Hi, I’m Rana from Indonesia. I am in my third year of BA Architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture which is a joint course between the University of Manchester and the Manchester Metropolitan University.

You may have heard staff and tutors on Architecture Open Days brag about the benefits of being part of the two universities: the University of Manchester (UoM) and the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). If you are anything like me when I was in your shoes, you may be wondering whether this is true. Well, I am here to let you in on the reality of this. Being a final year BA Architecture student, I have had extensive experience of using the wide variety of facilities and resources that are available to us: students at the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA).

Having recently moved to Manchester Technology Centre (MTC) on Oxford Road, the MSA benefits from newly renovated studio spaces which you are free to use any time within the building’s opening hours, as long as there are no scheduled studio sessions taking place. There is also a dedicated open space called the Co-Works. The new CAD Lab has 60 high-end workstations capable of running any architectural software you may need. These spaces are all free for you to use as long as you have your MMU ID to enter them – they are managed by MMU – and, again, there are no scheduled sessions happening. Also specific to students of MSA, the school regularly holds Employability events to build students’ skills and connect them with potential employers, ADD tutorials for troubleshooting related to computer and software, and many more.

The architecture-specific modelmaking workshop, B15, is located at the University of Manchester campus. You also get access to UoM buildings with great study spaces such as the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons, the Main Library, Stopford, the Student Union, and more. You get to search their extensive library resources online which is always good for essays or dissertations as part of the course. We also regularly get lecturers from UoM staff and researchers.

Rana’s workspace

In addition to the B15 workshop at UoM, there are workshops at MMU which is open for students from any arts course so they may provide different, but equally useful, perspective. I personally find the study spaces at UoM tend to get very busy during certain times of the year. Being an architecture student, we get more options as we also have access to MMU buildings, including the MMU Library, MMU Student Union, the Benzie building, and more; all of which has a number of study spaces. The MMU library has a few sections of computers that can run architectural software in addition to the CAD Lab at MTC. The library resource at MMU is vast with more relevance to art and design, compared to the UoM database which is good for scientific books and journals.

Rana at MMU Library

Specific to architecture, we have a society called the Manchester Student Society of Architecture (MSSA). However, being a part of the two universities, you also get to join other societies from both. My personal favourite is how the two have free sports sessions that you can join, and they sometimes have different schedules and places so you can choose any that is comfortable for you.

If you had any doubt or confusion about the course being part of two universities, I hope this post has helped clear some of it. If anything, this is one of the things that sets MSA apart from other architecture schools.

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