Outline

The Kent School of Architecture offers a full-time and part-time research programme, leading to MPhil and PhD research degrees. The School promotes innovative and interdisciplinary research study in architecture, urbanism and related fields. The main objective is to combine contemporary advanced research with an educational agenda, preparing candidates to practise in a global academic and professional world.

A particular feature of the KSA research degree programme is the wide spectrum of investigation and the possibility of undertaking research by design.

PhD students have access to all University of Kent facilities and a weekly seminar designed for research students only. Each candidate is entitled to two supervisors.

The Programme Director is Professor Gordana Fontana-Giusti. KSA supervisors include: Dr Gerald Adler, Dr Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Professor Marialena Nikolopoulou and Professor Don Gray.

Staff are active in research and give papers at conferences nationally and internationally.

Programme structure

For further information see the School site.

Funding

For the purposes of higher education and professional qualification, Part 1 and Part 2 architecture programmes are funded for UK students as a five-year continuum of undergraduate education, leading to the conclusion of Part 2.

Every school at Kent offers one or two University postgraduate research scholarships, each available for three years, providing fees at the home/EU rate and a stipend up to £13,590 per annum (2011/12 rate).

Many schools offer scholarships in the form of Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAs) whereby postgraduate research students receive financial support in return for teaching. The value of awards may vary, but often cover tuition fees at the home/EU rate and a substantial maintenance grant.

All postgraduate research students are eligible to apply for GTAs. See Graduate Teaching Assistantships.

For further details of postgraduate funding, see Postgraduate funding.

Further information:

• Scholarships website
• Funding website
• Finance Office

Resources and facilities

The School of Architecture is in a self-contained building at the heart of the Canterbury campus.

The studios include a dedicated computing suite with a range of environmental and construction software, located in the main top-lit studios and seminar rooms. There is a fully equipped architectural model-making workshop for constructing models and large-scale prototypes.

Further information:

• School website
• Canterbury campus

Research groups

KSA incorporates the Centre for Research in European Architecture (CREAte), which focuses on research in architectural humanities, and Centre for Architecture and Sustainable Environment (CASE), which promotes research in the field of sustainable architecture.

Staff research

Dr Gerald Adler: Senior Lecturer in Cultural Context and Design
20th-century architectural history and theory, in particular Germany; Heinrich Tessenow; architecture in its wider cultural and philosophical contexts; the place of the ruin in the modern architectural imagination.

Keith Bothwell: Senior Lecturer in Environment and Sustainability
Sustainable urban design and case studies of green buildings, in particular energy performance resulting from passive design; the environmental impact of timber in schools; incorporating daylighting performance into building regulations.

Dr Timothy Brittain-Catlin: Senior Lecturer in Cultural Context and Design
Early 19th-century English architecture and, in particular, the work of A W N Pugin.

Professor Gordana Fontana-Giusti: Director of PhD Programmes and Graduate Studies; Programme Director, MA Architecture and Cities
Contemporary architectural and urban theory; urban and regional regeneration, philosophy and its relation to architecture, conceptual art and the relationship between the arts and architecture; cities and water.

Howard Griffin: Programme Director, MA in Architectural Visualisation; Director of Recruitment and Marketing
Architecture and film; the representation and use of architecture in film; the use of film and visualisation in architecture; virtual architecture and digital space; looking at form and space in virtual worlds and cyberspace; the architecture and symbolism of freemasonry in England.

Michael Richards: Senior Lecturerin Design; Programme Director, MArch
Design studio pedagogy in the area of ethics; the variances between the physical and fictional relative locations of ‘place' in cinema; the implications for an understanding of contemporary cities.

Manolo Guerci: Lecturer in Cultural Context
Secular architecture, particularly domestic, ranging from Early-Modern European palaces with special emphasis on connections between Italy, France and Britain in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, to Post-War social housing estates; relations between European Modernism and traditional Japanese architecture; conservation of historic buildings, particularly 17th-century construction techniques in Rome.

David Haney: Lecturer in Cultural Context
Relationship between landscape and architecture considered from both professional and cultural perspectives; history of modern architecture and landscape; history of “green” or ecological design; ecological concepts in German modernism.

Professor Marialena Nikolopoulou: Professor of Sustainable Architecture
Outdoor thermal comfort; urban microclimate; occupant perception and use of space; sustainable design and rational use of energy in a built environment.

Further information:

• School website
• School staff profiles

Contact details

Admissions enquiries
T: +44 (0)1227 827272
E: information@kent.ac.uk

Subject enquiries
Professor Gordana Fontana-Giusti
Kent School of Architecture, Marlowe Building,
University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NR,
UK
T: +44 (0)1227 824700
E: g.fontana-giusti@kent.ac.uk

Further information:

• School website
• Graduate School

Find out more

• School website
• Staff profiles
• Graduate School
• Open Days
• Order or download a prospectus