Design Yearbook 2016

2016

School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

Newcastle University

Contents

Welcome 3

BA (Hons) Architecture 4

Charrette

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

BA Dissertation

Fieldwork and Site Visits

4

BA Architecture & Urban Planning (AUP) 80

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

MArch 90

Stage 5 - Semester 1

Thinking-Through-Making Week

Stage 5 - Semester 2

Stage 6

MArch Dissertation

Modern Turkey: State, Space and Ideology - Zeynep Kezer

Linked Research

90

Research in Architecture 164

Mountains & Megastructures

A Mountain Near Thebes - Andrew Ballantyne

Taught Masters Programmes

PhD / PhD by Creative Practice

Architecture Research Collaborative

164

Welcome

Professor Graham Farmer – Director of Architecture

Welcome to this Yearbook which is a wonderful record of the hard work and achievements of staff

and students during the past 12 months. The School has seen a number of positive changes this year

and we have integrated new full and part-time colleagues, introduced numerous new teaching and

research initiatives and integrated a wide range of new design projects and studios, each of which have

delivered some outstanding work at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank those colleagues who have taken up new teaching

management roles this year; Sam Austin and Zeynep Kezer as BA and MArch Programme Directors

respectively, and the new Stage coordination teams; Ed Wainwright and Claire Harper in Stage 2,

Matthew Margetts, Matt Ozga-Lawn and Josep-Maria García-Fuentes in Stage 3, James Craig and

Steve Parnell in Stage 5 and Adam Sharr in Stage 6. Each of them has brought innovation but also

a concern for continuity to their new roles and this is represented by the work in this book which

once again conveys the diversity, sense of invention, energy, enthusiasm and relevance that continue

to characterise and define our teaching and research. This year we will also graduate the first cohort

of students from our cross-disciplinary undergraduate degree programme in Architecture and Urban

Planning (AUP) and a selection of their work is included in this book for the first time. Establishing

a new programme has brought substantial challenges and has required a real commitment on behalf

of staff to get to this point. I would particularly like to thank Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo for

their invaluable contribution in this respect and also to wish the first graduates from the programme

all the best as they move into the next stages of their education or future careers.

The Architecture Research Collaborative continues to go from strength to strength under the

Directorship of Katie Lloyd-Thomas and Martyn Dade-Robertson and this year has seen a number of

exciting developments in the context of architectural research in the School. One highlight of this year

was the Mountains and Megastructures event which brought together staff and students to exhibit

and present a diverse range of creative practice, historical, cultural and geographic research into large,

landscape-scale artifices – mountainous, real, fictitious and otherwise. The active participation of

our students in this event is evidence of our ongoing commitment to developing and supporting

a research-based culture within our taught programmes and this in turn helps to support design

outputs of the very highest quality. During the past year the work of our students has been recognised

in numerous competitions and particular mention goes to Assia Stefanova and Rob Arthur who

were placed first and runner-up in the RIBA Hadrian Medal for Part 2 with Randi Karangizi also

runner-up at Part 1. Stage 5 students Becky Wise, Katie Fisher and Noor Jan-Mohamed were also

awarded first place in the North Pennines Community Observatory design competition which is

now being built at Allenheads. Our success in design competitions has also been mirrored by the

Newcastle University Architecture Society (NUAS) who were this year recognised by the Student’s

Union as the University’s Best Departmental Society. I would like to take the opportunity to thank

NUAS President Regen-James Gregg and all of his excellent team, who have made an invaluable

contribution to the wider life of the School and who have been so important in helping to maintain

the sense of identity and community that so defines the character of our School.

Fifty years ago the School of Architecture moved into what we know as our current home – a

newly refurbished Architecture Building and a brand new Building Science wing. Those building

developments brought the staff and students of Architecture together for the first time in many years

because for most of the 1960s the School had to function in scattered accommodation in various

buildings on campus and for a while even in temporary huts.

We are now undergoing the first major redevelopment of our estate since 1966 and during the next

academic year we will move into our new workshop facilities and studio accommodation which

will extend the existing Building Science wing and provide us with significantly enhanced facilities.

The new building will certainly help support our pedagogical and research ambitions well into the

future but it is also interesting to look back at the thoughts of our predecessors as they moved into

their new home fifty years ago. In his speech to mark the opening of the new School of Architecture,

Professor Jack Napper, (then Head of School) took the opportunity to outline the character of the

architectural programmes at Newcastle, describing design pedagogy as a continual and uncertain

experiment and suggesting that an ideal specification for a programme in Architecture would be one

that could educate in the best and widest sense, that could develop the ability in students to apply

their developing knowledge to new situations, and could propagate a strong sense of human values.

As we reflect on another year of positive change and look forward to the next stage in our evolution

it is reassuring to know that the educational values held by those who came before us are still both

recognisable and relevant today.

3

BA (Hons) Architecture

Sam Austin

Newcastle’s RIBA Part I accredited BA programme fosters an inclusive, research-led approach to

architecture. Alongside a thorough grounding in all the skills required to become an imaginative,

culturally informed, socially aware and technically competent design professional, it offers

opportunities to engage in developments at the forefront of current research, from computation and

material science to architectural history and theory. Emphasising collaboration as well as independent

critical enquiry, we encourage students to draw on diverse methods and fields of knowledge, to follow

their own interests and to develop their own design approach.

We believe that to produce good architecture requires more than rounded abilities and knowledge;

it requires judgements about what we value in the buildings and cities we inhabit, what to prioritise

in the spaces and structures we propose and what contribution architecture can make. The course

doesn’t claim to offer simple – or correct – responses to these challenges. Our diverse community

of researchers and practitioners, each with their own interests and expertise, introduce students to

a range of issues, ideas, traditions and techniques in architectural design and scholarship. We help

students develop fine grained skills in interpreting spaces and texts, critical thinking to understand

the implications of design decisions, and spatial and material imagination to stretch the boundaries of

what architecture can achieve. Rather than teach a single way of working, we give students the tools

to discover what kind of architect they want to be.

A lively design studio is central to this learning process and to the life of the School. Design

projects, taught by a mix of in-house tutors and practitioners from across the UK, account for

half of all module credits. We promote design as thinking-through-making, an integrated process

of researching and testing ideas in sketchbook, computer, workshop and on site, of responding to

diverse issues and requirements all at once – spatial, material, functional, social, economic etc. This

approach is reinforced by collaborative projects involving artists and engineers, and at the beginning

of each year by week-long design charrettes where students from all stages of all design programmes

work together to respond to diverse design challenges, through installations around the School and

beyond. Lectures, seminars and assignments in other modules examine the theoretical, historical,

cultural, practical and professional dimensions of architecture, and support students to embed these

concerns in studio work.

Stages 1 and 2 are structured to guide students through increasingly challenging scales, kinds and

contexts of design projects, a breadth of related constructional and environmental principles and

varied themes in architectural history and theory. Briefs invite experimentation with different

architectural ideas and representational skills, first through projects set in Newcastle, then

incorporating study trips to regional towns and cities. As work increases in depth and complexity

– from room to house, community to city, simple enclosure to multi-storey building – students

have more opportunities to develop and focus their own interests. A dissertation – an in-depth

original study into any architecturally related topic – sets the scene for a year-long Stage 3 final

design project. With a choice of diverse thematic studios, each with its own expert contributors and

international study trip, students acquire specialist skills and knowledge, allowing them to craft their

own distinctive portfolio.

5

Charrette

The academic year kicks off in style with a long, School-wide, intensive workshop known as Charrette Week. It is an extremely creative, explorative

and thought-provoking week, allowing all years and courses to come together to experiment with a wide range of studio themes, which are delivered by

guest artists, engineers and architects. This year’s broad theme of Spectacle/Material/Resistance, generated some fantastic outcomes for the exhibition

at the end of the week, including an indoor beach, a baroque fashion show, mesmerising optical illusions, an immersive theatre production and allencompassing

inflatable structures.

Charrette 1: A Hole in One Week

Holly Hendry

Charrette 2: Aural Dynamics

Gillian Peskett and Joseph Finlay

Charrette 3: Framing Newcastle

Yatwan Hui, Andrea Fox and Liz Leech

Charrette 4: From Precarity to Permanence

Charlotte Gregory and Julia Heslop

Charrette 5: Illusion of Architecture

Jennie Webb and Matt Lawes

Charrette 6: Inflate!

Michael Simpson and Cara Lund

Charrette 7: Migratory Hides

Matt Rowe

Charrette 8: Nu Baroque

Tom Randle and Matt Charlton

Charrette 9: Play! Summer is Not Over

Amara Roca Inglesias and Nicholas Henninger

Charrette 10: Site Specfic Theatre

Hanna Benihoud and Hannah Pierce

Charrette 11: Spectacle, Ruin Value and the Ruination of Spectacle

Gareth Hudson and Nathan Hudson

Charrette 12: Tracing Echoes

Andrew Walker and Kyveli Anastassiadi

Charrette 13: Wonder & Success

Hazel McGregor

6

Stage 1

Stage 1 is a varied introduction to architecture, characterised by numerous workshops, visits and hands-on

activities, and students respond to it with great energy. For the first semester Stage 1 architecture students

share their modules with students who are on the BA in Architecture and Urban Planning.

In the first week of term students take part in a number of intense design charrettes with all students

from across the School. First year begins with a number of skill-building exercises involving measuring,

observation and photography in buildings in and around Newcastle, as well as life and object drawing.

Their first design project explores the domestic interiors of Pieter de Hooch through model-making

and drawing. Students are then asked to design a small community reading room on a suburban site

in Newcastle, where site analysis skills and the ability to design at different scales are developed. Theory,

history and technology are taught through lectures, seminars and group work, and are also integrated into

the design teaching.

In semester two, students start by studying a series of 20th and 21st century row house precedents before

designing their own house for an artist on an inner-city site, where scale, function, materiality and

construction of space are developed. A final semester two project focusses on unbuilt and lost architecture

and asks students to convey architectural ideas through the use of digital media, before students bring

together the great range of work they have undertaken for the portfolio. Finally, there is a whole-year

history trip to Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire.

Year Coordinator

Martin Beattie

Project Leaders

Armelle Tardiveau

Carlos Calderon

Jennie Webb

Kati Blom

Martin Beattie

Contributors

Alex Borrell

Becky Wise

Cath Keay

Charlotte Powell

Chloe Gill

Chris Beale

Chris Elias

Claire Harper

Damien Wootten

David Davies

Di Leitch

Elizabeth Gray

Ewan Thomson

Georgina Robinson

Greg Murrell

Henna Asikainen

James Harrington

James Longfield

James Perry

Jamie Morton

Jennie Webb

Joanna Hinchcliffe

Joe Dent

Justin Moorton

Kati Blom

Katie Fisher

Katie Lloyd-Thomas

Keri Townsend

Kevin Vong

Laurence Ashley

Louise Squires

Malcolm Pritchard

Mariya Lapteva

Martin Beattie

Matt Charlton

Matt Wilcox

Michael Chapman

Mike Veitch

Nedelina Atasanova

Nik Ward

Nikoletta Karastashi

Nita Kidd

Olga Gogoleva

Patrick McMahon

Peter St Julien

Richard McDonald

Rumen Dimov

Ruth Sidey

Sana Al-Naimi

Sam Austin

Smajo Beso

Sneha Solanki

Sophia Banou

Stephen Brookes

Steve Tomlinson

Tara Stewart

Tony Watson

Tracey Tofield

Vili-Valtteri Welroos

Wallace Ho

William Tavernor

Xi Chen

Students

Aaron Swaffer

Abigail May Smart

Aleksandra Iachinskaia

Alesia Berahavaya

Alysia Lara Arnold

Amna Ahmad I M Fakhro

Anna Christian Moroney

Arran James Noble

Bahram Yaradanguliyev

Benedict Thornton Wigmore

Boris Larico Villagomez

Brandon Athol Few

Calum James Luke

Charlie William Donaldson

Cheng Wan Mak

Ching Wah Hong

Chloe McSweeney

Chou Ee Ng

Ciara Catherine McClelland

Cooper Taylor

Danielle Helena Berg

Darcy Eleanor Arnold-Jones

David Michael Gray

David Richard Osorno G?z

Dianne Kwene Aku Odede

Dominica Ruby Bates

Dora Mary Frances Farrelly

Eleanor Waugh

Elliot Matthew Dolphin

Elliott James Crowe

Eloise Aliza Coleman

Emily Catherine Child

Emily Reta Spencer

Emma Elizabeth Kemp

Emma Imogen Moxon

Ethan John Archer

Euan McGregor

Eve Kindon

Faith Mary Hamilton

Finlay William Lohoar Self

Fope Foluwa Olaleye

Freya Jane Emerson

Gemma Louise Duma

Grace Charlotte Ward

Hannah Emily McAvoy

Harry Cameron Tindale

Harry Robert Henderson

Hattie Florence Reeve

Hazel Ruth Cozens

Helena Genevieve Taylor

Henri Robert Cooney

Henry James Cahill

Ho Sze Jose Cheng

Ibadullah Shigiwol

Ioana Buzoianu

Irvano Irvian

Jack Adam Collins

Jack Oscar Sweet

Jake Andrew Holding

Jake Williams-Deoraj

James Gillis

James Edward Bacon

James Edward Knapp

Jamie Schwarz

Jay Antony Hallsworth

Jemima Alice Smith

Jerome Sripetchvandee

Jhon Sebastian Cortes

Joanne Lois May Cain

Joel Pacini

Jonathan Pilosof

Jordan Middleton

Jordan Paige Ince

Jose Diogo Marques Figueira

Joseph Henry Noah Elbourn

Joshua Willem Jago Knight

Junyi Chen

Ka Chun Rico Chow

Kai Lok Cheng

Katie Ann Campbell

Katrina Barritt-Cunningham

Katy Rose Barnes

Kieran Harrison

Kieron Thomas Dawson

Kiran Kaur Basi

Kotryna Navickaite

Levente Mate Borenich

Liam Kieran Rogers

Liam Michael Marcel Davi

Lilian Winifred Davies

Louis Windsor Page-Laycock

Luc James Askew-Vajra

Malgorzata Nicoll Szarnecka

Man Cheong Gabriel Leung

Mathilda Louise Durkin

Matilda Marie Barratt

Matthew Edward Harrison

Matthew Oliver Ward

Michalakis Georgiou

Monica Said

Myeongjin Suh

Nadia Beatriss Young

Nancy Margaret Marrs

Nicholas James Morrison

Nicholas Juan Tatang

Nitichot Setachanadana

Nophill Damaniya

Olga Barkova

Pablo Larrea Wheldon

Phoebe Shepherd

Polina Morova

Qian Wang

Rachael Helena Burleigh

Rachel Spencer

Rachel Marie Cummings

Rebecca Charlotte Glancey

Rebecca Jean Maw

Reece Oliver Jay

Robert Walker Ashworth

Rowena Saffron Covarr

Rufus Giles Wilkinson

Sam Henry Carroll

Samuel George Brooke

Samuel James Hawkins

Samuel Joseph Robinson

Seyoung Han

Simone Pausha Pearce

Siriwardhanalage De Saram

Siroun Elise Button

Sophie Ogilvie-Graham

Steven Gary Lennox

Susanna Emily Jane Smith

Tanya Naresh Haldipur

Tian Hong Kevin Wong

Tian Yee Lim

Toghrul Mammadov

Weihao Wang

Wiktoria Sypnicka

Wing Yung Janet Tam

Yuan Xue

Yuen Sum Tiffany Liu

Yuze Tian

8

Architectural Representation

Kati Blom

In the first three weeks of the first year, students undertake different analogical exercises such as life drawing, drawing in various places in the city and

photographing and constructing multi-view drawings based on measurements. These exercises prepare them for the design projects.

10 City Drawing Photos courtesy of Damien Wootten and Sneha Solanki

11

Beyond the Frame

Armelle Tardiveau

The project focusses on orderly domestic interiors depicted by Pieter de Hooch in Holland during the mid to late seventeenth century. We begin by

observing, drawing and modelling the fragment of the house in the painting, before designing a new room beyond it.

12

Top - Xi Lin

Bottom - Rachael Cummings

Top left to bottom right - Chou Ee Ng , Kotryna Navickaite, Joseph Elbourn, Chou Ee Ng, Jack Sweet, Jose Figueira, Nikshith Reddy, Xi Lin Ng, Jose Figueira

13

Heaton Reading Room

Jennie Webb

Students were asked to design a small community reading room in the vibrant and culturally diverse suburb of Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne. The

local area currently lacks library facilities of its own and so through the creation of a reading room, comes the opportunity to foster a love for reading,

writing, storytelling and community mindfulness. The design for the reading room, run by a specially formed literary cooperative, needed to address

the relatively tight urban site conditions and be multifunctional; capable of hosting reading and writing groups, book clubs and childrens’ storytelling

sessions.

14

Top - Rebecca Glancey

RENDER

Top - Bahram Yaradanguliyev

Bottom - Choue Ee Ng

15

Row House Typologies and Living

Martin Beattie

Students are asked to design a modest 3-bedroom row house and studio for an artist and their family. The site, in the Ouseburn Valley, is an area close

to Newcastle city centre with a rich industrial past.

16 Jose Figueira

Top left to bottom right - Joseph Elbourn, Henry Cahill, Phoebe Shepherd, Jonathan Pilosof,

17

Unbuilt Architecture

Carlos Calderon

Unbuilt Architecture is designed to introduce the use of digital media within the creative architectural design process. Digital communication tools

are used to re-analyse and re-interpret three unbuilt and lost works of architecture: Cedric Price, Fun Palace; Louis Khan, US Consulate in Luanda;

and John Dobson, Royal Arcade.

18

19

Stage 2

Economy forms the basis of our architectural investigations and design explorations in Stage 2 this year.

How architecture is produced by, and productive of, the economies within which we live has been explored

through analysis of urban environments and the imagination of their futures; the design of collective

housing and communal spaces; projects crossing the boundaries between art, architecture and engineering;

and the design of spatial experience.

With projects set in Edinburgh’s historic port, Leith, and the Northumberland border town of Berwickupon-Tweed,

and in the fictional realms of film, projects have moved between the scale of the dwelling to

the scale of space; from the digital to the material and practices of making: always asking the question of

architectures’ role and relation to the economies it is embedded in.

A year of transition, Stage 2 seeks to encourage a growing sense of criticality towards design decisions, a

developing autonomy of thought and action, and an understanding of architectures’ position in times of

social, cultural and economic flux.

