APL Design Yearbook 2010-11 - Newcastle University

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FRONT COVER 

design 

yearbook

design 

yearbook 

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This yearbook was published by Newcastle 

University School of Architecture, Planning 

and Landscape on the occasion of their 

degree shows during the summer of 2011. 

Copyright the editors, students, authors, 

photographers and Newcastle University APL. 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication 

may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval 

system or transmitted in any form or by any 

means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise, 

without first seeking the written permission of 

the copyright owners and of the publishers. 

Editor: 

Rachel McDonagh 

Editorial assistants: 

Adam Dalby 

Paul Hegarty 

Jamie Nicholson 

Jennifer Webb 

Yearbook Committee 

Max Breese 

Joanna Doherty 

Graham Farmer 

James Longfield 


Jacob Neville 

Adam Sharr 

Michael Smith 

Jennifer Webb 

Dayle Zieleniewski 

ISBN 978-0-7017-0238-0 

School of Architecture Planning & Landscape 

The Quadrangle 

Newcastle University 

Newcastle Upon Tyne 

NE1 7RU 

design 

yearbook 

nclapl10_11

Foreword 

Welcome to this yearbook, a splendid record of 

the achievement of our architecture and urban 

design students. We hope and intend this will 

be the first of many such yearbooks. 

The year gone has been a year of significant 

change in architecture in Newcastle. In 

particular I am delighted to introduce you to 

a number of new architecture colleagues; 

Graham Farmer (Director of Architecture), 

Professor Mark Dorrian, Professor Adam Sharr 

and Dr. Katie Lloyd Thomas. This investment 

in architecture, particularly at senior level, 

represents a confidence in the discipline 

from the University that is heartening as we 

approach some very uncertain and difficult 

times in higher education. I am also pleased 

to tell you the University has been investing 

in our buildings, including our splendid new 

Kofi Bar. One of the next projects will give us a 

foyer more reflective of a design School, rather 

than as one colleague has said, something 

reflective of a sociology department. I’m sure 

no insult was intended! 

Also looking ahead I am pleased to tell you 

that we are in the process of developing an 

exciting portfolio of Masters programmes in 

architecture and landscape, which will give us 

a true design graduate school for the first time. 

I would also invite you, if you can, to come to 

the School’s new programme of public lectures 

which this year has included such luminaries as 

the journalist and broadcaster Owen Hatherley 

and Professor Ananya Roy from Berkeley. One 

other upcoming highlight I would suggest you 

look out for is the Ethics and Aesthetics of 

Architecture and the Environment Conference 

to be hosted by the School in July 2012. 

John Pendlebury 

Head of School

Contents 

006 

008 

036 

052 

130 

132 

178 

206 

220 

236 

BA (Hons) Architectural Studies 

BArch Architecture 

MSc Digital Architecture 


MA Urban Design 

PhD Creative Practice 

Stage One 

Stage Two 

Stage Three 

Stage Five 

Stage Six 

Featuring 

002 

018 

032 

064 

126 

138 

152 

174 

206 

220 

Graham Farmer 

Dr Katie Lloyd Thomas 

Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson 

Prof Mark Dorrian 

archiGRAD 

Dr Nathaniel Coleman 

Prof Adam Sharr 

Prof Andrew Ballantyne 

Rick Price 

Prof Mark Dorrian and Matt Ozga-Lawn

A Precarious Pedagogy 

Graham Farmer 

Graham Farmer is a Senior Lecturer and is the Director of 

Architecture at Newcastle. He is a qualified architect and has a 

background in architectural practice where he has contributed 

to several award winning buildings. His research revolves around 

the social production of architecture and his recent publications 

address the ethical, technical and cultural dimensions of 

sustainability. He is currently working on two major books, one 

on the theory and practice of sustainability (with Professor Simon 

Guy, University of Manchester) and one exploring the tectonic 

poetry of the Scandinavian architects; Lewerentz, Utzon and Fehn 

(with Professor Michael Stacey, University of Nottingham). He is 

deeply interested in architectural pedagogy and in particular the 

connection between ‘thinking and making’. In 2001 he received 

the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) annual 

award for ‘best article’ for a research paper published in the Journal 

of Architectural Education. 

The impending changes to the funding of 

Higher Education are questionable on many 

levels and their impacts are unpredictable. 

However, they would appear to pose 

a particular challenge for architectural 

education….. 

The theme of the recent SCHOSA 1 annual 

conference; ‘Survival of the Species’ captures 

the prevailing uncertainty around architectural 

education. The reality though, is that 

professional courses in architecture have long 

held a precarious position within research-led 

universities with academic staff often finding 

themselves situated uncomfortably between 

the instrumental demands of the profession 

and the research expectations of academia. 

At the same time university administrators 

often find it difficult to see why the expense 

of design studio pedagogy is necessary – or 

why architecture can’t be taught like other 

subjects as a lecture or seminar-based 

curriculum – or they question why academics 

spend so much time in the studio, often at 

the expense of research standing and related 

career progression. 

Paradoxically, the steady (and at times difficult) 

rise of an academic culture within architecture 

in the UK has been accompanied by a 

growing schism between theory and practice 

as the structures of reward and recognition 

within academic research have tended 

to promote hermetic exchanges between 

academics with little or no connection to the 

problems confronted by practice or to wider 

Feature / Graham Farmer 

public debates around the built environment. 

As architectural research has sheltered deep 

within the academy, the taught programmes 

have become the primary interface with 

practice resulting in a one-way dialogue, 

framed predominantly by the prescriptive 

and reproductive demands of professional 

accreditation. This relationship is increasingly 

problematic given changing patterns of 

research funding, a growing emphasis on 

social impact within research assessment 

and at a time when practices would appear to 

be in urgent need of theory and reflection to 

guide their work. 

“As fees rise, students will expect a return 

on their investment and will demand the 

knowledge and skills that will make them 

employable.” 

003 

As HE institutions begin to grapple with their 

offer in the face of a competitive market, those 

responsible for architecture programmes 

would appear to have much to do. The recent 

period of national popularity for architecture 

courses and the accompanying expansion 

of student numbers is likely to reverse and 

courses will have to work harder to justify what 

they deliver. As fees rise, students will expect 

a return on their investment and will demand 

the knowledge and skills that will make them 

employable, at the same time universities will 

have to demonstrate and communicate the 

‘added value’ that flows from the distribution 

of resources to support research. 

1. SCHOSA is the Standing Conference of Heads of Schools of Architecture and it is made up of representatives from 

all of the Architecture courses in the UK.

004 Feature / Graham Farmer 005 

If we concede that architectural education 

is threatened by its shifting context then it 

would appear timely to review the relationship 

between architectural practice, education 

and research. If the discussions at the 

SCHOSA conference are an indication of 

how institutions might respond, then there 

is certainly no consensus – with views 

encompassing those who promote a move 

towards more a general liberal arts based 

education, free from professional scrutiny 

– a presumably the costs associated with a 

studio education – to those who envisage the 

privatisation of education and a return to an 

apprenticeship model in which architectural 

practices take full responsibility for delivering 

architectural ‘training’. Neither would seem a 

particularly attractive proposition, particularly 

if you accept that investment in architectural 

design pedagogy and research contributes to 

the future development of both discipline and 

the profession. 

From my own viewpoint, the future 

sustainability of programmes in architecture 

will rely on a critical interrogation of what is 

distinctive about the discipline together with a 

stronger articulation of the particular value and 

role of architectural research and pedagogy. 

This process might begin by connecting to 

debates that have been developing over the 

past decade in the US around ‘post critical’ 

or ‘projective’ practice 2 . These approaches 

have usefully revisited the categories of 

theory and practice in architecture and 

ordered them into distinctive practices. 

Stan Allen reformulates practice and theory 

as ‘material practice’ and ‘hermeneutic 

practice’ respectively. Hermeneutic practice 

understands the present through analysing 

the past and material practice analyses the 

present in order to project transformations 

into the future. In this relationship, research 

and practice become different but potentially 

mutually reinforcing practices that might work 

more closely together in engaging reality. In 

this relationship, architecture is not the object 

of theory and architectural practice does not 

need theory as legitimation for defining the 

form in which it manifests itself. Instead what 

is proposed is a construct of practice that 

is flexible enough to engage the complexity 

of the real, yet sufficiently secure in its own 

technical and conceptual bases to go beyond 

a simple reflection of the real. 

This position has particular implications for 

the pedagogy of architecture and it points to 

a renewed concern for the specific demands 

of material practice and a recognition the 

prescriptive, experimental and pragmatic 

conditions of architectural design. In this 

scenario, architectural pedagogy would seek 

to ground itself within the material conditions 

and concrete problems of practice – thus 

delivering professional expertise, but without 

limiting itself to reproducing the current 

demands of practice. As educators we should 

seek to encourage reflexive material practices. 

Richard Sennett’s book, The Craftsman 3 , 

provides a salient resource on these matters 

and it draws on the philosophy of pragmatism 

2. See for example: Somol, R & Whiting, S (2002) Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism, 

Perspecta 33, The Yale architectural Journal, MIT Press, Cambridge. 

Allen, S (2000) Practice: architecture, technique and representation. London: Routledge. 

3. Sennett, R (2008) The Craftsman, Penguin Books, London. 

to explore the relationship between material 

practices and reflection. He highlights a wide 

range of activities (including architecture) that 

require both physical mastery of technique 

and intellectual reflection. These activities 

stand as examples of crafts, or disciplines, 

that cannot abide by talent and thinking alone: 

they all require doing. Sennett specifies his 

argument on craft as an activity that goes 

beyond the mere reproduction of established 

standards and instead the craftsman exhibits 

the particular qualities of being engaged. 

Quality becomes a determining factor, but 

crucially, the measure of quality is not only 

accessible to ‘experts’ but also extends 

outwards to the public. The craftsman always 

holds a double perspective and embodies 

himself in the attitude of the perceiver while 

he works. What makes this focus on craft 

particularly relevant is that it does not speak 

of abstract theoretical models but of concrete 

problems, bridging the divide between 

socio-political conditions and the work of 

design and execution. In Sennett’s argument, 

an opposition between social relevance 

and architectural quality is not inevitable, 

theory does not disappear in favour of an 

instrumental practicality but is embedded 

within the material outcomes of architecture. 

By redirecting attention to the particular 

expertise within the discipline, we potentially 

create a renewed form of agency, one in 

which architects responsibly address the 

broad socio-cultural context in which they 

operate, but do so first and foremost as 

design-literate architects. If architecture is 

to secure and sustain a robust sphere of 

influence in a rapidly changing academic 

and practice context it must extend beyond 

the mere fulfillment of spatial and technical 

requirements and it should avoid a tendency 

towards exclusive intellectual debates. A 

strong teaching and research culture is vital 

to the future discipline of architecture but both 

must be well positioned to contribute, albeit 

in different ways, to constituting new forms 

of practice and to providing speculations 

on fundamental societal questions. This 

is the expertise that we might reasonably 

want to offer a future generation architects 

and the added value that we should seek to 

impart through research informed pedagogy 

and practice: the nurturing of a patient 

understanding of the craft of design whilst 

simultaneously attending to the agenda of 

making affective buildings that can ‘work’ 

in the broadest possible social sense – a 

precarious, but nonetheless essential task.

BA (Hons) 

Architectural Studies 

The course seeks to deliver both breadth 

and depth in architectural thinking, design, 

declaration and debate. Balancing art and 

science and effectively integrating theoretical 

teaching with practice, the degree seeks 

to challenge and stimulate. Graduates are 

known for being creative, resourceful and 

employable. 

Some of the above can be clearly attributed 

to the diversity, dedication, hard work and 

inspiration of staff - be they permanent and 

part-time teaching staff, visiting and graduate 

tutors, critics or support staff. However, a 

good deal also has to do with our students 

who, as the following pages demonstrate, 

bring their own diversity, dedication, hard work 

and inspiration in abundance. 

Simon Hacker 

Degree Programme Director 

Image courtesy of Simon Hacker 

007 

BA

008 BA / stage 1 009 

Stage 1 

Stage 1 gradually introduces a wide set of 

skills to prepare a student for a larger scale 

design in the second semester. Students 

start with materiality and other sensuous 

experiences, develop their understanding of 

human scale and functionality, and gradually 

expand their architectural knowledge to the 

context and surroundings. Students play first 

with the basics of spatial construction and 

architectural elements and develop later their 

understanding of the impact of architecture 

on human life at the personal and communal 

level. Theory and history as well as specifics 

of technology and professional presentation 

techniques are integrated into the design 

teaching. 

Kati Blom and Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson 

Stage Directors 

Image courtesy of Karen Livingstone 

BA

010 BA / stage 1 / project 1 011 

Project 1 

The Language 

of Architecture 

The first projects introduce the students to 

different ways of reading architecture by 

asking them to choose a 20th or 21st century 

building that excited them and getting them 

to communicate that building to others in 

their group. Over the course of three weeks 

the students swap buildings with one another 

and use different ways of understanding their 

buildings from diagrams to 3D models. 


Project Leader 

David Boyd 

Maggie Centre 

Zaha Hadid 

Site Plan 

Main Forming Line 

Central 

Triangular Form 

Secondary 

Triangular Form 

Shifting Form 

The compositional diagrams for this building focus mainly 

on the triangular forms from which the building appears 

to have been developed. The outer walls are a series of 

overlapping triangles, some of which are completed, some 

incomplete and some only suggested by fractured lines 

and corners. The relationship of the triangles cause a 

visual tension and dynamism, resisting any axial centre or 

symmetry. These diagrams attempt to portray the sense 

of shifting shapes and perspective, which is arguably the 

main component in the form of the building. These shifting 

shapes are apparent in the plan on the left, stopping any 

static patterns and causing a much more dynamic form. 

The J-Graph of this Maggie Centre shows a clear distinction 

between public and private areas, reflecting the function of 

the building. The lobby is the only semi public area of the 

building, providing a clear distinction between what is for 

visitors and what is for patients. All the private areas, such 

as the counselling rooms, are accessed via the kitchen 

area, making the kitchen an access hub for the centre. The 

terrace is located at the deepest threshold point, supplying 

a private outside environment to which patients at the 

centre may retreat. 

BA

012 BA / stage 1 / project 1 013 

Ian Campbell 

Villa Savoye 

Le Corbusier 

The way people move through 

the building is very significant. 

The thermal baths are arranged 

in a specific order to encourage 

an order to the visitor’s 

experience. 

I interpret the main indoor 

pool to be the focal point of 

the building. In most cases 

the other baths and spaces 

have been arranged around 

this square. 

I chose the second group 

of lines to represent the 

spaces arranged near to the 

indoor pool. Each stems 

from one of the four sides 

of the square and there is a 

sense of balance between 

the pairs of opposing sides. 

I intended for the plan 

composition to highlight the 

way in which the spaces are 

positioned perpendicularly. 

The third and fourth sets 

of lines take the form 

of rectangles and they 

represent further symmetry 

and balance in the building. 

Although the enclosed lines 

loosely mark out where the 

rooms are, the spaces left in 

negative space are equally 

important. They show the 

main routes for movement 

around the many private 

baths. 

Ian Campbell 

Thermal Baths 

Peter Zumthor 

BA


Project 2 

Memory Spot 

The Memory Spot project asks students to rely 

on their own spatial experiences, and develop 

a scheme of design in model format. Space 

is created using basic architectural elements 

in large enough scale so that some of the 

technical problems are solved. Poetic rather 

than technical qualities are emphasised. 

Kati Blom 


Alanah Honey 

Rumen Dimov 

Immersion 

My My basic basic idea idea translated from from a a 1/50 1/50 model to to a a 1/20 1/20 model; considering the the shape and and size size of of elements in in more more depth and and 

Immersion in the earth started 

with simple impressions and pro- 

gressed to standing eye height. 

Having gaps at the base allows 

ground level view and I considered 

making the user crawl in so as to 

be at ground level but this is im- 

posing my experience on them too 

much. 

I still want to create a ground level 

view, so combining this with the 

concept of immersion or envelop- 

ment in the earth I could create a 

dug out space that fits with the 

human form so eye level is at 

ground level. 

practical, structural concerns. 

I must not look at reality as being like 

myself. 

P EULARD 

BA


Vilmante Daulenskyte 

Emily Waters 

Greta Varpucianskyte 

BA

The excessive materiality of 

Stock Orchard Street: towards 

a feminist material practice 


Dr Katie Lloyd Thomas joined the school as a lecturer in 

architecture in January this year having recently completed a PhD 

on concepts of materials and the architectural specification at the 

CRMEP at Middlesex University. Katie trained as an architect and 

has been involved in architectural education for over a decade. 

She is the editor of Material Matters: Architecture and Material 

Practice (Routledge, 2007), which was long listed for the RIBA 

International Book Awards 2007. Her most recent publication ‘The 

Excessive Materiality of Stock Orchard Street: Towards a feminist 

material practice’ in Around and About Stock Orchard Street, ed. 

Sarah Wigglesworth (Routledge, 2011) brings together her main 

research interests in materiality and feminism. Katie is also a 

founder member of ‘taking place’, a group of artists and architects 

concerned with feminist spatial practice, who are currently making 

a series of artworks, ‘The Other Side of Waiting’, for the Mother and 

Baby unit at Homerton Hospital, Hackney. 

‘Is it possible to actively strive to produce 

an architecture of excess, in which the 

“more” is not cast off but made central, in 

which expenditure is sought out, in which 

instability, fluidity, the return of space to the 

bodies whose morphologies it upholds and 

conforms, in which the monstrous and the 

extrafunctional, consumption as much as 

production, act as powerful forces? Is this 

the same as or linked to the question of the 

feminine in architecture?’ 

Elizabeth Grosz 42 

In her short essay ‘Architectures of Excess’, 

the feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz uses 

the figure of excess to make connections 

between different feminist approaches 

which have dominated the last forty years. 

First, excess describes all groups, including 

women, who are marginalised as ‘other’ in 

society. Second, excess also refers to those 

aspects of life and culture which disrupt 

conventional categories and are banished 

to the outside, which of course include and 

can be understood in relation to the feminine. 

