The Bartlett B-Pro Show Book 2022

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL B-Pro Show 2022

Introduction

B-Pro, or Bartlett Prospective, is a suite of graduate programmes devoted to advanced experimentation in computational architecture, design and urban environments. Architectural Design MArch explores the most advanced experimental research in design and fabrication. Urban Design MArch takes critical approaches towards creative urban and landscape design, defining creative strategies for global cities and communities. Our Architectural Computation MSc and MRes programmes engage with and advance the main technologies by which tomorrow’s architecture will be designed and constructed. In 2018 these programmes were joined by two innovative Bio-Integrated Design Master’s degrees, which respond to the impact of biotechnology, computation and climate change on the built environment. The B-Pro programmes welcome a diverse international student cohort, offering highly structured access to the realisation of research and to the production of new schemes in architecture and urbanism.

Architectural Design, directed by Gilles Retsin and Tyson Hosmer, is organised around research clusters, each driven by their respective tutors, including two labs –the Automated Architecture Labs and Material Architecture Lab – to explore specific speculative domains of application. The latest technologies – robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), computerised numerical control (CNC) fabrication, 3D printing, supercomputing, simulation, generative design, interactivity, advanced algorithms, extensive material prototyping, biotechnologies, links to material science –and their many applications are researched in great depth. The exploration of supercomputing and generative platforms also forms a core part of our innovative approach to conception and fabrication, enabled by exceptional digital production facilities. With extensive use of AI and

simulation in virtual reality, the degree offers access to new fields for experimental research and generative design.

Urban Design, directed by Roberto Bottazzi, looks at creative approaches towards environments and cities at all scales, innovative computational design, biotechnologies, AI and digital approaches to networks and territories. The research clusters and the programme’s Urban Morphogenesis Lab develop alternative proposals based on new morphological concepts and protocols which reflect how cities are complex, dynamic living systems. Critical environmental and ecological questions are also viewed through an interdisciplinary lens, acknowledging the dispersed and often paradoxical nature of contemporary urbanism. Through contextual case studies and interventions, students address the challenges involved in resolving complex issues facing populations, public space, building typologies and land use.

The Bio-Integrated Design Master’s programmes are led jointly by Professor Marcos Cruz (The Bartlett School of Architecture) and Dr Brenda Parker (UCL Biochemical Engineering). With access to the latest in biotechnology and advanced fabrication, students work collaboratively in the lab, studio and workshop to develop novel products and environments, in the context of critical issues of climate change and sustainability. The solutions produced hold the potential to be shaped into world-changing environmental and social innovations.

Our Architectural Computation programmes are directed by Manuel Jiménez Garcia and Philippe Morel and challenge the boundaries of what architectural computation can achieve. Projects explore computational methods for automated construction and augmented reality applications for the built environment,

and use AI for space navigation and pattern generation. The work of this programme demonstrates the possibility of becoming truly fluent in computational language, opening up new domains for research.

Our B-Pro programmes are further enhanced by collaboration with the school’s Architecture & Digital Theory MRes, co-directed by Professor Frédéric Migayrou and Professor Mario Carpo, which is dedicated to the theory, history and criticism of digital design and digital fabrication. We also look forward to supporting PhD research in this exciting arena. The B-Pro Prospectives Lecture Series, with numerous speakers, architects, historians and theoreticians, continues to present new opportunities for students to encounter fresh takes on emerging research in the fields of digital theory.

Through a shared vision of creative architecture, B-Pro gives students the opportunity to participate in a new community and to affirm the singularity of their individual talents. These programmes are not only an open door to advanced architectural practice but also form the base from which each student can define their particular approach and architectural philosophy, in order to seek a position in the professional world.

This year the work has continued to develop further the clear shift in the contextualisation of previous research, and the application of digital design and thinking has engaged directly with the political, cultural and societal realms. In particular, the climate crisis is addressed by a number of clusters with an emphasis on changing landscapes and ecosystems, environmental sensing and materials. Issues of social justice and poverty are addressed through engagement with the political structures and economics of housing and population programmes.

We are very pleased that this year marks the return of the physical B-Pro show in the home of the school in Bloomsbury. In addition to this show, the online B-Pro show and this accompanying book are a broad showcase and testament to the continuation of the exceptional quality of work at B-Pro, its incredible commitment to design research and digital innovation and the continuing creativity, passion and dedication of staff and students at The Bartlett School of Architecture.

Frédéric Migayrou Chair, Bartlett Professor of Architecture Director of B-Pro

Andrew Porter Deputy Director of B-Pro

Professor

Professor

Air Bubble Eco-Machine, 2021.

Photo: NAARO

B-Pro Labs

Automated Architecture Labs

Lab Directors: Mollie Claypool, Manuel Jiménez Garcia, Claire McAndrew, Gilles Retsin

Affiliated with Architectural Design MArch Research Cluster 4

Automated Architecture (AUAR) Labs is a consortium of research streams at The Bartlett School of Architecture, operating at the intersection between architecture, automation and platforms.

Increasing automation requires architectural input. To make this work, we utilise the notion of the discrete, considering every element, part or particle as a piece of data that can be computed. Parts therefore take on the properties of a ‘bit’, becoming serialised, standardised and embedded with a simple binary rule: 0 or 1 (that is, connected or not connected). The emphasis on the part as a unit reintroduces the age-old disciplinary notion of part-to-whole relationships and constructs an architectural framework designed for automation. Our research brings advanced technologies, design, people and communities together to radically rethink architectural production. We are exclusively interested in revolutionising housing production using a regenerative, circular and localised approach to automate the design and manufacture of homes. We run live design research projects with communities across the UK, most recently in London, Dorset and Bristol. In 2021 we won the Architects’ Journal Social Sustainability Prize for our project Block West and were the recipients of its Small Projects Award in 2020 as part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Transforming Construction Network Plus. Block West was referred to as ‘an intersectional piece of architecture which goes beyond a building’ by the Architects’ Journal jury.

AUAR Labs works with students in Architectural Design MArch Research Cluster 4 with an agenda on housing, automation and platforms. Current and past collaborators include Knowle West Media Centre, Hackney Council, Bristol City Council, Waltham Forest Future Creatives, New City College, the Building Centre, East London Dance, Studio Wayne McGregor and Nagami Design. AUAR Labs has received funding from UCL Innovation and Enterprise, UCL Culture, Transforming Construction Network Plus, Epic Games and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Impact Acceleration Fund.

Image: House Block, 2021. Photo: James Harris

Material Architecture Lab

Lab Directors: Guan Lee, Daniel Widrig

Affiliated with Architectural Design MArch Research Clusters 5&6

Our research starts by asking questions about materials through design, both digitally and manually. With the prevalence of digital tools, the capabilities of industrial production have migrated from factory floors to smaller-scale workshops, laboratories and research facilities. Coupled with advances in material science at a microscopic scale, and availability of specialist tools to customise materials, the prospect of a new kind of architecture is now imminent. Despite advances in technology, the cost of digital fabrication is high, while change in the construction industry is slow. Digitally driven fabrication is deterministic by nature: everything made has to be modelled digitally, without the element of chance. In Material Architecture Lab we encourage making without preconceptions, allowing the characteristics of the material and fabrication techniques to inform and enrich the outcome. In order to be experimental with processes of making, we look closely at existing crafts and manufacturing techniques with the aim of adding to existing knowledge when possible, learning from it at the very least. Exploring the potential of material design requires setting aside established ideas of not only how something should be constructed, but also how materials should appear or behave. New materials in architecture emerge rarely, but their impact is considerable. The fabric of our cities and landscapes is a testament to what prevails and endures. Traditional materials can be refashioned by altering the way they are processed or utilised. Material behaviour changes with quantity; performance differs depending on a structure’s size and on the environment in which it is constructed, while visual impact varies with distance. Our method of enquiry is hands-on, set firmly in the realms of empirical testing of matter and fabrication on an architectural scale. The development of material science goes hand-in-hand with technological shifts. As a research laboratory, our interest in material is mediated through not only experimentation with the latest in digital design and fabrication but also applicability, tested in the construction industry through live projects. Our methodology prioritises a hybrid of fabrication techniques, favouring customised systems, the design of processes as well as products, and use of digitally controlled machining and semi-automated processes. Our experiments are grounded in cyclical processes of making prototypes, with rigorous and iterative refinements. The lab’s work is as much about traditional making as it is about computation and digital technology.

Image: Coir, Material Architecture Lab, 2018. Photo: NAARO

Urban Morphogenesis Lab

Lab Director: Claudia Pasquero

Affiliated with Urban Design MArch Research Cluster 16

It is timely in the Anthropocene, and even more so in the age of global pandemics, to search for non-anthropocentric modes of reasoning, and consequently also of designing. As part of the PhotoSynthetica consortium, the Urban Morphogenesis Lab, together with ecoLogicStudio and the Synthetic Landscape Lab at Innsbruck University, has therefore been pursuing architecture as a research-based practice, exploring the interdependence of human and biological intelligence in design by working directly with non-human living organisms.

Reassessing the dark side of urban ecology brings into focus a new aesthetic of nature and, accordingly, the urban landscape. This new aesthetic of nature projects the design practice into the realm of microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria and fungi. These creatures often induce fear because their tactics elude our comprehension; however, their intelligence has endowed them with exceptional properties. For example, they are capable of turning what we consider waste and pollution into nutrients and raw materials.

From this perspective, the bio-digital architectures of the Urban Morphogenesis Lab promote a new urban aesthetic centred on a novel appreciation for the micro-scale of bacteria as well as other forms of non-human intelligence. Within our body of work, the cultivation of these organisms becomes an act of ‘culturalisation’. Over the past year we have developed a new set of projects, including: ‘Air Bubble Eco-Machine’ for COP26 in Glasgow and the Saudi Biennale in Riyadh; ‘GAN-Physarum’, a project that harnesses the properties of slime mould to help develop more adaptable, biologically driven cities, for the Centre Pompidou in Paris; ‘Tree One’, a robotic ten-metre-tall sculpture, 3D-printed with algal biopolymers, for Hyundai Motor Studio Busan; and the ‘Otrivin Air Lab’, a living showroom and bio-design workshop in London; as well as international exhibitions in Spain, Korea and Venice, to name just a few. The lab is also currently working on a new book, DeepGreen: Bio-Design in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, due to be published by Routledge in 2023.

Image: Air Bubble Eco-Machine, Glasgow installed at COP26 UN Climate Change Conference 2021 by ecoLogicStudio with the Urban Morphogenesis Lab at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and the Synthetic Landscape Lab at Innsbruck University. Photo: NAARO

Research Cluster tutorial, 2021. Photo: Richard Stonehouse

Architectural Design MArch

Architectural Design MArch

Programme Directors: Tyson Hosmer, Gilles Retsin

Architectural Design at The Bartlett School of Architecture is invested in the frontiers of advanced architecture and design and its convergence with science and technology. Composed of an international staff of experts and students, this programme is designed to deliver diverse yet focused strands of speculative research, emphasising the key role computation plays within complex design synthesis.

Design is increasingly recognised as a crucial agency for uncovering complex patterns and relations. Historically, the most successful architecture has managed to capture cultural conditions, utilise technological advancements and answer to the pressures and constraints of materials, economics, ecology and politics. This synthesis is now being accelerated by the introduction of computation and the ever-evolving landscape of production. Architectural Design students are introduced to advanced coding, fabrication and robotic skills, aimed at computational and technological fluency. Simultaneously, they are taught about the theoretical frameworks which underpin their enquiries. Students are part of a vibrant urban and professional community, enriching the process of learning and opportunities for networking. With advanced design at its core, the Architectural Design programme devotes a high proportion of its time to studio-based design enquiry, culminating in a major project and thesis. The programme is organised into research clusters, each with their own agendas, underpinned by the shared resources of technical tutorials, theoretical lectures and seminars. The latest approaches to robotics and artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, 3D printing, supercomputing, simulation, generative design, interactivity, extensive material prototyping and links to material science are explored. Students engage critically with new developments in technology, which are rapidly changing the landscape of architecture, its social and economic role and its effectiveness in industry applications. Students are introduced to theoretical concepts through lectures and introductory design projects and are supported by workshops to build computation and robotics skills. Throughout the year, students work in small teams or individually, according to the methodology of each research cluster, amplifying their focus and individual talents in the context of complex design research and project development. Projects are continuously evaluated via tutorials, with regular design reviews by external critics. Alongside our cutting-edge research, we host public lectures and seminars throughout the year.

Programme Administrators

Tung Ying (Crystal) Chow, Tom Mole

Image: Diffusive Habitats, Faizunsha Ibrahim Ghousiaa, Eric Morgan Hughes, Sergio Eduardo Mutis Ordóñez, Garyfallia Papoutsi, Research Cluster 3

RC1 Monumental Wastelands

Hadin Charbel, Déborah López

Research Cluster 1 explores the Anthropocene through the lens of ubiquity, examining the production of data, raw material and logistical processes, and their impacts on contemporary scenes.

Using Climate-Fiction as a vehicle, we research, experiment with and project imminent realities. As part of this, over the past two years we have focused on the permafrost thaw of Arctic zones. Warming temperatures have begun to alter existing modes of life, prompting responses to themes of ‘cli-migration’ and ‘autonomous ecologies’, the forced migration of people due to changing climatic conditions and the automation, rights and participation in discourse of nature respectively. This year, the cluster moved south, to below the Arctic circle, and back onto continental Europe.

At the conceptual level, we used research to devise strategies of preservation through adaptation, moving away from a nostalgic return and instead embracing fast-approaching reality. In doing so, we recognised that some things would inevitably be lost, while others could and should be preserved through practical yet sensitively tuned strategies. We note that this may have implications for territories, cultures, biotopes and climatic zones, as well as various mediums and interfaces between the real and the virtual.

The cluster adopted a methodology of ‘decoding’ and ‘recoding’, from which projects emerged as strategies of preservation through adaptation while empowering various forms of decolonisation, encompassing humans, non-humans, logistics and resources. A combination of legal precedent, ecosystemic analysis and machine learning across different behaviours, architectural typologies, geological formations and media formed the basis for the decoding of datasets. Using videogame engines, interactive world-building was explored as a tool for recoding in the form of archiving, decision-making, building and communicating the multilayered effects of these changing scenes. Dynamics, flux and uncertainty were all integrated into the possible outcomes.

Students

Climate Squatters

Norah Ziyad Aldughaither, Xiaotong Lu, Arjun Vijay Prajapati, Tung Shiau, Bryan Steven Velastegui

Cordova

IBERALAND

Jinghan Chen, Siting Wu, Chenxi Zheng, Qiniu Zhu

Knowledge

Decentralization

Yongnan Chen, Peiyu Fu, Yiqian Lu, Donghua Qu, Dong Yue

Reversible Architecture

Mingmin Shen, Sitan Sun, Xinjie Wu

Theory Tutor

Albert Brenchat-Aguilar

Skills Tutors

Sherif Tarabishy, Zehao Qiny

1.1 Climate Squatters A catalogue of various houses that combine architectural fragments collected from different stages of cli-migration. Each house responds to a particular condition related to household size, location on the land and the person’s relationship to it.

1.2–1.4 Reversible Architecture Three scales of spatial and architectural decoding and recoding using material debris. The small scale examines various room configurations, the medium scale creates various combinatorial outcomes to satisfy the condition of a house, and the larger scale deploys the aforementioned at the size of a building or community.

1.5–1.10 Climate Squatters 1.5 Voxelised analysis of a user’s preference inputs and its architectural translation into a built form using the collected materials. 1.6 Exploded axonometric of the different house layers: foundation, slabs, walls and roof. 1.7 Evaluation of the generated housing outcomes from the scale of the voxel to the house itself, accounting for weight, material utilisation and overall efficiency. 1.8 Exterior view of the community and houses as part of the newly relocated settlement. The range of material combinations reflect the history of various migrations as well as a negotiation between the user’s preference, need and role in the community. 1.9 Prior to building, a digital platform allows users to test various house placements, which are scored according to factors such as proximity and effects on the land and wildlife. 1.10 The platform enables users to engage with the different stages of the migration process both before and during inhabitation, while also creating an archive and record of the community’s history.

1.11–1.14 Reversible Architecture 1.11–1.12 Interior views of the houses, showing the reuse of the different fragments, the way they interlock and the spatial qualities and material language they produce. 1.13–1.14 Exterior views of community-generated housing blocks that negotiate private and public spaces and the capacity for building use to be transformed, making it reversible.

1.15–1.21 Knowledge Decentralization 1.15 Motion tracking and analysis of façade patternmaking to be used in knowledge transfer and training on the virtual platform. 1.16 Dataset of vernacular architecture with a related hashtag of material, climate and form.

1.17 Multi-dimensional association of various vernacular façade patterns according to word2vec hashtags.

1.18 Different façade pattern images in the database turned into depth maps and analysed for different performative criteria such as water flow simulation and thermal profile. 1.19 Diagram of the virtual platform illustrating how different forms of knowledge are gathered, uploaded, hashtagged, associated and transmitted, distributing and decentralising the archiving and dissemination of local practices. 1.20 First-person view of the immersive landscape management system, preserving and transferring indigenous wildfire management techniques via a virtual environment.

1.21 Third-person view gamifying the process of building up a traditional ecological knowledge system in relation to a lake in order to determine sustainable fishing practices.

1.22–1.27 IBERALAND 1.22 Aerial section view of a house that has been partially degrown, responding to various incentives proposed by the IBERALAND system, addressing a speculative trend in urban farming that seeks to balance ecological health and market value.

1.23 Game view of a user in ‘eco-romantic’ mode making decisions to degrow certain parts of their house. The interface displays the different placement options and takes different factors into account when scoring the decision, such as the amount of energy it would save and the ecological benefit it would produce, as well as how much it would cost the user to execute their plans.

1.24 Similar to the previous image, this shows the expansion of the individual decision-making at the collective level, utilising the roof as an extended communal garden that prioritises biodiversity in valuing the bio-coin in an attempt to change market trends.

1.25–1.27 Game view of the virtual environment in ‘eco-modernist’ mode which allows farmers in rural areas to simulate different actions and consequences of their farming practices in order to view their impact on the ecology at individual and communal scales.

RC2 Soft Robotic Architecture

Valentina Soana

Research Cluster 2 explores the potential of robotic systems, lightweight structures and shape-changing materials in architecture and design. Our research moves beyond the role of robotics as tools towards the notion of robotic spaces, structures and building systems. This approach opens new interaction scenarios between human, material and machine systems.

Designers have long envisioned building systems that can respond and adapt to human, environmental and structural conditions. The integration of robotic solutions into elastic material systems can create novel structures that are able to self-form, reconfigure and achieve multiple states, operating and interacting at both architectural and human scales. This approach can generate systems that achieve motion-leveraging material behaviours. Compared to conventional rigid-body kinematic systems, elastic kinetic structures can adapt to continuous changes in internal and external conditions with a minimal amount of energy and material resource.

During the year, Research Cluster 2 investigated multidisciplinary approaches at the intersections between architecture, art and engineering. Students developed novel adaptive material and structural systems that can achieve multiple states of equilibrium. The integration of actuation principles based on pneumatic and cable-driven approaches with elastic, bending and tensile material behaviours generated lightweight kinetic systems. These robotically controlled systems leveraged material behaviours to respond to changing conditions. Each team focused on a different design context to create structures that could respond to human emotions and other criteria such as music.

In parallel to the design of a new physical system, our work focused on the development of novel methods to control the behaviour of these continuously changing material and structural systems. We developed custom algorithms to compute system choreographies and control information based on feedback such as human and sound data. This approach allowed the designer/ choreographer to generate a continuously changing system by integrating design intentions and physical feedback.

