Projective Cities, MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design, AA

Call for applications: MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) - Announcements - e-flux Call for applications 2026: MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) at Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Don't miss out on the opportunity to study at AA Projective Cities! Join us for the MPhil Programme online event on Thursday, November 20th at 1:00 PM (GMT) to learn about programme's critical & innovative research-by-design approach.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/study-at-aa-projective-cities-mphil-in-architecture-and-urban-design-2026-tickets-1815544585729?aff=oddtdtcreator

We are pleased to launch our collaboration with the Autonomy Institute in the coming academic year.
Watch Projective Cities' 2025 Keynote Lecture by The Autonomy Institute's co-directors Julian Knowlton Siravo and Will Stronge

From Working Time Reduction to Public Luxury: The Autonomy Institute / Julian Siravo, Will Stronge This is the keynote lecture for the Projective Cities Taught MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design.Over the past 7 years, The Autonomy Institute went from a...

Applications for Architectural Association School of Architecture Projective Cities MPhil Programme 2025 are still open!

https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate
https://projectivecities.aaschool.ac.uk/

AA ProjectiveCities

Join us tomorrow for the keynote lecture of Projective Cities Taught MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design.

"From Working Time Reduction to Public Luxury: The Autonomy Institute", Julian Siravo, Will Stronge.

Date:
Friday 14 March 2025
Time:
18:00 - 19:30
Location:
AA Lecture Hall, 36 Bedford Square and online

Over the past 7 years, The Autonomy Institute went from a small policy think tank advocating for a four day week, to becoming a respected research institute providing insights, services and consultancies to private business, governments and media platforms across the globe. During the talk Julian Siravo and Will Stronge – two directors of the institute – are going to take us through this evolution, from early innovations like the Autonomy Data Unit to its current structure and most recent initiative: the Universal Basic Services (UBS) Hub.

The Autonomy Institute is an independent, progressive research organisation that creates data-driven tools and policy to strengthen democracy and build a fairer economy.

Julian Siravo is an architect, an urban designer and the co-director of The Autonomy Institute – where he leads the Public Futures Lab. Julian has spent time in research and commercial architectural practices, eventually gravitating to the world of policy. Julian has taught in various design and architecture schools, including University College London, the Royal College of Art and the Architectural Association.

Will Stronge is Co-Director of the Autonomy Institute, an independent research organisation focusing on issues relating to the future of work, welfare and climate. He is the co-author of Overtime: Why We Need a Shorter Working Week (2021) and the editor of Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought (Bloomsbury, 2017).

More information below:
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/publicprogramme/whatson/the-autonomy-institute

Applications are open now for 2025 Projective Cities MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design at Architectural Association School of Architecture. Applicants to be considered for a bursary should apply by the early deadline of 24 Jan. 2025.

MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) - Announcements - e-flux Call for applications 2025: MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) at Architectural Association School of Architecture.

MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) - Announcements - e-flux Call for applications 2025: MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) at Architectural Association School of Architecture.

MPhil Dissertation 2022 •From Autarchy to Synergy. A look at the Spanish Countryside from 1950's 2020's • Clara Asperilla Arias

“From Autarchy to Synergy. A look at the Spanish countryside from 1950’s to 2020’s” aims to critically understand the socio-spatial fabric of Spanish rurality today. The research explores the processes that in recent decades shaped the rural subject, including the 20th century Francoist internal colonisation project and the period of economic liberation and democracy. The research arrives at the current state of rural exodus and depletion of social and architectonic patrimony where the Spanish inner countryside (namely "Hollowed Out Spain") is undergoing a lacerating process of demographic desertification.

Instilling the female subject as the protagonist in order to critically analyse the last 70 decades of inland rural Spain, a series of design propositions build upon prototypes for everyday support and self-care within an exhausted territory. Rather than conclusively resolving the demographic crisis of rural Spain, this design project formulates protocols and provocations for a village’s own survival.

