The Foundation Programme is a one-year full-time course that focuses on observation, conversation and the development of key skills. This course is aimed at students who are at the very start of their architectural studies, and facilitates individual and group project work.
The Intermediate Programme (BA(Hons)) is a three-year full-time programme. The First Year is characterised by its shared, open studio, where students work individually and together across a series of projects. Years two and three introduce students to the unit system, in which small design studios (12–14 students) operate a vertical structure of Second and Third Year students.
The Diploma Programme (MArch) is a two-year full-time programme that accepts students who have completed the Intermediate Programme at the AA, as well as eligible new students who have studied elsewhere. The programme leads to the AA Final Examination (ARB/RIBA Part 2) and is structured around a unit system, in which small design studios (12–14 students) operate a vertical structure of Fourth and Fifth Year students.
The AA offers ten Taught Postgraduate Programmes for students with prior academic and professional experience. Most of the programmes are full-time courses of advanced study, except for Conservation and Reuse, which provides a part-time study option.
Professional Practice is a RIBA Part 3 course and examination that allows successful candidates to register as architects with the Architects Registration Board (ARB). The course is open to AA RIBA Part 2 graduates and eligible non-graduates.
The Visiting School encompasses diverse learning programmes, workshops and site-based agendas shaped by participants working intensively in small groups over varying periods of time from one to two weeks. Central to each programme is the idea that experimental, new and provocative forms of architecture are best learned by doing.
The Landscape Urbanism (LU) programme leads to either an MArch (16 months) or MSc (12 months) degree. It explores the role that design and designers – specifically architects, landscape architects and urban designers – can play when working within the field of policymaking. Contemporary planetary urbanisation is structured by policies that respond to the dominant capitalist system governing our societies, economies and ecologies, which in turn have been shaped by human relations of power, production and environment-making. LU explores design within and beyond normative aesthetic and performative proposals, as we confront the processes, landscapes and territories of planetary urbanisation and the environmental, racial, socioeconomic and health-related crises they have triggered.
Design in the Capitalocene
The programme investigates how progressive policies can be implemented to target the ecological emergency within the Capitalocene. Our exploration of the links between design and policy will be framed within the following research areas:
Extractivism and Land Struggles
This research theme focuses on landscape investigations, and examines spatial practices related to extractivism and the land struggles they have generated. The study of these specific political ecologies is linked to the concept of consequential landscapes, particularly in the contexts of mining, industrial agriculture and other extractive industries. Our research in this area is supported by organisations such as the London Mining Network in the UK and Red Muqui in Peru, and foregrounds visions for futures projected by local communities and Indigenous nations.
Land Reform and Alternative Models of Ownership
This research area explores the impact of land reform in various contexts and how this can be leveraged to unlock radical futures, alongside the investigation of alternative ownership models such as Public-Common Partnerships (PCPs) and Community Land Trusts. These models offer radical alternatives to mainstream urban developments such as Private-Public Partnerships (PPPs), Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) and new enclosures in the UK.
Agroecological Urbanism and the Agrarian Question
The agrarian question surrounding the relationship between agriculture and capitalist systems has been sidelined in the wake of an ‘urban age’. Our research into this topic will explore how so-called agroecological urbanism and its building blocks could offer an alternative to the predominant city-model. This research area will be supported by collaborations with the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University, as well as agroecological institutes in the Global South, where the agroecological movement originated. Our research will investigate how landed community kitchens, territorial hubs, agricultural parks and models such as enterprise stacking within communal frameworks could all be implemented. It will also examine the development of bio-based materials and procurement systems to explore the transformation of the construction industry worldwide.