Bachelor of Applied Architecture

Melbourne Polytechnic runs credit points the way most Victorian TAFEs do - 12 credit points per subject, 96 per full-time year - and the Applied Architecture degree uses that structure to move students through architectural software, design studio work and sustainability principles at a pace that assumes no prior design background. It's aimed at people who want to work in architectural practice as designers and documenters, not necessarily become registered architects through the traditional five-year-plus pathway.

Studio culture here is smaller and more hands-on than what you'd get at a large university architecture school - critiques happen in rooms of a dozen or so rather than lecture halls of 200, and staff are often practising architects or building designers rather than purely academic researchers. The course threads environmental sustainability principles and responses to natural and built environments through the design studios rather than treating sustainability as a bolt-on unit.

Graduates commonly move into architectural technologist, building designer and documentation roles within practices, or continue into further architecture study if registration is the eventual goal.