Year Coordinators

Ed Wainwright

Claire Harper

Jennie Webb

Project Tutors

Jamie Anderson

Amy Butt

Dan Kerr

Nita Kidd

Luke Rigg

Christos Kakalis

Gillian Peskett

Hazel Cowie

David McKenna

Yasser Megahed

Claire Harper

Ed Wainwright

Fine Art Tutors

Alexia Mellor

Holly Hendry

Isabelle Southwood

Gareth Hudson

Julia Heslop

Rosie Morris

Isabel Lima

Peter Sharp

Contributors

Adam Sharr

Amara Roca Iglesias

Amy Linford

Andrew Ballantyne

Carlos Calderon

Corbin Wood

Emily-Jane Harper

Ewan Thomson

Greta Varpucianskyte

Hannah Pierce

Imogen Holden

Iona Howell

James Longfield

James Perry

Katie Lloyd Thomas

Kieran Connolly

Lam Nguyen Tran

Martin Beattie

Martyn Dade Robertson

Matt Lawes

Matthew Margetts

Patrick Devlin

Peter Kellett

Prue Chiles

Richard Murphy

Richard Talbot

Rob Paton

Rumen Dimov

Sam Austin

Sam Clark

Sarah Tulloch

Seva Karetnikov

Simon Hacker

Steve Dudek

Tim Pitman

Zeynep Kezer

Students

Aadil Abdul Rashid Toorawa

Agatha Savage

Aishath Rasheed

Alena Pavlenko

Alexander McCulloch

Alexander Mackay

Alexander Gardner

Alice Reeves

Alice Simpkins-Woods

Amber Farrow

Ameeta Ladwa

Andreas Haliman

Angus Campbell Brown

Anna Vershinina

April Glasby

Ashleigh Usher

Assem Nurymbayeva

Benjamin Taylor

Boram Kwon

Chao Shen

Charlotte Goodfellow

Charlotte Armstrong

Chi-Yao Lin

Ciaran Horscraft

Claudia Bannatyne

Connor O’Neill

Daniel Barrett

Daniel Francis Hill

David Stuart Jones

Eliza Hague

Elizabeth Rose Ridland

Elle-May Simmonds

Emily Georgina O’Hara

Emma Kate Burles

Esme Hallam

Farrah Noelle Colilles

Gabrielle Faith Beaumont

George Oliver

Grace de Rome

Hannah Ysia Hiscock

Hao Zhuang

Harrison Jack Avery

Hector Adam Laird

Henry Orlando Valori

Ho Yin Chung

Huey Ee Yong

Isabel Mills Lyle

Jack David Ranby

Jacob Alexander Smith

James Kennedy

Jennifer Betts

Ji Chuen Ng

Joe Thomas Dolby

John Knight

John Joseph O’Brien

Jonathon McDonald

Joseph William Firth Smith

Juan Felipe Lopez Arbelaez

Ka Chun Tsang

Kate Francis Byrne

Kate Helena Stephenson

Katherina Weiwei Bruh

Katherine Isabel Rhodes

Katherine Mitchell

Katie Hannah Longmore

Laura Jane Cushnie

Lawrence Loc Man Wong

Liam Costain

Lily Francis Street

Lily Rebekah Travers

Lucy Emily Heal

Marina Ryzhkova

Marisa Rachel Bamberg

Mark Andrew Laverty

Matthew Layford

Matthew Lovat Hearn

Matthew Patrick Rooney

Melitini Athanasiou

Men Hin Choi

Muhammad Ahmed Asfand

Natalie Mok

Natasha Diyamanthi Trayner

Nial Simran Parkash

Nicholas Honey

Nita Harieth Semgalawe

Nurul ‘Aqilah Binti Ali

Octorino Tjandra

Pannawat Sermsuk

Paul Mathew Johnson

Philippa McLeod-Brown

Philippa Jane Smith

Pitaruthai Longyan

Prajwal Limbu

Pui Wing Clarins Chan

Quynh Dang Le Tu

Rebecca Rowland

Regen James Gregg

Rhiannon Jade Graham

Richard Harry Mayhew

Robert Thurtell

Robert John Thackeray

Rufaro Natalie Matanda

Ryan Daniel Bemrose

Ryoga Dipowikoro

Sam McDonough

Sam Welbourne

Samuel Richards Nicholls

Sean Martyn Hoisington

Shien Min Gooi

Shuyi Chen

Sirawat Thepcharoen

Thasnia Haque

Timothy Seymour Lucas

Tin Ho Lee

Tristan Patrick C Searight

Trung Hieu Tran

Tung Son Cao

Vincent MacDonald

Wai Yip Tsang

William Mansell

Wing Kei So

Wing Kin Wong

Xueyang Bai

Yanjie Song

Yee Yuen Ku

Yi Shu

Ziyun Wang

20 Opposite - Charlotte Armstrong Exploring Experience

At Home in the City

Amy Butt & Dan Kerr; Nita Kidd & Luke Rigg; Christos Kakalis & Gillian Peskett; Hazel Cowie & David McKenna; Claire Harper & Ed Wainwright

How housing is produced, where it is built and who it is for are essential questions, not only for architectural practitioners, but for society at large.

Semester one’s main project, set in Leith, Edinburgh, explored the changing conditions of housing and collective living within a set of specific economic

and social constraints.

22 Leith Symposium

Top from left to right - Matthew Rooney, Marina Ryzhkova, Michael Choi, Agatha Savage, Daniel Barrett, Yee Yuen Ku, April Glasby

23

Engineering Experience

Amy Butt, Dan Kerr & Alexia Mellor; Nita Kidd, Luke Rigg & Rosie Morris ; Christos Kakalis, Gillian Peskett & Gareth Hudson; Hazel Cowie,

David McKenna & Julia Heslop; Claire Harper, Ed Wainwright & Peter Sharp

Through a collaborative project involving students, staff and practitioners from architecture, fine art and engineering, filmic environments were

reimagined as a set of physical artworks to be moved into, through, over, under – experienced through human motion and the camera, and re-filmed

to re-tell a specific experience from each film.

24

Top - Group D3

Bottom - Group D4

Top from left to right - Groups C3, D4, B2, D3, B1

25

Exploring Experience

Amy Butt & Dan Kerr; Nita Kidd, Luke Rigg & Yasser Megahed; Christos Kakalis & Gillian Peskett; Hazel Cowie & Jamie Anderson; Claire Harper

& Ed Wainwright

How can architecture bring the body, the spatially experienced state of being, back into activities, practices & processes that are progressively moving

online? How can those events, desires, acts and experiences be explored physically and in combination with digital technologies? This project, set

in Berwick-upon-Tweed, explores how spatial design can embody the digital, and bring a sensual, haptic and material quality into an increasingly

technologically mediated society.

26 Top - Nicholas Honey Bottom - Mark Andrew Laverty

Top left to bottom right - Richard Mayhew, Agatha Savage, Robert Thackeray, Kate Stephenson, Panawat Semsuk, Timothy Lucas, Katie Longmore, Charlotte

Armstrong, Bai Xuey, Mark Laverty, Liam Costain, Benjamin Taylor

27

28 Top left to bottom right - Panamat Semsuk, Chi Yao Lin, Angus Brown, Ziyun Wan

Top - Matthew Rooney

Bottom - Chao Shen

29

Stage 3

Stage 3 is coordinated into year-long design studios, with students entering immediately after the

Charrette exercise. This year, we ran eight separate studios – our most ever in Stage 3. Over these pages,

each studio is described in more detail, from experimental architecture to explorations of ‘The Long Now’.

As part of these varied studios students undertake a field trip in the first semester, travelling to locations

as diverse as Venice, Rome, Tenerife, Lisbon, Malmo, Copenhagen, London and Lindisfarne. Students’

design work is supported by three non-design modules: Architectural Technology, Professional Practice,

and Principles and Theories. All three tie-in with the student’s evolving design thesis and culminate in an

extensive design portfolio document.

In all studios, the project kicks off with a short ‘Primer’ exercise, culminating in a year-wide event

exhibiting and celebrating the diversity of the studios in Stage 3. The Primer, and the range of approaches

it demonstrates, embodies our attitude as a School to design work at this level: that rather than asking

students to convey what they’ve learnt so far, our third year is about taking those first steps into the

unknown, the particular and the extraordinary, and so help them start to define whatever’s next for them

in their endeavours in architecture.

Year Coordinators

Josep-Maria García-Fuentes

Matthew Margetts

Matt Ozga-Lawn

Project Leaders

Aldric Rodriguez Iborra

Amy Linford

Andrew Ballantyne

Armelle Tardiveau

Carolina Figueroa

Daniel Mallo

David McKenna

James Longfield


Kati Blom

Libby Makinson

Luis Hernandez

Martyn Dade-Robertson

Matt Ozga-Lawn

Matthew Margetts

Michael Simpson

Sean Douglas

Simon Hacker

Tony Watson

Contributors

Alex Gordon

Andrew Byrne

Aurelie Guyet

Austen Smith

Cara Lund

Colin Riches

Colin Ross

Damien Wootten

Darren Conboy

David Bailey

Declan McCaffertyand

Javier Rodriguez Corral

Jo McCafferty

Kate Wilson

Kevin Gray

Kieran Connolly

Libby Makinson

Luciano Cardellicchio

Marc Horn

Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson

Nick Peters

Nigel Bidwell

Peter Brittain

Peter Mouncey

Peter Mouncey

Rachel Currie

Ray Verrall

Sam Clark

Sergi Garriga

Sophia Banou

Stephen Ibbotson

Stephen Richardson

Tim Mosedale

Usue Ruiz Arana

Valerio Morabito

Yasser Megahead

Students

Abdul Rahim

Adam Kamal Najia

Adnan Ahmed Issa Qatan

Aldrich Jun Lin Choy

Alex Jusupov

Alexander Jack Ferguson

Alexander Leopold Borrell

Alice Chilangwa Farmer

Alice Jane Chilman

Alicia Charlotte Beaumont

Amy Louise Callaghan

Anna Leilani Denker

Anthony Roger Metelerkamp

Antonis Kypridemos

Antonius Tanady

Ashok Jahan Mathur

Becky Somerville

Benjamin Joshua Risby

Benjamin Michael Simpson

Benjamin Patrick Martin

Bethan Hannah Thomas

Bethany Laura Elmer

Bradley John Davidson

Caitlin Latimer-Jones

Cheuk Yan Debby Chung

Chloe Alexandra Weston

Christopher Gabe

Clement Ting Yiung Tang

Cristina Mercedes Perez Diaz

Darragh O’Keeffe

David Philip Winter

Declan Joseph Wagstaff

Edgar Yat-Fei Sin

Eleanor Gwenllian Brent

Elise Khoury

Ellen Rita White Peirson

Emily Sarah Rosie Hinchliffe

Erica Alexis Mote Caballero

Finian John Orme

Finlay Giovanni McGregor

Frances Grace Fen-Yi Lai

Frederick Armitage

Frederick Lewis

Gaurav Hemant Kapoor

George Parfitt

George Edward Entwistle

George William Marr

Georgina Molly McEwan

Hayley Lauren Graham

Hiu Yan Lau

Hoi Yuet Chau

Holly Julia Tisson

Hsin-Wei Lin

Ioi Teng Tsang

Iona Frances Haig

Ivo Patrick Pery

Jack Andrew Cross

Jack Michael Ryan

Jack Munro Glasspool

Jack Peter Lewandowski

Jade Angela Moore

Jaimie Alexandra Claydon

James George Clark

Jenna Catherine Sheehy

Jennifer Anne MacFadyen

Jessica Katherine Wheeler

Jie Loon Lee

Jordi Ryano

Josephine Margaret Foster

Julian Job Besems

Justyna Anna Jaroszewicz

Ka Hei Surin Tong

Kai Wing Phoebe Mo

Kimberly Baker

Kiran Alexander John Milton

Lauren Ly

Loretta Ming Wai So

Lucy Hartley

Luke Christopher Rossi

Luke Victor James Dunlop

Lydia Bronwyn Hyde

Lydia Sarah Elizabeth Mills

Man Chun Ip

Marios Kypridemos

Matthew Davies Smith

Melissa Holly Wear

Meshal Abdulrasool Hasan

Michael Bautista-Trimming

Michael Teasdale Wilkinson

Mojan Kavosh

Naomi Howell Sivosh

Natasha Heyes

Navneet Kaur Sihra

Nicholas David Green

Nicholas Peter Harmer

Patrick Charles King

Pui Ying Chu

Rui Huang

Sara Kelly

Scott Matthew Doherty

Shiyun Chen

Sihyun Kim

Simon Angus Quinton

Sin Yi Wong

Sun Yen Yee

Tanatswa Lesley Borerwe

Thomas Badger

Thomas Adam Reeves

Thomas George Ardron

Tooka Taheri

Tsz Wai Fung

Tulsi Vikram Phadke

Wan Yee Chong

Wei Zhang

Xavier Paul Alleyne Smales

Yiwen Fu

Yuet So

Yuk Lun Chong

Zhi Wei Chad Seah

Zhuoran Li

Zineb Khadri

30

Opposite - Allan Chong ‘Formless’ An Alternative Typology to Preservation

Studio 1 – Building on What is Already Built - 15th Lincoln’s Inn Fields

Josep-Maria García-Fuentes & Aldric Rodriguez Iborra

This studio explored architecture as preservation, as it understands they both are placed within a cultural continuum and are the outcome of a complex

cultural, social and political struggle. It challenged students to design a major addition to an existing heritage building. This requires understanding the

existing building in all of the ways its architecture and materials express the values it sought to represent and serve at the time, and in the ways that these

meanings might or might not be extended, enriched or transformed and reshaped by the new addition.

32

Top - Alicia Beaumont An Extension to Sir John Soane’s Museum Middle - Ashok Mathur Soane Architecture School

Bottom - Allan Chong ‘Formless’

Top - Ashok Mathur Soane Architecture School Bottom - Beth Thomas An Extension to Sir John Soane’s Museum 33

34 Top - Sara Kelly Institute of Integrative Pedagogical Design Bottom left - Jenna Sheehy Extending Sir John Soane’s vision of an ‘Academy of Arts’

Bottom right - Tom Ardron Institute of Interdisciplinary Exchange

Top left - Lucy Hartley Sir John Soane’s Architectural Association

Bottom Left -Tom Ardron Institute of Interdisciplinary Exchange

Right - Sara Kelly Institute of Integrative Pedagogical Design

35

Studio 2 – Aperture

Daniel Mallo & Armelle Tardiveau

Aperture studio proposed an exploration of light and material quality, a journey through the craft of photography as a means to expose and render

light vibrant. The design of a camera obscura, a room-sized observatory that records the passing of time and the urban landscape, becomes the starting

point of an urban investigation of the Georgian Market Town of Richmond (North Yorkshire). This remarkable urban townscape with its characteristic

pitched roofs and stone buildings is the setting for the graduation project, a photographic institute situated at the point where the town meets the soft

rolling hills of Yorkshire.

36 Top - Lydia Hyde Aperture Institute Bottom - Freddie Armitage The Light Institute

Top - Alice Chilman

Middle and Bottom - Jennifer MacFadyen A New Cultural Centre for Richmond

37

38

Top - Frances Lai

Middle left to bottom left - Jack Ryan, Amy Callaghan, Steven Lin, Jack Ryan, Jack Lewandowski

Top - Lauren Ly Aperture Bottom left - Erica Caballero Aperture Bottom right - Frances Lai The Aperture Institution 39

40

Top left to Bottom right - Lydia Hyde, Nick Harmer, Christie Chu, Jenny MacFadyen, Lei Denker

Top left to bottom right - Tulsi Phadke, Lei Denker, Freddie Armitage, Jack Lewandowski, Nick Harmer, Lei Denker

41

Studio 3 – Experimental Architecture

Martyn Dade-Robertson, Luis Hernandez & Carolina Figueroa

This year started by focusing on developing a new type of hydromorphic material based on the application of bacteria spores. Hygromorophic materials

change their morphology in the presence of water, and bacteria based hygromorphs offer the potential for actuators that can mechanically respond

to humidity, creating the possibility to design new types of responsive building skin. The studio embarked in a primer to design new systems and

mechanisms, developing our hydromorphic technology both in the lab and the workshop. We then used a trip to Venice as the basis of the final project

to create spaces for experimentation, including the integration of labs, workshops and public functions.

42

George Entwistle The City & The City

Top - Adam Najia - The Venice Cleanup

Bottom, left to right - Bradley Davidson, Aldrich Choy, Iona Haig

43

44 Top left to Bottom right - Michael Bautista, Julian Besems, Adnan Qatan, Julian Besems, Adam Najia

Top and Middle - Simon Quinton Eudoxia

Bottom - Michael Bautista-Trimming Zaira

45

Studio 4 – Infrastructures

Matthew Margetts & Michael Simpson

The Infrastructures studio explored the interface between the human scale ‘ritual’ and city scale infrastructure, responding to varied dynamic systems.

The gaps left behind when infrastructures change can be physical, social or emotional; operating at a personal or collective level.

The studio started at the individual scale, looking at very personal ‘rituals’ – articulated and exaggerated through ‘contraptions’. Through these we

developed tactics for looking at systems and processes at a larger scale.

We chose Brentford as our location for the studio as it contains in a relatively small area an intense confluence of infrastructures – both past and present.

Students were challenged to think at different scales, and to identify a particular circumstance to explore an opportunistic, dynamic architecture,

responsive to human needs.

46 Top - Ellen Peirson An Agricultural Primary Education Bottom - George Parfitt Brentford Droneport

N E W E X H I B I T I O N

r e c e p t i o n

a theatrical entrance ....

Top left - George Parfitt Brentford Droneport

Top middle, Top left, Bottom - Ben Martin Kew A Santuary for Sensory Atmospheres

47

48 Top left to bottom right - Chloe Weston, Cheuk Y D Chung, Yuet So, Cheuk Y D Chung, Chloe Weston, Ben Simpson. Cheuk Y D Chung

Top and Middle - Jordi Ryano The Brentford Ear

Bottom - Yuet So Brentford Hub

49

50 Rui Huang Unbalanced City

Top left to Bottom right - Ben Simpson, Rui Huang, Mishal Hasan, Jordi Ryano, Ellen Peirson, Mishal Hasan, Ivo Pery, Caitlin Latimer-Jones

51

Studio 5 – Material Poetics

James Longfield & Amy Linford

Materials qualities are central to the production of architecture, technically, in terms of the pragmatics of construction, and through the social meanings,

rituals and memories they embody. Our studio encouraged students to engage with material as the ‘stuff’ of architecture, real, rather than rendered, the

thickness, thinness, density, weight of building elements, and the effect these qualities have on the sensory experience of occupation.

Through the studio each student has explored a specific material through hands-on investigations, using the process of making as a way of thinking

about building design and detailing; a thoughtful and critical process of material assembly which emerges out of the pragmatics and poetics of material.

52 Holly Tisson

Top - Natasha Heyes Middle - Naomi Howell Sivosh Bottom - Hayley Graham

53

54 Top - Chad Seah Bottom - Holly Tisson

Top - Chad Seah Middle- Naomi Howell Sivosh Bottom - Justyna Jaroszewicz

55

Studio 6 – Ruskin and The Long Now

Andrew Ballantyne & Libby Makinson

John Ruskin said, ‘When we build, let us think that we build forever’. The Long Now Foundation was set up to promote long-term

thinking, and is building a 10,000–year clock. When we start thinking about buildings with a long–term view in mind then we

think about processes of adaptation, re–use and renewal, as well as erosion and decay. In the long term everything is dynamic. We

are looking beyond the immediate function of the building to think about what happens when things change. Ruskin wrote about

Venice, which is a model of precarious resilience: mud into magic.

56 Chris Gabe Prospective Preservation for the Long Now

Top left - Melissa Wear Top right - Surin Tong Middle right -David Winter Bottom left - Kiran Milton Bottom right - Phoebe Mo

57

58 Top - Kiran Milton The Timeless Architecture of Evolutionary Predisposition Bottom right - Surin Tong Building Happiness

Bottom left - Phoebe Mo Building for Permanence and Sensibility through an Experience of Concrete

Jack Glasspool - Long Term Preservation of Short-term Industry

59

Studio 7 – Trace

Simon Hacker & Tony Watson

The studio focused on man-made traces – the marks, indications and imprints that we make across a multitude of scales and their relationships to human

experience. Whilst some of these marks are relatively permanent, many traces change or fade over time.

The studio has considered various ways in which traces may be located, observed, researched and represented. These have then fed into considering

strategies that can be employed to draw, form, copy, follow and imprint new and contemporary traces and changes within both urban and rural contexts.

60 Alex Borrell The Sheep Counting Institute

Top - James Clark Long Term Preservation of Short-term Industry Middle - Declan Wagstaff Place of Experience Bottom - Jaimie Claydon

61

62 Top - Declan Wagstaff Middle - Jess Wheeler Middle - Jack Cross Bottom - Tom Badger

Top left to bottom right - Becky Somerville, Emily Hinchliffe, Jack Cross, Freddie Lewis, Luke Dunlop, Ellie Brent, Luke Dunlop, Nick Green, Jess Wheeler,

Tom Badger

63

64 Top - Tom Badger Architecture and the Inevitable Bottom - Bethany Elmer Returning the Lindisfarne Gospels

Top left - Elise Khoury Top right - Josie Foster Bottom left - Declan Wagstaff Bottom right - Georgie McEwan

65

Studio 8 – Variations

Kati Blom, David McKenna & Sean Douglas

Students developed a series of small scale prototypes in order to establish a design methodology and programme for a larger proposal, consisting of two

buildings and an urban plan.

In the first project, CHAMBER, we started with a small rehearsal space and a construction fragment. From these emerged a residential institute for a

quartet of musicians. The larger project, SHOW & STORE, began with a pavilion to store and exhibit a single object, extrapolated to a building to

house a larger compendium.

66 Top - Alex Jusupov Alison & Peter Smithson Architectural Foundation Bottom - Alice Farmer

Top left to Bottom right - Antonius Tanady, Gaurav Kapoor, Cristina Diaz, Ben Risby, Antonius Tanady, Ben Risby, Rackel Chong, Loretta So, Lee Jieloon,

Vance Zhang, Sean Kim

67

MODERN NATURE

FLUENCY DISORIENTATION RESISTANCE HISTORY

Edit line

68 Top - Ben Risby Middle - Sean Kim Middle - Shiyun Chen Bottom - Cristina Perez Diaz

Alex Jusupov Alison & Peter Smithson Architectural Foundation

69

70 Top left - Tanatswa Borerwe Top right - Shiyun Chen Bottom left - Alice Farmer Bottom right - Rackel Chong

Top left - Edgar Sin Top right - Lee Jieloon Bottom left - Lee Jieloon Bottom right - Mojan Kavosh

71

Highlighted Project –‘Formless,’ An Alternative Typology to Preservation

Allan Chong

This project takes a theoretical path in creating an alternative typology for preservation. It introduces a compromise between the desire for preservation and the cultural shift

necessary for architectural expansion in the city’s future. ‘Formless does not mean the absence of form, for preservation certainly depends on pre-existing architectural forms. But while

preservation aesthetics respond to the existing building’s form, they do not change it. Instead they supplement it with new interpretive frames altering the reception of its cultural meaning.’

