In order to be effective, architects must connect what they design with how they feel about the world. They must mobilize their identity and personal resources in the service of what they believe not what they are told to believe by the mediated world of high architectural culture and education. As a diploma/MA student you have an obligation to explore the limits of your personal design identity and develop certainties that are capable of sustaining you in practice. This is a unique privilege.
The Free Unit will help you do this by offering an alternative to the traditional studio programme - giving you the opportunity to propose, develop and realize independent projects or to become involved in your own live projects supported by the professional infrastructure of ASD projects.
The emphasis is on your personal position. So each student develops a detailed "contract" with themselves and the Free Unit detailing how, when what and where. Then each student is helped to identify external tutors and is given support to develop a personal tutorial team, what the studio calls your "friends". These ten friends are involved in directing, judging and finally assessing your work.
In recent years students have carried out projects, which emphasise their personal histories, often returning to places they have known or wish to work in in the future. The results have been moving and deeply felt and for many have become the basis of their future practice.
