Inscriptive Practices
BEA MARTIN
ENTER SITE
MOBILE VIEW
HOW TO NAVIGATE
IP Site Symbols
Your key to navigating Inscriptive Practices online.
BOOK A PLACE
FAQ
Go to Homepage
Go to Programme Calendar
Go to More Information
Go to About Bea Martin
Go to Inspiration
Go to Frequently Asked Questions
email Bea Martin
Click to Book a Place Lab / workshop /Seminar
Click to Folow on Instagram
FAQ
INSCRIPTIVE PRACTICES
... is a design and research laboratory, at MSA, that treats drawing, modelling, and making as experimental, inscriptive acts. These practices invent new media and methods, allowing students to think and design architecture on their own terms. It is concerned with the literal and figurative manifestations of ideas, and with how propositional tools can generate hidden and speculative dimensions of architecture.
Follow IP on Instagram
BEA MARTIN
email
FHEA RIBA ARB OASRS
'B' is a British architect, artist, and educator. A Senior Lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture and PhD student at the Bartlett, her work explores the unknown, the unformed, and the not-yet, through speculative drawing, visual studies, and experimental architecture. Founder of Speculative Assemblies, she treats drawing as a living apparatus—an inventive process where architecture is always in flux. With over fifteen years of professional experience, including at Richard Rogers and Partners, Bea’s practice bridges architectural precision with open-ended inquiry, embracing abstraction, ambiguity, and cross-disciplinary encounters to unsettle conventional modes of making and thinking.
CRITICAL CONSTELLATIONS
Perry KULPER
Peter J Baldwin
Ephraim JORIS
Neil LEACH
Nat CHARD
Emma Kate MATTHEWS
Michael CHAPMAN
Clement LAURENCIO
Bryan CANTLEY
Mathew EMMET
Niloufar ALENJERY
Anders ABRAHAM
Neil SPILLER
Ray LUCAS
Fabio BARILARI
Mark DORRIAN
Riet EECKHOUT
Pedro PITARCH
YOU + PEA
Philip BEESLEY
SMOUT ALLEN
Caleb SKENE
Connery FRIESEN
Larissa FASSLER
Michael WEBB
Elis FINNEGAN
Mark Foster GAGE
C J Lim
Peter COOK
Scott TULAY
Drawing Architecture Studio
Thomas PARKER
Daniel K BROWN
Gem Barton
Felix ROBBIINS
Eric WONG
Adrian LABAUT
Mark WEST
Hazem TALAAT
George THEMISTOKLEOUS
Michael YOUNG
Thom MAYNE
Stefan LENGEN
Chiara BUGATTI
Jerome TRYON
Tomás SARACENO
Brian M KELLY
Cesare BATTELLI
Architects, artists, makers, theorists and educators whose work sparks new methods and tools.
MONDAY 6 OCTOBER
LAB I
Worlds Before Worlds
An introduction to Inscriptive Practices as a laboratory of invention, positioning architecture as thought practice, experimental method, and speculative ethos. Readings from Michael Polanyi, Gaston Bachelard, Donna Haraway, John Cage, and Vilém Flusser frame questions of tacit knowledge, imagination, chance, and apparatuses as engines of thought, alongside precedents from Nat Chard, Perry Kulper, Bryan Cantley, Riet Eeckhout, Neil Spiller, Michael Webb. Afternoon workshops use quick-fire provocations (20–30 mins) to build a toolkit of methods: materialising words with pen, paper, string, collage, or objects, and a Blind Composite exercise where paired drawings are exchanged in silence. Reflection asks how fragments and marks become negotiations between logics.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
What does it mean to invent a practice?