Koolhaas, R., Otero, P. J. (2014) ‘Preservation is Overtaking Us’.

Interpreting the concept of ‘formless’ in preservation means that architecture and heritage are no longer seen as permanent objects, but they keep transforming to re-frame their

key spaces. The project becomes a series of processes and imagines an endless architectural development in terms of space, material and technology. The processes form a unique

methodology – ‘Extraction’ & ‘Projection’, through which the extension completes a cycle. As it keeps changing over time, it gives rise to many cycles which each reframe the

previous cycle, and each provide different functions to support the theme of preservation. At a certain point of growth, when people trace back to the beginning of the process,

all of the cycles and spaces are hinged on the heritage, as the extended spaces are derived from the existing spaces.

72

Highlighted Project – The Sheep Counting Institute

Alex Borrell

The Institute is a place for artists, writers, and inventors to dream up new alternatives to pressing issues. Along the way they research, gather and create

new dream archetypes, absorbing traces of the collective unconscious but also paving the way for future development. These images are archived and

later attached to sheep which, rescued from the sea, pass through the building on a conveyor belt.

73

BA Dissertation

Experimenting with Informality: How can the hyper-complexity of informal growth be

integrated into architectural design?

Chris Gabe

‘The process of creating a neointestine (tissue engineered intestine) involves the construction of a

“scaffold matrix” that replicates the three-dimensional form of the existing tissue. This should allow

the local cells to populate the structure and multiply, creating new tissue. It must replicate the dual

function of the organic tissue acting as both an absorptive surface and a barrier against the external

environment. It must also facilitate the development of a vascular network, allowing a functional

blood supply into and out of the scaffold…’

‘…This is an example of encouraging growth by creating a biologically responsive scaffold matrix.

This does not rely on mathematical principles designed to mimic the fundamental complexity of

a prerequisite system, but rather nurtures the existing biological networks into growth and repair.

This concept could be explored in the world of informal urbanism. An example of this system of

framework driven growth can be found in the occupancy of Torre David…’

Postmodernity and Postmodernism: ‘A glance backwards is part of the way we go forwards’

Ellen Peirson

Postmodernism’s first aim was always to end the ‘grand narrative’ and to dismiss the idea of working

towards a prescribed single look or a style. However, in doing this, to the general public some of the

ideas seemed so extreme that it created a recognisable aesthetic. The discussion on postmodernism

has been recently opened up again with a revival of sorts a possibility. This revival is more concerned

with the attitude of postmodernism as opposed to any connotations of a particular style or aesthetics.

In AD’s ‘Radical Post-Modernism’, architects and thinkers polemicize on the possibility of this. From

these discussions, the most resonant phrase seems to be: ‘sometimes history repeats itself better if

the architects don’t know it’. A successful revival may rely on the misconceptions of the movement

to be forgotten and for just the relevant values to be taken forward. The movement was expansive

and unrestrained, and produced a wide range of architecture that cannot be compared stylistically.

It offered many opportunities for reform and improvement which are still relevant today such as its

user centred and site specific approach to design. However, as with movements that have gone before,

it has been judged mainly on aesthetics. In truth, there can be no completely postmodern building.

Therefore, for it to flourish, it may be better for it not to be considered a movement but more an

approach or attitude to design.

‘Depressingly Irrelevant’:

Interrogating the Criticism of Speculative Design and Exploring the Value of Such Projects

George Entwistle

‘This is a period of slackening - I refer to the colour of times. From every direction we are being urged

to put an end to experimentation, in the arts and elsewhere’ - Jean-François Lyotard

With criticism from writers such as Patrik Schumacher being given such a prominent platform, in

popular design journals such as The Architectural Review, speculative design has been left in a fragile

state. There is a danger that designers will become reluctant to engage with speculative design for fear

of being heavily criticised and that it might be phased out. There is perhaps already evidence of this

beginning to take place as ‘there are already utterances of critical practice being little more than design

for design’s sake, “design for designers” or perhaps more appropriately, design for critical designers’.

Speculative design as a practice stands at a crossroads in how it deals with this criticism. One way

is to continue on its current path, to retreat to within the community of the avant-garde, being

‘overly self reflective and introverted’, hiding from critics outside of their ‘closed community’ such

as Schumacher. Jean-François Lyotard describes this path: ‘Artists and writers must be brought back

to the bosom of the community, or at least, if the latter is considered to be ill, they must be assigned

the task of healing it’.

The alternate path is explained by Dunne and Raby: ‘Speculative designs depend on dissemination

and engagement with a public or expert audience; they are designed to circulate’. Dunne and Raby

propose the opposite of what is described by Lyotard, calling for speculative design to be thrust onto

a public stage, suggesting that by hiding the practice within a ‘closed community’, ‘its usefulness as

part of a larger disciplinary project is undermined’.

74

Spraying the City: An exploration of graffiti and street art as a democratic creative expression

Georgina McEwan

Graffiti and street art, as the voice of the unelected and disadvantaged, intends to regain possession

of public space in a rebellion against authoritative dictations of the urban environment: to ‘reclaim

the streets’. No urban space can be defined as neutral, with walls and street topography symbolic

of boundaries for socially constructed zones and territories. Graffiti writers in 1970s New York

considered urban developers and architects of the rapidly evolving city as callous decision makers,

an attitude still reflected in the aggressive and territorial language of the graffiti community: ‘writing

graffiti is “bombing”, a tag is a “hit” and advanced letter formations are “burners’’’. Instances of profitdriven

architectural gentrification associated with the mundane metropolis lifestyle in developing

cities have led to environments that are often constrained by limitations inhibiting liberated social

action. Graffiti and street art, through transgressive artistic reclamation, highlights the importance

of democratic creative free expression in its ability to drive and shape urgent issues in today’s culture.

The Future of Concert Halls: A first exploration

Julian Besems

Whilst classical music is primarily performed in traditional concert halls without the use of

amplification devices, a concern has been expressed that recording and reproduction quality has

started to create an expectation of excellence that cannot be met in live performances.

This evokes the question of how the advanced development of recording, reproduction and

amplification devices will influence the need for and form of new and existing purpose built music

venues in relation to classical music.

This research question will be answered through a recording experiment and a public survey.

Recordings of both live performances, and hi-fi reproductions of the same pieces of music are

taken. These are played blind to respondents who express their preference. The samples are analysed

through spectrograms. The public survey investigates the respondent’s primary reason to attend a live

performance and how they listen to music.

The overall results from the listening experiment show that there is no significant preference for live

over hi-fi reproduced audio quality. There is however a significant preference for hi-fi reproduction

quality for female voices, and live quality for male voices. The spectrogram analysis explains the

preference difference: the reproduction samples have a higher high frequency incidence; the live

samples have a higher low frequency density. The survey outcome states that people primarily visit

classical performances for the audio quality.

Lessons for the Tonlé Sap Lake: Can the living conditions of Kampong Khleang be improved

by rural development?

Sara Kelly

The Tonlé Sap Lake is South-East Asia’s largest inland fishery. It passes through nine districts of

Cambodia, including Kampong Khleang, which forms the focus of this dissertation. The Tonlé Sap

Lake annually absorbs around 20% of the Mekong River’s flood capacity. As a result, the area around

the lake becomes flooded and inhabits both floating and stilted communities.

In contrast to modern approaches, where there is a reluctance to develop marginal land , the

communities of this district have developed their own approach and are looking to consolidate this.

Farming and fishing communities adapt to the local ecology and have managed a 10-meter water

level rise. Communities such as Kampong Khleang have developed an innovative architectural

morphology that permits them to live in these conditions, however imperfectly.

This response is shaped by their environmental, social and political conditions. Neal Mongold

explains this observation. He argued that architecture is the shaping of the physical environment and

thus it is involved in the shaping of the economic, political, spiritual, and psychological environment.

These communities offer a unique insight into this relationship between the development of social

and physical form. One could argue that the prospect of uncertainty of global warming has stimulated

the architectural field to radically change its relationship with water.

75

BA Dissertation

Tokyo: The Urban Laboratory

The birth, death and legacy of Metabolism, with a case study of the Capsule Tower as an

emblematic microcosm.

Caitlin Latimer-Jones

Japan experienced devastating destruction through World War Two and multiple natural disasters.

With financial and technical assistance from global superpowers, Tokyo experienced unprecedented

urban growth and infrastructural and industrial progress. The capital became an urban laboratory for

Metabolism’s utopian megastructures. The post war movement’s ideas stem from viewing the city as

an adaptive entity and relied on advanced technology. However, megastructures never reached the

intended global success, experiencing the same demise as the movement by the 1970s. This paper

explores Tokyo’s mid-1900s landscape, what Metabolism was responding to and how the movement

has enlightened contemporary urban design and planning. Contemporary designs should be led by

concerns related to sustainability, green spaces, users’ interconnectivity and the existing city. The

‘metabolic development’ of the world’s societies should continue to evolve, to ameliorate and surpass

the 1960s utopian proposals.

From an Era of Welfare to an Era of Consumption: Proposing a loss of ethic in the regeneration

of Park Hill Estate

Tom Ardron

Park Hill Estate was granted Grade II* listing in 1998 amongst a selection of other post-war housing

estates. In 2007, Manchester-based Urban Splash began work on regenerating the estate. This thesis

traces the changes throughout the history of Park Hill from its original intentions to present day

in order to propose a loss of the public-housing ethic ingrained in our understanding of the estate.

Beginning with a chronological analysis from the design conception, I discuss the influence The New

Brutalism had on the design of Park Hill and how devices in both architectural and urban design

enhanced the ethic of social housing as architectural self-justification within the estate. Following this

I evaluate the changes in public policy which played a major part in the decline of the estate from the

1980s to its listing and how echoes of these policies could still be influencing both the redevelopment

of Park Hill and housing markets in the UK today.

The founding motives of both English Heritage and the developer Urban Splash within the

regeneration initiate the second part of this study. This highlights factors such as financing and a

contradiction in practice between the stakeholders as a possible directive to some changes. A shift

from a social to a profit-orientated motive is proposed as one of the main transitions within the

development.

An Assessment of Exhibition as the Means of Appropriating Egyptian Style, with example of

Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly.

Melissa Wear

I have chosen to study the appropriation of Egyptian aesthetics because of its cyclic relationship

with Western Europe. One of the earliest civilisations developed in Egypt. A specific movement

of Egyptian architectural style into Greece, Rome, and then through to Western Europe creates an

interesting cycle when considering the human desire of returning to one’s roots. It is useful to observe

what is gained or lost in the translation of styles. Equally, in a growing era of continentalism, it is

interesting to consider why people choose to retain identity using cultural divisions. As architecture

is increasingly designed by international firms and away from local values, it is important to recognise

why we choose to keep or lose certain elements of identity. It is most clear to study this subject using

an age that has entirely passed.

Britain’s interest in Egypt lasted roughly a century, most aptly bracketed by two London buildings:

the 1812 Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly and the 1928 Carreras Cigarette Factory in Camden. However,

a more general interest in Egypt can be traced back to the thirteenth century; historian James Curl

predicts, ‘The inspiration of Egyptian art and architecture for the West is not yet dissipated’.

Mass Egyptianising has led Egyptomania to become associated with garishness (of bright colours and

secular ornamentation). This is perhaps linked to the method of exhibition in sharing the splendours

of decoration associated with Egyptian style.

76

AUP Creative Practice / Social Sciences Dissertation

Tyne Deck in the 21st Century: How can architectural interventions be used to improve the

relationship between Newcastle and Gateshead?

Tom Wessely

This Creative Practice Dissertation analyses how the infrastructure at Quayside has developed since

the Roman period. It focuses on the key changes at Quayside such as the construction of the High

Level Bridge, built in 1847. Following this, it critically examines in greater detail the structures

built in the contemporary era, such as the Millennium Bridge and the Sage. The aim is to establish

through a design proposal how the quayside area might help improve the relationship between

Newcastle and Gateshead. Information obtained through interviews and focus groups influences the

design proposal. Through a mapping exercise, I unpack the urban quality of Quayside and propose

possible ways of improving the relationship at Quayside through architectural interventions. The

proposal is influenced by the Tyne Deck, designed in 1969 by Gordon Ryder and Peter Yates (but

never built) reflects on the controversial Garden Bridge by Thomas Heatherwick. In the conclusion,

I discuss what impact such proposed infrastructure could have on local organisations such as the

NewcastleGateshead Initiative and how it might improve the relationship between Newcastle and

Gateshead.

Public Spaces in Kibera

Veenay Patel

This dissertation looks to unfold the production and consumption of public spaces in Kibera.

The research was conducted in the Gatwekera district of the informal settlement and focuses on

six public spaces in the area. The information collected about each space is portrayed through six

narratives, where I express conversed, observatory and researched findings. The intention is to try

and understand the relationship between people and place within the settlement. Furthermore, the

aim is to explore the possibilities that may enhance these spaces for the residents and enable them

to effect change for a better future.

The focus of this study is to look in particular at the production and use of public spaces within the

settlement. Kibera is structured upon government owned land and therefore, in layman’s terms is all

considered to be public space. However, this is not the case as the informal city works with the same

notions of public and private as the formal city. For the purpose of this study, a public space can be

defined as a social space that is generally open and accessible to the people. The characteristics of a

public space in the formal city differ to those of the informal as the facets that define these spaces

are dependent on the people that utilise them. This led to an exploration of ‘What defines a public

space in Kibera?’ The insinuation being that the functional and symbolic value of a public space in

an informal settlement like Kibera is based upon the foundation of what the residents require rather

than being a simple space of leisure. Thus, this research aims to unravel some key concepts that can

help us understand how public spaces work in Kibera and the bearing this has on the lives of the

citizens that reside there.

Identifying Inadequacies of Water and Sanitation Provision in the Slums of Mumbai and the

Consequences of this for Female Access to Education and Employment.

Rebecca Alexander

Water and sanitation provision is a concern for many informal settlements in the cities of

developing countries. Cultural norms in many countries mean that women from low-income urban

communities find that their lives and opportunities are shaped by the inadequate provision of basic

services. Mumbai is a city with one of the largest informal populations in the world. Understanding

the nature of these informal settlements is necessary in order to intervene most effectively. This study

examines the challenges of delivering adequate water and sanitation services to the slums of Mumbai.

The inadequacies of both formal and informal systems were explored to identify the consequences of

such shortfalls. The research found that many aspects of life within Mumbai slums were connected

to water and sanitation related activities. Furthermore it was found that because women and girls

bare the brunt of the burden of these activities their education and employment opportunities are

negatively impacted by insufficiencies.

77

Fieldwork & Site Visits

BA (Hons) Architecture

As part of Stage 3 the varied studios undertake a field trip in the first semester, travelling to locations as diverse as Venice, Rome, Tenerife, Lisbon,

Malmo, Copenhagen, London and Lindisfarne.

Studio 1: Building on what is already built

Rome, Venice and Verona, Italy

Studio 2: Aperture

Tenrife

Studio 3: Experimental Architecture

Venice, Italy

Studio 4: Infrastructures

Brentford, United Kingdom

Studio 5: Material Poetics

Copenhagen, Denmark + Malmo and Stockholm, Sweden

Studio 6: Ruskin and the Long Now

Venice, Italy

Studio 7: Trace

Norway

Studio 8: The Variations

Portugal

MArch Architecture

Stage 5: Whole year

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Stage 6: Zazibar Studio

Zanzibar, Tanzania

MA Architecture and Urban Design

Nantes, France

78

BA Architecture & Urban Planning (AUP)

The BA (Hons) Architecture and Urban Planning (AUP) is an evolving three year programme which

began in September 2013 and is now reaching its first cycle of maturity. The degree programme is a

broad one that seeks to unite academic themes and approaches from the architecture and urban planning

programmes across the School. But whilst many joint degrees can sometimes simply mesh two existing

programmes together, we wanted to do something different. The AUP degree carries its own intellectual

and pedagogical themes that cannot be found on other programmes elsewhere in the School. There are

four conceptual strands, which includes one major theme, ‘alternative practice’, and three minor themes:

visual culture, urban design and social enterprise.

The alternative practice strand responds to a critique of twentieth century architecture and planning as

overly technocratic and individualised. Returning to these critiques, alternative practice intends to address

these issues by a greater focus on social, cultural, political and environmental concerns in the design and

construction of the built environment. Our course has drawn inspiration from a range of thinkers and

practitioners concerned with the built environment (including philosophers, political activists, sociologists,

geographers, architects and planners) that have sought to engage and include communities in design

and building (sometimes self-build, sometimes co-production).

The following section which contains images of design work from Stage 1, 2 and 3 of the programme

effectively showcases much of the intellectual and practical academic content of the degree – particularly

the degree’s internal themes – and should be of interest to all with a firm awareness of the connections

between social, environmental and design issues and the built environment more specifically. We hope you

will enjoy the work shown here and derive as much pleasure from these projects as we have in helping their

creators to realise their own personal goals.

Directors

Andrew Law

Armelle Tardiveau

Project Leaders

Armelle Tardiveau

David McKenna

Rutter Carroll

Tim Townshend

Contributors

Adam Sharr

Ali Madanipour

Andrew Donaldson

Andy M Law

Armelle Tardiveau

Cat Button

Chris Beale

Cristina Pallini

Damien Wootten

Daniel Mallo

Dave Webb

Dhruv Sookhoo

Geoff Vigar

Georgia Giannopoulou

Helen Robinson

Ian McCaffery

Irene Curulli

Irene Mosley

James Longfield

James Street

Jane Midgely

Joe Dent

John Pendlebury

Jules Brown

Kati Blom

Katie Lloyd Thomas

Ken Hutchinson

Loes Veldpaus

Marion Talbot

Mark Tewdwr-Jones

Martin Beatie

Martin Bonner

Matt Ozga Lawn

Matt Wilcox

Montse Ferres

Neil Powe

Paola Gazzola

Paul Crompton

Peter Kellett

Peter Mouncey

Prue Chiles

Raphael Selby

Ray Verrall

Roger Maier

Rose Gilroy

Rutter Carroll

Scott Savin

Steve Dudek

Steve Graham

Steve Parnell

Stuart Cameron

Su Ann Lim

Sue Speak

Teresa Strachan

Tibo Labat

Tim Mosedale

Tim Townshend

Usue Ruiz Arana

Stage 1

Abbey JoForster

AdilZeynalov

AhmadNamazli

Ahmet Halil Hayta

Ben Edward Johnson

Callum Robert

Campbell

Conrad Chi WahLi

EmilyWhyman

Fatma Beyza Celebi

Flynn Christopher

Linklater-Johnson

Georgia AnneMiles

HarryBloomfield

Huiyu Zhou

Jemima Anulika

Manasoko Onugha

Jiewen Tan

Jieyang Zhou

John-Kervin Marcos

Joshua Edward Beattie

Joshua Thomas Goodliffe

Junqiang Chen

Ka Hei Chan

Ka Hei Wong

Konstantins Briskins

Marvin Shikanga Mbasu

Max James Hardy

Mehboob Chatur

Michael John

Rosciszewski Dodgson

Minsub Lee

Nikshith Reddy

Nagaraja Reddy

Photbarom Korworrakul

Racheal Felicia

Modupeayo Osinuga

Richard George Gilliatt

Ryan Patrick Thomas

Sahir Thapar

Shaoyun Wang

Siddhant Agarwal

Sonali Venkateswaran

Stephen Johnston

Sutong Yu

Theodore Christian

Robert VostBond

Ting En Wu

Vaios Tsoupos

Van Abner Tabigue

Consul

Winnie Wing Yee

Wong

Xi LIN

Xinyun Zhang

Xuanzhi Huang

Yasmine Khammo

Yuan Xu

Zeynab Bozorg

Stage 2

Alex Joseph Robson

Ali Alshirawi

Andrew John Laurence

Blandford-Newson

Chia-Yuan Chang

Christopher Hau

Eleanor Kate Chapman

Filip Ferkovic

George Jeavons-Fellows

Hannah Rose Knott

Henry Andrew Morgan

Hiu Ying Sung

Jieyu Xiong

Jonas Wohni Grytnes

Lok Hang L Leung

Nadine Landes

Phuong Anh Pham

Runyu Zhang

Seyed Masoumi Fard

Sheryl Lee

Simona Penkauskaite

Sze Chai Anthony Choy

Thomas Gibbons

Yeqian Gao

Yilan Zhang

Stage 3

Yuxiang Wang

Adem Mehmet

Altunkaya

Blair Forrest Nimmo

Charles Richard Moore

Charlotte Harrison

Fedelis Fernando

Tosandi

Harry George

Treanor

Jack William Burnett

Jessica Lily Poyner

Martin Kruczyk

Po-Yen Chang

Rebecca Mary

Alexander

Richard Keeling

Rutheep Prabhakaran

Ryan Thomas Conlon

Safeer Shersad

Shu Ting Tang

Sophie Hannah Laverick

Thomas Bartholomew

Charles Wessely

Veenay Patel

Zheng Kit Leong

80

Opposite - First Graduating Year AUP

AUP Stage 1 – Measure

David McKenna

There are 14 boat houses belonging to various colleges, schools and amateur rowing clubs located along the Wear in Durham. The earliest date from

the early 1800s and coincide with the founding of the university. Measure required the design of a 15th boat house and cafe that would form a gateway

from the city centre to the university playing fields.

