This website presents the research activities by staff at the School of Architecture and Cities at the University of Westminster. It is intended to keep students, teachers and scholars updated on research related activities, events and awards by members of the School and to allow them to share their work and achievements with the wider academic and professional community.
Toti, Alessandro. 2024. “Reform or Revolution: Architectural Theory in West Berlin and Zurich (1967–72).” Architectural Theory Review, June, 1–20. doi:10.1080/13264826.2024.2356373.
The article explores the evolution of architectural and urban theory in the wake of the 1960s politicisation of the architecture faculties of TU Berlin and ETH Zürich. Focusing on Oswald Mathias Ungers, Jörn Janssen, and their students, it examines a symposium, an exhibition, and a seminar that shaped divergent perspectives on architectural theory.
Pete Silver’s patented structural prototype has been selected for the 2024 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The prototype was built at the Marylebone Campus. It is made of carbon fibre rods held in torsion by rigid carbon fibre tubes, with reinforced polyamide connecting components. All materials were sponsored by the School of Architecture + Cities and assistance was provided by Fabrication Lab staff and by Dr Will McLean. Carbon fibre rods and tubes were supplied by Easy Composites Ltd and connecting components by RK Rose+Krieger GmbH. For a full description of UK patent number GB2594037B – Helical Structural Framework with Torsional Integrity – see URL
Smith, A., Gold, J. R., & Gold, M. M. (2024). Olympic urbanism: past, present and future. Planning Perspectives, 39(3), 487–499. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2024.2344598
The urbanization of the Olympic Games and the continuing evolution of the IOC-host city relationship invites deeper consideration of Olympic urbanism and its role in shaping multiple cities across the world. This special issue of Planning Perspectives takes up this challenge, placing particular emphasis on planning histories and historiographies. The timing of its publication in 2024 is significant. Besides being the year that celebrates the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, 2024 marks the centenary of the previous Paris Summer Olympics and of the first ever Winter Olympic Games at Chamonix in France’s Haute-Savoie
Future for Religious Heritage, March 2024
In the UK, as in countries across the world, former cinemas have been widely reused as places of worship. While there has been some research into the reuse of cinemas as churches, there has been little work on the broad repurposing of this building type for different faith groups. This article considers the way that buildings offer a snapshot of faith and society in the twenty-first century and reveals the extent to which religious adherence is, in fact, growing in many of Britain’s cities.
The Conversation, May 15th 2024
Feature article on research findings from the project ‘Moving pictures: reusing cinemas as places of worship in the diaspora.’
Landscape, Autumn, 2023, 6-13
As Liverpool’s Birkenhead Park is placed on the UK government’s Tentative List for consideration as a World Heritage site, this article explores the park’s important global role as a pioneer in public park provision. It demonstrates the design lineage with Central Park, New York City, and confirms the bold assertion that “without Birkenhead Park there would be no Central Park, and without Central Park there would be no New York City.” The article explores how the scale and concept of such historic parks is still relevant to contemporary life, especially in urban responses to climate change.
“The power of the pocket park,” Landscape, Spring, 2024, 42-44
In a journal issue dedicated to ‘Landscapes for Living’, this article argues for the role of pocket parks as part of green space provision for urban housing. The article explores two important modernist pocket parks – influential Paley Park in New York City, created via philanthropy, and Crabtree Fields in central London – a park forged through the power of community activity.
Deriu, D. and Maggi, A. (eds), Picturing Cities: The Photobook as Urban Narrative (FrancoAngeli, 2024).
This Open Access anthology examines how photobooks have variously been deployed to read, analyse and interpret cities through curated sequences of images – often in conjunction with literary or critical texts. Stemming from an urban history conference that was held in Bologna, a broad range of illustrated essays shed light on this particular genre of publication. The contents are organised into four sections: framing modernities; urban imaginaries; visual journeys; and politics of representation.
In this seminar, Urna Sodnomjamts presented her ongoing research into the metamorphosis of the nomadic herders of the Mongol Steppe into urban dwellers of Ulaanbaatar city, the capital of Mongolia.She discussed the circular economy and the land uses that sustained the ancient communities and the political evolution, environmental realities and economic challenges that, over the last two centuries have threatened their continuity. She also analysed the traditional Mongolian ger (yurt), its structure and its adaptations and the history and theory behind land-use and the interpretations of custodial vs settler occupation.
