Insider not Outsider; Integrating Environmental Thinking in Thesis Design

This paper examines strategies evolved to support architecture students in developing sustainable thesis proposals during their final year of professional architectural education. While in recent years we have had considerable success in establishing an integrated approach in encouraging sustainable thinking to become embedded within the third year of the undergraduate architecture programme, it has proved much more difficult to replicate the same outcome within the graduate programme. In their fifth and final year students are expected to be able to undertake and sustain as a self-directed design project, the design of a thoroughly researched building of reasonable complexity and ambitious architectural intention, encapsulating a critical architectural position and maturity of judgment. Although offering a degree of freedom not present in earlier years, the final year is also where students demonstrate their ability to meet key criteria at the threshold of professional practice and approaching qualification. This paper explores strategies developed within the current fifth year studio, locating students within a series of European cities with differing environmental conditions, demanding the development of an understanding of appropriate sustainable responses while producing proposals which integrate context, programme and technology. Through a series of steps, including an analytical study, the building of large-scale model, an extended field trip and discussions with local practitioners, the structure aims to provide a working method that can be adapted and customized depending on the conditions encountered. The methodology also aims to encourage students to develop their powers of observation, awareness of the local, and although moving from familiar territory to develop an approach allowing them to operate as insiders rather than mere tourists