This PhD examines the transformation of architectural education and practice in post-war Britain through an institutional biography of the Royal College of Art (RCA) architecture department. Using forensic archival analysis, biographical studies of unsung actors and oral history interviews, it studies the RCA’s role in the emergence of practice-led and interdisciplinary pedagogies, situating their development in the evolvement of built-environment discourses and the decline of ‘public-service’ architecture.

The politics of architectural education and professionalism has been a recurring research topic since the 1958 Oxford Conference (Zamarian, 2019), which made universities sole providers of architectural training. Despite growing significance in current professional education, historical accounts of these pedagogies remain scarce. This PhD addresses this gap by critically examining how changing economic and socio-political conditions influenced the evolution of these pedagogies after the 1951 Festival of Britain until the late twentieth century.

The RCA serves as the appropriate case study to examine the connection of pedagogy, professionalism and practice, including in relation too their architectural schools across Britain. Unlike 1950s beaux-arts and polytechnic models, the RCA combined its institutional tradition of fine arts with its role as a government-affiliated institution tasked with fostering innovation in design. Its pedagogical model of ‘design for industry’ and ‘design with impact’ (Casson, 1951) responded directly to post-war industrial and social challenges along with changing legislation and professional guidelines.Its influence extended beyond practice-led pedagogical innovations, playing a critical role in reshaping the social responsibilities of built-environment professions and the formation of education-industry partnerships and engaging with pressing post-war issues, including redevelopment, conservation, housing safety and public-sector decline.