travel to the City of Jerusalem as a flexible practice that is not geographically confined but could be enacted by the varied combination of text, place, memory, and visual imagination—arguing for the possibility of relief from territorial confinement, and the violence it conceals. 

The thesis will unfold both chronologically and thematically in order to explore how the mentality of pilgrims and the scenography of pilgrimage has produced particular structures, landscapes, and representations that I refer to as the  Architecture of Pilgrimage.  Each of the five chapters looks both into a specific era in the history of Jerusalem pilgrimage (early Christianity, the Middle Ages, the beginning of Modernity and the 20th Century), as well as a particular theme, such as the fabrication of sacred landscapes, the intelligence of analogical thinking, the importance of movement in ritual, the politics of heritage and preservation, and the formation of collective memory. While these paradigmatic ideas did not necessarily originate in Jerusalem, the city’s condition allows their examination in a state of acceleration and saturation.

Methodologically, the thesis uses photography as a tool for architectural research and design, producing a travelogue composed of photographs and text. As documentation, this project will provide primary evidence of the current condition of Jerusalem pilgrimage. As representation, it will join a lineage of past endeavours that has used the medium of photography to frame spaces as a tool of architectural design. As a series,   the images will unfold along the itinerary of the thesis and form cartography of pilgrimage. As a project, it will trace, define, and speculate on a possible new route  Towards Jerusalem .

Image : Stations of the Cross in the Sacred Mountain of Varese, Italy. Photo by Gili Merin, 2018

Biography : Gili Merin is an architect and photographer She is a Diploma unit master at the AA, a lecturer for History and Theory of architecture at the Royal College of Arts, and a visiting professor in Syracuse University. She was trained as an architect, editor and researcher at OMA in Rotterdam, Kuehn Malvezzi in Berlin and Efrat-Kowalsky in Tel Aviv. Gili writes and photographs regularly for the Architects’ Journal, Frame Magazine and Haaretz newspaper. Her essays and reportages have been published in a number of print and online journals, amongst them the AA Files, MITs Thresholds, The Guardian and The Architectural Review.

The social factory: Social movements from autonomy to precarity

Enrica Mannelli

The thesis studies the evolution of the “social factory” and the related social movements that tackled this evolution. The concept of the social factory rises from a theory developed by Mario Tronti in early 1960 who claimed that in a Fordist society  “the whole of society lives as a function of the factory and the factory extends its exclusive domination to the whole of society” . Therefore, the history of the social factory is the evolution of an exploitative system, marked and challenged by a series of struggles led by the working class, the subject exploited. From an urban perspective, the Fordist social factory is the first moment that every single element of the city (such as factories, housing projects, and parks) and urban activity (working, dwelling, and leisure) is commodified and planned according to the main production system in order to fulfil the main goal of reproducing the labour force, i.e. making people productive. The urban history of the social factory – which this thesis sets out to trace – is the evolution of the city structure in relation to the evolution of the system. 

In the last 60 years, the working world has moved from a production system based on the factory assembly line to the contemporary “creative factory” that exploits not only intellectual labour but also the workers’ life as such; from  zoning  policies to a condition where we are unable to mark the spatial boundaries of the work field. As an illustration of this shift in the nature of work, Italy represents an exemplary and fast-paced case study while at the same time, Italian thinkers and practitioners of the 1960s and 1970s produced extensive theoretical and political contributions on this precise topic. Among them, the rejection of the system expressed by the Italian theories of autonomy and the Autonomia movement is the most interesting. 

Therefore, this research will analyse the structure of several Italian cities in relation to a particular shift within the evolution of the system: Turin, the factory; Bologna, the creative city; Rome, the autonomous social centre; and Milan, the cooptation of the autonomous social centre. In doing so, it questions the urban form in two ways: as an outcome of the capitalist system, reading urban planning as a means of capitalism itself; and as a contested spatiality in which the struggles of workers and citizens occur. Ultimately, this project questions the opportunity to tackle the contemporary Roman social factory through an urban policy to enable a system of social factory workshops. The latter is imagined as a critique of the Centro Sociale Occupato Autogestito (Self-managed occupied social centre; CSOA) that represent an important moment and space within the evolution of Italian theories of autonomy, and an opportunity to challenge the relentless nature of capitalism.

Image : Tano D’Amico, Girl and Guards, Rome (1977)

Biography : Enrica Mannelli is an architect. She graduated in Architecture in Rome (2008) and holds a Master of Arts in Housing and Urbanism from the Architectural Association (2017). As a firm believer in the importance of acquiring hands-on experience alongside academic study, she worked in a number of firms of different sizes, methods, and ambitions: among them, she collaborated with Cino Zucchi Architetti in Milan and Lynch Architects in London. She is currently working between Rome and London while pursuing her PhD by Design.

School of Architecture and Cities

The School of Architecture and Cities has a strong reputation for research and hosts a series of research centres and groups. Doctoral students interested in the design and management of urban environments benefit from supervision by staff working at the forefront of research on strategic design, mobilities and place making.

The unique composition of the School combines the disciplines needed for the design of environmentally and socially sustainable cities. Our aim is to encourage the cross-fertilisation of ideas from architecture, transport, infrastructure, tourism and urban planning. The multi-disciplinary configuration of the School encourages innovative and joined-up thinking from our doctoral students.

Engagement with practice is part of the School’s research culture. Alongside a passionate group of around 100 research-productive staff, the School hosts high-impact professorial positions and influential visiting fellows. Staff collaborate with a variety of influential partners in the UK and globally.

Due to the applied and practice-oriented nature of the research, the School creates a substantial impact in a variety of policy communities. Symposia and workshops are hosted on a regular basis.

The School boasts an outstanding portfolio of externally funded research in Air Traffic Management, Sustainable Freight Practices, Smart Urban Development, Cycling Policy, ‘Monsoon Assemblages’, Major Events and Urban Change, Heritage and Cultural Resources.

How to apply

The academic staff member responsible for PhD admissions in the School is Dr Kate Jordan who can be contacted by email via: [email protected] .

You can find more information about study options on our Mode of study page .

