Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Study Details: 1 (FT) / 2 (PT) year programme
Full-time or part-time study
The MArch Design Practice is a transformative one-year programme for architects, designers, spatial and creative practitioners at any career stage – whether you’re looking to reimagine an established practice, emerging from undergraduate study, or transitioning from other creative, activist or policy-engaged fields.
Planetary crisis demands new design thinking. This programme positions students at the intersection of urgent planetary challenges and unprecedented opportunity. You’ll study material processes and innovation, strategies of specification and reuse, embodied carbon and emerging technologies – from critically engaging AI and carbon accounting methods, developing interdisciplinary design strategies and methods of representation, to bio-based materials, and more. You’ll explore how these sites of opportunity intersect with economics, politics, and identity to reshape design practice.
We examine how renewable energy systems, green technologies, and social movements are transforming the built environment. Through critical engagement with construction's planetary impact, you'll develop bold, rigorous design propositions for more equitable futures, for people and planet.
The programme is aimed both at postgraduate students and mid-career professionals, and offers a balance between core knowledge, elective and collaborative work and a self-defined research project – enabling you to choose your own areas of interest, while developing the skills to implement your ideas.
Candidates are selected entirely on merit, and applications are welcomed from all over the world, as well as from mid-career designers and career changers. The selection criteria considers creativity, imagination and innovation as demonstrated in your portfolio or equivalent professional experience, as well as your potential to benefit from the programme and to achieve the MArch standard overall.
The programme welcomes architects, designers and spatial practitioners from a range of backgrounds, including those from other design disciplines such as sound, moving image or performance, with an interest in the built environment. Applicants from other backgrounds are also welcome, such as practitioners involved in local government, NGOs, journalism and activism.
This is not a RIBA/ARB validated Part II programme. Our structure offers flexibility for practitioners to tailor their learning to specific goals, whether you're working towards a specialism, developing a research-led practice, or pivoting your career. Students are encouraged to draw on existing practices and experiences, and to use the skills and exposure of the programme to propose interventions into existing architectural models or develop new forms of practice.
You'll take core units in the School of Architecture while choosing from interdisciplinary electives across the Royal College of Art – from digital storytelling to creative pedagogy, investigating the politics of housing, exploring sound design and new media, and more.
You'll develop an independent research project with dedicated one-to-one supervision, supported by intensive research workshops, career development sessions, and CV/application guidance to launch your next chapter. No two student journeys are identical. Each graduate is supported to carve out their own individual trajectory following their time with us on the programme.
Material Processes
Carbon Economies
Detailing Risk
Just Transition
Independent Research Project
Ranked for twelve consecutive years as the world’s number 1 art & design university*, the Royal College of Art’s postgraduate programmes enable yo...
Thu 18 Jun 2026