Students

TPOP

Weichen Dong, Jiahui Li, Yuanxin Li

WINGS

Yuting Lei, Eduardo Nunez Luce, Yue Xu, Xiangyu Zhang

Theory Tutor

Provides Ng

Skills Tutors

Emmanouil Dimitrakakis, Shahram Minooee Sabery

2.1–2.4 WINGS This project proposes a soft robotic structure that is able to self-form and change shape in response to human movements and emotions. The system combines pneumatic elements with curve-folding principles to generate adaptive and lightweight structural forms that fluidly change shape and mimic human behaviour. 2.1 WINGS softRobotic Structure physical prototype. The image shows a human interacting with the WINGS physical robotic system while it is in a closed state.

2.2 A close-up of the WINGS physical robotic system interior. The soft space is used to create an environment that humans can shape through robotic pneumatic actuation and manual manipulation. The image shows details of the fabrication system comprising custommade pneumatic folding units connected by bending active strips. A strategic combination of three systems, folding, inflating and bending, achieves the desired behaviour: folding from a flat state to an enclosed one. 2.3 WINGS softRobotic Structure simulation. This simulation shows the architectural vision of a shape-changing canopy composed of WINGS modules. The structure is designed to achieve a range of movement from fully closed to open. The image shows the three main states superimposed onto each other.

2.4 WINGS softRobotic Structure physical prototype. This image shows a person interacting with the WINGS physical robotic system in a closed state. The project focused on the exploration of different shapes, topologies and curve-folding principles, generating a catalogue of shape-changing building elements. In parallel to material development, a custom feedback control system was developed to sense human motions and emotions and translate them into material states in real time. This project questions the relationship between humans and space, proposing a soft and responsive environment closely connected to human emotion and perception.

2.5–2.9 TPOP This project creates a system of soundresponsive lightweight building elements, designed to enhance the experience of music during concerts and performances. The system augments the perception of sound with visual and spatial dimensions.

2.5 TPOP softRobotic Structure topological and kinetic studies. This image shows a selection of physical robotic prototypes in different states and topologies actuated in response to various sounds.

2.6–2.7 TPOP softRobotic Structure physical prototype. These two images show a user interacting with the TPOP physical robotic system. The system comprises robotically actuated linear elements and elastic surfaces that bend and inflate in response to music. It can self-deploy and achieve a variety of different states.

2.8 TPOP softRobotic Structure physical prototype. The image shows two TPOP modules in a combination of states. Different topologies and actuation sequences generate a wide range of shapes and behaviours. Custom algorithms were developed to compute system choreographies and control data based on music data. This approach allows the designer and/or choreographer to generate a continuously changing system by integrating design intentions and physical and sound feedback.

2.9 TPOP softRobotic Structure topological and kinetic studies. The image shows the architectural vision for a larger TPOP system comprising multiple interacting modules. The structure is designed to articulate the stage during musical performances. The intention is to visually enhance the experience of listening to music and rethink the staging possibilities of live events.

RC3 Living Architecture Lab: AI + Autonomous Architecture

Octavian Gheorghiu, Tyson Hosmer, Philipp Siedler

Research Cluster 3 interrogates the notion of ‘living architecture’ as a coupling of living systems with the continuous assembly and (re)formation of architecture. The research focuses on developing autonomously reconfigurable buildings with situated and embodied agency, facilitated variation and artificial intelligence (AI). The studio develops experimental design models which are embedded with the ability to self-organise, self-assess and self-improve, and which use deep learning to train assembly systems to improve their skills in negotiating shifting architectural objectives. In parallel, we develop architectural robotics and intelligent simulation models in a tightly coupled feedback loop to create an architecture that is self-aware. The studio reappraises linear building life cycles holistically, learning from living systems; we look to achieve extraordinary scalable efficiencies of adaptive construction with simple flexible parts.

Our work seeks to directly embed local adaptability in the design process by training models to learn to adjust and reconfigure to unforeseen and changing socio-economic needs and environmental conditions. One thread of research focuses on enabling physical reconfiguration by tuning and training autonomous robotic assembly systems in digital simulation environments. Real-time control and sensory feedback of physical robotics are managed within bespoke digital twin simulation environments developed using Unity. Another thread focuses on design models that apply AI to the spatial organisation of reconfigurable parts to improve multiobjective architectural problem solving.

This year, Research Cluster 3 rethought the notion of home, work and factory as separate building typologies. Our projects investigated new socio-economic models and scalable platforms that enabled the formation of emergent communities through novel distributed living, working and production models aligned with autonomously adaptive architectural systems. The work operated across several different scales, from the collaboration of small-scale distributed assembly robotic material systems to larger, room-scale robotic spatial embodiments. State-of-the-art architectural robotics and AI design algorithms have the potential not only to transform how we design and build architecture, but to fundamentally change our relationship to and conversation with the built environment. Our projects this year have interrogated ideas surrounding how we live with robots or within robotic environments and how this may change our patterns and way of life.

Students Diffusive Habitats

Eric Morgan Hughes, Faizunsha Ibrahim

Ghousiaa, Sergio

Eduardo Mutis Ordóñez, Garyfallia Papoutsi

Social Engagement Explorer (S.E.E.)

Doaa Marwan Mohamed

Alqaderi, Yuxuan Dai, Jiaping (Sarea) Fang, Hang Li, Tianyu Liu

SYMBOT

Dana Marwan Khalid

Al-Haj, Rhea Sethi, Dhwani Nilesh Shah, Yiduo (Freya) Xu

Transformable Architecture System (T.A.S.)

Yining Tang, Xiaochen Wang, Yutonglong Wang, Junjie Wu

Theory Tutor

Jordi Vivaldi Piera

Skills Tutors

Barış Erdinçer, Ziming He, Panagiotis Tigas, Philipp Siedler, Marko Margeta, Nastasja Mitrovic

Consultants and Critics

Alisa Andrasek, Shajay Bhooshan, Ezio Blasetti, Biayna Bogosian, Mario Carpo, Moritz Doerstelmann, Winka Dubbeldam, Behnaz

Farahi, Jelle Feringa, Nils Fischer, Paulo Flores, Jakub Klaska, Daniel Kohler, Theo Lalis, Ludovico Lombardi, Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Matias Maierhofer, Areti Markopoulou, Anna Maria Meister, Casey Rehm, Jose Sanchez, Patrik Schumacher, Roland Snooks, Robert StuartSmith, Martha Tsigkari, Marios Tsiliakos, Georg Vrachliotis, Maria Yablonina, Philip Yuan

3.1–3.3, 3.27–3.33 Diffusive Habitats This project proposes an autonomous adaptable architectural system that reassesses the linear life cycle of traditional building practice. An advanced distributed robotic material system was developed with bi-directional cyber-physical control protocols for simultaneous state alignment through algorithmic and deep-learning-driven decision-making strategies for robotic collaboration. The project operates through an integrated platform used by the community to both collectively and independently decide the present and future state of their surroundings. The project explores spatial configuration and negotiation through an agent-based spatial planner algorithm which exploits reinforcement learning to respond to and continuously adjust situated volumetric conditions in relation to multi-user requirements. The project utilises constraint-solving algorithms to materialise the space and deploys distributed robots and artificial intelligence to construct and reconfigure the results.

3.1, 3.28–3.29, 3.33

Distributed robotic system prototypes. A series of iterative prototypes were developed for the distributed robotic material system. 3.2 Reinforcement learning. The robots were trained to learn collaborative behaviours in a physics-based simulator. 3.3 Emergent community visualisation. Diffusive habitats are adaptive and scalable, growing from a single room up to emergent village communities. 3.27 Agent-based spatial planner. An agent-based computational system with reinforcement learning was developed and trained to generate continuously adaptive 3D spatial layouts.

3.30–3.32 Spatial adaptation renders. Diffusive habitats were transformed with the collaboration of distributed robots to reconfigure walls, apertures, furniture and spatial elements.

3.4–3.11 S.E.E. Social Engagement Explorer (S.E.E.) provides an integrated computational platform and robotically reconfigurable architecture to enable the formation and adaptation of emergent communities. A distributed robotic material system is developed, combining robotics for assembly and reconfiguration. Robots are composed of two parts: a three-wheeled rover and a bespoke robotic arm linkage which interfaces with the panel system. The two robotic elements are combined as roving assembly robots which break into two parts for various collaborative tasks. In parallel, a mechanical panel system enables locking, unlocking and adjustments to spatial assemblies. A computational platform with reinforcement learning allows autonomous assembly of constrained spatial configurations which negotiate the requirements and social alignment of a community of users. Users sharing spaces connect through a transactional virtual platform used to drive collective space transformation and virtual social interaction. 3.4–3.5, 3.8–3.9 Generative spatial assembly computational system. A computational system trained with self-play reinforcement learning for generating 3D spatial configurations. 3.6–3.7 Distributed robotic material system prototyping. An iterative series of robotic material system prototypes were tested considering a bi-directional synergy between the mechanical locking and sliding system of the architectural panels and the degrees of freedom of the assembly robots. 3.10 Spatial adaptation studies. The constraints of the robotic material system are developed and tested in parallel with the computation system to continuously adapt existing assemblies. 3.11 Adaptive architecture visualisations. The project is designed as an emergent community and considers how living with robotic environments might change how we use and inhabit space.

3.12–3.17 SYMBOT This project considers an ecology of humans and robotic environments co-existing through

symbiotic and conversational relationships. It creates adaptable spaces guided by a bottom-up system that enables self-organisation, assembly and reconfiguration. This multi-agent embodied robotic architecture is composed of four interdependent subsystems of large spatial-scale robotics and smaller furniture-scale robotics, including: spatial-scale nested robotic units capable of expansion through robotic sliding; largescale assembly robots for reversible assembly of and locomotion across the nested architectural units; large-scale rovers for moving units and assembling robots at ground level; and a furniture-scale robotic material system for reconfiguring modular elements within spaces using tracks integrated into nested architectural units. The multi-scalar system allows a community of inhabitants to collaboratively adapt and reconfigure their surroundings to create a variety of multi-functional spaces and transform these spaces at the interior level. 3.12–3.13 Computational reconfiguration. A computational simulator was developed to compute reconfiguration sequences within the constraints of the robotic system. 3.14–3.17 Transformable artist community visualisations. The research was contextualised and implemented as a multi-functional artist community in Hackney Wick, London. The multi-scalar robotic system enables the space to transform from private living accommodation to work, display or performance spaces.

3.18–3.26 T.A.S. The Transformable Architectural System (T.A.S.) is inspired by the geometric transformations of the Jitterbug discovered by Buckminster Fuller, and seeks to embody these qualities in a transformable spatial-scale robotic architecture. The autonomously reconfigurable inhabitation system is developed to enable the formation and adaptation of emergent nomadic communities. The system consists of robotically actuated joints to drive the units to transform, connect and disconnect as spatial assemblies. The robotic architecture is developed through the integration of hard and soft skin systems and robotic equipment that enables the required degrees of freedom for the geometric transformations. Parts are actuated to form clusters and larger body plans with the ability to perform individual and collective transformations such as rotating, walking, bridging, expanding and contracting. The project is a self-adaptive architecture developed through a bespoke physics-based computational simulator directly linked to physical robotic prototypes in a cyber-physical feedback-based control system.

3.18–3.19, 3.23–3.24 Body plan visualisations. A range of geometric studies test the spatial opportunities and performative degrees of freedom of various architectural body plans. 3.20 Transformational geometry studies. Architectural robotics are developed within constrained transformational geometry studies enabling interior and exterior transformation. 3.21–3.22 Architectural robotic prototyping. A series of robotic prototypes test and integrate a material system composed of robotics, locking and unlocking joints, and transformable rigid and soft skin systems within the constraints of the robotic system. 3.25–3.26 Nomadic architecture visualisations. The research was developed and tested as a scalable nomadic community platform in both rural and urban contexts.

3.3

3.2

3.11

3.10

3.8

3.9

3.13

3.12

3.17

3.15

3.16

3.21

3.22

3.20

3.18

3.19

3.26

3.23

3.24

3.25

3.28

3.27

3.33

3.31

3.32

3.30

Architecture and Automation: Matter, Home, Platform

Manuel Jiménez Garcia, Gilles Retsin, Kevin Saey

From tiny bits of matter to territorial-scale housing platforms, Research Cluster 4 continues its investigations into housing and automation. Students look to find ‘Home’ as a condition emerging somewhere in between these vastly diverging scales. The cluster develops the imagination, tools and thinking to enable missiondriven, non-extractive, distributed and scalable platforms for housing, with the aim of creating a more equal, sustainable and inspiring built environment.

Already mindful of the social and political consequences of automation, students learn from emerging tech platforms to develop community-driven alternatives for homes and housing. Research Cluster 4 looks at everyday automated workflows set in the present, while being invested in radical spatial and aesthetic agendas for the future. Our research investigates new narratives for community, work, life and domesticity in an increasingly automated world. Topics range from life with autonomous entities, robots, artificial intelligence and mobile robotic mini-factories to viral platforms, primitive materials and activism.

Terra proposed an eco-conscious nonprofit using a combination of automated rammed earth and earth-casting techniques to create environmentally sustainable housing communities. homeLUST developed a platform with a relocation, reforestation and recreation strategy to target rural ageing, environmental degradation and unaffordable housing. EcoLocks applied automated technology to community housing design to create a platform that provides people with free flexible housing that can be dismantled and rebuilt in different locations. conCreate’s goal was to rethink community housing as affordable, sustainable and inclusive. Using recycled concrete, an automated design process and a user platform, conCreate encouraged a relationship between community, architecture and the environment. StoneShare examined methods of alleviating rent burden through the implementation of fractionalised payment models.

Students conCreate Nutnicha Attawutinun, Elisa Ballabio, Nazuk Beborta, Noor Mubesher

EcoLocks

Aala Ibrahim Salih Ahmed

Abbas, Dongxuan Cui, Yuan Geng, Yuchen Xue, Yunhao Zhong homeLUST

Yinzhe (Inge) Cai, Yuran Ji, Guansheng Li, Xiaoyu Pan, Jingxuan Xu

StoneShare

Zeynep Aydinoglu, Md Shakhawat Hossain, James Evan Preuss

Terra

Du Li, Munan (Gareth) Li, Anita Shitseswa Wesonga, Dayong Zhang

Theory Tutors

Mollie Claypool, Provides Ng

Skills Tutor

David Doria

4.1, 4.5, 4.20, 4.24 EcoLocks This project applies automated technology to housing design and uses recycled plastic as its primary building material. It proposes a circular building process where plastic waste, collected from the sea, is stored in housing projects as building blocks. The platform provides people with free, flexible housing that can be disassembled and rebuilt in different locations. It also creates an opportunity for heavily polluting companies to pay for recycled materials to offset their waste. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) has high feasibility due to its strength. It can be recycled up to ten times and has a 500-year life span. The project proposes an algorithm to compute where and how to interlock discrete building blocks, avoiding the need for traditional jointing or post-tensioning systems. Augmented reality technology will assist human technicians in building construction. The discrete interlocking system can form infinite combinations and variations suitable for different dimensions and configurations. Machine learning automatically generates floor plans according to individual user needs. EcoLocks can automatically provide a variety of apartment types and translate the plan result into architectural models.

4.2, 4.6, 4.14, 4.19, 4.23 conCreate This project rethinks community housing as affordable, sustainable and inclusive. Using recycled concrete, an automated design process and a user platform, conCreate encourages a relationship between community, architecture and the environment. Starting from concrete quarries, conCreate gives new life to building elements which would be otherwise wasted during the traditional demolition process. Reconstructing new buildings is the mission of automated architecture, which conCreate adopts as part of its agenda. Despite users not being part of the design process, they are essential to the life of the buildings themselves. Through the conCreate app, they can live sustainably and feel like part of a community.

4.3–4.4, 4.9, 4.16, 4.21, 4.25 StoneShare This project examines methods of rent burden alleviation through the implementation of fractionalised payment models. By allowing residents opportunities to divide allotted spaces at their discretion, it eliminates fixed payment terms, so that rents can scale based on circumstance. This fractionalisation manifests through constructs comprising a monolithic stone framework and rapidly reproducible 3D-printed ‘stone’ programmatic dividers. The stone monoliths shield internal building functions, allowing the building to retain its neolithic aesthetic, while the 3D-printed elements offer users the option of customising via the StoneShare application, providing user authorship as well as personalised functionality within the domicile. All customisation and fractionalisation is done via the use of a proprietary application. This application further enforces the notions of user autonomy and authorship with the proposed armature through its transparent facilitation of rental management and internal customisation. StoneShare’s bipartite system investigates disparate timelines in relation to its interior and exterior conditions. The interior of StoneShare demonstrates a plan in flux entirely based on the needs of the inhabitant, while the exterior remains static, representing a multi-centurial constant. Through this framework, StoneShare aggregations stand removed from architectural trends. Imbued with the ability to change and adapt, StoneShare questions the disposable nature of current architectural models and strives to create forms ingrained with evolutionary potential.

4.7, 4.11–4.13, 4.18, 4.22 Terra This project proposes an eco-conscious nonprofit with partially automated techniques to create environmentally sustainable housing communities. A proprietary material fabrication process

seamlessly combines rammed earth walls and concrete and earth slabs. Through automation of the ramming process, Terra creates a variety of typologies of rammed earth buildings with a computational combination of limited rammed earth components and moulds. The platform promotes a sustainable lifestyle to its residents by subscribing them to sustainable lifestyle products and setting individual emission limits. The goal is to create communities that have access to subsidised and environmentally friendly housing.

4.8, 4.10, 4.15, 4.17 homeLUST This project puts forward a platform that stimulates old villages and designs city residences with a relocation, reforestation and recreation strategy that targets rural ageing, environmental degradation and unaffordable housing. The UK is home to several remote villages made up of elderly residents who do not have adequate access to healthcare. homeLUST suggests a land-planning system that thoughtfully relocates residents from these villages to the city, providing them with brand new homes reminiscent of their old ones. homeLUST automatically generates each building with the architectural characteristics of its original village and builds it using cross-laminated timber and glulam to realise rapid construction. Each original living environment is recreated through Lidar scanning to deliver a familiar, home-like experience. The project also matches each rehomed resident with a young cohabitant who will act as a caregiver in exchange for affordable housing. The village sites are then reforested, providing resources for future projects.

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Material Architecture Lab

Ordinary Material

Adam Holloway, Guan Lee, Daniel Widrig

‘It is not enough to use brick because we like its texture and [because] it is a material full of historical references. It is not that this is bad in and of itself, but we can take much better advantage of its possibilities.’

Eladio Dieste, 2004

What makes a material ‘ordinary’? How can non-ordinary uses of material play a role in architecture and design experiments? How can the conflicts in use and design of material be considered ordinary in different situations? Do surprising outcomes in material use arise because of the ‘misuses’ of material, or must unexpected results be attributed to ‘new’ material?

Architecture of material is about engineering imagined opportunities, cooking with or without a recipe and constructing solids out of liquids. Whether designing or making, what we seek can transform everyday ideals. At the heart of a material-based practice is the commitment to stretch the bounds of experimentation and fabricate purposeful trial and error. One can argue that each material has an ideal expression based on its properties, innate qualities and ability to be. As we move further away from the naturalness of a material, do we necessarily arrive at innovative materiality? How do we measure the performance of such inventiveness without appropriate use? We are advocating not a disregard for pragmatic concerns but a closer examination of the different roles that context can play above and beyond the realms of practicality. Ordinariness is not necessarily ordinary, materiality is not materially stable.

In Research Cluster 5&6, we encourage design and making within a critical framework that is anything but ordinary. This year our projects have included a plant-based composite using corn, flax and willow, by-products from the fast fashion industry and compressed earth-based bricks. The challenge was to transform artisanal work that is difficult to scale into architecture. How can craft grow from one person making one thing at a time to a collective understanding of materials and a dialogue of give and take in construction? This shift of scales, central to our projects, is both physical and conceptual.

