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The Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture is launching a new Conservation and Reuse programme (MA/PGDip), which will accept its first students in September 2025. The taught postgraduate programme approaches working with existing things from the perspective of climate change, driven by an urgent need to cultivate the careful use and reuse of materials and spaces – from the cathedral to the car park. This is the first new programme to be launched by the school in ten years.
The Conservation and Reuse programme offers Master of Arts (MA) and Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) pathways, with full-time and part-time study options available for each. The AA is now accepting applications for entry to the programme for the 2025–26 academic year. Read more about the programme on the AA website and apply here.
The curriculum of the Conservation and Reuse programme reaches beyond buildings to include landscapes, environments and wider material culture, both tangible and intangible. It explores historical and theoretical frameworks of conservation, encouraging students to engage with questions of value and heritage from a critical standpoint and grounding their work in awareness of the spheres of implication in which objects and buildings are embedded. This enquiry takes place alongside the testing of new and established construction techniques for making and remaking, and a focus on developing practical skills. Students will synthesise this knowledge in a design thesis targeting a situation of their choice, taking responsibility for a rich existing environment and exploring how it could change.
The AA sees the need to equip a new generation of practitioners with the ethical, critical and technical skills to tackle a complex world. This new programme will nurture designers who are able to work with existing things, make beneficial judgements about value and bring about change with precision, optimism and grace.
Programme Heads Amandine Kastler and Rod Heyes said: “There is a pressing need for a new generation of practitioners able to radically reimagine existing structures and situations. We have devised a course full of things we are fascinated by and curious about – combining our interests in material culture with our backgrounds in design practice. The programme is rigorous and will challenge orthodoxy, but it’s also fun and wide-ranging, exploring how contemporary priorities are transforming conservation and reuse. Design is at the heart of the course, and we are looking forward to supporting students to become more knowledgeable and more confident in working with existing things of relative value.”
The AA is holding a Virtual Open Day on Wednesday 6 November from 12–3pm GMT for applicants interested in the school’s taught postgraduate programmes and PhD programme. Register to attend the Open Day here.
