The teaching of architecture at Cambridge is rooted in an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of architectural production. There is an over-riding concern for the development of appropriate settings for human activity. The unbroken traditions of history teaching and life-drawing classes exemplify these concerns. At all levels of the BA and Diploma courses, students are encouraged through this individual tuition and the studio system to explore different approaches and thus develop their own skills and, ultimately, their own design philosophy. Outside the studio, students are also assisted to research and write about approved topics of their own choice in essays and dissertations.
Architecture is a practical art.
Some of its aspects are best taught in an academic context and others in the context of design, manufacturing and assembly. Architectural education at Cambridge respects these distinctions and seeks to develop an individual's ability to resolve a brief in an appropriate manner and to articulate clearly both the solution and the thinking behind it. Likewise, students are made aware of issues that may arise in practice and taught principles which they may apply during a life-time of change. This three-year course provides a basic grounding in Architecture and, subject to satisfactory completion of the studio work, provides graduates with exemption from the RIBA Part 1 Examination. The course is intended on the one hand to establish the basis for a body of technical, historical and theoretical knowledge and, on the other, to apply this knowledge to the study of the principal questions of building and of the built environment.