PhD via MPhil

The majority of students will apply via the PhD via MPhil route. You can read more about the application process and entry requirements on our How to apply page .

Distance Learning

If you intend to apply for a research degree by distance-learning, you will need to demonstrate that you have appropriate local support for the duration of registration – please refer to the information on our Distance learning page .

PhD by published work

If you intend to apply for a PhD by Published Work please refer to the information on our PhD by published work page as the application process differs from the normal MPhil/PhD. Before applying, you should first make contact with the relevant academic for an informal discussion of your publications. You should only submit a formal application at this stage.

Apply for the following subjects

Architecture.

• Architecture by Practice
• Urban Design

Apply to our research degrees using the links below.

You'll be able to select your subject area in the 'Supporting Information' section of the application form.

September 2024 start

January 2025 start

Studentships.

The Graduate School and each of the academic schools at the University of Westminster are committed to doctoral programmes which encourage and make possible excellent research. As part of this, we are committed to offering a range of studentships.

Find out about current studentships being offered across the university on our Studentships page .

Research centres and groups

Find out more about research based in the School of Architecture and Cities:

• Active Travel Academy
• Architectural Humanities Research Group
• Emerging Territories
• Design Practices Research Group

Planning, Transport and Tourism

• Max Lock Centre
• Place and Experience Research Group
• Transport and Mobilities

Related pages

Fees and funding.

How much will it cost to study a research degree?

How to write your research proposal

Discover how you should write your research proposal before applying for University of Westminster.

Research degree by distance learning

Find out about Research Degree distance learning options at the University of Westminster.

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Course type

Qualification, university name, phd architecture in england.

33 degrees at 27 universities in England.

Customise your search

Select the start date, qualification, and how you want to study

Related subjects:

• PhD Architecture
• PhD Architectural Design
• PhD Architectural History
• PhD Building Design
• PhD Building Design and Architecture
• PhD Surveying and Cartography

• Course title (A-Z)
• Course title (Z-A)
• Price: high - low
• Price: low - high

Architecture PhD

University of bath.

Study a PhD in a department that integrates architecture and civil engineering research to take on the complex challenges of creating a Read more...

• 4 years Full time degree: £4,800 per year (UK)
• 6 years Part time degree: £2,400 per year (UK)

London South Bank University

Research in the area of architecture is carried out by specialist centres. The majority of academic staff belong to one or more of these Read more...

• 6 years Distance without attendance degree: £4,820 per year (UK)
• 3 years Full time degree: £4,820 per year (UK)
• 5 years Part time degree: £2,892 per year (UK)

Architecture, Construction and Environment PhD

University of gloucestershire.

What is Architecture, Construction and Environment A Landscape Architecture research degree offers you the opportunity to explore Read more...

• 4 years Full time degree: £5,100 per year (UK)
• 6 years Part time degree: £3,400 per year (UK)

PhD Research Degrees

Arts university bournemouth.

Research degrees are awarded in recognition of significant contributions to knowledge and scholarship produced through the development of Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £6,000 per year (UK)
• 5 years Part time degree: £3,000 per year (UK)

Architecture research degree MPhil/PhD

De montfort university.

With internationally renowned researchers, state-of-the-art facilities, a passion for interdisciplinary working and a focus on real-world Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £4,786 per year (UK)
• 5 years Part time degree: £2,393 per year (UK)

Architecture Design (Social Science) PhD

University of nottingham.

While the design-based component of the project may be drawn, modelled, filmed, built, etc, candidates will be required to incorporate Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £4,712 per year (UK)

University of Plymouth

Join an active research area that explores the urban condition from a range of critical perspectives, through a focus on the nature of Read more...

• 4 years Part time degree: £3,180 per year (UK)

Architecture - PhD

University of kent.

Architects and the designers of our surroundings are the driving force behind the design of our built environment. Whether they are Read more...

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD

Ucl (university college london).

About this degree The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) consists of a piece of supervised research, normally undertaken over a period of three Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £6,035 per year (UK)
• 5 years Part time degree: £3,015 per year (UK)

Architecture, Interiors & Urbanism PhDs and Mphil

University of portsmouth.

If you want to take your expertise in Architecture, Interiors and Urbanism into a postgraduate research degree, Portsmouth is the perfect Read more...

• 6 years Part time degree: £2,393 per year (UK)

PhD in Art, Design and Architecture

Manchester metropolitan university.

Discover your research degree study options, including areas of expertise for our academic supervisors. Our research degrees will help you Read more...

• 6 years Distance without attendance degree
• 3 years Distance without attendance degree
• 6 years Part time degree

University of Brighton

For over 30 years, the University of Brighton has brought innovation and impact through research in built environment, architecture and Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £4,796 per year (UK)
• 7 years Part time degree: £2,398 per year (UK)

Doctor of Philosophy - MPhil / Phd

London metropolitan university.

A PhD is conducted purely by research. Each PhD is the unique development of your individual research project, performed under the Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £6,500 per year (UK)
• 4 years Part time degree: £3,250 per year (UK)

Architecture (Science) PhD

This PhD addresses the core of architecture including design as research, and research that supports and stimulates design. Research is Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £5,100 per year (UK)

Architectural Space and Computation MPhil/PhD

Architecture (social science) phd.

Research in architecture at Nottingham covers a diverse multidisciplinary field including architectural history, theory and criticism; Read more...

Architectural and Urban History and Theory MPhil/PhD

Architecture and digital theory mphil/phd.

This programme allows students to produce original research in areas related to computational tools applied to design, regardless of scale, Read more...

MPhil/PhD Research Architecture

Goldsmiths, university of london.

This MPhil/PhD programme is aimed at practitioners of architecture and other related spatial practices who would like to develop a Read more...

• 4 years Part time degree: £2,393 per year (UK)

Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering PhD

Loughborough university.

One of four Royal Academy of Engineering designated Centres of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design, the School of Architecture, Read more...

• 6 years Part time degree: £2,356 per year (UK)

1-20 of 33 courses

Course type:

• Distance learning PhD
• Full time PhD
• Part time PhD

Qualification:

Universities:.