This seminar introduces ongoing research on the role that events play in fostering innovation in a sustainable way. It focuses on how events can become places and spaces for identifying and experimenting with new forms of sustainable living and doing business. It is based on a multi-disciplinary study combining a systemic perspective derived from institutional theory with a new view of prototyping from service design research. To understand how events can contribute to sustainable innovation, we need to consider the role they play in the ecosystem that provides the context where stakeholders negotiate values and agree on a common agenda.
Griffiths, S. ‘The poverty of embodiment in the work of Juhani Pallasmaa’. Architecture_MPS 27, 1
(2024): 2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.amps.2024v27i1.002.
In books such as The Eyes of the Skin, architectural theorist Juhani Pallasmaa posits unmediated sensual encounters as the site of authentic engagement with the built environment. Such ideas, derived from phenomenology are very prevalent in architectural discourse today. In this article, I show that they are also highly problematic. Pallasmaa’s arguments are shown to be politically naive and philosophically unsound though analyses of works by Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. Drawing on philosophical, historical and neuroscientific sources, the article posits an alternative, rationalist account of architectural experience in which the intellect and the senses are entwined.
This pivotal publication unites a diverse array of established and emerging scholars in urban design research from around the globe, showcasing a wide range of perspectives and insights. The event was a vibrant gathering of about 50 attendees in person and online, reflecting the global interest and relevance of the topics discussed. Insightful presentations included D Damyanovic with ‘Cool public spaces for the cities’; J Woudstra with ‘Trees and urban open spaces’; K Kamvasinou with ‘Crisis and Temporary Public Spaces’; H Kamalipour with ‘Informal Urban Design’ and E Pafka/K Dovey with ‘Enquiry by mapping’.
As global tourist cities increasingly experience the negative impacts of overtourism in inner city districts, mega events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games can be seen as opportunities to develop tourism in peripheral areas in need of regeneration. The Paris 2024 Olympics are a case in point because, while many Olympic and Paralympic events will take place in iconic venues in the historic centre, some of the key Olympic venues and new developments are located in the suburban district of Seine-Saint-Denis. During the bidding process, the expected legacy for the Seine-Saint-Denis region played a crucial role in supporting Paris 2024’s bid.
This conference paper explored whether a current trend for white interiors suggests new directions in the social and religious cultures of Christianity. To examine this, the paper discussed three recently refurbished churches in London as case studies, through which to explore these questions: St John-at-Hackney; St Augustine’s, Hammersmith.
This seminar explored the value of social and cultural theory as a means to understand the history of the of the estate.It drew on Bourdieu’s schema of habitus that connects individual practices within a wider field of play that encompasses estate management, public health and urban regeneration. The seminar also engaged with the concept of the geo-body, unpacking the relationship between map demarcations, and the territorial quarantining of things, people and relations to be either valued and kept, or eviscerated, as well as the production of emptiness as a starting point for the production of community, and the doxa of slum clearance, urban renewal, and estate regeneration.
Somers, J., Demasi, M., Burke, S., & Carr, P. (2023). ‘Toilet talk: (Trans) Gendered negotiation of public spaces.’ Routledge International Handbook of Innovative Qualitative Psychological Research. Eds. by Tseliou, E., Demuth, C., Georgaca, E., & Gough, B. Routledge
Public toilet provision in the UK fails to meet the needs of cis women while trans communities are absent from current building regulations. This research explores how individuals negotiate differing positions on toilet provision and accessibility. The data were formed of online posts on Dezeen, a forum for building design professionals, and Mumsnet, a parenting forum, in response to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government “Technical review on increasing accessibility and provision of toilets for men and women”. Discursive psychology was used to explore how accessibility to toilets is constructed.
This research seminar explored the potential of dissensus as an agent of design in the current post-political arrangement. Dissensus is understood as an opportunity to shape alternative ways of conceptualising, imagining, planning, and designing urban space, contesting hegemonic urban agendas. Drawing from her doctoral research, Luz investigated the transformative potential of dissensus and its materialisation into agonistic spaces by looking at everyday practices of resistance to hegemonic discourses of urban regeneration from 2015 to 2018 in El Cabanyal, a contested neighbourhood in Valencia.
The editorial board of Vesper: Journal of Architecture, Arts and Theory is going to hold a panel discussion with writers and critics to launch their ninth issue: ‘The Adversary’ (Vesper is published in English and Italian by the Iuav University of Venice). The event is organised by the Westminster Law & Theory Lab in collaboration with the Architectural Humanities Research Group.