Third, and less explicitly in this essay than 

in Grosz’s more recent writing, excess also 

seems to stand in for the proliferation of 

possibilities, for the opening of new processes 

and ways of living, that would not be built on 

principles of equality, nor by promoting the 

supposed feminine over the masculine, but 

instead by moving out of existing structures 

and logics towards the unknown conditions of 

the future. 

Feature / Dr Katie Lloyd Thomas 

Trying to define what this future excess might 

be like, at least for architecture, Grosz draws 

on a number of figures of the feminine which 

emerged in particular from French feminist 

theory, psychoanalysis and deconstruction. 

These include the monstrous rather than the 

ordered and harmonious, the superfluous 

rather than the necessary, the unstable rather 

than the security of the fixed and immutable. 

Each of these figures brings to mind aspects 

of the excessive architecture of Stock Orchard 

Street; its ‘hairy’ straw bale walls and its ‘fat’ 

gabions. The ‘crude’ superfluous bags and 

quilts which wrap the office building; the 

tiny hi-tech springs in smart green boxes on 

which it perches whose hissing and leaking 

is an ongoing worry to clients, builders, and 

engineers. And, moreover, the proliferation of 

material and structural solutions which each 

retain individual identities rather than being 

subsumed into a unified whole. 

‘Too many ideas.’ ‘Too much going on.’ 

‘Inconsistent.’ 43 

There is just ‘more’ in general at Stock 

Orchard Street. Each of these figures might, at 

least in Grosz’ terms, be linked to the question 

of the feminine. In troubling the boundaries 

of architecture’s orthodoxies, what has been 

cast out – the excess - enters in... 

Material excess and the feminine 

...At Stock Orchard Street the exposure of 

019 

42. Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Architectures of Excess’ in Architecture from the Outside, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 

2001, p.163. First published in ed. Cynthia Davidson, Anymore, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2000. 

43. Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, ‘The Future is Hairy’ in ed. Jonathan Hill, Architecture: The Subject is Matter, 

London: Routledge, 2001, p.27.

020 Feature / Dr Katie Lloyd Thomas 021 

what might usually be interior to the wall is a 

frequent motif. A transparent polycarbonate 

skin allows a view into the interior of the straw 

bale wall – ‘the secret life of the building’- and 

reveals potential contaminants such as rot, 

condensation, insects and rodents. In the 

gabion walls a concrete column hides inside 

the mass of fill. And where a soft shiny quilt 

has been wrapped around the office building, 

Sarah and Jeremy recall how both their 

fathers thought this must be an internal layer 

still awaiting the final cladding. The quilt is 

not however included in the calculation of the 

wall’s thermal resistance, it is in fact mounted 

on to battens fixed in turn to an inner wall built 

up with conventional insulation. The quilting 

is, to use Grosz’ term, ‘extrafunctional’. It is 

intended to signify domesticity by alluding to 

the conventional feminine sphere. 

‘We want it to feel like domestic upholstery, 

puckered and buttoned, deflating any 

corporate pretensions. There is a gender 

thing going on here as well.’ 44 

It is used as decoration – an excess that 

Jennifer Bloomer has associated with the 

feminine; 

‘The ornamental has come to be associated 

with dishonesty, impurity (ordure), the 

improper, and excessiveness or exorbitance, 

characteristics that the Symbolic order has 

deemed feminine.’ 45 

The use of the quilt remains representational. 

Sandbags and quilt walls 

44. Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, ‘The Future is Hairy’, p.24. 

45. Jennifer Bloomer, ‘D’or’ in ed. Beatriz Colomina, Sexuality and Space, p.168. 

Its meanings are effective because they 

disrupt existing structures (the separation 

of work and home, associations of softness 

with domesticity and the feminine and so on). 

Although the quilting employs techniques 

usually associated with women and domestic 

work – pattern cutting, stitching and upholstery 

- its manufacture is in fact highly prescribed 

by the architects. The quilting makes a point 

but, like so many of the alternatives proposed 

by feminist theorists working with masculine/ 

feminine binaries, its critical power relies on 

relationships with existing discourses and 

practices, rather than opening up alternatives 

to existing structures. What else might the 

1 : Schedule attached to letter from London Borough of 

Islington Building Control, in respect of 9 Stock Orchard 

Street, 1 July 1998 

excessive materiality of Stock Orchard Street 

make possible? 

Exceeding the limits of proper materials 

Item 29 of the schedule was part of the 

conditional Building Regulations for Stock 

Orchard Street. [1] 

As so many of the materials and construction 

techniques used at Stock Orchard Street, 

the quilted wall falls outside the category of 

‘proper materials’ as defined by the building 

regulations. Its ‘extrafunctional’ status is not 

just determined by the architects’ choice 

to use it symbolically. As a one-off walling 

material, a bespoke invention designed and 

produced for this specific condition it bears 

none of the appropriate marks which permit its 

inclusion within existing regimes of approval 

and has not been tested to demonstrate its 

conformity with required standards. As such 

- un-tested, un-measured, un-approved - it 

cannot be counted in the functioning build-up 

of the wall. 

Similarly, the sandbags which clad the wall 

to the railway are ‘extrafunctional’ in terms of 

the Building Regulations even though they 

dampen the sound and vibration caused

022 Feature / Dr Katie Lloyd Thomas 023 

Construction of sandbag filling rig 

by passing trains. Their use is inspired, 

Sarah and Jeremy tell us, by a photograph 

of a London coffee house during the Blitz, 

and not in explicitly critical terms. The sand 

bag wall is also carefully detailed. Stitching 

patterns, dimensions and special window 

frames are worked out with precision, bags 

that will appear at the end of the wall have 

hidden seams. But the realisation of the wall 

allows for deviations in construction and 

for the exigencies of time and weathering. 

Drawing no. 0/243 shows a fully developed 

design for a ‘sand bag filling rig’ complete with 

dimensions, ‘push/pull hatch’ and directions 

for utilising parts of the existing building 

structure for winching, mixing and filling, but 

is in the end replaced by the builders’ own 

invention, using items already on site such as 

plastic piping. 

‘In their making of the building, the builders 

have suspended their initial belief in the 

project and have claimed the various 

unknown technologies as their own.’ 46 

The polypropylene sacks are intended to 

decay and peel away, fingers are crossed 

that shedding fragments do not end up on 

the track. Here the use of a material outside 

‘the world of the proper, the system, form, 

regulated production’ 47 sets up a condition 

in which productive forces exceeding those 

prescribed by the architects become part of 

the wall’s realisation... 

46. Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, ‘The Future is Hairy’, p.16. 

47. Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Architectures of Excess’, p.153. 

Towards a Feminist Material Practice 

...It is these shifts – in the relationships 

between players including builders, architects, 

engineers, regulators, in the ways they found 

their expertise, in the negotiations between 

them, in the processes of design and 

construction, as well as in the appearance 

of new critical uses of materials – that I 

have tried to draw out in this account of 

the excessive materiality of Stock Orchard 

Street. It is this excess, this proliferation of 

possibilities for practice, of new ways of 

working and operating critically, even at the 

most intransigent, deeply embedded level of 

architecture’s material production, that I want 

to claim as the legacy of Stock Orchard Street 

for a feminist material practice.] 

Extracts from my chapter in: 

“Around and About Stock Orchard Street” 

ed. Sarah Wigglesworth, Routledge: 2011


Project 3 

What’s 

cooking? 

‘What’s Cooking?’ gave stage one students 

their first opportunity to design a small building 

with a brief and site – a cookery school on the 

banks of the Ouseburn. With great energy 

and imagination they cooked, ate, drew, 

modelled and designed a wonderful array of 

inventive and diverse schemes. 



Matthew Wilcox 

Cooking School Interior 

(Clockwise from top left) 

Ruta Austrina 

Atmospheric Drawing 

Eleanor Gibson 

Material Study 

Kristina Kupstaite 

Section in Context 

Matthew Pybus 

Light Study 

BA


(clockwise from left) 

Students create artwork 

in stage 1 studio, 

Tammy Hooshyar Emani 

Cookery School Interior, 

Ella Cain 

Cooking Space 

Shuo Yang 

(clockwise from top left) 

Timber Floor Detail, 

Cooking School Plan, 

Cooking School Model, 

Inspirational Image 

BA


Project 4 

Reading 

Place 

This project set the students the task of 

reimagining the Newcastle University Campus 

as a master plan. Working in small groups the 

students acted as commercial architectural 

practices answering a competition brief 

called Campus 2021 where they were asked 

to relocate and redesign the department of 

architecture, a new teaching facility and a new 

University ‘Shop Window’. 



Ian Campbell, Keira 

Lyons, David Tam 

Plans for Campus 2021 

BA


(Far Left) Current 

high level pedestrian 

circulation 

(Left) Future controlled 

pedestrian circulation 

(Far Left) 

Current public space 

(Left) 

Future public space 

Section a-a 

Section b-b 

Smith Leonie, 

Yang Shuo, 

Barbaris Myrto 

Plans for Campus 2021 

BA

The Architecture 

of Information 


Martyn Dade-Robertson is Lecturer in Architecture and 

Communication in the School of Architecture Planning and 

Landscape. Martyn originally did a degree in Architecture at 

Newcastle University before embarking on an MPhil and PhD at 

Cambridge University (Darwin College) with a theses entitled 

ŒInformation Architecture in Screen Based Semantic Spaces. This 

Ph.D. research led to a number of successful cross disciplinary 

projects and collaborations and internship at Microsoft Research. 

More recently Martyn completed a Research Associate contract at 

Culture Lab developing software for authoring interactive stories. 

His book, The Architecture of Information, was published by 

Routledge at the beginning of June. 

A thought experiment I occasionally use with 

my postgraduate students, is to ask them 

to imagine a parallel universe containing a 

society at a similar stage in its technological 

development to our own but with one key 

difference: that the idea of architecture hasn’t 

been invented yet. 

Buildings still exist, along with a plethora 

of other designed artefacts, but there is no 

distinction between design disciplines. A 

bright design theorist decides that this lack of 

distinction between the designs of different 

artefacts is a problem and endeavours to 

categorize design into coherent disciplines 

based on criteria he or she must define. I 

then ask my students to imagine, free from 

their knowledge of how the world actually 

is, what categories he or she might come 

up with. Would it be possible to define 

design in relation to the materials from which 

various artefacts are created? Wooditecture, 

Steelytecture, Plasticitecture …? Or through 

geometric similarity between designed 

artefacts? Triangletecture, Rectangletecture 

…? It’s a silly game but allows my students 

to do three things. 

1. They stop thinking about the design of the 

built environment as something independent 

from all other design disciplines since many 

of their fictitious categories define groups of 

artefacts which include, but are not limited to, 

buildings. Wooditecture for example includes 

chairs, pencils and log cabins. 

Feature / Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson 

2. By thinking in terms of categories which 

are invented by them and are outside their 

everyday experience, it reveals how even 

logical categorisations can be alien when 

viewed from a different perspective. The 

notion of a wooditecture seems intuitively 

wrong but is not ridiculous given that there 

are common methods for working and 

constructing with wood. 

033 

3. When the students return to our universe, 

they are able to look critically at our own 

categorisation of the design of artefacts and 

to assess where titles such as ‘architecture’ 

seem logical and where they seem arbitrary. 

The division of design disciplines is useful but 

it can also be limiting. 

I graduated with a degree in Architecture in 

2000 with a nagging doubt. I had enjoyed 

my three years and was about to embark 

on my year in practice to be followed by a 

further two years of study and a year out 

before I would be able to receive full RIBA 

accreditation. Despite the extensive nature 

of an architect’s education, however, I still 

felt that I was missing something. During the 

late nineties I had, as an architecture student, 

seen territory that I felt belonged to me as 

an architectural designer, captured by a new 

breed of designers of the World Wide Web. 

I felt instinctively that there was something 

architectural about buying books online, 

navigating a news website or searching for 

files and folders on my computer’s desktop 

graphical user interface. Furthermore,

034 Feature / Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson 035 

terms and ideas were being stolen from 

my chosen profession as a new breed of 

‘information architects’ arrived, citing cannons 

of architectural theory such as Kevin Lynch 

and Christopher Alexander. Despite this, we 

were not being taught web programming in 

our technology lectures or discussing the 

history of computing as part of our ‘history 

of the designed landscape’ courses. This 

intuition, that there was more to architecture 

than the built environment, continued through 

my Masters and PhD. studies and the results 

of my search for a broader definition of 

architecture in the digital age. 

“I see architecture as a design practice 

defined by the creation of objects of a certain 

scale in relation to the human body.” 

There is, I believe a need for new 

classifications. In the first instance we must 

revise the classification of architecture itself 

as something which has been applied, and 

has the potential to be applied much further, 

outside the design of the built environment. 

I don’t hold with, for example, Pevsner’s 

distinction between architecture and building 

as being exemplified by the difference 

between a cathedral and a bicycle shed. 

Rather, I see architecture as a design practice 

defined by the creation of objects of a certain 

scale in relation to the human body. Any 

artefact that surrounds us and through which 

we move has the potential to be architectural 

(independent of whether an architect has had 

a hand in its design). The structuring of our 

environment into patterns which are perceived 

as we move through them is the central role 

of architectural design and this, in an age of 

digital environments, is extended to include 

environments that are virtual rather than 

physical. 

In the second instance we need to review 

classification as a subject in its own right. In 

other words how we structure our world in 

relation to groups of objects or concepts in 

real or conceptual spaces. In particular we 

need to focus on the role of architecture in 

articulating categories through the creation of 

patterns in our environment. By understanding 

classification as a patterning activity, light can 

be shed on a whole range of digital artefacts 

which might not seem to have much to do 

with architecture at all, but are central to how 

we communicate and perceive the world. 

“This, in an age of digital environments, is 

extended to include environments that are 

virtual rather than physical.” 

We need a new set of theories and a new 

type of architecture. Through this new 

understanding we can use the idea of 

architecture to analyze a range of digital 

artefacts. We are, with digital technologies, 

living in a similar place to my parallel 

universe. The lens of architecture allows us 

to cut across a range of ideas and designed 

artefacts and to understand a commonality, 

which has nothing to do with the way they 

are categorized by their professional and 

disciplinary boundaries, at a time when a new 

generation of designed objects is emerging, 

which have yet to find a framing discipline of 

their own. 

Adapted from: 

“The Architecture of Information: Architecture, Interaction 

Design and the Patterning of Digital Information” 

M. Dade-Robertson, Routledge: 2011.

SELS 

SSELS 


Stage Two Architecture Trip 


036 BA / stage 2 037 




Stage 2 

For most students the second year of the 

course is a point where they begin to establish 

their architectural “persona” in the wider 

context of the public realm. An increasing 

command of the thematic areas and skills 

of the discipline and a growing insight 

into its philosophical frameworks allows a 

deeper engagement with the actuality of the 

architectural domain, its social, aesthetic and 

technical parameters. 

Dr Neveen Hamza and Bill Tavernor 


Image courtesy of Jennifer Webb 

BA


Project 1 

Dwelling 

in Brussels 

This semester’s main themes are the ways in 

which we dwell, make “homes” for ourselves 

and relate to each other socially. 

The first project, which began with a study 

trip to Brussels, was dedicated to exploring 

and learning from the world around us. We 

focussed on analyzing what is often taken for 

granted - the settings of everyday life - with 

sketchbook in hand. 

The project had a two-fold objective: to 

develop the students’ architectural drawing 

skills, and to sharpen the awareness of 

spaces, identifying what makes a space work 

well and meet users’ needs. 

. 

Dr Paola Michialino 


Student sketchbook work by: 

Jonathan James 

Lydia Forster 

Neringa Stonyte 

Ruth Sidey 

BA


Student sketchbook work by: 

Jonathan James 

Lydia Forster 


Ruth Sidey 

BA


Project 2 

Simplicity, 

Economy, Home 

The brief is to design a small housing 

complex for students and academics who 

will make relatively short visits to Newcastle as 

part of research or educational projects. 

The project is all about the delicate boundary 

between community and privacy and the 

creation of effective thresholds that allow us to 

have some choice and control of our personal 

environment. 

Bill Tavernor 


Joseph Goodwin 

(from top) 

Welcome House Concept, 

Green Space Frame and Render 

Ngoc Lam Nguyen Tran 

(clockwise from above) 

Model, Analytical Sketch 

and External Render 

BA


Catalin Simcock 

(from top) 

Parti Diagram, 

Development and 

Site Analysis 

Adam Fryett 

(from top) 

Sea Anemone Concept 

and Section 

BA



(opposite) 

Presentation Visuals 

(above) 

Presentation Model 

(right) 

Concept Model 

BA


Project 3 

Living 

Memories 

Set in its idyllic historical setting, this is a 

project that is surgical in its attempt to reintegrate 

a managed ruin designed by John 

Dobson and John Nash for Lord Armstrong 

in the late 19th century. Students adopted a 

holistic design approach from landscape, to 

design of the smallest architectural detail. An 

aspiration to provide a journey between past 

memories and a beautiful present setting; an 

architectural tribute to an era of flourishing 

economy and worldwide recognition of the 

industrial importance of this region. 

Dr Neveen Hamza 



Site Model 

Joseph Goodwin 

(above) 

Site Plan 

(right) 

Sectional Detail 

BA


Jamie Anderson 

(above) Interior Perspective 

(left) Exterior Render 

Richard Breen 

(from top) Courtyard 

Render and Memory 

Facade Image 

BA

052 BA / stage 3 053 

Stage 3 

The first semester develops a number of 

key themes including the relationship of 

architecture to the arts, as well as various 

aspects of permanence and changeability - at 

the scale of the city, in relation to buildings and 

also with regard to components and materials. 

The year also provides a number of 

opportunities for students to pursue and 

explore areas of personal interest, including 

the development and completion of a 

dissertation on a research topic of their 

own choosing, whilst the design module 

culminates in students choosing one of three 

final projects which, this year, were all located 

within central Gateshead. 

Dr Hentie Louw and Matthew Margetts 


Image courtesy of Matthew Margetts 

BA


Project 1 

Bough-Haus 

This pavilion is a show case to celebrate 

the synergy between nature, art and 

architecture as an exercise in architectural 

experimentation. This project, situated in 

Jesmond Dene in Newcastle upon Tyne, 

gave the students the opportunity to explore 

the tectonics of using timber as a primary 

construction material to construct fluid 

spaces for various cultural activities including 

theatrical performances. 



