Architecture

An exciting, creative Master’s degree with accreditation from the ARB and RIBA, for students with a first degree in architecture who wish to progress their studies to final qualification as a practising architect.

Course content
Your focus will be to investigate the relationships between critical practice, design and research in the making of architectural proposals. The work produced throughout this two year Master’s is a collaborative effort between you, our academic staff and award winning practicing architects.

Our studio is divided up into a number of thematic studio groups, each led by a pair of tutors. Each of the groups also feature an expert external ‘consultant’ who will contribute to teaching throughout the year.

This course encourages lateral thinking, problem solving, creativity and engagement with issues in a self-critical design led process. But it is also broad in its engagement. It will address issues as diverse as our survival on the planet and local engagement with culture and craft - the making of anything from an entire city to a door handle.

Through exposing you to many ways of seeing the world as a designer, ultimately the master’s programme challenges you to define your own voice as an architect enabling you to be critically self-aware of your future practice.

Course Structure
Introduction
The focus of the MArch is to investigate and develop the relationships between critical practice, design and research through the making of unique and challenging architectural propositions.

The studio is divided up into thematic groups which collectively encompass a broad range of approaches to architectural design. The groups reflect the expertise and preoccupations of the tutors and expert consultants involved. Accordingly, the briefs developed and the work produced become a collaborative investigation between practitioners, students and academics into some of the spatial issues affecting the production of the built environment, both on this island and elsewhere.

Students are offered a choice of group at the beginning of MArch I and then again at the beginning of MArch II, their thesis year. It is imagined that they will choose a different group each year to make the most of the breadth and the depth offered by the studio system. Choices are also offered for humanities and technologies dissertations.

The four semesters of the Masters programme are thought of as a single entity, within which diverse challenges allow the student to identify core strengths and to develop these through open discussion with a strong emphasis on self-directed study and ambitious agendas.

Ultimately the purpose of this diversity and choice is to expose you to different ways of seeing and engaging with the world as an architect. Our course is structured to provoke you in becoming critically self-aware as a designer and to establish your own voice as an architect. Our intention that this will provide you with the firm foundations for your future practice.

Year 1 Modules
MArch Studio 1 (30 CATS)
MArch Studio 2 (30 CATS)
Architectural Research: Humanities
Dissertation (30 CATS) (project work)
Architectural Research: Technology
Dissertation (30 CATS) (project work)

Year 2 Modules
MArch Studio 3 (30 CATS)
MArch Studio 4 (30 CATS)
Thesis Research (30 CATS)
Professional Skills (30 CATS)

Graduate
1. A recognised qualification equivalent to a 2.1 Honours degree in Architecture. Applicants with a degree in Architecture below 2.1 Honours standard (or equivalent) will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

2. Normally an assessment equivalent to 60% or above in their (first degree) final year major design project.

3. A demonstration of a critical awareness of the applicant’s position relative to the profession and discipline of architecture. Such demonstration is typically in the form of a personal statement.

4. International applicants will be asked to submit an architectural design portfolio to support their application and may also be invited for interview.

5. International applicants should note that if they wish to undertake Part 3 (to lead to ARB registration as an architect and as an RIBA chartered architect) they must be successful in an application to ARB for their first architecture degree to be assessed by ARB as satisfying Part 1.

Note: Applicants who have completed 1 year of MArch at another institution in the UK or ROI (recognised by the university), are eligible to apply for credit (maximum 120 credit points) for direct entry onto year 2 of the MArch. Applicants who wish to apply in this manner will be required to contact the Course Director with their expression of interest. These limits may be subject to School specific limitations and appropriate compatibility of the prior learning with the module/s for which exemption is sought and/or award applied for, which may have specific subject requirements. Further information can be found here: Procedures for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) | Academic & Student Affairs | Queen's University Belfast (qub.ac.uk).

The deadline for applications is normally 30th June 2024. However, we encourage applicants to apply as early as possible. In the event that any programme receives a high number of applications, the University reserves the right to close the application portal earlier than 30th June deadline. Notifications to this effect will appear on the Direct Application Portal against the programme application page.

Please note: A deposit will be required to secure a place on this course.

Project design work
Critical design reviews
Representation
Research
Essays
6,000-10,000 word dissertation
Reports

2 years (Full Time)

Entry Year: 2024/25

Career Prospects
Completion of the MArch constitutes Part II of the RIBA/ARB criteria leading to eligibility to sit Part III, the Professional Examination and registration as an architect in the UK.

Where might you be in five years?
Contributing to our society anywhere in the world, as an architect or in one of its many parallel disciplines

Our graduates are currently working alongside world leading architects in the construction of significant cultural buildings, designing skyscrapers in Hong Kong and the Middle East, emergency housing for refugees in Africa, film sets for Hollywood productions and computer games, as well as working as urban planners worldwide, teaching in universities or becoming artists and photographers.
http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/sgc/careers/