The event will be in room MG14, Marylebone Hall, at 18:00. Drinks reception to follow. Registration via Eventbrite. All welcome.
Verdini, G., El Ganadi, Y., Nolf, C., Vannoorbeeck, F., Anouar, S. and Siddiki, A. (ed.) 2023. Climate Adaptation and Cultural Resilience. The Case of the Oasis of Figuig, Morocco. Milan ILAUD PRESS.
This book addresses the environmental and social challenges of climate adaptation of Figuig, an oasis in the Oriental Region of Morocco still alimented by traditional underground water conduits. This fragile ecosystem, weakened by persisting socioeconomic decline, is now threatened by the impact of climate change, thus requiring new transformative approaches. Scenarios of resilience and sustainability were discussed by an interdisciplinary group of Moroccan and international scholars, practitioners, and students with local stakeholders and community associations, during an intense planning and design charrette.
The presentation unpacked current work by the Gaza Experimental Lab to rethink Gaza and its reconstruction with interventions that reimagine a world built out of urgency and scarcity, challenging colonial powers and the geography of exclusion by re-appropriating discarded resources. Recent work includes a self-built prototype that tries to offer alternatives on the ground by using materials salvaged from the ruins. The components assembled are an accumulation of what has been collected, used, or appropriated in collaboration with families to reconstruct fragments of their neighbourhoods and homes in Gaza and Palestine.
Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs), have been controversial and divisive as they challenge the established car-centric social order. In this presentation, we use Membership Category Analysis (MCA) to analyse differences in how residents who are for, against or unsure about the scheme frame what the LTN is and does, contributing to reshape or disrupt automobility and assign new meanings or moral values to being in public space. We focus on the ways in which two opposing sets of characters, ‘the good driver vs. the irresponsible cyclist’ and ‘the vulnerable cyclist vs. the negligent driver’, are mobilised to frame stories about the scheme and create narratives about what the LTN does.
Davide Deriu’s photo-essay, ‘On the Edge’, inaugurates the new web issue published by the Canadian Centre of Architecture (CCA), which focuses on how different measures and regulations ensure or prevent safety in our built environment. The piece weaves together a series of photographs from the CCA collections that feature protective barriers such as handrails and parapets. It revisits prominent place in the canon of Western architectural history in order to explore how photographs can visualise the tense state of being on the edge. By disrupting the logic of the archive, the essay draws on the indeterminate character of fragments to provoke new insights and interpretations.
An eco-restoration plan prepared by the team of the British Academy funded project, Reimagining the Good City from Ennore Creek, in consultation with the residents, elders and fishers of Ennore, Chennai.
An exhibition, film screenings, play performance and workshop to Reimagine the Good City from Ennore Creek, as part of the British Academy funded research project by the same name.
Krystallia Kamvasinou has a chapter titled “Crisis and temporary public spaces: reflections from London, UK” published in the Research Handbook on Urban Design, edited by Marion Roberts & Suzy Nelson (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024). Gathering together scholars across the globe, the book demonstrates the depth and rigour of 21st century urban design research. Krystallia’s chapter explores adaptive, temporary public space interventions in London during two pivotal moments, the 2008 global financial downturn and the COVID19 public health emergency, and discusses their longer-term contribution to reimagining cities.
This presentation explored the role of the construction site as an essential component of architectural education. It addressed the questions: What kind of educational experience do construction sites offer to architecture students and how is this different from campus based learning? What is unique about the building site as an educational environment? How is this type of learning an example of active engagement and equity, diversity and inclusion? Scott drew on his work with a cross section of over 800 students and architectural practice and the construction industry in London.
Routledge will publish their much-anticipated Encyclopaedia of Technology and the Humanities on the 29th April this year. The book covers topics such as archaeology, cultural heritage, design, fashion, linguistics, music and philosophy. The field of architecture is represented by Pete Silver and Will Mclean in a chapter entitled A Critical Pedagogy for Architectural Technology.
The 13th METU Architectural History Graduate Symposium was held in Ankara on December 21-22, 2023, and explored multiple interconnections between health and architectural and environmental histories. At this symposium, Davide Deriu delivered a keynote lecture (online) based on his recent book, On Balance: Architecture and Vertigo. The talk was the closing event of the programme and was followed by a lively Q&A session.