Markus Ryden 

Robert Gibbs 

Alex Cook 

First Prize Winners 

TRADA Timber 

Tectonics Competition 

Felicity Barbur, 

Rebecca Close, 

Yohance Harper. 

Second Prize Winners 

TRADA Timber 

Tectonics Competition 

BA


Project 2 

Middlesbrough 

Film Archive 

The MFA is a 5 week intensive design project 

designed to challenge stage 3 students to 

work within tight constraints with a complex 

but flexible brief. The project was tightly 

programmed with a series of tasks and 

deadlines set each week. 

The brief proposes a new ‘shop window’ 

for the NRFTA (Northern Region Film and 

Television Archive) located in Middlesbrough. 

It is intended to showcase existing collections 

whilst also providing a repository for the ever 

growing number of unofficial histories. 

Students were asked to consider three 

themes in particular; 

context, constraint and communication. 

Matthew Margetts 


Daniel Dyer 

(all images) 

BA


Markus Ryden 

(from top) 

Zoning Diagram 

Experience Diagram 

Parti Diagram 

Rendered Section 

Andrew Belfield 

Dana Mudawi 

BA


Mara Weiss Gabriel Li 

BA


Joseph Charman Kit Stiby Harris 

BA

Metis 


Mark Dorrian is Professor of Architecture Research at Newcastle 

University and Co-Director of the art, architecture and urbanism 

atelier Metis. His books include (with Adrian Hawker) Metis: Urban 

Cartographies (2002), (with Gillian Rose) Deterritorialisations: 

Revisioning Landscapes and Politics (2003), (with Jane Rendell, 

Jonathan Hill and Murray Fraser) Critical Architecture (2007), 

Warszawa: Projects for the Post-Socialist City (2009), and 

(forthcoming, with Frédéric Pousin) Seeing From Above: On the 

Cultural History of the Aerial View by (2012). His work has been 

published in many journals including Radical Philosophy, Log, 

Parallax, The Journal of Architecture, The Journal of Narrative 

Theory and Word & Image. 

Introduction 

Metis is an atelier for art, architecture and 

urbanism founded by Mark Dorrian and Adrian 

Hawker. Their first book, Urban Cartographies, 

was published in 2001. The following text and 

images describe their project for the recent 

Northwich Cultural Centre competition in 

which they were finalists. 

Location Plan 

View along high street 

Feature / Prof Mark Dorrian 

065

066 Feature / Prof Mark Dorrian 067 

Description 

Metis’s design for the Northwich Cultural 

Centre responds to the streetscape of the 

town, picking up existing lines and vectors of 

movement and interweaving the spaces of 

the cultural centre into them. In the project 

the new building is understood as a major 

attractor, but also as a gateway. It is a cultural 

and economic hub, a generator of activity, and 

a focus for new developments. At the same 

time it is an embarkation and orientation point 

for river walks, parkland and boating. The 

design allows space for an area of tie-ups for 

commercial and pleasure boats beside a new 

tree-lined river path that is linked to an external 

café and restaurant deck. It proposes that 

a footbridge be connected with the cultural 

centre, permitting its spaces and facilities to 

be integrated with the new river crossing. As 

well as providing an upper-level entry into the 

complex, adjacent to the exhibition space, 

the ramp that folds down to ground level from 

the bridge creates a new public living room 

for the town that can also be used as an 

Sectional Perspective 

outdoor theatre or cinema. This area receives 

pedestrians moving from the town market 

place, while the oversailing bridge shelters the 

main (ground floor) entrance to the cultural 

centre and acts as a gateway to a new river 

path running north. 

Metis’s intention in the design of the 

programmatic elements in the cultural centre 

is to provide dynamic, compelling, convivial, 

and beautiful naturally-lit spaces together 

with possibilities for the overlap, connection 

and intermingling of uses. Throughout, the 

design is as attentive to the theatricality of the 

open public and circulation areas as it is to the 

Perspective 

Level One Plan 

Ground Floor Plan

068 Feature / Prof Mark Dorrian 069 

performance spaces themselves. The basic 

organisational strategy of situating the main 

auditorium to the rear of the site allows the 

more informal public functions (bar, restaurant, 

and gallery spaces), together with the daylit 

dance theatre on the upper level, to take full 

advantage of the waterfront. This in turn also 

permits the main auditorium to be opened 

onto the foyer area via large hanger-scaled 

doors, thus combining performance with open 

public areas and suggesting new possibilities 

for the configuration of activities. Likewise the 

main auditorium can be combined with the 

adjacent green room. 

By responding to existing patterns of 

movement around the site, Metis’s project 

produces a new choreography for it, one 

in which pedestrian routes, performance 

spaces, river traffic and vehicular servicing are 

Section AA 

Section BB 

strategically organised in order to enhance 

the environmental quality of the area and the 

cultural possibilities of the institution. 

Interior view of Dance Theatre 

Model Image

070 071 

Project 3a 

Afterimage 

This graduation project invited students to 

produce a design for a new building on the 

site of the recently-demolished Gateshead 

car-park that acted as an afterimage of 

the old structure. Through studies of the 

volumetrics and morphology of the previous 

building, and its architectural relations with 

the city, proposals were developed for a new 

architecture that worked through a kind of 

oscillation between past and present. The 

task was to design a cyclists’ hotel (‘cyclotel’), 

vélodrome, and associated facilities on the 

site. More generally, the project aimed to 

encourage speculation on how a change 

in the user of architecture (who is no 

longer just a person, but an assemblage 

of person and bicycle) could lead to new 

forms of programmatic thinking and spatial 

composition. 



Image courtesy of Claire Sheffield 

BA

072 

Felicity Barbur 

Afterimage 

The Other Side 

Andrew Belfield 

Afterimage 

This project uses the rubble from the 

demolished car-park to mould a new 

landscape, which is then traversed by incised 

walkways and protected gardens. The 

velodrome makes a new public space, while 

the hotel is contained in a pier-like structure 

that sits lightly upon the rubble landscape. 

BA / stage 3 / project 3 

073 

BA

074 

Simon Brooke 

Afterimage 

Beginning with a study that applied fragments 

of the image of the car-park onto domestic 

objects (a bottle, a cup, etc.), this project 

proposes an arrangement of urban forms 

with pictorially-articulated skins that are 

ambiguously located between the intimate 

and the colossal. 

Rory Clayden 

Afterimage 

Gateshead Cyclotel 

My study of the Afterimage of the Gateshead 

‘Get Carter’ car park focused on the layering 

of the strong forms and repetitive shapes 

that made up the structure’s design. The 

design for the Cyclotel continues this theme: 

overlaying a number of different grids creates 

a dense build up of elements that form the 

hotel accommodation which surround the 

velodrome. 


PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT 



075 

Clockwise from top 

left: Afterimage study, 

Perspective section of one 

hotel room, Site model, 

Sectional model 


BA

076 

Rebecca Close 

Afterimage 

My graduation project focuses on the 

reinvention of the iconic Trinity Square car 

park which was demolished in 2010, into a 

‘cyclotel’ and cycle complex. The first part of 

the project explores the portrayal of movement 

inspired by the car park’s sloping facade 

which expresses the ramped circulation of the 

interior. Consequently, the proposal centres on 

developing accessible links through the site 

and incorporating the movement of cyclists 

and pedestrians into the building form. 

PARTI 

Drawing portraying 

movement of shadows and 

development models and 

sketches leading to the 

proposed building forms. 

Tom Dobson 

Afterimage 

The essences of the ‘Get Carter’ car park 

which I found intriguing have been conveyed 

within the form of a puzzle. When translated 

into a building the individual pieces play with 

the density of mass and light in order to create 

spaces reminiscent of its predecessor. 


077 


left, Concept puzzle, 

Concrete light study, Room 

configuration 1, Room 

configuration 2, Room 

configuration 3. 

BA

078 

Chris Kerr 

Afterimage 

‘The Point Of View’ 

Elevated cycle track, supported by a dense 

timber structure, anchored by a concrete 

reception and velodrome complex. Cycle 

track leads to viewing decks & modular 

bedrooms providing views over the tyne valley. 

Clockwise from top right: 

Reception perspective 

Velodrome complex perspective 

Site plan 

Structure & Track Perspective. 

Gabriel Li 

Afterimage 

Resurrection of a Carpark 

E PLAN N 

The proposed cyclotel acts as an afterimage 

of the pre-existed Gateshead Carpark through 

recreating the experience and movement. The 

rooms are designed as a metaphor of cars, 

where they are pre-fabricated, movable and 

convertible. The building itself acts as a shelter 

facilitating the movement and circulation of the 

users and rooms. 


left: Plans, module 

exploration, module 

design, perspective 

sketch. 


079 

BA

080 

Elinor Mulligan 

Afterimage 

Movement Plane 

My ‘afterimage’ is taken from the concept that the original 

carpark was one continuous surface, extruded from the ground 

for the purpose of perpetual movement. The scheme developed 

from a series of studies involving the manipulation of a simple 

piece of card which represented the ground as a single plane 

to create form and space. As such it was imagined that the 

extruded surfaces would not just form the envelope to the 

buildings but also continue to represent the ground surface, and 

therefore be freely navigable; mimicking the continuous surface 

of movement from which the car park was derived. 

PARTI 


Inspiration, Folding study, 

Folding development, 

Site study Perspective 

from between strips, Site 

overview, 

Albert Parkhouse 

Afterimage 

Gateshead Cyclotel 

The design concept came about from a study 

of the demolition of the Trinity Square carpark 

in Gateshead. Taken down section at a time, 

the dismantled form of the structure inspired 

the narrow ‘strip’ form of the ‘Cyclotel.’ The 

project focuses on the relationship between 

the buildings as much as the structures 

themselves. 


PARTI 

081 

Clockwise from top left: 

Site Plan, Development 

Sequence, Rendered Image 

BA

082 

Patrick Ramsey 

Afterimage 

Joseph A. Redpath 

Afterimage 

Initial study investigated the idea of 

discovering of a clear line of sight through a 

series of objects. This informed the design 

which developed as a series of fins which sat 

on the site perpendicular to the velodrome 

track. These fins, sculpted by function, anchor 

the building to the site and demonstrate the 

opacity and transparency of the building 


PARTI 

083 

Exploded Diagram of Room, 

Elevation of hotel room wall, 

Light of sight discovery tool, 

Final building in immediate 

context 

BA

084 

Joe Reilly 

Afterimage 

“Here is what we have to offer you in its most 

elaborate form - confusion guided by a clear 

sense of purpose.” 

Gordon Matta-Clark 


Design in Context; Car Park 

Demolition; Development 

Models, Perspective Render. 

Claire Sheffield 

Afterimage 

Working with ideas of density and 

compaction, this proposal winds the 

velodrome into the main structure, elaborating 

it as a vertically-articulated strip. Below this 

are contained the public functions, while the 

hotel rooms form an intensely occupied layer 

on the top level. 


085 

BA

086 

Adam Smith 

Afterimage 

Decomposing Solids 

A study into the results of a [manipulation] 

upon a singular solid mass. The idea 

is grounded strongly in the centre of 

[Gateshead] through a study of the original 

mass of the infamous [Trinity Carpark] made 

famous by the film [Get Carter]. An inward 

looking development process led to an 

interesting and exciting final design based 

strongly around the central mass and the 

resulting [decomposition] caused by its 

interaction with a velodrome which sits within 

the site. 


image 1, Initial Concept, 

image 2, Development 

Model, image 3, Plaster 

Cast, image 4, Final 

Concept, image 5, Final 

Development, image 6, 

Suspended Lecture Hall, 

image 7, Internal Space, 

image 8, North West Corner 

Perspective 

013 

013 

stage stage 3 3 / / project project 3 3 /Afterimage /Afterimage / / Trinity Trinity Square Square Car Car Park Park - - Derwent Derwent BA / stage Tower 

Tower 

3 / project 3 

Marc Marc Alexander Alexander Turnier 

Turnier 

Afterimage 

Afterimage 

Marc Trinity Square Alexander Car Park - Derwent Turnier Tower 

Trinity Square Car Park - Derwent Tower 

Afterimage 

Trinity Square Car Park - Derwent Tower 

A transformation between the Trinity Square 

Car Park A A transformation transformation (aka ‘Get Carter between between Car Park’) the the Trinity Trinity and Square Square Car Car Park Park (aka (aka ‘Get 

‘Get 

the Derwent Carter Carter Car Car Tower Park’) Park’) (aka and and ‘Dunston the the Derwent Derwent Rocket) Tower Tower (aka (aka ‘Dunston ‘Dunston Rocket) 

Rocket) 

providing an providing providing oscillation an an between oscillation oscillation past between between and past past and and present. 

present. 

present. 

I I love love architecture. 

architecture. 

PARTI 

PARTI 

Parti Parti 

Diagram Diagram 

- - 

N/A 

N/A 

087 

Clockwise Clockwise 

from from 

top top 

left: 

left: 

velodrome velodrome Clockwise from perspective, 

perspective, top left: 

context context velodrome perspective, perspective, perspective, model 

model 

development development context perspective, and and 

approach. 

approach. model 

development and approach. 

BA

088 

Gabriella Smith 

Afterimage 

The velodrome is used to make a major urban 

event-space. The hotel, which also serves as 

a kind of public viewing-device (like theatrical 

boxes), wraps around this, its architecture 

calibrated to the acceleration and deceleration 

of cyclists as they move around the track. 

Mara Weiss 

Afterimage 

A complex landscape, which recalls prior 

occupancies of the site, is patterned by 

route-ways that subdivide it into territories of 

concrete, reeds, grass and rubble. Within 

this moulded terrain are distributed an array 

of luminous abstract cubes that contain the 

hotel, villa-like apartments, and other facilities. 


089 

BA

090 091 

Project 3b 

Mind [the] Gap 

A place of enquiry: 

Connection, Disconnection & Belonging in a 

remote central area of Gateshead 

Employing collective and collaborative 

working techniques, the project seeks to 

create places and environments that can 

stimulate ground-breaking and radical thinking 

by academic and commercial researchers 

– often a solitary activity as depicted by 

Rembrandt’s ‘Faust’. Yet the programme 

speculates that these ‘thinking spaces’ might 

be best located alongside, or perhaps right 

in the heart of, a linked public provision. In so 

doing, it is hoped that both ‘professionals’ and 

‘public’ will learn more about one another – 

and, perhaps, also learn more about what it 

means to ‘belong’. 

Simon Hacker 


Image courtesy of Hugh Craft 

BA

092 

Matthew Crabbe 


Riverside Sculpture Centre 

The scheme looks to reconnect the 

underused riverside sculpture park with the 

rest of Gateshead. Working on a steep site 

next to the high level bridge the building is 

built into the slope using a considered series 

of terraces and retaining walls. The centre 

looks to form the beginning and end of a 

new sculpture trail thoughout the park and 

Gateshead. 

Clockwise from top left: view 

from high level approach, 

section, site plan and model 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joseph Charman 



093 

Left: aerial view 

Below: formal analysis and 

perspective section 

BA

094 

Hugh Craft 


Rhys Dunn 


Gateshead is an area with high potential for 

development. My project aims to build on this 

now and for the future. It is important not to 

think of the site in isolation, looking at the area 

as a whole, physically and socially is key. My 

project establishes connections to the area of 

Gateshead as well as its people and develops 

a ‘place.’. The creation of activity, bustle, and 

respectful but contemporary design that 

welcomes everyone is essential. 


095 

BA

096 

Katy van Geffen 


Rosanna Retreat 

The Rosanna Retreat is a residential centre for 

Cystic Fibrosis sufferers aged 15-25 years old. 

The concept was to create a place of respite, 

rejuvenation and to become a positive 

alternative to the institutional hospital building. 

The centre will also provide community 

provisions in three areas; psychology, 

physiotherapy and nutrition. Clockwise from top left: 

Section, Sketch section, 

Model photo, Site plan, 

Zoning sketch 

Tom Farmer 


The Bridge 

This project proposes an investment from 

the Gateshead Hilton into developing the 

adjacent site as a research centre, exploring 

and highlighting the gaps in society whilst 

providing shelter, food and a place to belong 

for the most vulnerable people. The building 

plugs into the High Level Bridge which will be 

utilitsed as an urban market place, offering 

advice, training and a possible place of work. 


097 

BA

098 

Olga Gogoleva 


Thomas Bewick Research 

Institute for Ornithology 

PARTI 


The Rise of the Bird, site 

map, gaps, study space, 

perspective. 

Tom [BJ] Lobb 

Tom B J Lobb 

Stage 3 / Grad project / Mind the GAP / Heal the GAP 

Tom [BJ] Lobb 

Na feui bla feu facing eugait venim dolent 

Mind [the] Gap nis nulla facipsusto et at. Ip ea facipisl esting 

Heal Na feui [the] bla Gap feu facing el eugait et, vero venim commolortie dolent eu faccumsandre 

nis nulla facipsusto et faciduipsum at. Ip ea facipisl erit, conullam esting quat dit nim 

zzriliquisl eratet vel diat ad min ut dolesto cons 

My el et, project vero commolortie was a cancer research centre. 

euguerit eu faccumsandre 

wisim vercillaUd tio et acipisi. Agnisi 

My faciduipsum passion lies erit, in conullam making bla feugait quat architecture luptatetum. dit nim that 

helps people. The centre contains a phase 


4 research lab, patient accommodation, a 

euguerit wisim vercillaUd tio et acipisi. Agnisi 

mental wellbeing centre which all overlook a 

sunken bla feugait Maggie’s luptatetum. influenced rehab centre. 


Na feui bla feu facing eugait venim dolent 

nis nulla facipsusto et at. Ip ea facipisl esting 

el et, vero commolortie eu faccumsandre 

faciduipsum erit, conullam quat dit nim 


influenced euguerit wisim vercillaUd rehab tio et acipisi. centre. 

Agnisi 

bla feugait luptatetum. 