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Inscriptive Acts
BOOK A PLACE
MONDAY 13 OCTOBER
LAB II
Composite Realities
This lab explores the composite as more than collage — a method of holding fragments together without collapsing them into one system. Readings from Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, Donna Haraway, and Daniel Libskind frame the composite as a space where contradiction and multiplicity thrive. Precedents from El Lissitzky, Gordon Matta-Clark, Hannah Höch, FELD Studio, time[scape]lab and Superstudio show how composites generate knowledge and resist singular interpretation. Afternoon workshops build layered surfaces, speculative collages, and composite narratives, producing drawings that stage multiple logics and contradictions.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
The Logic of the Composite
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Making Composite Worlds
BOOK A PLACE
MONDAY 24 NOVEMBER
LAB III
Fables for Architecture
This lab explores architecture as story: how allegory embeds hidden meanings, double logics, and parallel worlds in design. Readings from Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Schumacher, and Roland Barthes frame allegory as a way of thinking beyond function. Precedents from John Hejduk, Bosch, Bruegel, William Dutoit and William Kentridge show how drawings stage manifesto, myths, atmospheres, and characters. Afternoon workshops develop allegorical maps, spatial characters, and nonlinear storyboards, producing narrative constructs that treat architecture as fable.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
The Architecture of Allegory
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Drawing the Fable
BOOK A PLACE
MONDAY 1 DECEMBER
LAB IV
Speculative Assemblies
This session rethinks assembly not as beams and joints but as constellations of fragments, atmospheres, and stories. Readings from Deleuze & Guattari, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, and John Cage frame assemblies as speculative, affective, and non-hierarchical. Precedents from Perry Kulper, Bryan Cantley, Joseph Cornell, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Luke Lupton show how assemblies generate thought without resolving contradictions. Afternoon workshops guide students through building speculative assemblies from fragments, translating them into hybrid models and relationship-drawings that capture resonance, tension, and polyphony.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
Assemblies Beyond Tectonics
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Constructing Speculative Assemblies
BOOK A PLACE
MONDAY 8 DECEMBER
LAB V
Drawing Otherwise
This session explores drawing as a speculative act — a tool for research, provocation, and world-making rather than mere representation. Readings from Paul Klee, Michael Young, John Berger, and Penelope Haralambidou frame drawing as gesture, vision, force, and interpretation. Precedents from Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock, Niel Spiller, Julie Mehretu, Ephraim Joris, and Henri Michaux demonstrate how drawing can discover, propose, and perform. Afternoon workshops test methods of “drawing otherwise” — from gestural and automatic marks to sound translations, awkward constraints, and content-driven techniques — generating portfolios of experimental drawings that privilege invention over illustration.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
Drawing as Invention, Not Illustration
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Drawing Otherwise
BOOK A PLACE
IP PROGRAMME FALL 2025
FAQ
MON 1 DEC
MON 24 NOV
MON 10 NOV
MON 3 NOV
MON 8 DEC
WEEK 27-31 OCT
MON 20 OCT
MON 13 OCT
MON 6 OCT
MON 15 DEC
TUTORIALS
MON 17 NOV
TUTORIALS
LAB IV
LAB III
LAB V
WORKSHOP
WORKSHOP
WORKSHOP
LAB II
LAB I
VISIT
Worlds Before Worlds
Speculative Assemblies
Drawing Otherwise
Fables for Architecture
Materialising the Invisible
Composite Realities
Materialising the Invisible
Visiting Professor
Materialising the Invisible
Perry Kulper
w/ MATT AULT
w/ MATT AULT
w/ MATT AULT
BOOK A PLACE
WORKSHOP
Three-Day Studio Commitment
Materialising the Invisible
Day 1 — OBSERVATION & NOTATION
Monday 20th October
Led by Bea Martin (Inscriptive Practices) & Matt Ault (Digital Design + Fabrication)
We begin with looking closely. Through seminars and workshops, you will learn to observe, measure, and decode organic specimens — turning the invisible logics of growth and structure into drawings. Using sectioning, notation, and iterative redrawing, we will explore how error, ambiguity, and process can open new ways of thinking.
Architecture is not only about what we can already see or build — it’s also about the hidden logics, speculative ideas, and invisible structures that shape it. In this workshop, you will explore how concepts become physical. Over three days, you will move between drawing, diagramming, digital modelling, and making, turning abstract ideas into material experiments. The focus isn’t on producing a polished final project, but on testing processes, embracing uncertainty, and creating a portfolio of studies that push architecture into new territory.
Day 2 — TRANSLATION & TESTING
Monday 3rd November
From drawing to modelling, we shift into transformation. Diagrams become rules, codes, and operations that translate line into surface, and surface into form. Using analogue and digital tools, you will test how rotation, scaling, mirroring, and aggregation can generate new spatial languages.
Final Output
- A bound process book: drawings, diagrams, models, notations, photographs of prototypes.
- Fabricated fragments: physical pieces embodying the translation from invisible principle to material form – including errors and rough tests.
- A final exhibition: process-based display showcasing the experimental journey + conversation.
