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Programme Structure
The Taught MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) is an 18-month, interdisciplinary research and design programme that examines multi-scalar questions arising at the intersection of architecture, urban design and planning. The programme is dedicated to a systematic analysis of, design experimentation for, theoretical speculation on, and critical writing about the contemporary city. Student projects combine new design and traditional forms of research, while challenging existing disciplinary boundaries and contributing to emerging spatial design practice and knowledge. The programme recognises hereby the need for a new practice-led research training, as architectural and urban design practice is increasingly research-led, demanding from graduates a new multidisciplinary knowledge.

Projective Cities proposes architectural design as a precondition to the conception, realisation, and subversion of urban plans.

Projective Cities recognises architecture and the city as a collective form of knowledge shaped by cultural, social, political, and economic contexts.

Projective Cities specifically raises the question of what kind of project and research arises from architecture and architectural urbanism. It sets out to define the status and methods of design research. This is understood both as an intellectual problem, exploring the relationship between theory and design for knowledge production and the discipline, as well as a practical problem, of the way that design research can affect practice.

Projective Cities has been highly successful in preparing its graduates for diverse careers in academia and practice, with graduate destinations including PhD programmes, academic or research careers and joining leading design offices.

Projective Citiesis a critical forum to engage with questions of governance and development in the context of global challenges of urbanisation. Its objective is to respond to current urban, environmental and social crises by rethinking the agency of spatial design and development within specific political, economic, social and cultural contexts.

Projective Cities prepares its candidates for independent research through a framework of rigorous design and research methodologies. The first year of the programme is taught, introducing students to research methods, academic writing, architectural and urban histories and theories, advanced analytical techniques and speculativel design in preparation for a substantial dissertation. At the end of the first year, students submit a research proposal. This is developed in the second year, leading to an integrated design and written dissertation.

Projective Cities seeks candidates with a desire to develop substantial and original research. It seeks exceptional thinkers, gifted designers and critical writers with an interest in the future of our cities. 

The ambitions of Projective Cities are framed by the following methodological and pedagogical propositions through which our research is clarified:

  • That the contemporary city can be read as an architectural project and the city as a projection of the possibilities of architecture.
  • That typical and typological are complementary disciplinary frameworks and conceptual modes of thinking in which reason acquires a critical and conjectural structure.
  • That the urban plan and its cultural, social, political, historical, and economic contexts are defined by architectural design operative at different scales.
  • That architectural and urban design are intelligible as formal and theoretical products of disciplinary activity as well as the collective formal outcome of socio-political forces.
  • That design and research activities are inseparable in architecture and urbanism, and that knowledge production (theory) and formal production (practice) are methodologically linked.

Architecture and urbanism are symbiotic modes of enquiry driven by relevance and agency within a field and not novelty for their own sake. This field is defined in terms of a series of distinct diagrams that are always social and spatial. We aim to investigate the politics, the asymmetries and power relations that define all these diagrammatic relations.
This past year, students have presented and are developing dissertations situated in London, Cycladic Islands in Greece, Muscat in Oman, Klang River Basin, Canadian Residential Camps, and Xochimilco in Mexico City. Thesis projects investigated a variety of sites and problematics, with a particular focus on community-led initiatives and programmes, as well as models of cooperative housing. The programme has established tradition of working with stakeholders, municipal authorities, and local universities, for example in Athens and Barcelona, and has participated in international events and festivals of architecture such as Oslo Architecture Triennale and The Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. In 2022 and 2023 Projective Cities’ graduates Clara Asperilla Arias and Amy Brar received commendations from The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) for their dissertations, and Luis Young was awarded Boas scholarship at the British School in Rome 2023.

During the past academic year, the programme organised numerous public events, seminars, and lectures with international scholars, artists, and architects, including Cierto Estudio, Francesca Hughes, Nora Akawi, Valerio Massaro, Diana Ibáñez Lopez, Sarah Akigbogun, and Matilde Cassani.