099 

Stage 3 / Grad project / Mind the GAP / Heal the 

My project was a cancer 

research centre. My passion 

lies in Tom making [BJ] architecture Lobb 

that helps people. The centre 

contains a phase 4 research 

lab, patient accommodation, a 

mental wellbeing centre which 

all overlook a sunken Maggie’s 

BA 

My project was a cancer 

research centre. My passio 

lies in making architecture 

that helps people. The cent 

contains a phase 4 researc 

lab, patient accommodation 

mental wellbeing centre whi 

all overlook a sunken Maggie re 

influenced rehab centre. l 

th 

co 

lab 

me 

all

100 

Jacob Neville 


[Writer’s] Gap 

This project proposes a Creative Writing 

Research Centre for Gateshead in response 

to the city’s social fragmentation and lack 

of identity. The centre is both ‘introverted’ 

and ‘extroverted’ meaning elements of 

escapism contrast with functional links back 

to Gateshead. The concept of ‘fragments to a 

whole’ attempts to respect both the function 

of the building and our place in society as an 

individual within a greater community. 


Individual writing space 

section, Key design stages, 

Circulation diagram, Solid/ 

Void diagram, Zoning 

diagram, Entrance 

perspective, Clustering of 

Writing Spaces (Section) 

Ian Perrell 


Ecology and Biodiversity Research Centre 

The design aims to combat the gaps that 

surround Gateshead, focusing on linking the 

Quayside with upper Gateshead. My building 

provides an appropriate research building for 

the chosen quayside site. 

I drew on inspirations from the immediate 

context; the cascading nature of the Gorge 

onto the Tyne, and the ever-changing view 

of the site that’s distorted through the dense 

trees of the Gorge. 


101 


1- South Facade. 2- Lecture 

Hall. 3- Section through 

atrium. 4- North Facade. 

5- Site Section. 

BA

102 

Markus Rydén 


Centre for Urban Research 

The Centre will create a common ground for 

the design professionals, planners, and the 

public. The core will start life as a debating 

chamber, while adaptable provisions will grow 

around it as the regeneration of Gateshead 

progresses. The densification of building will 

become a metaphor for the ‘gaps’ in the city. 

PARTI 


left: section, internal 

perspectives, diagrams. 

Rory Stott 


Gateshead Centre for Philosophy 

The building provides offices for working 

philosophers and a public library, social area 

and lecture theatre. The library is housed 

in one of the arches supporting the High 

Level Bridge, forming the symbolic heart 

of the building as the collection of existing 

knowledge, off which both researchers and 

the public can thrive. 


103 


Concept sketch of Library; 

Cross section through 

Library; Panorama of 

Quayside with building in 

situ. 

BA

104 

Mark Thompson 


Recycle North Centre 

The RNC is a new multi-functional 

development to house an interactive, 

demonstrational recycling facility and advice 

centre for energy efficiency in the community. 

Separated into a tower and plinth form, the 

advice centre and offices for companies 

involved in energy efficiency are based in the 

tower and the recycling centre is based in the 

plinth for intentional viewing by the public. 


section through advice 

centre, offices and bar tower, 

model of eastern facade 

arrangement, western 

elevation, sectional detailed 

perspective of recycling 

activities room. 

Jake Aiken Winter 


Freecycle Re-use Centre 

Today we are told the greatest danger to our 

existence is where our energy comes from. 

However, there is a greater concern, we 

are running out of space in which to “throw 

things away”. Rubbish mountains are building 

and landfills are overspilling at a madly 

unsustainable rate. The Freecycle Centre 

uses light & architecture to change people’s 

perceptions of what they “throw away.” 


105 


Freesearch Tower, light 

boxes, arrival hall, soft light, 

Freehall1, Freehall2, wax 

landscape 

BA

106 

Paul Wood 


Gateshead Research Centre 

FAULKNERBROWNS 

ARCHITECTS 

Creative solutions to complex 

challenges 

Iconic buildings for landmark 

sites 

Dobson House, Northumbrian Way, Killingworth, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE12 6QW 

T (0)191 268 3007 / F (0)191 247 8132 / email@faulknerbrowns.co.uk 

www.faulknerbrowns.co.uk

108 109 

Project 3c 

New Horizons 

The brief is for a 200-pupil Montessori 

Elementary School (3-12) in the Chandless 

Area of Gateshead. A Montessori school 

offers a unique challenge to an architectural 

designer: the value placed on sensory 

development through contact with physical 

matter, space and natural forces; the belief in 

the humanizing potential of a well-structured 

learning environment; the quest for beauty 

and order; the optimistic faith in the power of 

human imagination aimed at problem solving 

activity; the cultivation of intrinsic motivation 

– individuality with social responsibility; the 

search for a dynamic whole, pursued through 

active experience; the emphasis on variety 

and spontaneous activity in the curriculum. 

Dr Hentie Louw 


Image courtesy of Kit Stiby Harris 

BA

110 

William Anderson 

New Horizons 

Montessori School 

“They had a recess at eleven o’clock and 

employed the time playing a very special kind 

of ball game on the broad terrace at the top of 

the stairs... they utilized the wall in the game, 

as in squash - a curved wall, which they played 

against with great virtuosity. I do not claim that 

these Italian youngsters learned more about 

architecture than the tourists did. But quite 

unconsciously they experienced certain basic 

elements of architecture, and they learnt to play 

on these elements.” 

Experiencing Architecture - Steen Eiler 

Rasmussen. 


Slate elevation model, 

purpose-free external 

courtyards, cloister sketch, 

top lit photograph of stone 

and concrete hall. 

Emma Armstrong 

New Horizons 

Playscale Village 

A Montessori School based on the coming 

together of geometric forms to produce an 

organic and dynamic mass. The design is 

based on the observation, interaction and 

perception of the children and their ability to 

manipulate the space where they learn. 




Model of complete building 

form, Model of Classroom 

interior, Sketch of entrance, 

Model of Classroom exterior, 

Section though Main Hall, 

Section through Entrance 

and Circulation Points 

BA


Robert J. Arthur 

New Horizons 

The Sergi Montessori Academy 

Inspired by Maria Montessori’s credo that 

the calmness of an ordered mind aids a 

child’s intellectual development, the proposed 

Montessori school in Gateshead follows 

an almost monastic ideal of preparing a 

child’s working environment. Throughout 

the day, everchanging patterns of light and 

shadow achieve an appropriate medium 

for concentration where Japanese layering 

techniques offer an architecture of opaque, 

translucency and transparency. 


relationship with outdoors, 

floorplan with parti, 

ricepaper experimentation 

with light and shadow, 

sketchbook, calm indoor 

working spaces, building 

model. 

Jonathan Beeby 

New Horizons 




Inspired by the Montessori material, the 

‘binomial cube’, the project seeks to explore 

how the combination of repeated geometric 

forms can be translated on a number of levels 

to produce a simple and coherent building 

with a strong sense of variety and depth of 

atmosphere. Clockwise from top left: 

Classroom wall external, 

Classroom model, 

Classroom wall internal, 

South facade, Entrance 

approach and model. 

BA


Sarah Brown 

New Horizons 


The building utilises a radial plan with the 

three classroom blocks forming spokes into 

the landscape providing close contact with 

a sheltered external area and maintaining 

the montessori philosphy of interaction with 

nature. The central staircase houses the library 

and acts as a ‘hinge’ for the design. Clockwise from top 

left: Ground Floor Plan, 

Perspective of Central 

Staircase, South East 

Facade, Basic Building 

form. 

Sophie Connor 

New Horizons 


My school is based around a repeating 

classroom pod which docks into a shared 

social space. This forms a boundary between 

the public outside and the private spaces of 

the classrooms and beyond. The pods are 

given individual identities, providing spaces 

which a child can easily relate to. 


PARTI 



development sketch 

showing front of school, 

section of plan, development 

massing model, model 

showing classrooms and 

breakout space. 

BA


Edward Dale-Harris 

New Horizons 

Green Community School 

Influences: 

‘Travelling’ 

Gateshead Warehouses 

Northumberland Dairy Farms (and cows!) 

Vernacular 

Sustainablitiy 

Edward Cullinan-Cotsworld 

Haworth Tompkin- Snape Maltings 

Louis Kahn- India Institute of Management 


Classroom Threshold, 

Warehouse Atmospheric 

Painting, Concept Sculpture, 

Social Interactive Furniture, 

Classroom Interior. 

Daniel Dyer 

New Horizons 


A Montessori School in the Chandless Estate, 

Gateshead. The particular focus of my project 

was the reuse of an existing wall on the site. 

This was in order to demonstrate a notion of 

reuse in an area of Gateshead with a legacy 

of demolition. The school aimed to provide 

flexible learning environments with the use 

of partition shelving in each classroom. This 

flexibility meant that the shelving revealed two 

chairs and a table. 




Classroom Exterior, Flexible 

Furniture, Entrance area. 

BA


Kit Stiby Harris 

New Horizons: 

A woven school 

When a bird builds its nest, the shape 

of its body becomes impressed on the 

material. The image of the nest as a secure 

environment, coupled with the notion that a 

‘woven wall’ is representative of community, 

informed a tectonic response at a range of 

scales to the Montessorian pedagogy. 


playing with scale; the 

feeling of the complex; a 

secure environment; the 

woven infill wall re-imagined; 

the tectonics of a nest 

Youngeun Jung 

New Horizons 

Inside-Out 

In response to the nature-conscious Montessori 

pedagogy, the challenge of this project was 

to create an environment for a child that 

engages closely with the surrounding nature. 

Realisation of the design mainly stemmed from 

the study of the traditional Korean architecture, 

which exemplifies the harmonious relationship 

between man and nature. Likewise the design 

intention was to create an integral space in 

which a child can freely shift from inside to 

outside, and outside to inside. 




Initial concept, Capriccio, 

final site model, classroom 

model. 

BA

120 

Dana Mudawi 

New Horizons 

A Space to Learn 

The way we use, perceive, populate, 

organise and inhabit space lies at the heart of 

architectural invention. 

How a space is designed changes the mood 

and behaviour of its inhabitants. 

How can we explore the transformative 

potential of space in a way that challenges our 

established perceptions and use of space? 

A Space to Learn: challenging the concept of the 

traditional learning environment. 

PARTI 

Clockwise from top left: typical 

class base, thermal mass 

axonometric, sustainability 

section, outdoor performance 

area, classroom courtyard. 

Samuel Pye 

New Horizons 


A School that uses Montessori’s ideas 

of teaching the whole child as a design 

concept, creating a space that has an organic 

multi-faceted language of a timber structure 

covered by a cedar shingle skin. 


121 

BA

122 

Hatty Saunders 

New Horizons 


Clockwise from top: Parti 

Diagram; North to South 

Section; Elevation showing 

Materiality North & South; 

Perspective inside Classroom 

looking up to Mezanine 

Level; Site Plan; Mass Model 

expressing Roof Formation. 

Alaa Tarabzouni 

New Horizons 


The Montessori school is located in 

Gateshead. The driving force behind this 

design was to complement the site, and to 

offer a building that could be easily adapted 

into the wider regeneration scheme of 

Gateshead, while still keeping the explorative, 

fun nature of a child’s perspective throughout. 


EXPLORE 

123 


Entrance Perspective, Plans, 

Building Section. 

BA

124 

Gavin Welch 

New Horizons 


The school has been created with the child’s 

experience central to the design, fitting to the 

Montessori values. Open plan classrooms 

allow the children to freely explore the school 

in their quest to learn. A strong connection is 

created with the surrounding context and a 

proposed redevelopment of the area. 


Development Massing 

Model, Initial Concept 

on Site, Landscaping 

Development, Room 

Development Sketch, 

Montessori Material Study 

Dayle Zieleniewski 

New Horizons 

Gateshead Montessori Primary School 

A school that is designed to help guide the 

self taught children through life by continually 

influencing the students to experiment and 

adapt their environment through geometric 

and spatial manipulation. An exposed timber 

structure with tactile materials echoes the 

honesty of form and function of the building. 


125 


View from classroom, 

Southern Elevation, 

Classroom Layout, 

Classroom Section, 

Main hall,. 

BA

Graduate Retention 

And Development 

archiGRAD 

“ArchiGRAD has been the perfect next step from university. It combines 

the familiar creative studio environment of working alongside peers 

with the privilege of being mentored by professionals and the 

challenges of successfully managing an alternative practice to deliver 

high-quality work on time to real clients.” 

The GRAD Manifesto.... 

archiGRAD is an opportunity to develop our 

skills whilst looking for work. It is a means by 

which we can sustain a creative perspective, 

and to work as part of a team with our fellow 

graduates. It gives us the chance to get 

involved with the local community and to 

address issues of urban design in the region. 

We are passionate about the built environment, 

and being out of work puts us at risk of our 

skills diminishing. For many of us progressing 

to the next stage of our career would seem a 

much more unlikely prospect if we did not have 

the archiGRAD scheme to keep us involved. 

Because we’re not employed, our voluntary 

stance gives us a chance to express ourselves 

on a more independent level, and to confront 

aspects of urban design without influence from 

employers. 

The Basic Intent.... 

1. 

2. 

3. 

4. 

The region benefits from the GRADs’ 

speculative efforts in identifying problems 

that might have a design based solution. 

The students benefit directly from the 

experience in growing knowledge, 

confidence, skills and learning from each 

other. 

Their portfolios and CVs continue to grow, 

improving their prospects. 

The opportunities identified by the GRADs 

could lead to funded work – either for the 

GRADs or local practitioners. 

Feature / archiGRAD 

127

128 Feature / archiGRAD 129 

What Has Been Done.... 

PROVOCATIVE INTERVENTIONS... 

A site, an issue, an action, a spin. GRADs 

highlight issues of waste, recycling, food 

sustainability and bio diversity in Newcastle 

city centre by creating thought provoking 

interventions. 

GATESHEAD CREATIVE QUARTER... 

1NG were interested in the viability of a creative 

quarter development adjacent to Gateshead 

Quays, focussing on preconceptions, 

precedents, people, place and proposals. 

GRAD’s produced a 100 page document 

which was presented to 1NG. 

MIDDLESBROUGH MYPLACE.... 

Middlehaven regeneration site, is currently 

being renovated for use as a new facility 

housing services for young people as part of 

the national myplace programme. 

GRADS worked on three design concepts 

addressing how the disused strip of land in 

front of the Custom House. 

What Is Happening Now.... 

MONKCHESTER ROAD NURSERY.... 

Monkchester Nursery is an early eighties 

building designed around interconnected 

classrooms, with connections to outside 

spaces. There are a number of difficulties with 

the building which GRADs have been asked to 

consider: Storage, the entrance sequence and 

a new dining room/ multi-purpose space. 

BALTIC EVENT & EDUCATION STRUCTURE... 

The Baltic have asked GRAD’s to help design 

an Outdoor Education space to sit in Baltic 

Square. The Museum currently hires out 

marquees and would like something a little 

more bespoke for the purpose of education, 

corporate events and weddings amongst 

other things. 

GATESHEAD SPACE INVADERS.... 

The GRADs have been awarded funding to lead 

an exciting participation project. ArchiGRAD 

will work with a group of young people and 

their local built environment through a range of 

architectural and creative activities, to empower 

them to influence immediate and long-term 

regeneration in Gateshead and beyond. 

Want to get involved? Contact us.... 

www.archigrad.co.uk 

studio@archigrad.co.uk

BArch 

Architecture 

The Bachelors of Architecture (BArch) is a 

professionally accredited programme (RIBA Part 

II) that prepares graduates for a career in the 

architectural profession. Our programme draws 

its strength from the high quality of its student 

body and the academic interests of our staff 

specializing in a range of areas including history 

and theory, digital design, and architectural 

technologies. Project assignments emphasize 

the cultivation of an ethos that combines 

flexibility with tenacity, and robustness with 

imagination, by taking lively and experimental 

ideas—often derived from the analysis of a 

site and its culture—and developing them to 

address a wide array of practical and intellectual 

challenges. As our students develop their 

design and critical skills, we encourage them 

to engage in individual and group research 

projects as part of their education and support 

them in taking accelerated routes for obtaining 

joint graduate level qualifications that our school 

offers in Town Planning, Digital Architecture and 

Urban Design. 

Dr Zeynep Kezer 


Image courtesy of Kier McNeill 

131 

BArch

132 BArch / stage 5 133 

Stage 5 

Stage 5 involved investigations of society, 

environment, storytelling and detail. First 

semester began with charrette projects 

shared with stage 6, easing graduate students 

into the school after a year in practice. Two 

parallel option projects comprised first 

semester: Social Mapping, examining the 

physical and social fabric of Newcastle and 

Gateshead; and Eco-Homes, working with the 

City Council to design sustainable houses for 

sites in the city. The second semester project 

- Detail, Narrative and Memory - examined 

storytelling and detail in architecture. Design 

work was supplemented by stimulating theory 

seminars and option modules shared with 

other postgraduate programmes including 

‘Linked Research’ projects and a study trip to 

Brussels. 

Dr Nathaniel Coleman and Prof Adam Sharr 


Image courtesy of Lauren Wedderburn 

BArch

134 BArch / stage 5 and 6 / charrette 135 

Project 1 

Gateshead 

Charrette 

This year’s charrette included three 

distinctive projects: Where will the flyover 

go?, Gateshead Soup and Action! which 

addressed a strangulated urban space in 

central Gateshead located in and around 

three housing blocks and adjacent to the 

flyover that by passes the Town Centre. 

Daniel Mallo and Armelle Tardiveau 

Project Leaders 

Charrette Site Plan 

Where will the Flyover go? led by Dermot 

Foley (landscape architect, Dublin) 

challenged the assumption that the 

flyover will be taken away and attempted 

to make this infrastructure a better place. 

(Left) 

Mark Brown 

Louise Daly 

George Musson 

Perception, Motion, Engagement 

(Bottom Left) 

Nick Simpson 

Jonny Gabe 

Jen Charlton 

Vote with your feet 

(Bottom Right) 

James Harrington 

Paul Maguire 

Nicholas Kemp 

Urban Diffusion 

BArch

136 BArch / stage 5 and 6 / charrette 137 

Gateshead Soup led by Manuel Tardits 

(Mikan architects, Tokyo) invited to 

identify issues particular to the housing 

blocks in order to create a new urban 

soup, a rich catalogue of spaces 

providing food for thought. 