Students

The Corn Factor

Hanzhe Bao, Zhengyou

Chen, Zhenhao Jin, Qianyi Sun

Fast Fashion Architecture

Chao-An Chang, Chung Yin (Jeffrey) Kwong, Taylor Leung, Chong Li, Jiali Yan

Rain, Willow and Mud

Siying Chen, Siyuan Meng, Shijie Wu, Xiangbayangxi

Skin of Flax

Solomia Bogusz, Sangwon Cho, Tessia Zachariah, Pinru Zhu

Small Moves

Xiaohui Chen, Yutong Wu, Zheng Zhang, Yihui Zhao

Theory Tutor

Ruby Law

Skills Tutor

Bryan Ho

Sponsor

Grymsdyke Farm

5&6.1, 5&6.3–5&6.8 Rain, Willow and Mud This project takes on the challenge of applying purely organic materials and traditional methods of making to the contemporary practice of architecture. More specifically, the project investigates wattle and daub, a historical form of construction that combines a lattice of plantbased strips with sticky material, usually made of a combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw. This has been a common practice for centuries in the architectural vernaculars of cultures across Asia and Europe. The beauty of this practice lies in the contrast between the delicately woven wattle structure and the paste of raw earth that it is encased in, often applied in an ad hoc manner. However, while wattle and daub has significant advantages as a sustainable construction technique, it has fallen out of favour due to its inability to be scaled up to meet today’s expectations of finishing in buildings. This design research focuses on three key aspects: learning from traditional basket-weaving techniques to improve the structural integrity of the willow frame; investigating both the sourcing and composition of soil used for daubing to produce an optimal recipe; and lastly, combining these two elements of research into a design output of prefabricated material components with the help of digital tools. Rain, Willow and Mud work together before and after, above and beyond inhabitation.

5&6.2, 5&6.30–5&6.36

Fast Fashion Architecture

With the rapid expansion of the garment industry, its mounting by-products, including fabric offcuts, have irreversibly affected our natural environment. Although fashion and architecture have traditionally been conceived as two independent disciplines, they could be united by their shared use of textiles as a primary material. This project develops a material study that interweaves a synthesis between textile waste pollution (a result of the fast fashion industry) and architecture. The design works closely with synthetic fabric, widely used in fast fashion manufacturing yet the source of various types of harmful pollution, to develop architectures that can extend the lifespan of these textiles. As woven strands of polyester yarn cannot be undone or refashioned, heat is used to bind discarded synthetic fabric into construction bricks. The research asks if speed and cheap production necessarily mean inferior quality. The responsible use of material comes with a cost and cannot be hurried.

5&6.9–5&6.15 The Corn Factor Corn as an agricultural crop has significantly impacted human cultures and surroundings for over 10,000 years. As maize production increases, its negative effects including land loss have worsened. This research questions how we can live with corn not only for sustenance but also as a construction material. What if the entire corn plant could be utilised: the fruit, husk, cob, stoke, silk, ear, tassel and even the roots? How might this approach affect the ecology of the cultivation and consumption of corn? What are the environmental factors that are at stake?

5&6.16–5&6.22 Small Moves The focus of this project is how slight and incremental adjustments in earth construction can improve the material process. Building with earth can be a cumbersome and tedious process. Small Moves sees these supposed disadvantages as key attributes of lower embodied energy construction. By limiting the amount of material transportation, architecture can become more sustainable. Rammed earth is a well-established construction technique in different cultures. In order to sustain this way of making architecture, a certain amount of refinement is inevitable, however minimal. This research considers tweaks in the earth material recipe, strategic modification in methods of ramming earth and digital shifts in design language. By moving less, the material can go further.

5&6.23–5&6.29 Skin of Flax What if the skin of architecture was made of plants? How would it feel to the touch? This project explores the use of natural flax fibre as a sustainable architectural material. Flax is primarily used in the textile industry, and is characterised by high durability, robustness and great tensile strength. Through wet felting and moulding, this research develops a cloak for buildings that is more animal than vegetal. This leather-like material can be hairy or smooth and is both flexible and resilient. If the construction industry is supplied with a viable alternative to leather, where could this material be applied? What would the Skin of Flax architecture look like?

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RC7 Biospatial Assemblies

Richard Beckett

Research Cluster 7 is an innovative design research studio that considers how advances in ecology, engineering and the human microbiome are affecting architecture. It explores new modes of bio-design and digital fabrication, as well as advances in the fields of synthetic biology and material sciences. We question how these topics can challenge modern approaches to architecture which have sought to separate the human from the non-human world as the preferred condition. Instead, using a multidisciplinary and multispecies design approach, we pursue new ways of building with living agencies to create future cities that are sustainable, healthy and biodiverse in the age of the Anthropocene.

This year we explored novel ways of integrating unplanned and unplannable living agencies into architecture and cities. Themes included bio-augmented design, resilient infrastructure, novel architectural tectonics and large-scale living fabrication. Students adopted the contemporary understanding of the human as a holobiont, while exploring the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), to develop novel biospatial platforms, materials and assemblies for multiple living agencies across a range of building typologies.

The results included new social narratives for urban living using greening transport networks to provide more equal access and exposure to nature in cities. A new style of built microbial infrastructure, autonomously operated through a platform using ML models, offered new programmes that facilitate shared spaces for gig workers, commuters and residents.

New assemblies were developed using loofah, mycelium and plant roots. These living building materials, produced naturally and then assembled through biological growth, were embedded with secondary living organisms for a range of functions including health, photosynthesis and volatile organic compound absorption. These living assemblies were explored for a new type of housing.

Elsewhere, ML datasets informed new tectonics, optimised for the growth of microorganisms on buildings. These ecologies engage biologically with the material condition to inform the physical and aesthetic phenomenon of ‘building ageing’ as a beneficial condition. This approach rejects the sterile obsession of modernism and the aesthetics of ‘newness’. Instead, ageing and ruining become planned conditions informing time-based reconfigurations of mass, material and space within a building programme.

Students Biohealer.AI

Xiaoying Fu, Yuqian Gao, Hangchuan Wei, Yuhan Wu

Biospatial Assemblage

Aya Ahmed, Keerthi Prakash

Loofahtecture

Junjie Lyu, Yuchen Qiu, Jinghui Wei

Theory Tutor

Yota Adilenidou

Skills Tutors

Tony Le, Levent Ozruh, Diego Pinochet

7.1, 7.5–7.11 Biohealer.AI This project is a novel design platform for embedding non-human biodiversity into buildings through the use of machine learning techniques which integrate complex ecological datasets to create nature-centric design strategies. The project utilises these datasets to inform tectonics which optimise the growth of microorganisms upon the building substratum. These ecologies in turn engage with the material condition to inform the physical and aesthetic phenomenon of building ageing as a beneficial condition. This approach rejects the sterile obsession of modernism and the expectation that buildings should exhibit aesthetics of newness. Instead, the ageing, and in some cases the ruining, becomes a planned condition which exhibits time-based reconfigurations of material and space within the building as part of the mixed-use programme.

7.2–7.4 Biospatial Assemblage Building on the previous bioreceptive design approaches developed in Research Cluster 7, this project looks beyond the material condition towards defining new ways to plan building strategies to integrate living matter into buildings. The proposed tool will allow environmental information to be embedded into any given structure, thus optimising building mass and form for the maximum growth of natural diversity. This concept shifts the reduction of risk in human and non-human entanglements from incorporating purely behavioural factors to also include social conditions. The project explores the potential for greening transport networks as a strategy to provide more equal access and exposure to nature in a new style of infrastructure dubbed ‘assemblage pods’. These structures will be autonomously operated and host spaces for gig workers, Transport for London users and local residents.

7.12–7.18 Loofahtecture Rapid urbanisation and increasingly sterile built environments associated with modernist architecture are isolating humans from green spaces and microbes. Microorganisms play a key role in the field of human health through relationships between the human microbiome and the microbiome in buildings. It is important to restore the microbial diversity in urban habitats to create a healthier living environment for the contemporary model of the human as a holobiont. The project explores the use of loofah, a natural plant material, to conduct biological experiments and experiments in the manufacturing of building materials. The purpose is to design a grown building material embedded with living organisms which are combined within computational assemblies to create biological assemblies that can be applied to architectural design.

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RC8 Fused Space and Continuous Lifecycles

Kostas Grigoriadis

Piece-by-piece assembly has remained unchanged as a method of constructing buildings since time immemorial. It can be argued that there is no fundamental difference between the way buildings were constructed 2,000 years ago and how they are made today. Parts and pieces are cut to size and shape, delivered to the construction site and assembled mechanically.

For the past six years, Research Cluster 8 has endeavoured to fundamentally rethink this practice. Resisting current discretebased design and construction methodologies, we have speculated on how architecture can advance from this unchanged practice through material fusion. In this approach, there are no pieces, parts, assemblies, components, elements, connections, bolts, screws and glues. Instead, there is just topology, enabled by the 3D printing of multi-materials – materials that are fused together continuously, changing gradually from ceramic to stainless steel, for instance, without the need for mechanical or other connections.

This shift to fusion is rapidly taking place in industries adjacent to architecture, such as aerospace engineering. At the same time, corresponding CAD/CAM methods are also evolving to reflect this change. For instance, boundary representation (BRep) and discrete representations of geometry are giving way to implicit modelling and field-driven design. Additive manufacturing can achieve ever-larger structural parts, connections, walls and even whole structures like bridges.

In light of this, we have spent this year exploring the combination of 3D-printed plastics with variable rigidity, opacity, colour and texture to achieve rich varieties of spatial qualities and environments. In addition, lifecycle considerations about the sourcing of these materials and their end of life led us to research their recursive recycling and the design of ever-changing and adapting environments. Material continuity also became a continuity of process.

Multi-material architecture is not a bygone trend nostalgically explored by architects and researchers, but a logical evolution of current manufacturing technologies. ‘Multi-material is the next evolution in the technology … you’re probably looking at a 5 to 10-year timescale to see real multi-material integration.’ 1 It is not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’.

Students Completing London

Modernism

Mai Ibrahim Saleh

Altheeb, Lawrence Hsu, Jiangjing Mao Vestriplas

Jingyan Liu, Basak Su Ozcelik, Surapa Phataraprasit, Mingze Tang

Theory Tutor

Ilaria Di Carlo

Skills Tutors

Sam Esses, Alberto Fernández González, Martina Rosati

Consultants and Critics

Roberto Bottazzi, Martyn Carter, Marjan Colletti

1. James Bradbury (2013), ‘The Rise of Multi-Material 3D Printing’, The Engineer, 9 May. Available at www.theengineer.co.uk/ content/in-depth/ the-rise-of-multimaterial-3d-printing

8.1, 8.4 Completing London Modernism The design creates a variety of spatial qualities in three dimensions that can be occupied for various flexible functions, rather than spaces that only serve specific needs. To achieve this, gradual variations of enclosure are designed. Thickness, transparency, density, flexibility and colour are explored through the fusion of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), both forms of plastic. Solar and structural analyses and circulation access inform the organisation of these variable properties. The resulting spaces range from private to open, with light also ranging between direct to diffused and neutral to coloured.

8.2–8.3, 8.11–8.14 Vestriplas 8.2, 8.12 Throughout history tessellation has been used in building envelopes and for architectural embellishment. Here, the arrangement of atoms in crystal formations serves as the inspiration for the design of tessellating patterns used in unit lattice cells. A mesoscale cellular structure generated by replicating one of these formations is explored using plastics with different structural properties and colours targeted to corresponding areas of the structure under high or low structural stress. These plastics are fused together to become one continuously graded structure. 8.3, 8.11, 8.13–8.14 Mass production of plastic has accelerated rapidly, resulting in billions of metric tonnes of waste that poses a severe threat to the environment. Roughly 90% of plastic produced is not recycled. Sawdust is another material that almost always ends up in landfill. To address this issue, this project merges these two components into a multi-material composition and utilises this as a building material. Spaces of variable porosity, transparency and thickness are manufactured by making use of particle-based digital design methods and dual-nozzle extrusion techniques to organise the sawdust inside the plastic matrix. This enables us to adjust internal comfort, visibility and privacy. The ensuing building proposal is for the multi-material to be 3D-printed within a lattice framework built in a vacant area in Shoreditch, London. The mix is recursively deposited in parts of the framework to define spaces for exhibitions and other events, then removed, shredded and converted into filament, only to be 3D-printed again to form new spaces in this constantly evolving artificial material landscape.

years. The project is sited in one of these spaces and fashions an appendix to the row of terraced apartments adjacent to the railway line next to the site. A concrete core and steel frame provide the structural framework within which continuous, multi-plastic enclosures are 3D-printed with variable colours, transparency, density and porosity of openings. The resulting spaces form a highly varied contrast to the repetitiveness of the estate.

8.10 Vestriplas Sawdust and plastic, textural skin studies. Colour data from solar analysis of the form is extracted and blurred using the 3D animation application, Houdini. This data is then rebuilt within a hexagonal unit and various patterns are applied to it. Transparent plastic is used for shaded areas, while sawdust is used for areas that receive direct light. Another skin study is based on structural displacement analysis. Colour is used to control whether the skin is porous or not. The areas with lower displacement and therefore higher structural stability are covered in open faces for natural ventilation. The material used in these areas is 100% plastic due to the lower structural strength requirements.

8.5–8.9 Completing London Modernism

8.5, 8.8 Sequential iterations of the shortest path algorithm generate different degrees of spatial enclosure and porosity. These iterations are then used for a new set of studies of variable transparency and opacity, programmed across different areas of the porous envelopes. 8.6, 8.9 The design method is applied on the modernist site of the Barbican Estate, London. The estate’s conservatory is the second largest in London and houses more than 2,000 species of plants and trees. Built more than 40 years ago, the estate’s public concourse is oversized, and its proportions are a nostalgic remnant within the dense urban space of contemporary London. The proposal forms another appendix to the estate, between conservatory, public concourse and residential buildings. The plastic form changes from transparent at the top of the conservatory to opaque in front of the adjacent concrete volumes. These cellular multi-material spaces insert a multiplicity of ambiences into this context, inviting open inhabitation and lively activities into the uniform modernist leftover space. 8.7 The project is an extension of the Alexandra Road estate, London, designed by Neave Brown. One of the characteristics of the development and other similar modernist buildings in London is the linear arrangement of housing units across the site, which can result in repetitive and undifferentiated spatial qualities. Additionally, several unused spaces have formed within the estate over the

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RC9 Architecture for the Augmented Age

Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez, Igor Pantic

Throughout history, technology has had a crucial influence on the development of society. Different eras have been defined by technological advancements which have had a profound impact on the built environment and construction. It has been proposed that, after the internet age, we are entering a new era – the ‘Augmented Age’ 1 – while physicist Michio Kaku argues for a future in which architects rely heavily on augmented reality (AR). 2 As we immerse ourselves in rapidly developing extended realities (XR), the barriers between humans and machines are increasingly blurred, with portable devices such as smartphones and tablets augmenting our perception of the environment.

Research Cluster 9 explores how XR technologies can change the ways in which we design, build and interact with our cities. We explore a hybrid approach to making that is neither purely analogue nor automated through the application of alternative fabrication strategies, utilising cutting-edge head-mounted devices to holographically assist designers and makers. We ask whether full automation is the ultimate goal or whether the role of humans in the construction chain needs to be reconsidered as automation is more widely adopted. Making in mixed reality (MR) reinvigorates traditional craftsmanship by augmenting hand and material skills with the precision and formal possibilities of digital modelling. MR-assisted processes can enhance human labour with data previously exclusive to machines while enabling seamless inclusion of intuitive decisionmaking and experience, both of which are often absent from automated construction processes.

Our research also includes XR technologies which allow for immersive experience and interaction with the metaverse and built environment. We propose new models which question the concepts of art ownership and intellectual property by developing digital platforms for multi-player design and using AI-assisted design. Under this speculative agenda, students interrogate how virtual platforms, understood as environments in which users can create, collaborate, explore, socialise and engage in economic activity, intertwine with the built environment and how architecture and the urban environment become the canvas and enablers of the virtual.

Students

AthAR

Maher Moghrabi, Yancheng Qu, Armita

Vajdi, Jiaming Ye

CastAR

Haodong Kong, Xuqi Liu, Yu-Han Tseng, Zihan Yuan Mixity

Xiuyun Hu, Chi (Jill) Lee, Yin-Chu Yu, Xu Zhang

SkillCast+

Sarah Khaled Murtada

Aladayleh, Misha Anthony Gliwny, Yi Li, Esra Oksuz

Theory Tutor

Stephannie Fell Contreras

Skills Tutor

José Pareja Gómez

Consultant

Hanjun Kim

Critics

Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Ponk Memoli, Jose Sanchez, Pablo Zamorano

1. Brett King (2016), Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane, Singapore: Marshall Cavendish International

2. Michio Kaku (2014), The Future of the Mind, New York: Doubleday

9.1 Mixity This project proposes a collaborative platform for users to interact with the cityscape in mixed reality (MR). It injects open-ended design into the seemingly immutable urban context while boosting its dynamism and flexibility. The platform implements the notion of ‘remixing’ culture by providing open-source kitbashing and libraries generated using artificial intelligence (AI) as design tools that challenge the traditional crafting and creation methods at the intersection of traditional design and MR. To investigate the potential of architecture in the digital age, Mixity invites crowds to play, create and interact as creative users. The project combats digital totalitarianism by promoting a commons-based collaborative community.

9.2–9.9 SkillCast+ This project proposes a hybrid material system composed of steam-bent timber surface elements made from pockets of nylon fabric filled with sawdust, solidified with PVA glue and built with the help of MR. By combining MR-aided assembly with locally sourced materials of timber, sawdust and fabric, SkillCast+ enables construction skills to be downloaded through MR, based on archived gestures of bending, stitching and folding. The MR platform of Skillcast+ can optimise fabrication methodologies of rural housing for digital nomads, eliminating the need for skilled labour or outsourced materials. 9.2 MR-assisted fabrication of a physical prototype. Holographic guides are displayed through HoloLens, a head-mounted MR device. 9.3 AR manufacturing process. 9.4–9.7 AR functionalities.

9.8 Diagram of a built physical prototype. The primary structure is made of steam-bent timber, while sawdust infill surfaces serve as an enclosure. 9.9 Visualisation of a housing prototype.

9.10–9.13 CastAR This project proposes a fast and affordable system for building low-cost housing in rural China, by creating a series of complex moulds for spray-on glass-fibre-reinforced concrete from wicker. The use of MR in fabrication allows people without previous construction knowledge to engage in the construction of their community. An MR app for HoloLens is developed in order to guide the construction process, in which builders will create wicker formwork and assemble the GRC panels in place following holographic templates. 9.10 A section of a housing unit, assembled from puzzle-like sandwich panels. The primary enclosure is connected and strengthened by additional single surface panels placed over the seams. 9.11, 9.13 Housing prototype visualisations. 9.12 On-site assembly sequence.

9.14–9.18 AthAR Recent technological developments suggest that in the near future we will be living in a world where MR is ubiquitous and completely integrated into our daily lives. This has the potential to change the way we perceive and interact with our environment, as our physical reality is overlaid with digital information. This project proposes a game-like platform which enables the creative community to propose an interactive experience with its built environment through MR, exploring new forms of art ownership. This approach opens up the aesthetic and semiological possibilities of architecture beyond the physical and introduces time as a flexible variable in the customisation process. 9.14–9.16 AR user interface. The images show the process of a user creating digital overlays over the existing built environment. Primitive geometries are used to augment the volume of existing buildings. Customised textures, generated with AI diffusion models and accessible through a usercontributed library, are then overlaid. 9.17 Digital overlay on a physical environment. 9.18 Instructions for creating digital overlays on built structures.

