Launch
Launch Week is the first week of your academic journey in the Canterbury School of Architecture and Design and follows on directly from Induction Week. It is an intensive week spent gearing up for your year’s study objectives and getting to know your course staff, peer group and the school community in greater depth.
Projects 01
You’ll be introduced to fundamental issues, processes, and skills that will be relevant throughout your studies. You will investigate new ways of understanding the relationships between the human body, building components and the built environment through the design of a spatial enclosure.
Constructing for Equity 01
You’ll study the social, environmental, and cultural factors that impact contemporary architecture and construction, examining two critical topics - social justice and equitable architecture, and the climate crisis and its diverse challenges for construction.
Briefs and Positions 01
You’ll prepare a basic set of briefing materials to inform and guide your development of a small-scale design proposal, which you’ll make later in the year.
Opportunity
Opportunity Week is an intensive week of activity conceived and undertaken in collaboration with an external partner(s), and it’ll be driven by the partner’s external knowledge and area of practice – so it could cover anything from politics or law to sport and wellbeing.
Projects 02
You’ll apply what you learned in Briefs and Positions 01 to a building retrofit project, proposing the adaptive reuse or transformation of an unused or underused building to accommodate a mix of uses. You’ll have the opportunity to explore themes such as preservation, restoration, and innovation.
Building Analysis
In the Building Analysis unit you’ll learn how to analyse buildings and construction as a student in the field of Architectural Technology. You will develop a competency in building information modelling (BIM) software and learn how to use it to create digital models of buildings. Using these models, you will learn how to perform analyses related to building environmental efficiency and embodied carbon, two important considerations in today's architecture and construction industry.
Material and Digital Practices
This unit will introduce you to basic ideas around representation as a critical practice, and core theories of the design and production of small-scale objects in 2D print and 3D physical form. Working between the physical and virtual worlds, you will establish a range of techniques in digital and physical representation, building the foundation on which you begin to develop your visual communication skills and technological competence.
PLE Digital Outcomes
The PLE Digital Outcome is a purposefully edited, self-directed record of your constructive engagement with and presence on digital media platforms across the year.
ATOM Activities
ATOM activities are tiny pieces of diverse individual learning that facilitate interdisciplinary exposure across the university’s curriculum and beyond. They are chosen by you according to your personal interest.