Over half of the Architecture staff are research active. Taken collectively, their work encompasses a rich and diverse scope of subjects, which include: urbanity and human immersion; sustainability and design process; regional Modernism and Liverpool’s Twentieth Century architectural history; materiality and culture; international transport infrastructure; (re)production and use of wastelands and derelict urban spaces; alternative approaches for housing design; housing for dementia; methods and tools for low energy building design with user oriented building simulation software; the design of libraries in a changing society and culture; analysis of cognition in the creative process, in particular cognitive bias, judgment heuristics, and the validity of design quality indicators; and pedagogy and the student experience in creative programmes. There is a deliberate strategy to interweave research and teaching within the programme, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This manifests both through how research informs teaching to inspire and nourish our students’ learning, but also how studio teaching and emergent project work can contribute to published research in a range of contemporary fields and problems in wider contexts – an approach that has been termed ‘teaching-informed research’. For example, the MArch programme has established a long-term engagement with the architecture of housing, and several staff are research active in this field. Also, urban design project work in the MArch programme is this year completing a five-year strategy of studying Second Tier port cities across Europe, including Marseille, Genoa and Gdańsk, which share similar concerns to Liverpool. Out of these projects, a coherent body of ‘research through design’ has been developed on the particularities of urban regeneration in such places. This work has been disseminated through public exhibitions, and the aim now is for a collective publication celebrating the culmination of the five year study. Pedagogic research by staff feeds directly into enriching teaching and learning within the programme. Some projects have also secured funding, including studies into both curriculum enhancement and retention. These focused on different aspects of our students’ learning experience, such as enhancing the integration of design and technology learning through computer modelling, and understanding students’ experience of induction and transition in their programme. Research in the Architecture programme is also integrated with City Lab – an experimental art, design and research studio, which enables action led research and innovation within the built environment by collaborating across a range of cutting-edge themes to explore the intersection of art, architecture, ecology, design and science. This is one of the five Labs that reside within the School of Art and Design’s ART LABS research centre, which collectively offer contemporary and innovative approaches to professional research, practice-based research and advanced study; a robust collaborative structure aims to support the work of individual researchers, research partnerships and research students.
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Liverpool John Moores University - Architecture 2018