9.19–9.23 Mixity 9.19 Kitbash workflow and functionalities. An open-source kitbash library is used as a means of altering the volume of existing buildings. Users can place,

scale and rotate models from the library, attaching them to the built environment’s digital twin before they proceed to alter their appearance with AI-generated imagery.

9.20 The Mixity phone app. 9.21 The kitbash model catalogue.

9.22 Artwork gallery map. Since this is a multi-user platform, experiences can be shared or individualised. A user can see previews of digital overlays for nearby buildings created by other users. 9.23 Visualisation of a digital overlay on the physical environment.

Ecocentric Assemblies

Andreas Körner, Barry Wark

RC10

Research Cluster 10 is motivated by ecocentrism, giving value and consideration to all kinds of matter in the creation of an ecological architecture. Our research utilises machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to remove anthropocentric bias through procedural design tools. To achieve this, we have developed methodologies which integrate environmental information and non-humans within our processes, resulting in a biodiverse and material-focused built environment.

We explore ecological aesthetics, considering how architecture can move beyond superficial designs that focus on the ‘sweetness’ of nature towards qualities that might make us contemplate the interconnectedness of our artefacts with the atmosphere and other ecological agents. The cluster conceives of buildings as open and adaptive entities, operating over large timescales that embrace the lives and post-lives of multiple occupants and components. In doing so, we imagine new forms of inhabitation in our urban spaces that foster ecocentric values. Furthermore, the cluster investigates the methods, means and production that would allow for such an architecture to be realised in the world, encompassing digital fabrication, assembly and novel materials.

This year, teams explored material systems of stone, bricks and cast elements. Each group considered how their system might form the primary structures on site over long timescales, speculating on how the very act of building might have to be reconceived in this endeavour. Each team developed AI-empowered sketch tools where the organisation of the building ranged between generative production and the wilful desire of the designer. In order to make these tools, each team developed a set of qualitative and quantitative criteria, ranging from novel spatial taxonomies to solar analysis, in order to inform the production of their own datasets for ML. All projects speculated on the spatial and aesthetic possibilities of such architecture, experienced and developed through time-based media and empowered by game-engine environments.

Students Brick(s)

Rachel George, Prarthna Misra, Dushyant Jitendra Wagh

ReCASTING

Yefan Gu, Chuheng Tan, Dongqi Ying

Neo-Liths

Juan Ramon Cantu, Xiaoning Feng, Sukriti Garg, Jiacen Yao

Theory Tutor

Andreas Körner

Skills Tutors

Tony Le, Nayan Patel

Consultants and Critics

Patrick Danahy, Casey Rehm

10.1, 10.4–10.6 Neo-Liths The project embraces the longevity of construction materials in architecture by developing a lithic structural framework that operates on an ecological timescale. A set of design tools are developed through the use of procedural design and machine learning (ML). These tools enhance design capacities by embedding environmental intelligence in the act of drawing stone structural layouts while retaining authorship. Ecocentrism, a non-hierarchical arrangement of all objects and organisms, is reflected in the openness occurring throughout the material layers of the project. The deployment of the stone structure in a stepped arrangement provides the possibility of future human-architectural intervention thanks to its longevity. The porosity of high-resolution 3D-printed textures creates a skin which promotes the diffusion of nonhuman organisms due to the exposure to different climatic conditions throughout time. To understand different naturally occurring weathering processes, a series of simulation workflows have been developed. This includes the staining of stone surfaces due to sunlight and the capillary movement of water through the lithic structure. The tectonic layers consisting of natural stone, 3D-printed stone and lightweight timber structures are arranged according to different degrees of longevity. The resulting spatial arrangement creates lightness and darkness as well as sequences of highly heterogeneous spaces. The project explores architecture as an additive process where new layers are incorporated over time to create a rich built environment with a distinct, ecocentric aesthetic.

10.2–10.3 ReCASTING This project rethinks casting techniques in architecture as a method of production and deploys generative design tools to increase the ecocentric potential of casting. The project is interested in shapelessness, intricacy and co-existence with non-human agencies. ML in conjunction with procedural modelling is used to create a set of tools that can be applied to any site while regarding each specific location’s constraints such as solar heat gains and shading. The architectural articulation distinguishes between concrete frames, façade elements and an adaptive interior wall system. The frame is assumed as a given spatial matrix and all other design parameters are based on it. The building’s envelope consists of a series of textured elements that weather over time. They are replaced when needed, allowing the building to gradually change. The interior walls are made from wood and have the shortest lifespan of any component in the project. When needed, elements can be replaced and the building adapted. This project proposes that we can envision materials that are usually unsustainable as ecological through design. Cast elements are used to design a building that lasts for centuries while accepting and embracing weathering processes as ecocentric aesthetics.

10.7–10.10 Brick(s) The project explores the idea of a building that is constantly being reconstructed over millennia, with elements being installed, dismantled and rebuilt across a site. Some areas are left to experience non-determinate growth and colonisation and others are programmed for human inhabitation. This programming is not static but adaptive and changes over time. In this endeavour, the project considers bricks not as static building elements, but as durable, reconfigurable elements that have structural capacity as well as the ability to easily propagate vegetation. This will allow some areas to be built upon and others to be unmaintained, displaying a structure interconnected with its environment, and creating new kinds of spatial experiences in our urban environments. The project investigates notions of wildness by creating a multi-

layered and highly diverse landscape of interior and exterior spaces. Bricks have been used in construction since ancient times. This project investigates traditional ways of building with bricks and the resulting patterns and methods to create intricacy. This historic review, together with tools such as ML, procedural modelling and environmental simulations, creates a rich design ecology. Wind and solar analysis are used to identify suitable areas for human occupation in this ecocentric environment.

Architectural Design Thesis

Module Coordinators: Mollie Claypool, Jordi Vivaldi Piera

In this module students write at Master’s level, analysing text to establish content relevant to their individual programme of study. The vehicle for this is an introduction to key theoretical concepts in architectural design, taught in the first term, which are then taken forward during the rest of the academic year. These concepts are varied but specific to the clusters’ research for that year. The module gives students an overview of the skills required to undertake a theoretical, cultural and historical study at postgraduate level, looking into the issues that underpin a study of architectural design, and introduces students to appropriate lines of investigation. Students develop their knowledge of the theoretical and historical issues that underpin a study of architectural design and gain an understanding of the skills required to undertake a theoretical and historical study. They then undertake a written essay (including a literature review) with a bibliography and illustrations, examples of which are shown on the following pages.

Architectural Cannibalisation

Xinjie Wu

Thesis tutor: Albert

Brenchat-Aguilar

‘Architectural Cannibalisation’ explores architectural recycling when dealing with objects of a similar nature and confronting neo-colonial global practices of resource extraction. This thesis explores the digestion of buildings by other buildings and examines how this relates to colonial constructions of the ‘savage’. Architectural Cannibalism embraces other forms of knowledge that reject a capitalist linear conception of time and lead to practices of circular economy and respect for the environment.

Cannibalism as a historical concept was not only interpreted as people or other non-humans eating those of their own species, but also used as a racist and colonialist term on the European and American continents, particularly during the 18th century. Some colonial powers used this term indiscriminately to refer to certain populations, whose lands and minds they intended to colonise, as ‘backward’. The refurbishment, maintenance and demolition of buildings generate huge amounts of waste; they are also responsible for consuming vast quantities of the world’s resources, which could lead to catastrophic shortages in the future. Architectural Cannibalisation, however, would lead to buildings becoming reversible. Most of the reused materials could be cut into fragments for better cannibalisation, so that some buildings might even be able to digest

themselves. At times, such digestion would require the material’s own properties to be altered to adjust to new circumstances.

Architectural Cannibalism could reshape the city’s historical narratives, transforming the texture of its buildings by allowing them to be constantly dismantled and reconstructed. When the inherent motivation of cannibalism is superimposed on colonisation, not only do local architectural styles and cultural representations change dramatically, but the character of the material is also attached to the new building as people reassign it.

Image: A material combination test of architecture cannibalism. Image by the author

Diffusing Babel: Recreating an Authorship Model for Living Architecture

Sergio Eduardo Mutis Ordóñez

Thesis tutor: Jordi Vivaldi

As Roland Barthes stated, the humanist author is a modern figure who, allegedly, creates through their own individual genius, shaping their creations into existence.1 Therefore, as captured by Mario Carpo’s reflections, the paradigm of modern architectural authorship is that of form-making. 2

The last major incarnation of this type of authorship was staged during the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. Assembly lines and washing machines triggered modernist architects to envision mass-prefabricated utopias of steel and glass. Designers had to forego their ideas of becoming ornamental sculptors and embrace making through the assembly of prefabricated building blocks. Yet the change for modernist architects was not a fundamental one, as they remained, in essence, form-makers.

These days, within the ever-evolving Digital Revolution, architecture is in the midst of a much greater change. Ongoing developments lead architects to daydream about total robotic fabrication, mass customisation and super-intelligent design. As Carpo asserts, the new modes of architectural authorship are embracing high-speed computation to find better shapes through heuristic trial and error, a fundamental change that redefines the paradigm of authorship as that of form-finding.

Yet, one of these new modes of architectural authorship, Living Architecture, does not fit the pattern. Living architectures are autonomous systems capable of selforganisation, assessment and improvement. They apply high-speed trial and error but are also evolving systems that never conclusively ‘find’ a form. If they are not authored through form-finding, then how?

Fortunately, the realm of fiction might hold the key to this setup. As Paul Ricoeur describes, fiction has the capacity to shape reality, 3 spawning novel ideas and understandings. Yet, few fictions provide such unique insight into contemporary authorship as Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Library of Babel (1941). This study, therefore, sets its sights on Borges’ wandering librarians to uncover and explore a more accurate model for understanding living architecture creations: Diffusive Authorship, a masscollaborative multispecies search.

1. Roland Barthes (1977), ‘The Death of the Author’ (trans. S. Heath), Image, Music, Text, London: Fontana, pp142–148

2. Mario Carpo (2017), The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

3. Paul Ricoeur (1979), ‘The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality’, Man and World, Vol. 12, pp123–41 Image: Diffused Library of Babel. Iteration #02c8. Triggers: Borges-Bruegel-Demaziéres-Turner-Basile. 2022. Image by the author

Gaming Architecture: Space Perception Enhancement through Materiality

Xiuyun Hu

Today, the popular perception of architecture derives from the physical world. However, as new technological developments lead to a migration of activities from the physical world to the virtual world, a transformation is also occurring in the field of architecture. Unlike physical space, in cyberspace, where gravity and capital are no longer significant criteria constraining architecture, materiality emphasises not the utility of the actual building but rather the perception of virtual space. Consequently, even though designers are free from structural and material constraints, they must consider how to work with people’s spatial perception in digital worlds. A new perspective on materiality might bring this problem into a new light.

Videogames, among the most emblematic media in the virtual world, have provided an interface for the application of architecture in cyberspace. Thus, this thesis uses the overlapping topics of games and architecture as a basis for discussing the interpenetration of physical architecture and the digital world. In videogames, the employment of a physical simulacrum is a common strategy for immersive spatial perception that compensates for the lack of acumen in gaming architecture. In addition, limited visual and aural senses direct people’s focus towards spatial interaction.

As the role and necessity of virtual architecture evolves, ‘narrative’, ‘simulacrum’ and ‘interactivity’ have become the three most important factors for designers to consider. This thesis aims to clarify how these factors work as materiality to drive and enhance spatial perception in digital construction. Through case studies, the thesis analyses the techniques used to achieve these three aspects in videogames. Lastly, based on the theory and precedent study, the thesis discusses the project Mixity as an experimental approach to applying the abovementioned techniques to develop spatial perception in virtual worlds.

Thesis tutor: Stephannie Fell Contreras

Image: Mixity project – digital overlay on physical architecture. Image by the author

Responding to Sadness

Yuting Lei

Thesis tutor: Provides Ng

Recent research has shown that the average person spends more than 90% of their time within buildings; the long-term negative emotions developed through this, such as sadness, may threaten both psychological and physical health.1 Although happiness is an essential parameter in the evaluation of urban life, emotions are generally not a priority for architects in the design of building forms and functions. According to Frijda, ‘Emotion implies a relationship between an experience and a particular event, object or environment.’ 2 As such, when an environment responds appropriately to its inhabitants’ needs and desires, it may improve physical and mental health.

This paper introduces a research project on a pneumatic architectural system which facilitates interaction with user emotions. The system, named WINGS, applies a curved folding approach to provide richer deformation results, with the objective of creating a responsive building system. Emotional data is captured and transmitted to control the deformation of the pneumatic structure so that the configured forms may respond to the spatial needs driven by the user’s negative emotions.

The research project consisted of three parts. Firstly, it surveyed the spatial demands of people with sadness through a questionnaire. Secondly, it explored how the curved folding approach may affect the

deformation of pneumatic elements in order to reconfigure spaces. Thirdly, it analysed users’ emotions through data collection and identification, recording responses using the designed interactive system. Research shows that there are commonalities in the spatial demands of people experiencing grief, and the project demonstrated how WINGS may respond to such emotions. This paper concluded by discussing the limitations of the system and relevant ethical concerns.

1. Neil E. Klepeis et al. (2001), ‘The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS): A resource for assessing exposure to environmental pollutants’, Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, Vol. 11(3), pp231–52

2. Nico Frijda (1994), ‘Varieties of Affect: Emotions and episodes, moods, and sentiments’, in D. Ekman, P. Ekman and R. Davidson (eds), The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Oxford University Press, pp297–302 Image: WINGS collecting information about human emotions through sensors and reacting to them through pneumatic deformation, 2022. Image by the author

Stain: Visualising Aspects of Stone Weathering in Architecture Using Machine Learning and Solar Analysis

Xiaoning Feng

Thesis

tutor: Andreas Körner

Since the 20th century, the importance of weathering in architecture has been increasingly recognised. The effects of ageing have become part of the historical aesthetics of stone. To extend the use of this aesthetic, this paper considers the changing colour of stone building façades as a starting point. The staining of architectural façades involves very complex physicochemical processes. Research has shown that these processes are influenced by climatic conditions such as sunlight. However, this influence is not linear and the results are not always visible.

This paper examines the relationship between sunlight and the staining of building façades. It employs machine learning (ML) to build a design tool that visualises this staining and influences the design itself to some extent through a feedback system.

A façade at the Palace of Westminster in London was chosen as a case study. For the study, a sunlight analysis of the façade was carried out using the Ladybug plugin for Grasshopper. The results were then compared to the actual façade stains for diagnosis and a hypothetical relationship was derived: areas with strong sunlight radiation tended to bleach and turn white, while areas with short direct sunlight tended to bio-stain and turn darker and greener in colour. Based on this, additional architectural cases

were collected in London to create a dataset. This was fed into the ML algorithm to create a mapping relationship that could predict and visualise the staining of stone based on sunlight simulations. Furthermore, the machine-predicted stain map was projected back onto the façade and an evaluation was carried out to provide feedback on the system and determine the final design outcome. In conclusion, this paper attempts to establish a computational workflow to predict and visualise the staining and weathering of stone based on sunlight simulations. However, there are limitations, in that staining is not only influenced by sunlight: other factors should also be considered.

Image: Field studies, solar radiation analysis and ML are used to predict the weathering of stone façades. Image by the author

Urban Design MArch at The B-Pro Show 2019.

Photo: Ash Knotek

Urban Design MArch

Urban Design MArch

Programme Director: Roberto Bottazzi

Urban Design at The Bartlett School of Architecture is a Master’s degree dedicated to the analysis and design of emergent issues in global cities. Students consider cities as privileged vantage points from which to investigate and speculate on the most pressing contemporary conditions, such as the conflation of digital and physical domains, climate change, gaming culture and ever-expanding urbanisation.

The main drivers of the programme’s design investigations are the research clusters, in which small groups of students work closely with dedicated tutors. Each cluster responds to a unique research agenda and brief to develop its own sophisticated design proposals. Within their clusters, students are able to investigate a particular set of urban concerns and are introduced to advanced computational methods to analyse and generate new urban programmes and morphologies. Each cluster acts as an incubator for new spatial ideas in which design and digital technology merge, giving rise to proposals which consider new ways of inhabiting and experiencing urban environments.

The range of topics covered by the different clusters includes the impact of big data and machine learning algorithms for design, biocomputing, planetary urbanisation and speculations on what the metaverse will look like and whether it will alter our experience of cities. Within each cluster a lively and creative conversation is promoted through tutorials, workshops, lectures and exchanges, providing each student with access to new ideas and methodologies that they can expand upon in their final project and thesis.

The variety and richness of the research agendas pursued by students are underpinned by an integral interest in the role that digital technologies play in shaping our urban environment. The Bartlett Prospective (B-Pro) lecture series, journal, workshops in digital technologies and dedicated theory modules all support students in their research.

Programme Administrators

Tung Ying (Crystal) Chow, Tom Mole

Image: Carbon X, Nipun Garg, Zhengwei Li, Samritha Yogesh, Research Cluster 18

RC11 Hidden Dimensions: AI and the Future of Central Business Districts

Julian Besems, Philippe Morel

‘If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.’ Alan Turing, Lecture to the London Mathematical Society, 20 February 1947

As this quote by Turing suggests, designing with artificial intelligence (AI) does not necessarily mean taking the output of a model as an absolute conclusion. It requires interrogation and interaction that are achieved through various algorithmic and computational approaches being integrated into the design process. For this, Research Cluster 11 engages with fundamental mathematical concepts to achieve computational literacy. In addition to these core principles, we strive for the adoption, adjustment and application of advanced machine learning (ML) methods. We argue that the potential of computers in design lies not solely in their pure calculating power but in how algorithms can offer ways of abstraction, after which a multiplicity of solutions can be explored for a wide range of problems. We engage in developing computational methodologies that act within these hidden layers of design.

These principles are explored through speculation on the future of central business districts (CBDs). Today, if we look at the main typology and functional body of CBDs – the skyscraper and standard office building respectively – we cannot help but think that with the advent of computationalism both will undergo major changes.

The replacement of intellectual tasks by extraordinary AI tools forces us to question the very existence of CBDs whose economic rationality is no longer evident. By studying these districts around the world and through a detailed case study of La Défense, the largest purpose-built business district in Europe, the cluster has explored the future of CBDs in the era of AI.

The projects carried out over the year have addressed this discourse across a range of topics and methodologies. Each formulated a proposal to address the contemporary issues that are inherent to the urban typology of CBDs. Through gathering an extensive breadth of data on La Défense collected from multiple sources and by responding to this data through various algorithmic and ML methods, the projects not only speculate on future scenarios of CBDs, but design them.

Students

Informatizing City

Zhiying Chen, Baitong Li, Hao Ren, Yining Wang

Forest Invasion Plan

Yaqiong Song, Yuyu Hu

Metabolic City

Anqi Dai, Yuxi Li, Luyun Mei, Xinyi Zhang

Nourishing CBDs

Xueyang Miao, Mingming Wang, Zhong Wang, Ziyun Yan

Theory Tutor

Philippe Morel

Skills Tutor

Julian Besems

Consultants and Critics

Nikola Marinčić, Lili Mészáros, Ceel Pierik, Soungmin Yu

11.1, 11.4, 11.13–11.17 Informatizing City The 21st century is undoubtedly the age of information, and even more so an age represented by an explosion of data. Vast amounts of information have completely changed the way cities operate and are organised, and are challenging existing approaches to urban design. At the same time, information also offers the possibility of making urban design more objective, more flexible, more adaptable, faster and smarter. We need to make information sing. To do this, this project develops the idea of using information and machine learning (ML) to design cities by building a new urban design framework consisting of an ICI system and GAN2City generator and using it to reconstruct La Défense, Paris. The ICI system is used as a framework for merging information from different views of the city in response to specific problems. The GAN2City generator consists of three generative adversarial networks (GANs) and receives the processed city information from the ICI system. It processes this information to discover hidden layers and generate a new city. This framework has been used to create a new enhanced urban environment for La Défense. Of course, this is only one of the thousands of possibilities that this design framework can offer and is just the starting point for imagining the million different faces of La Défense through information.

