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Architecture

How buildings and cities are imagined, drawn, made to stand, made comfortable and made to mean something.

For: anyone starting the degree, anyone working with architects, anyone who has walked into a room and felt something.

Shaped by the NAAB Conditions for Accreditation (2020, revised 2024: health, safety and welfare, regulatory context, design synthesis, building integration) and the studio-centred programmes of schools such as the Bartlett, ETH Zurich and MIT.

15readings
3.2 hoursof reading
4stages
14 reads · 1 deep dive
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Stage 1

Year 1 · Seeing and drawing

4 readings · 50 min
  1. 01ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Form, Space & Order: The Grammar of Rooms

    Mass, void, light, proportion and movement: the grammar of space.
  2. 02ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Architectural Drawing & Representation: Thinking With a Pencil

    Drawing is how architects think, test and tell.
  3. 03ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    History of Architecture: Five Thousand Years of Answers

    Five thousand years of buildings, on every continent.
  4. 04ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Engineering Drawing & CAD: The Contract Between Designer and Maker

    Plans, sections and elevations are a contract with the builder.
Stage 2

Year 2 · Ideas and matter

4 readings · 52 min
  1. 05ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Modern & Contemporary Architecture: Why Buildings Look the Way They Do Now

    From the Bauhaus to now: the ideas that shape what gets built today.
  2. 06ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Statics: Why Things Stand Still

    Every building is forces in balance.
  3. 07ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Materials Science & Manufacturing: Why Things Are Made of What They Are

    Concrete, steel, timber, glass and brick: what each can and can't do.
  4. 08ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Building Technology: How a Wall Keeps the Weather Out

    Walls, roofs, windows and joints: how a building keeps the weather out.
Stage 3

Year 3 · Making it stand and making it comfortable

4 readings · 50 min
  1. 09ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Mechanics of Materials: Why Things Bend, Buckle and Break

    Why beams bend and columns buckle.
  2. 10ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Structural Analysis: How Forces Find Their Way to the Ground

    How forces find their way down to the ground.
  3. 11ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Environmental Systems in Buildings: Designing Comfort, Not Just Adding Machines

    Light, heat, air and sound: designing comfort, not just adding machines.
  4. 12ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Urban Design & Planning: Buildings Make Streets, Streets Make Cities

    Buildings make streets, and streets make cities.
Stage 4

Year 4 · Putting it together

3 readings · 41 min
  1. 13ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    The Design Studio: From a Brief and a Site to a Building

    The studio: from a brief and a site to a building.
  2. 14ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Construction Management: Why Big Projects Run Late

    How a design actually gets built.
  3. 15Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min

    Business Law & Ethics: Who Is Allowed to Do What, and Who Pays When It Goes Wrong

    Contracts, liability and the duties architects owe.
When you finish

Francis D.K. Ching, Architecture: Form, Space, and Order; MIT OpenCourseWare's Architecture course list, free; the textbooks named at the end of each subject.

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Law

What law is for, how lawyers reason, and how the world's legal families answer the same human questions differently.