Emergent Technologies and Design MArch

Architectural Association School of Architecture

The Emergent Technologies and Design programme is open to graduates in architecture and engineering who wish to develop skills and knowledge in architectural design science within new production paradigms.

We investigate new synergies of architecture and ecology through the critical intersection of computational design and fabrication. Our focus is on exploring the experiential and social potentials of new material and spatial configurations for architectural and ecological urban designs, situated in the dynamic contexts of emerging biomes. The programme is designed to stimulate critical thinking through research-driven design projects that are developed in an intellectually rigorous and creative studio environment. Our projects are developed by multiple iterations through hypothesis, material and computational experimentation, robotic fabrication and evaluation reflected upon in verbal presentations and group discussions and documented in analytical and scientifically structured papers.

Design research is central to the agendas of Emergent Technologies and Design. The programme proceeds from the fundamental premise of a shared understanding between staff, students, researchers and collaborators across the world that nature and artifice are strongly coupled, that the cultural production of artefacts and systems exist as part of the environment of other active systems, and that they are subject to change. We also share an understanding that causality of change is complex and multi-scalar, and the dynamics of change are perturbed and accelerated by human activities coupled together, these cause changes to society and the natural world. Design processes in this domain are developed through iterative computational processes of serial experimentation and analysis, generative propositions and simulations.

The programme has two distinct phases: the Studio and the Dissertation, which are both aligned and supported by the research of the course and the advanced expertise of our alumni and colleagues in practice and the industry. The courses are structured to provide skills and knowledge of a coherent set of linked and convergent discourses, methodologies and concerns that cross multiple disciplines in the Studio, and the opportunity to further develop those skills and deepen knowledge in the Dissertation course.