11.2, 11.6–11.9 Metabolic City Currently central business districts (CBDs) with the economy as their core attribute are facing environmental problems caused by the concentration of population and industry. Excessive energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and the extraction of large amounts of raw materials are overloading the environment. In order to achieve sustainable urban development, the linear development model will need to be replaced by a highly circular one. This project is based on the theory of urban metabolism, extracting abstract urban elements as design objects and analysing and optimising the urban operation model quantitatively. It improves the efficiency of urban metabolism and reduces the pressure of economic activities on the environment. Starting with an analysis of the economic sector, environment and human activities in La Défense, Paris, this project proposes strategies to optimise urban metabolism at global and micro scales. Cellular automata and genetic algorithms are used for the functional replacement and dismantling of buildings. To improve the material cycle within the city, a material bank is created as a base for storing information and demolished building components, which are then registered as source materials for new buildings to be used in subsequent construction. A minimum spanning tree algorithm is used in the process of assembling new buildings. The vertical connection, openness, function, shape and form of the components determine the possibility of a connection between different components. The physical properties of the components determine the rules of the assembly. Afterwards, GAN is used to generate and optimise the interior space for proper and reasonable use.

11.3, 11.10–11.12 Nourishing CBDs Until the end of the 19th century, the countryside around Paris and its neighbouring towns was the main source of food for the Île-de-France region. However, by the 20th century, expansion of transport, the rapid growth of global agricultural production systems and the development of retail almost cut the city off from the surrounding farmlands. Simultaneously, the agricultural belt on the edge of Paris grew increasingly urbanised. Nowadays, population growth and urban sprawl put urban food systems under great strain. To address these issues, the supply and demand of food in urban area needs to be matched with the allocation of land resources related

to food production. Based on existing research on sustainable food strategies, human-land relationship conflicts and the resource allocation of food and urban space, the urban food supply chain needs to be rebuilt to demonstrate features that are healthy and sustainable.

11.5, 11.18–11.22 Forest Invasion Plan A utopia is a place, imagined or real, where there is social harmony and peace. In this time of environmental crisis, utopian thinking has also sought to include issues related to ecological harmony in a concept known as ‘eco-utopia’. Urban greening is an integral part of the urban design process in the context of eco-utopia. Since 1985, French forests have expanded by up to 80,000 hectares per year and presently cover 17m hectares of the country. With La Défense as the highly human-controlled economic centre of Paris, this project explores a new approach to urban development. In a reversal of the environmental crisis brought about by humans, the destruction of nature and the encroachment of the city on the forest, the survival model of nature infiltrating the city gives humans a new way of living with the forest. With one site being the concentrated economy of human urbanisation and the other being the most pristine of forests, can the CBD become the ideal ecological utopia? This project uses ML to simulate the forest entering La Défense and explores how it might grow without human interference and affect the surrounding buildings. Based on this, this project asks what model of co-existence would be chosen by humans.

Videogame Urbanism: Welcome to the Metaverse

Luke Pearson, Sandra Youkhana

RC12

Over the last year, the ‘metaverse’ has become one of the most discussed, and controversial, buzzwords in technology and design. It can be broadly defined as a persistent virtual world which we will use as a counterpart to our physical world. Although it lacks a fixed definition, it is typically assumed that the metaverse will involve games and game-like experiences alongside interoperable software platforms, blockchain technologies, social media and cryptocurrency, creating an online environment for work and leisure.

Yet while the metaverse is often framed as a ‘spatial’ internet, there is far less discourse on how these spaces will be designed and what architecture and urbanism expertise is needed in this process. With a rise in content creators and world-builders made possible by countless online game platforms and game engines, what will the role of the trained urban designer be? How can we help to masterplan the metaverse?

This year Research Cluster 12 examined the metaverse as a subject and site for urbanism through videogame technologies, creating designs that explore the potential migration of real-world urban design principles into persistent virtual experiences.

We began the year with a deep analysis of current metaverse-like platforms, including popular ‘creative’ videogames. These studies unravelled how each platform engages with questions of identity, construction, aesthetic style, communication and economy. Having gained knowledge of current metaverse technologies, students produced projects that challenged the concept of a virtual ‘digital twin’ by investigating a site in London and prototyping how its physical form, culture and economy could be translated into a metaverse-like environment.

Speculative projects then drew from this research, using the future metaverse as a site to develop playable videogames that interrogate the design of new urban systems. Ideas included how the highly volatile cryptocurrency markets could drive a dynamic new form of decentralised financial district; creating a metaverse ‘wonderland’ to encourage social use of public parks in the physical world; and designing new forms of virtual cultural centre that combine procedural generation with player-led collaborative design. This research challenged the metaverse’s potential power structures, prototyping new forms of public participation through ‘Videogame Urbanism’.

Students Culture Arcade

Ruiyao Lu, Yuxi (Lea) Xu, Ying Zeng, Jingyue Zhang DeFi City

Wenbo Di, Angyi Li, Yutong Wu, Kerun Yu

Instant Wonderland

Anjia Li, Xiangli Liu, Yuke Qin

MetaConsumer

Yuanyuan Cao, Xiaolin Liu, Shaoyu Wang, Han Wei

Post-City

Hantong Bao, Jiayi Li, Yiyang Zhang

Theory Tutor

Georgios Tsakiridis

Skills Tutor

Luke Pearson

Consultants and Critics

Thanks to our critics Krina Christopoulou and Agostino Nickl, Metaverse consultants Tamar Clarke-Brown, Victoria Ivanova and Kay Watson from Serpentine Galleries and Jo Townshend from UCL Art Futures

Partners

Themes for this year developed from our conversations with Serpentine Galleries and contributions to Serpentine’s Future Art Ecosystems 2: Art x Metaverse

12.1–12.4 DeFi City What would a financial district in the metaverse look like? This project critiques the skyscraper as a symbol of capital and the unregulated systems of cryptocurrency through the lens of a business district entirely defined by the highly volatile decentralised finance markets. The game conceptualises a future where the urban form of the metaverse is fundamentally connected to crypto trading. As players engage with the city through cryptocurrency trades, they generate a city shaped by the expansion of different competing blockchain technologies as well as participating in Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAO) decision-making structures. Skyscraper typologies are generated by individual coin technologies, demonstrating the blurred relationship between symbolic value, economic utility and even social media memes within the crypto ecosystem. Different investment patterns produce a range of morphological city configurations, with the systems of the game assessing what types of cryptocurrencies and blockchains the player’s decisions promote. Investment in ‘stable’ or ‘utility’ coins –cryptocurrencies with a function – produces a city that grows through dominant and specific clusters of useful digital assets. However, should the player embrace the volatility of the market and throw themselves into ‘pump-and-dump’ projects and meme coins in the pursuit of significant and speedy gains, the city will devolve into a dystopia of instability, where buildings continually shift beyond comprehension and images of cartoon animals proliferate. Through various DAO events, players make decisions alongside other stakeholders that fundamentally affect the future organisation and structure of the urban form. Through these mechanisms, the project critiques how the metaverse may take symbolic forms from our real cities and subject them to the unstable forces of decentralised finance, creating a virtual city that is perpetually reshaping its own power dynamics to redefine the future of a fluctuating financial centre.

12.5 Post-City What will the architectural ‘style’ of the metaverse be? Drawing inspiration from building mechanisms in popular ‘creative’ videogames such as Fortnite, this project explores how the component-based collage approach to building that these games promote could produce a resurgence of postmodern architectural principles in the metaverse. The building systems of Fortnite could be seen as an influential piece of design software, especially among its most populous player base, 18–22 year olds. The project seeks to engage these young people with architecture by using a game-based mechanism they will be familiar with, placing it in an architectural design context. By analysing visual techniques and details from notable postmodern buildings, the project invites players to experiment with architectural design in a Fornite -inspired environment, with user constructions judged on how closely they align with postmodern design principles. With millions of young people already highly familiar with such building systems, the project questions how such interfaces might become more and more integrated into design tools and what this might mean for future architects of the metaverse.

12.6 MetaConsumer This project explores how the economy of the emerging metaverse centres and virtual worlds are sites for content production and consumption. By combining studies into consumer behaviour with the analysis of ‘gamer types’ using Bartle’s taxonomy of players, the project creates new forms of retail experiences that leverage the ways in which people instinctively engage with virtual environments. The game is constructed around a system of ‘shopper’ agents containing both consumer and gamer profiles. Players must create structures that appeal to

both the consumerist tendencies of these shoppers and the intrinsic ways they are predisposed to interact with virtual environments, creating a dynamic world that oscillates in and out of meaning depending on who is engaging with it. Players create and place structures through combinations of different generic elements, which then become attractive to agents based on their particular personality type and ‘gestalt-ish’ reading of space. Killer-type players, who thrive on competition and domination of others, will be attracted to vertiginous structures inspired by games such as Doom Eternal. In contrast, explorer-type players will seek out structures that provide unexpected journeys and experiences, which draw upon the aesthetic experience of games like Minecraft. Ultimately, the project proposes that players see game worlds in fundamentally different ways according to their behaviour, and that this could be used to create a shifting landscape of experiences and consumption.

12.7–12.8 Instant Wonderland As the metaverse will be an entirely synthetic virtual environment, how will it address our relationship with nature? This project proposes a virtual park that exists as a 1:1 digital twin of the Olympic Park in London. The Wonderland grows and responds to activity in the physical world, with the procedural generation of the virtual landscape encouraging physical activity and communal gathering in the real-world park. Different activities, such as walking one’s dog, riding a bicycle through the park, working out or eating a picnic, all create unique procedural forms and an evolving record of activities within the park, which are transcribed into a unique form of virtual nature. Players can create their own ‘flora’ to represent themselves, with each individual who experiences the park being embodied through the unique natural elements they generate. The project examines how the metaverse and the aesthetic qualities of virtual worlds could be used to encourage new behaviours in our physical world, establishing a productive, symbiotic relationship between a public space and its virtual twin. 12.9–12.13 Culture Arcade This project questions the future of cultural institutions in the face of emerging technologies for the exhibition and marketisation of art. Drawing from the South Bank Centre as a paradigm of a cultural institution, the project proposes a procedural museum that emphasises the collective fungibility of artistic practice rather than the artificial scarcity of non-fungible tokens. Exploring a generative environment based on Brutalist architecture, players can create their own artistic interventions and reshape the virtual world by sharing them. Using and developing skills in an artistic toolset, players collaborate to extend and augment the cultural institution in their own image. Participants can paint and sculpt the architecture around them, procedurally generate or carve space, warping the architectural features or even turning the space into a giant dynamic environment that pulses to audio loops composed by players. This interface produces a new form of cultural institution for the metaverse that is ‘fungible’ and co-designed through cues from real-world architecture, algorithmic generation and collaborative, communal design and curation. Players can shape the world and generate their own new forms of culture together. The project suggests that cultural institutions can establish new positions in the metaverse that move beyond the recreation of traditional galleries and leverage the content creation systems and aesthetic experiences of games to increase visitor creativity and engagement with cultural practices.

12.9

12.10

Machine Thinking Urbanism: Cities

Beyond Cognition

Roberto Bottazzi, Tasos Varoudis

Research Cluster 14 explores the role of algorithms in mining, visualising and designing with very large datasets to conceive innovative urban environments. Such research relies on sensed or gathered data and on learning algorithms which categorise data in an unsupervised manner. Structuring cities through data provides students with advanced tools for analysis and design, radically redefining notions of scale, time and connectivity, the consequences of which can be profound for urban design. Received notions of type, programme, site, representation and inhabitation are reassessed, giving rise to complex, fluid, open and incomplete urban proposals. This year, Research Cluster 14 expanded its research by deploying machine learning (ML) not to produce visual outcomes but rather to analyse and simulate how cities operate. Unsupervised ML models offer an unprecedented opportunity to cross-reference data describing urban life more broadly, in terms of what can be considered (places, morphologies, behaviours, events) and how this can be described (dynamic, granular and relational representation). Starting from this premise, the design projects focused on large, dynamic masterplans based on unconventional themes for urban design, from which strategic, time-based interventions emerged. This allowed students to develop their projects by considering aspects of urban life that are not included in traditional masterplans.

Mood-ulated Subtopia focused on the notion of attention economics, using this to read London’s cityscape. The group’s final proposal redesigned the public areas of Canary Wharf to enhance user experience and disrupt the area’s monocultural qualities. IsoChronic City used ML models to reconfigure public spaces around the notion of the 15-minute city, imagining a post-pandemic London with spaces that are flexible, reconfigurable and tailored to the needs of local communities. ML models were used by Agro-Matrix not simply to maximise food production in the city, but to integrate crops as urban elements. Dietary habits and cultural preferences were computed alongside quantitative parameters such as sun exposure or wind. Finally, Tonal Walks took sound as an urban material to propose a new type of public space designed around acoustic comfort. Elephant and Castle roundabout was redesigned to provide spaces for the local community and celebrate the area’s musical culture.

Students

Agro-Matrix

Mingze Chen, Aashi

Mathur, Shivani

Sathiyamurthy

Seethapathy, Nermeen

Abbas Zaidi, Yanqi Zeng

IsoChronic City

Sonali Bordia, Shuyao Li, Prakriti

Srimal, Siyang Zheng

Mood-ulated Subtopia

Jiwen Bian, Trishla

Chadha, Rajita Jain, Zhaoyi Wang

Tonal Walks

Chaitali Santosh

Bedmutha, Fan Liu, Yuxuan Liu, Ravisha

Vikramsingh Rajput

Theory Tutor Provides Ng

Skills Tutors

Margarita Chaskopoulou, Vassilis Papalexopoulos, Eirini Tsouknida

Consultants and Critics

Stefania Boccaletti, Silvio Carta, Klaas De Rycke, Ilaria Di Carlo, Tom Holberton, Tim Ireland, Andreas Kofler, Frédéric Migayrou, Philippe Morel, Annarita Papeschi, Ben Pollock, Andrew Porter

14.1 Mood-ulated Subtopia An overall view of the new configuration of the public areas in Canary Wharf. The built environment has the power to influence a person’s emotions through its spatial-atmospheric configurations. A dynamic public space evokes different emotions depending on visual and ambient parameters, and thus promotes social interactions and engagements between people and their environment. This project delves into the need to modulate the mood and emotions of the existing built environment to augment the economy and development of the city. The technological interventions will act as socio-economic drivers in the attention economies of Canary Wharf, London, to give a fresh perspective of the city.

14.2–14.7 IsoChronic City This project is a response to the process of reurbanisation of cities in the postpandemic era. It utilises datasets interpreted by machine learning (ML) algorithms along with spatial computational methods to create urban environments influenced by considerations of proximity and walkability based on the notion of the 15-minute city. By primarily focusing on time rather than space, the proposal restructures existing network centrality, fabricating responsive public spaces using topo-geometrical interventions and transforming unused built structures into interactive spaces with additional amenities. The design alters the physical aspects and spatial characteristics to achieve a sustainable, inclusive and accessible city. 14.2 Based on an algorithmic approach, the urban strategy identifies poorly connected areas and establishes either fixed or mobile interventions that will improve connections in the local area. 14.3 Masterplan. The overall design strategy unfolds around three different types of interventions: voids, mobile elements and new constructions. Based on a careful and original step-depth analysis, the masterplan is constructed around the notion of connectivity so that all public amenities will be within a 15-minute walk. 14.4 Part of the overall strategy also looks at carving new openings and connections between different areas. These new voids will not only improve connectivity but also form new public reconfigurable areas for post-pandemic urban life. 14.5 One of the largest interventions proposed by the project is a market hub located in one of the vacant sites in the area. The use of mobile elements allows the scheme to be easily reconfigurable to meet the uncertainties of life in post-pandemic London. 14.6–14.7 These images depict two rendered views of one of the void segments introduced by the new masterplan.

14.8–14.12 Mood-ulated Subtopia 14.8–14.9 The project disrupts the monotone and generic qualities of the public spaces in Canary Wharf by introducing a series of elements that can change their aspect over time. 14.10 This diagram illustrates the different data layers used to simulate the perceptual qualities of public spaces. The layers include Space Syntax analysis, Google Street View images and the distribution of artificial lights. 14.11 Based on social media data, this diagram scores either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ moods in Canary Wharf. This data is used to develop a model to evaluate how different spaces are perceived in order to break the monotone quality of the public areas in Canary Wharf. 14.12 Ray casting masterplan. Instead of constructing a masterplan using an aerial view to delimit homogeneous territories, the strategy for this project is developed in three dimensions using a ray casting technique that projects data in space. The result is an atmospheric urban strategy that takes into account the point of view of each potential user.

14.13–14.17 Tonal Walks This project examines the ways in which data and automated algorithms can be deployed to rethink how acoustics can alter the design

and experience of public spaces. The project is a response to the transformation of soundscapes in large cities such as London, where historical soundmarks are now masked by the noise of transport. Data offers a unique entry point to analyse and connect sound, the morphology of the city and its visual and emotive impact on people. By concentrating on the infamous Elephant and Castle roundabout, the project provides an alternative type of public area, combining physical and ephemeral elements to alter the relation between sound and space. 14.13 Based on social media data, this map extracts keywords to infer the prevailing mood in different areas. 14.14 The project focuses on the Elephant and Castle roundabout, a major transport hub with a complex and problematic soundscape. By making extensive use of digital simulations, the project proposes a fragmented, abstract landscape designed to create specific acoustic conditions for the local community to experience and appropriate. 14.15 The sensory experience of the public space is enhanced through lights whose position is based on the correlation between different datasets. As the conditions and uses of the space vary throughout the day, so do the arrangement, colour and intensity of the lights. 14.16–14.17 The final aesthetic of the project is both familiar – every element in the scheme is geometrically simple – and alien – due to the lack of recognisable patterns in the distribution of the objects. The project lets the computational logic underpinning the design process determine the final aesthetic of the space.

14.18–14.22 Agro-Matrix Food has always been a central element in the shaping of cities. Nowadays, food imports and exports have shown their fragility in times of global pandemic and climate change. A food desert is very common in London neighbourhoods. This project utilises food as a catalyst to connect people, cultures and societies. With the support of urban agriculture, it creates a food-centric neighbourhood. The project proposes an open-air supermarket where people can grow their food in vertical farms, on-ground farming in parks and plaza spaces and roof farming with a working food network system. 14.18 Map overlaying data about food points of interest, supermarket locations, transport stations and health deprivation. 14.19–14.20 Different views of the main food hub located in East London. 14.21 An evolutionary algorithm is deployed in order to distribute local crops. Local citizens will also be able to access an app that will allow them to find out which crops they could grow in their properties, gardens and balconies. 14.22 By combining different sets of data, the project uses crops not only to improve dietary habits but also as an urban element which affects the perception and quality of public areas.

14.6

14.5

14.16

14.15

Urban Morphogenesis Lab DeepGreen City

Filippo Nassetti, Claudia Pasquero

RC16

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, with urban populations due to double by 2050. Intense urbanisation has led us to rethink human socio-economic development on a global scale, with particular emphasis being placed on the relationship between humans, their footprint and the environment.