82

Top left - Konstantins Briskins Top right - Callum Campbell Middle - Callum Campbell Bottom left - yasmine khammo bottom left - Xi Lin

Top left to bottom right - Ka Chan, Xi Lin, Sutong Yu, Ka Chan, Yasmine Khammo, Winnie Wong, Sutong Yu 83

AUP Stage 2 – Theory and Form

Rutter Carroll

In semester two of Twentieth Century Architecture, students were asked to consider a Theory + Form approach to the submission of an essay and design

project, through a strategy for the reuse/conversion/extension/adaptation of an existing post war building in the Tyneside area.

Wallsend Central Library, a key building from the post war period in the region, was identified for study and analysis with respect to its reuse. Built in

1967 as the main library in the town of Wallsend, and designed by local architects Faulkner Brown (formerly Williamson Faulkner Brown and Partners),

the building allowed students to assess the design through a series of Theory + Form lectures, seminars, design analysis tutorials and exercises.

84 Top - Wallsend Central Library, Williamson, Faulkner Brown and Partners, 1966 Bottom - Seyed Masoumi Fard, Yuxiang Wang, Jonas Grytnes

Group work: Jieyu Xiong, Lok Hang Leung, Chia-Yuan Chang, Seyed Masoumi Fard, Yuxiang Wang, Jonas Grytnes, Thomas Gibbons, Alex Robson,

Christopher Hau, Henry Morgan, Yilan Zhang, Runyu Zhang, Sze Chai Anthony Choy, Hui Ying Sung

85

AUP Stage 3 – A Home for All: Housing for Vulnerable Population

Tim Townshend

During the 2020s a point will be reached when 25% of the UK population will aged 65 and over. People are living more active lifestyles into older

age and there is a huge challenge to meet the needs and aspirations of these ‘active third agers’. APL 3002 explored the complexities of providing

a stimulating, safe, appropriate and desirable home for older persons in an existing setting, Armstrong House, a listed Arts-and-Crafts property in

Bamburgh. Armstrong House Bamburgh is an independent charitable trust providing ‘independent living with support’ affiliated to the national

Abbeyfield society. The students were charged with thinking holistically about the place of older persons’ housing in a settlement such as Bamburgh

and how it might be more fully integrated into the everyday life of the community, by providing ‘places of encounter’ learning from Dutch experience.

86

87

AUP Stage 3 – Alternative Practice: Co-producing Space

Daniel Mallo & Armelle Tardiveau

For Alternative Practice: Co-producing Space, students focused on a live project at Denton Burn Community Association which concerns the design

of a community garden and a playful area for an unused derelict plot. The project included the mapping of the Network of Social and Environmental

Initiatives in the neighbourhood and aimed to engage students with existing community-led initiatives. The project culminated with a series of design

proposals and temporary installations on site, which allowed the community to experience the transformed space and trigger conversations about the

potential of the place as well as learning together through the enactment of a temporary community space.

88 Installation at Denton Burn

89

MArch

Zeynep Kezer

‘What can architecture do? Where might architectural thinking take us?’ Newcastle’s

two-year MArch fosters a research-led approach – one that challenges students to stretch

their architectural and critical imaginations, to think harder and more deeply about what

architecture is and what it could be. Work is diverse, threaded by an interest in architecture

as a collective, cultural endeavour. Projects interrogate architectural production in all its

aspects, from material processes, to modes of design, representation and construction, to

the ways that architecture shapes – and is shaped by – the society and culture in which

it is situated.

As an RIBA accredited Part II programme – the second of three steps towards qualification

as a UK architect – MArch is geared to develop advanced skills in analysis, representation,

design and technical resolution through projects of considerable scale and complexity.

But it is also rooted in the belief that architectural training must go beyond professional

competence. MArch draws on the diverse expertise of ARC, our School’s multidisciplinary

research collaborative, to push explorative ways of working and thinking architecturally.

Students are encouraged to undertake original investigations into issues and techniques at

the forefront of contemporary developments in architecture and beyond – from synthetic

biology to the space of the psyche – while at the same time grounding their work in

a specific material, social, cultural and intellectual context. Cross-studio reviews and

symposia support a lively exchange of ideas and challenge students to position their work

in relation to trends in architectural production and discourse.

Teaching in MArch cuts across common distinctions between design, technology and

history and theory, promoting an integrated approach that treats all aspects of architecture

as opportunities for critical creative enquiry. Studio modules play a central role,

incorporating lectures, seminars, consultancies and workshops spanning the curriculum,

as well as cross-year events such as Charrette and Thinking-Through-Making. Projects are

undertaken in small design-research studios, each exploring particular issues or themes that

resonate with the research interests of tutors. Briefs invite an open process of investigation

between staff and students, encouraging the development of an independent approach and

distinctive critical stance, all grounded in rigorous research. In Stage 5, two semester-long

projects set in a major European city interrogate the complexities of architecture’s relation

to context, from urban to detail-scale, allowing students to test new approaches, methods

and ideas. With most of the prescribed curriculum covered, Stage 6 is freed up to focus on

a specific interest or question, pursued in depth through a year-long thesis project.

With a rich range of opportunities for specialisation, the MArch programme at Newcastle

allows students to develop their own fields of expertise and to showcase these in a distinctive

portfolio. Alongside the design studio, students can choose to pursue independent research

through a dissertation, to join a linked research studio where they collaborate on a live

research project led by a member of staff, or to take a tailored set of modules from one

of our other specialist Masters programmes – such as Design and Emergence, or Urban

Design – with the potential of accumulating credits towards a second postgraduate

degree. Bridging between the two years of MArch, these activities spark ideas and develop

skills that feed into thesis projects. The School also has a series of exchange agreements

with leading schools of architecture in Europe and around the world, including KTH

Stockholm, National University of Singapore, and The University of Sydney. MArch

students can study abroad for one or two semesters of Stage 5, and the programme benefits

from the diverse skills and experiences of students who join our projects.

91

Stage 5

Stage 5 is a year for in-depth experimentation: for exploring architecture in all its cultural, social, political,

material and historical contexts, for testing new approaches to design, representation and technology.

Briefs emphasize critical thinking and require students to engage with current debates in architecture

and society at large. The year’s work focusses on a particular international city – this year Rotterdam

– beginning with an intensive week-long study visit, including architectural tours, excursions, talks,

group urban analysis and social events. Students undertake a critical reimagining of the city through two

semester-long projects which challenge them to work at two radically different scales – first urban, then

detail. Framing design as a rigorous, as well as speculative process, they foster design-research skills and

interests in preparation for Stage 6.

In semester one, Plan Rotterdam asked students to engage with the urban fabric of the city, its historical

layers, cultural currents and social differences. The project was taught as five distinct studios that each took

on a different urban area and issue. Common themes include the interplay of buildings, infrastructure,

land and water in a city below sea level, architecture’s role in the production of images, experiences and

lifestyles, and the politics of regeneration in a place renowned for visionary architectural and urban ideas.

The project is paired with the Tools for Thinking about Architecture module, which introduces a range of

critical approaches through lectures, workshops and seminars.

Semester two’s Rematerializing Rotterdam switched focus to material and technical imagination, taking

detail, construction and atmosphere as opportunities for creative and critical exploration. The brief

asked students to interrogate a [g]host architecture – built or unbuilt, in Rotterdam or elsewhere – and

to reimagine it in the contemporary city. A detail and environment lecture series, supported by expert

consultancies, encouraged students to pursue a technical specialism that embodies the intentions of the

project.

Year Coordinators

James Craig

Stephen Parnell

Project Leaders

Hanna Benihoud

James Craig

Laura Harty

Matthew Ozga-Lawn

Nathaniel Coleman

Stephen Parnell

Contributors

Adam Sharr

Aidan Hoggart

Ben Bridgens

Chantelle Stewart

Claire Harper

Daniel Mallo

Dik Jarman

Ed Wainwright

Graham Farmer

Jonnie McGill

Katie Lloyd Thomas

Kieran Connolly

Leon Walsh

Luis Hernan

Mark Clarke


Miguel Paredes

Neveen Hamza

Nita Kidd

Sam Austin

Sarah Jane Stewart

Zeynep Kezer

Students

Adam Hampton-Matthews

Alexander Baldwin-Cole

Alexandra Paula Carausu

Amit Chhaganbhai Patel

Carl Matthew Reid

Cleo Kyriacou

Daniel Richard Duffield

David Livingstone Boyd

Deryan Teh

Gavin Jia Chung Wu

Hei Man Lau

James Richard Street

Jessica Raine Wilkie

Joseph Wilson

Joseph Philip Dent

Justin William Moorton

Kathleen Rebecca Jenkins

Katie Anne Fisher

Kayleigh Anne Creighton

Kim Alicia Gault

Laurence William Ashley

Malcolm Greer Pritchard

Mariya Lapteva

Martin James Parsons

Matthew Westgate

Matthew Michael Wilcox

Matthew Sharman-Hayles

Michael James Southern

Nedelina Atanasova

Nicola Jane Blincow

Nikolas Kirris Fennell Ward

Noor Aliya Jan-Mohamed

Raphael Tevel Selby

Rebecca Elizabeth Daisy Wise

Richard John Spilsbury

Robert George Evans

Rose Eleanor O’Halloran

Ruochen Zhang

Samuel Edward Halliday

Shiu Tung Wallace Ho

Sophie Cobley

Stavroula Rousounidou

Su Ann Lim

Theodora Kyrtata

Thomas James Saxton

Thomas Richard Cowman

Ulwin Paul Beetham


Erasmus Students

Camille Bourneuf

Delia Heitmann

Gustav Lundstrom

Insa Thiel

Stephanie Chiu

92 Opposite - Joe Dent Metropolitan Imaginaries - Site Plan

Metropolitan Imaginaries

James Craig

Metropolitan Imaginaries asked students to map, analyse, and condense the myriad architectural elements that constitute Rotterdam’s metropolitan

image. Using Ivan Leonidov’s social condenser as a key reference, each student set about creating an urban strip that would act as a vessel to contain

architectural interpretations of Rotterdam’s metropolitan conditions. Each strip was articulated, combined, and placed in the Maashaven basin – a site

that lies adjacent to Rotterdam’s prime metropolitan location: the Wilhelminapier. The proposed masterplan is a layered, multi-programmed terrain that

highlights and exaggerates Rotterdam’s extant desire to be seen as a metropolitan city.

94

Kathleen Jenkins

A D A M H A M P T O N - M A T T H E W S

Top from left to right - Joe Dent, James Street, Stavri Rousounidou, Adam Hampton-Matthews, Noor Jan-Mohamed, Justin Moorton

95

Iterations & Intensities

Matthew Ozga-Lawn

The studio looked with a close and critical eye at the design processes associated with two major Rotterdam-based practices, OMA and MVRDV.

Students were asked to emulate and embody these practices, in order to gain an understanding of Rotterdam as the site that allows for and encourages

these means of producing architecture. A mock competition was held between the two practices for the same masterplan site in Delfshaven, with large,

group-produced masterplan models alongside individual explorations.

96

Top - MVRDV - Intensities Group Masterplan From Minecraft Blocks to a Building Masterplan

Top - Nik Ward Top Right - Stephanie Chiu Bottom Left - Jessica Wilkie Bottom Right - Carl Reid

97

The City as a Platform

Stephen Parnell

This studio was based on the premise that it is the architecture of the underlying immaterial ‘platforms’ – the operating systems of the city – its rules,

regulations, frameworks, social morals, systems, etiquette, traditions, networks, legislation, and so on, that is most influential on the design of the city.

Students were asked, as a group, through mapping and desktop research, to come up with a definition of what a ‘platform’ is in the context of urban

environment. They then had to individually design a building based upon that idea. The intention was to question the architect’s traditional role in

society and investigate original models of ‘spatial agency’.

98 Top - Michael Southern

Top - Rosie O’Halloran Middle - Malcolm Pritchard B ottom - Cleo Kyriacou

99

Urban Hacker

Hanna Benihoud

‘Operation Rotterdam’ was the mission that the students acting as special agents were deployed on. Their mission was to hack into the city unlocking the

upcoming changes in society: Individualisation, Internationalisation, Informalisation, Intensification and Information as described by the Netherlands

Institute for Social Research. Each target area had an affiliated person of interest (P.O.I) who engaged with the agents to inform their hack. Hacking

into a city meant that a sophisticated method of mapping was needed to understand the rules that govern it. The urban hacks then transformed into

architectural interventions which continued to engage their P.O.I and transformed their target area.

100 Top - Wallace Ho Bottom - Insa Thiel

Left to right, from top - Katie Fisher, Tom Cowman, Wallace Ho, Matthew Wilcox, Joe Wilson, Matthew Westgate

101

What Makes a City Vital?

Nathaniel Coleman

Students in this studio engaged in analyses of urban conditions that are deeper and broader than the self-congratulatory language architects, developers,

and civic boosters tend to use to describe supposed success in cities. Relative to this, analyses based on use rather than exchange were encouraged, while

writings on cities by Lefebvre and Rykwert provided some of the main textual sources for the students’ work. In particular, students were encouraged to

consider those aspects of cities that make them vital but are non-commodifiable, related more to civic virtues and dreaming than to exchange. As part

of their research, students developed a series of strategies for re-urbanising OMA/Koolhaas’ De Rotterdam complex, the quarter it sits in (and ostensibly

establishes), and Rotterdam more generally.

102 What Makes a City Vital? Suspended Symposium Group Model

ARB CRITERIA COVERED:

Marketing Collage

Ulwin Beetham

“The success of a city therefore cannot be measured in terms of

financial growth and of a share in those markets it may have managed to capture,

or even of its place in the process of globalization which is the inescapable

phenomenon of our time- but depends on the inherent strength of the fabric

and its availability to the social forces that mold the life of its inhabitants.”

Joseph rykwert, The Seduction Of Place

When examining the image of rotterdam and its architecture and

what it wants it to convey through the slick and seductive imagery of brochures

and city guides, a strong identity emerges that underpins both what it believes

it is and the perceived power it holds over shaping its own future. Critically

dissecting this imagery and information reveals one of the many inevitabilities

of the sale: The reality never meets the expectation.

Truly the International City, gradually stripped bare of any localised

context rotterdam is both anywhere and nowhere simultaneously. As neoliberal

policies drive the agenda of 21st century discourse, the unique circumstance

afforded rotterdam have led it to become debased to a carousel of skyscrapers

housing infinite quantifiable commodities, the program. The model of success

based on a series of overreaching potentials rather than realities that form a

city for tomorrow but not for today.

After the Luftwaffe bombing in 1940, Rotterdam became a target

for a wave of policy-making and urban renewal, systematically restructuring

the city to a post-modernist utopian vision. This included the significant

redevelopment of areas such as Kop Van Zuid to become a ‘Manhattan on the

Maas’, constructing monoliths of economic power, an illusion of achievement,

attempting to compete within the growing capitalist market.

A dominant environment was created, operating on the control and

subordination of a significantly (49%) non-dutch population. The majority of

developments on Kop Van Zuid have been privately financed office buildings &

commercial exploits, however despite this ‘working image’, unemployment is at

8.5%, twice that of the national average. The area is significantly unpopulated

and desolate, an ‘isolated and unnatural urban space’.

I argue that the cultural, and hence economic, failures of Rotterdam

are a direct result of the Masculinist approach to urban design, gentrifying and

excluding those not valued by traditional white ‘Masculinism’: women, ethnic

minorities (majorities), and alternative sexualities. To establish social cohesion

and equal representation, difference of the ‘other’ to the existing ‘Masculinity’

must be embodied in the urban environment.

The BroChUre

THE MYTH OF MASCULINITY

Left to right, from top - Vili Welroos, Ulwin Beetham, Gavin Wu, Mariya Lapteva, Deryan Teh, Daniel Duffield, Becky Wise

103

Thinking-Through-Making Week

Thinking-Through-Making continues our theme of collaborations with artists, engineers, architects, musicians, thinkers and makers. This is for final

year BA and MArch students in the second semester of the year. With a focus on material and making, this week-long series of lectures and workshops

asks students to approach architecture through the process of making and drawing at large-scales, bringing material back to the core of architecture’s

exploration.

Articulated Structures

Holly Hendry

Articulated Structures

Sebastian Kite and Benjamin Custance

Chemical droplet workshop

Professor Rachel Armstrong

The Golden Journey

Matt Rowe

Dis-Connect to Re-Combine

Dr Luciano Cardellicchio

Illigraphy

Russ Coleman

Jesmonite

Matt Rowe

Lino cut with embossing

Northern Print

Material Processes

Amy Linford

Sculpted Polystyrene Spaces

Magnus Casselbrant and Jesper Henriksson

Spatial Possibilities

Dr Rachel Cruise

Stitch

Helen Pailing

Stonemasonry

David France

Temporary liquid

Russ Coleman

The Golden Journey

Matt Rowe

Your ideal multi-dimensional growing edible building

Henry Amos

104

https://thinkingthroughmaking.org/workshops/

Another Architecture [Brutal]

Stephen Parnell

This studio looked at the much polarised movement of Brutalism and the issue of what to do with a large listed Brutalist building. Brutalist architecture

is coming to an age where questions about what to do with them are being asked – should they be conserved, restored, renovated, refurbished, reused,

or demolished? What is Brutalism anyway and what does it mean for 21st century architecture? Students were asked to consider these questions while

re-programming the Meelfabriek Latenstein (flour factory) on the Rijnhaven basin in Rotterdam.

106 Top - Joe Wilson Bottom - Kayleigh Creighton

Left to right, from top - Raphael Selby, Matthew Sharman-Hayles, Katie Fisher, Justin Moorton, Robbie Evans, Insa Thiel, Stavri Rousonidou

Right - Robbie Evans

107

De-Tale

Hanna Benihoud

This studio is inspired by the discussion in ‘The Tell-The-Tale Detail’, where Marco Frascari explains the architectural ‘joint’ which creates a transition

from one element to another. The relationship may not occur between just one material and another, or a traditional wall and floor, but between the

transition of light and dark space, between volumes, temperatures, thresholds, solids and voids or any other transitional moment within a building. Each

student chose a material to become obsessed with and used that to explore the idea of a ‘joint’. Building 1:1 ‘joints’ reconnected the draftsman and the

craftsman and designing details first created a narrative that informed their architectural language for the entire scheme.

108

Noor Jan-Mohamed

Top Left - Rebecca Wise Top Right - Gavin Wu Bottom - Deryan Teh

109

In Praise of Folly

Laura Harty

In this studio, we drew on the 1509 essay ‘In Praise of Folly’, in which Erasmus of Rotterdam uses Folly, neutered feminine, to manipulate and disguise

his fundamental critique of the overarching powers of the day. In cloaking his critique in Folly, he allows otherwise stark and punishable observations to

be accepted as trite amusements. His satire permits superficial reading, while allowing room for oppositional and reformative propositions. As Erasmus

engages Folly as vehicle and decoy, so too each student adopted an attendant persona to drive a material investigation, interrogate an attendant brief

and deliver an inquisitive proposal.

110 Daniel Duffield

Top Left - Ulwin Beetham Top Right - Adam Hampton-Matthews Bottom Left to Right - Ulwin Beetham, Nicola Blincow, Angie Lau

111

Hybrid Objects

James Craig

Hybrid Objects asked students to create an architectural response to the complex space that exists between viewers and objects. This space, a foggy

territory where myriad meanings can be made, is the zone where projected meanings collide to create a space of betweenness. The result is a hybrid

object; constituted from entangled meanings that exist between observers and objects. Through the selection and unpacking of an object from the

permanent collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, each student developed their own art depository in the Museumpark area of Rotterdam.

112 Laurence Ashley

Top Wallace Ho

Bottom from left to Right - Laurence Ashley, Delia Heitmann, Vili Welroos

Middle from left to Right - Ruochen Zhang, Kim Gault, Ruochen Zhang

113

Spectres of Utopia and Modernity

Nathaniel Coleman

Students in this studio investigated the ghosts of modernity by charting its traces in selected surviving examples of heroic modern architecture from

the 1920s and 1930s, and in projects from the post-World War II period of its greatest orthodoxy, 1945-1960. In developing their individual projects,

students were challenged to consider how their study building harbours both the ghosts of modernity and the spectre of Utopia that has struck fear

into the hearts of architects (and others) since at least the 1950s. Through their investigation of the core topics of modernity and Utopia, students were

encouraged to confront their own Utopia-Anxiety as directly as they could by proposing a new, ‘alien’ structure correlated with their study building.