(from top) 

Gateshead Soup 

Stroller Coaster 

Shading Puzzle 

Finally, the charrette led by Daniel Mallo 

and Armelle Tardiveau (Newcastle 

University) carried out an urban Action!, 

a collectively deployed event to reveal 

the controversies of the site and alter the 

perception of this unused open space. 

Footage of the Collective 

Action! that took place on site 

on the 8th October 2010 

BArch

Social Mapping – Master 

Planning: Foundations for the 

Overcoming of Certainty 


Nathaniel Coleman is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Newcastle 

University. He first studied architecture at the Institute for 

Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City, holds BFA and 

BArch degrees from RISD, a MUP degree from the CUNY Program 

in Urban Design, and MSc and PhD degrees from UPenn. Previously, 

Coleman practiced in New York and Rome, and taught in the US. 

A recipient of Graham Foundation and British Academy grants, 

Coleman’s research concerns the problematic of Utopia in relation 

to architecture history, theory, and design, and the city. Other 

research interests include the social dimension of architecture, 

and pedagogy. Coleman is the author of Utopias and Architecture 

(2005), his most recent publication is the collection he edited, 

Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and 

Utopia (2011), he has also published nationally and internationally 

in edited books and journals. 

Although ‘Social Mapping’ and ‘Master 

Planning’ may conjure up anxieties linked 

to the excesses of orthodox modern 

architecture and planning, the persisting 

value of both for imagining the just city 

is advanced here, albeit in potentially 

surprising ways, and in relation to Utopia. 

Social Mapping – Master Planning: 

Foundations for the Overcoming of 

Certainty 

Social Mapping and Master Planning 

are phrases that at first glance suggest 

something authoritarian, at the very least 

top-down, and perhaps even panoptic 

in their sweep. Under current conditions 

both are at best anomalous and at worst 

retrograde: how can you map the social 

and who (or whom) could have the nerve 

to claim for themselves the title of master 

of the plan? And yet, the antithesis of social 

mapping and master planning, in lieu of 

the autogestion Henri Lefebvre envisioned, 

which the distorting myths of some Big 

Society seem only to place at an ever 

further remove (as a kind of pathological 

utopia akin to Disney World), architects, 

planners and urban designers must 

continue to find ways to imagine futures 

for neighbourhoods, villages, towns, and 

cities that do not descend into the anarchic 

narcissism of absent planning controls and 

radically free-markets (or the determinism 

of the immediate post-war period). 

Feature / Dr Nathaniel Coleman 139 

So, there it is: in this instance, Social 

Mapping and Master Planning have been 

turned on their heads. Apart from the 

linguistic (or other forms of) gymnastics this 

suggests, the intention is radical. Under 

the cover of a dubious self-proclaimed 

progressiveness, prophets of nothingness 

suggest that there is a correlation between 

anti-planning, that is its abdication, and 

the provision of settings invented by their 

users. Long ago such perspectives were 

called into question during the epoch of 

abstract orthodox modernist architecture 

and planning, with their obsession for the 

generalized, not to say generic, and the 

abstract. The paradox remains, individual 

and group appropriation (individual and 

social imagination even) are nourished 

by carefully defined settings, made up of 

articulate elements that establish a field 

of appropriation as much as of response. 

And here I am reluctant to name adherents 

of either faction, the non-definers and 

definers alike, not least because I wish 

to remain focused on the theoretical 

aims of this essay but also because I 

would like to avoid sidelining readers into 

discussions around what they do or do not 

like. However, this evasiveness is not just 

self-serving in its apparent cowardice; its 

primary aim is to be generative, in just the 

ways Social Mapping and Master Planning 

suggest impossible thought experiments 

that are nonetheless possible.

140 Feature / Dr Nathaniel Coleman 141 

The Street is a Room. Drawings for the City/2 Exhibition. 

Louis I. Kahn, 1971 (Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 

given by Louis Kahn (72-32-3) 

With my stubborn retention of Social 

Mapping and Master Planning as 

continuing to offer up possibilities even 

in an epoch of doubt, with the attendant 

abdication of social responsibility and the 

ebbing of society this assures, readers 

may have by now caught a whiff of Utopia; 

and rightly so, perhaps most obvious for 

those familiar with my work. 1 But despite 

its by now longstanding role as the straw 

1. 

2. 

man of twentieth century architecture 

and planning failures (which were indeed 

legion), the presence of Utopia is less 

verifiable than many, including Colin Rowe, 

would have us believe. 2 And so, if the 

scent of Utopia is ascertainable here, the 

argument is that it is far less malodorous 

than generations of architects and planners 

have been trained to believe (at the very 

least potentially so). Agreeably so as well, 

See for example Nathaniel Coleman (Ed.), Imagining and Making the World Reconsidering Architecture and 

Utopia, Ralahine Utopian Studies, Volume 8 (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2011) and Nathaniel Coleman, Utopias 

and Architecture (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2005) 

Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1978). 

because when architects and planners can 

no longer throw up their hands in defeat, 

because harbouring the conviction that the 

marketplace determines all—as a cover for 

inaction in the form of a poverty of social 

imagination—is no longer tenable, Utopia 

can return to guide imagination. But in what 

form, what sort of Utopia, especially when 

plans are still instruments of power wielded 

against those with a less than equal voice 

or authority. If I might still be indulged my 

conviction that to design anything architects 

still need to know much about the people 

who will appropriate what is offered to 

them, and their ability to do so will be easier 

the more concrete what is on offer is (in the 

sense of tangible), this might be a good 

time to turn to what sort of mental tuning 

would be best brought to bear on the social 

maps and master plans recalcitrant utopian 

architects and planners might devise. 

Although social mapping and master 

planning may be questionable terms, 

my proposal is that they are redeemable 

if thought through ideas of the city, 

community and Utopia offered up by, 

for example, Martin Buber’s conception 

of ‘communities of communities,’ Henri 

Lefebvre’s ‘critiques of everyday life,’ ‘the 

right to the city,’ and Utopia as offering a 

way to imagine a reformed future through a 

recollected past, David Harvey’s ‘dialectic 

utopia,’ and Fredric Jameson’s conviction 

that ‘it is difficult enough to imagine any 

radical political programme without the 

conception of systemic otherness, of an 

alternate society, which only the idea of 

utopia seems to keep alive.’ 3 At least 

one way to temper the potential excesses 

of utopia would be to ‘walk the city’ with 

Michel de Certeau, but also to keep in mind 

Gianni Vattimo’s thoughts on the rhetoric 

of Utopia in the invention of projects but 

also on the possibilities of Utopia, even 

in the present: ‘the issue becomes one 

of conceiving a post-metaphysical utopia 

precisely under the sign of multiplicity 

asserted as a fundamental value and 

not just as a phase of “confusion” to be 

overcome through a process of synthesis, 

etc.’ 4 

In consideration of the links suggested 

here between social mapping and master 

planning and between both and Utopia, 

if each is practised under the ‘sign of 

multiplicity […] as a fundamental value,’ 

whatever lingering suspicion of their value 

as totalizing terms inherited from the height 

of modernity might be safely set aside so 

that architects and planners can return to 

the work of imagining a just city. 

3. Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996); Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City, in 

Writings on Cities (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996) 63 – 181 Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (Eds.); Henri Lefebvre, 

The Critique of Everyday Life, Three Vols. (London: Verso, 2008); David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 2000); Fredric Jameson, ‘The Politics of Utopia,’ New Left Review 25, Jan. – Feb. 2004. 

4. Michel de Certeau, ‘Walking the City,’ The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 

1984) 91 – 110. Gianni Vattimo, ‘The End of Modernity, The End of the Project,’ Rethinking Architecture: A Reader 

in Cultural Theory, Neil Leach (Ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 1997) 148 – 54. Gianni Vattimo, ‘Utopia 

Dispersed,’ Diogenes 53(1), 2006: 18 – 23.

142 BArch / stage 5 / project 2a 143 

Project 2a 

Ecohomes-Ecoliving 

This project investigated a wide range of 

approaches for sustainable living. Students 

had a choice of two sites in Newcastle, and 

wrote their own brief. In the first part, stages 

5 & 6 worked together in groups to produce 

a master plan. In the second part, stage 

5 students worked individually to develop 

detailed house types. 

Dr Martin Beattie and Daniel Mallo 

Project Leaders 

Victoria Telford, 

Nicholas Backhouse, 

Nicholas Scannell 

Jennifer Webb, 

Joanna Doherty, 

Alistair Wilkinson 

BArch


James Newman, 

Sophie Ellis, 

Beatrice Chan 

Beatrice Chan 

BArch


Victoria Telford 

Jennifer Webb 

George Musson 

Paul King 

BArch

148 BArch / stage 5 / project 2b 149 

Project 2b 

Social Mapping / 

Master Planning 

The project is made up of three interrelated 

parts: the eponymous first two, which 

comprise group work, and Urban 

Elaborations, which comprises individual work 

developing upon the earlier components. 

The challenge is to re-imagine how project 

analysis is mapped, and to broaden the 

horizons of influence on architectural 

interventions beyond formal consideration to 

include the social. 



Mark Greenhalgh, 

Jennifer Charlton, 

Pratik Jain, 

Nicholas Kemp and 

Amy Linford 

Social Mapping 

Bensham 

Cara Lund 

Skills Swap 

Jesmond 

BArch

150 BArch / stage 5 / project 2b 151 

Amy Linford 

Elaborations 

Bensham 

Anthony Vickery 

Elaborations 

Bensham 

Michael Simpson 

Elaborations 

Jesmond 

Alastair Whiting 

Elaborations 

Bensham 

BArch

An Ace Caff 


Adam Sharr is Professor of Architecture at Newcastle University, 

Editor of arq: Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge 

University Press), Series Editor of Thinkers for Architects 

(Routledge) and Principal of Adam Sharr Architects. His books 

include Heidegger’s Hut (MIT Press, 2006) and, co-edited with 

Allison Dutoit and Juliet Odgers, Quality Out of Control: Standards 

for Measuring Architecture (Routledge, 2010). 

This article reviews a project that will, 

arguably, be the definitive contemporary 

museum. Designed by David Chipperfield, it 

is currently on-site in Berlin and is due to be 

completed in 2015. 

The Museumsinsel – or Museum Island – 

situated on Berlin’s river Spree has been 

a barometer of political and architectural 

history. 1 Its partial destruction in the final 

battle for the city in April 1945 symbolised 

the demise of the Nazi state and, to many, 

represented the demise of the Enlightenment 

values embodied by its nineteenth century 

neo-Classical architecture. For architects, 

the Museumsinsel is, most famously, 

home to the Altes Museum designed by 

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1828) [1, 2]; a 

building once celebrated as a totem of 

European civilisation and which served as 

inspiration to modernists. 2 Located in East 

Germany during the Cold War, the Island 

was also home to the parliament building 

of the Communist state: the bronze-glazed 

Palast der Republik completed in 1974 

and demolished – controversially – in 2008 

to make way for a reconstruction of the 

Prussian palace which stood on its site before 

1945. 3 Most recently, the Museumsinsel 

has been of renewed interest to architects 

because of the reconstruction of its Neues 

Museum, completed in 2009 to a design by 

David Chipperfield and Julian Harrap [3]. 4 It 

remains the architectural conservation project 

du jour and its technical achievements are 

remarkable, organising all the air handling 

and lighting technologies necessary for a 

contemporary museum so that they remain 

effectively invisible while making few incisions 

in the building’s historic fabric [4]. 

1 : Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin 2 : Altes Museum, Plan, 1826. 

Feature / Prof Adam Sharr 

153 

1. Peter-Klaus Schuster, Cristina Inês Steingräber, Museumsinsel Berlin (Hamburg: SMB 2004) 

2. Barry Bergdoll and Eric Lessing, Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia (Milan: Rizzoli, 1994) 

3. Andrew Webber, Berlin in the Twentieth Century: A Cultural Topography (Cambridge, C.U.P., 2009) 

4. David Chipperfield, Kenneth Frampton, Candida Höfer, Julian Harrap, Neues Museum Berlin (Berlin: Walter König, 

2010)

154 Feature / Prof Adam Sharr 155 

3 : David Chipperfield & Julian Harrap, Main Staircase in 

the Neues Museum. 

The Museumsinsel was designated a World 

Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999 – not 

just for the architecture of its five museum 

buildings and the global significance of their 

exhibits, but also because it demonstrates 

the history of the idea of the museum. The 

group stands for the Enlightenment idea of 

the museum: cultural treasures assembled 

for public inspection, celebrated for their 

contribution to universal education and 

4 : Gallery in the Neues Museum showing the integration 

of contemporary museum servicing in historic fabric. 

knowledge, symbolically located at the 

centre of the city. Schinkel’s famous drawings 

of the Altes Museum demonstrate the 

civic grandeur of its portico and its central 

public rotunda [5, 6]; the latter open to the 

street offering immediate public access to 

different galleries and their Etruscan, Greek 

and Roman treasures. The Altes Museum 

(1828) was followed in 1859 by the Neues 

Museum; in 1876 by the Greek fantasy of the 

Alte Nationalgalerie, a temple sat on its own 

acropolis accessed by five flights of steps; 

and in 1904 by what is now the Bodemuseum, 

a neo-baroque edifice surrounded on three 

sides by water. The final addition, in 1930, 

was the Pergamonmuseum – housing the 

trophies of German excavations at Pergamon 

and other sites – with its galleries tailored to 

suit the larger exhibits. Shifts in the fashions of 

museology and developments in conservation 

are reflected in each successive building. 

The exhibits gradually moved further from 

the street door with increasingly larger foyers. 

Sequences of galleries and arrangements of 

exhibits became more explicitly curated. Each 

5 : Altes Museum. The famous drawing of the portico, 

1826. 

successive museum was built with a greater 

percentage of space devoted to infrastructure 

and ancillary spaces, with more offices, 

conservation studios and visitor facilities. 

Chipperfield’s forthcoming project – the 

sixth substantial building among this famous 

group of museums – demonstrates a radical 

extension of these ideas. 

The title of the forthcoming museum, the 

James Simon-Galerie (named after a ‘bright 

example for modern patronage’) is perhaps a 

misnomer. Galleries – a handful of temporary 

display spaces – are a minor component of 

the programme. This is instead a ‘reception 

6 : Altes Museum. Drawing of the rotunda, 1826.

156 Feature / Prof Adam Sharr 157 

building’ that will ‘offer [visitors] orientation 

and direct them to the highlights’. 5 Rather 

than dealing with five individual buildings, 

Berlin State Museums want to market the five 

museums together, selling visitors a single 

entrance ticket. As part of their masterplan for 

the site, tunnels will be built to connect the five 

buildings together, accessed from the new 

building. This reflects the current museological 

vogue for ‘cultural quarters’; visitor attractions 

grouped and marketed together. To this end, 

the James Simon-Galerie will ‘provide an 

infrastructure for the entire Museumsinsel’, 

containing ‘an information and ticket office 

area, cloakrooms, an auditorium, a museum 

shop, space for temporary exhibitions, a café 

and a restaurant’. 6 

“All is rotunda in this project, all is void; there 

is barely any museum.” 

Just the museums’ exhibits have become 

more explicitly curated, the Island’s museums 

are now themselves to be curated. The 

new building, and the tunnels it opens 

onto, will provide a single access point, a 

singular orientation for the museums’ new 

meta-structure; a new, single, epistemology 

reconceptualising the exhibits within. 

Serendipity – thought-provoking chance 

encounters with exhibits, as discovered in the 

original Altes Museum by meandering through 

one of the multiple doors in Schinkel’s rotunda 

– will be substituted with a branded and 

largely pre-programmed sequence. 

But it is the new building itself, considered 

as the sixth museum in the architectural 

sequence on the island, which is arguably 

most interesting. At the Staatsgalerie in 

Stuttgart (1977-83), James Stirling famously 

quoted Schinkel’s Altes Museum by imagining 

its rotunda as a cookie cutter, used to bore 

a hole out of a block of galleries in order to 

make a public space punctuating a new civic 

route. Stirling reimagined Schinkel’s rotunda 

as a void in the museum. 7 Chipperfield has 

inverted this. The whole James-Simon Galerie 

effectively becomes the public space. All 

is rotunda in this project, all is void; there is 

barely any museum. 

In 1988, with the help of the advertising 

agency Saatchi and Saatchi, the V&A in 

London branded itself controversially as ‘An 

Ace Caff with Quite a Nice Museum Attached’. 

The sixth museum on the Museumsinsel 

is, effectively, an ace caff without much 

museum attached. It is focused on revenue 

earning activities: the gift shop, the café and 

the foyer. The caff (and the restaurant) will 

undoubtedly be ace, with stunning views 

over the river and the existing museums. The 

foyer will allow large groups of visitors to buy 

their passes in comfort and to browse the 

shop at leisure. The building contains all the 

retail opportunities favoured in contemporary 

museums with few of the difficulties caused by 

the troublesome display of historic artefacts 

and their awkward multiple interpretations. 

5. This text, on the website for the Museumsinsel masterplan, is published by Berlin State Museums: 

http://www.museumsinsel-berlin.de/index.php?lang=en&page=1_1 [accessed 28.05.11] 

6. Ibid. 

7. Antony Vidler, James Frazer Stirling: Notes from the Archive (New Haven: Yale, 2010) 

In its focus on infrastructure and ancillary 

spaces, in its crystallisation of a single 

orienting structure, in its devotion to revenue 

generation, this sixth building is perhaps the 

logical extension of the architectural and 

museological shifts evident across the first 

five buildings on the Island. It appears to be 

a clear demonstration of the values prevalent 

among many large national museums. For 

the managers of heritage businesses, the 

James Simon-Galerie is perhaps the ultimate 

contemporary museum.

158 BArch / stage 5 / project 3 159 

Project 3 

Detail, Narrative 

and Memory 

This project is about detail; specifically, 

how an architectural detail can embody the 

story which informs the design as a whole 

– what Marco Frascari calls the ‘tell-the-tale 

detail’. Studio participants chose an existing 

building to work with, drew that building to 

encapsulate their interpretation of it, proposed 

a programme to extend it, designed that 

extension and drew a detail encapsulating the 

story of the project. The resulting proposals 

were diverse, thoughtful and enjoyable. 



