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LONDON, UK
A new architecture school seeks to unite practitioners and students in the shared pursuits of innovative design and critical research, writes Will Hunter
?Mission creep' is the phrase that springs to mind. To expand a project beyond its original objective is to walk a ?dangerous path' that only ends ?when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs'. So warns Wikipedia. And yet despite this scary advice, it can be fun to move the goalposts if you see a sunnier spot on the pitch.
In these pages last year I wrote ?Alternative Routes for Architecture' (AR October 2012), a piece about the challenges facing architectural education in Britain. The article also launched a research group under the same name (abbreviated to ARFA) to look into different educational models, and - as a think tank would - make a report. At some point the purpose changed from exploring to enacting. It became clear that, instead of analysing different models in an abstract way, it would be more fruitful to test one properly by trying to make it happen. Now, 12 months on, the London School of Architecture is born.
Our starting point was a simple one: how can you make architectural education lower cost and better value? The first so that the profession is an affordable career for talented students to enter; and the second so that graduates are well equipped with the intellectual creative capital and the core competencies to shape the built environment in the 21st century. We didn't want what we were doing to be an attack on other schools of architecture, many (if not most) of whom are asking exactly the same questions. But we did...