The Bartlett Autumn Show Book 2024 by The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL

School of Architecture, UCL

The Bartlett Autumn Show 2024

Introduction Amy Kulper

Architecture & Historic

Landscape

DS1

Feral Landscapes

DS2

Site Half Living: Awakening the Urban Biosphere

DS3

Unruly Operations –Transboundary Landscapes

DS4

Uncertain Sitopias

DS5

Wild Isles – Archipelagos in Flux

DS7

In the ‘Foreseeable Future’

Nature Reassembles

DS8

Locally Remote

Environment & Technology

History & Theory

Cinematic & Videogame

Architecture MArch

Skills

History & Theory

Bartlett Prospective (B-Pro)

Architectural Design

RC5

Product Architecture

RC6 / Material Architecture Lab

Hacking by Design

RC7

Unruly Tectonics

RC8

Augmented Multi-Materialities

RC10

AI Tectonics

Architectural Design Thesis

Urban Design MArch

RC11 Casts

RC14

Sensoria Urbanism

RC15

Pervasive Urbanism: Scenarios of Spatial Resistance

RC16 / Urban Morphogenesis Lab

Deep Green III

RC18

Relational Urbanism – From the Molecular to the Planetary Urban Design Thesis

Architectural Computation MSc/MRes

Bio-Integrated Design MArch/MSc Thesis Report

B-Pro Labs

Our Programmes

Short Courses

Public Lectures

Exhibitions & Events

Bartlett Shows Website

Alumni

The Bartlett Promise

Staf, Visitors & Consultants

Introduction

The Autumn Show 2024 at The Bartlett School of Architecture celebrates the work of students on the Architecture & Historic Urban Environments MA, Landscape Architecture MA/MLA, Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch, Architectural Design MArch, Urban Design MArch, Architectural Computation MSc/MRes and Bio-Integrated Design MArch/ MSc. The students and staf participating in these programmes embody The Bartlett’s commitment to critical inquiry and pluralism, demonstrating the importance of considering spatiality and design from multiple perspectives and vantage points. Philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer John Dewey describes critical inquiry in higher education as ‘the active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it’.1

The seven programmes represented in the Autumn Show realise this aspiration for critical inquiry through radically disparate lenses. Students in our Architecture & Historic Urban Environments programme strive to achieve an urgent and radical transformation through critical engagement with the past to build a better future by reinterpreting, rejuvenating, recreating and rethinking urban environments at all scales. Those in our Landscape Architecture programme are committed to an agenda of climate-focused landscape design and environmental stewardship, and are prepared to address sustainability and deal with real-world challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change and ecological crisis. Students in our brand new Cinematic & Videogame Architecture programme take advantage of the unique opportunity to design at the convergence of architecture, flm and videogames to develop radical new time-based, immersive and interactive design projects. The students in our Architectural Design programme explore advanced coding, fabrication and robotics, as well as the latest approaches to artifcial intelligence (AI), CNC fabrication, 3D printing, supercomputing, simulation and interactivity as conduits for contemporary design. Our Urban Design students explore new ideas in both design and theory, while developing a complex understanding of the city as a place of human co-existence. Those in the Architectural Computation programme learn the skills to create

generative and responsive forms through exposure to real programming environments, where they are taught by architects, experts in AI and human–computer interaction. And students in our Bio-Integrated Design programmes utilise revolutions in biotechnology, computation and climate change as foundations for exploring radical yet critical designs that might shape our future.

While the Autumn Show is a celebration of diverse forms of critical inquiry, these disparate programmes are not just autonomous oferings. Collectively, they create a school and give rise to schools of thought. The excellence of The Bartlett’s student work lies not simply in articulating the ethos of an individual programme, but rather in the appreciation of the diferences of approach, experience and worldview among our programmes. Pluralism in architectural education does not concern the adjacency of diference; rather, it explores the common ground of diference.

With the opening of the Autumn Show 2024, The Bartlett welcomes its new Exhibitions Director, Jonathan Tyrrell. Under Jonathan’s capable guidance the school will continue to showcase the critical inquiry and pluralism of its students’ creative work. On behalf of the school, I would like to thank all the students, staf, alumni and industry partners who, together with a huge extended network of family and friends across the world, have worked so hard to make the show and this catalogue a reality. To our students, although your time at The Bartlett passed much too quickly, we encourage you to continue to pursue critical spatial inquiry in your practice and to champion the value of inclusive and pluralistic design.

Amy Kulper Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture

The Autumn Show 2023. Photo: Richard Stonehouse

Architecture & Historic Urban Environments MA

Programme Director: Jane Wong

We are living in a time of planetary crisis and transformation. A century of unprecedented population growth, urbanisation and migration has imposed unsustainable pressures on the planet and heralded an entirely new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Whether they are working in ancient cities or ultra-modern metropolises, the greatest challenge facing built environment professionals in the future will be adapting and improving what already exists, not building anew.

Rising to the challenge, this multidisciplinary programme promotes a fresh and rigorous approach to the city in the 21st century. Focusing on the themes of environmental, racial and spatial equity, students are encouraged to engage critically and creatively at any scale and through any media to re-evaluate, rethink and restore historic urban environments, making them more resilient, equitable and sustainable.

Working alongside design tutors, historians and researchers with unique global experiences and diverse perspectives, students examine cities from around the world, using London as an outstanding laboratory for learning. The work presented in the Autumn Show is a selection of the fnal projects, completed between May and September 2024, which build on the knowledge and experience gained throughout the year in a combination of core and elective modules. These include wide-ranging thematic lectures from guest speakers, site visits to a variety of buildings and landscapes, and specifc skills workshops, such as 3D scanning and model-making. With the world-renowned Survey of London team, students learn the processes of urban surveying, recording, mapping and analysis, alongside strategies and key issues concerning urban and cultural heritage.

In conjunction with developing a robust theoretical and practical understanding of diferent sites and analytical methods, students are encouraged to become tomorrow’s leaders in the professions of the built environment, thinking critically and working creatively to cultivate their own mode of practice that seeks to realise a better future built on the past.

