The Dissertation：An Architecture Students Handbook（Second Edition）Starting.pdf

2 Starting What is a Dissertation? The first thing you need to know about a dissertation is what it is not. Unless you are undertaking a PhD, your dissertation is not going to be like a book, for reasons of time as much as anything else. Consider for one moment that a typical book is commonly something about 80 000 to 100 000 words in length, and can easily take 3 years or more to write and produce – a PhD is about the same. By contrast, a thesis for an MPhil is typically around 40 000 words, and takes 2 years to complete, while a dissertation for a graduate architectural course in the USA or a postgraduate architectural course in the UK can be anything from 5 000 to 25 000 words. In practice, an architectural dissertation is often only around 10 000 words (as with most of the details in this book, you should always check the specific require- ments of your own institution), and has normally to be completed within one academic year, or 9 months. Many students therefore have about the same space and time available as a more experienced author would have to write a single book chapter, or a long article in an academic journal. This sit- uation is even more complex in that many universities will now also accept dissertations that make extensive use of visual material, with some appro- priate amendments then being made to the overall number of words. The dissertation is not, therefore, the appropriate place to try to sum up everything that you have ever thought or believed about architecture – you simply have neither the time, nor the number of words, nor the number of images at your disposal to cram everything in. Instead, the dissertation is a place in which to enquire into an architectural subject which is of interest to yourself. It is a conscious and deliberate attempt to identify, define, explore and articulate a subject of some relevance both to