Our School

We believe students learn best by working in small, highly focused groups around a single tutor or team for an entire year, allowing them to direct their own path through the school.

The AA is a famously independent architectural school. We are self-governed, self-motivated and self-funded. We have a broad commitment to bringing issues of contemporary architecture, cities and the environment to a large public audience, and we remain focused on the highest standards possible for the education of young architects. As a school we are famous not only for our students, teachers and graduates – the essential part of our legacy – but also for the many ways our courses and activities have contributed to improving the conditions of modern architectural learning, practice and knowledge.

The AA School sits entirely outside the UK state funding of higher education. Our flexible, self-directed curricula, combined with our institutional independence and our truly global organisation, afford us a rare degree of awareness, ambition and confidence – all necessary qualities for schools confronting the sweeping social, technological and cultural changes in our world today. By constantly challenging ourselves, we remain confident of our abilities as a school to discover, communicate and disseminate new architectural ideas and projects in ways few other venues – offices, schools or cultural centres – could ever match.

Our Students

The AA’s 167th year, 2016/17, offers an ambitious array of new and returning undergraduate units, established and experimental graduate programmes and public activities.

Outside interest in the school continues at record levels. Never in the long history of the AA have so many candidates sought entrance to the school – as students, as teachers, as visitors and as AA members. Our main school in Bedford Square will number approximately 750 full-time students and 150 tutors, supported by an additional 80 administrative staff.

Sixty per cent of our full-time students study in our RIBA / ARB-validated Undergraduate School. Organised around the AA’s renowned "unit system" of study – year-long unit studios led by unit masters, tutors and collaborators – students in the Undergraduate School work towards RIBA qualifications in architecture. The remaining 40 per cent of our full-time students are enrolled in one of the AA’s 11 Graduate School programmes, pursuing MA, MSc, MFA or MArch degrees. A smaller number study for MPhil or PhD degrees in our most advanced programmes. Globally, our AA Visiting School will again bring together hundreds of part-time students to short-term schools, design workshops and special architectural events across five continents

Student life

Course locations