Students Baihaqi Abdullah, Faezeh Besharat, Xiaoyin Chen, Seung Hyeok Choi, Nabila Ferdousi, Ruokun Gao, Ge Ge, Xunming Gu, Glenizza Iruka, Pingxi Lin, Ghazal Nasiri, Zarina Partapurwala, Aishwarya Rajurkar, Yukun Ren, Yingqin Shen, Aruzhan Turganova, Qinxue Wang, Zhirui Xiong, Kangni Xu, Jinghua Yuan, Yongqi Zhan, Xu (Sue) Zhang

Tutors

Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Ievgeniia (Jenia) Gubkina, Helen Jones, Emily Mann, Maxwell Mutanda, Thomas Parker, Sophia Psarra, Lakshmi Priya Rajendran, Aileen Reid, Amy Spencer, Colin Thom, Jane Wong, Guang Yu Ren

Programme Administrator Drew Pessoa

Teaching Assistant Keya Kunte

Supervisors

Doron von Beider, Peter Bishop, Ievgeniia (Jenia) Gubkina, Emily Mann, Jonathan Kendall, Kay Sedki, Yip Siu, Colin Thom

Skills Tutor

Danielle Purkiss

Partner Care for St Anne’s

Image: Joint Architecture and Historic Urban Environments MA and Architecture MSci ﬁeld trip to Milan, Italy, 2024. Photo: Jane Wong

1.1–1.3 Jinghua Yuan ‘Surgeon’s Scrapbook of Spatial Anatomy: Scenarios for Future Hospitals’. From the perspective of a surgeon and as exempliﬁed by St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, this project examines how body cognition inﬂuences urban health infrastructures and hospital design.

1.4 Aruzhan Turganova ‘Bridging Kazakh Nomadic Heritage and Modernisation through Digital Technologies’. Focusing on preserving Kazakhstan’s nomadic pastoral practices, this project proposes using digital tools to bring together herders, landowners and government to address contemporary challenges such as land privatisation.

1.5 Seung Hyeok Choi ‘Korean Cultures in London’s Kitchens: Integrating Migrant Cooking Practices in an Evolving City’. Through interviews with the Korean diaspora, this project traces how kitchen designs are adapted to support their cooking practices and proposes design solutions to better integrate culinary culture into London’s housing.

1.6–1.7 Zhirui Xiong ‘Echoes of Baihua’. This project explores the historical and contemporary relationships between urban planning, educational reform and domestic spaces in Baihua, China. By doing so, it reveals the disparities and pressures faced by families, which challenge the principles of equitable education.

1.8 Zarina Partapurwala ‘Want to Play a Game?

Enculturation through Play: Tracing Cultural Imprints on Board Games’. Through Parchisi, a traditional Indian board game, this project makes links to culture, the social life of kings, trade, global reach and its contemporary meaning – proposing an immersive design where diferent cultures can be simultaneously experienced.

1.9 Xunming Gu ‘(What’s the Story) London Glory? Polyphonic Soundscapes of 1990s Britpop in London’. Drawing on the Britpop movement of the ’90s, this project explores its relationship with the socio-spatial dynamics of London, highlighting its impact on urban identity, social stratiﬁcation, gentriﬁcation and the reshaping of its iconic neighbourhoods.

1.10 Nabila Ferdousi ‘Democratising Farashganj: Temporary and Tactical Urbanism as a Pathway to Renewal’. By proposing a temporary and tactical urbanism approach to planning, this project emphasises incremental development as the means of rejuvenating Farashganj in Bangladesh, thereby paving the way for a democratic design movement.

1.11 Baihaqi Abdullah ‘Epicentrum of Change: Jakarta before 2100’. Taking into account Jakarta’s land subsidence and the response of the government to move the capital to a new city, this project proposes preventive measures, such as banning groundwater extraction and using rainwater, as an alternative to relocation/new city strategies.

1.12 Ghazal Nasiri ‘The Utopia Box: A Study of the Self and the Other through Contrasting Dynamics’. As a counterpoint to Edward Said’s concept of orientalism, this project reconstructs London through the idealised accounts of 19th-century Persian travellers to Europe, exploring the cross-cultural impacts on architecture and urban design that were to inﬂuence Iran’s modernisation.

1.13–1.14 Glenizza Iruka ‘Transculturalism, Contact Zone and Tourism in Ciboleger, West Java’. This project critically examines the interplay of external forces in reshaping the indigenous spaces and identities of the Baduy community, proposing a community-centric approach that foregrounds Indigenous agency, thereby bridging economic imperatives with sociocultural concerns.

1.15 Yukun Ren ‘Taming Tea: From Monasteries to Colonial Tea Estates’. Following the transformation of Chinese tea, this project uncovers how it shaped new

economic, political and ecological identities through production, trade and cultural exchange in colonial India and Britain.

1.16 Kangni Xu ‘More than Human: Reimagining Urban Symbiosis in a Decentralising World’. This project draws from philosophy, ecological ethics and architecture to explore how speculative designs can challenge the current anthropocentric paradigm, pushing for concepts that transcend the human/animal dichotomy.

1.17 Ge Ge ‘From Forgotten to Remembered: Social Infrastructures for Sex and Night-Time Workers’. Locating itself at the Crossbones Graveyard in South London, this project probes into its history of sex work and contemporary issues of women’s safety, to rethink the site’s urban design elements from the perspective of the right to the city, incorporating safety, visibility and a fair social environment.

1.18 Qinxue Wang ‘The Genus Meconopsis, Blue Poppies and their Epistemologies of Botany and Buddhism’. A Tibetan alpine flower becomes the focal point of this project, which traces how its spiritual significance in Buddhist practice was transformed into its commodification in the horticultural trade, thereby illustrating how two distinct epistemologies – modern botanical and Buddhist – shape our understanding.

1.19 Yingqin Shen ‘Poetry Wanderings: Philosophy and Aesthetic Thoughts in Chinese Poetry’. Inﬂuenced by the Tang dynasty, this project draws from the poetry of that era, translating its philosophical and aesthetic ideas into a contemporary architectural design language.

Korean Cultures in London’s Kitchens: Towards a Sustainable Integration of Migrant Cooking Practices in an Evolving City

Seung Hyeok Choi Supervisor: Yip Siu

This project explores how Korean dietary cultures are adapted within the evolving landscape of British kitchens in London, a megacity grappling with the impacts of global warming. London’s architectural density is characterised by tall buildings that obstruct wind flow, exacerbating the heat island efect and hindering natural ventilation, thus adversely afecting residential environments. Concurrently, London has seen significant demographic shifs, with a tripling of the Asian population and a halving of the White British population between 1991 and 2021, highlighting the city’s transformation into a global urban centre. In addition, the rise of small households, particularly among the 20–39 age group, has increased the demand for compact living spaces, such as onebedroom flats and studios.

Within this context, this project traces the historical evolution of British kitchens from the Victorian era to the 1970s. Afer World War I, the decline of domestic service spurred public interest in kitchen design, leading to innovations such as combined kitchen–dining areas in the 1940s, a focus

on cleanliness in the 1950s, and personalised, aesthetically reﬁned kitchens in the 1960s. However, since the 1970s, kitchen development has stagnated, raising questions about the efectiveness of these designs in the context of modern London’s urbanisation, climate crisis and demographic shifs.

