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Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) - BA (Hons)
Main Site
Full Time
Sep 2026
3 Year
Architecture is a profession, and this course is an integral part of a sequence of steps – RIBA parts 1, 2 and 3 - that leads to entry into it. Criteria for entry on to the UK Register of Architects are prescribed by the Architects Registration Board (ARB). The ARB and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have agreed to hold the criteria in common and successful completion of this Honours Degree course gives Part 1 exemption. In addition to this, the RIBA has introduced new Themes and Values for Architectural Education, which includes further focus on climate literacy, health and life safety, ethical practice, and research literacy. The modules in the course work within this framework to provide a coherent balance of intellectual and practical skills, as well as facilitating various avenues to develop students' transferable and digital skills for a wide range of employment. The course sits in the Department of Landscape and Architecture, one of four Departments in the School of Arts, which is one of three Schools (with the Design School and the School of Creative and Cultural Industries) in the Faculty of Kingston School of Art (KSA). It is located in the compact Knights Park campus, where it is directly adjacent to the range of other creative disciplines within KSA. It has immediate access to excellent and wide-ranging resources for physical making, an opportunity which sits at the heart of the pedagogy in each of the programmes and forms a key component of the BA Architecture programme. The Department's accommodation currently occupies the fourth and fifth floors of the New Extension Building at Knights Park, with the KSA workshops on the ground and first floors of the same building. This is a place in which to converse, to debate, to work and to learn from each other.
Architecture evolves in response to needs that arise in the world. We differ from other creative disciplines in this key facet ? we cannot (generally) sit and just produce architecture on our own but have to work collaboratively others. The buildings we design will impact on others, anyone who interacts with the building or who is affected by its making. Architects are constantly negotiating with the realities of a site, the limits of a material and resources, the needs of a client, the capacity of a builder and so much more. Far from being a limiting factor it is this abrasion that is where architecture's value and meaning is sited. This also means that there are many roles an architect can develop ? from being a skilled organiser, to sourcing the technical knowledge required, and thinking carefully about practical matters, and ones of delight and joy.
Architecture is a living culture, and is not distinct from life, but intrinsically part of it. Our species remakes its environment to suit its ends. It is this act, in its broadest sense, and with all its duties and gifts, that constitutes the territory of the subject. You arrive here already as architects. It is not a body of knowledge separate to you, but already something you have an intuitive relationship with. You have your histories in space ? rooms, buildings, and public spaces you have enjoyed and loved. In this module you will learn how to draw architectural knowledge from this experience. We will also introduce you to buildings and places that you will learn from. This process ? whereby the architect is constantly able to draw on their surroundings to inform what they do is something which goes on for the rest of your life ? you will seek out remarkable places, study them, all so that you might gain insights you can use in your work for others. Key to this is finding ways, drawing, modelling, and writing, to describe these aspects.
Architecture is slow. It takes time to develop the range of skills we need, and these keep evolving over our life. It also takes time in practice. Even small projects take many months to complete, while larger works can run to decades. There is a particular discipline to this - a combination of patience and rigour. As a design develops, we must be constantly attuned to its deficiencies as well as its delights. We must respect the brief, and develop it, taking input and critique as we go, talking to one another about our doubts and challenges. Engaging consistently and working it forward to an unknown destination is a tricky thing but is the essential task of the architect.
There is something about the act of designing that is hard to describe. Ideas do not arise on their own, but through acts of creativity. Here, the combination of the mind and the body differs from purely intellectual activity. We have a word for this of course ? play. But we recognise that this word covers a wide territory ? the play of the child being very different from the play of a skilled musician for example. In common however is a sense of immersion ? an engagement with a task where matters of risk or worries about skills are set aside to explore something ? to open new territories in this act. It is a critical part of your capacity to imagine.
Architects make the human habitat. This places us in a position of great responsibility. Our buildings should be safe in use, and fulfil the needs of their occupants. Given how important this act is; a huge number of laws and regulations govern the work of architects - ranging from planning to health and safety and rules concerning energy use, for example. More than this, each architect will also have their own ethical position on their responsibilities to their clients and the broader community they are part of, which includes future generations.
The built landscapes of our world are a way of reading a society over time ? its relationship to climate and material, along with ideas of social structure, ritual and use. Architects frequently draw their ideas from this living archive, and architectural historians thread their stories of how ideas may move through time and space. Each architect also does this, in an open manner, exploring works that fascinate them, finding ideas there that they enjoy and use. This ability for us to draw on thinking laid down by others is wonderful, a shorthand to developing ideas that otherwise might take considerable time.
Architecture makes the human habitat. As such it is a mediation between the internal climatic requirements for inhabitation and the nature of the broader environment. What we make and how we make it is shaped by this fundamental concern. This embraces all aspects of a design - the materials we use, how we can engage with the available beauty of the world, and how our buildings respond in use. In this module you will prepare a series of designs for places to dwell in a set site, with the specific goal of thinking carefully about these interconnected aspects. Construction and the bringing together of materials will be a driver in your research and proposals.
Architecture touches on so many areas of life and culture that each project represents a chance for you to understand the world anew. You can draw your ideas from anywhere, and as your skills develop your speed in responding to complex sites or briefs improves. This act of laying down the slow thinking that you can later draw on quickly takes years. In this module you will engage with a unit to engage in depth with a complex design challenge which will afford you space to really get to grips with a problem, and to articulate your own position in response, through Architecture.
Architecture involves the need to be competent - both in how we manage ourselves, our time and our development; and in how we design and construct. There is also a personal ethic that sits alongside this and which evolves in a situated manner. You are looking ahead to future employment and with an increased understanding of your own professionalism, the range of issues that affect how buildings are procured, built and occupied, and the role of architects within the construction industry and wider society. You will explore and articulate your own professional ambitions in the context of your thesis design project.
Architecture strategically engages individuals, communities and society with the issues of place in practical, personal, cultural and political ways. Through a process of primary and secondary research across a broad range of subjects, architects appraise the fundamental conditions of site and context, in order to inform a strategic design approach for a particular place. The detailed study of buildings and places from other times and contexts, develops an architect's ability to critique these complex interacting conditions.
4.1At Kingston University – the UK's leading university for Future Skills – they don't just teach a subject; they prepare s...
