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 MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) is an 18-month research and design programme that examines questions at the intersection of architecture, urban design and planning. The programme undertakes systematic analysis, design experimentation, theoretical speculation and critical writing, all of which focus on the contemporary city. Student projects combine design with traditional forms of research, while challenging disciplinary boundaries and contributing to emerging spatial design practice and knowledge.
The programme recognises the need for multidisciplinary understanding and new design research training to meet the demands of contemporary architectural and urban practice. Each cohort of students addresses a shared theme which they take as the starting point for individual research agendas. The ambition of this agenda is to use comparative analysis to investigate the different organisational, formal, programmatic and material structures that govern how we live together, and to develop new design proposals in response to these investigations. Our intention is to rethink the informal and formal relations between subjects, spaces, structural and non-structural elements, objects and protocols of use and occupation in cities; doing so will enable us to understand specific architectures and the broader political and social discourses that define them.
In 2025–26, Projective Cities introduces a new research trajectory: New Forms of Welfare State. Through this, students will use comparative analysis to investigate the different organisational, formal, programmatic and material particularities that define the architecture of the welfare state and its urban, territorial and infrastructural manifestations.
For this new research framework, Projective Cities will collaborate closely with The Autonomy Institute. Building on the work and writing of the Institute, our design studios will initiate new experimental designs for residential spaces that explore the intersections and boundaries of autonomous work, free time, and gendered, domestic and emotional labour. Within this agenda, artefacts from appliances to apartment floor plans all are tools that can be used to challenge and complicate the family unit and the notion of feminised work.
Additionally, in collaboration with The Autonomy Institute, students will engage with an evolving landscape of welfare provision to reimagine the spatial and social interfaces between citizens and state services. From housing to national food hubs and social care facilities, students will explore how these infrastructures can work with each other in a new space of unconditionality.
Five terms of study are divided into two phases. Phase 1, a three-term academic year beginning each autumn, introduces key design and research methodologies through studios, seminars and academic writing modules. Workshops and guest seminars supplement the core teaching within this phase, and Term 3 is dedicated to the development of individual dissertation proposals. Phase 2 begins the following autumn and concludes in March of the second academic year; during this phase, candidates conduct an independent research project that forms their final dissertation.