The new Projective Cities Programme is dedicated to a research-and design-based analysis of the emergent and contemporary city, leading to an MPhil in Architecture. It proposes the City as an architectural project and as a projection of the possibilities of architecture. The programme recognises the City as a new contemporary field, area of study, design and research agenda, and pursues through architectural experimentation and speculation the meaningful production of new Ideas for the City. The focus of the course is the formation and design of cities explicated within its dominant types and large-scale architectural artefacts. It systematically examines and speculates on the design challenges of the contemporary city through both theoretical and specific architectural design enquiries.

By providing a unique integrated research platform dedicated to the examination and research of the future of the City, the taught MPhil programme unites theoretical and practical design research. This research will be demonstrated in a distinct contribution to scholarship in an integrated design and written dissertation.

A Contemporary City

For the past two decades, the discourse of architecture in relation to its larger context has been predominantly discussed and reasoned through concepts of urbanism and articulated by complex form, with little or no relevant alternative overarching theories for its existence and relentless proliferation. The Idea of the City, on the other hand, can be seen as distinctly different from urbanism and is directly concerned with the emergent phenomena of the contemporary city.

The current area of investigation will be the contemporary city itself. The contemporary city is understood here as the expansion and cumulative construction of the city in progress, for example witnessed in the emerging and fast expanding cities in the Far East and Middle East. This understanding will focus on the conception and articulation of the city through its dominant types.

The aim of this investigation is to arrive at a proposal for a Contemporary City as an architectural project. Implicit in such a proposal is the role of the dominant type as the embodiment of the Idea of the City – its raison d’être – and as a deep structure and pliable diagram of the city.

Projective Cities Programme Tutors

Directors

Christopher C M Lee graduated with the AA Diploma (Hons). He previously taught at the AA in the History and Theory Studies (2009/10) and was the Unit Master for Diploma School (Unit 6, 2004/09) and Intermediate School (Unit 2, 2002/04). He is the co-founder and principal of the award-winning Serie Architects (serie.co.uk) and is currently conducting his doctoral research in the Berlage Institute Rotterdam on the topic of type and the city.

Sam Jacoby trained as a cabinet-maker, graduated from the AA, and is an architect in private practice. He is a co-director of the Spring Semester Programme at the AA. Previously taught at the AA in the History and Theory Studies (2009/10), Diploma School (Unit 6, 2004/09), Intermediate School (Unit 2, 2002/04), and at the University of Nottingham (BArch Unit 6, 2007/09). Currently pursues a doctoral degree at the TU Berlin.