Nicholas Backhouse 

Vale Tower accommodation and workshops 

Jesmond Dene 

Hanna Benihoud 

For the Love of Science 

National Institute of Medical Research 

Mill Hill 

BArch


Beatrice Chan 

Inhabited Hemp Bridge 

King Edward VII Bridge, Newcastle 

Ka Chan 

Detail, Narrative and Memory 

Blackfriars, Newcastle 

Wai Lok Chan 

Union Rooms Extension 

Newcastle 

Kyle Cowper 

Castle Banquet 

Castle Keep, Newcastle 

BArch


Nicholas Kemp 

Embassy of Minority Nations 

American Embassy, Mayfair 

Louise Daly 

Nature’s Dance 

The Camera Obscura, West Pier Brighton 

bridal suite (optional) 

reception option 3 

Processional Section 

1:100 

Cara Lund 

St Peter’s Intensive Farm 

Cardross, Glasgow 



dining option 2 

dining option 1 ceremony 

Amy Linford 

Weddings at Saltwell Park 

Gateshead 

BArch


Paul Maguire 

Teufelsberg Media Machine 

Berlin 

Keir McNeil 

Hatchery 

Llanberis 

?! 

Sketch Axo| Existing City Route 

George Musson 

The Alternative City 

Westgate Road, Newcastle 

Analyitique 

BArch


Georg Schubert 

King’s House City Hotel 

Newcastle 

Michael Simpson 

Reading in Layers 

Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem Pub, Nottingham 

(above and left) 

Victoria Telford 

Retracing Narratives 

Robert Sinclair Tobacco Factory 

Michael Smith 

Section 

Sagrada Familia, Barcelona 

BArch


Henry Poon 

Detail, Narrative and Memory 

Saltburn Station 

Jeremy Trotter 

Chester Tidal Baths 

River Dee 

Hydroelectric Station 

Anthony Vickery 

Viva Geevor 

Pendeen, Cornwall 

BArch

170 BArch / stage 5 / project 3 


171 


H o m e S e w e r ‘ s 

W o r k s h o p 

E v e n t s / 

M a t e r i a l s o r t i n g 

Raichel Warren 

The Home of Craftivism 

The Old Warwick Street Bus Depot 


L e c t u r e 

G e n t l e m a n ‘ s 

T a y l o r i n g 

Lauren Wedderburn 

A Load of Rubbish: A Place For the Bricoleur 

Spillers Wharf, Newcastle 

N 


Jennifer Webb 

Ramblers Retreat 

Northumberland 

BArch


Alastair Whiting 

Counterpoint 

The Holy Jesus Hospital, Newcastle 

The Holy Jesus Hospital in amongst the monumental additions from the 1960s 

Alastair Whiting. 

Detail, narrative and memory - The Holy Jesus Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne. 

Analytique exploring some of the key themes and spaces from the project. 

Alastair Whiting, 


The Junction between the Holy Jesus Hospital and the Swan House roundabout. This was the start point of the project, the curious conjunction of old and new 

and how a new space is created between. 

Alastair Whiting, 


Paul King 

Scone Lab 

Seaton Deleval Hall, Northumberland 

Alistair Wilkinson 

Micro-brewery & Museum 

Castle Ward, Bedford 

BArch

Slime mould 


Andrew Ballantyne qualified as an architect and worked mainly on 

theatres before deciding to do a doctorate, which led to his first book, 

on Richard Payne Knight. He has also worked with archaeologists 

in Greece, and published a study of Paliochora on Kythera. These 

days he is best known as the author of Architecture: a Very Short 

Introduction, which has been translated into many languages and 

has been republished around the world. He has also written on 

architectural theory, in such books as What is Architecture?, Deleuze 

and Guattari for Architects, and Architecture Theory. He is interested 

in the ways that people bond with buildings, and make them part 

of themselves. This theme is explored in two current book projects, 

Tudoresque: In Pursuit of the Ideal Home, with Andrew Law, which 

will be published in the summer of 2011, and Architecture in the 

Space of Flows, with Chris Smith, which will be out early in 2012. 

This is an extract from a discussion 

about how form can be generated from a 

multiplicity of small localized decisions. The 

case of slime mould is real and particular, but 

it can be read as a metaphor, or—better—as 

an example of a process that has a parallel in 

other processes that work in a similar way. 

The intelligent community 

Dictyostelium discoideum is popularly known 

as slime mould, but popularity is not its most 

pronounced characteristic. It can take the form 

of a strangely malleable slug-like creature, 

which wanders about in ways that are not 

always easy to understand as its structureless 

body reconfigures itself in ways that make 

the slug look familiarly creature-like. Slime 

mould shows signs of intelligence. It can 

find its way through mazes—sorting out the 

quickest route among alternatives—despite 

not having an organ that looks anything like 

a brain. It can also on occasion disappear; 

and having disappeared, it can reappear. 

It can do this because it is composed of 

many thousands of microscopic amoebalike 

organisms. In certain conditions they 

assemble into something that at first glance 

seems slug-like, which can do things that 

the individual cells cannot, like finding its way 

through a maze. The slime mould has been 

an important testing ground for thinking about 

emergence. 1 Understanding it turns out to 

involve people at an interface between biology 

Feature / Prof Andrew Ballantyne 175 

and mathematics, with mathematicians 

leading the way. 

The story does not have a clear beginning, 

but we could start with Alan Turing, who is 

best known for doing something like inventing 

the computer, shortening the war against the 

Nazis; but he also published an essay entitled 

“The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”. 2 

What he argued was that, given a set of 

simple interactions between cells, and a large 

number of cells, some complex patterns of 

behaviour can arise. One might not have 

predicted it from the initial conditions, but 

once one has seen it happening then one can 

make an analysis that shows mathematically 

that enough is specified in the initial conditions 

to make the complex behaviour occur. One 

of the tendencies as this area of study has 

developed has been for the biologists to 

intuit a source of willpower in the collective 

organism—supposing for example that there 

must be “leaders” among the slime mould 

cells, which influence how the collectivity 

behaves. However the mathematicians see 

no need for such a hypothesis, and see 

the description as being complete without 

it. The problem is that non-mathematicians 

cannot follow the logic of the highly technical 

mathematics that is involved, so it is difficult to 

realign one’s intuitions. In the same way, if one 

had not seen a pan of water coming to the boil 

a few times, one might think that something 

had been added when it came to boiling- 

1. Steve Johnson, Emergence (New York: Scribner, 2001), pp. 11–17, 20–21, 63–4, 163–9. See also John H. Holland, 

Emergence: From Chaos to Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Scott Manazine, Jean-Louis Deneubourg, 

Nigel R. Franks, James Sneyd, Guy Theraulaz and Eric Bonabeau, Self-Organization in Biological Systems (Princeton 

NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Richard Solé and Brian Goodwin, Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades 

Biology (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 

2. A.M. Turing, “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 

Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 237, No. 641 (1952), pp. 37–72.

176 

point. The biologists’ initial intuition was to see 

transcendence—here a transcendent will, that 

arrives from somewhere as yet unexplained. 

The mathematicians, by contrast, asserted 

that the collective organism’s will is immanent 

in the thousands of microscopic chemically 

determined wills of the cells. 

It is difficult to think of slime-mould cells as 

individuals, as we encounter them only in 

swarms. They can behave individually, but 

when they do so they disappear. Without a 

microscope they are indivisible, so perhaps 

they better deserve to be called “individuals” 

than do most other things. An important part 

of what has happened, which makes more 

of us intuitively accept the mathematicians’ 

reasoning, is that computers now can perform 

complex calculations rapidly and repeatedly 

in order to generate sequences of behaviour. 

When a mathematically derived model is 

being used then we know completely what 

there is in the model. We might have a series 

of interdependent variables that produce 

unpredictable results, but we know for certain 

that the results are not being caused by 

anything outside the mathematics. There 

might be a tendency to resolve in one 

way or another, to implode or disintegrate, 

depending on the initial conditions and the 

milieu, but we cannot impute motive, or will, 

or transcendental guidance, unless we put 

those things into play ourselves, programmed 

into the initial conditions. We can project our 

own emotions into the circumstances that 

we observe, but if it is all mathematically 

defined at the outset then we know that we 

are doing just that—projecting. Whereas in 

the case of natural organisms we are more 

inclined to accept our projections as being 

observations. Descartes was famously 

resistant to projecting his human feelings 

into animals, and he reasoned that animals 

did not have the means to feel pain. He 

was probably wrong there. But if instead of 

conducting his experiments on birds he had 

conducted them on a mathematical model 

of Dictyostelium discoideum then we would 

have found it very surprising if anyone thought 

that the mathematical model could suffer. In 

the case of natural organisms there is always 

the possibility that by performing the right 

experiment, one might make a discovery of 

some subtle organ—a soul, perhaps—that 

determines volition. But if the mathematical 

model can produce equivalent behaviours 

without needing to introduce such a thing, 

then one would stop searching for it and 

could conclude that it is an effect of intuitive 

projection rather than a natural object. It is the 

difference between Spinoza and Descartes, 

the difference between immanence and 

transcendence. 3 

Extract from: 

“Architecture in the Space of Flows” 

eds. Andrew Ballantyne & Chris L. Smith, Routledge: 2011 

3. See for example John C. Dallon and Hans G. Othmer, “How cellular movement determines the collective force 

generated by the Dictyostelium discoideum slug”, in Journal of Theoretical Biology, 23 (2004), pp. 203–22. 

www.grimshaw-architects.com 

Photography: Mark Humphreys, Ger Van Der Vlugt, 

Paul Rivera, John Gollings, Peter Aaron, Minerva plc


Stage 6 

The Design Thesis (BArch Graduation Project) 

is an opportunity for students to propose, 

research and develop an independent project 

which strongly emphasises a personal 

position, current interest and ethical stance. 

The Design Thesis is a research-led design 

project that demonstrates the fundamental 

integration of many facets of architecture. 



Image courtesy of James Longfield 

BArch


Thesis Groups 

1. Sustainable Visions 

This project is a demonstration of deep 

environmentalism embedded in construction 

technologies as well as in economic, 

agricultural or social practices. 

2. Manufacturing and 

Production Processes 

This project reinterprets the meaning of 

manufacturing today and its relationship 

with leisure and creative industries in our 

contemporary cities. 

3. Enticing Institutions 

These projects thrive in the generation of 

‘Enticing Institutions’ that propose a new 

breath of views, particularly with regards to 

users’ involvement. 

4. Urban Intervention 

The city is the playfield of theses that propose 

an ‘Urban Intervention’, an attempt of sparking 

urban life whilst stretching over a wide range 

of scales. 

BArch

182 BArch / stage 6 / sustainable visions 

183 

Alexandra Blaylock 

Sustainable Visions 

Upcycling Theatre 

Upcycling Theatre is a process which takes 

discarded textile and furniture waste from 

households in the Manchester area and 

upcycles them within the theatre industry as 

costumes and sets. The public engage with 

the process within the on-site theatre and 

throughout the materiality of the building. 

PROCESS 

PUBLIC 


Site Model, Examples of 

materials to be upcycled 

into costumes and sets, Key 

Section through Processing 

area Theatre and Public 

Area. 

Mark Brown 


A Bigger Bed and Breakfast 

“Why don’t umbrellas disintegrate in sunshine 

or at least grow in rain?” (Cedric Price) 

Why does the built environment at the British 

seaside resort not have the capacity to 

change in response to seasonal changes and 

the tide of the tourist? 

PARTI 

Modelling the relationship 

between the static and 

transient populations. 

BArch

184 BArch / stage 6 / sustainable visions 185 

Sophie Ellis 


Where Waters Meet 

Turning flood risk into an opportunity in 

Kingston upon Hull. The scheme reduces 

surface water flooding, re-opening fresh 

water drainage channels and creating 

neighbourhood osmosis power plants where 

fresh and salt water meet, once more seeing 

water as the lifeline to the city. 

a a 

a 

FUTURE HOUSES WHERE WATERS MEET LANDSCAPE PARK DREAMING CITY WATER STREETS SEMI-ACTIVE INDUSTRY AND POST-INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE PARK 

Design houses that work with the fluid 

Where the waters meet install osmotic Carry out remedial work of the post- Allowing water back into the city to Reduce surface water flooding by creating water 

Introduce water streets, retention zones and 

landscape, that are capable dealing with 

energy generation, looking to the diindustrial landscape and create land- make creaming environment in which transfer at street level that will carry the fresh wa- 

saltmarshes in redundant areas improving the 

the twice daily tide variance and the 

vine properties of water to meet the scape laboratory testing new food pro- buildings and light is reflected. Welcomter supply to the osmotic plants. This will also con- 

aesthetics and bringing man and nature closer 

predicted sea level rise. 

demands of the future and carry out reduction as salt water levels rise. 

ing water back into Queen’s Garden, fortinue the dreaming city ideology. 

whilst carrying out remedial work of the postgeneration 

of the former docks. This site 

merly, Old Dock (Background page 10) 

industrial landscape in preparation for future 

still needs to provide some protection 

will create fresh water store for the 

habitation. 

from tidal flooding in the city. 

Hull College Osmotic Plant 

URBAN RESERVOIR 

Fresh water storage and retention 

zones near the osmotic power 

plants lowering surface water flooding. 

These reservoirs will add amenities 

to the city in the form of fishing 

and boating lakes. 

PARTI 


creating a dreaming city, 

how do we transform the 

former docks?, city centre 

connections, 1:500 massing 

option, city scale proposal. 

Salt content of the river will need to 

investigated to dedtermine the scheme 

boundary. If the salt content carried 

up the River Hull is too low for osmosis 

energy production, another sustainable 

energy source will need to be found. 

WATER STREETS? URBAN RESERVOIR? WATER STREETS? 

Rachel Phillips 


BArch

186 BArch / stage 6 / sustainable visions 

187 

Alexander Price 


Teesside Centre for Remediation 

This project stems from a belief that 

humanity should try to reduce its impact 

on the environment, and looks at ways of 

decontaminating post-industrial land for 

the benefit of the local ecology, as well as 

humans. The scheme consists of a research 

centre with public facilities for raising 

awareness of these issues as well as facilities 

to enable the remediation to take place. 

View across site taking in 

the greenhouses, with the 

centre in the background. 

Nick Scannell 


Intervening in the Interstitial 

This thesis explores the possibility of 

intervening in an abandoned post industrial 

site whilst maintaining the conditions of the 

place that make it so unique. The proposal 

is for a series of architectural infrastructures 

that make the site habitable and provide 

a generator in time for a variety of future 

possibilities. 

Catalogue of interventions. 

BArch

188 BArch / stage 6 / manufacturing and production processes 189 

Simon Hargreaves 

Manufacturing and production processes 

rein-CAR-nated 

There were around 30 million cars in use within 

the UK in 2002. Every year approximately 2 

million new vehicles are registered and a similar 

number are scrapped. However, in 2010 an 

additional 400,000 cars were scrapped due 

to the governments “Scrappage Scheme”. 

Oil is a finite source and we are approaching 

“Carmageddon”. The day that the dominance of 

the internal combustion engine ends and a new 

way of life is born. 

window 

glass fibres fibres Polymer Polymer 

£ 

£ 

£ 

£ 

£ 

Tyres + 

switcHes 

Rubber mercury 

£ 

£ 

seating 

carpets 

Battery 

External 

fuel 

endangered species 

Currently landfilled items 

from an End-of-Life 

Vehicle and there recycling 

performance rating. 

lead petrol/diesel Miscellaneous 

£ 

£ 

£ 

internal 

Pollutants 

James Harrington 


Institute of Making 

Exploring the architecture of making, the 

thesis challenges the articulation of advanced 

manufacturing processes, whilst seeking to reestablish 

the connection between making and 

the city of Newcastle. Conceptually envisaged 

as a transitionary structure, the scheme allows 

adaptation of a standardised kit of parts, 

evolving to facilitate new working relationships. 

From left: Internal Machine 

Hall, Exploded Axonometric. 

BArch

190 BArch / stage 6 / manufacturing and production processes 

191 

Carl Holden 


Linen Factory 

Reusing the cultural heritage of a former 

paper mill in the town of Radcliffe , the 

building exposes the public to the linen 

process through using linseeds’ ability to 

decontaminate the surrounding area , the 

smells of the retting process and the eventual 

production of linen. It highlights the decay and 

renewal of a polluted landscape and changes 

the perception of the mill for the town. 

Top left: Retting 

Middle: Site Entrance 

Bottom: Landscape Sk’ 

Claire Kennedy 


Fish and Bits 

Re-creating the dependence between 

a derelict building and its surrounding 

community with a programme expressing the 

tensions and opportunitires between industrial 

and public uses. Material and atmosphere 

emphasised to express interplay between 

uses. 

Hand-drawn crane, steel 

frame model photo, internal 

view, overlapping volumes 

BArch

192 BArch / stage 6 / enticing institutions 

193 

Rebecca Berry 

Enticing Institutions 

The Dawn of the Bookless Library 

Today, due to the rapid development of computer based technologies, 

the educational relationship between users and libraries has evolved 

into a more open and accessible exchange of information and 

learning. Due to the influence of computer networking, the role of 

library no longer emphasises the idea of ‘guardians’ of appropriate 

and accessible information. This thesis explores whether the library is 

moving away from containing the book and what impact this will have 

socially, culturally and architecturally. 

Max Breese 


Reconnecting Merton 

The project deals with disconnection at the 

site of Merton Priory, South London. 

The remains of the Priory are hidden under 

a Sainsbury’s Car Park and the A24. Three 

different strategies have been developed to 

reveal the ruins, and to create an integrated 

urban environment between ruins, retail and a 

new theatre, gallery and education spaces. 


gallery space, site model, 

axonometric view of site. 

BArch


195 

Dominic Lamb 


Newcastle First 

Newcastle First is a museum celebrating 

Geordie firsts in engineering. 

Built in the shadow of the High Level 

Bridge and adjacent to the Stephenson 

Quarter, Newcastle First is a site-specific 

museum celebrating Newcastle’s past - its 

ground-breaking role in British and indeed 

international engineering history. 

