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.
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