Architecture, Heritage, and Urban Planning

How can we see cities and their buildings as a means of understanding history and society?

In this course you will examine the everyday built environments of cities in Britain (and beyond). Through careful engagement with architectural history, we can read the planning and development of urban spaces as a reflection of the identities of the social groups who use them. This course explores the hidden histories of both the beautiful and the seemingly banal, comparing the desire to preserve and protect heritage sites with the development of 'Brutalist' urban sprawl. While Oxford is renowned as a medieval place, both the design of the city and many of the Colleges' buildings today are exemplary, ambitious, and creative cases of modernist architectural imagination.

In this course you will explore a wealth of 'behind-the-scenes' sites and resources in Oxford to facilitate your understanding of the built environment, and you will benefit from special access to extraordinary buildings and their designs, working with architects and urban planners and learning from Oxford academics and world-leading experts.

By the end of this course, you will:

• Be able to critically analyse how urban architecture and the built environment reflect and shape historical, political, and social change.
• Be able to compare and contrast differing approaches to heritage, preservation, and urban development.
• Develop a critical vocabulary for discussing contemporary debates over key issues including gentrification, conservation, and preservation.
• Be able to conduct informed, site-specific analysis of the social implications of buildings and urban spaces.

This course would suit a range of students in architecture, history, human geography, sociology, urban planning, and heritage studies.

Available as a Residential course on the following dates:

Session 3: 10th August - 28th August 2026