114

Left / Top - Malcolm Pritchard

Right - Sam Halliday

Left - Joe Dent Top Right - Nik Ward Bottom Right - Sam Halliday

115

Stage 6

In Stage 6 students undertake a year-long thesis project with a self-generated brief, within a theoretical

framework established by their chosen studio. This year, five studios were on offer:

Border Territories: Adam Sharr and Sam Austin

Experimental Architecture: Rachel Armstrong and Paul Rigby

Landscapes of Human Endeavour: James Craig and Matthew Ozga-Lawn

Matter: Graham Farmer and Paul Rigby

Zanzibar: Prue Chiles

These studios offer a comparable level of complexity as graduation projects, but they cover a broad range

of issues and geographies leading to a diverse variety of outcomes. They showcase the interactions between

studio leaders’ research expertise and the evolving interests and specialisms of Stage 6 students. To achieve

this, every year, students’ individual thesis projects are developed within each studio’s theme, balancing

their individual learning objectives and interests against those already covered in Stage 5.

As in previous years, the thesis projects were located in a variety of strategically selected urban or wilderness

landscapes, in sites from Zanzibar to Whitley Bay to Orlando. They tackled issues from the master plan

to the molecular scale and with temporal ambitions stretching into millennia. Students have built upon

experience gained from previous years’ representational techniques and experimentation.

This is the fifth year Newcastle has run a studio-based thesis model with cross-year/cross-studio interactions

that keep students aware of the work undertaken by their peers in other parts of the school. This year, in

addition to the Technical Review, Thinking-Through-Making Week and an expansion of the Academic

Portfolio, we also inaugurated a vertical exhibition in the 6-7th week of the first semester, showcasing in a

cascading manner the preliminary work of Stages 2-6.

This has been a successful and stimulating year academically, and we would like to express our gratitude to

all the various contributors throughout the year.

Year Coordinators

Zeynep Kezer

Adam Sharr

Project Leaders

Adam Sharr

James Craig

Matthew Ozga-Lawn

Graham Farmer

Paul Ribgy

Prue Chiles

Rachel Armstrong

Sam Austin

Contributors

Alistair Robinson

Andrew Ballantyne

Andrew Carr

Andrew English

Claire Harper

Ed Wainwright

Emma Cheatle

Gary Caldwell

Howard Evans


Katie Lloyd-Thomas


Maurice Mitchell

Mhairi McVicar

Nat Chard

Neil Armstrong

Nick Heyward

Patrick Devlin

Pete Brittain

Peter Hoare

Peter Kellett

Philip Beesley

Steve Parnell

Students

Alanah Marie Honey

Alexander Glen Burnie

Alyssia Katherine Booth

Anna Elizabeth Cumberland

Carrie Yee

Christopher James Bulmer

Corbin Wood

Emily Daisy Page

Emily-Jayne Harper

Ewan George Thomson

Gregory David Walton

Greta Varpucianskyte

Imogen Alexandra Holden

Jack Roberto Scaffardi

Joshua Long

Katherine Grace Gomm

Kevin Vong

Lee Daniel Whitelock

Matas Belevicius

Matthew Joe Mouncey

Matthew Clubbs Coldron

Matthew Robert Jackson

Megan Meleri Jones

Mundumuko Sinvula

Robert Philip Paton

Roubini Hadjicosti

Rumen Rumenov Dimov

Ruth Eleanor Sidey

Simon David Baker

Thierry Guy Neu

Thomas Henderson Schwartz

Vlasios Sokos

Vsevolod Karetnikov

Wei Sheng Kwan

116

Opposite - Greg Walton After Happily Ever After: An Architectural Fairy Tale of Walt Disney

Studio 1 – Border Territories

Adam Sharr & Sam Austin

This studio is about border conditions. Borders produce spatial conditions, from dividing walls (think of Berlin, Belfast or San Diego-Tijana) to lines

which exist on a map but not on the ground; from enclaves of one jurisdiction within another (embassies, airports) to distinctive economic and political

effects. Borders can be psychological and cultural as much as physical. Students have chosen their own border conditions to work with including: the

green line of Nicosia, Cyprus; Campione d’Italia (an Italian exclave in Switzerland); Newcastle Airport; the ‘interzone’ of post-War Tangiers; the border

transgressions of shortwave radio; and the psychological border between risk, fear and pleasure.

118

Jack Scaffardi Freeport Municipale

Rumen Dimov Lost in Transmission 119

120 Ewan Thomson The Airside City

Thierry Neu Unravelling Risk

121

122 Megan Jones Literary Constructs of an Interzone

Roubini Hadjicosti Palimpsest of Memories

123

Studio 2 – Experimental Architecture

Rachel Armstrong

Experimental Architecture establishes an organic platform for thinking and practice through iterative experiments that engage directly with the natural

realm. It seeks to explore the complexity of the natural world without reducing it into a series of soluble problems but also opens up the practice to poetic

and artistic engagement. For example, experimental architecture asks: can we grow an artificial reef around the city of Venice to save it and connect

human populations with the marine environment? Can we grow a new island for Venice using the pollutants in the lagoon (algae and plastics) and reinvest

in future generations through the production of ‘functional’ earths, or can we design ‘super’ soils to support life on other planets and bring new

kinds of flourishing to extreme environments?

124

Seva Karetnikov Please don’t tap on the glass

Imogen Holden The Opera of Shalott

125

126 Matthew Mouncey Of Death and Decomposition

Kevin Vong Experimental Junk

127

128 Corbin Wood The Delormer’s Creed

Carrie Yee Resurrecting Memories: Sustainable Crematory Landscape

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Studio 3 – Landscapes of Human Endeavour

James Craig & Matthew Ozga-Lawn

Human endeavour has long been associated with expansive and unknowable landscapes, from George Mallory’s first attempt to ‘conquer’ the summit of

Mount Everest in 1924 through to Felix Baumgartner’s recent skydive from a helium balloon 24 miles above the Earth’s surface. These varied projects

are concerned with representing architectures sited between the psyche of a chosen endeavour and the landscape (in the broadest sense of the word) that

they are engaged with. They include an interpretation of Walt Disney’s delirious deathbed fantasy of E.P.C.O.T., a secular retreat based on C.S. Lewis’s

notion of Epicurean Life, and a garden of mechanical computation derived from the life of Ada Lovelace.

130

Greg Walton After Happily Ever After: An Architectural Fairy Tale of Walt Disney


131

132 Alexander Burnie Z

Chris Bulmer Magical Realism

133

134 Greta Varpucianskyte Scripted Spaces: Biographical Landscapes of Ada Lovelace

Robert Paton The Nuclear Family

135

136 Lee Whitelock At Home with War

Emily Page The Archive of Destroyed Monuments

137

138 Emily-Jayne Harper Between Subject and Object: Landscape Beyond Reach

Joshua Long Epicurean Life

139

Studio 4 – Matter

Graham Farmer

The studio celebrates the ‘liveliness’ of matter and encourages design processes founded on a dialogic and emergent understanding of architectural

materiality. In doing so the studio challenges any notion of buildings as static assemblies of inert or neutral products and instead seeks concrete material

practices in which technology is always both performative and contextual. Students have selected their own matter to collaborate with and have explored

new understandings of conventional construction materials like sand, brick and timber or experimented with new materialities. Themes of making,

manufacture, entropy, sensuality, transformation and environmental renewal have all surfaced as key themes in the work of the studio.

140

Matas Belevicius St. Anthony’s Mycelium Works

Matas Belevicius St. Anthony’s Mycelium Works

141

142 Mundu Sinvula Sensory Deprivation

Alyssia Booth Weather Architecture

143

144 Matthew Jackson Modular Imagination

Vlasios Sokos Research Centre for the Development of Prototype Materials and Building Components

145

146 Simon Baker Shifting Sands

Ruth Sidey Beauty in Precision?

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Studio 5 – Zanzibar

Prue Chiles

Zanzibar has a romantic multi-cultural history; spices, gold, ivory and slaves have travelled between the East African Swahili Coast, the Arabian

Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent for 20,000 years on dhow boats. Today, the archipelago’s population of 1.3 million is growing rapidly. This

semi-autonomous archipelago off the coast of Tanzania urgently needs to address its future growth. Zanzibar’s challenges are a microcosm of the most

critical global development issues. The studio is working with a new architecture and planning department in Zanzibar, who have ambitions to create the

most sustainable island in East Africa, physically, socially, and environmentally. Scenario planning and mapping have formed a basis to understand the

whole island scale, coupled with ethnographic field research, including interviewing local people and a small-scale building project with a local school.

Linked Research students (Stage 5) have joined the team to develop a foundation for a major research project. The team has developed a critical position

on the colonial past and the new development plans for the future of the island. Stage 6 thesis proposals form a ’chain’ across the buffer zone of the World

Heritage Site capital of Zanzibar, Stone Town, and move out across the island. All projects support key development aims of the island; firstly to retain

the historic core of a rapidly developing city as a place to live and work. Secondly, to develop successful, well connected neighbourhoods with innovative

ideas for more ecological and mixed development. Lastly, to find sustainable ways of developing coastal villages and island agriculture.

148

Matt Clubbs Caldron Zanzibar Central Bus Terminal and Urban Forum

Alanah Honey Zanzibar Institute for Design

149

150 Anna Cumberland From the Ground Up: An Agricultural Future for Chwaka

Thomas Henderson Schwartz Catching the Winds of Trade

151

152 Wei Kwan Guerrilla Aqueduct

Katherine Gomm Mnazi Tatu (Three Coconuts) Maternity Hospital and Women’s Health Centre

153

Highlighted Project – Freeport Municipale

Jack Scaffardi

This project is set in the Italian exclave of Campione d’Italia – a tax haven with a rich artistic history and home to Europe’s largest casino. This thesis aims to serve as a critique of art

as a commodity, taking the form of a cemetery of objects.

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Jack Scaffardi Freeport Municipale

Highlighted Project – After Happily Ever After: An Architectural Fairy Tale of Walt Disney

Greg Walton

This story tells of an old man so devoted to the idea of creating and preserving a legacy that he dedicated his entire life to it. For four decades the man had gone from success to

success, infecting modern culture in a way no one else ever had, with barely anything eluding him. The man had two sides; the public benevolent figure that the world adored, the

other is what he thought of himself, his psyche tormented. Rather curiously, he was inherently unknowable. He was a myth, an invention, a character in a storybook, meticulously

designed by the master storyteller himself. This story begins at the end, as the man finally comes face to face with his own mortality; in a hospital bed awake, motionless and staring

at the ceiling.


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MArch Dissertations

The 10,000 word MArch dissertation offers students the opportunity to undertake a sustained enquiry into a topic of particular interest to them and to

develop their own modes of writing and presentation. Where appropriate the timing of the dissertation allows for topics explored to inform their final

thesis design project. The research has a growing profile in the School, with two public presentations taking place in October and February, and the

dissertation is now a feature of the Degree Shows in Newcastle and London.

Lost in the Wild:

An Exploration into Spatial Dislocation within Survivalist Landscapes

Matthew Mouncey

McCandless’s Alaskan Odyssey struck a chord with a large portion of society when it was first covered

by the media; his tragic tale gained notoriety for the social angst it accentuated within people in the

Western World. But more so than that, it highlighted glaring shortcomings in civilization as we

understand it. Within this dissertation I unpack the story of McCandless, such that it highlights the

driving factors behind spatial dislocation within survivalist landscapes.

These notions of longing for the unknown set the context for a deep-seated social angst that comes

to explain why characters like McCandless flee. Their actions are reactionary to their perceived

view of civilization, which I unpack throughout the course of the text. Both the spatial necessaries

and implications of their actions are explored such that they pinpoint and question the core issues

associated with spatial dislocation. The description of architecture as a metaphor for the power and

authority that orchestrates this social neurosis calls into sharp relief the power and influence of the

built environment around us. The removal of the body into heterotopic survivalist landscapes implies

the basic re-ignition of fundamental human mechanisms that have been repressed. The architectural

condition we’re facing is one of power and authority; by exploring subversive courses of action it may

be possible to reconcile the problematic areas of civilization through a discussion with survivalist

landscapes.

The System of Houses

Jack Scaffardi

This piece is an investigation into how housing operates as commodity within capitalist society,

one that is designed to maximise what Karl Marx termed exchange-value at the expense of its usevalue

– use-value being the usefulness of a thing and exchange value being its monetary relation.

Neil Brenner states: ‘the commodification of housing is the handling of housing not as one of

life’s necessities, something that provides shelter, protection, privacy, space for personal and family

activities, but rather as something that is bought and sold and used to make money’. This study

investigates how housing’s operation as a consumer good manifests in the domestic environment.

What Does the Commission of the CCTV Headquarters, and Rem Koolhaas’ Winning Design,

Say about the Current Political, Economic and Architectural Climate of Beijing and China?

Emily Page

Commissioned in 2002 by the People’s Republic of China, the CCTV Headquarters is widely

regarded as political propaganda and an ‘institute of censorship’, intended to project China onto the

world stage and showcase its ascendency. The focus for my MArch dissertation was to understand

the interrelationships between the building and China’s economic growth, branding strategies and

soft power initiatives.

The dissertation discusses China’s use of starchitect Koolhaas and the use of a highly recognisable

logo form as a branding tool for both building and country. China is pursuing a strategy of greater

international engagement to increase its influence on the world stage. The thesis examines China’s

attempts to improve its worldwide branding and perception, considering strategies such as the 2006

‘Ten Mile Brand Strategy’ that attempted to establish brand promotional systems. It also studies the

impact the CCTV building has on China’s soft power initiatives, both in aiding and abetting soft

power strategies.

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Rebuilding to Remember: How the ruins of war have been used in urban reconstruction

Alyssia K. Booth

‘To be sure a cityscape is not made of flesh. Still, sheared-off buildings are almost as eloquent as body

parts… Look, the photographs say, this is what it’s like. This is what war does. War tears, war rends,

war rips open, eviscerates. War scorches. War dismembers. War ruins.’ – (Virginia Woolfe)

Architectural heritage is often attacked in times of conflict, and post-war reconstruction presents a

number of potential challenges: limited economic funding; the necessity to rebuild; the difficulties of

clearing huge areas of rubble. However, over the past few decades, advances in modern architecture

have allowed many ruins of war to be rebuilt in some capacity, owing to recognition of their

associations with collective memory, the identity and history of places, and of the educational

importance of commemorating the darker periods of human history as well as successes. Although

undeniably a time of great trauma, the aftermath of war can also be seen as a political opportunity

for rebuilding, creating potential for ‘radical’ architectural speculations within the reconstruction.

This paper is a study of the ways in which people engaged with the destroyed architecture of

WWII, the choices of different methods of rebuilding with the ruins; replica, retention, integration,

(including the impacts of these choices) and how integrating ruins alongside modern architecture can

help restore the collective memory, identity or culture of a war-torn city, playing an important role

in the future of post-war reconstruction. The study aims to reveal that the post-war reconstruction of

cultural heritage is not only important to the successful moving on of societies, but also a significant

political tool to manipulate communities and the remembrance of history in a post-war environment,

giving cause to question the current lack of architects involvement in the reconstruction of war ruins.

Prefabricated Masonry and its Place within the UK House Building Industry:

Can we normalise prefabrication and make it desirable through the use of brick; whilst

increasing the efficiency and sustainability of new homes?

Katherine Gomm

Brick has long been a staple component of British architecture, used for palaces, factories and

homes and our preference for the material is still strong. However, with growing pressures on the

government to increase the number of houses built, can we adapt the use of the humble brick to

increase the efficiency and sustainability of new homes in the UK? Prefabricated brick cavity wall

panels have the ability to meet these demands, but is it possible to remove the stigmatism associated

with prefabrication and embrace this new technology? Can we normalise the notion of prefabrication

and increase its desirability through the reinvention of the familiar brick in order to build better

homes for the future?

The results of my survey of the British public conducted to understand their needs and desires show

that in general people do not want a prefabricated house. However, in studying the UK’s first and

only private dwelling built using prefabricated brick cavity walls, it is clear that this new system has

favourable benefits when compared to traditional construction methods. It merits further research,

development and consideration as a valid new building technology.

Mankind’s Box

Christopher James Bulmer

Rabbits have hutches, hamsters have cages and mankind has an architecture of Manspace. Manspace

began with the agricultural revolution, it is the turning point in which mankind departed from its

intimate symbiosis with nature, and began laboriously carving out an artificial human island out of

the surrounding wilds. Manspace was born, and at the centre of this island of Manspace peasants

lived their lives in a wood, stone, brick or mud structure consisting of foundations, walls and roof–

the house. The house remains the centre of this Manspace, and like flowers being fed in a glass

vase mankind desperately tries to supplement his own needs within his own enclosure. Continually

seeking to instil the idea that the house is in fact full of life rather than void of it. This lack of life is

all around the house, in the fresh cut flowers with their promise to die, in the pests which mankind

exterminates, in the stuffed animals real or otherwise and in the images of landscapes on multiple

forms of media. Through all these elements mankind attempts to fulfil his biophilic needs and repress

his ecological boredom; he tries to feel alive. However these efforts are in vain for mankind is not

truly alive in the house, yet nor is he dead; mankind is merely existing within his box.

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Is Essex the Only Way?

Tracing echoes of Essex in regional housing development

Imogen A E Holden

This dissertation seeks to untangle the suggestive frameworks put forward by the inaugural Essex

Design Guide. In exploring its shaping of new housing developments and identifying moments of

Essex-ness, this research aims to prove that the Guide is a document of distinction and worthy of

research in its own right. Whilst on the surface the Guide reflects the standardised planning policy

document, in exploring the richness of the document’s cultural, historical and theoretical contexts,

it becomes increasingly difficult to categorise. An eclectic combination of social commentary, policy

checklist, design sketchbook and materiality mood-board, the Guide slides across category boundaries

raising broader questions relating to assumed knowledge, sense of place and the Local. In exploring

moments of inner logic and assumed understanding, occurring both within the Guide and in its

connections to external factors, the relationship between the Local and locality will be challenged in

reference to the Essex-ification of new UK development.

Building Normalities

Ewan Thomson

One in four people in the UK will experience a mental illness in any given year. However, public

perceptions of mental illness do not reflect this, with stigma still rife. Stigmatisation of the mentally ill

is an issue architecture cannot shy away from, as it’s already played a major part in it. Take Oakwood

hospital, Barming Heath. A former Victorian mental hospital, it has since been turned into flats. The

slogan they used to sell them was ‘with prices like these, you’d be barmy not to buy!’

The inpatient facility is a specialised building typology with important architectural ordering, and

a complex set of power relationships. This study seeks to understand if and how architecture can

help normalise spaces of mental illness, both in the public eye and for people using mental health

buildings.

Don’t Just Hope for a Better Life. Buy Into One.

Ruth Sidey

This dissertation, through an analysis of Nigella Lawson’s latest kitchen, highlights the conflicts that

arise between the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’ in the domestic sphere. Idealised constructions of the domestic

have been utilised since the dichotomy between the home and the place of work was established.

These curated environments have been used variously to promote consumption, national identity

and most recently to provide an aspirational ‘lifestyle’ model. Nigella’s performance of a ‘perfect’

lifestyle, in the wake of her widely publicised divorce, is dissected and placed in historical, social

and political contexts. The author concludes that Nigella willingly places herself within traditional

domestic ideals and stereotypical gender roles, presenting an ultimately pleasing femininity. Her

image, through a form of retrospective imagining, conjures up images of an era that promised a

‘better life’ through social mobility. In the neoliberal context of today, however, this nostalgic image

serves to mask an uncomfortable truth; that achieving our aspirations is now, in many ways, blocked.

The gap between the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’ is in fact a glass wall which can never be penetrated, and the

‘perfect’ remains in the idealised, unachievable realm.

Designing and Building With / For / Around / About a Community?

Reflections from a Live Project in Borneo

Thomas Henderson Schwartz

The dissertation examines the role of western architects, designers and students working in developing

countries through the lens of a personal experience of the design and build of a community centre in

Kampung Buayan, Sabah, Borneo, 2013-14. It is structured as a semi-chronological theorised diary,

borrowing ideas from post-colonial theory, sociology and contemporary understandings of space.

The opening of the dissertation situates the stakeholders of the project and explains how each came

to be involved. The second part deconstructs motivations and responsibilities of the stakeholders

and critiques the idea that ‘local is good’. The third part analyses the design process within the

framework of Bhabha’s understanding of post-colonial translation and hybridity. Next, the fourth

part investigates to what extent one can integrate into a community and the cultural and ethical

considerations of such an integration. The fifth part examines the role of authorship and ownership

of a piece of architecture. Here the motivations of the architect are re-examined and the success and

failures of the project are elaborated. The final part examines the role of recognising the naivety and

ambivalence of an architect working in a similar context and how that recognition is productive.