• University of Suffolk
• University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education
• Royal College of Art
• University of Reading
• University of Lincoln
• University of Oxford
• University of Manchester
• University of Liverpool
• Lancaster University
• Architectural Association School Of Architecture
• University of Cambridge
• University of Sheffield

Related Subjects:

Architecture PhD

• Research Themes
• Conferences

‍ ‍ MPhil/PhD

Working at the intersection of theory, research, media and critical-spatial-practices, the MPhil/ PhD programme in Architecture supports experimental practice-led and interdisciplinary theses aiming at tangible public and social impact. The programme fosters architectural research at the intersection of history and theory, critical ecologies, new materialism, and digital culture. The programme is investigating the diverse ways in which architects, artists, filmmakers, curators and other cultural producers have negotiated crises associated with globalization, migration and statelessness, the hauntings of empire and the colonial present, new digital technologies, and the growing biopolitical conflicts around ecology and climate change. We strongly encourage to think about the performativity of space, or architectural forms and practices in their interrelation to the climate crisis, social movements and institutional change.

We support written academic research in the history and theory of architecture and new media of exploration and documentation. We are especially interested in practice-led research, which could involve an architectural project, a work of heritage preservation, community work, an artistic practice, an exhibition, or a film production. Our programme is relevant to diverse research careers in academia, spatial practice, curation, publishing and critical conservation. We encourage establishing real world collaborations with industry-based research groups, leading design practices, policymakers, social and environmental justice groups, human rights organisations and cultural institutions. We particularly welcome research proposals aligned with the strategic areas of research in the School of Architecture:

‍ Climate Justice

‍ Architecture & Social Movements

‍ Institutional Forms & Practices

‍ Documentary Research, Heritage & Digital Materialities

‍ Interior Architecture & The Culture of Care

‍ Feeling, Fiction, Frame

Laboratory for Design and Machine Learning

‍ All research themes encourage interdisciplinary research with new models of collaboration between postgraduate research students, as well as academic and non-academic institutions or partners.

Research Methods

The programme emphasises the development of innovative methods of research through design and spatial analysis and their documentation in new computational and media forms.

Career Opportunities

PhD study leads to a range of opportunities. You might become a lecturer or academic researcher, designer or consultant in industry, curator in leading cultural institutions worldwide, in international institutions such as NGOs and charities. It is an opportunity for you to investigate a research question or issue in depth, enabling you to take a more reflective, more innovative role in design.

Dr. Ines Weizman Head of PhD Programme

School of Architecture Royal College of Art Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU

[email protected] ‍

School of Architecture, Royal College of Art Postgraduate Research (PGR) Programme

Architecture PhD Postgraduate Research

The Programme's Elevator Pitch! Please view the programme's elevator pitch for an overview.

General Information

Please find information on the programme curriculum, application rounds and fees.

Apply Please consult the Royal College of Art's application portal:

Start your Application .

Contact Dr. Ines Weizman Head of PhD Programme

School of Architecture Royal College of Art Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU ‍ [email protected] ‍ School of Architecture, Royal College of Art

‍ Postgraduate Research (PGR) Programme

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Course closed:

Architecture is no longer accepting new applications.

The Cambridge Department of Architecture has been ranked top by the Times Higher Educational Supplement in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework for research quality in a joint submission with Land Economy, one of four Cambridge University disciplines to have achieved first place in their respective Units of Assessment.

A doctoral degree at the Department of Architecture offers the opportunity for independent research under the supervision of a departmental member of staff.  Unless the candidate is part of a research group, the research is undertaken entirely by the candidate on their own, with regular supervision on progress with their supervisor.

The Department welcomes applications from postgraduates to undertake research towards a PhD in most areas, including Urban Studies, History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism, Digital Media Design and Communication, Design, Technology and Natural Materials, Planning and Environment, but is unable to accept candidates for whom no supervisor is available.  The Department does not offer a taught PhD programme. Instead, it admits those applicants who meet the academic admissions criteria and whose research interests match those of an available member of the academic staff who is willing to act as the student's supervisor.

As well as the research and skills training programme and undergraduate teaching opportunities offered by the Department of Architecture, candidates have the opportunity to attend numerous training and personal development courses offered by the university.

The examination constitutes the oral examination of a thesis not exceeding 80,000 words for the PhD on a subject approved by the Degree Committee for the Faculty. 

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the programme, candidates will have acquired excellent skills, experience and knowledge to undertake postdoctoral work (research and teaching) or another related profession.

To continue to read for the PhD following an appropriate Master's degree, students must achieve a pass in the MPhil by Research or an overall total score of at least 70% in the MPhil by Advanced Study course. Continuation is also subject to the approval of the research proposal, and the availability of an appropriate supervisor.

The Postgraduate Virtual Open Day usually takes place at the end of October. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions to admissions staff and academics, explore the Colleges virtually, and to find out more about courses, the application process and funding opportunities. Visit the  Postgraduate Open Day  page for more details.

See further the  Postgraduate Admissions Events  pages for other events relating to Postgraduate study, including study fairs, visits and international events.

Key Information

3-4 years full-time, 4-7 years part-time, study mode : research, doctor of philosophy, department of architecture, course - related enquiries, application - related enquiries, course on department website, dates and deadlines:, michaelmas 2024 (closed).

Some courses can close early. See the Deadlines page for guidance on when to apply.

Funding Deadlines

These deadlines apply to applications for courses starting in Michaelmas 2024, Lent 2025 and Easter 2025.

Similar Courses

• Architecture and Urban Studies MPhil
• Master of Studies (MSt) in Architecture (Degree Apprenticeship) MSt
• Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment MSt
• Professional Practice in Architecture PGCert
• Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment PGCert

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Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)

London, United Kingdom, Construction Project Management, Contract Management, NLP, AI

About the Project:

LSBU is a modern university with a mission to transform lives, communities, businesses and society through applied education and insight. We strive to influence the wider world and to positively impact on the society around us. LSBU’s PhD Scholarships are central to this vision.

LSBU is an inclusive and welcoming organisation, committed to eliminating discriminations. This means that we work pro-actively to eliminate individual, institutional, and systemic inequalities. We believe that it is not enough just to eliminate discrimination but that we must speak out and act against inequalities wherever and whenever they occur.