The paper was delivered as the inaugural lecture at the 8th International Conference on Contemporary Religious Architecture: The Client.
K. Jordan, ‘White Spirit: Situating Whiteness in Contemporary Church Architecture’ Architectural Histories, Vol 11(1) pp.1-14 2023
In his polemical tract, The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England published in 1843, AWN Pugin condemned the ‘vogue’ for whitewashed church interiors that had characterised Protestant iconoclasm: for him, the return to colour and darkness was an indispensable backdrop to the reawakening of ritual, tradition and the sacred. In 19th-century Christian theologies, colour (or the lack of it) was profoundly important: no decorative scheme was ever applied without considering the religious implications. The long history of whiteness as a trope in Christian visual culture has been well documented but little attention has been paid to its meaning in late modernity. In the 21st century, whiteness is understood as a polyvalent and freighted concept, bearing implications that reach beyond the religious and into secular critical discourses. In this essay, I explore the contemporary vogue for whiteness as a motif in church architecture, focusing on its political and cultural significance in relation to the decline of traditional Christian worship and the rise of ‘believing without belonging’.
An inter-disciplinary two-session panel that invited contributions that presented, reflected on or critically analysed visual / aesthetic cultures of climate change data, the scientific and artistic imaginaries they draw from, the manners in which they make climate change and its data palpable, the new collaborations and alliances they foster and the new publics they create. The panel was organised with Neal White (School of Arts, University of Westminster), Roberto Bottazzi (The Bartlett, UCL) and Kaya Barry (Griffith Centre for Social Cultural Research, AU). It included presentations by Jonathan Cane, Rohit Majumbdar, Mariska Versantvoort, John Zhang, John Cook, Guy Sinclair and others.
This presentation discussed the counter-mapping strategies used by the fishers of Ennore Creek in north Chennai, alongside other ways of visibilising their struggle (protests, tours, festivals, music videos), to resist the degradation of their creek-based lives and livelihoods by a state-sponsored heavy industry complex, facilitated by the manipulation of maps. It focused on one instance of counter mapping, when the fishers’ map was not a map at all, but a lively demonstration of fishers standing thigh deep in water, protesting the depiction of the water as land on a fraudulent map issued by the State to justify encroachment into the creek.
At this panel, Lindsay Bremner presented ongoing work by an interdisciplinary team of researchers, activists and fishers to rethink the meaning of what constitutes a good city from Ennore Creek in North Chennai in India, as part of a British Academy funded research project. The presentation engaged with ideas of the Good City that have shaped Chennai since the early 20th Century, and presented provisional ideas emerging from a fisher-led ‘People’s Plan’ to reimagine Ennore creek not only as a human lifeworld but as a becoming-world of multi-species entanglement, as the basis of good-citiness-to-come.
In recent years, Creative Placemaking has played an essential role in urban intangible heritage management. However, the trade-off between economic development and urban conservation might lead to unsustainable outcomes, such as property-led development, commercialization, and gentrification, and these side effects would harm the interests of creative actors and stakeholders in the community. In this seminar, the preliminary findings of PhD research creative placemaking in Wudadao, Tian-jin, China, will be presented.
What is the proper relationship between architecture and language? How does the way this relationship, as it is currently construed, allow or constrain architecture’s capacity to address the fundamental political and environmental crises of our time? Where does the uniquely human activity of producing architectural experience sit in relation to current conceptions of our relationship to nature as informed by science? Part of a wide-ranging research project, these are some of the questions examined in a book proposal, putatively entitled Against Poetics – On Architecture and Language, to be discussed at this research seminar.
Masters Architecture students at the University of Westminster have completed a lightweight, prefabricated timber structure that forms part of a therapeutic gardening project in east London. Designed by the Live Design Studio for Masters DS20 Architecture students at the University of Westminster, The Growing Space forms part of the bustling citizen community hub at London’s Cody Dock. Constructed from Douglas Fir, the lightweight timber structure provides a space for horticultural activities. The project was initiated and led by Maria Kramer.
Partners: Webb Yates Engineers, Nicholas Alexander, OfCA, Gasworks Dock Partnership
Sponsor: Rodeca
Funding: University of Westminster QHT Fund
The Power of Events is an industry-led initiative that aims to showcase the UK Events Industry. The not-for-profit organisation provides a platform that gathers all the major industry players and collaborates with selected universities in the country to carry out research on the social, cultural and economic value of events. The Tourism and Events Team at UoW hosted the launch of the PoW app on October 17th at Fyre Hall, Regents Campus. The app aims to engage students, industry professionals and academics in future research projects that will support the advocacy work carried out by the PoW. The event was attended by students, industry representatives and alumni.
