On the Advanced Sustainable Design - MSc programme, you’ll gain skills that you can apply in a wide series of contexts.
We believe that resilient solutions depend on understanding the environmental, economic, social, cultural and physical aspects of the places in which we operate.
Our programme attracts students from across the world and our courses and teaching reflect this. What we see is an exciting exchange of ideas between developed and developing economies that are shaping how all of our built environments will develop.
In our introductory course, Sustainable Theories and Contexts, we look at development in terms of formed and forming cities - looking at the challenge of infrastructure, for instance, and how this impacts in different global cities.
Sustainable Design Methodologies is a core studio course that engages with two very different scales of investigation. We look at the planning of whole settlements and contrast this with a project examining the detail retrofit of buildings. In our retrofit project, students can choose to work in Edinburgh, Dubai and Singaporean climates and therefore gain experience in low impact design in familiar contexts.
You'll complete the masters programme with a research dissertation. This is an opportunity to work on topics relevant to your home environment and your professional development. Past research topics have included:
- Sustainable shrinkage – post industrial urban decline in the former East Germany
- Sustainable retrofit of office buildings in Greece
- Cultural perceptions of concrete in Spain
- Towards a new typology and establishment of ‘air house’ standard in Malaysia
- Sustainability agendas towards social inclusion and equity: a case study of Medellin, Colombia
- Is passivhaus an applicable solution for social housing in Chile?
- What adaptation strategies are relevant to the residential buildings built in 1970s or 1980s in Shanghai, China?