The TU282 M Arch programme at TU Dublin recognizes that the landscape of architectural education and the profession is changing in many ways, and wishes to equip its graduates with advanced knowledge and expertise to be agile professionals capable of dealing with this new landscape. To achieve this, it places a tripartite emphasis on the architect as practitioner, researcher, and educator/communicator.
These three modes of practice are highly complementary in the field of architecture, and require common skillsets. The capacity to act in a leadership role and exercise critical judgment in a multi- disciplinary environment in the review of an architectural idea, for example, is central to this multivalent practice, whether it takes place in an architecture office, a teaching studio, a conference environment, a cultural or political forum or an architectural research environment. Graduates often find that they straddle these modes of practice at different points in their career, and will increasingly do so as the architecture profession continues to develop outside of its traditional role.
The M Arch also equips its graduates to become confident in disseminating and communicating their knowledge by various means to the widest possible audience. This allows them to engage wholeheartedly with their community of fellow professionals as well as the broader society they will encounter in their professional careers.
The programme is organised over three semesters with a design studio supported by two theory or skills modules as the core structure in each. In Semester One the Collaborative Design Studio and Whole Life Design modules engage with a professional design team on a real adaptive reuse challenge and students work in teams to develop sophisticated analyses and design responses. In Semesters Two and Three, the studios operate on unit model conducting design research into themes such as Landscape, Technology, Culture and Democracy.