Through observations and interviews with London-based Koreans, this project investigates how residents adapt to Britishstyle kitchens while preparing Korean cuisine. It identifies some common issues including inadequate ventilation, limited storage space and the challenges posed by dry kitchens. In response, residents have installed additional shelving, repurposed dishwashers for storage and used makeshif ventilation solutions such as hairdryers. These examples show the potential future development of kitchens that can flexibly adapt to the cooking methods and requirements of Asians within the current British housing environment. By combining social and urban observations with participatory research, this project generates further studies on the relationship between kitchens and other residential spaces. It seeks to enhance community among young, individual residents in London flats and to propose ways to integrate global and diverse cultures into the city’s evolving urban fabric.

Image: A depiction of how Koreans adapt to a British house kitchen, 2024. Image by the author (based on participant observation)

Disappearing Dissent: The Politicisation and Paciﬁcation of August Kranti Maidan, and the Route to Reclaiming Sites of Protest

Aishwarya Rajurkar

Supervisor: Emily Mann

This thesis investigates the history and recent spatial transformations at August Kranti Maidan, a prominent public space in central Mumbai, to explore how the Indian authorities have sought to suppress protest by reshaping the urban environment. In December 2019, the Indian government enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which ofers an expedited path to citizenship for religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. This legislation sparked widespread protests due to its exclusion of Muslims, raising concerns over its violation of India’s constitutionally enshrined secularism. In response, demonstrators across the country occupied public spaces, including August Kranti Maidan.

August Kranti Maidan exempliﬁes a contested site where spatial politics and

public protest intersect. While it holds immense political and cultural signiﬁcance, recent state-imposed surveillance and restrictions have curtailed its use as a space for public assembly. The government’s enforcement measures, including arrests and limitations on gatherings, have pushed much of the dissent into the digital realm, with social media platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram becoming critical tools for mobilising resistance in the absence of accessible public spaces.

Drawing from the author’s personal experiences of protesting and analysing the systematic paciﬁcation of the Maidan, this dissertation critiques current policies governing public spaces, and people’s right to dissent and to their city. Its objective is to envision frameworks that safeguard citizens’ rights to peaceful assembly and protest. On a broader scale, it reﬂects on the vital role of protest as a form of public pedagogy, fostering citizenship education and preventing the growing threats of authoritarianism and vigilantism.

Image: People raising their voices and the ominous presence of surveillance cameras, highlighting the dual identity of August Kranti Maidan as both a symbol of resistance and a site subjected to spatial control. Image by the author

The Expedition of Himalayan Poppies: Spatial Practices in Producing Modern Botanical Knowledge of Meconopsis

Qinxue Wang

Supervisor: Emily Mann

This project builds on the consensus of a more-than-human perspective, re-examining the production of modern botanical knowledge alongside non-modern epistemologies of nature outside Europe.

Botanically, it can be argued that, without the Linnaean binomial nomenclature, the accurate identiﬁcation of plants would be unattainable. Modern botany represents not merely an accumulation of knowledge but the construction of a comprehensive set of professional groups, institutional systems and conceptions of nature that align with the modern world. Within this scientiﬁc framework, botanical knowledge is understood primarily as a set of taxonomic standards, supported by experimentally based studies and exclusive academic paradigms that seek to justify the causes and efects of natural phenomena. This approach exacerbates asymmetric power relations between humans and nature by transforming nature into an object of observation, dissection and experimentation, thereby strictly delineating human–plant interactions.1

Focusing on the Meconopsis (Himalayan poppy), a high-alpine ﬂower, this project draws on extensive archival research from Kew and the Royal Horticultural Society, interviews with Buddhist practitioners and lecturers, and botanists at Kew and the

Xiangshan China National Botanical Garden. This research illustrates how modern botanical knowledge was produced through the expeditions of plant hunters in China, the processes of naming and archivisation at Kew Herbarium, and the cultivation of the plant in horticultural gardens. These processes ultimately transformed Meconopsis from a spiritual entity – integral to Buddhist practice, where it guides individuals towards transcendent recognition of the true nature of the mind – into a highly sought-afer commodity in the global horticultural trade. Furthermore, this project examines the role of spatial practices in these processes, particularly how they intertwine with the formation of archivisation and classiﬁcation at Kew Herbarium and in horticultural rock gardens. It explores how these practices shape difering epistemological perspectives on Meconopsis among modern botanists and Tibetan Buddhists, thereby creating distinct ways of recognising, archiving and cultivating nature, reﬂecting an ‘epistemological and methodological rupture’ that began in the 18th century with the advent of Linnaeus’s nomenclature system.

1. Mi Zheng, ‘The Modern Transition of Natural Philosophy Research Method in 17th-Century Britain: On the Birth of the Royal Society of London’, Studies in Dialectics of Nature, 2018. Available at zrbz.cbpt.cnki.net/WKB3/ WebPublication/paperDigest.aspx?paperID=97408 ba8-f716-4fe9-a754-846e39db413a.

Image: Spatial practices in producing modern botanical knowledge of Meconopsis (Himalayan poppy) in the 20th century, juxtaposed with the Buddhist epistemological perspective. Image by the author

Railside Relocation

Xu (Sue) Zhang

Supervisor: Ievgeniia (Jenia) Gubkina

During the mid to late 1900s, China’s planned economy systematically squeezed people into a state-owned urban system. Under the nation’s orders, citizens were relocated and assigned to ‘work units’ known as danwei within distinctive zones. These work units contained living and production areas of various sizes, covering facilities related to housing, food, education and medical care, among other needs. Afer the mid-1960s, following the Cultural Revolution and the introduction of the market economy, this work unit system began to unravel.

This project uses the example of one such ‘work unit’, along the Qinhuangdao Railway,

to trace the relocation of a resident in the 1950s. The narrative follows the change in living spaces between the unit system and its eventual dissolution, the impact on employees and residents as the work-life community transformed, and the advantages and disadvantages of moving out of the ‘unit’ as residents became older.

History ofen builds on records where there is a gap between actual occurrences and descriptions of history. In attempting to bridge this, the project draws on the twin strands of history: an actual history, which consists mainly of individual memories and oral histories, and a descriptive history, which consists mainly of written archives. These describe how relocation behaviours are afected by the environment, the economy and politics – and how they act on the individual.

Image: Two relocations in four decades. Image by the author

Open Studios event for the Landscape Architecture MA/MLA, 2024. Photo: Richard Stonehouse

Landscape Architecture MA/MLA

Programme Directors:

Laura Allen, Mark Smout

The professionally accredited Landscape Architecture MA and MLA programmes equip students with critical, interdisciplinary knowledge and design skills to address today’s urgent ecological, infrastructural and social challenges, allowing students to respond to the increasing need to work across built and natural environments. Our students develop unique skills in research, technical and ecological knowledge, strategic thinking and inventive design. They produce innovative responses to design briefs that support sustainability and deal with real-world challenges such as biodiversity loss, climate change and the ecological crisis.