Dr Stroma Cole, Reader in the School of Architecture and Cities, spoke at the Mainstreaming Net Positive Hospitality Summit, organised by the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, on driving sustainability in tourism through equality and inclusion.
The event explored how to push positive change in the hospitality industry while keeping sustainability at the heart of operations. The organisation has recently launched a five-year strategy to support the growth of the sector sustainably and responsibly to support their goal of bringing the hospitality industry together to tackle worldwide environmental and social challenges.
This one-day conference, hosted and sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute of Istanbul, reappraised the cultural, social and political relations between Turkey and Italy in the early period of the Turkish Republic. Davide Deriu was invited to give a talk based on his AHRC-funded research on western perceptions of modern Ankara. Focusing on the figures of Atatürk and Pietro Canonica (the Italian artist who sculpted several monuments of the Turkish leader), the event advanced new historiographic and critical interpretations. A bilingual publication will follow.
Since 2016 local authorities in London have pursued a novel policy of closing the streets in front of schools to cars during pick up and drop off times. These ‘School Street’ schemes were initially relatively marginal but since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic have increased dramatically, now covering nearly a third of state-funded primary schools in the city. This seminar reports on the work conducted as part of a doctoral research project at the Active Travel Academy focusing on these schemes.
An installation designed as an assemblage of architectural parts drawn from the V&A collection of drawings and photographs of historic Islamic architecture. This is intended to reflect the way that British mosques have been built by their communities, where they reference various traditions of Islamic history through architectural symbols.
Ramadan Tent Project is an award-winning charity established in 2013 with a mission of bringing communities communities together, curated the pavilion and hosted a series of artistic, cultural, creative events to inspire and engage audiences from all backgrounds.
This paper explored faith and diaspora in the contemporary urban landscape through an examination of the adaptive reuse of listed twentieth-century cinemas in London by migrant communities. The paper considered encounters between heritage bodies, local communities and faith groups, examining intersections of the sacred and secular: assimilation and autonomy.
Jordan, K., ‘Modernity and Monasticism: Roman and Anglo-Catholic Monasteries in the Twentieth Century’ in Doig and Barnwell (eds) Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland 1929-1990, Shaun Tyas (2023) pp 128-149
This chapter offers a critical overview of the architecture of Roman and Anglo-Catholic religious communities in the twentieth century.
Jordan, K., ‘Architecture and Buildings: Building the Post-Emancipation Church’ in Mangion and O’Brien (eds) The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Oxford University Press, (2023) pp 56-77
This chapter makes a critical reading of the buildings commissioned for the Catholic Church in Britain and Ireland between 1830 and 1913
With the aim of envisaging more sustainable urban development pathways that address current global challenges, a series of projects were funded under the Joint Programming Initiative of the European Commission call on Urban Accessibility and Connectivity (ERA-NET ENUAC, 2021-2024). Within this framework, ACUTE (the Accessibility and Connectivity Knowledge Hub for Urban Transformation in Europe) was launched in 2022 in order to synthesize ENUAC project results. The seminar will introduce the ACUTE knowledge hub and present a series of research findings and innovative solutions on accessibility and connectivity across 15 European projects.
In this research seminar, John Cook and Ben Pollock will present the work of Climate Cartographics, a UKRI funded proof of concept grant that followed from the ERC grant funded project Monsoon Assemblages. They will discuss a series of pilot projects undertaken for external clients, as a way of testing cartographic and service delivery methods, with a view to setting Climate Cartographics up as a self sustaining company.
Gender based violence is a global pandemic and water insecurity is increasing in intensity and extent. In this seminar, Stroma Cole discussed a study that used qualitative and quantitative data to examine the association between these two global health threats. A significant positive association was found between household water insecurity and reported gender-based violence in Sumba, Indonesia. The concept of ‘gender-based water violence’ was defined as the spectrum of stressors associated with water insecurity that are so extreme as to significantly threaten human health and well-being, particularly that of women and girls.
Re-Imagining Coral Reefs, a project led by John Zhang utilising mixed reality technology as a tool for cross-disciplinary research and climate data communication, took part in this year’s Creatch’23 conference.
