The Emergent Technologies and Design (EmTech) Programme is open to architecture and engineering graduates seeking knowledge and skills in architectural design science, who want to experiment with how these can be applied within new production paradigms.
It investigates new synergies of architecture and ecology at the intersection of computational design and advanced fabrication, with a focus on the potential these offer for new architectural, urban and ecological design solutions within emerging biomes. The programme stimulates critical thinking through research-driven design projects developed in a rigorous and creative studio environment. Its projects evolve iteratively through hypothesis, experimentation, fabrication and evaluation; students reflect upon this work in verbal presentations and group discussions, and document their findings in analytical papers.
The programme, which offers MArch and MSc options, has two distinct phases: the Studio and Dissertation. Both phases are supported by the research of the programme team and by the expertise of EmTech alumni, alongside an extensive network of research colleagues in practice and industry. As well as building strong technical and theoretical foundations, students develop valuable teamwork skills throughout the programme. During the Studio phase, they work in teams while contributing individually at key stages of each project. In the Dissertation phase, students have the opportunity to collaborate with peers who share similar research interests, further enhancing both their academic and professional experience.
Design research is central to the programme’s agenda. The work develops from the understanding that nature and artifice are connected; that the cultural production of artefacts and systems exists as part of other active systems, and that these systems are subject to change. EmTech acknowledges that the causality of change is complex and multi-scalar, and that its dynamics are disrupted and accelerated by human activity. It is concerned with the consequences of these changes within society and the natural world.
Phase 1: The Studio
Design 1: Digital and Material Fabrication
This project highlights the ways in which physical and digital computational techniques can be used to adapt different material systems to specific climatic contexts. Students use digital models to respond to various environmental parameters, and create physical models that integrate material behaviour and robotic fabrication processes. The purpose of the project is to design and develop computational workflow techniques, and to analyse and fabricate material systems within EmTech’s ‘Design and Build’ research agenda.
Design 2: Ecological Urban Design
In this project, students create experimental designs and system logics for settlements situated in extreme climates. They develop design strategies that support both inhabitation and production within biomes undergoing rapid ecological transformation. These strategies integrate infrastructural systems and networks with spatial configurations of dense or distributed inhabitable units, alongside productive landscapes characterised by their own operational networks.
Elective: Climate and Ecological Systems in Design Science
The scientific method is an evolving set of procedures based on systematic observations and measurements, forming hypotheses from those observations, testing hypotheses through experimentation, and modifying and further testing them in response. The aim of the process is to arrive at a point where there is no difference between the hypothesis and the observed results of the experiment. The course introduces scientific inquiry into students’ design and design research practices.
Phase 2: The Dissertation
The Dissertation Research Studio extends students’ research skills with a view to applying these in advanced production processes within architecture, urbanism and ecological engineering. Students learn how to analyse complex issues and to engage in independent research, integrating insights gained from case studies with those from digital and material experiments
We operate across a spectrum of contexts, anchored by two core areas of design research: dynamic material systems with advanced fabrication, focusing on technologies applied at the scale of medium-to-large buildings and landscapes; and ecological urban design in emergent biomes, which explores how integrated technologies can operate within landscapes such as shorelines, river valleys, deltas, mountains and deserts.
Students explore theoretical discourses, science and case studies that relate to their chosen topic and set out the methods through which they will develop their Design Proposal, which unfolds through iterative design cycles as they apply the knowledge and skills gained during earlier phases of the programme.
Design and Build
This is a collaborative student project and makes an essential contribution to the culture of EmTech. The project runs throughout the year alongside the Studio and the Dissertation, and provides opportunities to design and deliver a built project within real-world material, structural, fabrication and assembly constraints. This enhances students’ design, computational and analytical skills, many of which are applicable within professional practice. Our Design and Build projects have been published internationally in the architectural press since 2001 and have received industry awards.