Dezeen Magazine

RCA architecture course to move away from "paper architecture" - new dean

Dezeen Wire: new Royal College of Art dean of architecture Alex de Rijke will steer students away from proposing unrealisable "paper architecture" and instead focus on how their ideas could be built (+ movie).

In an interview with Dezeen at the RCA Show 2012 last month, de Rijke said: "Historically [at the RCA] there's always been a very strong agenda on paper architecture - the speculative, the work that is provocative but not necessarily make-able."

In future, "Students will be encouraged to speculate not just about future uses or programmes or places, but actually speculate about how they will be built," de Rijke says. "Material experiment will very much become part of the course."

De Rijke, of UK firm dRMM, was appointed to the role in September 2011 following the retirement of Nigel Coates in May.

Watch him give a tour of work by this year's graduates in our other movie filmed with him at the show and see all our coverage of Show RCA 2012 here.

Movie: tour of Architecture at Show RCA 2012
with Alex de Rijke

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