The Cambridge University course
Architecture and Cambridge are virtually synonymous. It is impossible to think of this university city without its buildings and courts, its great interiors and College gardens. A tradition of fine building which started in the thirteenth century continues to this day and provides a unique environment for the study of architecture.
The Department has the highest ratings for teaching in architecture and an outstanding record of graduate achievement. Its small size, friendly atmosphere and superb library make it an enjoyable place in which to study. In building on the past, through the study of architecture’s history and theory, it looks forward to the future.
Architecture was first established as a subject of study in the University in 1912 at the instigation of Edward Schroder Prior, a distinguished Arts and Crafts architect and a scholar of mediaeval building. Nearly fifty years later both the course and the Department were considerably expanded under the late Sir Leslie Martin, a former Fellow of Jesus College. This process has continued ever since and, together with the Department of Engineering, the Department recently established the first part-time Masters’ Course in the University – in Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment.
Cambridge is almost unique among UK universities in treating architecture as an arts subject, rather than part of Engineering or Technology. The Department of Architecture shares facilities with the Department of History of Art: together, they form one of the eight Faculties in the University’s School of Arts and Humanities.
Most of the Department’s accommodation is at Scroope Terrace, a group of five converted houses dating from the 1830s in which the smaller Department of History of Art is also located. In 2006-7 a new studio building was constructed behind Scroope Terrace to allow the Department’s research wing, the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, which is presently at 6 Chaucer Road half a mile to the south, to move to the Scroope Terrace site.
The exceptionally fine Middleton Library, devoted to architecture and history of art, is arguably the Department’s greatest asset. It is accommodated in Scroope Terrace, while there is a smaller, research library at Chaucer Road. Other facilities include workshops, photographic and computer rooms (including a research-based CADLAB). Every student on the Tripos course is provided with a studio workspace and encouraged to do their design work there rather than in their college rooms. It is the studio which forms the heart of design education.
Architectural Research at Cambridge
The Department conducts research over a broad field of topics related to the built environment. Of the research themes currently being pursued at the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, the largest and longest established is into the broad area of Environmentally Responsible Building. This includes making the best use of naturally available energy (sunlight, daylight and natural ventilation) and controlling the energy cost and environmental damage of construction itself. Another theme is research into architectural CAD, which seeks to bring the computer into play, not as design automation, but as an effective graphical and analytical medium for design, communication and simulation. Further themes are concerned with the recording, analysis and care of historic buildings, the mitigation of the risk of disasters and design management.
The broad spread of the Department’s research is reflected in the number of other University Departments, practices and consultancies with which it collaborates. Many of these collaborators form part of the ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’ – the greatest and most rapidly expanding concentration of technology-driven groups in Europe – indeed, several were ‘spin offs’ from the Martin Centre. Among these groups the Centre remains noted for its respect for history and precedent, for its use of advanced mathematical and computer models, and for a profound sense of responsibility towards the environment, both natural and man-made.
Architectural and Academic Approach
The teaching of architecture at Cambridge is rooted in an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of architectural production. There is an over-riding concern for the development of appropriate settings for human activity. The unbroken traditions of history teaching and life-drawing classes exemplify these concerns.
The Department is relatively small; teachers are usually easily available to students and much of the teaching is individual or in small groups. At all levels of the BA and MPhil courses, students are encouraged through this individual tuition and the studio system to explore different approaches and thus develop their own skills and, ultimately, their own design philosophy. Outside the studio, students are also assisted to research and write about approved topics of their own choice in essays and dissertations.
Architecture is a practical art. Some of its aspects are best taught in an academic context and others in the context of design, manufacturing and assembly. Architectural education at Cambridge respects these distinctions and seeks to develop an individual’s ability to resolve a brief in an appropriate manner and to articulate clearly both the solution and the thinking behind it. Likewise, students are made aware of issues that may arise in practice and taught principles which they may apply during a life-time of change.
The Architecture Tripos
This three-year course provides a basic grounding in Architecture and, subject to satisfactory completion of the studio work, provides graduates with exemption from the RIBA Part 1 Examination. The course is intended on the one hand to establish the basis for a body of technical, historical and theoretical knowledge and, on the other, to apply this knowledge to the study of the principal questions of building and of the built environment. Students are encouraged to discover how the requirements of each project can be elicited, interpreted and translated into a design proposal by looking at them in their complete cultural context and evolving a form of building appropriate to them.
Design is the core discipline in architectural education and studio work forms the major educational activity throughout the course. This in turn necessarily entails formal exercises in criticism, involving the presentation of studio work in which specialised studies are brought together in the finished design. In addition to these general design exercises, short projects of a specifically technical nature are set during the course. Teaching within the Department is reinforced by weekly supervision provided through the individual Colleges.
First-Year students are taught in a single studio group by a Year Master and Assistant Studio Masters. Second- and Third-Year students are offered a choice of four or five different studios, each with its own architectural approach and project programme led by a Studio Master and Assistant. Following a ballot at the beginning of each academic year, roughly equal numbers of Second and Third Year students are allocated to each studio. In order to ensure a breadth of experience, Third-Year students are not allowed to repeat a year in their previous studio.
Studio projects are devised to develop skills in observation, design and representation and to apply knowledge acquired in the lecture programme.
Projects range from small artifacts to major projects exploring a theme, in projects sited in a specific location in Cambridge, London or sometimes further afield. Project locations are always visited and outside experts give seminars and attend reviews.
Substantial lecture courses with associated reading and other studies counterbalance the studio work. Many of the lectures draw on current research and are supplemented BY a, an, design, an, computingby a mixture of class work, seminars and visits to buildings (including some under construction). Some subjects, such as computing, are taught entirely in classes.
Examination
At the end of the academic year, each student submits a portfolio for examination. At the same time he/she is required to sit examination papers associated with the lecture courses. There are six written papers in the first year, five in the second, and four in the third. In addition, Third-Year students are required to submit a written dissertation of 7-9,000 words on an approved topic of their choice. This is a major commitment and usually entails original research started in the summer vacation between the Second and Third Years.
Career Destinations and the Year Out
The majority of Cambridge architecture graduates elect to continue their architectural education – the next step of which is a year of practical experience in an architectural practice or construction-related business. Following this, they will take a two-year Diploma course. Although the Department briefs them prior to their Year Out and monitors their progress, it does not secure ‘placements’ for them but leaves them to face the realities of the job market. In fact, our graduates have an excellent employment record both at home and overseas, and many offices positively seek Cambridge-educated Year Out students.
However, a first-degree course in Architecture also provides students with an excellent grounding in the analytic, creative and communicative skills so keenly sought in so many other professions, in business and in industry. Recent Cambridge BA graduates in architecture are developing careers in advertising, banking, construction, film, health management, project management and consultancy.
Further information on the Architecture Tripos is provided in the Prospectus, published by:
The Faculty Office
University of Cambridge Department of Architecture
1 Scroope Terrace
Cambridge CB2 1PX
and on the World Wide Web: www.arct.cam.ac.uk
Architecture at Jesus College
Jesus College has had a tradition of encouraging architecture graduates and undergraduate applications since the arrival of Sir Leslie Martin in the mid-20th century. Unlike in some colleges, there is a Fellow in Architecture, Nicholas Ray, who is a Principal of a Cambridge architectural practice, and founded the Cambridge Historic Buildings Group at the Martin Centre. There is no quota for admission numbers, which vary between three and five undergraduates a year.