The AA

Visiting School

One – three weeks

The Visiting School encompasses diverse learning programmes, workshops and site-based agendas shaped by participants working intensively in small groups over varying periods of time from one to two weeks. Central to each programme is the idea that experimental, new and provocative forms of architecture are best learned by doing. These programmes take place all over the world, including Bedford Square in London and Hooke Park in Dorset. The Visiting School welcomes applicants in any moment of their studies and careers, from within and outside of the architectural realm. The AA Summer School Programme, also part of the Visiting School, is equally open and takes place for three weeks during the summer period.

DTA Students’ education and architectural practices post AA

Incubators

Join one of our Visiting School short courses happening around the world.

Location

Course Title

Dates

Programme Heads

For the term of your natural life

18 December 2026 – 15 November 2029

Film-Architecture Forum

Summer 2026

Venice Biennale: Marghera Pasts, Presents and Futures

Summer 2026

Rebuilding Rome: Film and Narrative Forensics

Summer 2026

Atcham, UK

Full Moon Theatre (test)

12 October 2027 – 16 February 2028

Ibrahim Abdou

Page:

For the term of your natural life

Programmes

AA Visiting School

For the term of your natural life

Dates

Winter 2026

Brief

In the last few years, Australia has directly encountered the effects of catastrophic climate change. During the summer of 2019-20, millions of people were subject to toxic smoke and more than a billion animals were killed when violent wildfires burned widely across the east of the country. Since 2022, much of the same region has experienced widespread and devastating flooding in what have become the wettest years on record. But as the recent fires in California, Greece, and the Arctic demonstrate, these are global phenomena.

AAVS Sydney will be an intensive two-week studio, taught in partnership with the University of Sydney SSADP, that challenges students to examine the specific forces that drive these events and their repercussions for architecture and urbanism. Working from the University of Sydney’s Darlington campus on the traditional and unceded lands of the Gadi people, students will engage with Aboriginal Australian knowledge holders and professionals, visit exemplary architectural sites, and engage with the work of architecture in professional practice, government, and the field.

Students can expect to spend time in the temperate rainforests of the Illawarra region, visit a multispecies sanctuary, and present their research in a working fire station.

Throughout the studio, students will:

Respect, listen to, and learn from Indigenous practitioners and engage with the concepts of Indigeneity and Country.
Engage with the concepts of the Anthropocene, ferality, the Earth system, unnatural disaster, and ecocide in the Sydney region as a point of entry.
Undertake collective field investigations, including bushwalks in the urban area of Sydney and the rainforest of the Illawarra region.
Learn how to use GIS software, including how to find, visualise, and analyse geographic data critically and responsibly.
Learn how to quickly develop a thesis grounded in various forms of research and present and defend that thesis with precision and clarity.
Understand how strategic and policy-making processes impact the urban environment, visiting and talking to spatial practitioners and policy-makers.
Explore how spatial production and design can be anticipatory rather than reactive practices.

Fees

A non-refundable £60 deposit is required from all applicants upon application and will be deducted from the total fees below:

• £880 — Standard Programme Fee (including a 1-year AA Digital Membership)

• £820 — AA Member Fee

• £656 — AA Full-time Student Fee

• £757 — Fee for Full-time students of Melbourne University (including a 1-year AA AA Digital Membership)

Fees do not include flights, food or accommodation, but accommodation options can be advised. Owing to some site locations being outside of urban areas, food during the field trip may need to be ordered and paid for in advance.

Applications

Applications for this program will open soon.

Eligibility

The programme is open to current architecture and design students, PhD candidates and young professionals.

Software requirements: Adobe Creative Suite, Rhino (SR7 or later), QGIS 3, Blender.

Visas

All participants travelling from abroad are responsible for securing any visa required, and are advised to contact their home embassy early. After full payment of course fees, the AA School can provide a letter confirming participation in the workshop.

Insurance

All participants are responsible for securing their own travel and health insurance. Please ensure that your travel insurance also covers your personal belongings i.e. laptop, equipment, tools, passport etc. The AA takes no responsibility for lost/ stolen property.

Biographies

Programme Heads

Oskar Frederick Johanson (AA Dipl’19) is a PhD candidate at the Climates Rights program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Since 2021 he has been co-program head of the AA Visiting School Sydney. From 2021-22 he was an Agent of Change for the 10th Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. From 2020-21 he was a Research Fellow at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. He has taught short courses at the AA, UCL, Cambridge, the University of Melbourne, and Iowa State University. He has written for AA Files, The Avery Review, and The Sydney Morning Herald, among others. His research was recently featured in The Architecture of Staged Realities, an exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, and is currently on show as part of L'architecture des réalités mises en scène: (re)construire Disney, an exhibition at arc en rêve, Bordeaux

Adolfo Del Valle Neira (ARB/RIBA Part I, UdK MA‘20) is a Peruvian-American architect and writer. He is co-program head of the Architectural Association Visiting School Sydney. He was a collaborator at Raumlabor. After that he worked for ZUsammenKUNFT eG, an interdisciplinary urban development cooperative, on the About Urban Praxis project at the Haus der Statistik until 2021. His work and writing on the Making Futures was featured in the Making Futures book published by Spector Books in April 2022. He continues to work as an Architect based in Berlin. G, an interdisciplinary urban development cooperative, on the About Urban Praxis project at the Haus der Statistik.