Preparing for your first year
Reading is a vital part of the course, both as part of the course and as part of your personal development as a designer. There are many architectural magazines and journals that are worth reading, such as Building Design, Architectural Review, The Architects Journal, Architecture Today and Domus. Some are worth reading on a regular basis, others only occasionally.
Architectural magazines and journals
Textbook for Design Communication module
- Architecture: Form, Space and Order Francis Ching, John Wiley & Sons; ISBN: 0471286168
Suggested general reading
- Analysing Architecture, Unwin, Simon, London: Routledge, 1997, ISBN 978-0415719162
- Architecture Depends, Jeremy Till, MIT Press, 2009, ISBN: 0262518783
- Architecture Design Notebook, Peter Fawcett, Architectural Press, ISBN: 0330326090
- Architecture, Form, Space & Order, Ching, Francis D. K, John Wiley and Sons, 2014, ISBN 978-1118745083
- Concise Townscape, Gordon Cullen, Routledge, 1961, ISBN: 0750620188
- Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, ISBN: 0099429837
- The Architecture of Happiness, Alain De Botton, Pantheon Books, 2006, ISBN 0241970059
- The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes, Thames and Hudson. ISBN: 0500275823
- Ways of Seeing, John Berger, Penguin Books. ISBN: 0140135154
Computing
A laptop is an essential piece of equipment for your studies. Although we don't recommend specific systems, the following specs should give you good machine to undertake your studies on.
PC Laptop
Processor: Core i7 or Core i9 12th gen or higher, 3ghtz min speed
Storage: 500GB SSD min, 1TB recommended
RAM 16 GB min, 32 GB recommended
4GB dedicated graphics card minimum, 8gb recommended, avoid shared memory graphics.
14 inch Screen minimum, 15 inch or 16 inch recommended
Mac Laptop
Processor: M4 processor, 10-Core CPU 10-Core GPU Minimum
Ram: 16GB Unified Memory min, 32Gb recommended
Storage: 500GB SSD min 1TB recommended
14 inch Screen minimum, 15 or 16 inch recommended
Whichever system you choose, we also recommend 2TB or 4Tb external drive for backing up and storing work, you may also find a 24" or greater monitor useful when working in your accommodation.
We do not recommend Chromebooks, iPads, iPad Pros, MacBook Airs or Android Tablets as suitable for your primary computing device.
With regards software, all students have free access to Microsoft 365, Autodesk and ArchiCAD (architectural design packages), Affinity suite (an alternative to Adobe Creative cloud with similar functionality of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign), SketchUp. Details of how to download software together with other packages available will be given at the start of term.