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Building Modern Turkey: State, Space and Ideology

Zeynep Kezer

BUILDING

MODERN TURKEY

STATE, SPACE,

AND IDEOLOGY IN

THE EARLY REPUBLIC

Zeynep Kezer

Zeynep Kezer’s book, Building Modern Turkey: State, Space and Ideology was published in

December 2015 by the University of Pittsburgh Press as part of its Politics, Culture and

the Built Environment Series. The book provides a critical account of how space and spatial

practices mediated Turkey’s transition from an empire into a modern nation-state. Kezer

deliberately juxtaposes the making of new types of spaces to accommodate the demands of

this new politico-cultural formation with the dismantling of ethnic and religious enclaves and

the practices they engendered, exposing the inextricable relationship between the creative and

destructive forces deployed in the nation-state building process. Building Modern Turkey surveys

a broad terrain of state activities – from achieving internal pacification to gaining international

recognition – and how these played out in sites prominent, ordinary, and marginal. In so

doing, she demonstrates how, as an indisputably spatial process, state formation necessarily

operates at multiple and interdependent scales from that of the individual body to that of

regional geopolitics.

The nationalists’ bid to reinvent Turkey as a modern nation-state following the Ottoman

Empire’s collapse at the end of WWI was a formidable challenge. On the home front, the

move meant not only importing wholesale an alien form of government with its laws and

institutions, but repudiating an indigenous legacy that had shaped this land and its people for

over six centuries. This entailed tearing down communitarian structures that had historically

constituted the social fabric of the empire and instituting a centralized legal and institutional

network enabling state penetration into ever-expanding areas of people’s everyday lives. On

the international front, Turkey’s nation-statehood depended on gaining recognition as a peer

within the Westphalian system of states.

Nowhere were these tensions played out more dramatically than in the built environment

where a feverish drive to create the spaces (governmental and institutional buildings,

monuments, public works, etc) to accommodate this new order was coupled with an equally

intense determination to obliterate Turkey’s ethnic and religious landscapes, the persistence

of which – claimed the nationalists – obstructed national unification and secularization.

Meanwhile, the construction of embassies in the new capital Ankara, and, by implication,

Turkey’s international recognition as a peer state, hinged on regional geopolitical rivalries and

unsettled scores from WWI. So did the question of which foreign experts and whose credit

would shape Turkish modernization.

The first book to provide a spatial account of the making of the modern Turkish state, this

volume addresses important omissions in architectural history and, more generally in Turkish

historiography, regarding the costs and consequences of imposing an imported concept

of ‘the modern’ on a multicultural, complex indigenous society and destroying the built

environment which underpinned it. The broad range of spatial scales considered in this study

exposes previously overlooked interrelations and tensions between local, national and regional

productions of space. Interdisciplinary in approach, this book seeks to explain the complex

factors that inform the physical and ideological shaping of the modern world of the unified

nation state.

159

Linked Research

The 40 credit Linked Research module is unique to the Newcastle curriculum and it spans the two years of

the MArch enabling year-long collaborative research projects between staf and students. Linked Research

encourages approaches that extend beyond the conventional studio design project or ‘lone researcher’

dissertation model allowing space for multiple and speculative forms of research. Projects are often openended

and collaborative and, because they are long term and involve groups working together, they can

enable participatory projects and large-scale production with a wide range or partners inside and outside

the university.

Coordinator

Graham Farmer

2015-16 Projects

Testing Ground

Graham Farmer

2016-17 Projects

Architecture Default

Kieran Connolly

Testing Ground

Graham Farmer

Alexander Burnie

Rumen Dimov

Megan Jones

Joshua Long

Mundu Sinvula

Corbin Wood

Simon Baker

Atlas of Artificial

Mountains


Matas Belevicius

Seva Karetnikov

Noor Jan-Mohamed

James Street

Brutalism

Steve Parnell

Raphael Selby

Insa Thiel

Joe Wilson

Building Adaptability

John Kamara

Gustav Lundstrom

Empty Pool

Katie Lloyd Thomas

Rona Lee

Theodora Kyrtata

Stavri Rousonidou

Martin Parsons

Laurence Ashley

Alex Baldwin-Cole

Ulwin Beetham

Sophie Cobley

Robert Evans

Katie Fisher

Sam Halliday

Kathleen Jenkins

Matthew Westgate

Newcastle After Dark

Ed Wainwright

Sam Austin

Delia Heitmann

Tom Saxton

Matt Sharman Hayles

Rosie O’Halloran

Zanzibar

Prue Chiles

Nicola Blincow

Malcolm Pritchard

Alexandra Carausu

Matt Wilcox

Beyond Representation

James Craig

Matt Ozga-Lawn

David Boyd

Joseph Dent

Nick Ward

Ruochen Zhang

Learning Spaces

Matthew Margetts

Tom Cowman

Kayleigh Creighton

Carl Reid

Jessica Wilkie

Gavin Wu

160 Opposite - Testing Ground 2015-16 The Rochester Roundhouse

Testing Ground

Graham Farmer

The Testing Ground Project is now in its third year and it provides the opportunity for students to collaborate with other disciplines in a wide range of

‘live’ situations with the aim of creating public facing architecture and related activities. The main project this year has been the design and construction

of The Rochester Roundhouse, Northumberland. The project included extensive community consultation and has responded to residents’ wishes to

reuse the dilapidated Brigantium roundhouse to create a community resource. The students involved have had to design and construct the project as

well as navigating complex statutory processes and managing time and cost. The regenerated site provides an open air amphitheatre and contemporary

timber pavilion which will be used for stargazing, musical performances and a range of community workshops. The roof of the existing stone circle

has been removed to turn it into an open-air space and local craftsmen have worked with students to carry out repairs to the dry stone wall, before the

addition of new seating and flooring. The larch-clad timber pavilion is located next to the stone circle and includes a sedum green roof. The pavilion

and associated landscaped outdoor spaces will provide a multifunctional, bookable facility that will be managed by the community. It will also become

a key performance venue for the annual Redefest folk music festival.

162

163

Research in Architecture

Research in the School is flourishing and we’ve seen some very exciting developments this year. These

include new collaborative projects, internal and external recognition of our work and significant funding

success, all of which are enabling growth in the numbers of PhD and post-doctoral researchers in

architecture, and the development of research-led teaching at all levels of the degrees we offer.

Colleagues have had considerable success winning grants this year that firmly establish us as a leading centre

for interdisciplinary architectural research in the UK and will bring early career researchers to the School.

External high profile grants include Computational Colloids (EPSRC, Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson –

£158k), LIAR – Living Architecture – (EC, Professor Rachel Armstrong – £175k), Imaginaries of the

Future (Leverhulme International Research Network, Dr Nathaniel Coleman – £109k) and eVis (EPSRC,

Dr Neveen Hamza – £128k). Martyn Dade-Robertson and Rachel Armstrong have also been awarded

a share of a substantial University internal Research Investment Fund (RIF) grant for their joint APL

research project ‘Ageing City’.

In terms of growth as a research centre, Dr Emma Cheatle joined us at the start of the year, having

won the highly competitive Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute three year postdoctoral

fellowship, to pursue her project ‘Tales of Confinement’, an investigation into the role of architectural

spaces and buildings in the history of maternity, and Dr Tom Brigden has just embarked on his three

year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. We are currently recruiting a third post-doctoral researcher in

Design-led Architectural Research to start in September 2016 and will be advertising a fourth post for

2017. At the same time as becoming the home, to our knowledge, of the largest body of post-doctoral

researchers in a UK architectural school, we are also seeing our research strengths informing teaching at

all levels. Curriculum changes in the BA are enabling research-led teaching in history and theory, and

in design, and our unique ‘Linked Research’ offering in the MArch which involves students working

together with colleagues’ own projects has expanded, including projects as different as lab-based research

and building for communities. Some of this work was presented at the Association of Architectural

Educators annual conference at UCL in April, and linked research students joined colleagues and visiting

speakers to present their own projects at our very successful Mountains and Megastructures symposium

and exhibition in March.

We continue to provide PhD studentships with Aldric Rodriguez Iborra taking up the Design Office

position, and we had PhD completions from Abdelatif El-Allous, Mohamed Elnabawy Mahgoub,

Mabrouk Alsheliby, Yohannes Firzal, Amira Hasanein, Antonius Karel Muktiwibowo, Tugce Sanli and

Deva Swasto. Notable achievements from our PhD cohort include the award to Catalina Mejia Moreno

of an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in ‘Architecture and/for Photography’ at the Canadian Centre for

Architecture and Sana Al-Naimi’s participation in the Vice Chancellor’s ‘Celebrating Success in the

University’ for her contribution to the ‘Extraordinary Gertrude Bell Exhibition’ at the Great North

Museum. Congratulations to all!

Cultures and Transition

Andrew Ballantyne

Ian Thompson

Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes

Martin Beattie

Peter Kellett

Sam Austin

Zeynep Keyzer

Futures, Values and

Imaginaries

Adam Sharr

Andrew Ballantyne

Graham Farmer

Ian Thompson

Kati Blom

Matt Ozga-Lawn

Nathaniel Coleman

Neveen Hamza

Steven Dudek

Mediated Environments

Carlos Calderon

John Kamara

Katie Lloyd Thomas


Neveen Hamza

Rachel Armstrong

Sam Austin

Steven Dudek

Research by Design

Adam Sharr

Armelle Tardiveau

Daniel Mallo

Graham Farmer


Matt Ozga-Lawn

Matthew Margetts

Prue Chiles

Rachel Armstrong

Social Justice,

Well-being and Renewal

Armelle Tardiveau

Carlos Calderon

Daniel Mallo

Kati Blom

Nathaniel Coleman

Peter Kellett

Prue Chiles

Specifications,

Prescriptions and

Translations

John Kamara

Katie Lloyd Thomas

Matthew Margetts

Simon Hacker

Zeynep Kezer

Visiting Professors,

PhD examiners and

contributors:

Professor Dana Arnold

Sebastian Aedo Jury

Sophia Banou

Dr Camillo Boano

James Craig

Professor Mark Dorrian

Professor Paul Emmons

Professor Katja Grillner

Professor Katherine Gough

Dr Amin Kamete

Thomas Kern

Astrid Lund

Professor Julia Morgan

Professor Dejan Mumovic

Charlie Sutherland

Professor Robert Tavernor

Ed Wainwright

Tony Watson

PhD students

Abdelatif El-Allous

Antonius Muktiwibowo

Artem Holstov

Ashley Mason

Catalina Moreno

Charles Makun

Chen-Yu Hung

Deva Swasto

Dhruv Sookhoo

James Longfield

Javier Urquizo

Jose Hernandez

Katriina Blom

Khalid Setaih

Kieran Connolly

Mabrouk Alsheliby

Macarena Rodriguez

Maimuna Saleh-Bala

Matt Ozga-Lawn

Mohamed Elnabawi

Mohammed Mohammed

Najla Mansour

Ni Ketut Agusintadewi

Oluwafemi Olajide

Oluwatoyin Akin

Paola Figueroa

Pattamon Selanon

Rand Agha

Sam Clark

Sana Salman Dawood

Al-Naimi

Sarah Cahyadini

Stephen Grinsell

Thomas Kern

Tijana Stevanovic

Tugce Sanli

Ulviye Kalli

Usue Arana

Wido Tyas

Xi (Frances) Ye

Xi Chen

Yasser Megahed

Yohannes Firzal

Yun Dai

164 Opposite - STASUS Everest Death Zone: Mallory

Mountains and Megastructures

The Mountains & Megastructures symposium took place on the 16th and 17th of March in the Architecture Building. The symposium was organised

by ARC (Architecture Research Collaborative) at Newcastle University, and is intended as the first in a series of events addressing particular themes

emerging through our collective research. We were joined by two keynote speakers, Stéphane Degoutin, an artist and writer whose paper ‘Fake Mountain

Metaphysics’ demonstrated the range of ways artificial mountains can be imagined and realised, and Jonathan Hill, Professor of Architecture and Visual

Theory at the Bartlett, whose talk ‘A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction’ discussed the ‘shock of the old’ as alternative to the ‘shock of the

new’. Speakers from the School included Professors Rachel Armstrong, Andrew Ballantyne, Graham Farmer, Stephen Graham, Prue Chiles and Adam

Sharr among many others, including Linked Research students Seva Karetnikov and Matas Belevicius.

The talks and discussion were accompanied by an exhibition of work on the joint theme, including projects from STASUS (James A. Craig & Matt

Ozga-Lawn), Amy Butt, Ray Verrall and Christos Kakalis. Images of the event are opposite, and following is Andrew Ballantyne’s paper from the event.

166

Mountains and Megastructures Symposium

167

A Mountain Near Thebes

Andrew Ballantyne

It was Deleuze and Guattari who said we should make deserts of ourselves. We can make

ourselves receptive to being settled by nomadic ideas that live in us for a while and then

move on. ‘The desert, experimentation on oneself, is our only identity, our single chance

for all the combinations which inhabit us’. The concepts that inhabit us shape who we are

and how we interact, so they are part of us even if they move on from us, and they have

a political dimension to them. Deleuze and Guattari make this image of thought seem

like a personal discipline, something we can encourage in ourselves and in our attitudes

to dealing with the world. As an image it seems benign and welcoming, and it has much

in common with Foucault’s sense of the self and the ideas that operate through it; but

where Deleuze and Guattari’s desert is a temporary home for ideas that seem more-or-less

welcome, Foucault’s is rather different. It is a place where the tribes of ideas might set up

camp rather forcibly. Their presence might not be welcome and they might not move on.

With Deleuze and Guattari the sense of the self is fluid and constantly engaged with the

surrounding milieu, and Foucault shares that sense of engagement but with him the self

often seems not so much fluid as malleable. It adapts and can be reshaped in any number

of ways, but it is hammered into shape. Nietzsche’s thought lies behind all of them as a

formative influence, and Deleuze remade Nietzsche in his own way, but Foucault carries

more-evident traces of philosophising with a hammer. He wrote about the prison, the

psychiatric hospital and the school: institutions in which people are remade for the sake

of society. These institutions take in people who have a will of their own that may be

as-yet unformed, or be actively antisocial, and they are knocked into shape, learning and

internalising attitudes and patterns of behaviour that allow them to lead productive wellregulated

lives in the social world.

Foucault coined the term ‘heterotopia’ for such spaces that are apart from the

commonplace world where a society’s dominant values freely operate. In a heterotopia

they are suspended to a degree and maybe one is held in it until one can show a suitable

degree of conformity to the norms. The conditions may be coercive and brutalising, or

might offer greater-than-usual freedoms for transgression, but they are set apart from the

places where normal polite behaviour is in play, and where routine transactions are made.

There are some identifiable places where such conditions apply, but the heterotopia is

a heterotopia not because it is a particular spot, but because the range of concepts and

power-relations there are outside the societal norm. It can be institutionalised, as in a

prison, a school, or a honeymoon hotel, but equally it can be more personal than that – a

interior space withdrawn from social conformity – such as a room of one’s own, or the

desert.

Saint Anthony lived in Egypt in the third century AD – one of the church’s ‘desert

fathers’. Foucault wrote a commentary not on Anthony himself, but on La tentation

de Saint Antoine, a novel by Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) which takes the persona of the

saint as a vehicle to explore a range of ideas. The place in which the action unfolds – if

it can be called ‘action’ – is heterotopic. The place is specified by Flaubert as the summit

of a mountain near Thebes in Upper Egypt. There is some historical reason for this, as

early monasteries, including some associated with Anthony, were in deliberately remote

places, and mountains were seen as deserted, set apart from society. It is this remoteness

that makes the place heterotopic and appropriate as a place of retreat when there is a

need to distance oneself from society’s established normative thought. In cities the forms

of behaviour are required by convention and it is one’s mastery of the convention that

demonstrates effective participation in society, whether that be as a productive machinelike

worker, or as a participant in a Proustian salon. Anthony’s isolation is in many ways

like that of a prisoner, except that he has chosen to be shut away with his thoughts: it is

the place’s remoteness that is its crucial characteristic. The external world does not figure

at all. The subject-matter is internal to Anthony – his states of mind, his reading of the

Bible, his hallucinations – made apparent in the text on the page.

Flaubert re-visited and re-wrote The Temptation of Saint Anthony over many years,

eventually publishing it in 1874. It is less like a novel than a screenplay. It uses the format

of a work for the theatre, but the ‘stage directions’ include elaborate special effects that

cry out for computer-generated images: apparitions of literary characters, fabulous beasts,

deadly sins and heresiarchs. It opens with Saint Anthony involved with his reading of the

Bible and the visitations – apparitions or hallucinations – prompted by it. The desert is a

168

Martin Schongauer - The Torment of Saint Anthony

heterotopia, and in it the saint remakes himself. The process of transformation is effected

by meeting and disputing with the apparitions, building up to an ecstatic culmination

with a vision of the face of Christ in the disc of the sun at dawn, as Anthony deliriously

declaims.

O joy! O bliss! I have beheld the birth of life. I have seen the beginning of motion! My

pulses throb even to the point of bursting. I long to fly, to swim, to bark, to bellow, to

howl. Would that I had wings, a carapace, a shell, – that I could breathe out smoke,

weird a trunk, – make my body writhe, – divide myself everywhere, – be in everything,

– emanate with all the odours, – develop myself like the plants, – flow like water,

– vibrate like sounds, – shine like light, – assume all forms – penetrate each atom –

descend to the very bottom of matter, – be matter itself!

Anthony is shedding his human conceptions and becoming part of nature – in Biblical

terms, recapturing the state of affairs before the fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion

from the Garden of Eden. He is becoming instinctual and matter-like, responding to

stimuli without the mediation of intellectual processes. Foucault articulates this as the

‘relationship between sainthood and stupidity’. Saint Anthony, he says, ‘wished to be a

saint through a total deadening of his senses, intelligence, and emotions’.

If Saint Anthony is becoming matter, the matter is not inert but formative – vibrant and

pulsating. We are moving away from a position where ‘man’ gives form to matter that is

seen as characterless substance, to one where the matter has an innate form-generating

role, but the matter’s idea of form might be very different from man’s. This brings us into

the realm of the posthuman, which developed after Foucault’s death but in his wake. It

is a world in which matter and things have a role, and (all things being equal) sometimes

have a say. This was taken up by Jane Bennett in her discussion of ‘thing-power’. Her

‘vibrant matter’ is clearly recognisable as a relative of Anthony’s.

There is liveliness in matter before there is organic life, such as the interactions in chemical

processes that are in effect highly localised decisions that bring about results that are

statistically predictable but at the level of individual molecules they are events that

can resolve one way or another, depending on the proximity of another molecule, the

pressure, the temperature and so on. The sedimentations and turbulences of geological

formation leave traces in the strata of a bed of limestone, or the whorls in a slab of marble.

The characteristic shapes of mountain ranges or drifts of sand dunes are determined not

by a designer working out the form from outside, but by the materials deciding the form

from within, interacting with the circumstances. The hylomorphic model of design – a

term taken up from Gilbert Simondon by Deleuze and Guattari – resolves form from

outside, and has ways of measuring and determining the form that involve delineation of

geometric shapes. There has been significant development of thinking about this issue in

recent years, and the idea of form being generated from within – or seeing the human

agents as part of a material formation – takes forward the thinking that Foucault set in

play.

Anthony’s mountain is a heterotopia not of social coercion – like the prisons, madhouses

and schools – but a heterotopia of liberation, where the self can open up to experiment,

rewilded, inhabited by the rocks and wind, miraculated by sunbeams. On such a plateau

of immanence the self can lose its outline and be washed away by lapping waves, or

dispersed like the morning vapours as the sun rises and shines on Saint Anthony.

Master of the Osservanza - The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul

169

MA in Urban Design (MA_UD)

Daniel Mallo, Georgia Giannopoulou, Tim Townshend

Contributors: Ali Madanipour, Tim Townshend, Colin Haylock, Suzanne Speak, Prue Chiles, Jules Brown, Michael Crilly, Daniel Mallo, Richard Smith,

Aidan Oswell, Montse Ferres, Martin Bonner, Armelle Tardiveau, Dhruv Sookhoo, Georgia Giannopoulou, Roger Meier, Roger Higgins, Victoria Keen

The MA in Urban Design is a well-established interdisciplinary programme at Newcastle University that draws on expertise from the disciplines

represented in the School, namely Architecture, Planning and Landscape. The programme brings to the foreground a strong agenda of social and

ecological engagement together with a relational approach to the built environment and public life. Three distinct design projects punctuate the year

and are supported by theory courses and critical debate around the practice of Urban Design. The projects introduce students to contemporary and

topical themes including Urban Agriculture which allows us to rethink urban regeneration through the lenses of grass-roots processes whilst engaging

with the strategic thinking of a large territory. The European field trip to Nantes (France) aims to introduce alternative approaches to Urban Design

including landscape and tactical urbanism. The project is sited in an abandoned quarry at the heart of the city and provides the opportunity to rethink

design as a process over time. Finally, Housing Alternatives examines new models of neighbourhood design in the context of the housing crisis and

housing needs; the project explores concepts of affordability, sustainable living and community led-models, centred around the increasingly popular in

the UK cohousing model. The year concludes with the Urban Design Thesis, a major research-led design project. The course offers many opportunities

for visiting places within the UK and in Europe in the context of the projects.

