Architecture postgraduate research
PhD Programme
Research entails a degree of maturity and self-determination and direction over and above that needed for postgraduate taught courses. This is not to say that research within the School is either undirected or of a solitary nature. Students participate in our graduate studies programme and benefit from involvement in research activities of the newly established Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC) .
MARC’s research aims to critically understand the co-evolution of design and development strategies and socio-economic processes shaping architecture and cities. Our approach involves: the development and application of an interdisciplinary approach to researching architecture and its links to urban development, understanding technological innovation and urban change; analysing and integrating previously disconnected research fields – architecture, urban planning and place-making, the property sector, civil engineering and utilities industry, and stimulating collaborative, inter-disciplinary methodological approaches to understanding architecture and engaging with contemporary practice in a global context.
Our postgraduate research programme is intrinsically inter-disciplinary and is open to students with an interest in any aspect of architectural research including: sustainable urbanism, urban design and development, socio-technical systems (particularly related to sustainable energy technologies), places and place-making, ecological and landscape design and the conservation and management of historic environments. We also encourage proposals for research by design.
Examples of recent and ongoing projects undertaken by postgraduate students include:
- Sustaining Buildings: Designers as intermediaries for Carbon Neutral Futures (PhD)
- Rhetoric and Realities: The Role of Behaviour Models in Energy Related Decision-Making (PhD)
- Social representations of hydrogen: a case study of the Unst community renewable energy initiative (PhD)
- Soundscapes within urban parks: an environmental psychological analysis (PhD)
- Urban Design Representation and Communication: Computer Visualisation and Public Perception in contemporary Portugal (PhD)
- The Solar City: Heuristics for climatically derived urban form adapting to seasonal and daily environmental forces and rhythms (PhD)
- The fractal nature of architecture: is space hyperbolic? (PhD)
- Towards a bioclimatic healthcare typology: environmental force manipulation of a genotype (PhD)
- Urban Complexity: Mapping the dynamics of human movement in everyday urban space (PhD)
Research degree projects should be sufficiently limited in scope to be capable of being tackled within a reasonable time. You should plan to complete the duration of full time study specified (36 months full-time; 72 months part-time), and this inevitably limits the scope of fieldwork if the work requires this, and the time that such work will take. An appropriate and manageable subject is a prerequisite to successful research. The area and the scope of the research area must therefore be defined as precisely as possible.
Although we welcome applications for research degrees on any subject in relation to our specialisms, our academic staff also has particular topics they are keen on supervising: follow this link for a list of research opportunities in Architecture at SED.