Is there any difference between AA urban design and UCL urban design? Architecture&Urbanis from AA, the top architecture institution in Britain, and Urban Design from UCL are also two graduate courses of architecture. From the perspective of course naming, it seems that they are all architecture majors based on urban research. What are the differences and similarities between the two majors in the two schools in terms of detailed curriculum?

AA Urban Design and UCL Urban Design:

AA Architecture&Urbanism

Overview of Architecture&Urbanism

The title of this course is very interesting. It's called "Design Research Laboratory". It can be seen from the naming AA Architectural Alliance College The avant-garde and experimental nature of the course Architecture&Urbanism is in line with AA's tradition of innovation. Macroscopically, this is a 16 month postgraduate course, which takes three years as a research framework cycle, and constantly updates the research content and structure with the times.

Overview of Architecture&Urbanism Postgraduate Architecture Course

It can be seen from the course overview that the postgraduate course of Architecture&Urbanism is divided into four semesters, the first three semesters are a stage, and the last semester is based on the study of the first three semesters to complete a final design paper project. In the end, it will be submitted to the "expert panel" composed of world famous architects, who will make critical suggestions.

Let's see what students need to do in the first stage of the three semester. Although the official use of "thinking about life, work and the future of culture", "using behavior to connect the digital world and the material world" such a simple two sentences generally summarized the purpose of the first stage. However, the larger the concept, the larger the knowledge system, and the strict requirements of curriculum providers for students.

The keywords "expand", "bigger" and "challenge the limit" all indicate that at the beginning of the project, students can't "muddle" through. In the official overview, the college also emphasized the application of high-tech concepts in the "realization" of architectural design, citing four directions of mobility, subversion, kinetic energy and roboticization.

In the second stage of curriculum practice, the school divided the students into three directions. The studios in the three directions represent the future culture, future work and future life mentioned in the first stage. The key word of future culture is behavior based design; The future work is to think more about parameter semiotics based on agent system; Machine automation in modern community structure is the subject of future life studio.

We should not only focus on the subject itself, because the architecture of each subject will be changed once every three years. What we should pay more attention to is what the Architecture&Urbanism project really wants to explore based on these topics. Rather than architecture, this discipline seems to be more inclined to encourage students to use the existing architectural foundation to think about philosophy and the relationship between human beings and the urbanization process.

After talking about AA's Architecture&Urbanism, let's talk about UCL's Urban Design. It belongs to the B-Pro project of UCL The Bartlett School of Architecture. Now we want to mention Urban Design, which is one of the five courses of B-Pro project.

UCLUrban Design, University College London

Introduction to Urban Design Architecture Postgraduate Course

Compared with AA's emphasis on concepts and theoretical knowledge, University College London UCL's Urban Design is obviously down-to-earth. The focus is clearly on the city, which is a human symbiosis model, and two design implementation approaches, digital design and computing, are given. Students are encouraged to directly use the school's London base as a "research institute" to carry out field transformation and design, and also encourage students to carry out outdoor practice.

In terms of curriculum, Urban Design and its twin brother Architectural Design can be said to be exactly the same, which is also a 180 point credit allocation. The five courses are set around the ultimate project. The introductory course is an introduction to urban design, plus a skill elective course of B-Pro project, and the preliminary concept stage preparation course of the final project.

Features of Urban Design Architecture Postgraduate Course

It can be seen from the highlights of the curriculum on the official website that the theme of the school's curriculum is clear. The advantage lies in the fact that the core of the course of Urban Design is to strike at the core of the course from fist to flesh. It is also mentioned by the way that we know about the city of London. It can be speculated that the practice project of the curriculum should be based on the example of London, where the school is located.

In the two B-Pro program highlights mentioned above, the school mentioned "the unparalleled B-make workshop in the UK". We know that generally the world's top design colleges will be equipped with top studio equipment for students to create, but UCL's B-make workshop is not just "top".

B-make workshop equipment list

From the list, we can see that there are all kinds of tools needed for architecture, even B-make workshop provides high-tech products such as laser cutting machines and robots. What's more, the school also arranges special Workshop training courses every semester to help students get started and use equipment.

Examples of student works of Urban Design

By comparing the architecture&Urbanism and Urban Design majors of AA and UCL, we can clearly find the focus of the two schools. Architecture&Urbanism mainly focuses on the theoretical discussion of urbanization, the process of human civilization, and how to combine it with architecture and practice. Urban Design is as simple and direct as the title of this course, focusing on the research and design of specific projects, and discovering more possibilities in the city, a community of human civilization.

Is AA urban design the same as UCL urban design? Today, we focus on Study abroad in urban design In terms of the course, we introduced that Architecture&Urbanism and Urban Design belong to the category of urban design, but the former is more based on the consideration of architectural design in the process of urbanization. If you want to know more about relevant professional colleges and universities, please come to natural light for free consultation.

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