We know that cities are the biggest carbon emitters globally; therefore, it is necessary to redesign their infrastructure and rethink consumption patterns. Is there a way to convert waste and pollution into raw material to feed new processes of production? How can we make visible what is currently invisible and informal in cities? Innovative strategies for waste management, water conservation, recycling, renewable energy and trading are required, and technologies for the filtration and re-metabolisation of air pollution should be implemented. Though often overlooked, layers of informality in urban spaces supplement and complement existing public services such as water catchment systems, individual waste recycling and decentralised construction. Yet, to develop effective ways of addressing vulnerabilities, all of the human and environmental systems in cities need to be utilised.

By investigating the post-industrial area of East London, Research Cluster 16 has reimagined a resilient city network that uses its size and collective energy to create a refuge for humans and displaced wildlife, promote the emergence of positive microclimates, replenish depleted water sources and restore degraded terrains. This entails innovative strategies of urban regreening and rewilding, as well as urban agriculture.

Methodologically, we have been testing the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a new ‘green’ planning application, combining the scalability of a planning programme with the sensibility and intuitive accessibility of its design interface. Using sophisticated algorithms to analyse high-resolution data, the application produces simulated scenarios of sustainable urban development and a new kind of urban planning, one that is dynamic, iterative and comprehensive.

Students

Bio-Gradient Grid

Yihui Gu, Yangyang Liu, Yao Wang, Longzhi Zhou

Eco-Rehab

Qi Jiang, Hong

Rong, Quan Zhou, Shaopo Huang

Decomposing

Temporalities

Lesego Bantsheng, Emily Paige Fusilero, Vinay Kumar Porandla, Yuxuan Sun

VoltaicEcotone

Sirène Abiad, Sohee

Cho, Valentina Corallo, Wing Ki Ho

Theory Tutor

Emmanouil Zaroukas

Skills Tutors

Filippo Nassetti, Oscar Villareal

Consultant

Marco Poletto

Partners ecoLogicStudio, Synthetic Landscape Lab at Innsbruck University

16.1 Bio-Gradient Grid ‘Physarum Urbanism GAN’. This project proposes a bio-intelligent Physarum polycephalum (slime mould) network that is eroded into a post-natural landscape to research potential areas for bio-material algae photosynthetic processing in London. The machine learning (ML) cycle generative adversarial network (CycleGAN) develops a blended London satellite map and network structures extracted from experiments with slime mould. To reflect the current environmental deterioration caused by fossil fuels, it proposes a post-anthropocentric city built by humans, planned by slime mould and powered by algae, where humans and non-humans are intertwined.

16.2 VoltaicEcotone ‘Woodland Bioenergy Generation’. The project proposes an alternative, decentralised energy infrastructure powered by the symbiotic relationship between moss and microalgae. The system is composed of a collective of energy-generating ecotones that form transitory spaces between the natural and the artificial in the urban context in which they are integrated. The woodland ecotone acts as one of the main bio-material collection centres, specifically for the cultivation of moss.

16.3 Eco-Rehab ‘Urban Habitats’. Since the mid-18th century, intensive industrial production has caused massive heavy metal pollution of soil. This has become an important environmental factor, causing an imbalance in the ratio of humans to natural space. In response to such harsh environmental conditions, the specific ecological characteristics of new urban spaces have begun to be discussed. Based on the properties of heavy metal uptake by mycelia, the project speculates on the future spatial evolution of mycelium-human symbiosis through generative adversarial network (GAN) modelling. Over time, the novel mycelium composite material in urban systems effectively treats heavy metals in brownfields. Soils are rejuvenated, vegetation increases, biodiversity is enhanced and new urban habitats are created.

16.4–16.6 Decomposing Temporalities 16.4 ‘Six Geoengineering Models’. In response to climate change-induced flooding, six radical geoengineering models of London’s morphology were tested according to three parameters: water decentralisation, water infiltration and habitat diversity. These models aim to renegotiate the place of wastewater treatment in urban ecosystems. 16.5 ‘Metabolisation of Voxels’. Through exploring and voxelising the material relationship between wastewater treatment and architecture, morphologies can be viewed through non-anthropocentric lenses, including artificial intelligence such as CycleGAN. The non-human lens curates architecture and utility as extensions of one another, with their relationship bargained through the voxel. 16.6 ‘Aquamarket Morphology’. An urban temporality is envisioned where waste is not only a problem to be managed but a vital part of urban ecosystems. In this landscape, a mycelium prototype named ‘mygregate’ formulates fluctuating aggregations that are continuously negotiated according to market and habitat needs. The mygregate is sourced and harvested through mycofiltration usage in wastewater treatment ponds. Therefore, wastewater becomes a resource that grows architecture and redefines the relationships between humans and waste, humans and non-humans, and between humans themselves.

16.7–16.9 VoltaicEcotone 16.7 ‘Bio-material

Colonisation of Substrate’. Biological and artificial intelligence are utilised to create a new energy network that is formed as a collaboration between bio-materials and conductive materials. The ecotones, composed of a clay substrate, act as production hubs and decentralised energy infrastructures. 16.8 ‘Aquatic Bio-material Extraction’. Levels of bio-material colonise the ecotones’

infrastructure, while its components change according to the surrounding context. Ecotones adjacent to aquatic environments act as collection centres for microalgae, which are then extracted to create an algal gel medium. Coupled with moss, they generate electricity through their symbiotic relationship and photovoltaic properties. Aquatic ecotones consist of microalgae cultivation ponds, habitats for aquatic species and tidal areas for leisure purposes. 16.9 ‘Urban Morphogenesis’. East London undergoes a radical transformation influenced by moss and microalgae propagation patterns. This morphogenetic process is enabled via ML, altering the urban fabric into an energy-generating productive landscape composed of voltaic ecotones.

16.10–16.11 Decomposing Temporalities ‘Mygregate Prototypes’. Within the project, mycelium bilaterally acts as a binding agent in the mygregate prototypes while also contributing to their biological intelligence. Observed in a 3D-printed mould, mycelium exercises its mobility through an established network. Mycelium’s ability to utilise its network to navigate space informs the negotiated aggregations of the mygregate in the proposed aquamarket. Through this decentralised process of growth and negotiation, architecture becomes intertwined in the continuous refabrication of human and non-human relationships.

16.12 Bio-Gradient Grid ‘Artificial Expandable Modular Terrain’. The grid system comprises different scales of voxels from bottom to top to create a terrain where artificial forms define the fundamental elements of the city for all living entities.

16.13 Eco-Rehab ‘The Urban Landscape’. The mycelium becomes associated with the soil of the site and spreads, continuously absorbing heavy metals from the ground. At the same time, the composite material formed by the mycelium in combination with the clay and other substrates meets the structural support requirements, assuming some of the functions of the original land and gradually satisfying the survival of other organisms, forming an ecological cycle.

Relational Urbanism: From the Molecular to the Planetary

Zachary Fluker, Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Research Cluster 18 investigates urban design methods in the context of planetary urbanisation, in which global ecology is a capital-driven process. A capital-driven Earth system is one in which many agents interact in a non-linear way, with different levels of organisation and hierarchies, each ruled by their own laws. The cluster points to the limitations of a city-centric approach in tackling urban challenges, bringing attention to the hinterlands and the machine landscapes that support contemporary lifestyles.

Earth System Sciences

The cluster started the year by learning about the Earth’s primary biochemical cycles – nitrogen, carbon and phosphorous – as a complex dynamic system. Students identified the relevant scales, from the molecular to the global, and the rules of law to determine a site and research question. They also examined the role of the Earth’s biochemical cycles in providing the ideal conditions for biodiversity, such as stable weather patterns and the impact human-induced disruptions are having on biodiversity loss. By the end of the year, students were familiar with concepts such as dead sea zones and the Great Acceleration commonly associated with the Anthropocene.

Geopolitics

Students have also learned about geographic information systems on a planetary scale, investigating how global production chains, geopolitics and international trade are triggering localised environmental degradation.

Non-Linear Design Methods

The cluster design methodology embraces the non-linearity of the Earth system, leading to a much larger spectrum of disciplinary niches and employing a wide range of design methodologies from flow modelling, data mining and interactive platforms. The students’ final projects have engaged a wider audience (human and non-human) with questions about environmental change and evolution.

Students

Bittersweet Journey: From Cocoa to Chocolate

Feiran Fang, Xiaohan

Jiang, Jiawen Zhang

Carbon X

Nipun Garg, Zhengwei Li, Samritha Yogesh

Cryo-Automata

Raksiri Kaewtawee, Jesu Bipin Chowdary

Koya, Yu Zhong

Rice as Infrastructure

Xiuyi Li, Zhiqiang Lei, Sen Ma, Yilan Wei

Tree Infrastructure

Zeyang Hu, Yi Le, Jiahui Zhu

Urban Mining

Xinjian Jiang, Guohui Liu, Man Zhang

Theory Tutor

Sheng-Yang Huang

Skills Tutors

Dimitra Bra, Leon Hart, Mochen Jiang, Xiao Ran, Yuankai Wang, Mike Xie, Yue Zhu

18.1 Cryo-Automata The globe displays the black carbon present in the atmosphere between August and November 2019. Black carbon is a short-lived pollutant that lasts only days to weeks after being released into the atmosphere. During that short period, black carbon can have a significant impact on the cryosphere by forming a dark layer on top of the glaciers, resulting in low albedo and global warming.

18.2 Urban Mining This project proposes a building that is in constant flux through the amount of electronic waste (e-waste) produced. The general body is made up of equally sized metal mesh frames, which are interspersed and organised to create different functional areas with freedom of movement and flexibility.

18.3–18.4 Cryo-Automata 18.3 The geographic point cloud data of the terrain is gathered by drones to estimate site conditions and regulate the growth and decline of the structure. By precisely intertwining the climatic and geographic data of the hinterlands, an ever-adapting and self-evolving system is generated to grow and maintain the artificial glacial landscapes year after year. 18.4 Drones fly over the Himalayan terrain of the Hindu Kush to gather and exchange geographic and climatic data. This is used to identify the shortest path to grow artificial glaciers.

18.5–18.7 Urban Mining 18.5 An analysis of the larger site area with a comprehensive understanding of the network of high streets and activities related to consumption, population and use. This data allows for analysis of specific areas so that the e-waste infrastructure can be integrated into the once-busy high streets. 18.6 A formal recycling process for electronic equipment will be added to existing high street buildings, which includes mobile phone recycling, sorting, dismantling and processing, as well as 3D printing and a control centre. Old discarded mobile phones enter the building and are eventually transformed into valuable metal and building materials through a bottom-up flow. 18.7 Over time, conventional mines gradually become depleted, whereas with urban mining the opposite is true. The four façades highlight this process and present how urban mines operate from four perspectives. The recycling system grows and matures as the framework and materials change, increasing the mines’ capacity to recycle e-waste and store metal material, step by step.

18.8–18.11 Rice as Infrastructure 18.8 The urban slope is created by overlaying the building heights onto the ground level, treating the city as a natural part of the design. The slope of the city paves the way for studying the relationship between the urban slope and plant density. 18.9 The location of phosphorus production in the city is estimated by analysing retailers, public lavatories, restaurants and population densities.

18.10–18.11 This image shows rice being grown in the city. River water with a high phosphorus content is used to irrigate the rice, with water flowing through all the modules from high to low. The phosphorus is absorbed by the rice and acts as a fertiliser to improve growth.

18.12–18.14 Tree Infrastructure 18.12 Masterplan of predicted data of tree-planting locations over a 90-year period. The masterplan uses the spatial algorithms ‘quadtree’ and ‘metaball’ to forecast data and generate a new urban forest design. 18.13–18.14 The design of the site changes according to the growth of the plants. These changes provide a rich living space for the surrounding inhabitants. Here, forestry is integrated into urban life, becoming part of people’s everyday experiences and bringing ecology to the city’s inhabitants.

18.15–18.18 Carbon X 18.15 The project explores the use of collaborative gaming, the metaverse and capital incentives in an effort to reduce global carbon emissions. Five colours of carbon structure the metaverse

environment in which global players compete and collaborate. The gaming aspect of the Carbon X interface and the balance of the colours of carbon are represented through hexagonal towers which also indicate the unlocking of neighbourhoods in a paradigmatic way. 18.16 Colours of carbon at a global level and their impact on Antarctica. 18.17 The interface connects and generates data between physical and virtual environments. One aspect of this connection is done using augmented reality to make micro-interventions within local neighbourhoods. 18.18 As users generate data within the physical world they unlock virtual environments to explore in Antarctica.

18.19–18.22 Bittersweet Journey: From Cocoa to Chocolate This project remodels Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s largest cocoa bean export port. 18.19–18.20 The aerial view shows the site’s connectivity to adjacent properties, the plant’s interaction with port services and the ship as a global infrastructure. The ship plays an integral role in linking chocolate with the global economy. By linking the people who produce the raw cocoa to the supply chain, this design seeks to maximise the potential for a new cocoa-based monetary system. 18.21 This project proposes a mixed-planting cocoa port. The masterplan shows the hybridisation of the city: old and new; plantation and port; and undulating topography and urban road network. 18.22 Annual data on forests in Côte d’Ivoire shows that their decline is gradually spreading from the ports to the interior, with Abidjan’s adjacent forests being converted to cocoa bean plantations. This shows that the location of ports has a clear impact on the distribution of cocoa cultivation.

18.5

18.6

18.15

18.16

18.17

Urban Design Thesis

Module coordinator: Emmanouil Zaroukas

The Urban Design thesis is a written project that helps students create a novel set of concepts, ideas and arguments that will broaden their worldview and augment their urban design explorations. Students are encouraged to move beyond the disciplinary boundaries of urban theories, venturing into computation, logic, data mining, artificial intelligence, artificial neural networks, biology, ecology, video gaming, online platforms, economic theories and politics to formulate a novel theoretical argument that affects and is being affected by the design studio.

The thesis is a critical and focused inquiry into a specific research area that invents new directions through which the design studio can be augmented. The autonomy of the thesis allows a genuine investigation into other disciplines and complements the design studio without being subsumed by it.

Students are required to study, work and produce in the rich and varied intellectual contexts created by the structure of the Urban Design MArch programme’s research clusters. They are consulted and supervised by History & Theory tutors. The product of this research is a written study, which has a structured critical argument based on a valid hypothesis.

The thesis provides each student with the capacity to design by other means and to produce innovative theoretical orientations that can influence the course of their design work.

Xeno-Urbanism: Making Space for Inclusive Design

Emily Paige Fusilero

Thesis Tutor: Emmanouil Zaroukas

Feminist theory throughout the late 20th century has laid the groundwork for the new theories of ecofeminism and xenofeminism. It has paved the way for a shift in the feminist thought framework from the simple justification of women in society to a discourse regarding the oppression of women and nature by historical patriarchal societal conventions and social norms. As environmentalism and feminism merged worlds to unify under ecofeminism, a new door was opened for theorists to question the relationships and the intersectionality of identities, both human and non-human, in our society. This paradigm shift led to discussions advocating for inclusive spaces that embrace identities that exist beyond the binary and challenged the way we perceive our non-sapient neighbours as part of the planetary collective in a time of globality. This was a catalyst for the xeno movement, which introduced and validated the roles of the ‘alien’ or ‘other’, and was a call to action to other architects, urban designers and occupiers of the built environment to rethink the way we live, interact and design future urban morphologies.

‘Separate but Equal?’: Deconstructing Gender Dynamics and Its Implications for Gendered Inclusive Design Driven by Urban Emotions

Trishla Chadha

Thesis Tutor: Provides Ng

The three notions of safety – comfort, belonging and commitment – are significantly impacted by the physical environment as well as by people, space and place.1 This research looks at how women’s fear of violence manifests itself in socio-spatial exclusion. It studies the relationship between women’s safety fears, their sense of victimisation and their movement patterns in urban places – three phenomena rarely dealt with in combination. The research argues that gendered power dynamics are reflected in the spatial exclusion that women experience in their daily lives. The subjective feelings and emotions of women have an impact on the intersubjective power-related process of producing space. 2 Urban design can play a significant part in shaping environments that encourage greater inclusion by examining and compiling available data, developing gender-sensitive frameworks, conducting case studies and critically evaluating studio projects to formulate hypotheses and apply assumptions.

1. Tovi Fenster (2005), ‘The Right to the Gendered City: Different Formations of Belonging in Everyday Life’, Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp217–31

Image: Xeno-Urbanism: Decomposing Temporalities.

Image by the author

2. David Bell and Gill Valentine (eds) (1995), Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, London: Routledge Image: Rethinking Cities for Women’s Safety through Gender-Integrated Design. Image by the author

Digital Twin: A Complementary Approach towards Design for Disassembly

Nipun Garg

Thesis Tutor: Sheng-Yang Huang

As the world strives to achieve a circular economy model amid the fourth industrial revolution, two terms have become extremely important for the construction industry: design for disassembly (DFD), a design principle that considers how to minimise value loss at end of life; and digital twin, a real-time virtual representation of a real-world physical system or process. Material information is an important factor in creating DFD designs and has highlighted the need for material passports (MPs). MPs not only capture information about a material’s past, such as its provenance, production and owner, but also need to be updated regularly to make materials available for their next cycle of use. Manual capture of such complex information can quickly become difficult. A digital twin has the ability to capture an object’s past, present and future and can complement DFD. Since it can be scaled down to a material level, it can also complement MPs. The building information model (BIM) created at the design stage becomes the backbone for the creation of a digital twin, as presently BIM technology is unable to exchange data in real time. For the exchange of information and integration to happen, interoperability becomes the first and most crucial step. Currently, with BIM this happens via an International Foundation Class (IFC) format

which is exchanged across the web predominantly using Extensible Markup Language (XML) language. However, with BIM gradually moving to cloud-based systems, capturing real-time data for the numerous materials involved in a building is critical, and XML handles this inefficiently. Javascript Object Notation (JSON) is another programming language that helps data exchange across the web, and studies have shown that, compared to XML, JSON easily parses data in a compact manner that is less time-consuming. As there are very few studies regarding JSON serialisation for specifying IFC models, this research attempts to create one.

Image: Information exchange via JSON between a digital counterpart and a physical system designed for disassembly. Image by the author

The Evolution of Nature and Cities in the Digital Age Yaqiong

Song

Thesis Tutor: Philippe Morel

The word ‘utopia’ has been closely associated with the topic of urban development since its inception in 1516.1 The related term ‘ecotopia’ (i.e. ecological utopia) concerns the relationship between humans and nature.

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, two camps –ecocentrism and anthropocentrism – have emerged, each holding different views on environmental issues. This has inspired proposals for ecotopian habitats such as the ‘green city’ 2 and bioregionalism3 to address the ecological crisis. The idea of ecotopia dates to Ernst Bloch’s 1915 theory of eco-socialism and sustainable ecology as analysed by Ernest Callenbach in 1979. However, the most recent version of ecological sustainability was formalised in 1987 by the United Nations and listed as the seventh Millennium Development Goal in 2000, covering five key aspects: climate change, biodiversity, ecological services, land degradation and pollution.

The design of an ecological city has long played a role in debates around sustainability, yet bringing a healthy ecosystem to cities and living in an ecotopian city is not straightforward. This thesis suggests introducing a natural ecosystem to cities, enabling nature to guide humans in how they should inhabit the environment. It repositions humanity’s position in ecology and explores our place

in the world from the perspective of our biological species.

The design is based on an understanding of urban forestry and the evolution of the forest ecosystem. Computation is used to simulate and predict how the forest might impact buildings. Here the function of architecture is abandoned to give way to natural development, after which design can be applied. The results show that nature expands steadily without human disturbance, eroding buildings while establishing a new ecosystem. Over the next century, the forest will create a culture of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, promoting the construction of an ecological utopia. Rather than simply adding nature to the city, designing an ecotopian city creates a new way of life and a better environment for humans and nature in the information age.