Day 3 — FABRICATION & PROTOTYPING
Monday 10th November
This workshop is about pushing you beyond imitation and into invention. You will learn to treat uncertainty as a strength, mistakes as discoveries, and drawings as engines for new ideas. Along the way, you will build skills in drawing, modelling, and fabrication — but just as importantly, you will develop curiosity, resilience, and the confidence to work with the unknown. The goal is not to repeat what architecture already knows, but to materialise what we cannot yet see — and that starts with you.
Ideas take material form. Working with digital fabrication, you will prototype one fragment, moving from digital translation to physical artefact. The process is as important as the outcome — documenting how the invisible becomes visible, and how a drawing becomes matter.
email B
email Matt
or
For more details
This coming year we are delighted to welcome Professor Perry Kulper back to the Manchester School of Architecture for his second visit as Visiting Professor with Inscriptive Practices.
Perry’s extraordinary body of work has transformed how we think about architectural drawing. Layered, speculative, and deeply imaginative, his drawings unfold as fictional narratives, cartographies of possibility, and poetic scores — not representations of architecture, but instruments for imagining what architecture could become. His return gives us another chance to learn from one of the most influential figures in experimental representation — a perfect fit for Inscriptive Practices, where drawing is both method and mission. We look forward to a week of provocations, risk, and invention.
Perry Kulper
Follow Perry on Instagram
VISITING PROFESSOR
This year's visit
27-31 OCTOBER
stay tune for details!
FAQ
Inscriptive Practices (IP)
is a design and research laboratory at the MSA that treats drawing, modelling, and making not only as ways of representing architecture, but as ways of discovering it. IP focuses on helping you develop your own experimental practice: the methods, tools, and media through which you think and design. You will be encouraged to take risks, to speculate, and to embrace the unknown. This means working with methods that are unusual, sometimes awkward, but always generative. Labs and workshop exercises often begin not with a fixed idea of what architecture should look like, but with a question, an experiment, or a tool that provokes unexpected outcomes. Inscriptive Practices is less interested in diagrams that explain ideas and more in the literal and figurative manifestations that produce them. The work of the lab is grounded in rigour — every experiment should reveal a precise relationship between concept and technique.
By taking part in IP’s ongoing labs, students will have the opportunity to:__ Invent or refine their own drawing or making methods.__ Use these to explore hidden logics, speculative worlds, and alternative forms of architecture.__ Learn how to situate their work within contemporary discourse through exhibitions, publications, and collaborative events. Participation in IP’s labs is open and ongoing — students are invited to engage as much as they wish. The more you experiment, the more you will cultivate your own growth and practice.
Follow IP on Instagram
FAQ
email B for more details
What kind of work comes out of IP?
What is IP?
Labs often generate drawings, models and artefacts that lead to publications and exhibitions. All can be used to strengthen your portfolio.
Inscriptive Practices (IP) is a design and research laboratory at the MSA. It explores drawing, modelling, and making not only as ways of representing architecture, but as ways of discovering it.
How does IP connect to studio work?
Why is IP important for students?
IP runs independently from your design studio, offering methods and tools you can apply to your studio projects, helping you expand the way you design and think.
IP gives you space to take risks, test unusual methods, and develop your own experimental practice. By working with inventive tools and media, you will learn to question conventions, uncover hidden logics, and produce rigorous, original work that can enrich your portfolio.
What is a seminar in IP?
Who is IP for?
For each seminar in a lab, students are given a set of readings. You do not need to read everything — just pick up on something and bring it to the group. A seminar in IP is a conversation, not a lecture: a chance to exchange thoughts and explore ideas together.
IP is open to all MSA students who want to push their critical thinking, methodologies, and tooling. It is especially for those willing to speculate, experiment, and embrace the unknown. No prior experience is needed — only curiosity and a readiness to learn from getting things wrong.
How do I book a place on a lab?
Click the Book link to access the form. Places are limited to 15 students and allocated on a first come, first served basis. If you get a place, a confirmation email with the lab brief will follow. Please book only if confident you can attend, so that others also have the chance to take part.
When and where do labs run?
Labs take place on Mondays in MTC Studio C.
What should I bring?
How do I book an individual tutorial?
Normally your laptop and/or traditional marking tools. Depending on the workshop, specific materials may be advised.
Email: Bea Martin at b.martin@mmu.ac.ukIndividual tutorials are normally held on Wednesdays or Thursdays.