Doctoral Scholarship (with stipend): Total studentship cost of £25,900 per FT PGR, including a yearly stipend (£18,622), inside London allowance (£2,040), supervision costs (£2,618), support, training, and printing costs (£1,620), and the cost of a laptop in the 1st year (£1,000). Studentships will be funded for three years only with expected submission in Jan 2027 and viva, corrections and award completed before Dec 2027. The successful candidate will need to be enrolled for a January 2024 start.

School/Division: School of the Built Environment and Architecture/Construction, Property and Surveying

Duration of Scholarship: Full-time. It is expected that those awarded scholarships will submit their thesis no later than three years from enrolment.

Fully funded PhD studentship (home fees only) at London South Bank University, School of Built Environment and Architecture January 2024 Start. The student will be supervised by Dr Yuting Chen ( https://peoplefinder.lsbu.ac.uk/researcher/89099/dr-yuting-chen ) and Prof. Chika Udeaja ( https://peoplefinder.lsbu.ac.uk/researcher/8q10z/professor-chika-udeaja )

Closing date for applications: 5 th November 2023 by 11.59 pm

Start date: no later than 5th January 2024

Applicants are invited for a full-time three-year PhD studentship in the School of the Built Environment and Architecture at London South Bank University (LSBU) to begin no later than 5th January 2024. We are seeking an exceptional and enthusiastic person to join our team Construction Project Management research team in the School of the Built Environment and Architecture for creating an automatic contract review system for proactive risk management and dispute avoidance.

Supervisors: Dr Yuting Chen ( https://peoplefinder.lsbu.ac.uk/researcher/89099/dr-yuting-chen ) and Prof. Chika Udeaja ( https://peoplefinder.lsbu.ac.uk/researcher/8q10z/professor-chika-udeaja )

Project description :

Procurement and contracts are important in managing construction projects, especially risk management. However, previous manual review processes and early AI-based are known to be time-consuming and error-prone and do not address the huge data generated during the contract or procurement processes. Also, construction projects have suffered long from contractual risk, which will cause disputes in the future.

The normal contract document reviewing process to reduce risk has long been labour-intensive and can cause errors. An AI-automated detection method that addresses contractual risk and incorporates scope 3 emissions requirements is needed to address our current challenges in procurement and contracts.

The proposed project aims to develop an AI-powered contract specification classification model to automatically detect the contractual risks and the risk-taking party from each contract clause to help review the contract and reduce potential disputes in the future. The methodology adopted in this research will combine behavioural and design science.  The behavioural science will be used to explore the challenges, and the design will be used to develop system development of the AI-powered Natural Language Processing.

Eligibility: The successful candidate will have a BSc and ideally, an MSc, in Construction Project Management or related discipline with strong research methods skills. Candidates with programming background, especially with experience using LLM, are preferred. Candidates should have an interest in contract and procurement management in construction projects as well as an ability to work independently and with initiative at a high level of self-motivation. The studentship will be awarded based on merit for full-time study three years only. The studentship is limited to home students.

Contact for informal enquiries: Please contact Dr. Yuting Chen on email: [email protected]

How to apply: Please send your CV and personal statement (including motivations for studying at doctoral level, interest and experience in this subject area, research skills and experience, your programming, coding experience and suggestions for how an element of the proposed PhD could be explored) via email to Dr. Yuting Chen via email: [email protected]

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted with an invitation to attend an interview during the week commencing 13 th November 2023. The successful candidate will be selected for the award in accordance with the University’s postgraduate admissions requirements and must be eligible under the Educations (Fees and Awards) Regulations 1997.

Closing date for applications: 5 th November 2023 by 11.59pm

PhD studentship – 3 years full-time, commencing January 2024

About the role

An enthusiastic and highly motivated candidate is sought to support an ongoing research initiative at London South Bank University into the additive manufacture of thermoplastic structures. The project team at LSBU represents a coalescence of expertise in structural mechanics, additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence and digital design, with additional support and direction to be provided by our industrial partners.

Thermoplastic biopolymers hold great potential in the drive for net zero in construction and in fostering greater material circularity, while the development of digital design methods for 3D printing promotes the use of automated methods in structural design and construction practice. This project aims to refine a digital design method developed at LSBU for the robotic additive manufacture of structural-grade components from biopolymers or other thermoplastics derived from natural sources, e.g., cellulose. The predictive power of numerical models is to be enhanced through the use of machine learning, allowing greater flexibility and reliability in the digital design of polymer structural elements such as lightweight joists, bespoke structural connections, retrofitted components and load-bearing architectural features.

The successful candidate will be responsible for conducting structural analysis via finite element modelling of component geometries and structural optimisation informed by experimentally determined material behaviours. The candidate is expected to have some experience in the use of structural-mechanical analysis (finite element analysis) software in the context of structural or mechanical systems. In addition, knowledge of automation through scripting in languages like Python or C# (or similar) is desirable in order to run optimisation routines effectively. Some familiarity with machine learning or similar artificial intelligence approaches would be ideal, but training in this regard can be provided during the studentship. The successful candidate should be motivated to conduct their research independently and be comfortable liaising and working with stakeholders under the supervision of the Director of Studies (Dr Finian McCann) and the co-supervisors (Federico Rossi, Dr Luis Santos).

The work you will do

This role requires a very good MEng (1:1 / 2:1) or MSc (Merit or Distinction) graduate with proven experience in computational analysis for applications in structural or mechanical design, or industry experience to an equivalent level. You will be expected to work with a high degree of autonomy and manage a varied workload effectively with regular progress review meetings. Additionally, there will be a need to communicate technical activities and tasks to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including the industrial partners on this project. This includes the preparation of journal articles, technical reports for industrial partners, and conferences papers and presentations.

The skills and experience you will need to be successful

You will have proven experience of applying structural-mechanical modelling software, e.g., Abaqus, Ansys Workbench, Karamba, LS-DYNA, to an MEng / MSc research level, or in an equivalent industrial R&D environment. The right candidate should have strong expertise in computational structural or mechanical analysis applied to structural design and/or mechanics with coding and automation skills, preferably in Python, C# or Rhino SDK.