James Longfield 


Ruins of the Bank of England 

As our brutalist monuments are torn down 

one refuses to be removed, the former 

Bank of England building in Newcastle. Its 

ruination and extension is a reinterpretation 

of a monastery as both retreat and social 

centre critiquing financial institutions whilst 

addressing public perceptions of brutalism. 

Renewed Brutalism: 

Ethic and Aesthetic. 

BArch


197 

Nick Simpson 


An Enclave for All 

Enclaves give us a sense of contrast to the 

world around us, providing balance and 

respite when needed. 

This project reinterprets the narrow ginnels 

that run through the city of York - a form of 

enclave in itself - and the spaces that branch 

from them to create a 21st century library, into 

which the city’s inhabitants and visitors can 

escape. 


building cut-through, main 

frontage, site location, gap 

in the city’s street grid, 

analysis of existing ginnels. 

Michael Ting 


Saving Sailortown 

Like all gentrification threats, the fate of Belfast’s 

Sailortown is faceless, brutal and monolithic. The 

state discriminates indigenous life and relics as 

part of the greater plan for the commodification 

of space. Architecture and space can be a tool 

to provide a contrasting framework to withstand 

and accommodate the affected - mediating 

regardless of race, class, age or religion. 

BArch

198 BArch / stage 6 / urban intervention 

199 

Wei Zhang 


Participatory Museum for Post 80s 

The “concept of self” of kids born after 1980 

has developed differently compared to that 

of earlier generations in the contemporary 

Chinese society which generated a series 

of social phenomena. To solve those social 

issues, architecture can be a tool as a symbiotic 

form to absorb and reflect those phenomena, 

and provide the physical spaces for the mutual 

understanding of different social groups. 

Joanna Doherty 

Urban Intervention 

From no man’s land to everyone’s land 

Over twenty years after the fall of the Berlin 

Wall, many of the spaces of former no man’s 

land remain undeveloped. This project 

proposes a reclaiming of these sites with 

the main built intervention as an oral history 

archive, focusing on listening as a way of 

reflecting. 

Left to right: listening booth 

study, confronting the Wall. 

BArch


201 

James Dowen 


The Un- Conventional Centre 

“bigness, its subtext is f*** context” 

Rem Koolhaas. 

This project aims to tackle the issue of 

bigness within the urban fabric of Newcastle 

city centre. Masterplanning and creating 

good public realm for people at the human 

scale are at the main objectives. 

Sarah Gibbons 


The Big Society 

This thesis project aims to deal with the idea of 

adaptability of buildings and the loss of identity 

in cities with successive demolition. 

This project studies Madin’s Brutalist 

Birmingham Library and what will happen to 

it once is it defunct. Working with the political 

idea of ‘The Big Society’ the programme of a 

cultural hub, with art, music and markets aims 

to make the building accessible to all and an 

asset to Birmingham. 


existing library, facade 

model , detailed wall section. 

BArch


203 

Shevaughn Gill 


Made In Byker 

Byker has a chance to survive without relying 

on global order. Its civic organisation in line 

with the Coalition Governments Localism Bill. 

The Byker Dream School is an area wide 

campus encouraging new ways of learning at 

varying scales. From the Dream School to the 

Bike Park each person can choose their level 

of interaction. 

Ouseburn Valley: 

Forward thinking, Trust led 

industrial regeneration, 

Local Apprenticeships 

Byker Dream School 

Shields Road: 

Your Local High Street 

Hoults Yard: 

Local Apprenticeships 

Creative Industry 

Byker: 

Productive Green 

Space, 

Skilled Residents 

South Byker: 

Focus on food 

production 


The Urban Eco Town, An 

Economy of Exchange 

John Massey 


Integrating Byker 

“I must admit, that whilst I have been fortunate 

enough to design small communities, or 

parts of communities, it has, despite all my 

endeavours, not yet been possible to achieve 

the weave of functions (to make a place of 

living) of which I speak. These projects are 

largely dead during week-days and week-end 

places at weekends and the so the essential 

richness of life had not arisen.” (Erskine, 1984) 

By finishing the south wall in white, the difference 

between the eternal wall of byker could not be 

more extream, and light is also reflected back into 

the Byker Estate. 

Finished wooden handrail in the Byker Wall was 

one of the only use of fine materials, as it was the 

most immediated one to human interaction. 

District Heating pipes are often piped to neghbouring 

properties using external timber casings. These also 

add features at little additional cost. In this proposal, 

it allows for services to never affect neighbouring 

properties, or encroach on internal space. 

Detail Section 1 / 10 

BArch


205 

James Newman 


Tale of Two Cities 

The thesis addresses the issue of social 

deprivation, segregation and separation in 

London Docklands. The intervention bridges 

the social divide using elements of play, 

fun and leisure to break down the physical, 

economic and cultural barriers which currently 

exist between the ‘new’ affluent residents and 

the established “East End” communities. 


Intervention, Axonometric of 

the intervention 

Daniel Shevill 


The Esoteric City 

The Esoteric city aims to challenge Sheffield’s approach 

to regeneration through creative industry and its ‘sonic 

landscape’. In response to music’s esoteric nature, within 

the city, the project provides a dual use and adaptable 

market hall that can be appropriated by Sheffield’s 

thriving subcultural music scene. The scheme fuses the 

urban disconnection between the city centre and Park Hill 

flats with an architecture that addresses the environment 

desired by independent cultures. 


Site Strategy, Sheffield 

subculture locations and 

spatial qualities, Nighttime 

adapted music venue, 

Daytime market hall and 

urban thoroughfare. 

BArch

Grimshaw Architects 

Rick Price 

“Welcome, Rick. Have a seat, let’s get you 

set up with a desk and a machine. We’ve got 

a design meeting this afternoon and a design 

report due at the end of the week so I’m 

afraid this is going to be a bit of a baptism of 

fire.” 

The first words upon my arrival at Grimshaw 

in the month of August 2007. I’d love to say 

that these words daunted me but for once in 

my journey to becoming an architect, I found 

them exciting. In hindsight, I would now say 

that one should be more concerned if an 

architectural baptism was without this fire. 

Architectural practice is something of a 

paradox. Depending upon the university, most 

architectural students will graduate with a 

smattering of technical knowledge, sporadic 

understanding of building codes, and design 

ambition in spades. Fortunately, the University 

of Newcastle is an institution which values 

all three, and Grimshaw is a practice in 

which all three will be put to the test. From 

my perspective as a student, I knew I had to 

come to terms with the fact that the boundless 

parameters of the studio would soon come up 

against the hard constraints of reality. 

If Part 1 were to be seen as a kind of boot 

camp, where preconceptions of the built 

environment are dissolved and recrystallised 

into a deeper philosophical set of values 

about how architecture can and must 

improve the world around us, and Part 2 as 

occupying the position of mediator, between 

Feature / Grimshaw Architects 207 

the hypothetical and the executable, the 

path to qualification can be best described 

as a mastery. The baptism of fire, and one 

should still be excited by that prospect, is 

the consistent experience of the architectural 

pupae, and not to achieve such an experience 

would be quite disappointing. 

“To have the attention, and enthusiasm of 

two representatives of a company with both 

thumbs firmly in the hi-tech pie for the last 30 

years was truly humbling.” 

I was introduced to Andy, an Associate 

at Grimshaw, and HR manager Angela at 

our end of degree show four years ago. To 

have the attention, and enthusiasm of two 

representatives of a company with both 

thumbs firmly in the hi-tech pie for the last 30 

years was truly humbling. I quickly relaxed 

into a down-to-earth conversation in which I 

discussed my project with them, as well as 

my ambitions and architectural aspirations. 

I was surprised to find that having only been 

at Grimshaw since 2001, Andy had now 

moved to Associate level, and Angela had 

recently started that Summer. It is a young 

practice, with a balance of Part 1, 2 and 

3 architects, as well as more experienced 

Project Architects, Associates and Associate 

Directors. Andy, now an Associate Director, 

and Angela, now an Associate herself, are 

proof that opportunities to progress are there 

for the taking. I qualified in 2010 with the full 

support and encouragement of the company. 

There are regular Part 3 talks by the ‘people

208 Feature / Grimshaw Architects 209 

that know’, and study groups meeting once or 

twice a week that can be tapped into. 

My early experience at Grimshaw saw me 

working on the redevelopment of Reading 

Station, a project I have continued to work on. 

At the time I was hired, we were involved in 

options studies, identifying the opportunities 

and constraints of the site, existing and 

listed buildings, as well as pedestrian 

flows, access and egress. We worked on 

developing the design through a refreshingly 

logical procession of design reports, to build 

a picture for the client on what could be 

achieved, and the engineering challenges 

involved. My exposure to the client, engineers 

and other consultants was dizzying. In one 

day I could be solving cantilevers with our 

structural engineer, on another I would be 

putting together a presentation for the client 

and major project stakeholders. The next, I 

might be detailing elegant steel junctions, or 

choosing finishes for the undersides of the 

platform canopies. The existing station is 

currently undergoing phased demolitions, with 

major new elements on-site in August 2011. 

The projects Grimshaw undertakes can be big 

and complex, but within the complexity lies the 

opportunity to get involved at all levels, and 

all stages. I cannot adequately communicate 

in words the anticipation and sense of 

achievement one feels when a project with so 

much history and significance is mere months 

away from the construction stage. For this 

reason alone, the student experience can only 

ever be one link in the chain. This is what an 

architect in the making lives for, the tingling 

excitement of finally seeing their designs and 

ambitions realised in physical form. 

“Projects like this . . . represent a tangible 

ethos of experimentation, and thirst for new 

ideas within the company.” 

My involvement has, however, not been limited 

to the realm of buildings. Grimshaw actively 

participated in the 2008 London Festival of 

Architecture, in which a team of six of us 

worked on an arts project to represent the 

practice. We wanted to focus on the heritage 

of fine detailing the company is renowned for, 

while drawing on the very current challenges 

of sustainability. To bring these elements 

together, we worked collaboratively with a 

local dance school to produce a piece of 

performance theatre which would occur, 

seemingly at random, throughout the City of 

London. While they choreographed dance 

routines, we worked to design and build an 

in-house set of interactive sculptures using 

recyclable materials. The embodied energy 

of the sculptures, or costumes, was then 

related to that expended by the dancers in 

the performance and presented in a week 

long event where the office was opened 

to the public. Talks and workshops were 

hosted, bringing together a disparate group 

of likeminded individuals. Projects like this are 

not an isolated occurrence, they represent a 

tangible ethos of experimentation, and thirst 

for new ideas within the company. 

To ensure the practice cultivates an influx 

of original and interesting work, Grimshaw 

actively pursues and, in many cases, is 

invited to submit entries to competitions, and 

competitive bids. I have had the opportunity 

to work on one such project, a new tennis 

stadium competition in the Middle East. The 

pace of working on competitions is more 

intense, with the focus on quickly inspired 

innovative and original ideas. 

While brief, I hope this introduction to the life 

of a post Part 2 architect gives some insight 

into what one can expect and indeed seek 

out for their future in becoming a qualified 

professional. The journey can be daunting, but 

you will never stop learning new things. 

Find a place to continue your development 

in a company which evokes your deepest 

ambitions for practice, the problems you want 

to solve, the challenges you want to rise to. 

For me, this practice was Grimshaw, and I 

have never looked back.

MSc 

Digital 

Architecture 

The course aims to equip students with the 

knowledge, skills and experience required 

to apply digital theories and technologies in 

their professional careers and to contribute to 

research in the field of digital architecture. 

To this end, three interconnecting areas of 

digital architecture are examined in order to 

develop a strong understanding of the theory 

base as well as practical experience and skills 

in the use, customisation and development 

of Information and Communication 

Technologies. 

The three areas of study are: 

Digital Design Theories; 

Digital Communication; 

and Digital Materials. 

Carlos Calderon 


Image courtesy of Paul Maguire 

211 

MSc

212 MSc / ARC8016 213 

ARC 8016 

Emergent Digital 

Design Methods 

The objective of this course is to provide 

students practical and theoretical foundations 

to explore computational issues relevant 

to representation of architectural forms 

and design knowledge. Students will learn 

basic concepts in a computer programming 

language and acquire practical skills 

to develop their own software tools 

for architectural design. In parallel, the 

course will introduce various theories and 

implementations developed for computation 

and representation of formal design 

knowledge. 

The assignments explore different 

computational strategies as to solve an 

architectural problem in a given context. As 

a way of course work example, projects have 

explored: the relationship between parametric 

design and rapid prototyping; the application 

of visual programming (i.e. Grasshopper) to 

the generation of NURBS for surface canopy 

structures; and a scripted grammar (in Google 

Sketch-up) to facilitate modular housing 

design. 

Jennifer Webb 

Google Sketchup 

Michael Smith 

NURBS Surface Canopy Structure & L System Tree Columns 

MSc

214 MSc / ARC8016 215 

Rebecca Berry and James Harrington 

Digital research project exploring potential design processes linking parametric 

software modelling and rapid prototyping. Project involved parametric modelling of a 

high rise building, within the context of a speculative urban infill scheme. Conceptual 

models were digitally printed to inform adaptive feedback and constrain proposed 

scheme variations. 

MSc

216 MSc / ARC8017 217 

ARC 8017 

3D Modelling 

and Visualisation 

Representation lies at the core of the 

architectural design process: from initial formfinding 

stages to actual construction. Modern 

computing technologies are increasing the 

possibilities of depicting the world around us 

and challenging representation conventions. 

This module gives a general introduction 

to the world of 3D computer modelling and 

visualisation and encourages students to use 

an imaginative approach to the medium while 

providing you with a basic understanding of 

the creation of 3D objects and environments 

The assignment exploits the most powerful 

advance of digital making over physical 

making: its time-based nature. That is, the 

ability to experience the space of the model 

in time which is essential to the experience 

of architecture. In the given examples, 

the students combine cinematographic 

techniques with digital modelling as to create 

their own visual stories of buildings to convey 

the experience of architecture to a third party. 

Paul King 

Paul Maguire 

MSc

218 MSc / ARC8027 219 

ARC 8027 

Interactive 

Space Design 

This module aims at introducing the concepts, 

design principles and technologies behind 

interventions on the built environment which 

use digital technologies to change the way 

people interact with those around them and/or 

with the space around them. Students were 

asked to rethink an interactive digital material 

as to make strong connections between 

design and technological development. 

During the course we investigated and 

proposed interactive systems that intervene 

in public or semi-public spaces in the city of 

Newcastle. The systems can respond to and 

modulate environmental conditions such as 

daylight, acoustics, privacy or occupation. 

MSc 

Liam Needham, 

Henry Poon, 

Sylvia Papakonstantino 

Interactive Space Design 

“Tell a Story”

MA 

Urban Design 

Urban design is a multi-disciplinary 

activity, shaping and managing the urban 

environment, combining technical, social 

and expressive concerns and engaging in 

a range of scales of the urban social-spatial 

continuum. The Urban Design programme 

draws on expertise from across the School 

and aims to strike a balance between skills 

and techniques in environmental design and 

theories and methods in social sciences. 

We believe this approach gives our 

programme a unique character. 

Students come to Newcastle from all parts 

of the world and a variety of professional 

backgrounds which we see as a real strength 

and asset to the course. 

Georgia Giannopoulou 


Image courtesy of John Pendlebury 

221 

MA

222 MA / project 1 223 

3D Perspective 

Project 1 

Tyne Bridge 

Creative Quarter 

Jing Wang 

Fedra Papalexandri 

Our proposal creates a place with a Unique 

Selling Proposition involving the Lost Crafts 

Quarters. The site is a meaningful, scheme 

that offers quality employment and creates a 

community diverse in tenure. 

(clockwise from above) 

Key Connections, 

Masterplan and Sketch 

Development 

MA

shop 

ess (Office) 

G. FL: 

Visitor’s Centre 

G. FL: Restaurant, Drinking Est, Cafe 

1st FL: Business (Office) 

shop / Cafe / Restaurant / Retail 

Brandling Park 

224 MA / project 1 225 

Founding Rationales 

Opportunities 

G. FL: Restaurant, Drinking Est, Cafe, Retail 

1st FL: Hotel 

2nd FL: Hotel 

Constraints 

Principles 

Oakwellgate Lane 

100M GRID 

Canon Street 

Brandling Street 

Cycle Lane 

Church Square 

Brandling Park Street 

G. FL: Restaurant, Drinking Est, Cafe, Retail 

1st FL: Residential 

2nd FL: Residential 

SECTION C-C` 

G. FL: Business(Office), Workshop, Retail 

1st FL: Business(Office) 

2nd FL: Business(Office), Live/Work Unit 

Hawks Road 

SECTION A-A` 

G. FL: Workshop, Cafe, Retail 


2nd FL: Business (Office) 

G. FL: Workshop, Business(Office), Retail 


2nd FL: Business(Office) 

G. FL: Cafe, Retail 


2nd FL: Hotel 

Oakwellgate Street 

100M GRID 

100M GRID 

Cylce Lane 

Oakwellgate Road 


1st FL: Business(Office), Live/Work Unit 

2nd FL: Live/Work Unit 

0 10M 20M 

SECTION C-C` 

Hawks Road 

G. FL: Workshop, Business 


2nd FL: Business (Office) 

Project Goals 

SECTION B-B` 

(from top) Concept 

Development and Model 

Images 

Link 

Synerge 

Environmental 

Community 


1st FL: Business(Office), Live/Work Unit 

2nd FL: Live/Work Unit 

Assets 

100M GRID 



2nd FL: Business(Office), Live/Work Unit 

Elemental Objectives 

Hawks Road 

100M GRID 

100M GRID 

0 10M 20M 

Concept Development 

Jun Lee Seog 

Harveen Dhillon 

In an attempt to develop a ‘Creative Quarter’ in 

an inner-city area in Gateshead, we aimed to 

establish two connections: spatially, between 

the under-performing town centre and the 

redeveloped quayside area; socio-economically, 

between the existing mechanic businesses and 

developing knowledge industry, to create synergy 

and coherence in urban fabric. 

