There is a newfound interest in architectural education. This AD is a survey of some of the best contemporary architecture student work in the world. The most forward-looking architecture schools worldwide are reinventing pedagogy in the hope of developing radical syllabi that are a rich mix of the virtual and the actual. Design education is changing and adapting to compensate for the new material changes to the discipline, and is being used to disentangle old, outmoded spatial practices and replace them with new paradigms of space and representation. This issue showcases the students and teachers who are pushing the envelope of architecture in extraordinary ways, offering their insights into its future materiality and spatial dexterity. It premieres a new young generation of architects who are likely to become names in the architectural profession and possibly important teachers themselves. Their work has been selected by their own influential teachers of architecture who describe the studio methodologies - and reasons for them - that prompted the work. Contributors: Daniel K Brown, Jane Burry, Nat Chard, Odile Decq, Evan Douglis, Riet Eeckhout, Mark Garcia, Nicolas Hannequin, Perry Kulper, Elena Manferdini, Mark Morris, Hani Rashid, and Michael Young. Featured institutions: A Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan; Architectural Association, London; Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London; Carleton University, Ottawa; CONFLUENCE Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, Paris; Cooper Union, New York; University of Greenwich, London; KU Leuven, Belgium; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York; Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles; Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne; Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna

We are entering a new era of architecture that is technologically enhanced, virtual and synthetic. Contemporary architects operate in a creative environment that is both real and digital; mixed, augmented and hybridised. This world consists of ecstasies, fears, fetishisms and phantoms, processes and spatiality that can best be described as Surrealist. Though too long dormant, Surrealism has been a significant cultural force in modern architecture. Founded by poet Andre Breton in Paris in 1924 as an artistic, intellectual and literary movement, architects such as Le Corbusier, Diller + Scofidio, Bernard Tschumi and John Hejduk realised its evocative powers to propel them to 'starchitect' status. Rem Koolhaas most famously illustrated Delirious New York (1978) with Madelon Vriesendorp's compelling Surrealist images. Architects are now reviving the power of Surrealism to inspire and explore the ramifications of advanced technology. Architects' studios in practices and schools are becoming places where nothing is forbidden. Architectural languages and theories are 'mashed' together, approaches are permissively appropriated, and styles are not mutually exclusive. Projects are polemic, postmodern and surreally media savvy. Today's architects must compose space that operates across the spatial spectrum. Surrealism, with its multiple readings of the city, its collage semiotics, its extruded forms and artificial landscapes, is an ideal source for contemporary architectural inspiration. Contributors include: Bryan Cantley, Nic Clear, James Eagle, Natalie Gall, Mark Morris, Dagmar Motycka Weston, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Shaun Murray, Anthony Vidler, and Elizabeth Anne Williams. Featured architects: Nigel Coates, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Perry Kulper, and Mark West.

AHMM is a premier international architectural practice. Established over 30 years ago, it has won numerous awards including the Stirling Prize. Through the contributions of journalists, clients, fellow professionals and academics, this AD issue celebrates the practice's achievements in all areas of architectural production, featuring archive material, new works and unparalleled access to the AHMM organisation, revealing new insights into their work and urban philosophies. To get to this eminent position, the office has consistently responded in innovative and imaginative ways to the changing imperatives of art, science and economics that influence our built environment. These parameters have metamorphosed considerably since AHMM was founded, in terms of advances in digitisation, material science and changes to contract management, what constitutes sustainability, procurement routes, construction methods, collaboration and architectural education. Above all this AD will explore AHMM's practice as a holistic design project in itself, in terms of building buildings, but also in using a design ethos to cope with shifts in workload and the firm's varying business activities and its administration over the years, thus providing insight for a future generation of potentially successful architectural professionals.