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At 09:08 AM 1/12/2003 +1100, Kerry London wrote: >In particular - our second degree in the architecture program our fifth >year students do a year long project which is accompanied by a Design >Report (5-7 chapters). This looks to me as a building type study. If it is done with the sole purpose to assist the design project, it usually doesn't keep to the standards and norms of scholarly activity. >I have been finding it difficult to distinguish the difference between a >high quality 'undergraduate' project and a Masters project. It seems to me that modern tertiary education has deteriorated so much that soon we will have difficulty to distinguish the difference between a high quality 'undergraduate' project and a doctoral project. >My first email did not specifically say I was concerned about an >architectural design thesis - In some countries an architectural doctoral dissertation may be a building type study/design guide performed to very high standards. In such cases it is not necessary to design something and actually it is not necessary. The study puts together the principles and elements of the building type. The purpose is to produce a high-quality design guide. Such dissertations are not hold in very high esteem by colleagues specializing in semiotics and philosophy of architecture. However, they are very useful to designers and often become best-seller design guidebooks. Another interesting genre in architecture covers the structural aspects. The dissertations can deal with structural typologies in relation to their utilization, implications of structures to building image, as well as more engineering issues. If memory serves, Calatrava got his doctorate in structures with a heavy emphasis on civil engineering. Regards, Lubomir Popov