Shown here are the seven Landscape Architecture design studios, stafed by landscape practitioners, architects, urban designers and academics with distinct agendas. The design studio is central to both degree programmes, providing fundamental and specialised knowledge, as well as a strong identity from which students develop and launch their own approach to the contemporary study of landscape architecture. The studios ofer a wide array of methodologies, encouraging independent research and imaginative design solutions for addressing critical subjects within a global context.

Students are introduced to a variety of ways of understanding and approaching landscape design in both the studio and the feld, with study trips to Norway, Venice, the Scilly Isles, and other UK and European sites, focusing on urban and rural environments. Within these contexts, the questions, methods and sites addressed by each studio are broad and varied, highlighting a range of approaches and scales from which to respond to today’s challenges and propose alternative futures. The interests of the seven studios refect the breadth and depth of Landscape Architecture’s spatial and intellectual focus at The Bartlett. Themes include the notion of ‘Sitopias’ and how food landscapes can adapt to survive, how embracing a cyclical way of thinking can inspire future landscape solutions, and how we can adopt new methods of making urban sites 50% more alive.

Design teaching is delivered in an interconnected curriculum alongside history and theory, practice, and environmental and technical instruction. Each of these modules allows students to develop a unique and critical approach to the practice of Landscape Architecture, championing innovation within their research and design thinking. Also presented here are excerpts of work from the Landscape Thesis, Environment and Technology modules.

As we say our goodbyes to our MA and graduating MLA cohort, we have already embarked on a new year of Landscape Architecture at The Bartlett and look forward to enriching the community from our new home dedicated to landscape studies in Wicklow Street.

Image: ‘Scillonian Hedges – Restoring Wetlands and Connectivity on the Isles of Scilly’, Ruiyi Zhu, Design Studio 5

Year Coordinators

Tom Budd, Diana Salazar

Design Studio Tutors

Richard Beckett, Laurence

Blackwell-Thale, Tom Budd, Alberto Campagnoli, Emma Colthurst, Hannah Corlett, Pete Davies, Cannon Ivers, Günther Galligioni, Christina Leigh Geros, Eric Guibert, Katya Larina, Alexandru Malaescu, Doug John Miller, Lyn Poon

History & Theory Coordinators

Tom Ó Caollaí, Danielle Hewitt, Tim Waterman

Environment & Technology Coordinators

Blanche Cameron, Vladimir Guculak

Environment & Technology

Practice Tutors

Aitor Arconada, Paul Bourel, Marco Cerati, Vladimir Guculak, Claudia Pandasi, Samantha Paul, Natalie Thao

Practice Coordinator

Kelly Doran

Skills & Workshops Coordinator

Tom Budd

Senior Programme Administrator

Zoe Lau

Admissions Tutor

Emma Colthurst

Departmental Tutor

Henrietta Williams

Postgraduate Teaching Assistants

Henry Aldridge, Niamh Cahill, Beatrice Frant, Xiuzheng Li, Jennifer Oguguo

Feral Landscapes

Emma Colthurst, Eric Guibert

Design Studio 1 investigates regenerative ways of creating landscapes, valuing what already exists and collaborating with living beings and systems. Philosophically, we recognise that humans are not central to existence but rather share the world equally with all beings. Understanding our mutual interdependence requires new systems of thinking-with and making-with.1 Our ‘feral methods’ co-create with other-than-human agents through emergent watercolours, models and manifestos to follow the fows of matter and cognition. 2 We revealed the temporal rhythms of these agents through experimental site processes and performances, attending to the ‘modes of care’ that embody these philosophical, political and economical relations.

As ‘ferals’, we traversed Scotland to explore the ecosystems of large rewilded landscapes: the grassroots Langholm Initiative and BrewDog’s corporately owned ‘Lost Forest’. These estates are undergoing radical transformations to create new economies and identities, adapt to climate change, shift to environmental subsidies and negotiate the still unequal land ownership patterns of the Scottish Highlands.

We focused primarily on the emergence of three ecosystem dynamics: the shift between moorland and woodland, the formation of peatland, and the sedimentation and erosion of soils. In this context, humans guide or assume the role of ecosystem engineers.

We speculated on future ontopolitical Highland collectives, radical collaborations formed through ecofeminist gamekeepers, and the crowdfunding of a local and global ‘Kinrara Whisky Clan’. We reimagined the Highland Games as a ritualised rewilding of the Caledonian Forest, and ‘Memorials to Soil’ materialised across restored peatland and woodlands.

New aesthetic frames celebrate yet transform these romantic landscape identities into regenerative futures. Geometric stone and woodland circles, along with patterns on moor and peatlands, create abstract forms highlighting emergent processes. We rewrote and traced narratives from myths and legends into the landscapes. ‘Chance Operations’ (inspired by John Cage) shape peatland and wild commons.

These feral landscapes represent complex negotiations among the interests of wildlife, local communities, private individuals, corporations and nations, questioning which relations should be put at risk from one another and why.

Design Studio 1

Students

MLA Year 1

Hing Yuen Cheung, Jacob Hawley, Guanmian Jiang, Rongyuan Meng, Tung-Yu (James) Tsai, Mingke Zhu

MLA Year 2

Ying Monica Chong, Nelly Deprince, Mahtab

Hajikarimian, Rachele Mangoni, Tao Sheng, Shubhangi Shubhangi, Kexin Wang, Akito Yoshinaka

Practice Tutor

Claudia Pandasi

1. Donna Haraway (2016), Staying with the Trouble, Duke University Press.

2. Tim Ingold (2013), Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, Routledge.

1.1 Tao Sheng ‘New Highland Games – Reimagining an Ecological-Cultural Hybrid Landscape in Kinrara Estate’. Since the Highland Clearances, cultural and ecological heritage in the Scottish Highlands has declined. Simultaneously, restoration projects at places like Kinrara Estate highlight issues of land privatisation. This project asks whether current ownership structures serve the broader Highland community’s cultural and ecological needs.

1.2, 1.6 Nelly Deprince ‘Re-Peating Kinrara’. This project restores Kinrara Estate’s damaged peatland through a rewetting strategy based on water-retaining puddles and ditches dug by horse-pulled ploughs. The site also becomes a destination for nature enthusiasts, with shelters, camping platforms and an educational area. The resulting design creates an unusual landscape that carefully enhances and nurtures the existing environment.