Image:

1. CHENZHAOUP (2011), ‘思考城市乌托邦 (Urban Utopian Thinkings)’, chenzhaoup.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/思考 城市乌托邦 -urban-utopian-thinkings

2. Le Corbusier (1933), La ville radieuse, Boulogne: Editions de L’Architecture D’Aujourd’Hui

3. Patrick Geddes (1915), Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics, London: Williams & Norgate

La Défense fully colonised by a forest. Image by the author

At work in the studio.

Photo: Benjamin McMahon

Architectural Computation MSc/MRes

Architectural Computation MSc/MRes

Programme Directors: Manuel Jiménez Garcia, Philippe Morel

‘At its core, intelligence can be viewed as a process that converts unstructured information into useful and actionable knowledge.’

Demis Hassabis, Financial Times, 21 April 2017

The Bartlett’s Architectural Computation MSc and MRes programmes engage and advance the main technologies through which tomorrow’s architecture will be both designed and constructed. The programmes are designed to provide students with the depth of understanding needed to exploit computation fully in the context of design, research and industry. Students investigate computation as a technology that is responsible for driving fundamental shifts in industry and society by changing the way we produce and think. They develop technical knowledge, such as computer coding, not only as a skill to be practised, but also as a framework for thought. A broad theoretical understanding of the algorithms and philosophies of artificial intelligence (AI) and related domains supports this technical knowledge. Theory modules position the use of computation in the design process, ranging from analysis in space and structure, to the use of AI techniques in learning about design performance and the role of computation in creativity. Practice modules allow students to develop their personal interests within a range of themes, such as technologies of interaction, cybernetics, physics simulations, AI, automation and robotics manufacturing. A stream of skillsbased modules teach research skills and programming, guiding students through the multiple possibilities that computation offers in design environments.

Throughout the year, students engaged with a wide range of digital media and tools to develop their projects through studio modules, workshops and lectures. The modules and theses produced research projects that included exploring computational methods for automated construction; the generation of architectural forms using AI; data visualisation applications for the built environment; and computational workflows for adaptable habitats, among others.

Students

José Andrés Amenábar Tocornal, Inés Brotons

Borrell, Yu Chen, Maxime

Gaad Cocimarov, Yudi

Cui, Zhonghua Di, Asmaa

Maged Elbaz, Leshan Fu, Shahe Gregorian, Shengwei Hu, Kai Jiao, Minisha Khandelwal, Mouayyad Khatib, Eleni Leftherioti, Rishabh

Lunkad, Xiaojing Ma, Tin Nei Pang, Tommaso

Pardini, Elena Petrova, Yayan Qiu, Pallavi Ray, Fernando Rey Vidal, Areti Sanoudou-Dramalioti, Kaiyu Shi, Qiyang Shi, Julius Überall, Irmak Ugurlu, Shengzhan Xu, Tianxiaoyang Zong

Staff

Shajay Bhooshan, Vishu Bhooshan, Tommaso

Casucci, Khaled Elashry, Sherif Eltarabishy, Ava Fatah gen Schieck, Sam Griffiths, Sean

Hanna, Manuel Jiménez

Garcia, Marcin Kosicki, Petros Koutsolampros, Christopher Leung, Philippe Morel, Vasileios Papalexopoulos, Stamatios Psarras, Valentina Soana, Martin Traunmueller, Martha Tsigkari

Postgraduate Teaching Assistant

Dingyi Wei

Programme Administrators

Tung Ying (Crystal) Chow, Tom Mole

AC.1–AC.2 Rishabh Lunkad, Tommaso Pardini, Fernando Rey Vidal, Julius Überall ‘Dwelling Configurator’. The housing unit aggregations are generated using a custom rule developed from cellular automata. Each cell is individually evaluated to assess its connectedness to its neighbouring cell, its density and displacement and its stability during rigid-body simulation. The fitness function is synthesised and optimised over each iteration using a custom genetic algorithm. The aggregations are then clustered into habitable blocks using k-means algorithms and their performance is analysed based on four criteria: structural stability; the number of clusters; comfort; and accessibility or connectivity. From the catalogue of exploration, every iteration that best meets the four criteria is selected and provided to the user.

AC.3 Shahe Gregorian, Rishabh Lunkad, Tommaso Pardini, Irmak Ugurlu ‘Asymptotic Timber Grid Shell’. The image represents the sequence of geometric operations and optimisation steps taken to derive asymptotic curves. A base mesh is welded and triangulated and then relaxed using the force density method. Once the shape is form-found, the mesh is split into parts to be fabricated separately. Asymptotic curves are then calculated by ‘walking’ over the mesh and tracing the path to represent the timber elements through which this shape is realised.

AC.4–AC.5, AC.20–AC.21 José Andrés Amenábar

Tocornal, Asmaa Maged Elbaz, Shahe Gregorian, Irmak Ugurlu ‘Adaptable Bamboo Habitats’. AC.4 The building design process is in constant flux during its early stages. It is therefore crucial to develop tools that allow the user to easily manipulate geometry and quickly generate design options. It is equally important to allow for flexibility in order to adapt to various boundary and site conditions. Graphs offer a suitable interface that meets these requirements. The design and construction of timber gridshell structures are often difficult and depend on form-finding strategies. The output generally depends on the underlying mesh topology, but modelling the mesh topology can hinder early design exploration and limit the generation of design options. To expand the design space of such structures, this project investigates a graph-based form-generating workflow which embeds fabrication complexity and cost in its form-finding goals.

AC.5, AC.20–AC.21 The studio brief was to develop a customisable platform for users and developers to design and build bamboo habitats. This project proposes a holistic workflow that generates structurally aware buildings within a given footprint and provides a detailed cost breakdown for materials and construction. This is controlled via a platform that allows the user to first undertake an analysis of a given site. The user can then draw a boundary within their chosen site and generate layout options that directly impact the total cost. Finally, the user can directly view the engineering tab highlighting the structural and construction data. The generation of the building is achieved using the wave function collapse (WFC) algorithm to assemble interior bamboo modules using a set of connection rules controlled by the user.

AC.6, AC.11 Yudi Cui ‘Passive Solar Blossom’. A solarenergy-activated shape-memory-alloy mechanism for the passive adjustment of shading blinds. The functional prototype was manufactured using 3D polymer fused deposition modelling, lathe turning, 2D laser cutting and commercial off-the-shelf parts.

AC.7–AC.8, AC.16 Yu Chen, Kaiyu Shi, Shengzhan Xu, Tianxiaoyang Zong ‘Work Incubator’. This project explores the application of the WFC algorithm for architectural aggregation. The project also combines the WFC with rigid-body dynamics and graph path-finding methods to aid generation.

AC.9, AC.14–AC.15 Zhonghua Di ‘Under the Traditional Chinese Water Town Grammar: Reconstructing Cities Using the WFC Method’. In China, there are numerous dilapidated ancient buildings and villages that need to be renewed and rebuilt to preserve their cultural heritage. However, it is difficult to support this due to the huge number of villages that require renovation. This project proposes a platform that can instantly provide users with references for renewal layouts based on local land conditions and architectural styles. Firstly, the typical architectural language of each region (e.g. Wuzhen or Pingyao) is categorised. Secondly, using the WFC algorithm, typical modules for roads, buildings, waterways, vegetation and so on are defined along with rules on how to assemble them and generate programmed scenes. Finally, architects are able to simulate building layouts in a virtual environment.

AC.10, AC.22 Tin Nei Pang ‘Passive Air-Displacement Ventilation’. A passive wind displacement-driven ventilation device. These diagrams show a functional digital model of an operating mechanism with a section analysis through the four-way split ventilation ducts.

AC.12–AC.13 Yu Chen, Xiaojing Ma, Georgina Myers, Qiyang Shi ‘Curve Crease Folding’. This image represents the sequence of geometrical operations and optimisation steps taken to derive a curve crease foldable shape from a low-poly representation of a minimal surface. The bottom two images showcase the application of pleating on a base minimal surface in an architectural context and the adaptation of these pleats to functional requirements such as staircases and wall partitions.

AC.17 Rishabh Lunkad, Fernando Rey Vidal, Julius Überall ‘3D Concrete Printing’. The studio focused on deriving topologically optimised geometries for 3D concrete printing. 3D graphic statics were used to study and develop an architectural column. This column was split into variable parts, the fabrication process of which was studied to develop a toolpath for 3D concrete printing.

AC.18 Shahe Gregorian ‘Computational Framework for Timber Structures’. An early-stage design tool which allows users to model timber structures while receiving live feedback on fabrication complexity and cost. The intuitive graph-based interface generates architectural elements and subsequently rationalises its doublecurvature members to reduce cost.

AC.19 Rishabh Lunkad ’Design and Fabrication of Minimal Surfaces as a Cost-Effective Solution to Architectural Skins’. The design and construction of architectural skins have a huge impact on the cost of a built project. Fabrication of double-curved surfaces is a challenging and expensive process. While generating complex skins, there is often a huge difference between the parent shape and the resulting buildable component. Implementing a fabrication-aware design workflow helps bridge this gap, saving both time and energy.

Calcareous Arabesque, Bio-ID and B-Made in collaboration with Tate & Lyle, 2021. Photo: Marcos Cruz

Bio-Integrated Design MArch/MSc

Bio-Integrated Design

MArch/MSc

Programme Directors: Marcos Cruz (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Brenda Parker (UCL Biochemical Engineering)

Our Bio-Integrated Design (Bio-ID) programmes bring together advanced computation, biotechnology and digital fabrication in the context of climate change to create a radical and sustainable built environment. They take these life-changing phenomena as the foundation for exploring sophisticated yet also critical design solutions, which will help to shape our future society.

Taught collaboratively by The Bartlett School of Architecture and UCL Department of Biochemical Engineering, Bio-ID proposes a new sense of materiality with emergent hybrid technologies that form innovative products and environments, infused with natural and synthetic life. With two different Master’s programmes – MArch and MSc – working in tandem, the work of each student balances laboratory research, computation and advanced manufacturing. The programmes are hands-on, combining design and scientific research. Emphasis is given to the translation of phenomena observed at a microscopic level into architecturally relevant scales. Nature plays a central role, beyond that of a model or inspiration; it is in itself the medium of a new, multi-layered design approach that is biologically, materially and socially integrated.

Bio-ID brings together a multidisciplinary community of students, including architects, designers, urban planners, artists and landscape architects studying the MArch, and scientists and engineers studying the MSc.

Tutors

Marcos Cruz, Pradeep Devadass, Kostas

Grigoriadis, Nina Jotanovic, Andreas Körner, Alexandra

Lăcătușu, James Lawrence, Tony Lee, Brenda Parker, Ian Robinson, Evgeny

Rodionov, Javier Ruiz, Anete

Salmane, Harry Watkins

Laboratory Coordinator

Anete Salmane

Theory Tutors

Sam Esses, Sienna

Griffin-Shaw, Sally

Hughes, Jack Jeffries, Lydia Johnson, Nikoletta

Karastathi, Andreas

Koerner, Ben Lee, Tairan

Li, Valentina Marincioni, Annarita Papeschi, Peter Scully, Tania Sengupta, Prantar Tamuli, Edward

Tse, Maria Villafane, Helge

Wurdemann, Bogdan Zaha

Programme Administrator

Zoe Lau

Critics

Paolo Bombelli, Cobus

Bothma, Clare Brass, Tiziano Derme, Salome

De Sa Magalhaes, Gary

Grant, Ryan Hoover, Sally Hughes, Hannah

Laeverenz-Schlogelhofer, Ioana Man, Mathilde

Marengo, Yessica Mendez, Justin Nicholls, Osman

Orayici, Juan Carlos

Sanabria, José Pedro

Sousa, Laura Stoffels, Jake Robinson, Jonathan Wilson

Partners

UCL Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, St Andrews Botanic Garden, UCL Centre for Nature

Inspired Engineering, IAAC

Images (clockwise from top left): Urban Reefs, Philia Yi Sian Chua, Ebyan Alexander Rezgui, Ophelie Eloise Tousignant; Vertical Grounds, Mackenzie Evert Van Dam; Urban Oasis, Winnie Lau; Microbiosis, Faraz Alian, Sarah Zaki Aljishi, Zainuddin Ansari; Algal Substrate, Mangesh Madhukar Kurund, Arnav Abhay Kele; Emergent Territories, William Marcus Scott, Sheng-Han Chen; Biophotovoltaic Component, Agathe Helene Marie Chevee, Sarah Jane Olsen; Bioreceptive Roof, Junmei Chen

Barcelona, University of Coimbra, Design Museum, Central Saint Martins –University of the Arts

London

Students

Year 1

Sameera Bommisetty, Rita Espinha Dos Santos

Abreu Morais, Alexa

Guerra Cam, Satyam

Amar Gyanchandani, Tanvi Khurmi, Chao-Chun

Kung, Jennifer Florence

Levy Girardin, Itamar

Lilienthal Ladelsky, Mounika Maddipatla, Dana Molzhigit, Laetitia

Marie Nathalie Morlie, Sharifunnisa Mynasabgari, Natalia Beata Piórecka, Shylaja Regunathan, Penn Helary Ryan, Karishma Keshari

Tuladhar, Kenneth Neil

Wilson Rozas, Junyu Yang

Year 2

Faraz Alian, Sarah Zaki

Aljishi, Zainuddin Ansari, Junmei Chen, Sheng-Han

Chen, Agathe Helene

Marie Chevee, Philia Yi

Sian Chua, Arnav Abhay

Kele, Mangesh Madhukar

Kurund, German Gonzalo

Nieva Mesas, Winnie Lau, Sarah Jane Olsen, Ebyan

Alexander Rezgui, William Marcus Scott, Ophelie

Eloise Tousignant, Mackenzie Evert Van Dam

Our Programmes

The Bartlett School of Architecture currently teaches undergraduate and graduate students across 28 programmes of study and one professional course.

Across the school’s portfolio of teaching, research and professional programmes, our rigorous, creative and innovative approach to architecture remains integral. You will find below a list of our current programmes and their duration when taken full time (typical for MPhil/PhDs). More information, including details on open days, is available on our website.

Undergraduate

Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Three-year programme

Architecture MSci (ARB Part 1 &2)

Five-year programme

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Three or four-year programme

Engineering & Architectural Design MEng (ARB/RIBA Part 1, CIBSE)

Four-year programme

Postgraduate Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Two-year programme

Architectural Computation MSc/MRes

12-month programmes

Architectural Design MArch

12-month programme

Architectural History MA

One-year programme

Architecture & Digital Theory MRes

One-year programme

Architecture & Historic Urban

Environments MA

One-year programme

Bio-Integrated Design MSc/MArch

Two-year programmes

Design for Manufacture MArch

15-month programme

Design for Performance & Interaction MArch

15-month programme

Landscape Architecture MA/MLA

One (MA) and two-year (MLA) programmes, Situated Practice MA

15-month programme

Space Syntax: Architecture & Cities

MSc/MRes

One-year programmes

Urban Design MArch

12-month programme

Advanced Architectural Research PG Cert

Six-month programme

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme

Architectural & Urban History & Theory

MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme

Architectural Space & Computation

MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme

Architecture & Digital Theory MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme

Architectural Practice MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme

Professional Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 3)

10 to 23-month course

Public Lectures

Visit our Vimeo channel to watch this year’s recorded lectures – search ‘Bartlett School of Architecture’ to find us.

The Bartlett International Lecture Series

Attracting guests from across the world, our International Lecture Series has featured over 500 distinguished speakers since its inception in 1996. Lectures in this series are open to the public and free to attend.

This autumn and spring, the series was curated as an index of the school’s programmes and broadcast live on YouTube. Each lecture was curated by a programme to inspire, invent, imagine and provoke and co-hosted by students with tutors. The series aimed to expose different modes and methodologies of design and design thinking to embrace urgencies, subtleties and complexities of social, spatial and environmental justice.

Lectures this year featured:

— Contingent

M. Casey Rehm (Sci-Arc)

— The Landscape Model

Luis Callejas (LCLA Office)

Solidarity in Everyday Space

Jos Boys (LEEDIC) and Nina Tame

Engineering Carbon –

A Small Practice Perspective

Peter Laidler (Structure Workshop)

— What is the Future of Chinese

Architecture?

Jianxiang He & Ying Jiang (O-Office Architects)

— How to Talk About the Weather

Astrida Neimanis (University of British Columbia Okanagan)

Poikilohydric Design

Professor Marcos Cruz Inaugural Lecture

Building Integrated Environments: A Cognitive Framework

N. Katherine Hayles (University of California)

Rethinking Urban Materiality: Time as a Resource

Anupama Kundoo (Anupama Kundoo Architects)

The Making of Making (Architecture)

Josep Miàs (MiAS Architects)

Direct Urbanism

Barbara Holub (transparadiso)

What Can We Learn from One Billion Images?

Lev Manovich (City University New York)

— Scale

Mari Hvattum (Oslo School of Architecture and Design), Federica Goffi (Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism), Igor Marjanović (Rice Architecture) and Eunice Seng (The University of Hong Kong)

Difference and Design

Justin Garrett Moore (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation)

— Building Beyond

Dr Sonya Dyer and Dr Barbara Imhof (LIQUIFER Vienna-Bremen)

Queer Infrastructures

Professor Ben Campkin Inaugural Lecture Innovation at the Urban Scale

Laura Narvaez Zertuche and Martha Tsigkari (Foster + Partners)

— Return

Mae-ling Lokko (Center for Ecosystems in Architecture, Yale University)

Prospectives

The Bartlett’s B-Pro history and theory lecture series continued to offer a platform for the presentation, discussion and theoretical reflection on the links between digital thought, architecture and urban design. Speakers included:

Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou

— Kyle Steinfield

Daniel Cardoso Llach, Carnegie Mellon University

Work in Progress

A public lecture series from Landscape Architecture programmes, the series comprised curated but informal talks from practitioners and academics. Speakers were invited from a range of disciplines, to reflect on their work in progress, working methods and the process of working with landscape. Speakers included:

Ed Wall, University of Greenwich

— Jala Makhzoumi, American University of Beirut

— Herb Sweene, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

— Felicity Steers, erz Studio

Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett Research Conversations series featured presentations of research from students undertaking the Architectural Design or Architectural and Urban History & Theory MPhil/PhD programmes. Students were joined by senior academics from across the school, including PhD programme directors and supervisors, alongside members of the wider Bartlett and UCL community. This year research was presented by:

Olivier Bellflamme

— Jhono Bennett

Paola Camasso

— Nikoletta Karastathi

Alexandra Lăcătușu

— Xiuzheng Li

Ana Mayoral Moratilla

— Petra Seitz

Space Syntax Laboratory Research Seminars

This academic seminar series featured researchers sharing their findings, discussing their ideas and showing work in progress from The Bartlett’s Space Syntax Laboratory. Seminars were moderated by Dr Kimon Krenz. They were open to the public and attended by Bartlett’s staff and students. Guests to the series included:

Lars Marcus, Chalmers University of Technology

Francesca Froy, The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL

Ha Minh Hai Thai, RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design

Constance Desenfant, Weston Williamson + Partners

Ahmed Tarek Zaky Fouad

Gareth Simons, The Bartlett Energy Institute, UCL

Martin Bielik, Bauhaus University Weimar

Isabelle Soares, Leibniz University

— Paolo Santi, MIT Senseable City Lab

David Fredrick & Rhodora G. Vennarucci, University of Arkansas

Lingzhu Zhang, Tongi University & Alain

Chiaradia, University of Hong Kong

Bartlett Screening Rooms

The Bartlett Screening Room addresses questions around critical urbanism through the screening of short films and moving images, followed by discussion. It is a collaboration between Henrietta Williams, an artist/researcher based at The Bartlett School of Architecture, and Oliver Wright, programmer of the Open City Documentary Festival. Guests to the series included:

— Forensic Architecture

Kiran Kaur Brar

— Mike Revereza

Simon Liu

— Sasha Litvintseva

Sindhu Thirumalaisamy

— Bedwyr Williams

Riar Rizaldi

— Audrey & Maxime Jean-Baptiste

Suneil Sanzgiri

Queering Urbanism Lecture Series

Queering Urbanism is a new online event series initiated by B.Queer, The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment’s network for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual (LGBTQIA+) students, staff and allies. Organised by Claire Tunnacliffe, Jordana Ramalho and Ben Campkin, the series connects queer and trans studies to urban studies and practices of urbanism, foregrounding issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in the built environment. Guests to the series included:

— Petra Doan, Florida State University

Dhiren Borisa, Jindal Global Law School

Sarah Ensor and Tim Waterman, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Conferences & Events

As we emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, a diverse programme of events was held in hybrid formats at our Bloomsbury and Here East campuses exploring innovative ideas and current issues, with inspiring speakers from across the globe. Students were able to exhibit their work physically for the first time in two years at exhibitions both on and off-campus.

