The Architecture Foundation has launched a free schools database to help students discover architecture schools and their research projects.

The Architecture Schools Database is a free-to-access platform that provides a fully searchable collated list of every educational facility in the UK that teaches architecture.

It also has a function for academics and current students to register an account and set up profiles to display their research projects and design studios.

Users can filter their search by school, course, research theme, design project site and year. The database is intended to provide architecture students with a place to show their work, and give prospective students a tool to help them make an informed choice about where to study.

"The culture of architecture schools tends to be highly siloed," said the Architecture Foundation's deputy director and Dezeen Opinion columnist Phineas Harper, who led the creation of the database.

"It is often impossible to see the points of connection between different institutions prior to the end of year exhibitions by which time the opportunity for dialogue and collaboration has passed," he added.

"Even something as simple as two units who are looking at the same site coming together for a day of shared crits could be an eye-opening and productive experiment. The Architecture Schools Database is conceived as means of brokering those conversations."

Past projects will be kept on the database, and the Architecture Foundation hopes it will eventually function as an educational archive too.

The aggregator is an expansion on a prototype made by the foundation last year, which just covered the 88 MArch and Diploma studios in London's 11 architecture schools. Improvements have also been made to allow users more control over how their work is presented. Designer Joe Gilmore provided the graphic design.

The London-based not for profit Architecture Foundation was set up in 1991 by a coalition of architects, clients and members of the public to campaign for a "better built environment".

Along with organising exhibitions, debates, competitions and architectural initiatives, the foundation has launched a range of digital tools to help architects and laypeople alike learn more about the industry.

In 2017 it launched a free app called the Architecture Guide to London, which maps the location of over 1,100 historic and contemporary works of architecture in the city, with profiles and photographs of each one.