1.3–1.4 Akito Yoshinaka ‘Whiskyscape – the Kinrara Whisky Clan’s Journey to Unveil the Anatomy of the Highland Spirit’. The designed landscape reveals the connection between Scotch Whisky and its terroir as a means of transforming societal perceptions of production. To achieve this, a Kinrara Whisky Clan is established, inspired by the traditional Scottish Highland clan system and composed of both local and global whisky enthusiasts. In this journey through the landscape of the Kinrara Estate, clan members gain insight into the whisky-production process and the environment that nurtures it. Their shif in perception is a ﬁrst step towards creating a regenerative society.

1.5, 1.12 Ying Monica Chong ‘Revival of Dùthchas: Recentring Place-based Knowledge for Community-led Rewilding amid Scotland’s Green Land Grab’. This project addresses conﬂicts arising from carbon-of setting, land grabs and concentrated ownership in Scotland. Who owns Scotland? Who is rewilding for? What is ‘landscape knowledge’? Pioneering a manual of design scores that blends grouse-moor practices with scientiﬁc rewilding, it reimagines Kinrara Estate under community ownership, balancing cultural heritage and ecological restoration, and empowering gamekeepers as land stewards.

1.7 Guanmian Jiang ‘Wild Common’. The project restores Tarras Valley Nature Reserve by expanding woodland for carbon capture, creating ﬂoodplains to improve ecosystem resilience, and developing ecotourism to strengthen community bonds and connections to the land.

1.8 Mingke Zhu ‘Cultivating Wetness – Rewetting for the Sake of Peat’. Tarras Valley’s peatlands have sufered damage. The project aims to lay the foundation for the future of peatland conservation. The project adopts a phased restoration strategy, including rewetting, wetland agriculture and forest protection. The rewet landscape will provide visitors with a unique experience and ensure the long-term sustainability of Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

1.9 Hing Yuen Cheung ‘Weaving in Byng Place’. A concept inspired by the moss and weeds thriving in between the paving stones, this design ampliﬁes the relationship between plants and hard paving to address the lack of greenery in Byng Place, while creating more public space. It also delineates the carriageway and footway more clearly, while keeping the whole site as a single space.

1.10 Rongyuan Meng ‘Path and Tweed – Woven into the Land of Langholm’. The local soil erosion conditions inspired the concept of ‘Path and Tweed’. By analysing the geology and simulating the efects of erosion by water and wind on the Earth’s surface, an understanding of the processes of erosion and sedimentation, and various forms of natural disasters resulting from them, can be developed. This forms the basis for a design that both

reveals and controls these processes, creating an entropic aesthetic that is nonetheless safe.

1.11 Shubhangi Shubhangi ‘Symbiotic Dance with Nature’. The project, situated within Wormwood Scrubs, explores reintroducing landscape connections through fast-growing white poplar trees. Using a process-driven, intuitive approach, the watercolour technique produces a visual metaphor that captures the anticipated ecological transformations, blending historical narratives with the site’s evolving dynamics.

1.13–1.14 Rachele Mangoni ‘De Terra – a Monument to Soil’. A monumental cut gorge forms a section that reveals the history of Kinrara Estate, with the granite extracted from it used to create terraces that nurture soil formation. The estate is committed to preserving, protecting and regenerating soil, recognising its vital role in sustaining life. This project analyses soil using a variety of methodologies and creates interactive experiences to educate and engage people in soil conservation. The aim is to combat degradation and ensure the well-being of future generations: ‘Save Soil, Save Humanity’.

1.15 Kexin Wang ‘Coexisting with Predators – Harmony between Wildlife and Humans’. This project explores the unequal power relationship that exists between humans and animals, where human activities and interests ofen take precedence, leading to habitat destruction, resource depletion and the displacement or elimination of wildlife. The design approach seeks to challenge this imbalance by creating spaces where humans, herbivores and predators can all thrive, ensuring their safety and sustainability, as well as promoting mutual respect.

1.16 Mahtab Hajikarimian ‘Landscapes of Fear’. Investigating the multiple cultural and ecological forms of fear in landscapes, the project creates four realms inspired by local myths and fairy tales. Using abstract blowing techniques with soap and colour, the design tests processes of emergence on the site, while taking topography and altitude into account. The traced outlines from this method guide the development of the masterplan, harmonising artistic elements with the natural landscape.

1.17 Jacob Hawley ‘Archipelago of Stone Circles’. The project proposes the installation of 15 monuments formed of dry-stone wall enclosures. Within these, sheltered gardens are encouraged to develop, each with its own ecological characteristics, conditions and values. The monuments are varied and multifunctional: they pay homage to Scotland’s ancient history, but also endeavour to deﬁne its future, by providing a strong identity for local residents, enhancing the eco-tourism economy and improving biodiversity, as well as ensuring the survival of the heritage craf of local stone construction.

Site Half Living: Awakening the Urban Biosphere

Alexandru Malaescu, Cannon Ivers

The evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, in an efort to combat the sixth extinction (i.e. the ongoing human-driven mass extinction) and the rapid loss of biodiversity, devised a strategy to safeguard half of the Earth as wildlands. According to Wilson, “The Half-Earth project is a call to protect half the land and sea in order to manage sufcient habitat to reverse the species extinction crisis and ensure the long-term health of our planet.” 1 What role can cities play in this efort, then, and what positive impacts would it have on urban streets and spaces if the urban biosphere were seen as a critical aspect of a functioning city?

Currently, 55% of the world’s population lives in cities, and this fgure could hit 70% by 2050. As urban populations increase, the design of streets, squares, parks and gardens becomes paramount to quality of life for humans and the more-than-human with whom we share the biosphere. As Richard Weller states, “If we are to have any hope of broaching the sixth extinction, then design must interconnect the scenic, the systemic and the social.” 2

Inspired by Wilson’s theory, Design Studio 2 investigated the theme of ‘Site Half Living’, exploring methods for making urban sites 50% more alive: greener, more permeable and with healthier soils, increased biodiversity and enhanced social and cultural opportunities for humans. Students explored methods that ‘interconnect the scenic, systemic and social’. Each student selected an 800m x 800m urban site and analysed the current condition, examining how it could be transformed to be 50% more alive.

The social geographer Alastair Bonnett calls for a ‘geographical re-enchantment’ to avoid characterless ‘blandscapes’. 3 By drawing the entire area by hand, students discovered the site’s peculiarities – oddities of place – that are not visible from an aerial photo. Through the lens of the Site Half Living brief, students considered how design can amplify specifc site qualities to make the city of the future more alive.

Design Studio

2

1. E. O. Wilson (2016), ‘Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life’, E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, 1 March, eowilsonfoundation.org/eowbf-archive/half-earth-our-planetsﬁght-for-life, accessed 21 August 2024.