B

A

Platform

B

A

Lunar

Tree

Green

Roof

PPER PARK

QUARRY CLIFF

CREATIVE AREA

CENTRAL AREA

AND LEISURE AREA

PUBLIC SERVICE FACILITIES

(repurposing of abandoned

buildings on site)

cycle path

main road

divider + planters

main road

cycle path

REGENERATION OF CAP44

(maintaining the primary structure as

framework for future intervention)

NEW MARKET

PIER

SECTION A-A’

Ramp

170

Group - Cities and Cultures - Su Ann Lim, Guan Wang, Bo Li

Laurence Farshid Bonner, Guan Wang, Bo Li, Yixi Lu, Qingyi Du, Daniel Viana Santos

171

MA in Architecture, Planning and Landscape – Design

Nathaniel Coleman

Contributors: Nathaniel Coleman, Astrid Lund, Tony Watson

The Master of Architecture, Planning and Landscape-Design (MAAPL-D) course encourages students to develop a deeper understanding of varieties

of identity in cities. Students conduct detailed studies of particular urban communities, concentrating on determining strategies of appropriate

development for specific urban sites. In each of the three semesters of the course, developing projects presuppose devising community based urban

design frameworks for selected sites that broadly consider the surrounding context. In each semester, holistic design frameworks articulating the

potential character and quality of the environment initiated by the proposed project support reasonably complex building designs.

Semester one is divided proportionally between group explorations of the city and individual project work, augmented by developing research into

the history, theory and design of cultural buildings in an urban context. The second semester project explores ideas of meaning and identity in the

urban environment and the role that public space and buildings play in articulating notions of citizenship and community. Students produce three

architectural/urban design schemes of increasing scale and complexity for a specific urban location. Architecture as a civic element is emphasised,

including concentration on the relation between exterior and interior spaces.

The problematic of public space within an increasingly privatised built environment; the degree to which theory can be verified by the design; and the

support of both by close readings of set theoretical texts that consider architecture and the city from a range of perspectives are central to the course; as

is a developing understanding of architecture within the expanded field of an urban context in relation to notions of identity, community, and culture

more generally. No matter their scale, projects are construed as complex public buildings with key interior and exterior public spaces specific to their

location and purpose. Thesis projects developed during the third semester provide students with opportunities for elaborating on many of the themes

introduced earlier in the course. The thesis is a major design project framed by individual students that they largely produce independently.

The MAAPL-D course challenges students’ preconceived notions of architecture, planning, urban design and the city, as well as their ingrained habits

of architectural conceptualization and representation. In the course, individual buildings are considered as component parts of cities, rather than as

isolated objects within it. As such, tendencies to overemphasise buildings as spectacular image, interesting form, or virtuosic technological novelty are

counterbalanced by the urban, social, and tectonic qualities of projects. Within the expanded field of the city, urban buildings are emphasised as sociocultural

elements rather than primarily as abstract objects of aesthetic (or visual) appreciation.

172 Ling Shuang Yue

Da Yu

173

MSc in Sustainable Buildings and Environments

Neveen Hamza

Contributors: Andrew Arnold, Dr. Alan J Murphy, Barry Rankin, Clive Gerrar, Dan Jestico, Halla Huws, Dr. Hassan Hemida, Jess Tindal, Liam Haggarty,

Richard Allenby, Dr. Samuel Austin, Stuart Franklin, Dr. Wael Nabih

Students on the Sustainable Buildings and Environments MSc use building and urban performance simulation tools and a deeper understanding of building

physics to underpin their architectural design approaches. This academic year we were joined by students from the MArch and MAPL-D route in projects.

The students worked on three live projects with their estates departments and Newcastle City Council. They engaged with a number of well-established

professionals in the field.

Engineering Excellence Quarter (Newcastle University): we were asked by the University to start looking at massing ideas for projects to maximize capturing

sustainability aspects of the site. Students looked into environmental impacts (such as wind speed and shadowing studies) on pedestrians and how different

massing ideas could lead to a unified campus, where pedestrian movement is facilitated and the natural environment is moderated.

Sunderland Royal Hospital: we worked closely with the estate department to improve the 1960s building. Occupants complain about drafts in winter and

overheating and less effective natural ventilation in the wards all year round. The project addressed possibilities of aesthetic improvements, and insertions of

social interaction spaces, while moderating the indoor climate using building performance simulations. Students also expanded their explorations to look at

climate change scenarios and environmental architectural concepts which can prevent the need for cooling.

Fisherman’s Lodge in Jesmond Dene: the students presented design proposals for the public consultation that was managed by English Heritage and Newcastle

City Council. The Fisherman’s Lodge has been derelict for over ten years and ideas for its revival and extensions into various possible functions were

introduced to the council to help them build ideas for potential usage. Building and urban performance simulation were used to maximize the sustainability

potential of the projects and underpin design decisions in such a dark and historic valley.

174

Top - Zhengkai Lu

Bottom - Group Student Analysis

Top - Groupwork Engineering Excellence Quarter

Bottom - Rosy Rivera Lara Fishermans Lodge - Perspectives

175

PhD and PhD by Creative Practice Students

Towards a Synthetic Morphogenesis for Architecture

Paola Carolina Ramirez Figueroa

p.c.ramirez-figueroa@newcastle.ac.uk

www.syntheticmorphologies.com

Synthetic Morphologies is a design exploration project that emerges from a growing

design discourse on the possibilities afforded by Synthetic Biology. The 21st century

is poised to be the era of biology, very much like the 20th has been the age of digital

information. The notion comes from recent advances from Synthetic Biology in

manipulating and creating new living organisms that exhibit unprecedented traits

in nature. Design, as many other fields, has felt the influence of such a paradigmatic

shift. In architecture, for instance, a growing body of speculative work imagines a

future material reality enacted by hybrids of machine and living organisms, whereby

building are grown rather than constructed.

Yet, Synthetic Morphologies poses the possibility that, in fact, Synthetic Biology

presents design with a more profound challenge – one that stirs the restating of the

discipline of design itself. To think, for instance, of buildings which are grown out

of pre-programmed living organisms is, in effect, to continue the classic paradigm

of design wherein the designer is an almighty giver of form. I propose an alternative

approach – an organicist-inspired material practice for synthetic biology.

I believe the intersection of design and synthetic biology invites us to think

of design as a negotiation between different actors, some of which include the

chemical environment, mechanical conditions, designers and living organisms

themselves. Throughout my doctoral research I’ve engaged in different projects

which characterise and trace the evolution of the speculative discourse initiated by

synthetic biology, and which eventually leads to the notion of a biologically-oriented

material practice: a technique to engage with the processes of designing through and

with living organisms.

Architecture By Default

Kieran Connolly

k.i.connolly@newcastle.ac.uk

Rem Koolhaas’s polemical essay ‘Junkspace’, written at the turn of the millennium,

recalls a contemporary landscape of generic sameness, latent with subliminal

and ideological messages. The text rejects traditional ideas of architectural space,

dissolving ideas of order, type and hierarchy into a chaotic amalgam that is

apparently ordered and bound together by its globalised ubiquity. Junkspace, as

Koolhaas describes it, is the space of material human waste that has become a

measure of modernity. Fourteen years after the publication of this seminal essay, this

research began by examining a Junkspace par excellence – the suspended ceiling.

Organised on a standard grid of 600mm x 600mm, set-out using aluminium

sections, supporting lightweight tiles, it repeats, room after room in what can be

seen as an almost limitless horizontal expansion. The suspended ceiling has become

a seemingly ubiquitous feature in twenty-first century architecture, as recently

demonstrated by Koolhaas himself at the 2014 Venice Biennale.

Using Koolhaas’s observations as a starting point, the research has focused on the

relationship between the repetitive organisational qualities of the aforementioned

grid and the void spaces it conceals above – known as the Plenum. These spaces not

only deal with ventilation, but also hold an ever-increasing network of services that

give comfort and ‘power’ to the inhabited spaces below.

Through a series of investigations, often recalling the evocative imagery and

representation techniques of the radical Italian design collective Superstudio, this

relationship has been explored in order to expose our growing reliance on ‘serviced’

space. As such, the thesis examines these forgotten, hidden but vitally important

environments of Junkspace, in order to explore a much broader question – how

reliant are we becoming on these concealed service spaces? And what impact does

this have on the field of architecture?

176 Top, Middle - Paola Carolina Ramirez Figueroa Bottom - Kieran Connolly

The Contemporary Role and Transformation of Civic Public Architecture: The

Case of Tripoli’s Central Municipal Building, Libya

Abdelatif El-Allous

abdelatif.el-allous@newcastle.ac.uk

Space Thickening and the Digital Ethereal:

Production of Architecture in the Digital Age

Jose-Luis Hernandez-Hernandez

j.l.hernandez-hernandez@newcastle.ac.uk

www.digitalethereal.com

Digital Ethereal came about as a design discourse on digital technologies, and the

invisible infrastructure underpinning it. I believe our interaction with this landscape

of electromagnetic signals, described by Antony Dunne as Hertzian Space, can be

characterised in the same terms as that with ghosts and spectra. They both are

paradoxical entities, whose untypical substance allows them to be an invisible

presence. In the same way, they undergo a process of gradual substantiation to

become temporarily available to perception. Finally, they both haunt us: ghosts, as

Derrida would have it, with the secrets of past generations; Hertzian space, with the

frustration of interference and slowness.

But it is these same traits of Hertzian Space that affords the potential for a spatially

rich interaction with information systems, one that more closely resembles the

interaction with real architecture. The challenge however lies in how to design with

systems that are fundamentally invisible. They can be ‘translated’ – changing their

modality into one which is tangible. This modality change is however always laced

with cultural charges, which changes the nature of Hertzian Space.

In order to take advantage of hertzian space, I advocate for a creative practice aimed

at creating new objects, indexed to hertzian space, but which also captures the

cultural and social complexity imbued in the use of such technologies. I call this new

series of objects the digital ethereal. The design work created throughout this project

blends together disciplines and techniques such as performance, photography,

design, programming and electronics.

Shared Identity: Buildings, Memories, and Meanings

Stephen Grinsell

s.j.grinsell@newcastle.ac.uk

News stories about either the decision to save or demolish many buildings of the

1960s and early 1970s regularly use the noun monstrosity, usually prefaced by the

word concrete. However, not all concrete buildings create animosity. The recently

demolished Birmingham Central Library, whilst derided by Prince Charles as

looking like ‘a place where books are incinerated, not kept’ (Birmingham Mail,

2014) is also commonly and affectionately called the ‘Ziggurat’, a reference to the

stepped terraces of ancient temples. David Parker and Paul Long in their article

‘“The Mistakes of the Past”? Visual Narratives of Urban Decline and Regeneration’

write ‘For all their faults, the buildings of the 1960s and 1970s currently being

destroyed supplied Birmingham with an identity’ (Parker and Long, 2004 p.18).

Buildings are given their identity and meaning, or more accurately, given a

multiplicity of meanings, by those who gaze upon them and allow the building

to impact upon them. This impact, or the experience as a result of that gaze, stirs

emotions and evokes memories, memories that heighten a sense of identity. This

identity then becomes a shared identity as people share their memories, and what

the building means to them.

Parker, D., & Long, P. (2004). ‘“The Mistakes of the Past”? Visual Narratives of

Urban Decline and Regeneration’. Visual Culture in Britain, 5(1), 37-58.

Natural Ventilation: An Evaluation of Strategies for Improving Indoor Air

Quality in Hospitals of Semi-Arid Climates

Mohamed Mahgoub Elnabawi

m.elnabawi-mahgoub@newcastle.ac.uk

Learning from Vernacular Natural Ventilated Residential Houses in

Mediterranean Climate Zone of Lebanon; and Developing its Application

Methods in Designing Contemporary Housing in Beirut

Najla Mansour

n.mansour@newcastle.ac.uk

Top, Middle - Jose-Luis Hernandez-Hernandez

Bottom - Stephen Grinsell

177

A Coincidental Plot, For Architecture

Ashley Mason

ashley.mason@newcastle.ac.uk

Practiceopolis: The City of Architectural Practice

Yasser Megahed

yasser.megahed@newcastle.ac.uk

This Research sets out to interrogate a dominant stance towards technology that

prioritises a narrow approach to architectural production, which I have identified

as Techno‐rational practice. The imaginary city of Practiceopolis is introduced as

a site for the critical reading of diverse contemporary architectural practices. This

reading draws from the philosopher Andrew Feenberg’s classification of varying

stances towards technology.

Practiceopolis is a city built on diagrammatic relations between nine theoretical

modes of practice covering a wide spectrum of the contemporary architectural

world. Its morphology is set out according to the influence of technology and

technical knowledge in shaping different modes of architectural practice. It

highlights tensions between what Feenberg might call Determinist/Instrumentalist

approaches on the one hand, and Critical Theory/Substantivist approaches on the

other. Practiceopolis has two dimensions; the first sets out a parallel world created

as a tool for mapping the multiplicity of modes of architectural practice, of which

Techno‐rational approach is only one. The second maps architectural practices

critically from a dedicated map library in the city of Practiceopolis, located at an

intermediate place between the Instrumentalist and Critical-Theory stances of

technology.

On Repetition: Photograhpy in/as Architectural Criticism - Working through

the Archives of Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich’s German Pavilion and the

North American Concrete Grain Elevators

Catalina Mejia-Moreno

c.mejia-moreno@newcastle.ac.uk

www.travesiafoundation.org

‘Many of us, maybe all of us, look at some images repeatedly, but it seems that we do not

write about that repetition, or think it, once written, worth reading by others’.

T.J.Clark. The Sight of Death. An experiment in Art Writing. (New Haven and

London: Yale University Press, 2006) pp. 9.

In the photo-archives of two of the most recognised British architectural historians of

the late twentieth century - Robin Evans and Reyner Banham - two iconic buildings

come across repeatedly, almost compulsively. In Evans’, the Barcelona Pavilion (1929-

reconstructed 1986) and in Banham’s, the Buffalo Grain Elevators (late nineteenth

Century). While these slide sets can be understood as the result of the empiricist

English tradition and the relevance of direct experience for the buildings’ histories

and criticisms, they are also evidence of a wider phenomenon in architectural

history: the drive to re-visit, the compulsion to re-photograph and the instinct

to repeat. In this context, my PhD project questions photography as the inherent

means of repetition in architectural history, while arguing that the photograph as

material object and object of representation also performs as the criticism itself.

By studying two important moments in time for the photographic dissemination

of the two aforementioned buildings, and by understanding the material history

of photographs as commodities and objects of transaction, I critically examine the

relationship between architectural history, architectural criticism, and photographic

and ideological techniques of (re)production.

Natural Ventilation: An Evaluation of Strategies for Improving Indoor Air

Quality in Hospitals of Semi-Arid Climates

Mohammed Mohammed

m.mohammed@newcastle.ac.uk

Architecture for All in the megacity: Spatially Integrated Settlements in

Istanbul Dominated by Desirable Affordable Housing that Values More than

the Total Cost of Construction and Land Values

Ulviye Nergis Kalli

u.n.kalli@newcastle.ac.uk

178 Top - Yasser Megahed Middle, Bottom - Catalina Mejia-Moreno

Impact of Community Participation on Peri-Urban Development Projects in

Akure, Nigeria

Oluwatoyin Akim

o.t.akin@ncl.ac.uk

Cities, People, Nature: An Exploration

Usue Ruiz Arana

u.ruiz-arana@newcastle.ac.uk

mynaturehood.tumblr.com

With more than half of the world’s population now living in cities, it is the nature

within the city that has the potential to enhance people’s lives on a daily basis. The

city-people-nature trinomial raises a number of questions that form the basis of this

research. My first installation coincided with the ‘Landscape, Wilderness and the

Wild’ conference and explored two initial questions:

Is there a boundary between the natural and cultural in the city?

The relation between nature and culture is complex. The classical notion of nature is

the world devoid of human interaction or activity; and urbanization, the antithesis

of nature. At the other end of the spectrum there is the notion of nature as a social

constructed phenomenon, and the idea that nature as the untouched doesn’t exist

anymore, as human activity has affected the whole world. What is evident is that

cities depend on nature to survive and vice versa, and it is therefore difficult to see

where one ends and the other starts.

Could the expectation of nature in the city be challenged and what could we tolerate

within the urban?

Within the city we tend to arrest the progression of nature in order to maintain

landscapes and spaces looking a certain way, and avoid the chaos or fear that might

result from a ‘wild’ nature. ‘Wilderness’ is found on abandoned sites, on former

industrial sites, in the cracks of the pavements, in the joints of the walls, reclaimed

by nature whilst waiting to be developed or cleared out. Are looks the reason why we

arrest nature, and how is nature experienced through the other senses?

Revealing Design: A Dialogic Approach

Matthew Ozga-Lawn

matthew.ozga-lawn@newcastle.ac.uk

www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/staff/profile/matthew.ozga-lawn

My research project attempts to reveal hidden or overlooked agencies within the

studio space and the representational modes therein, which is normally conceived

of as a neutral zone through which designs are simply ‘transmitted’. In my study,

the studio is conflated with a rifle range. The studio, in adopting the characteristics

and agencies of the military space, opens architectural representation onto codes

and phenomena normally considered to be outside its remit. These phenomena are

drawn into the project through historical and theoretical links established by the

rifle range space.

My research blurs the agencies of the military and studio spaces, revealing coded

agencies that we as designers often take for granted in how we relate and engage with

representational artefacts in the studio.

Usage of Thermally Comfortable Outdoor Space through the Lens of Adaptive

Microclimate

Khalid Setaih

k.m.setaih@newcastle.ac.uk

Becoming Planners and Architects: the Formation of Perspectives on

Residential Design Quality

Dhruv Sookhoo

d.a.sookhoo@newcastle.ac.uk

After the Blueprint: Questions around the Unfinished in New Belgrade

Tijana Stevanović

t.stevanovic@newcastle.ac.uk

Modelling the Effects of Household Practices on Heating Energy

Consumption in Social Housing. A Case Study in Newcastle upon Tyne

Macarena Beltan Rodriguez

m.rodriguez@newcastle.ac.uk

Top - Usue Ruiz Arana

Middle, Bottom - Matthew Ozga-Lawn

179

The Impacts of Owners’ Participation on ‘Sense of Place’,

the Case of Tehran, Iran

Goran Erfani

g.erfani@newcastle.ac.uk

A key aspect for urban designers and managers concerns how urban transformation

arising from regeneration of inner-city areas is associated with ‘sense of place’.

Although much academic work tracks individual sense of place, little interrogates

the community aspect and its link with urban renewal. This study investigated how

the urban renewal schemes in Tehran, Iran have attempted to adopt the owners’

participation into their planning and implementation. It concentrated especially on

diverse ways that different stakeholders perceived the methods of these schemes and

the significance for community sense of place.

The study examined the urban renewal projects conducted by the municipality

of Tehran which concerns these areas as deprived neighbourhoods with various

physical, social and environmental problems. Two cases were studied, namely the

Oudlajan bazar and the Takhti neighbourhood, which both are located in the inner

city (district 12). Despite similarities, they are distinctive cases. Oudlajan, which

has outstanding heritage value to the city, is a commercial public space. The Takhti

project was about the residential private space. In addition, each case had diverse

socio-cultural and physical transformation. The selecting of the distinctive cases

shaped a better picture of urban transformation in Tehran.

The techniques applied seek to represent different types of participants, by means

of local observation and semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders

in these schemes. Additionally, to elicit what constitutes the interrelationships

between people and place, Photo Elicitation Interview (PEI) was carried out. The

photos captured by the residents were discussed with them to reveal the potential

impact of urban renewal projects on place-based community attachment, identity

and satisfaction in the eyes of individuals. Concurrently, planners, managers

and developers were interviewed. To signify the intersubjectivity, the results and

evidence from the previous phases were separately discussed with other participant

and non-participant residents in the renewal schemes. Furthermore, the study

considered the potential and limitations for sense of place associated with the urban

regeneration schemes.

Making Byker: The Situated Practices of the Citizen Architect

James Longfield

j.d.longfield@newcastle.ac.uk

My work draws from the site-based architectural approaches employed in Byker by

Ralph Erskine and Vernon Gracie, to explore a mode of practice where the skills and

expertise of the professional overlap with the personal commitment of the citizen to

the social and political context of their location of residence.

Through a series of projects, drawings, made pieces and activism, within the

Byker area, where I now live, my thesis traces the nature of a situated approach to

architectural practice, reflecting on convergences with conventional practice, as well

as identifying key points of divergence where my work steps beyond professional

boundaries to engage in a directly personal way.