MSA Inscriptive Practices
Bea Martin
Created on September 9, 2025
Start designing with a free template
Discover more than 1500 professional designs like these:
View
Vision Board
View
Periodic Table
View
SWOT Challenge: Classify Key Factors
View
Explainer Video: Keys to Effective Communication
View
Explainer Video: AI for Companies
View
Corporate CV
View
Flow Presentation
Explore all templates
Transcript
Inscriptive Practices
BEA MARTIN
ENTER SITE
MOBILE VIEW
HOW TO NAVIGATE
IP Site Symbols
Your key to navigating Inscriptive Practices online.
BOOK A PLACE
FAQ
Go to Homepage
Go to Programme Calendar
Go to More Information
Go to About Bea Martin
Go to Inspiration
Go to Frequently Asked Questions
email Bea Martin
Click to Book a Place Lab / workshop /Seminar
Click to Folow on Instagram
FAQ
INSCRIPTIVE PRACTICES
... is a design and research laboratory, at MSA, that treats drawing, modelling, and making as experimental, inscriptive acts. These practices invent new media and methods, allowing students to think and design architecture on their own terms. It is concerned with the literal and figurative manifestations of ideas, and with how propositional tools can generate hidden and speculative dimensions of architecture.
Follow IP on Instagram
BEA MARTIN
email
FHEA RIBA ARB OASRS
'B' is a British architect, artist, and educator. A Senior Lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture and PhD student at the Bartlett, her work explores the unknown, the unformed, and the not-yet, through speculative drawing, visual studies, and experimental architecture. Founder of Speculative Assemblies, she treats drawing as a living apparatus—an inventive process where architecture is always in flux. With over fifteen years of professional experience, including at Richard Rogers and Partners, Bea’s practice bridges architectural precision with open-ended inquiry, embracing abstraction, ambiguity, and cross-disciplinary encounters to unsettle conventional modes of making and thinking.
CRITICAL CONSTELLATIONS
Perry KULPER
Peter J Baldwin
Ephraim JORIS
Neil LEACH
Nat CHARD
Emma Kate MATTHEWS
Michael CHAPMAN
Clement LAURENCIO
Bryan CANTLEY
Mathew EMMET
Niloufar ALENJERY
Anders ABRAHAM
Neil SPILLER
Ray LUCAS
Fabio BARILARI
Mark DORRIAN
Riet EECKHOUT
Pedro PITARCH
YOU + PEA
Philip BEESLEY
SMOUT ALLEN
Caleb SKENE
Connery FRIESEN
Larissa FASSLER
Michael WEBB
Elis FINNEGAN
Mark Foster GAGE
C J Lim
Peter COOK
Scott TULAY
Drawing Architecture Studio
Thomas PARKER
Daniel K BROWN
Gem Barton
Felix ROBBIINS
Eric WONG
Adrian LABAUT
Mark WEST
Hazem TALAAT
George THEMISTOKLEOUS
Michael YOUNG
Thom MAYNE
Stefan LENGEN
Chiara BUGATTI
Jerome TRYON
Tomás SARACENO
Brian M KELLY
Cesare BATTELLI
Architects, artists, makers, theorists and educators whose work sparks new methods and tools.
MONDAY 6 OCTOBER
LAB I
Worlds Before Worlds
An introduction to Inscriptive Practices as a laboratory of invention, positioning architecture as thought practice, experimental method, and speculative ethos. Readings from Michael Polanyi, Gaston Bachelard, Donna Haraway, John Cage, and Vilém Flusser frame questions of tacit knowledge, imagination, chance, and apparatuses as engines of thought, alongside precedents from Nat Chard, Perry Kulper, Bryan Cantley, Riet Eeckhout, Neil Spiller, Michael Webb. Afternoon workshops use quick-fire provocations (20–30 mins) to build a toolkit of methods: materialising words with pen, paper, string, collage, or objects, and a Blind Composite exercise where paired drawings are exchanged in silence. Reflection asks how fragments and marks become negotiations between logics.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
What does it mean to invent a practice?
