The thesis project should span over two semesters. 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 5a and 5b increase to 18 and 21 credits respectively while the number of parallel modules is reduced

Fifth-year Design Studio invites the student to engage with complex large-scale architectural design problems. These problems aim to enable multiple scales and programmes to be managed within a tight set of constraints, both physical and temporal. Students will deepen the strength, breadth and application of their conceptual approach and will integrate increasingly sophisticated structural and environmental solutions at a large scale. Thesis will be a year-long piece of work, initiated by a proposition written at the start of the autumn semester. This proposition is tested against a theme (rather than a place) and will act as a framework within which ideas are developed. Students are invited to engage in sharpening architectural positions and idioms, and refining design methods, in the context of contemporary society and in relation to current architectural and cultural debates. Through explorative projects and research, students situate their work on an expanding platform for discussion, engaging with current issues facing the city and the region, related to both national and international contexts.

Propose, fully develop, and draw architectural spaces; Project a social or cultural idea an realise this through architectural space; Understand historical and contemporary narratives in relation to social, cultural and architectural typologies; Explore technological history and related precedents; Manipulate critically a spatial idea through a technological proposition in order to underpin a core architectural concept; Understand and use architectural language and expression in drawings and models; Investigate the physical interaction between the building proposition and the land, the environment, and material through construction studies in drawings and models at appropriate scales;

Deploy critical faculties to monitor the changing and developing meaning of the proposition through different inputs,; Describe critically and defend the completed collection of studies and a fully synthesised architectural project; Develop a cultural agenda for the proposed project and respond to a brief in both the direct factual mode and the propositional mode, understanding the intention and meaning buildings may have in collective society, place and consciousness;

Document fully the spatial, technical, environmental and structural aspects of their project in a comprehensive and complete set of drawings; Make complex models and constructions at scales 1:500, 1:200, 1:100, 1:50 and 1:1 that explore and express the ideas of the project; Produce with competence drawn technical details that are consistent with the design ideas of the project at scales 1:20 and 1:5.