Details about the role and How to apply

This is a full-time position funded for three years. The successful candidate must be enrolled before the end of January 2024 .

For an informal discussion, please contact:

Dr Finian McCann [email protected]

Associate Professor of Structural Engineering, School of the Built Environment and Architecture, London South Bank University.

Please note, the contact details listed are for enquiries only.

Interview and assessment process

It is expected that interviews will be held in early November 2023 .

Brief : Tsunami are one of the deadliest coastal hazards. Tsunami induced sediment scour at structure foundations is a major cause of structural failure during tsunami inundation events. Current engineering knowledge of the scour process is disparate and incomplete. This is due in part to the devastation caused by these waves rendering field surveys of limited use. Further the physical process of the scour is highly complex. This complexity means that numerical models are difficult set up and to run efficiently and physical models require large and specialized facilities too run. Thus, there is a lack of physical model data to understand the process and validate any numerical model. The practicing engineer is left with no way to predict the scour and therefore effectively mitigate structural vulnerability to it.

This project will look to provide a comprehensive look at the physical process and parameter sensitivity of tsunami scour at coastal structures. In addition, it will develop a design tool for practicing engineers to estimate the scour depth expected from a given tsunami event. This will be achieved through the combination of the analysis of an extensive unpublished data set of tsunami scour taken in a unique tsunami modelling laboratory and the development of a numerical model to extend the data and formulate a design equation.

Aims: To illuminate the physical process of tsunami induced scour at structures and develop a predictive equation of scour development and depth as a function of incident tsunami wave parameters.

Methods: The work will analyse an extensive laboratory data set of tsunami scour to illuminate the physical processes and influencing parameters. From this a numerical simulation will be developed and validated using the open source CFD software OpenFOAM . The numerical model will then extend the laboratory data to conduct a comprehensive parametric study of tsunami scour. From this a regression analysis will be performed to isolate the influencing parameters and develop a predictor equation.

Funding: The funding includes a yearly stipend (£18,622), inside London allowance (£2,040), support, training, and printing costs (£1,620), and the cost of a laptop in the 1 st year (£1,000). Funding is per year for three years full time home students only. The successful candidate will need to be enrolled for a January 2024 start.

Application Process : To apply upload your CV and complete this informal application https://forms.gle/qffx7GZkVDxBPRmX6

Applicants require a Bachelors (2:1 or better) or Masters degree in Civil engineering or a related field. This may include, but is not limited to Mechanical Engineering, Ocean and Coastal Engineering Physics, Earth and

Environmental Sciences and Mathematics.

Closing date Wednesday 01 November.

You will be contacted via email if you are shortlisted for interview. We aim to complete the shortlisting process within 1 week of the advert closing date ( 1 November ). LSBU's on-line postgraduate application form will only be completed by the successful candidate after selection. The successful candidate will need to be enrolled from January 2024 due to the conditions of the scholarship.

Informal enquiries to Dr David McGovern, [email protected]

Part funded PhD studentship.

This PhD research programme studentship is being offered by Dr Haydar Aygun at School of Built Environment and Architecture, London South Bank University Academic staff : LSBU People Finder

Background and rationale: Currently there are not any time efficient and low carbon acoustic system to monitor adverse changes in the built environment. There is a need for an engineering system to monitor adverse changes in the built environment.

Traditional environmental noise monitoring systems measure sound levels, store the data on internal memory card. Then the data is transferred to computer for analysing environmental noise parameters. They are expensive, time consuming, and contribute to carbon emission, especially for long term measurements. The costs of such a system are prohibitive, especially for developing countries. There is a need for a low cost, time efficient, and low carbon engineering system utilising artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms to monitor environmental noise remotely.

Aims: This PhD programme aims to design, build, and test an intelligent low-cost and low carbon noise monitoring system using green technology. The low carbon system will be capable of monitoring environmental noise for a longer

Methods: There is a growing need (regulation-driven) to monitor airports with a low cost, robust, and simple system. The AI and machine learning algorithms will be mitigating most of the laborious work. The expected research impact will show how such a system could be implemented around a noisy environment such as an airport to monitor environmental noise. An environmental sound monitor will be built and programmed using low-cost commercial electronics such as MEMS microphones, drastically reducing the cost of implementation. The system developed will be tested to international standards for compliance. Another new aspect of this research is that the system will be networked to create a platform. This platform would capture the sound environment and tag sound event spectrograms at the local level through Edge AI classification.

A central server will host the main AI. This will improve the accuracy of the classification through directed learning, without requiring user intervention. This will reduce the laborious nature of tagging unusual sound events which breach planning, construction, or demolition conditions.

Funding: The funding offered for this programme includes a yearly stipend (£18,622), inside London allowance (£2,040), support, training, and printing costs (£1,620), and the cost of a laptop in the 1 st year (£1,000). This funding is per year for three years full time. The successful candidate will need to be enrolled for a January 2024 start.

The selected PhD student should hold a BEng in Mechanical Engineering (2:1 or better), MSc in Acoustics, and experience in environmental noise monitoring, acoustic product development, analysing noise data, machine learning, and acoustic modelling.

You will be contacted via email if you are shortlisted for interview. We aim to complete the shortlisting process within 1 week of the advert closing date ( 1 November ). LSBU's on-line postgraduate application form will only be completed by the successful candidate after selection. The successful candidate will need to be enrolled from January 2024 due to the conditions of the scholarship. Informal enquiries to Dr Haydar Aygun [email protected] .

LSBU is a modern university with a mission to transform lives, communities, businesses and society through applied education and insight. We strive to influence the wider world and to impact the society around us positively. LSBU’s PhD Scholarships are central to this vision.

Project Description: The on-going drive to digitise the processes and products of the built environment in the UK is anchored on sustainability including carbon reduction. It is supported by Industry 4.0 through platforms like building information modelling (BIM), Smart Buildings and Digital Twinning. The BIM mandate of 2016 as well as the National Digital Twin Programme (NDTp), represent several routes towards digital transformation of the UK’s built assets. This project aligns with LSBU research areas such as digital transformation as well as health, safety, & wellbeing, by extending from the applicants’ prior research profile. It will strengthen the existing research at Centre for the Integrated Delivery of the Built Environment (IDoBE), which is uniquely placed to play a leading role in this regard.