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Inscriptive Acts
BOOK A PLACE
MONDAY 13 OCTOBER
LAB II
Composite Realities
This lab explores the composite as more than collage — a method of holding fragments together without collapsing them into one system. Readings from Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, Donna Haraway, and Daniel Libskind frame the composite as a space where contradiction and multiplicity thrive. Precedents from El Lissitzky, Gordon Matta-Clark, Hannah Höch, FELD Studio, time[scape]lab and Superstudio show how composites generate knowledge and resist singular interpretation. Afternoon workshops build layered surfaces, speculative collages, and composite narratives, producing drawings that stage multiple logics and contradictions.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
The Logic of the Composite
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Making Composite Worlds
BOOK A PLACE
MONDAY 24 NOVEMBER
LAB III
Fables for Architecture
This lab explores architecture as story: how allegory embeds hidden meanings, double logics, and parallel worlds in design. Readings from Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Schumacher, and Roland Barthes frame allegory as a way of thinking beyond function. Precedents from John Hejduk, Bosch, Bruegel, William Dutoit and William Kentridge show how drawings stage manifesto, myths, atmospheres, and characters. Afternoon workshops develop allegorical maps, spatial characters, and nonlinear storyboards, producing narrative constructs that treat architecture as fable.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
The Architecture of Allegory
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Drawing the Fable
BOOK A PLACE
MONDAY 1 DECEMBER
LAB IV
Speculative Assemblies
This session rethinks assembly not as beams and joints but as constellations of fragments, atmospheres, and stories. Readings from Deleuze & Guattari, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, and John Cage frame assemblies as speculative, affective, and non-hierarchical. Precedents from Perry Kulper, Bryan Cantley, Joseph Cornell, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Luke Lupton show how assemblies generate thought without resolving contradictions. Afternoon workshops guide students through building speculative assemblies from fragments, translating them into hybrid models and relationship-drawings that capture resonance, tension, and polyphony.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
Assemblies Beyond Tectonics
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Constructing Speculative Assemblies
BOOK A PLACE
MONDAY 8 DECEMBER
LAB V
Drawing Otherwise
This session explores drawing as a speculative act — a tool for research, provocation, and world-making rather than mere representation. Readings from Paul Klee, Michael Young, John Berger, and Penelope Haralambidou frame drawing as gesture, vision, force, and interpretation. Precedents from Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock, Niel Spiller, Julie Mehretu, Ephraim Joris, and Henri Michaux demonstrate how drawing can discover, propose, and perform. Afternoon workshops test methods of “drawing otherwise” — from gestural and automatic marks to sound translations, awkward constraints, and content-driven techniques — generating portfolios of experimental drawings that privilege invention over illustration.
Morning Seminar 11:30-12:30
Drawing as Invention, Not Illustration
Afternoon Workshop 14:00-16:30
Drawing Otherwise
BOOK A PLACE
IP PROGRAMME FALL 2025
FAQ
MON 1 DEC
MON 24 NOV
MON 10 NOV
MON 3 NOV
MON 8 DEC
WEEK 27-31 OCT
MON 20 OCT
MON 13 OCT
MON 6 OCT
MON 15 DEC
TUTORIALS
MON 17 NOV
TUTORIALS
LAB IV
LAB III
LAB V
WORKSHOP
WORKSHOP
WORKSHOP
LAB II
LAB I
VISIT
Worlds Before Worlds
Speculative Assemblies
Drawing Otherwise
Fables for Architecture
Materialising the Invisible
Composite Realities
Materialising the Invisible
Visiting Professor
Materialising the Invisible
Perry Kulper
w/ MATT AULT
w/ MATT AULT
w/ MATT AULT
BOOK A PLACE
WORKSHOP
Three-Day Studio Commitment
Materialising the Invisible
Day 1 — OBSERVATION & NOTATION
Monday 20th October
Led by Bea Martin (Inscriptive Practices) & Matt Ault (Digital Design + Fabrication)
We begin with looking closely. Through seminars and workshops, you will learn to observe, measure, and decode organic specimens — turning the invisible logics of growth and structure into drawings. Using sectioning, notation, and iterative redrawing, we will explore how error, ambiguity, and process can open new ways of thinking.
Architecture is not only about what we can already see or build — it’s also about the hidden logics, speculative ideas, and invisible structures that shape it. In this workshop, you will explore how concepts become physical. Over three days, you will move between drawing, diagramming, digital modelling, and making, turning abstract ideas into material experiments. The focus isn’t on producing a polished final project, but on testing processes, embracing uncertainty, and creating a portfolio of studies that push architecture into new territory.
Day 2 — TRANSLATION & TESTING
Monday 3rd November
From drawing to modelling, we shift into transformation. Diagrams become rules, codes, and operations that translate line into surface, and surface into form. Using analogue and digital tools, you will test how rotation, scaling, mirroring, and aggregation can generate new spatial languages.