2. Richard Weller (2023), The Landscape Project, ORO Editions, 79.

3. Alastair Bonnett (2014), Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies, Mariner Books.

Students

MLA Year 1

Priya Kaur Dosanjh, Zahra Falah Elshams, Sijie (Stephanie) Feng, Wenbo Kang, Man I (Liz) Kuan, Yu-Hsuan Kuo, Si Hyun (Bella) Lee, Vanshaj Mehrotra

MLA Year 2

Ryan Carter, Yue Tong (Mandy) Wan, Chenxi (Aurora) Wang, Fengyi (Chloe) Wu, Ruichao Yang, Zeyu Yang

Saurav Parmar

Practice Tutor Paul Bourel

2.1, 2.10–2.13 Yue Tong (Mandy) Wan ‘Temple Island’. The ambition for the project is to create a therapeutic landscape with biophilic design components, fostering a deep link with nature to enhance health and wellness. It investigates how being in nature might improve our well-being, creativity and happiness, while making the site more alive by transforming the car park into a pedestrian area, and conveying a sense of a place grounded in history.

2.2–2.6 Ruichao Yang ‘Oasis Reclaim’. As industry withdraws from the heart of London, how can a post-industrial site be redeveloped? The landscape should not only focus on high-value, high-density land but also explore alternatives to the commercial and gentriﬁcation paradigms. This project explores ways to work with nature and time, allowing natural processes to reclaim the area through assisted and spontaneous restoration. By creating an environment for ecological succession and guiding its progression, a dynamic, long-term landscape project will be established. Incorporating industrial remnants while respecting natural processes, the project ﬁnds a new balance between the city, memory, people and nature.

2.7–2.9 Fengyi (Chloe) Wu ‘Urban Living Library –Reclaiming the Hedgehog Habitat’. The project retroﬁts part of the UCL main campus into a place where hedgehogs can ﬂourish by creating an urban habitat and a natural biosphere for them. It serves as a wild-living outdoor library, where people can engage with the natural biosphere and be immersed in nature, helping them to appreciate one of the endangered species of Great Britain.

2.14 Zeyu Yang ‘Symbiotic Organism’. Central to the design is the concept of the ‘micro forest’, an idea informed by Michel Desvigne’s principles of dynamic landscape architecture, where vegetative density and spatial conﬁgurations evolve over time. By deploying varied planting schemes across the site on London’s South Bank, the project responds to both ecological imperatives and the evolving needs of the public realm.

The ‘micro forest’ concept extends beyond a mere increase in greenery: it functions as a living organism that integrates human activity with natural processes, thereby reshaping the spatial narrative of this part of the city.

2.15–2.17 Chenxi (Aurora) Wang ‘Under the Canopy, a Shared Democratic Commons’. The project is situated in the vicinity of Borough High Street, London. It engages with both little forms, such as wild grasses and the fragments of material, and the grand narratives of time. The design seeks to reanimate and connect fragmented and neglected vacant urban land to achieve a state of ‘Site Half-Living’. In addition, the project focuses on the ways in which urban public spaces relate to collective or social memory and cultural identity, a connection deeply intertwined with various levels of survival – of the past, culture and identity.

2.18 Ryan Carter ‘The City of London Ferments’. For 2,000 years, the City of London has been perhaps the most consequential square mile in England. It has also served for 200 years as one of the world’s top financial centres. The development of this industry to the exclusion of others has led to a general sterility, its streets enclosed as if exteriorised interiors. But the influences that once allowed the cultural flourishing of the City remain. Certain ruptures, notably the Great Fire and the Blitz, led to large-scale reorganisations of the City’s fabric. This project proposes that surgical ruptures and the controlled collaboration of species and cultures – a fermentation – be used to create a ‘Site Half-Living’.

2.19 Saurav Parmar ‘A New Identity: A Fluvial Pleasure Garden by the London Eye’. This project establishes a unique landscape identity near the London Eye, inspired

by historical Pleasure Gardens. It integrates water management, historical context and cultural elements to address the issues of extreme precipitation and climate change. The design improves pedestrian ﬂow, creating sanctuaries for solitude and reﬂection. Social alcoves foster community interaction through dining, workshops and exhibitions, while larger arenas provide spaces for play and educational and festive activities, which energise the city.

2.20 Yu-Hsuan Kuo ‘Active Outdoor Classrooms’. By creating spaces that encourage community interaction and educational opportunities – not just for lectures but also for cultural, food and other group activities – the project fosters a deeper connection between students and urban residents. This will make the campus more vibrant, turning it into a diverse knowledge hub. By increasing green spaces and biodiversity, the proposal enhances ecosystems that support wildlife, tackle air pollution and manage urban heat islands. This contributes to a healthier, more sustainable city environment, making urban living for humans and the rest of nature more harmonious.

2.21 Si Hyun (Bella) Lee ‘Bloomsbury Springs’. The project revitalises outdoor spaces by reviving lost ponds and establishing activity hubs. Before the Industrial Revolution, ponds were the primary water source for agriculture. However, with the advent of pipes, ponds became obsolete as a means of irrigation and were ﬁlled. This denied shelter to many creatures, causing their numbers to dwindle. The project rekindles this natural harmony. Water features will weave biodiversity back into the campus fabric, ofering refuge to myriad water-dependent beings, as well as sofening the campus architecture and creating serene spaces for relaxation and rejuvenation.

2.10

Unruly Operations –Transboundary Landscapes

Richard Beckett, Alberto Campagnoli

Design Studio 3 continues its exploration of contemporary human–nature relationships, our agency in shaping landscapes and the impact of ecologies on our lives.

Investigating geographical borders and humans as a geological force, students examined landscape scales and experimented with alternative approaches to integrate humans and non-humans within cities and territories. Proposals explored low-tech solutions to renegotiate spaces for nature in symbiosis with humans, emphasising sustainability and focusing on crafting novel solutions derived from local contexts, including social, political and physical environments.

Trans-frontier sites in London and Finland were analysed through desktop studies and feld trips, exploring how adjacent places with similar natural and cultural substrata can evolve into markedly diferent landscapes. By visiting the local Stratford area and travelling from the remote Arctic Circle downwards to Helsinki, students investigated physical, political and ideological borders, speculating on future proposals to address current issues.

Term 1 and 2 projects focused initially on sites around the Bloomsbury area and Northwall Road in Stratford, London, challenging conventional landscape narratives at a small scale, targeting site-specifc interventions and addressing local communities. In Term 3, the focus expanded to Finland, where students explored strategic landscapes and local infrastructure networks. They developed broader narratives at a national scale through targeted interventions in key areas. Sites were selected across a range of natural and urban environments.