The project is aimed at developing a framework for construction safety education through the integration of various digital technologies, especially BIM, VR and Industry 5.0; as well as the incorporation of behavioural aspects as well as scenario-based factors and construction methods. These technologies, factors and methods would holistically implemented in the framework including the gamification of scenarios in the VR platform.

Applicants are invited for a full-time three-year PhD studentship ( International Students Only ) in the School of the Built Environment and Architecture at London South Bank University (LSBU) to begin no later than 5th January 2024. We seek an exceptional and enthusiastic person to join our team in the School of the Built Environment and Architecture.

Duration of Scholarship: 3 years full-time in the School of Built Environment and Architecture at London South Bank University. The successful candidate must be ready to enrol in January 2024 and is expected to attend full-time for three years with thesis submission in January 2027 and viva, corrections and awards completed before Dec 2027.

Supervisor:  The student will be supervised by Dr Zulfikar Adamu  Academic staff : LSBU People Finder

Eligibility:  Applicants should have a minimum of an upper second-class undergraduate degree, and ideally hold, or expect to achieve a merit or distinction in a master’s degree in a relevant subject from a UK university, or comparable qualifications from another recognised university. See:  www.lsbu.ac.uk/international/your-country for guidance on entry requirements from different countries.

Application Process: Each application will be required to submit a proposal based on the project aim summarised above.

• Deadline for completing the application is 30 th November 2023.
• Signin - London South Bank University (lsbu.ac.uk)
• Select the School of Built Environment and Architecture
• PhD in Construction Management and Economics
• In comments box please add  Ref: CONSTRUCTSAFETY-BEA-2024
• International students not holding a UK passport must also satisfy the UK Government regulations for entry to study in the UK. Please use this link  www.lsbu.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/how-to-apply#international

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted with an invitation to attend an interview during the week commencing 4 th December 2023. The successful candidate will be selected for the award following the University’s postgraduate admissions requirements and must be eligible under the Education (Fees and Awards) Regulations 1997.

For informal enquiries about the project, contact Dr Amina Nazif ( [email protected] ). Applications submitted via email are NOT valid and will not be considered.

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• What the UK general election could mean for Middle East real...

What the UK general election could mean for Middle East real estate investors

The UK will go to the polls this week (4 th July 2024) to elect a new government and the results could be significant for Middle East real estate investors. Barratt London has looked at what the two major parties say in its manifesto and how it might have an impact on those looking to purchase a property in the UK capital with a new Government potentially in power.

Conservative Party

The party is committed to reducing immigration (legal and illegal) and proposes caps on working visas, which could affect those hoping to move to London for work, as well as increased income requirements for foreign nationals who wish to bring their families into the country. However, these measures are unlikely to affect higher net worth individuals who don’t require a working visa, or those buying for a holiday home or to house relatives studying in the UK.

Positively, plans to increase housebuilding by fast-tracking planning permission for brownfield developments in large cities – an area that Barratt London specialise in - could reduce the cost of buying a home in the UK and increase choice as more properties become available. The Conservative Party also plans to permanently raise the threshold at which first time buyers are exempt from Stamp Duty to £425,000, including overseas buyers who have never owned property. The manifesto promises leasehold reform, capping ground rents at £250, and making it easier for apartment owners to share responsibility using commonhold tenure.

For those buying a rental property, the Conservatives intend to pass a Renters Reform Bill that will give tenants more security in their homes with no-fault evictions prohibited.

Labour Party

The Labour party has announced many policies, from building 1.5 million new homes over the course of the next parliament to focusing on regenerating brownfield land opportunities for more development. However, policies of particular relevance to foreign investors from a real estate perspective is the proposal to add an additional 1% Stamp Duty on residential property purchases by non-UK residents. This increase would mean that for investors who own a home elsewhere, rates of Stamp Duty would become 6% on the amount under £250,000, 11% on the portion up to £925,000, 16% on the portion up to £1.5m and 18% on any amount over £1.5m. To put it into perspective, this would add £5,000 to the cost of buying the average London apartment (£500,000), but rates are still low in global terms - a foreign investor buying in Singapore would face 60% tax.

The Labour Party also promises to end Leasehold entirely and move to commonhold as the default for apartments, as well as regulating ground rents and maintenance costs – measures that could benefit those buying city flats as an investment. For those wishing to live in the UK, Non-Dom status will be abolished, and a points-based immigration system will be introduced.

Stuart Leslie International Sales and Marketing Director at Barratt London, comments :

“Overseas investors might be nervous at the prospect of a change of government, but it’s important to remember that London property has remained a secure long-term investment through six General Elections and three different shades of Government since 2000. Those who bought the average house in January 2000 for £132,705 will find it now worth around £499,663 – a 277% increase, clearly demonstrating that whatever the political party at the helm, investing in UK property continues to be a secure and reliable investment, especially in the regeneration areas that Barratt London specialise in, which increase in value even more strongly.“

For further information, please visit https://www.barrattlondonmena.com

About Barratt London (International)

Barratt London has been building high-quality homes in the UK capital for more than 40 years. A division of Barratt Developments - the UK’s largest housebuilder - Barratt London has already completed more than 50,000 homes in the city and invested £137m in the past three years.

With a wide range of homes available across London, the company specialises in seeking out regeneration areas with high rental yields and great transport links, including sites in partnership with Transport for London, where it can build sustainable developments and create thriving communities. Multi-award-winning Barratt London has a satisfaction rate of more than 90%, better than any other major UK housebuilder.

About Barratt Developments   

Barratt Developments is the UK’s largest housebuilder, creator of more than half a million homes across Britain over the past 60 years. A FTSE 100 company, Barratt is known for its quality builds, gaining five stars for a record-breaking 15 years in a row in the HBF New Homes Customer Satisfaction Survey, and winning more NHBC Pride in the Job Quality awards than any other housebuilder for the 19th year running.