Strategic SCALE Masterplan 

0 10m 50m 

LEGEND 

Pedestrian Flow 

Cyclists Movement 

Vehicle Movement 

Key Open Spaces 

Visual Links 

Buildings to be retained and/or enhanced 

Immediate surroundings proposed 

to be enhanced 

Strategic Masterplan 

MA

226 MA / project 2 227 

Project 2 

Freight Depot 

Minh Thai 

Vladimir Kabat 

Majeda Hatter 

Gateshead City Village will be an exemplar sustainable 

urban village, closely connected to a transformed 

City Centre and Baltic Business Quarter. It will provide 

opportunities for families, young professionals and 

the existing local community to live in an accessible 

neighbourhood with the highest quality housing offer, 

mixed with a good range of amenities. 

(top) Green Space 

(left) Movement and 

Character Area Proposal 

(from top) 

Perspective View and 


MA

228 MA / project 2 229 

Sarah Muscat 

Aaron Murphy 

Chen Xu 

Scott Gibson 

Our vision was to create a ‘Village in a City’, with 

sustainable homes and amenities to attract new families 

and retain the existing population; to bring together 

regeneration efforts in the area, a vital component for 

making Gateshead a truly vibrant new city of the future. 

Analysis Policies 


Edge Block Plan 

3D Visualisation 

MA

Pamphlet Architecture 

Prof Mark Dorrian and Matt Ozga-Lawn 

Mark Dorrian is Professor of Architecture Research at Newcastle 

University and Co-Director of the art, architecture and urbanism 

atelier Metis. His books include (with Adrian Hawker) Metis: Urban 

Cartographies (2002), (with Gillian Rose) Deterritorialisations: 

Revisioning Landscapes and Politics (2003), (with Jane Rendell, 

Jonathan Hill and Murray Fraser) Critical Architecture (2007), 

Warszawa: Projects for the Post-Socialist City (2009), and 

(forthcoming, with Frédéric Pousin) Seeing From Above: On the 

Cultural History of the Aerial View by (2012). 

Matt Ozga-Lawn is a Ph.D. Canditate at Newcastle University, and the 

first student enrolled on the new Ph.D. by Creative Practice mode 

of study. Matt is recipient of the Future Landscape Imaginaries 

studentship, and works in areas involving representational modes in 

relation to ideas of landscape, both physical and conceptual. Matt 

is interested in ruins and material thinking, and works primarily in 

installation-based media. He earned a distinction from his M.Arch. 

work at the University of Edinburgh in 2009. This work was later 

selected in the international competition for Pamphlet Architecture 

32 organised by Princeton Architectural Press. The Pamphlet, titled 

Resilience will be released in spring 2012. Matt is the co-founder of 

the conceptual architectural platform ‘Stasus’ with James A. Craig, 

and together they successfully entered two works into the 2011 

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Their projects and profiles 

can be viewed at www.stasus.com. 

Matt Ozga-Lawn, who is currently enrolled 

in Architecture’s PhD by Creative Practice 

at Newcastle University, has won – working 

together with James Craig under the name 

Stasus – the most recent international 

Pamphlet Architecture competition. Their 

project, which emerged from an academic 

studio based on Warsaw led by Mark Dorrian, 

is titled ‘Resilience’ and will be published by 

Princeton Architectural Press as Pamphlet 

Architecture 32. 1 Included here is an extract 

from Mark Dorrian’s introduction to the 

publication, ‘The Resilience of Ruins’, together 

with selected images from Stasus’s pamphlet. 

“Before travelling to Warsaw for the first 

time, we undertook a project that we called 

‘Architectural Forensics’, which invited 

students to undertake micrological ‘field work’ 

in the physical studio space where they would 

be based and within which their projects 

would emerge. The materials of the study 

were the scratches, traces and dust deposited 

by previous human and non-human 

occupants of the room and the project – in its 

requirement for the close observation of small 

things – demanded a delicacy of thought and 

a lightness and agility in the occupation of 

the space and in the procedures employed 

in tracking its objects of inquiry. Undertaken 

in advance of the group’s visit to the city, 

this project aimed to do two things: to bring 

within the ambit of architectural attention 

things normally considered to lie beyond its 

concerns; and to establish the idea that we 

might consider the physical studio as a kind 

Feature / Prof Mark Dorrian and Matt Ozga-Lawn 

of ‘second site’ for the emergent projects, one 

with reference to which they would develop 

and that they would come to be marked by. 

James Craig’s and Matt Ozga-Lawn’s 

responses to this invoked issues of 

obsolescence, interval, rhythm and timing that 

were subsequently to resonate throughout 

their work. One involved a drawing that was 

made and burned, and the construction of 

a vessel to hold its remains, while the other 

explored a stop-motion animation of furniture, 

choreographed in relation to traces observed 

upon the intensely marked floor of the studio. 

Reflection upon these themes was elaborated 

in a project titled ‘House for an Inhabitant 

of Warsaw’, which was intended to give a 

foothold upon the various locations in the city 

in which students had begun to work. Here 

an appropriated metronome, which served as 

Site Oblique 

1. The studio ran between 2007 and 2009. There is an overview of the work in Mark Dorrian, Warszawa: Projects for 

the Post-Socialist City, Edinburgh: Cityspeculations (2009). 

231

232 Feature / Prof Mark Dorrian and Matt Ozga-Lawn 233 

Section through furniture objects 

Observatory Chart of Elements 

a house for a timekeeper and set in motion 

the rhythms that would come to pattern the 

entire project, was counterposed with a 

house for a guide. Importantly, these were 

situated within – and in the case of the guide’s 

house, made from materials excised from – a 

wooden chest, the first of a series of furniture 

elements that began to accumulate within the 

project, mediating between Wola, the area of 

Warsaw to which the project was addressed, 

and the second site of the studio. From this 

point on, everything that was made came 

to operate simultaneously at two scales: the 

1:1 of the furniture elements and the studio, 

and the conventional architectural scales 

(1:500, etc.) at which the site was graphically 

constituted. 

Looking over the work, in retrospect it seems 

to me that the choice of site that James Craig 

and Matt Ozga-Lawn made for their project 

was motivated at a certain level by a refusal 

of representation, or at least by a refusal to 

draw over the area with the sort of urbanism 

that they saw already encroaching upon 

its edges. Far from providing a reassuring 

picture in accord with official narratives 

of Poland’s post-’89 westward-looking 

aspirational entrepreneurialism, they sought 

instead an approach that could hold back 

the impending development of the site. 

In the face of this they insisted upon the 

importance and necessity of the gap that 

the place established within the city and the 

interval for thought that if offered. As their 

project developed it drew upon the strange 

imagined half-lives of discarded things in 

order to develop a proposition for this large 

disused industrial zone in inner-city Warsaw, 

within whose environs a complex of decaying 

infrastructural installations traced sequences 

of fraying spatial figures. In it they found a 

world of flickering, palpitation and silences 

that gathered before being discharged 

in sudden convulsions. Here stillness 

accumulated in the city in the same way as 

the intervals between the tick of a clock in 

an empty room gradually and unbearably 

intensify before their release. In this place, 

things – footsteps, breath, the thud of the 

heart – took on a strange new clarity because 

the spacing between them had assumed a 

new consequence. 

This special quality of rhythm came to underlie 

Stasus’s proposal for an urban-scale studio 

and filmic landscape, whose scope runs 

from the momentary passage of a train – the 

anorganic shuddering of which vivifies the 

animation building – to the slowly gathering 

momentum of the yearly film festival, whose 

cosmic-mythic sweep circumscribes the 

multiplicity of events that rhythmically pattern 

the site. As this advances, elements within 

the landscape of objects that Stasus inserts 

within the site come in turn to life and begin 

to oscillate and hum with varying harmonics 

before falling once more out of use and into 

silence. 

Still from animation - Suspended Hotel Shadow and Tethering Study

234 Feature / Prof Mark Dorrian and Matt Ozga-Lawn 235 

Room Layout and Plan 

This project is a dream of things that 

interpolates the viewer as the dreamer. 

Uncertain of whether we are at the scale of 

the city or the scale of a room, we are – in 

part because of this – taken to the heart of 

things that lie close to hand: precisely the 

kind of fragile, intimate objects (a chair, a 

table, a toybox) that disappeared with the 

systematic erasure of domestic space in 

Warsaw’s mid-century trauma. It is the virtue 

of Stasus’s proposition that it makes and 

holds a clearing in the contemporary city 

that allows the re-sounding of something 

simultaneously opaque and of startling clarity, 

whose instruments are these obsolescent and 

anachronistic things that are charged with the 

future and imbued with the resilience of ruins.” 

1:500 Model Detail

PhD 

Creative Practice 

In 2010 the School of Architecture, Planning 

and Landscape started a new PhD route by 

creative practice. This exciting initiative allows 

students to pursue doctoral-level research 

that is centred on design. Students enrolled 

on the degree undertake an intensely focused 

programme of research that addresses 

relevant and carefully formulated issues and 

questions. As the student’s study progresses, 

these questions are unfolded through creative 

and sophisticated engagements with various 

media and technologies. 

The first student to be enrolled on the degree 

is Matt Ozga-Lawn, whose initial work is 

presented on the following pages. 



237 

PhD

238 PhD / Matt Ozga-Lawn 239 

Site / Sight / Cite 

Constructions 

Matt Ozga-Lawn 

My Ph.D. research continues from and 

develops upon interests formed during work 

on my MArch thesis for a project situated in 

Warsaw, through which a series of structures 

were conceived interacting with a peri-urban 

landscape on the periphery of the commercial 

centre of the city (this work is the focus of 

Pamphlet Architecture 32: Resilience). In this 

project, a new landscape was proposed, 

altering the site by a heightening of preexisting 

characteristics of both the site, the 

studio and material craft as a non-neutral 

influence upon it. In the early stages of 

my Ph.D. research, I reflected upon the 

difficulties of documenting the complex and 

shifting terrain of the design process itself. 

I produced an essay titled ‘A... Landscape’ 

which reflected on the Warsaw project and 

took the form of a mapping – an essay read 

in physical measurements rather than word 

count, constructed visually with iconographic 

relationships between points on its surface. 

The complexity of the document is generated 

from an understanding of the working process 

as often discursive and resistant to definition. 

Text becomes intermingled with imagery and 

meanings and connections shift from one to 

the other. The text is ‘designed’. 

(below) 

“A... Landscape” essay 

(opposite) 

Essay extension and detailed extract 

I have since extended the essay with a 

sequence of transparencies which serve 

to elaborate on and unpack aspects of the 

original text, while offering a more involved 

discussion of the format of the original – an 

editing process that is non-destructive, 

and itself a (potentially endless) act of 

configuration and design. 

PhD


My research is now progressing towards 

installation-based work focussing on an 

abandoned rifle range in Edinburgh. I use 

the rifle range as a tool for an exploration 

of representational modes in architectural 

design processes and their inter-relationships. 

The space works at vastly different scales 

– one dealing with human perception, the 

other with the micro-spatial logistics of the 

rifle firing. Through a utilisation of these 

spatial characteristics, I aim to produce (and 

document) a negotiable dialogue between 

design process and outputs that is not 

reductive but rather a wider, transient, iterative 

collection of narrative, ideas, potentialities and 

meanings. 

Exploring micro-spatial 

logistics of rifle-firing 

Rifle Range Target made into camera 

PhD


The newly established ‘Creative Practice’ 

mode of Ph.D. offers students like myself a 

great amount of freedom in technique and 

methodology. The exciting challenge raised by 

this mode is in how design elements relate to 

text-based documentation, and whether there 

is a distinction between the two. 

Edited stills from 

rifle range camera 

With James A. Craig, I recently submitted 

two works to the Royal Academy Summer 

Exhibition. We are happy to say they have 

been selected and hung in the exhibition and 

will be viewable from June 7th – August 15th 

2011 at the Royal Academy in London. 

Royal Academy 

Summer Exhibits 

PhD

244 245 

With thanks to all 

those contributing 

to teaching in the 

school, including: 

BA Architectural Studies 

Stage 1 

PROJECT 1: THE LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE 

Project leader: 

Martyn Dade-Robertson 

Design tutor: 

David McKenna 

PROJECT 2: MEMORY SPOT 


Kati Blom 

Design tutors: 

Sharon Beattie 

Rachel Campbell 

Carolyn Fahey 

David McKenna 

Workshop leaders: 

Tara Alisandratos 

Charlotte Powell 

Deidre Thompson 

Tracey Tofield 

Andrea Toth 

Keri Townsend 

PROJECT 3: COOKERY SCHOOL 


Katie Lloyd Thomas 


Peter Kellett 

Di Leitch 

Kati Blom 

David McKenna 

with: 

Simon Hacker 


Charlotte Powell 

Andrea Toth 

Tracey Tofield 

Sharon Beattie 

Ying Chang 

Louise Squires 

Tara Stewart 

Tony Watson 

with thanks to: 

Peter Kay from the Ouseburn Trust 

Tim Bailey from xsite architects. 

PROJECT 4: READING PLACE 




Astrid Lund 

David McKenna 

Graduate tutors: 

Paul King 

Jennifer Webb 

Stage 2 

PROJECT 1: DWELLING IN BRUSSELS 

Paola Michialino 

Simon McAllister 

Diana Leitch 

Tony Watson 

Jennifer Webb 

PROJECT 2: SIMPLICITY, ECONOMY, HOME 


Bill Tavernor 


Martin Beattie 

Zeynep Kezer 

Di Leitch 

Louise Squires 

Tony Watson 

PROJECT 3: LIVING MEMORIES 


Neveen Hamza 


Luca Biselli 

Stuart Franklin 

Bill Tavernor 

Andrew Thomas 

Rick Price 

Adam Vaughan 

Tony Watson 

Julian Watt 

Structural consultants: 

Andrew English 

John Meirs 

Gordon Reid 

Christopher Shipman 

Landscape consultants: 

Philip Barker 

Anna Dekker 

Trudi Entwistle 

Montse Ferrés 

Steve Law 

Dan Patterson 

Stage 3 

PROJECT 1: BOUGH-HAUS 




Luca Biselli 

Stuart Franklin 

Peter Mouncey 

Adam Vaughan 


Marc Horn 

Jonnie McGill 

Gordon Reid 

Chris Shipman 

PROJECT 2: MIDDLESBROUGH FILM ARCHIVE 



Design/Graduate Tutors: 

Alex Cunningham 

Phill Rowden 

Kate Wilson 

Engineering consultants: 

Stevie Ferguson 

Marc Horn 

Mark Johnson 

Phil Oliver 

Paul Richardson 

PROJECT 3A: AFTERIMAGE 



Design Tutors: 


Aikaterini Antonopoulou 

Graduate Tutors: 


Jennifer Webb 

Critics: 

Manuela Antoniu 

Ella Chmielewska 

Peter Salter 

PROJECT 3B: MIND [THE] GAP 


Simon Hacker 


Zeynep Kezer 

Tony Watson 



Jennifer Webb 

Critic: 

Paul Bell 

PROJECT 3C: NEW HORIZONS 


Dr Hentie Louw 


Thomas Kern 

Di Leitch 


Cassie Burgess-Rose 


Sarah Shuttleworth 

Charoula Lambrou 

Jennifer Webb 

External consultants: 

Sophie Campbell 

Ali Sterndale-Bennett 

Dr Pamela Woolner

246 

BArch Architecture 

Stage 5 

PROJECT 1: GATESHEAD CHARRETTE 

Project leaders: 


with: 


Graham Farmer 

Joanna Hinchcliffe 


Lowri Bond 

PROJECT 2a: ECO-HOMES, ECO-LIVING 

Project Leader: 

Dr Martin Beattie 

Guest Lecturer: 

Prof Michael Stacy 

Environmental Consultants 

Mark Siddall 

Roger Maier 

Phil Oliver 

David Warwick 

James Saywell 

PROJECT 2b: SOCIAL MAPPING 



Critics: 

Ellen Sullivan 

PROJECT 3: DETAIL, NARRATIVE, MEMORY 



Critics: 

Tim Bailey 

Kati Blom 

Tom Brigden 



Patrick Devlin 

Simon Hacker 


Dr Zeynep Kezer 

Chris Loyn 


Tim Pitman 

Rachel Witham 


Chris Wilkins 



Tim Bailey 

Peter Mouncey 

Jean Paul Colback 

Malcolm Brown 

Allan Aston 

Christopher Shipman 

Duncan Cox 

Andrew English 

Stage 6 

Thesis leaders: 



Graham Farmer 

Daniel Mallo 


Armelle Tardiveau 

Tim Mosdale 

Tim Bailey 

Peter Mouncey 

Chi Park 

Engineering Consultants: 

Thomas Critchley 

Jason Gardner 

Marc Horn 

Phil Oliver 

Critics: 

Dermot Foley 

Manuel Tardits 

Pierre d’Avoine 

Peter Buchanan 

Michael Stacey 

Christine Fontaine 

MA Urban Design 

Degree Programme Director: 

Georgia Giannopoulou 

with: 

Mark Siddall 

Christoph Oschatz 

Geoff Gardner 


Degree Programme Directorr: 

Carlos Calderon 

with: 

Peter Bailey 

Trevor Grant 

Asmund Gamlesaeter 

John Shearer 

PhD Creative Practice 

Degree Programme Directorr: 

Prof Mark Dorrian

newcastle university apl design yearbook 2010-11 

We are a community of students, scholars and practitioners who are 

committed to architecture and urban design as diverse and wide-ranging 

fields of investigation and practice. At Newcastle University we understand 

design to be a collective cultural endeavour that involves the acquisition 

and exercise of complex knowledges and skills. These we believe are best 

realised through a dynamic approach to education, which sees it not as the 

transmission of a set of truths but as an ongoing process of inquiry in which 

staff and students are both participants. Our efforts are always directed 

toward fostering an academic environment that values this openness, while 

encouraging the pursuit of design, in all its aspects, at the highest level. This 

Design Yearbook provides a glimpse of this ethos and outlook. 

featuring: 





Graham Farmer 



Rick Price 


School of Architecture Planning & Landscape 

The Quadrangle 


Newcastle Upon Tyne 

NE1 7RU 

www.apl.ncl.ac.uk 

ISBN 978-0-7017-0238-0

APL Design Yearbook 2010-11 - Newcastle University

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