From 2020 to 2023, the programme collaborated with the Department of Architecture of the University of Cyprus, working on a research and design project on the Municipality of Kessariani, in Athens. Focusing on the development of collective equipments, new housing typologies, and landscape interventions, the projects, together with extensive archival material has been presented in Kessariani City Hall (November 2022–June 2023).

For any queries regarding the admissions process email: postgraduateadmissions [​at​] aaschool.ac.uk.

Applicants seeking bursary funding support are required to submit their application by the early application deadline (January 24, 2025). Applications received after the late applications deadline (March 7, 2025) may be accepted at the discretion of the School.


Programme Heads: Platon Issaias & Hamed Khosravi 
Design Studio Lead: Hamed Khosravi 
Seminar and Academic Writing Lead: Anna Font 
Programme staff: Cristina Gamboa, Daryan Knoblauch, Roozbeh Elias-Azar
Yi Shi, From Factory to Fireside, Projective Cities, 2024
Christos Smyrniotis, Territories of Travel, Projective Cities, 2024
Yuanbo Jia, Stadium is for the Public, Projective Cities, 2024
Arielle Lavine, Forest Children, Projective Cities, 2024
KS (Bryan) Chee, The Confluence of Space, Projective Cities, 2024
Mohammed Al Balushi, Housing the Collective, Projective Cities, 2024






Christos Smyrniotis,
Territories of Travel: Performing the Cycladic Leisure-scape,
2024
Arielle Lavine, 
Forest Children: How Educations of Indigenous and Settler Children Reinscribe
the Colonial Order,
2024
Mohammed Al Balushi,
Housing the Collective: Architecture of Belonging in Muscat,
2024
Yi Shi,
From Factory to Fireside: Dwelling with Small Manufacturing in London,
2024
KS (Bryan) Chee,
The Confluence of Space:
Rethinking the Coexistence Condition of Urban
River and the City in the Case of Kuala Lumpur
, 2024
Zhijun Lei,
British Public Market: A Social Welfare Facility,
2024
Yuanbo Jia,
Stadium is for the Public,
2024
Kaiwen Chen, 
Re-Connecting Rural-Environ; The Cooperative Structure of the Mountain Villages in Beijing, 2023
Hanwen Xu, 
The Collapse of Housing Bubble in China; New Power as New Forms of Living,
2023
Daixue Shen,
Cinema and Cinematic Urban Form; The City and Social Engagement
, 2023
Fiorenza Giometti,
Riviera: What Happens When Summer Ends?
, 2023
Sahba Mansourardestani, 
From the Sacred to the Profane
, 2023
Alison Bartlett,
Resonate Beasts
, 2023
Kayen Montes,
Total Electric: The Spatial Possibilities in the Materialization of Energy,
2023
Chuxi Zhou, 
Redefining Logistics Infrastructure; A Case Study of Taobao Village,
2023
Amy Brar,
Precarious Waters; Spatializing Agency among Dispossessed Fisher Women of Lake Chilika,
2023
Luyao Luo, 
Alternative Breathers; On the modes of Comfort,
2022
Daryan Knoblauch,
Kristall: The Domestication of Water,
2021
Clara Asperilla Arias,
From Autarchy to Synergy; A look at the Spanish Countryside from 1950s to 2020s
, 2022
Fanyu Song, 
Housing Not Only For Living; Removation of Left-unfinished Commercial Housing in Southern China
, 2022
Clinton Thedyardi Prawirodiharjo, 
Care Devolution and Inter-Household Cooperation; Towards a Cluster Model of Common Institution of Land, Dwelling and Care
, 2021
Tanapol Kositsurungkakul, 
From Commodification to Cooperation; Architecture of Trading and Form of Social Solidarity Network in Bangkok,
2021
Yijie Zhang, 
Inclusive and Incremental Renovation; The Case of Old Public Housing in Shanghai,
2021
Qiyu Qin, 
Site as a Battleground: Reinventing Collective Equipment for Construction Workers in China,
2021
Yunshi Zhou, 
Educational Intervention & Rural Revitalization in China, 2020
Wojciech Mazan, 
Proximal Relations, 2020
Dimitris Chatziioakeimidis, 
Renovation as a Project,
2020
Vasav Vakilna, 
Beyond Urban Modalities, 2020
Huace Yang,
From Room to Community, 2020
Tanapol Kositsurungkakul,
From Commodification to Cooperation, 2020
Gianna Bottema, 
Housing and Care Cooperatives in the Netherlands, Spatial Diagrams of Cluster Living, 2019
Huajing Wen,
Interfamily Living: Building A Community of Public Housing in China, 2019
Pengyu Chen, 
Density, Proximity and Temporality, 2020
Lucia Alonso Aranda,
From Arrival City to Permanence: Services and Education in Tijuana,
2018
Raül Avilla Royo,
The Role of Public Housing in Barcelona,
2018
Ricardo Palma Prieto,
Community-Led Housing in London, The Case of StART,
2018
Susana Rojas Saviñón,
Housing Social Demands: The Church of England,
2018
Suchendra Akula Venkatesh, 
Another Vistara: New Assembly Buildings and Regional Architecture in Karnataka, 2017
Ilias Oikonomakis,
Domestic Conflicts: Forms of Collective Living in Metropolitan London, 2017
Talia Davidi, 
Canaan 2048, 2017
Dario Marcobelli, 
Corporateville: Leisure as Commodity, 2017
José Ignacio Vargas Mier y Terán,
Housing for an Ageing Population, 2017
Claudio Nieto Rojas,
The Urban Form of Aviation, 2017
Ji Yoon Gu,
The Scholar’s Garden as a Model for Spatial Governance, 2016
Seyithan Özer, 
From Enclosure to Partition: School Design and Pedagogy, 2017
Leonhard Clemens,
Exit Parliament: The Hotel as a Political Institution, 2016
Guillem Pons
Private Brussels, 2015
Yu-Hsiang Hung,
Beyond the Neighbourhood: The Shi-Jie in Kaohsiung, 2015


