Crompton, E., 2023.

Playing The Long Game: Challenging Structural Inequities in Undergraduate Architecture

Playing The Long Game: Challenging Structural Inequities of Entry to Undergraduate Architecture
At Manchester School of Architecture, we are launching a new Foundation course, a year zero. This comes at an interesting time for Architectural Education, with ARB and RIBA reviewing the structures of education of our future professionals, with an apparent desire to make the profession more diverse and education routes accessible to a wider range of people. But while ARB are seeking to simplify routes to accreditation, it is questionable if such changes will make the profession more diverse in practice.
This paper will look at equity in terms of who is given access to traditional architectural courses provided in higher education institutions, as well as the values which lie behind curriculum design, assessment, and student experience.
In designing the Foundation, student experience was central, and a concerted effort has been made to not rely on tried and tested pedagogy, subjects, and reference points. But rather then radically denounce existing fundamentals, the course attempts to intersperse questioning, critical enquiry, as well as introducing wider issues affecting architecture. The aim being to find out the architect (person) they want to become and to support the development of critically aware and creative future (humans) architects, wherever they go following graduation.
Increasing the diversity of our cohort at undergraduate is exactly the motivation for creating an Architecture specific Foundation year. The Foundation aims to recruit solely from groups traditionally underrepresented in Architectural education. It has taken two years to obtain full approval, navigating not one but two institutions' systems governing recruitment, admissions, eligibility criteria, curriculum and assessments.
What is clear is that architectural education will continue to be delivered at HE institutions. The question is, are they willing and able to accommodate the structural change required to shift who is admitted to those courses, if we are to shift the characteristics of who gets to become an Architect. At Manchester we are "Playing the Long Game", in the hope that slowly but surely, we transform our cohorts into ones that full represent all communities from Manchester, Greater Manchester and the UK.