Polysocial Realities, 10 September 2021 took place as part of Ars Electronica Festival. Students from Design for Performance & Interaction MArch participated in their first physical group exhibition in two years, at fold.ldn in East London.

Architects! Climate Action Network (ACAN) held an Education Toolkit Workshop, 28 September 2021 with ideas, guidance and resources for use by students, tutors and others who want to take immediate, ongoing and meaningful action towards a new climate education for architecture.

Supported by the UCL-Wits Strategic Partnership fund, Unfinished Symphonies: Transformational Decolonial Urbanism, 14-15 October 2021 saw Professor Achille Mbembe give a public lecture followed by a PhD workshop to share and discuss work in progress on transformational decolonial urbanism.

The student-led symposium Common Threads: Intersectional Methodologies of Architectural History Symposium, 18 November 2021 responded to notions of historical narrative, unacknowledged histories and modes of representation.

The sixteenth annual PhD Research Projects Conference, 22 and 24 February 2022 included two days of intense debate and discussion between students, staff, invited guests, critics and the public, discussing doctoral work in development and drawing to conclusion.

Eight temporary pavilions were exhibited at UCL Here East for The Olympic Games –10 Years On, 24 March 2022 by 50 first-year Engineering & Architectural Design MEng students.

Filmed just months before the invasion of Ukraine, What Shall We Do with These Buildings?, 4 May 2022 was previewed at a fundraising event in support of the country. The screening was followed by a discussion with members of the film production, academics and invited guests from the Ukrainian architecture community.

Book Launches

Landscape Citizenships, 30 November 2021

Dr Tim Waterman, lecturer at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, Jane Wolff, University of Toronto and Ed Wall, University of Greenwich discussed their latest book, Landscape Citizenships in a hybrid event between UCL and Toronto.

Dreaming the Impossible to Build the Extraordinary: The Formative First Year of Architectural Education, 1 March 2022

An informal launch of a new Bartlett publication by Frosso Pimenides, Director of Architecture BSc Year 1, with Jeremy Melvin.

Designs on History: The Architect as Physical Historian, 3 March 2022

Professor Jonathan Hill held a lively online discussion with the contributors of his book looking to understand design as a visible and physical history.

A Landscape Utopia: A double book launch with Tim Waterman and Cannon Ivers, 4 May 2022

The launch of two new books from the Landscape Architecture programme at The Bartlett School of Architecture: 250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know by Cannon Ivers and The Landscape of Utopia: Writings on Everyday Life, Taste, Democracy and Design by Tim Waterman.

Bartlett Shows Website

In September 2020, the school launched its bespoke digital exhibition environment, presenting The Summer Show 2020. Since then, nine further student shows have been shared digitally, including The Summer Show 2021 and The B-Pro Show 2021. Each digital exhibition has attracted thousands of online visitors from across the globe, with the Summer Show 2022 content viewed over 200,000 times.

The digital exhibition space was designed by creative agency Hello Monday, working together with the school’s exhibitions and communications teams, to create a unique online experience for the visitor. Hello Monday delivered a virtual show space that allows the user to explore the work spatially, within exhibition rooms, and in detail, on student project pages. Students have the opportunity to display their work using video, high-definition imagery and 3D models alongside detailed narratives.

With each exhibition, the digital environment is being refined to improve the visitor experience and to encourage greater engagement with the student work displayed. Projects are now searchable by thematic concern with all previous shows available to browse from a single landing page.

The Bartlett’s digital show environment has won web design awards at both the Awwwards and Favourite Website Awards and has been shortlisted for the prestigious Archiboo and D&AD Awards in the Digital Design category. Within the UCL community, the virtual shows team, specifically Chee-Kit Lai, Director of Exhibitions, Professor Penelope Haralambidou, Director of Communications, and David Shanks, Project Manager, have been recognised for their outstanding contribution to the learning experience with a UCL Education Award in the studentstaff partnership category.

www.bartlettarchucl.com

Screenshot of Summer Show 2022 website.

Alumni

The Bartlett’s diverse and vibrant alumni play a vital role in the life of the school, as staff, visiting lecturers, mentors, sponsors, donors and participants.

Each year we organise several alumni events, including an ‘R&V’ evening, founded by and for alumni as the ‘Rogues and Vagabonds’ over 60 years ago. After the exceptional circumstances of the past two years, we were delighted to return to in-person gatherings with an R&V drinks reception held at 22 Gordon Street. As well as giving alumni the opportunity to catch up with each other, the event also featured the launch of the new Bartlett School of Architecture publication, Dreaming the Impossible to Build the Extraordinary by Architecture BSc Year 1 Director, Frosso Pimenides, written in collaboration with architectural historian Professor Jeremy Melvin. The reception was chaired by Paul Monaghan, Director at Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.

We also invite alumni to join us at The Bartlett Summer Show at an exclusive Alumni Late.

All Bartlett School of Architecture alumni are invited to join UCL’s Alumni Online Community to keep in touch with the school and receive benefits including special discounts, UCL’s Portico magazine and more.

Registered alumni have access to:

Thousands of e-journals available through UCL Library

A global network of old and new friends in the worldwide alumni community Free mentoring and the opportunity to become a mentor yourself

Jobs boards for the exclusive alumni community

aoc.ucl.ac.uk/alumni

Cover image from Dreaming the Impossible to Build the Extraordinary.

The Bartlett Promise

Across higher education and in industry, the built environment sector is not diverse enough. Here at The Bartlett, we promise to do better.

The Bartlett Promise Scholarship was launched in 2019 to enable UK undergraduate students from backgrounds under-represented in The Bartlett Faculty to pursue their studies with us, with the aim of diversifying the student body and ultimately the built environment sector. In 2020, it was widened to include Masters and PhD scholarships, and in 2021, internationally, to Master’s students in Sub-Saharan Africa. We want a Bartlett education to be open to all, regardless of means.

The scholarship covers full tuition fees for the degree programme, plus an annual allowance to cover living and study expenses. All Promise scholars will also receive ongoing academic and career support during their studies. In addition, The Bartlett Promise Sub-Saharan Africa Scholarships provide a comprehensive support package, including travel to and from the UK and study visa costs.

Professor Christoph Lindner, Dean of The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment says:

The Bartlett is passionate and serious about creating access for students who face barriers to higher education. Launching The Bartlett Promise Sub-Saharan Africa Scholarship allows us to support students from a region of the world that is significantly under-represented in our faculty and to contribute to realising the potential, and launching the careers, of future leaders in the built environment. This is a long-term commitment and we look forward to seeing the ongoing impact our scholars will have in the UK and the wider world.

To be eligible for a scholarship, candidates must have an offer of a place on a Bartlett degree programme. When selecting scholars, we consider the educational, personal and financial circumstances of the applicant, and how these relate to the eligibility criteria.

Full details of the application process and eligibility criteria can be found on our website.

ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/bartlett-promise

Students at 22 Gordon Street, The Bartlett’s Bloomsbury home.

New School Director

The Bartlett School of Architecture is delighted to announce that Professor Amy Kulper has joined the school as Director, following an international search for a transformative leader.

Amy Catania Kulper is an architectural educator, administrator and innovator, whose teaching and research focus on the intersections of history, theory, criticism and design. Amy joins us from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she has been Head of Architecture for the past five years. She has also taught at the University of Cambridge, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Southern California Institute for Architecture (SCI_Arc), and the University of Michigan, where she was an associate professor with tenure and four-time recipient of the Donna M. Salzer Award for teaching excellence.

At RISD, Amy has continued to shape contemporary architectural thought. In 2019 she co-chaired the ACSA national conference Black Box: Articulating Architecture’s Core in the Post-Digital Era. As a part of the conference, she co-curated the exhibition, Drawing for the Design Imaginary at the Carnegie-Mellon Museum. More recently she co-curated Drawing Attention: The Digital Culture of Contemporary Architectural Drawings, a group exhibition at Roca Gallery in London.

I am honoured to have been selected as the next Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture and look forward to future collaborations with staff and students. This is a crucial moment for reflection and change as we examine our roles as educators and possible futures for both the discipline and the profession of architecture. The fluency of the architect is expanding to include expertise in racial, social, and environmental justice and decoloniality. I look forward to harnessing the creative innovations of the Bartlett community as we embrace this transformation in the education of the architect.

Professor Amy Kulper

Staff, Visitors & Consultants

A

Ana Abram

Tamanna Abul Kashem

Vasilija Abramovic

Georgios Adamopoulos

Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo

Elena Agafonova

Ava Aghakouchak

Yahia Ahmed

Visiting Prof Robert Aish

Roslyn Aish

Sarah Aljishi

Laura Allen

Carlos Alvarez Doran

Sabina Andron

Arveen Appadoo

Dimitris Argyros

Azadeh Asgharzadeh Zaferani

Abigail Ashton

Felicity Atekpe

Edwina Attlee

Joseph Augustin

B

Julia Backhaus

Kirsty Badenoch

Matthew Barnett

Howland

Beth Barnett-Sanders

Sarah Barry

Paul Bavister

Simon Beames

Richard Beckett

Bedir Bekar

Jonathan Bennett

Julian Besems

Bastian Beyer

Vishu Bhooshan

Peter Bishop

Laurence Blackwell-Thale

Isaïe Bloch

Eleanor Boiling

Jatiphak Boonmun

Iain Borden

Roberto Bottazzi

Visiting Prof Andy Bow

Matt Bowles

Eva Branscome

Albert Brenchat-Aguilar

Alastair Browning

Jessica Buckmire

Thomas Budd

Christopher Burman

Mark Burrows

Matthew Butcher

C

Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange

Ben Campkin

Brent Carnell

Mario Carpo

Dan Carter

Martyn Carter

Luciano Caruggi de Faria

Ricardo Carvalho De Ostos

Tomasso Casucci

Megha Chand Inglis

Hadin Charbel

Nat Chard

Zahira Chehabeddine

Po Nien Chen

Nikhil Cherian

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno

Tung Ying (Crystal) Chow

Krina Christopoulou

Philia Chua

Sandra Ciampone

Dovile Ciapaite

Mollie Claypool

Marjan Colletti

Michael Collins

Stephannie Contreras-Fell

Emeritus Prof Peter Cook

Hannah Corlett

Samuel Coulton

Marcos Cruz

Rut Cuenca Candel

Nichola Czyz

D

Christina Dahdaleh

Amica Dall

Tiffany Dang

Satyajit Das

Peter Davies

Tom Davies

Klaas de Rycke

Luca Dellatorre

Edward Denison

Pradeep Devadass

Max Dewdney

Ashley Dhanani

Zoi Diakaki

Ilaria Di Carlo

David Di Duca

Simon Dickens

Katerina Dionysopoulou

Thomas Dobbins

Paul Dobraszczyk

Patrick Dobson-Perez

Visiting Prof Elizabeth Diller

Oliver Domeisen

Elizabeth Dow

Sarah Dowding

E

Penelope Haralambidou

David Edwards

Amr Elhusseiny

Sam Esses

Ruth Evison

F

Pani Fanai-Danesh

Ava Fatah gen Schieck

Alian Faraz

Donat Fatet

Laura Fawcett-Gaskell

Alberto Fernandez Gonzalez

Timothy Fielder

Lucy Flanders

Zachary Fluker

Elie Fofana

James Ford

Emeritus Prof

Adrian Forty

Murray Fraser

Daisy Froud

Maria Fulford

G

Emeritus Prof

Stephen Gage

Gunther Galligioni

Mark Garcia

Paris Gazzola

Christophe Gérard

Christina Geros

Octavian Gheorghiu

Stelios Giamarelos

Pedro Gil

Jacqui Glass

Agnieszka Glowacka

Ruairi Glynn

Alicia Gonzalez-Lafita Perez

Jon Goodbun

Polly Gould

Niamh Grace

Gabriele Grassi

Kevin Gray

Emmy Green

James Green

Kevin Green

Sienna Griffin-Shaw

Sam Griffiths

Kostas Grigoriadis

Panagiota Grivea

Eric Guibert

Srijana Gurung

Seth Guy

H

Alice Hardy

Jack Hardy

Wardah Hassan

Sarah Hassan M Alsomly

Ben Hayes

Thea Heintz

Stephen Henderson

Colin Herperger

Simon Herron

Rosie Hervey

Danielle Hewitt

Visiting Prof Neil Heyde

Parker Heyl

Jonathan Hill

Ashley Hinchcliffe

Bill Hodgson

Tom Holberton

Adam Holloway

Tahmineh Hooshyar

Emami

Tyson Hosmer

Delwar Hossain

Oliver Houchell

Elise Hunchuck

Johan Hybschmann

I

Jessica In

Anderson Inge

Susanne Isa

Cannon Ivers

J

Benjamin James

Clara Jaschke

William Jennings

Manuel Jiménez Garcia

Steve Johnson

Helen Jones

Luke Jones

Nina Jotanovic

K

Melih Kamaoglu

Nikoletta Karastathi

Kayvan Karimi

Jan Kattein

Thomas Keeley

Arnav Kele

Jonathan Kendall

Thomas Kendall

Jakub Klaska

Fergus Knox

Maria Knutsson-Hall

Andreas Körner

Margit Kraft

Kimon Krenz

Joel Cady

Paola Camasso

Blanche Cameron

William Victor Camilleri

Alberto Campagnoli

Andreea Dumitrescu

Shyamala Duraisingam

Kirti Durelle

Thomas Dyckhoff

Tamsin Hanke

Sean Hanna

Zachariah Harper-Le

Petevin Dit Le Roux

Anete Krista Salmane

Dirk Krolikowski

Dragana Krsic

Amy Kulper

Mangesh Kurund

L

Elliot Nash

S

Freddy Tuppen

Alexandra Lăcătușu

Chee-Kit Lai

Lo Lanfear

Ekaterina Larina

Zoe Lau

Ruby Law

Benjamin Lee

Guan Lee

Kit Lee-Smith

Stefan Lengen

Christopher Leung

Thomas Leung

Sarah Lever

Visting Prof Amanda Levete

Tairan Li

Xiuzheng Li

Ifigeneia Liangi

CJ Lim

Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Visiting Prof Lesley Lokko

Alvaro Lopez

Déborah López

Luke Lowings

Tim Lucas

Matthew Lucraft

Elin Lund

Abi Luter

M

Alexandru Malaescu

Shneel Malik

Gurdav Mankoo

Emily Mann

Yeoryia Manolopoulou

Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk

Maria Marta

Sara Martinez Zamora

Robin Mather

Emma-Kate Matthews

Billy Mavropoulos

Claire McAndrew

Joseph McGrath

Níall McLaughlin

Visiting Prof Jeremy Melvin

Joseph Miàs

Frédéric Migayrou

Doug Miller

Siraaj Mitha

Matei-Alexandru Mitrache

Tom Mole

Carolina MondragonBayarri

Ana Monrabal-Cook

Philippe Morel

Bongani Muchemwa

Hamish Muir

Shaun Murray

Maxwell Mutanda

Filippo Nassetti

Sahar Navabakhsh

Provides Ng

Carlota Núñez-Barranco Vallejo

Aisling O’Carroll

Toby O’Connor

James O’Leary

Andy O’Reilly

Luke Olsen

Visiting Prof Femi Oresanya

Daniel Ovalle Costal

Levent Ozruh

P

Yael Padan

Igor Pantic

Artemis Papachristou

Thomas Parker

Claudia Pasquero

Jane Patterson

Thomas Pearce

Luke Pearson

Alan Penn

Barbara Penner

Drew Pessoa

Samuel Pierce

Frosso Pimenides

Jolanta Piotrowska

Alicia Pivaro

Ruth Plackett

Maj Plemenitas

Jakub Plewik

Danae Polyviou

Lyn Poon

Andrew Porter

Arthur Prior

Sophia Psarra

Stamatios Psarras

R

Ralf Saade

Visiting Prof Jenny Sabin

Kevin Saey

Kerstin Sailer

Rebecca Sainsot-Reynolds

Diana Salazar Morales

Sabrina Samuels

Tan Sapsaman

Ned Scott

Peter Scully

Petra Seitz

Ariha Semontee

Tania Sengupta

Alan Sentongo

Neba Sere

Sara Shafiei

David Shanks

Alistair Shaw

Bob Sheil

Visiting Prof Wang Shu

Naz Siddique

Isaac Simpson

Colin Smith

Paul Smoothy

Mark Smout

Valentina Soana

Joana Carla Soares

Goncalves

Jasmin Sohi

Jonathan Solly

Amy Spencer

Ben Spong

Matthew Springett

Michael Stacey

Iulia Statica

Johanna Stenhols

Tijana Stevanovic

Rachel Stevenson

Sabine Storp

Greg Storrar

David Storring

Kay Stratton

Sarmad Suhail

Michiko Sumi

Samuel Turner-Baldwin

Jonathan Tyrrell

U

Tom Ushakov

V

Melis Van Den Berg

Kelly Van Hecke

Kim Van Poeteren

Tasos Varoudis

Laura Vaughan

Hamish Veitch

María Venegas Raba

Viktoria Viktorija

Amelia Vilaplana de Miguel

Nina Vollenbroker

W

Michael Wagner

Andrew Walker

Qiong Wang

Susan Ware

Barry Wark

Gabriel Warshafsky

Tim Waterman

Harry Watkins

Patrick Weber

Dingyi Wei

Visiting Prof Lu Wenyu

Paul Weston

Alice Whewell

Andrew Whiting

Alex Whitley

Daniel Widrig

Anna Wild

Daniel Wilkinson

Gen Williams

Henrietta Williams

Graeme Williamson

James Williamson

Robin Wilson

Sal Wilson

Oliver Wilton

Lakshmi Priya Rajendran

Robert Randall

Peg Rawes

Sophie Read

Aileen Reid

Guang Yu Ren

Jane Rendell

Gilles Retsin

Charlotte Reynolds

Farlie Reynolds

Callum Richardson

Julie Richardson

David Roberts

Felix Roberts

Gavin Robotham

Daniel Rodriguez Garcia

Harry Sumner

Lina Sun

Tom Svilans

Iga Swiercz

T

Jane Wong

Catherine Wood

Y

Zifeng Ye

Sandra Youkhana

Tetsuro Nagata

Giles Nartey

Javier Ruiz Rodriguez

Mateo Rossi Rolando

Prantar Tamuli

Emma Temm

Philip Temple

Colin Thom

Kathryn Timmins

Eva Tisnikar

Michael Tite

Claudia Toma

Siyu Tong

Alessandro Toti

Martha Tsigkari

Chan Tsz Long

Michelle Young

Ying Ching Yuen

Z

Aikaterini Zacharopoulou

Barbara Zandavali

Emmanouil Zaroukas

Sepehr Zhand

Qingyuan Zhou

Dominik Zisch

Fiona Zisch

Stamatios Zografos

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