Simon Goddard,
Constructing Tertiary Lille, 2015
Yating Song,
Rethinking the Urban Block: Educational Infrastructure as the Driver of Shenzhen’s Renovation, 2015
Yana Petrova, 
Domesticity and Social Production, 2015
Naina Gupta, 
The Hague: A Post-Civic City, 2014
Guillem Pons, 
The Administrative City: Brussels and the Architecture of Bureaucracy, 2014
Filipe Lourenço,
Paris: The Metropolis of Tomorrow and its Un-Planning, 2014

Cao Xiaomao, 
Education as Urban Strategy: Reframing Chinese Cultural Industry, 2014
Marcin Daniel Ganczarski, 
The Inner City Campus: Academic Space in Zurich, 2014
Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, 
Hukou Reform as Urban Reform: Cellular and Infrastructural Development, 2014
Yuqi Huang, 
Centre as Void: Hangzhou’s New City Centre, 2013
Thiago Tavares Abranches de Soveral,
Legacy or Fallacy? Rio de Janeiro and the Olympic Legacy, 2013
Yasmina El Chami, 
Beirut, From City of Capital to Capital City: Reconstructing a Lebanese State Identity within Neo-liberal Economy, 2013
Yuwei Wang, 
The Chinese Unit; Persistence of the Collective Urban Model in Beijing,
2013
Maria Gabriella Nunes Pinta Gama, 
The Lobbyist City: Brasilia – The Latent Extension, 2013
Alvaro Antonio Arancibia Tagle, 
The Social Housing Centre: Urban Form, Policy-Making, and Standards in Santiago,
2013
Sakiko Goto,
Tokyo Podium, 2012 
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