Projects explored urban, natural, infrastructural and industrial landscapes. Emergent landscape proposals questioned diverse socio-cultural, economic and planning contexts across cities, rivers and regional borders, developed through digital and physical media, including animations and prototyping.

Design Studio 3

Students

MLA Year 1

Devyani Deole, Megan Hall, Samuel Hammant, Yu-Yu Lin, Taokai Ma, Lan Mu, Thanh (Amy) Vo, Yichen Yang, Charlotte Zaininger, Hanchi Zhang, Shaohua Zheng

MLA Year 2

Weijie Bai, Juan Elton Deves, Victoria Ondrusek, Yun Wang

Practice Tutor

Aitor Arconada

3.1–3.3 Juan Elton Deves ‘A Microbe Farm’. The new topography dug by people for this project creates the conditions for the subsurface water table to emerge. The autumn ice creates anaerobic conditions, simulating the function of a mire, enhancing the natural cycle to produce microbes, mosses, lichens and fungi – and, thus, biodiversity. New areas of mires and forests then connect the proposed landscape with the existing forests, mires and lakes, supporting human activity and ecological restoration. Finally, the proposed topography allows activities within the frozen landscape of winter, forested with Pinus sylvestris to form new forest areas.

3.4 Victoria Ondrusek ‘A Resonant Masterplan’. The proposed design rehabilitates the soil microbiome on an industrial site. Site A ﬁlters and stimulates microbial growth through a retention basin with resonant pools. Site B is made up of stages designed to create a unique auditory experience, allowing visitors to observe how the quality of sound evolves through the materials and positioning of objects.

3.5–3.6 Yun Wang ‘Tasty Helsinki’. This pop-up foraging map provides an overview of the original distribution of edible trees in Helsinki, including their identifying characteristics, harvest times and speciﬁc locations. ‘Ellie’s day’ uses storytelling show how people use the city’s foraging system to connect with nature. Ellie, a resident in Helsinki, gathers herbs, ﬂowers and fruit from urban spaces, sharing tips with others. This daily practice fosters community bonds and supports sustainable urban development.

3.7–3.8 Weijie Bai ‘Weaving the Future’. Inspired by ecofeminism, this restoration of Finland’s peatlands uses a handcrafed, rough and collective approach. The participatory model shown here simulates plantweaving in real-life scenarios. Three to four people weave, following bleeding patterns and terrain textures, creating new landscape restoration surfaces and vegetation systems through an organic and community process.

3.9 Victoria Ondrusek ‘A Living Composition’. This Kalevala-inspired concept collage shows the act of creation from the Finnish epic poem, if the runes were to be represented in the landscape. Emphasis is put on the merging of elements (air/water, earth/ﬁre, human/ animal), which is a major theme of Finland’s folklore.

3.10 Devyani Deole ‘Rethinking the River Edge at the Tainionkoski Hydropower Plant, Finland’. This project comprises a series of activities that enhance the river biodiversity and provide recreational areas honouring the Karelian and Finnish symbiosis with nature. Trails promote exploration and the use of local materials supports circularity within the proposed landscape.

3.11 Samuel Hammant ‘Rewiring the Finnish Forest Edge Condition’. The project is a symbolic felling of Espoo Central Park’s redundant electrical infrastructure, rewiring socio-ecological relationships and promoting novel pioneer growth.

3.12 Megan Hall ‘Threshold at the Forest Edge’. This abstract model metaphorically depicts the human interactions experienced at the edge of the Finnish forests, inspiring future connections between modern Finnish communities and their historic roots.

3.13 Taokai Ma ‘Wild River Revitalisation’. These ﬁeld experiments uncover a variety of invisible boundaries in the forest, tracing connections between the site and its surrounding environment, and exploring how they change over time.

3.14 Charlotte Zaininger ‘Hyötyliikunta – Seeding as a Peatland Restoration Strategy’. Represented here by a participatory masterplan, this project involves Finnish nature tourists as active participants in peatland restoration, transforming their engagement with the

landscape into a creative force for ecological renewal. The accompanying image is a textured schematic plan of restored peatlands, preserved forests and long-term site programming.

3.15 Lan Mu ‘Linear Landscape’. This project takes a linear approach to establish a new boundary for interaction between people and the landscape. Incorporating additional point-based design elements, it also diversiﬁes the ways in which people engage with the space and, in concert with the site’s existing conditions, brings vitality to the entire area. Shown here is a perspective view of the lake platform.

3.16 Megan Hall ‘Threshold at the Forest Edge’. The proposed community design aims to integrate various city initiatives by utilising the available farmland in the Myllypuro and Latokartano districts of Helsinki. The goal is to bridge the existing gap in the green pathway through these districts. Depicted here is the forest masterplan.

3.17 Thanh (Amy) Vo ‘Turning Adversity into Advantage: Harnessing Algae for Community and Environmental Beneﬁts’. The project promotes the harmonious use of natural and sustainable elements that support the local community and provide ecological improvements. Pictured here is a perspective view through the wetlands.

3.18 Yu-Yu Lin ‘A Year with Reindeer’. This calendar wheel shows how, through time, fungi-growers support the diet of reindeer, providing a vital resource for their survival in changing climatic conditions. Opportunities for visitors to engage with the animals and alternative tourism provided a staggered sequence for the proposed masterplan.

3.19 Samuel Hammant ‘Rewiring the Finnish Forest Edge Condition’. This illustrated timeline is a phase-by-phase model space that tracks the intervention’s successional development processes and, ultimately, the dismantling of the built form. The presentation techniques used are a reﬂection of the project’s dichotomy between low- and high-tech.

3.20 Yichen Yang ‘Reviving Boundary: Restoring Nature and Heritage in Karelia’. Represented by this masterplan, the project envisions a future where the current national borders dividing the land have disappeared, and the healed scars of the past are depicted. Border areas will be reconnected and reshaped by the forces of nature and human intervention, creating a new form of boundary. To address the threat posed by rising water levels and increased flood risks due to climate change, the project proposes modifying the riverbank topography and incorporating artificial landforms to guide the flow of water and to create a unique landscape.

Uncertain Sitopias

Katya Larina, Doug John Miller

The issue of food and the landscapes that fuel humanity encompass a vast array of factors. These landscapes of consumption integrate a variety of ecologies, politics, economics, culture, values and identities. The concept of ‘Sitopia’ (from Greek sitos, meaning ‘food’, and topos, meaning ‘place’) therefore distils this complexity into two essential points. First, the landscapes we rely on for sustenance have jeopardised our long-term survival on Earth. Second, assessing the potential for sustainable and inventive solutions to these foodscapes is an exciting and crucial task.