Final Output
Day 3 — FABRICATION & PROTOTYPING
Monday 10th November
This workshop is about pushing you beyond imitation and into invention. You will learn to treat uncertainty as a strength, mistakes as discoveries, and drawings as engines for new ideas. Along the way, you will build skills in drawing, modelling, and fabrication — but just as importantly, you will develop curiosity, resilience, and the confidence to work with the unknown. The goal is not to repeat what architecture already knows, but to materialise what we cannot yet see — and that starts with you.
Ideas take material form. Working with digital fabrication, you will prototype one fragment, moving from digital translation to physical artefact. The process is as important as the outcome — documenting how the invisible becomes visible, and how a drawing becomes matter.
email B
email Matt
or
For more details
This coming year we are delighted to welcome Professor Perry Kulper back to the Manchester School of Architecture for his second visit as Visiting Professor with Inscriptive Practices. Perry’s extraordinary body of work has transformed how we think about architectural drawing. Layered, speculative, and deeply imaginative, his drawings unfold as fictional narratives, cartographies of possibility, and poetic scores — not representations of architecture, but instruments for imagining what architecture could become. His return gives us another chance to learn from one of the most influential figures in experimental representation — a perfect fit for Inscriptive Practices, where drawing is both method and mission. We look forward to a week of provocations, risk, and invention.
Perry Kulper
Follow Perry on Instagram
VISITING PROFESSOR
This year's visit
27-31 OCTOBER
stay tune for details!
FAQ
Inscriptive Practices (IP)
is a design and research laboratory at the MSA that treats drawing, modelling, and making not only as ways of representing architecture, but as ways of discovering it. IP focuses on helping you develop your own experimental practice: the methods, tools, and media through which you think and design. You will be encouraged to take risks, to speculate, and to embrace the unknown. This means working with methods that are unusual, sometimes awkward, but always generative. Labs and workshop exercises often begin not with a fixed idea of what architecture should look like, but with a question, an experiment, or a tool that provokes unexpected outcomes. Inscriptive Practices is less interested in diagrams that explain ideas and more in the literal and figurative manifestations that produce them. The work of the lab is grounded in rigour — every experiment should reveal a precise relationship between concept and technique.
By taking part in IP’s ongoing labs, students will have the opportunity to:__ Invent or refine their own drawing or making methods.__ Use these to explore hidden logics, speculative worlds, and alternative forms of architecture.__ Learn how to situate their work within contemporary discourse through exhibitions, publications, and collaborative events. Participation in IP’s labs is open and ongoing — students are invited to engage as much as they wish. The more you experiment, the more you will cultivate your own growth and practice.
Follow IP on Instagram
FAQ
email B for more details
What kind of work comes out of IP?
What is IP?
Labs often generate drawings, models and artefacts that lead to publications and exhibitions. All can be used to strengthen your portfolio.
Inscriptive Practices (IP) is a design and research laboratory at the MSA. It explores drawing, modelling, and making not only as ways of representing architecture, but as ways of discovering it.
How does IP connect to studio work?
Why is IP important for students?
IP runs independently from your design studio, offering methods and tools you can apply to your studio projects, helping you expand the way you design and think.
IP gives you space to take risks, test unusual methods, and develop your own experimental practice. By working with inventive tools and media, you will learn to question conventions, uncover hidden logics, and produce rigorous, original work that can enrich your portfolio.
What is a seminar in IP?
Who is IP for?
For each seminar in a lab, students are given a set of readings. You do not need to read everything — just pick up on something and bring it to the group. A seminar in IP is a conversation, not a lecture: a chance to exchange thoughts and explore ideas together.
IP is open to all MSA students who want to push their critical thinking, methodologies, and tooling. It is especially for those willing to speculate, experiment, and embrace the unknown. No prior experience is needed — only curiosity and a readiness to learn from getting things wrong.
How do I book a place on a lab?
Click the Book link to access the form. Places are limited to 15 students and allocated on a first come, first served basis. If you get a place, a confirmation email with the lab brief will follow. Please book only if confident you can attend, so that others also have the chance to take part.
When and where do labs run?
Labs take place on Mondays in MTC Studio C.
What should I bring?
How do I book an individual tutorial?
Normally your laptop and/or traditional marking tools. Depending on the workshop, specific materials may be advised.
Email: Bea Martin at b.martin@mmu.ac.ukIndividual tutorials are normally held on Wednesdays or Thursdays.