In order to facilitate more extensive and, at the same time, more focused design projects and adequately comprehensive thesis projects, credits awarded to Design Studio 4a and 4b increase to 18 credits while the number of parallel modules is reduced.

In Y4 students start a personal pursuit; they must - through their design projects and their research work - relate to the world of architecture in their own personal way. Students are expected and asked to voice their position in architecture, to find their direction through architectural design. Students will develop a method of research and allocate significant time to the research part of the curriculum. The architectural project will be tightly allied to construction and the physicality of building; construction technology will be an important part of the years work. In the spring semester students are expected to measure their design ability against tightly drawn demands and complex programmatic issues within a sophisticated cultural and architectural framework - to create a complex architectural object. Design Studio will facilitate more inventive/experimental work, leveraging the knowledge of what students are already able to do. Design projects require an integrated technological proposition in terms of structure, construction, materials, and environment at an advanced level.

Conduct research in a precise way, collecting information and analysing it through drawings with insight; Express through plans a clear spatial idea that is well resolved in terms of its architectural qualities; Demonstrate through sections a clear understanding of space, structure, and environment; Evidence through detail drawings a clear understanding of material, structure and environment in their relation to architectural space

Resolve a design problem with complex societal demands; Demonstrate technological competence within the development of the project, and high level of technical resolution;

Create careful and precise analytical drawings; Describe a project fully through drawings (scale 1:500-1:50), well-made and accurate models, perspectives, and other three-dimensional information; and Produce (sectional) drawings at scale 1:20 that competently define the proposed building and the related understanding of building technology.