Architecture (Joint Programme with CIT) (MArch)

The Master of Architecture Degree is a joint course between University College Cork and Cork Institute of Technology and operates as a full-time course extending over 12 months. The course has been designed to provide a qualification in architecture under Article 46 of Directive 2005/36/EC, the Building Control Act 2007, and is required by the RIAI before starting a minimum period of post-qualification supervised practical experience in preparation for the RIAI Examination in Professional Practice, Registration and/or RIAI Membership.

During your study, you will be introduced to a diverse Programme, approached through creativity and scholarship, and where there will be significant opportunities to anticipate, speculate upon, and define new possibilities in the field of architecture. The established academic infrastructure and philosophy of CCAE are defined by a commitment to excellence in design, and consideration of wider cultural and theoretical phenomena. This framework is extended into the Masters Programme, where students will pose certain questions on the spaces and cities we inhabit, through a process of critical questioning and the dual acts of text and assemblage.

Central to enabling these investigations and explorations will be the series of prominent academics and architectural practitioners contributing to this Programme.  You will be encouraged to participate in a stimulating academic environment. You will be required to address the wider problematics that are raised by changes in contemporary society and provide clues as to how architecture might operate in such an environment.

The course will consider the complex conditions and multiplicities of the contemporary city. We will speculate on the patterns of organisation, the accretion of historical strata, and the network of infrastructural connections, political and economic frameworks that define the twenty-first-century city. Our aim is to form architectural scenarios based on sets of contextual (mnemonic) outputs that bear witness to these strands of development, whilst at the same time defining something new, unexpected and ultimately challenging.

The course is intelligently paced and driven by a thematic framework. You will acquire a comprehensive set of skills that will help you to understand the role of the architect in shaping the modern city.