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 17 ²⁰¹⁸

RUMPLE_STILT_SKIN

GREGORY KATZ & NICO VAN LOGGERENBERG

Definitions:
Rumple: to make untidy, to disorder, to fold, crumple, crease, wrinkle, tumble, crush, crinkle.

Stilt: a set of posts or piles supporting a building, upright poles with supports for the feet enabling the user to walk at a distance above the ground.

Skin: the outermost layer of a structure such as a building or aircraft, a thin layer forming on the surface of certain hot liquids, the thin outer covering of a sausage.

Rumplestiltskin, the classic Brothers Grimm fairy-tale, is a story about alchemy and detective work. Both these themes are central to the Unit 17 methodology. The latent potential of materials has fascinated people throughout the centuries; we think that we know something until we do something different with it and then it is transformed. In order to unlock new possibilities, we must engage with our materials on a physical level – by making. Much like in the fairy-tale, the back-and-forth of trying to find the right answer to the questions we pose, requires investigative work, resilience and alertness. The process of making things is all about finding things out: what are the ingredients, where to source them, what are the ratios, how are things combined? And so, we become detectives, searching for clues and gathering information. But beware the red-herring and the rabbit-hole that are inherent in this process of discovery. Once upon a time . . .

Synopsis:
A King poses the impossible challenge = dream big

A Princess asks for help = collaborate

Rumplestiltskin is blinded by hubris = keep on questioning