MArch Dissertation Beyond Studio
Richard Difford, Lindsay Bremner, Davide Deriu, Kirti Durelle, Kate Jordan, Mirna Pedalo, Diana Periton, Shahed Saleem, Ben Stringer, Alessandro Toti
The aim of the MArch dissertation is to encourage students to develop their ability to reflect critically, and with self-consciousness and confidence, on a topic relevant to architecture or urbanism. Each student chooses their own subject but the interests explored emerge out of research that begins almost a year earlier in the first year History & Theory seminar groups. Within these groups the students are guided by tutors well-versed in a broad range of interests and research methods; and committed to supporting the individual specialisms and scholarship of each student. A range of topics and a plurality of approaches is therefore encouraged. Ultimately, the ambition is that these dissertations will be distinguished, not by their adherence to any particular methodology or style, but by their high quality.
This year was no exception and there were many outstanding dissertations produced. Highlights include Irina Corăga’s thoughtful and well written dissertation Fissures within the Romanian Rural Idyll which opens up contested views of the rural in Romania (both in reality and in representation). Equally insightful was, Jane Ezechi’s investigation of the 1945 Pan-African Congress on Nigerian Independence and the legacy of tropical modernism, Between Decolonisation & Nation Building. This study critically analyses the architects and the architecture of mid twentieth-century Nigeria in relation to colonial and postcolonial history, ideology and theory.
Other exceptional dissertations included Alexandra-Clara Popescu’s Memory as an Act of Spatial (re)production, which traces the history and memories of Uranus, a neighbourhood in Romanian capital Bucharest, razed to make way for the communist-era Civic Centre Project; Sara Tranescu’s Collective Flânerie which explores walking as a spatial practice by interrogating the city through a feminist lens; and Oiva Kaspar Rechardt’s Disharmony which examines class conflict, utopianism and the development of New York City’s cooperative housing model. Equally outstanding were, Anastasia Kolioliou’s Life Jackets as Decoders: Material Manifestations of Corpographic Border on Lesvos which asks how life jackets reveal the emergent boundaries and violence in contemporary border regimes; and Oscar Lavington’s Love the Elephant, Hate Gentrification, which looks at the displacement of residents and communities as a result of urban regeneration.
These engaging and carefully researched dissertations are just the latest in a long line of successes in the long history of the MArch dissertation.