Architecture Edinburgh University

ESALA understands Architecture as the discipline responsible for the design of the built environment. It is both a celebration of our cultural inheritance and a statement of our cultural ambitions. Therefore, we could describe our activity in ESALA as the research and exploration of contemporary society, philosophically, historically, technologically and culturally through the medium of Architecture. While studying at ESALA, you will acquire the necessary knowledge and understanding of how buildings are made, and in the pursuit of this acquire skills of observation, analysis, creative thinking and design. You will learn about the significance of the architectural past, engage critically with contemporary architecture, and apply your skills and knowledge to the formation of built environments of the present and future. The creation of Architectural propositions as modest as a dwelling or as grand and complex as a city scale intervention is, for the architect, a matter of neither formula nor chance, but of reflection, negotiation and adaptation to material, social and cultural contexts.

Architecture therefore comes into contact with other disciplines concerned with buildings and their relationships such as engineering, construction, urban planning, environmental science, sociology and history. Through a carefully designed series of courses ESALA will introduce you to all these disciplines and reveal how they are complicit to the central discipline of Architecture? ESALA consider Architectural Design as the unique mode of thought and practice, combining logical analysis, critical judgement and creativity that produce buildings. The theme, which underpins our approach to architectural education, is that everything you do will be a process of enquiry and as such enables you to discover and develop your own process of design and further more your own position within architecture.

ESALA offers two Degree Programmes at Undergraduate level, both are accredited by the RIBA and lead to the Professional Qualification of Part 1 upon graduation.