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Architecture (Practice-Based)

School of Natural and Built Environment | MPhil
Entry Year
Academic Year 2025/26
Entry Requirements
2.1

Overview

Architecture at Queen’s addresses issues of architecture and urbanism in an increasingly globalised world, where factors such as sustainability and climate change, identity and heritage, and notions of craft and form, coalesce to create a complex context that architecture has to mediate.

Architecture at Queen’s offers a part-time, practice-based MPhil (by Practice) for those involved in venturous design practice and interested in the articulation and dissemination of the underlying motivations and potentials in their work: venturous practice is taken to mean those interested in expanding the boundaries of contemporary design practice. Candidates may be at an early, middle or late stage of their design careers and will have either a body of significant peer reviewed/celebrated work, or alternatively have a evidently significant creative trajectory in their academic or speculative outputs (projects and competitions) such as would support this level of enquiry.
Tacit knowledge figures prominently as a concern in this form of MPhil (ie by Practice) and the assumption is that candidates remain in practice for the duration of their part-time enrolment (minimum of two years, maximum of six). The evolution of the candidate’s practice and outputs over the term of the MPhil is of itself significant and clearly implies the modification of how that candidate practices, this forms an essential component of the research.
Recurrent themes within this MPhil by Practice include public behaviours (what choices implicit or explicit does the practitioner make, how she/he positions themselves within the profession and the canon), community of practice (to whom does the practitioner relate), and the particular tropes and techniques deployed in the production/delivery of designs outputs. Research methodologies are focused on the devices of practice itself rather than traditional text-grounded epistemologies - non-textual media will typically form the majority of the thesis.

The programme encourages interaction with other platforms focused on design practise research and design-driven research, notably RMIT University biannual Practice Research Symposia based in Barcelona, and the pan-European Community of Artistic and Architectural Research (CA2RE) under the auspices of the EAAE.

Subject Summary

Architecture at Queens is in the Top 200 in the World QS Rankings. In the island of Ireland we are the leaders in Architectural research and indeed we have world-class expertise in Architectural Design, Sustainable Cities, Heritage, and Architectural Humanities. Head of Architecture, Dr Sarah Lappin, was Chair of the Architectural Humanities Research Association for six years, and we were co-founders of the All-Ireland Architecture Research Group. You’ll conduct research that addresses the issues of architecture within an increasingly globalised world, focusing on an area of research strength such as materiality (developing new technologies); urbanism (sustainability and heritage); sustainability (developing urban resilience by adaptation); heritage (documenting the architectural past), and cultural context (gaining a real-time understanding of motion in the city). We value both traditional academic and practice-based research, particularly research-by-design, which we use to make new knowledge through not only the analysis of the existing, but also the documentation of new processes and situations created by new design thinking.

Architecture (Practice-Based) Highlights

Industry Links
  • Architecture has collaborations with numerous universities and other organisations around the globe. These include: TU Delft; MIT; Tokyo Metropolitan Government; Green Building Council, Australia; Innovate UK; Northern Ireland Climate Change; Belfast City Council Sustainable Development Group; Todd Architects, Belfast; and Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast.
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World Class Facilities
Internationally Renowned Experts
Student Experience

Key Facts

Architecture is one of 19 subjects at Queen’s University ranked in the top 200 in the world (QS World Rankings by subject 2024).

  • In terms of research quality, Queen’s is ranked 12th in the UK for Architecture, Built Environment and Planning (REF 2021/Times Higher Education).
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