The trajectory of these actions are observed and recorded in order to describe an

alternative approach to producing and appropriating the built environment, before

finally questioning whether architectural practice, in its professionally bound form,

is capable of delivering a social architecture.

Quality Control and Quality Assurance in Construction – Case of Tower

Buildings in Libya

Salem Tarhuni

The Conservation of Twentieth Century Architecture in China

Yun Dai

y.dai@newcastle.ac.uk

180 Top - Goran Erfani Middle, Bottom, Opposite - James Longfield

Comprehensive Intelligence in Sustainable Courtyard House Architecture

Rand Agha

r.h.m.agha@ncl.ac.uk

A Spatial Carbon Analysis Model for Retrofitting the Guayaquil’s Residential

Sector – GURCC as a Case Study

Javier Urquizo

j.urquizo@newcastle.ac.uk

Crisis of Traditional Identity in Built Environment of the Saudi Cities. A Case

Study: The Old City of Tabuk

Mabrouk Alsheliby

m.alsheliby@ncl.ac.uk

Looking Towards Retirement: Alternative Design Approaches to Third-Ager

Housing

Sam Clark

s.clark4@newcastle.ac.uk

UK society was first categorised ‘aged’ during the 1970s, and is currently heading

towards ‘super-aged’ status, whereby 20 per cent of the population will be aged

sixty-five and over by the year 2025. Indeed scientific evidence indicates linear

increases in life expectancy since 1840, such that UK population ‘pyramids’ are now

looking more like ‘columns’, with fewer younger people at the base and increasing

numbers and proportions of older people at the top. There are 10,000 centenarians

living in the UK today, with demographers anticipating a five-fold increase by 2030.

Half of all babies born this year can expect to live one hundred years.

Housing plays a significant role in sustaining a good quality of life, and there is

growing opinion that moving to specialist or more age-appropriate housing has

a positive impact on the wellbeing of older people, as well as potential benefits

to the property market as a whole. Recent design research includes a competition

commissioned by McCarthy & Stone to ‘re-imagine ageing’, and an RIBA report

illustrating future scenarios in which ‘Active Third-Agers’ have made a huge impact

on UK towns and cities. Both initiatives were predicated on the idea that today’s

older population (colloquially known as the ‘baby-boomers’) have alternative and

more demanding lifestyle expectations that are likely to drive a step-change in

housing choice for older people.

Sam is working in collaboration with national house builder, Churchill Retirement

Living, to further explore the needs and aspirations of those entering retirement. In

this instance a PhD by Creative Practice is being used as a vehicle for applied design

research that will contribute to contemporary visions for retirement living.

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ARC – Architecture Research Collaborative

With a threefold increase in research income this year since the Architectural Research Collaborative (ARC) launched in 2012, thanks to a number of successful

funding bids by colleagues, new collaborative ventures and two postdoctoral fellows starting their research in architecture with us in 2015-16 and two more posts

to come in September 2016 and 2017, ARC is firmly establishing itself as a major centre for research in architecture. Our remit is to promote and investigate

high quality architectural research as a necessarily interdisciplinary activity, which produces knowledge through multiple methodologies and practices including

creative practice, history and theory, and building, engineering and social sciences. ARC is therefore structured by key themes cutting across the various disciplines

constituting architectural research, with a view to facilitating collaborative projects involving Newcastle researchers and partners at other institutions. Themes

such as ‘Industries and Technologies of Architecture’ and ‘Experimental Architecture’ are responsive to topical issues and to change in ARC membership and are

updated as new themes emerge. Through a programme of small-scale responsive funding we actively support collaborations between colleagues and early career

and doctoral research.

Our commitment to interdisciplinary research has an international presence through the Cambridge University Press journal arq – Architectural Review Quarterly

– whose managing editor, Professor Adam Sharr, and the majority of the editorial team are based in ARC. This year saw the publication of a special issue of arq

on the subject of design-led research put together by the speculative design practice STASUS – comprising ARC members James Craig and Matt Ozga-Lawn, and

two publications from the conference Industries of Architecture held here in 2014; a book of the same name (Routledge, 2015) and special issue of the journal

Architecture and Culture entitled ‘Into the Hidden Abode: Architecture and Production’, edited by Katie Lloyd Thomas and Adam Sharr (with Tilo Amhoff,

University of Brighton, and Nick Beech, Queen Mary’s University, London). ARC members continue to publish widely and have presented their research across

the UK, Europe, in Canada, the USA, and in the Middle East, and also engage in co-production projects. They are also active in engagement and design research

with local communities, such as Fenham Pocket Park, a local project whose stakeholders include Sustrans, Newcastle City Council, Fenham Community Pool,

Your Homes Newcastle, Fenham Library and Fenham Model Allotment. A successful bid by Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo to the Department of Communities

and Local Government funding led to the creation of a new piece of public space, and enabled a co-production process amongst stakeholders equally

meaningful as the space itself.

This year’s ARC Special Theme event Mountains & Megastructures (16th – 17th March) was a great success, involving linked research students, colleagues and

invited speakers, artist Stéphane Degoutin and Professor Jonathan Hill, UCL. The exhibition and symposium explored topics ranging from early endeavours

to ‘conquer’ the Everest to Alphand’s picturesque artificial hills in Paris, and their literal and figurative constructions and reconstructions at different scales from

miniature megastructures such as the Apollo Pavilion to the concrete megastructures of the north-east, from the vertical megastructures of science fiction to the

complex of megadams on the Tigris and Euphrates. We are currently preparing a book proposal from the event to showcase ARC’s form of interdisciplinary

architectural research, and have put forward a follow-up public event ‘Scaling the Heights’ to the AHRC Being Human Festival (November, 2016) to be housed

in the north tower of the Tyne Bridge.

CURE: Creative Upcycled Resource

Graham Farmer

Research by Design

This cross-disciplinary research project brings together architecture, engineering,

social sciences, and business. It explores the technical, social, economic and design

related barriers to material upcycling, and seeks to propose solutions to enable

widespread, creative re-use of designed products and packaging.

U-TEC Cafe

Collaborators: CeG - Newcastle University, Newcastle Business School

Replicas

Adam Sharr, Zeynep Kezer

Futures, Values and Imaginaries

Replica architectures employ selective ideas of the past to construct the image of

states, cultures, organizations or powerful individuals in the present, often operating

in service of radically conservative ideologies. Promoted through the rhetoric of

reconstruction, replica projects are seldom ‘literal’ reconstructions. Rather, they

involve the tendentious reclamation of historic architectural or urban forms to

reinforce particular national or cultural identity narratives, however counterfactual

their historical veracity. The idea of Replicas was the subject of a session at the SAH

conference in Chicago in 2015 and this material will form an edited book.

Collaborators: Society of Architectural Historians Conference, Chicago, 2015

182

Utopias and Architecture

Nathaniel Coleman


Utopian thought, though commonly characterized as projecting a future without

a past, depends on golden models for re-invention of what is. This general theme

encompasses a range of projects examining the social and formal dimensions of

architecture through the concept of utopia and integrating architectural thinking

into Utopian Studies. The projects and outputs range from the interdisciplinary

Utopography workshop to a special issue of Utopian Studies as well as Lefebvre for

Architects, recently published by Routledge, and papers for journals including the

‘Journal of Architectural Education’, ‘Architectural Research Quarterly’, and the

‘Journal or Architecture’.

Coleman N. ‘Architecture and Dissidence: Utopia as Method’, Architecture and

Culture, 2014, 2(1), pp. 45-60.

Energy, Society and Cities

Carlos Calderon


These projects involve understanding, modelling and designing for new energy

futures. Themes include the effects of household practices on heating energy

consumption, smart energy technologies, decentralised energy, energy systems

to reduce fuel poverty and developing new ways of planning for spatial energy

infrastructure in cities. This work is supported by contributions from Your Homes

Newcastle, Newcastle City Council and Newcastle Science City and involves

collaborations across fields of architecture, engineering and planning.

Collaborators: Newcastle City Council, Your Homes Newcastle, Newcastle Science City,

Cambridge Architectural Research

Byker Hobby Rooms

James Longfield, Adam Sharr

Research by Design

This project was investigated as part of Linked Research with Stage 5 and 6 students

on the MArch degree program. The project investigated the unique phenomena of

the hobby rooms in the Byker redevelopment which are currently under-occupied.

By investigating their intentions and mapping the spaces of current hobby activity

the project developed speculative proposals for alternative hobby spaces that offered

greater flexibility and specificity. The project concluded with the construction of key

items of furniture which imagined the hobby rooms as specific mobile spaces, able to

support a process of redevelopment.

http://makingbyker.wordpress.com

Collaborators: The Byker Lives Project

Bacilla Vitruvius

Martyn Dade-Robertson, Carolina Figueroa

Research by Design

Vitruvius suggested in his texts On Architecture that ‘architecture is an imitation of

nature’ (Vitruvius, 2009) but what happens when architecture becomes nature and

we begin, through the design of biological systems, to become architects of nature?

This project explores the relationship between architecture and the emerging field of

Synthetic Biology. The project explores both the applications of Synthetic Biology for

new types of building material and the implications of architectural design practice

on the development of Synthetic Biology.

Collaborators: Northumbria University, The Centre for Synthetic Biology and

Bioexploitation

183

Architecture’s Unconscious

Kati Blom, Nathaniel Coleman, Andrew Ballantyne,

Katie Lloyd Thomas, Sam Austin

Social Justice, Wellbeing and Renewal

This project is built around a series of informal meetings including architects, artists,

philosophers and scholars of cognitive science and psychoanalysis. The project aims

to uncover the processes of environmental perception – with particular emphasis

on stories of unexpected, non-verbal encounters which are born of a pre-linguistic

sensation of space. These incidental sensuous encounters with place – whether

labelled as unconscious or not - are vital when discovering the qualities of spaces.

Collaborators: Isis Brook (Writtle University), Lorens Holm (University of Dundee),

Wolfram Bergande (Bauhaus- University Weimar)

Re-interpreting Sustainable Architecture

Graham Farmer


This research aims to bring together recent debates in philosophy and social /

cultural theory to the study and practice of sustainable architecture and urbanism. In

adopting a critical, comparative and interdisciplinary perspective and by theorising

sustainability, my aim is to bring the discussion of a sustainable built environment

centrally into the social sciences and humanities.

G. Farmer (2013) ‘Re-contextualising Design: Three ways of Practicing Sustainable

Architecture’, Architectural Research Quarterly, 17(2).

G. Farmer & S. Guy (2010) ‘Making Morality: Sustainable Architecture and the

Pragmatic Imagination’, Building Research and Information, 38(4), 368-378.

S.Guy & G.Farmer (2001), ‘Re-interpreting Sustainable Architecture: The place of

Technology’, Journal of Architectural Education, 54(3) Feb. pp140-148.

Demolishing Whitehall

Adam Sharr


In 1965, the architect Leslie Martin submitted to Harold Wilson’s Labour

government a plan to rebuild London’s government district, Whitehall. Presented

to an administration which had been elected on the promise of remaking Britain

in the ‘white heat’ of technology, the plan’s architecture embodied the 1960s idea

of an imminent jet age that seemed not just possible but imminent. Our co-written

book, Demolishing Whitehall, tells the story of the Whitehall plan and investigates its

inherent tensions between ideas of technology and history, science and art, socialism

and elitism.

Collaborators: Stephen Thornton, Politics, Cardiff University

Industries of Architecture

Katie Lloyd Thomas, Adam Sharr

Specifications, Prescriptions and Translations

Developing out of research and an earlier symposium on architecture’s technical

literatures ‘Further Reading Required’ (The Bartlett, 2011) this international

conference took place at Newcastle in November 2014. IOA invited architectural

theorists, historians, designers and others to explore the industrial, technical and

socio-economic contexts in which building is constituted that are all too often

sidelined within the architectural humanities. IOA also hosted a number of openstructured

debate-oriented workshops with the aim of bringing into the discussion

those working in building, technology, law, practice management, construction or in

industry together with researchers in the architectural humanities.

Collaborators: Tilo Amhoff (University of Brighton), Nicholas Beech (Oxford Brookes

University), ProBE (University of Westminster), John Gelder (NBS), Sofie Pelsmakers

(UCL Energy Institute), Rob Imrie (Sociology, Goldsmiths), Emma Street (Real Estate &

Planning, University of Reading), Liam Ross (ESALA).

184

Visualising Energy

Neveen Hamza


http://www.eviz.org.uk/

This project is based on the EPSRC funded Eviz (Energy Visualisation for Carbon

Reduction) project. The project brings together an interdisciplinary team of engineers

and designers to develop applications which close the gap between abstract, invisible

energy flows and people’s desire to understand their energy use and become more

energy efficient. The key idea is to increase understanding of energy dynamics as

a function of occupant behaviour and building characteristics and to allow experts

to make better predictions of energy efficiency and design buildings around human

behaviour.

Collaborators: Plymouth University, University of Birmingham, University of Bath

Landscape Visions

Ian Thompson


This project, led by a landscape architect/photographer in collaboration with

landscape archaeologists, an oral historian and a specialist in heritage interpretation,

considers the legacy of land reclamation within the Great Northern Coalfield,

following the closure of the last deep mines. We aim to understand the reclamation

process, not just the social, political and economic drivers, but also the visions which

shaped the reclaimed landscape. How did these arise? What was not valued and what

has been lost?

Collaborators: Dr Arieti Galani (heritage studies), Professor Sam Turner, Dr Oscar

Aldred (archaeology), Sue Bradley (oral history), McCord Centre for Historic and Cultural

Landscapes, Durham County Record Office, Woodhorn Museum Northumberland

Design Pedagogy as Material Practice

Graham Farmer

Research by Design

This research explores the role of material practice as a means to connect design,

pedagogy, research and social engagement. This work provides the opportunity for

‘live’ experimentation with materials, performance and varying modes of design

practice.

Stonehaugh Stargazing Pavilion

G. Farmer (2013) ‘Re-contextualising Design: Three ways of Practicing Sustainable

Architecture’, Architectural Research Quarterly, 17(2).

G. Farmer & M. Stacey (2012) ‘In the Making: Pedagogies from MARS’, Architectural

Research Quarterly, 16(4), 301-312.

Rethinking Heritage

Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes


http://valuablereside.upc.edu/

This project examines the modern conceptualization of heritage and its associated

preservation and conservation techniques and policies. The research takes an

interdisciplinary approach and includes anthropologists, geographers, political

scientists and scholars in tourism. It deals with both theory and particular case

studies, and is currently funded through several competitive grants in Spain and

Chile, with collaborators in the US, UK, Italy, Chile and Spain. The project relates

research to professional practice and teaching – like the international workshop

‘Valuable-RESIDE’, funded by the EU.

Collaborators: School of Architecture of Barcelona-Valles, UPC-BarcelonaTECH

(Spain); Universidad de Concepción (Chile); Politecnico di Torino (Italy); West Chester

University of Pennsylvania (US). FIC Barcelona Architects.

185

Architecture and the Machinic Unconscious

Andrew Ballantyne


Our responses to architecture have a cultural dimension, but our cultures are ways

of dealing with our instincts – inherited from millions of years of evolution. Modern

humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, identifiable buildings for

only about 10,000 years, since the global warming that brought the Ice Age to an end.

This project draws together some insights from the recent literature of evolutionary

psychology and the schizoanalysis of Deleuze and Guattari in trying to understand

how we unconsciously interact with one another in and through buildings. Most of

what we do, we do unconsciously. What can we learn from our animal-becomings?

-- from burrowing, nest-building, the construction work of ants and beavers, and the

territorializing effects of music.

Beyond Representation

Matt Ozga-Lawn, James Craig

Research by Design

This project seeks to better understand architectural representation through an

interrogation of its limits; the vastness of landscape, and the internalised space of

consciousness. The research stems from an investigation into landscapes of human

endeavour – in which both limits are potentially at their most extreme – with a

project examining the bodies of ‘failed’ attempts to conquer Mount Everest. The

research is developing in conjunction with an MArch studio exploring these themes.

Craig J, Ozga-Lawn M. ‘Everest Death Zone’. Paper for Emerging Architectural

Research 2014, 1(5).

Curating APL

Matthew Ozga-Lawn, James Craig

Research by Design

Curating Architecture, Planning and Landscape is ongoing research into the

dissemination of the School’s outputs and identity, including the annual yearbook

and exhibitions, online materials and publications and conference materials. The

work includes wide-ranging research into these forms of communication, including

analysing materials from Schools across the UK and further afield. The aim is to

generate key understandings of how APL could present and curate its identity.

Newcastle University School of Architecture Planning and Landscape Yearbook 2014

Collaborators: Thomas Kendall, Simon Bumstead, Richard Taylor, Ed Wainwright

The Edge of State

Zeynep Kezer


In my current project, I examine the Turkish government’s efforts to modernize

Eastern Anatolia and consolidate its authority over the region’s ethnically and

religiously mixed population over the last century. I am especially interested in the

expansion of the state apparatus – through the build up of institutional structures,

military installations, transport & communications infrastructure, and resource

extraction – and the resistance it encountered, with a view toward understanding the

limits of state capacity and official ideology.

‘Spatializing Difference: The Making of an Internal Border in Early Republican

Elazıg, Turkey’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

186

A Participatory-Design Study for Cobalt Business Park

Armelle Tardiveau, Daniel Mallow

Social Justice, Wellbeing and Renewal

Cobalt Office Park is the largest of its kind in the UK with 12000 workers. Located

in North Tyneside, this edge city environment is neither urban in the traditional

sense, nor a greenfield science or technology park yet constitutes a highly significant,

and under-researched, type of place in people’s daily lives. Greater or lesser ecological

sustainability can be enacted and take root in such spaces; for this the project seeks

to engage Cobalt workers, particularly in optimising their work-life balance as well

as engaging local residents in extending existing sustainable practices in such ‘nonplaces’

bordering their residential areas.

Collaborators: Prof Geoff Vigar (PI) Dr Abigail Schoneboom (urban sociologist)

Building Lifecycle Integration

John Kamara

Specifications, Prescriptions and Translations

This research explores the hypothesis that effective integration of the different

interfaces (e.g. information/knowledge, organisations) over the lifecycle of a building

will enhance its performance (with respect to how it supports the immediate and

changing business needs of clients/users and other actors that interact with it, and

how its impact on society and the environment is optimised). Current work is

focused on the interface between clients and the design/construction industry at both

the development and handover stages of a project.

Kamara, J. M. (2013) ‘Exploring the Client-AEC Interface in Building Lifecycle

Integration’, Buildings 3(3), 462-48.

Building the Nation State

Zeynep Kezer


In Building Modern Turkey: State, Space and Ideology, I examine how space and spatial

practices mediated Turkey’s transition from empire to nation-state. By juxtaposing the

making of new spaces, responding to the demands of a new politico-cultural order,

with the obliteration of ethnic and religious enclaves characterizing the Ottoman

way of life, I expose the interdependence between the creative and destructive forces

in this process. My survey of broad ranging spatial transformations demonstrates

how state formation operates at multiple and interdependent scales from that of the

individual body to that of regional geopolitics.

Building Modern Turkey: State, Space and Ideology (University of Pittsburgh Press for

the Politics, Culture and the Built Environment Series, 2015).

Problems of Translation

Martin Beattie


This research aims to understand the processes by which different cultures meet in the

context of avant-garde architecture, art and literature. In particular the project maps

and compares the linkages and spread of modernism between European and Indian

avant-gardes, through its art and architecture of the 1920s. Specific case studies

include analysis of the Bengali artist Gaganendranath Tagore along with the Bauhaus

painter Lyonel Feininger and the collaboration between Rabindranath Tagore, the

Bengali poet, novelist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature and Sir Patrick

Geddes, the Scottish town planner at Santiniketan.

‘Problems of Translation: Lyonel Feininger and Gaganendranath Tagore’ at the

Fourteenth Annual Indian Society of Oriental Art Exhibition, Kolkata, India.

Collaborators: Association of Art Historians

187

188

Newcastle University School of

Architecture, Planning and Landscape

Yearbook ‘16

Editorial Team

Sam Austin


Matthew Wilcox

Special Thanks

Graham Farmer

Matt Ozga-Lawn

James Craig

Anne Fry

Rumen Dimov

& Linked Research Group

“Curating APL” 2014-15

Printing & Binding

Statex Colour Print

www.statex.co.uk

Typography

Adobe Garamond Pro

Paper

GF Smith

Colourplan, Turquoise, 350gsm

First published in June 2016 by:

The School of Architecture

Planning and Landscape,

Newcastle University

Newcastle upon Tyne.

NE1 7RU

United Kingdom

w: www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/

t: +44 (0) 191 222 5831

e: apl@newcastle.ac.uk

ISBN 978-0-7017-0256-4

ISBN 9780701702564

90000 >

£10

9

780701

702564

Design Yearbook 2016

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