Projective Cities The Taught MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) is an 18-month, interdisciplinary research and design programme that examines multi-scalar questions arising at the intersection of architecture, urban design and planning. The programme is dedicated to systematic analysis, design experimentation, theoretical speculation and critical writing, all of which focuses on the contemporary city. Student projects combine new design and traditional forms of research while challenging existing disciplinary boundaries and contributing to emerging spatial design practice and knowledge. The programme recognises the need for multidisciplinary knowledge and new, practise-led research training to meet the demands of contemporary architectural and urban practice.

Each cohort of Projective Cities examines a common theme as the starting point for individual research agendas. The current theme is the Architecture of Collective Living, and the ambition of the programme is therefore to investigate, by comparative analysis, the different organisational, formal, programmatic and material particularities that define it through a series of historic and contemporary case studies. The spatial organisation of the Architecture of Collective Living is reflected in a series of informal and formal relations between subjects, spaces, structural and non-structural elements, objects and protocols of use and occupation. It therefore opens up a discussion about how the urban can be understood through specific architecture and its design, and how its effect as an urban armature is not only of spatial importance, but is organised by larger political and social discourses.

Projective Cities has initiated a series of external collaborations and partnerships that aim to introduce students to relevant contemporary case studies, foster design experimentation and develop their individual research ambitions. Phase I students undertook design exercises and workshops in Barcelona, Athens and London, and the programme established institutional collaborations with local municipalities, universities (ETSAB/NTUA), activist groups and architect co-operatives like Lacol and Arquitectos de Cabecera. This year, these sites and areas of interest will be expanded, and a multiplicity of sites and design and research methodologies will respond to the discourses individually and collectively initiated and formalised by students.