The Manchester School of Architecture is consistently ranked as one of the best architecture schools in the UK. With over 100 years of educational experience, we have strong links with national and international architectural practices. Our architectural research is carried out within the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC) and looks beyond technical design to the complex processes and practices that run through the development, adaptation and use of built environments. Our staff engage with research projects throughout the world, including the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, South East Asia and the US. At MARC we set ourselves the mission of critically traversing the disciplinary boundaries of architecture and the social sciences to open up new areas of architectural research, create new standards of architectural pedagogy, and craft a new conceptual language to inform and influence urban policy. Research focuses on social studies of architecture, architectural history and theory, the politics of urban infrastructure and networks of architectural expertise. What affords this mission is MARC's unique institutional setting: it is hosted both by The University of Manchester at the School of Environment, Education and Development, and by the Manchester School of Architecture, a joint School with the Manchester Metropolitan University. This allows MARC to benefit from synergies with Planning and Environmental Management, Geography, and a number of other humanities disciplines, and at the same time from engagements with the production of architectural knowledge in the context of an architectural school. Making connections between these disciplines and practices, MARC has developed a distinctive expertise based on theoretical experimentation, methodological rigour, empirical attention, and hands-on studies of architectural practice, building technology, and techniques of architectural representation and mapping.