Masters Degree in Architecture | Graduate School of Architecture

The Unit System is an innovative approach to learning, first pioneered by Alvin Boyarsky at the Architectural Association in London, in the 1970s. It is a holistic learning environment, organised around year-long design studios or ‘units.’ See below for more details.

The Unit System

‘I don't think the problem of architectural education is to teach people to be almost proto-professional operators, because that's for them to work out as they go out into life. The problem is to actually produce witty people who've got lots of conversations echoing in their ears when they leave. They've heard a lot of conversations; they've seen a lot; they've met people who are on their way up into the world.’

Alvin Boyarsky, quoted in Irene Sunwoo's ‘Pedagogy’s Progress: Alvin Boyarsky’s International Institute of Design’, Grey Room, (34)(2009):53.

Many of the world’s top schools of architecture owe a collective debt to the innovations in teaching and learning first introduced by Alvin Boyarsky, Head of School at the Architectural Association in the 1970s. His most important contribution to architectural education was the ‘unit system’, an approach which is now global in its reach. Broadly speaking, instead of the traditional, year-based horizontal hierarchy in which students progress through a series of modules/years until graduation, Boyarsky envisioned a holistic ‘learning’ environment (as opposed to a ‘teaching’ environment), in which student life in both the undergraduate (2nd & 3rd year) and postgraduate (4th & 5th year) is organised around year-long design studios or ‘units’.

This innovative approach emphasises the development of comprehensive design projects undertaken within the setting of a single unit selected by a student at the outset of the year.

Students work in close contact with unit leaders and tutors who independently set the agenda, aims and objectives for that year’s design project.

At the GSA, students in 2017 were able to choose from six Units; in 2018, this has continued with six postgraduate Units.

Our now-famous Unit System Poster is available at the start of each year, allowing students to peruse the Units on offer before making their all-important choice.

Unit 15 (x) ²⁰¹⁸

RADICAL LANDSCAPES

Doreen Adengo, Dr Finzi Saidi, Jabu Makhubu & Valentina Manente

Unit 15(x) Radical Landscapes aims to broaden architectural potential through the interrogation of natural processes and socio–economic interaction along and within wetlands. In keeping with its theme, Unit 15(x) explores the potential of discarded natural landscapes such as wetlands which have historically been cartographically excluded, exploited, dug-up, filled-in, built-over and dumped-on without fully understanding the vital natural processes that wetlands conduct. In 2018, Unit 15(x) will travel to Kampala, Uganda to explore the urban wetlands where the delicate balance between nature and human settlements is most poignant. Unit 15(x) derives its motivation from the cultural belief that the wetlands of Kampala where once seen as a scared place of replenishment and renewal by the Baganda, before being devalued as ‘waste lands’ by the British colonial rulers. Wetlands serve a natural purpose of controlling floods, biodiversity conservation and removal of pollutants by filtering runoff water as it heads towards the Lake Victoria. However wetlands are under threat due to urban expansion and unregulated activates as they are currently viewed as the last place to build. The current Ugandan government realizes the importance of conserving and protecting wetlands with a vision that favours exploring sustainable benefits of wetlands for the people of Uganda. Unit 15(x) is intrigued by the fluid boundary between land and water, architecture and landscape, rural and urban, cultural and spirituality, man and nature, work-play & home. The students’ proposals will be informed by critical observation of wetland inhabitants’ activities within the natural processes of the wetland zones. Through transformative pedagogy, Unit 15(x) students will use these observations to develop creative and speculative responses that challenge the ways we ‘WRITE, talk, see, tell, hear, listen, IMAGINE, DRAW and MAKE.’ The Major Design projects in 2018 will include the following- dwellings: industry, permaculture, farming, water treatment plants, traditional healing, flood control, habitat creation and public space,- all of which will demonstrate spatial and design interaction with wetlands in radical, resilient and sustainable ways. The central theme in all these projects will be to present evocative design arguments for the boundary, where the water and human activity on land meet.

Nkoane Makutu 001

Nkoane Makutu 002

Veronica Chipwanya 001

Elao Martin 001

Jody Van Aswegen 001

Nthabiseng Mabena 001

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