What are Live Projects? A UK term, it refers to collaborations between architecture schools and real clients on real projects. In the US, for example, these are merely referred to as industry collaborations. Clients are widely variant, from municipal governments and youth organizations, as well as galleries and community-based gardens.
There are many iterations of this teaching model in the UK so the issue is, how to determine a good fit for prospective students? One issue that is increasingly at the fore of students’ minds is how to balance idealism with practical skills. At Birmingham City University’sBIAD (Birmingham Institute of Art and Design), the program is structured precisely to help students achieve that balance.
Kevin Singh, Head of School, explains: “CO.LAB is the collective term for our live projects. We have a module [i.e. program] at the undergraduate level (Co-Lab 1), and one for M.Arch (Co-Lab 2). However, many projects are done across the 2 courses with post grads working with undergrads.” Each Co-Lab course is worth 15 credits, which equals a year-long course of 150 hours. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every project will occupy the entire 150 hours because each is different. Rather, these are the total credits one receives for completing a Co-Lab project.