Projective Cities 2022
MPhil Dissertation

Category: Territory
Author:Clara Asperilla Arias
more: see link in bio



MPhil Programme in Architecture and Urban Design
Architectural Association School of Architecture

MPhil Dissertation 2023 • Precarious Waters: Spatializing Agency among dispossessed Fisherwomen of Lake Chilika • Amy Brar

Precarious Waters examines and spatialises forms of water-living central to fisherwomen of Lake Chilika, to situate their water rituals as the medium for enhancing agency in the context of marginalised communities. The dissertation proposes a fundamental shift in established notions of value and productivity, by learning through the embodied knowledge, rituals and practices of women commonly excluded from developmental discourse.

Locating the spatial inquiry at the intersection of landscape, infrastructure and female bodies, the dissertation demonstrates that wet-space in these villages are collective and form invisible networks of protocol at settlement scale. These networks, choreographed by fisherwomen, are fundamental to the socio-relationships of the marginalised fishing communities. Through a series of design propositions informed by empirical, anthropological research and care, the dissertation confronts existential threats resulting from the socio-spatial hierarchy embedded in modern water infrastructure, by adopting a collaborative modus operandi, and highlighting value through the subaltern female body.

Projective Cities 2023
MPhil Dissertation

Category: Infrastructure
Author: Amy Brar
more: see link in bio



MPhil Programme in Architecture and Urban Design
Architectural Association School of Architecture

MPhil Dissertation 2023 • TOTAL ELECTRIC, Kayen Montes
The Total Electric Project investigates the moments of intersection between dwelling standardization and electricity management in the household; it analyses how, through its adoption as the ultimate energetic language, electricity created a symbiotic relationship with its users by domesticating them and their surroundings. Moreover, the thesis is interested in the socio-economical roots of this energy form and the psychological implications that its project has had on its subjects. Accordingly, it investigates the subject matter from an architectural and social engineering perspective, as it perceives the spread of the electric network as the built manifestation of a perpetual process of social fragmentation produced as part of a modernization project, since the dawn of industrial capitalism.
The project claims that the keys to alternative habitation modes, to that of the Western nuclear family, are hidden within a systemic transformation of the electric network. The central aim of the thesis is to interpret the effect these transformations could have on the built environment, and to move away from the palimpsest of social structures built upon the linear economic system that was the modern electric project. To achieve this, the research then focuses on the evolution of housing in London’s metropolitan context; by reviewing the regulatory process of space and electricity, it aims to uncover how this energy form was introduced and domesticated into our homes.

Projective Cities 2023
MPhil Dissertation
Category: Infrastructural
Author: Kayen Montes

more: see link in bio

MPhil Programme in Architecture and Urban Design
Architectural Association School of Architecture

MPhil Dissertation 2023 • TOTAL ELECTRIC, Kayen Montes

The Total Electric Project investigates the moments of intersection between dwelling standardization and electricity management in the household; it analyses how, through its adoption as the ultimate energetic language, electricity created a symbiotic relationship with its users by domesticating them and their surroundings. Moreover, the thesis is interested in the socio-economical roots of this energy form and the psychological implications that its project has had on its subjects. Accordingly, it investigates the subject matter from an architectural and social engineering perspective, as it perceives the spread of the electric network as the built manifestation of a perpetual process of social fragmentation produced as part of a modernization project, since the dawn of industrial capitalism.

The project claims that the keys to alternative habitation modes, to that of the Western nuclear family, are hidden within a systemic transformation of the electric network. The central aim of the thesis is to interpret the effect these transformations could have on the built environment, and to move away from the palimpsest of social structures built upon the linear economic system that was the modern electric project. To achieve this, the research then focuses on the evolution of housing in London’s metropolitan context; by reviewing the regulatory process of space and electricity, it aims to uncover how this energy form was introduced and domesticated into our homes.

Projective Cities 2023
MPhil Dissertation

Category: Infrastructural
Author: Kayen Montes
more: see link in bio



MPhil Programme in Architecture and Urban Design
Architectural Association School of Architecture