By Naser Nader Ibrahim

• Real Estate
• Middle East
• United Kingdom
• Barratt London
• Stuart Leslie
• Middle East Real Estate Investors
• Real Estate Investors
• Middle East Real Estate Investor
• Real Estate Investor
• Barratt London
• Barratt Developments

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The Bartlett School of Architecture

• Architectural Design MPhil/PhD and Architectural & Urban History MPhil/PhD

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD and Architectural & Urban History & Theory MPhil/PhD

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD

This stream within Architecture MPhil/PhD encourages the development of architectural research through the combination of designing and writing. Students present a thesis consisting of a project and a text that share a research theme and a productive relationship. The project may be drawn, filmed, built, or make use of whatever media is appropriate.

View the UCL Prospectus page for this programme

Architectural & Urban History & Theory MPhil/PhD

This stream within Architecture MPhil/PhD allows students to conduct an exhaustive, original and creative piece of research into an area of their own selection and definition. The range of research topics undertaken is broad, but most explore the history and theory of architecture and cities between 1800 and the present day.

In their first year, students are registered as MPhil candidates, but are then expected to upgrade to PhD status. Full-time students are expected to complete their PhDs in three to four years, whilst part-time students complete theirs in five to seven years.

Architectural Design thesis submissions combine a design project and a text of around 60,000 words. The research for Architectural & Urban History & Theory  is normally presented as a text of 100,000 words maximum with illustrative material.

All students have the option of auditing modules from  Architectural History MA , led by Professor Peg Rawes. Students are also encouraged to take advantage of the variety of skills development courses run by the Graduate School UCL and the Language Centre. In particular, students are advised to follow the workshop The Creative Thesis, run in conjunction with the Slade School of Fine Art, which is tailored to practice-led research.

Supervisors

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD and Architectural & Urban History & Theory MPhil/PhD both draw on the full range of the research expertise offered at The Bartlett School of Architecture.

As an MPhil/PhD candidate, you will have two doctoral supervisors: one from the school and a second from another school in The Bartlett or elsewhere in UCL, depending on your research area.

Dr Sabina Andron Graffiti, street art and public art; legal geography and urban property regimes; the right to the city, spatial justice and urban commons; urban semiotics, geosemiotics, surface semiotics; urban visual culture and image theories; deviance, disorder and crime in cities; vandalism, protest and anti-social behaviour; transgressive and subversive practices of urban inhabitation.

Professor Peter Bishop Application of urban design and urban planning theory; incremental urbanism; temporary uses and installations; role of conservation in distorting urban change; role of other stakeholders and political forces outside the design process in the construction of the built environment.            Professor Iain Borden History of modern architecture; urbanism and urban culture; skateboarding, graffiti and urban arts; public space; experiences of architecture; film, photography and other urban representations; critical theory and cultural studies.

Roberto Bottazzi The aesthetic, spatial and philosophical impact of digital technologies on architecture and urbanism.   Professor Ben Campkin Histories, theories and practices of urbanism and urbanization. Transdisciplinary urbanism and experimental methods of urban research, publication and public engagement. Urban night spaces, cultures and governance. London’s history and built environment; contemporary urban policy and practice in London. Queer space, architecture and architectural histories; heritage associated with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer populations.

Professor Mario Carpo   History of architectural theory and history of cultural technologies, with focus on the early modern period (the Vitruvian tradition and the Italian Renaissance, from Alberti to Vignola) and on contemporary digital design theory (1990 to the present).   Professor Nat Chard Architecture and indeterminacy; relationship between ideas and technique in architectural representation and manufacture; experimental practices in architecture; developing methods of drawing and making as a means of architectural research.             Professor Marjan Colletti   Digital design and digital theory; experimental building and urban design; innovative CAD/CAM fabrication technologies; neo-baroque and exuberant synthetic and syncretic design techniques.             Professor Marcos Cruz Innovative environments, utilization of bacteria and algae, computation, bio-technology and synthetic biology.

Dr Edward Denison Histories and theories of modernism and modernity outside ’The West'. Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, especially China and Chinese encounters with modernity domestically and/or globally. Colonialism, post-colonialism, and globalisation. Cultural heritage and critical approaches to urban heritage. Community engagement/campaigning and neighbourhood planning.    Professor Murray Fraser Architectural design; design research; architectural history and theory; cultural studies; architecture and globalisation; cross-cultural influences; cultural identity; urbanism.   Professor Stephen Gage Time-based architecture; architecture that interacts with people and the external environment; architecture and performance.

Dr Sam Griffiths Theories and methods for researching and writing the historical relationship between urban populations and their built environments; the spatial cultures of industrial cities, suburbs and high streets; urban manufacturing; architecture as chronotope in realist fiction and historical writing; space syntax as an interdisciplinary approach to research in the humanities and social sciences.  

Peter Guillery London's buildings and topography of the 16th to 21st centuries, especially housing, industrial buildings and vernacular architecture.

Dr Sean Hanna   Spatial cognition; mathematical and computational modelling of spatial and social relationships; individual and collective creativity; machine learning and intelligence; complexity and big data.   Dr Penelope Haralambidou Architectural drawing and making as research methods; art and architecture; Marcel Duchamp; architecture and allegory; theories of perception, memory, imagination and representation in design; visual technologies – historical and contemporary; experimental film and digital projection; exhibition design and curating; book architecture; stage design; and the design of public spaces.   Professor Jonathan Hill Programme Director Histories and theories of architectural authorship and design; the formation of the architect; architecture by users and non-architects. Histories and theories of architecture and landscape with regard to their relations with the environment, climate and weather since the eighteenth century.

Dr Jan Kattein

Dr Chris Leung   Prototyping through digital modelling, simulation, fabrication and instrumented testing as a modus operandi for design research; timber construction and sustainable approaches to the design of timber buildings; passive low-energy actuator technologies (phase-transitioning waxes, thermo-bimetals, shape memory alloys) for environmental control in buildings; digital and hybrid digital-analogue control systems for facade systems; solar energy; passive cooling with optically selective radiators; embodied mechanical logic; advanced manufacturing processes e.g. design for multi-material polymer printing.   Professor Yeoryia Manolopoulou Architectural design and theory; design research methods; architecture and experience; collaborative, aleatoric and performative design; dialogic architecture; place, material practices and building; pedagogic settings; theories of embodied mind, action and environment; the architectural score; practices of drawing; architecture’s intersection with art, anthropology and neuroscience.

Dr Clare Melhuish Anthropology of architecture, the built environment and urban processes; ethnography of architectural practice; urban and architectural visual and material culture; postcolonial urbanism; critical urban heritage; modern(ist) architecture and planning in London; French modern(ist) architecture and planning; Arab cities; Caribbean urbanism; universities and urban regeneration; education spaces and the city;  participatory and community-led planning; anthropology of home and domestic space; ethnographic methodologies.

Professor Alan Penn Urban research at the scale between the building and the city; design of complex buildings and their relations to organisations (i.e. hospitals, laboratories and offices); development of computing for architecture; urban pollution dispersal; virtual reality applications for the built environment; simulation of social phenomena and urban growth and change.        Professor Barbara Penner Tourism; American hotels, resorts, and commercial architecture; gender and space; domesticity; consumerism; bathrooms and infrastructure; inclusive urbanism; appropriate technology.             Professor Sophia Psarra Architecture narrative and fiction, geometry of architecture and urban space; conceptual order, spatial morphology and spatial experience; the formation of spatial meaning in architecture and symbolic languages across different media; architectural theory; the morphology of cities in relation to processes of industrialisation, de-industrialisation and innovation; spatial design of complex buildings and its relation to society and organisations; computer modelling and visualisation.

Dr Caroline Rabourdin       Essay writing as critical and creative practice; spatial theory; phenomenology; art practices; spatial literature; philosophy of language; linguistics; translation studies; comparative literature.        Professor Peg Rawes Theories of materiality and technology in architecture and spatial arts practices; embodiment,  spatial subjectivities and aesthetics; histories and theories of geometry and spatiotemporality in early-modern European and Continental philosophy; social and political theories of ecology; wellbeing.             Professor Jane Rendell Gender/feminist theory and architecture; art, architecture and urban interventions; critical spatial theory and practice; creative/critical subjectivity and positionality in writing or site-writing; psychoanalysis and space; public space, cultural identity and narrative.     

Harriet Richardson Architectural history and heritage; medical buildings; development of hospital planning and design; post-war hospital architecture in Scotland; National Health Service; urban history; Scottish Architecture

Dr Tania Sengupta Postcolonial and transcultural studies; colonial, post-colonial/contemporary architecture and urban history (non-western worlds, especially South Asia); postcolonial identities in western contexts. For non-western contexts: architectures of governance; provincial identity and rural-urban relationships; spatial cultures of domesticity; material and spatial cultures; global, local and scalar relationships in architecture/ urbanism; everyday spaces and practices.   Professor Bob Sheil Architecture and design through production, experimental design, prototyping, making, fabrication, craft, innovative technology, digital practice, digital manufacturing, assembly, materials, modelling, transgression from drawing to making, 3D scanning.

Professor Mark Smout Design-based approach to architecture, landscape (urban and rural) and climate change via political, technological and artistic disciplines.     

Dr Nina Vollenbröker Mobility; domesticity; the U.S. American West; manuscript diaries; nineteenth-century quilts; photography; histories and spaces of deaf culture; disability and architecture.

Dr Robin Wilson  The architectural media (especially the architectural journals of the 20th century); architectural photography; architectural criticism; arts-based and performative methods of spatial research; curatorship and architecture; utopian theory.

Dr Fiona Zisch Cognitive architecture / neuroarchitecture; spatial cognition; cognitive ecologies; neurophilosophy; radical embodiment; embodied knowledge and intuition; cyberfeminism; technology, interaction, performance; movement, choreography.

Other current doctoral supervisors include:

• Allen Abramson, (UCL Anthropology)
• Matthew Beaumont, (UCL English)
• Nadia Luisa Berthouze, (UCL Computer Science)
• Victor Buchli, (UCL Anthropology)
• Marc-Olivier Coppens, (UCL Chemical Engineering)
• Colin Fournier, (Emeritus Professor of Architecture & Urban Planning)
• Lisa Griffin, (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit)
• Susanne Kuechler, (UCL Anthropology)
• Adrian Lahoud, (Royal College of Art)
• Jerome Lewis, (UCL Anthropology)
• Mark Miodownik, (UCL Mechanical Engineering) 
• Sharon Morris, (The Slade School of Fine Art)
• Michal Murawski, (UCL SSEES) 
• Ioannis Papakonstantinou, (UCL Electronic and Electrical Engineering)
• Brenda Parker, (UCL Biochemical Engineering)
• Kathryn Riley, (UCL Institute of Education)
• Hugo Spiers, (UCL Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences)
• Philip Steadman, (UCL Energy Institute)

Events and exhibitions

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD and Architectural & Urban History & Theory MPhil/PhD jointly run a series of events which all students are expected to attend:

Research Conversations

Fortnightly work-in-progress seminars and reviews for new MPhil/PhD students. MPhil students also present more in-depth seminars to meet the criteria needed to upgrade to PhD status.

Research Projects 

An annual PhD conference and exhibition with invited critics as respondents, organised by The Bartlett School of Architecture with the Slade School of Fine Art.

• Find out more about PhD Research Projects 2020
• Read the PhD Research Projects publications on Issuu

Our MPhil/PhD students develop creative and critical techniques that can be used in researching, designing and writing about any architectural issue, subject or site.

Upon completion of their PhDs, students have gone on to pursue careers in a wide variety of fields, from architectural and design practice to curatorial positions. Students have also progressed into academic roles at both The Bartlett and other higher education establishments, such as:

• The Architectural Association
• Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London
• Goldsmiths College, University of London
• Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, Copenhagen
• Royal Holloway College, University of London
• University for the Creative Arts
• University of Toronto
• University of Westminster

Programme Directors:  Professor Jonathan Hill  and Professor Sophia Psarra Programme Coordinators:  Nina Vollenbröker  and  Dr Sophie Read Programme Administrator:  Rahil Alipour  and Drew Pessoa

Find out more about our MPhil/PhD students

Find out more about The Bartlett's leading research

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