Climate change, deforestation, water depletion, pollution, mass extinction and diet-related diseases all stem from our failure to develop sustainable food systems quickly enough to meet the demands of growing populations and urban centres. This has led to exploitation and, at times, disaster. Yet there are ‘foodscapes’ (i.e. landscapes centred on food production and consumption) of immense cultural and ecological value, such as the grazing felds of the Lake District, the vineyard-covered slopes of northern Italy and the centuries-old fshing villages along the Mediterranean coast. These landscapes demonstrate how studying foodscapes can reveal both the unknown and the beautiful, ofering valuable insights for navigating a complex future.

Humanity’s 12,000-year experiment in agriculture has drastically altered our relationship with the natural world. Timothy Morton refers to the large-scale systems that have emerged, which have signifcantly contributed to the climate crisis, as ‘agrilogistics’. Agrilogistics marks a shift from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to settled agriculture, creating rigid boundaries between human and non-human realms and promoting a notion of progress often opposed to nature.

As climate predictions suggest a 3°C to 4°C rise in temperatures, these agrilogistic systems will face severe strain. This raises critical questions: What new systems and ecologies will emerge for food production? What social and landscape adaptations are necessary for a successful future?

Design Studio 4 shifts focus from traditional agricultural systems to solutions inspired by local contexts. We challenge agrilogistics by exploring the intersections of landscape ecology and food systems. This year’s study explored how food as a starting point can lead to diverse projects, from community kitchens and allotment gardens to novel systems of distribution, consumption and waste.

Design Studio 4

Students

MLA Y1

Zhiyu Lin, Yuhui Shi, Penelope Silva Valqui, Gregory Smith, Hoi Lam

Wong, Zhenyi Zhang

MLA Y2

Mengqi Gao, Mingpei Liu, Ruoxi (Sherry) Shao, Li-Chen Sun, Mingjie Wei, Shihui Zhou

Frankie Smith-Morris

Practice Tutor

Samantha Paul

4.1, 4.15–4.16 Mingjie Wei ‘Slow Water’. The River Wye, an historic and ecologically vital waterway in England, is sufering from significant difuse pollution, particularly from agricultural sources like farm waste and by-products of anaerobic digestion. This project addresses the technical and environmental limitations of English floodplains by proposing a slow-water system that uses green infrastructure to manage pollution and reconnect floodplains, presenting a new, eco-functional and sustainable vision for the floodscape.

4.2, 4.9 Penelope Silva Valqui ‘Marine Enclaves: Edges between the Marine Ecosystem and the Urban Environment in Venice’. This project explores the relationship between the marine ecosystem and the urban environment in Venice, proposing indicator gardens along the water’s edge where natural formations occur. These gardens function as monitoring systems for pollution, bioerosion and sediment dynamics, aiming to prevent algal blooms, the occurrence of which can lead to eutrophication, toxicity, habitat modiﬁcation and degradation.

4.3 Hoi Lam Wong ‘The Vine Bufer Garden’. With the rising demand for Prosecco, vineyards have expanded onto both the hilly slopes and the urban flatlands adjacent to industrial zones in north-eastern Italy. Facing serious land-use conflicts and the efects of climate change, vineyards around the Conegliano Valdobbiadene area are struggling to maintain both quantity and quality of yield. This project proposes a bufer garden as a demonstration ground, blending the two conflicting landscapes and enhancing the ecological resilience of the peripheral vineyards to ensure their future sustainability.

4.4–4.5 Mingpei Liu ‘Common Border: Collaboration Farming Landscape’. This project ﬁnds a generic answer to the problems of climate change for the Sussex agricultural landscape that also fosters collaboration. It aims to re-establish shared boundaries, transforming them from simple hedges or fences into integrated solutions. In the short term, these borders will serve as bufers for seasonal ﬂooding; in the long term, they will function as infrastructure for sustainable agriculture, providing common spaces for agricultural cooperation, resource exchange and livestock movement as part of a participatory approach to agricultural management.

4.6–4.8 Frankie Smith-Morris ‘A London Eel Matrix’. Environmental degradation, overﬁshing and the continued movement of urban cultures away from river systems has lef the European eel on the brink of extinction. This project studies the River Ravensbourne in south-east London to design a system of ecological conservation for the European eel. The broader outcome of this work aims to assist ongoing, though ofen isolated, community attempts to restore the river’s fragmented ecologies, conceptualising how historical practices related to the movement of eels can beneﬁt local ecologies and cultures.

4.10 Li-Chen Sun ‘Roots and Shoots: Allotment Garden Revival on Warren Farm, Ealing’. This project transforms underused urban spaces into productive gardens, fostering community bonds, enhancing biodiversity and providing access to nature for young families.

Inspired by the UK’s allotment culture and by permaculture principles, it converts grasslands into productive landscapes, incorporating educational opportunities in ecology and sustainable agriculture. The design includes managed sports ﬁelds and areas for climbing and parkour, ofering diverse recreational options. The project envisions a vibrant urban farm that supports community engagement, serves as a model for sustainable urban agriculture and addresses the shortage of recreational spaces.

4.11 Ruoxi (Sherry) Shao ‘Firewatch Forest’. The death of spruce in the Bia ł owieża Forest has heightened concerns about the increasing risk of wildfires. This project integrates traditional agricultural knowledge and designed burning activities to reduce fire risk, while creating a stable future habitat for wood wasps that are migrating due to climate change. The forest landscape is designed from the perspective of a fire watcher, emphasising the ecological benefits of fire and the necessity of its coexistence with the forest.

4.12 Mengqi Gao ‘Flow and Aggregation: A New “Dam” to Live with Coastal Climate Change’. In response to climate change, a £3 billion project proposes the construction of an 11-mile-long dam at Wash Bay, between Lincolnshire and Norfolk, to protect fertile land by transforming the bay into a lagoon. However, environmental groups have raised concerns about potential harm to the local ecosystem. This project balances natural and engineered solutions, using a self-growing island system to mitigate wave erosion and rising sea levels while creating new habitats and spaces for leisure.

4.13 Yuhui Shi ‘A Bufer Park between Canals, Cropland and Lagoon’. Located on the west bank of the Venetian Lagoon, this site requires enhanced resilience to adapt to the efects of the environmental crisis, such as rising sea levels and biodiversity loss. The research envisions a new scenario for the land by reactivating water ﬂow. A healthy ﬂow will support the existence of more animal and plant species in new habitats, inviting visitors to enjoy the riverside and agricultural landscape.

4.14, 4.17 Shihui Zhou ‘An Uncertain Guerrilla Garden’. Guerrilla gardening, a grassroots activity typically organised spontaneously by the public, serves as the foundation for this project, which explores how people can collaborate with nature in an of-grid style. As the Heathrow Airport Expansion plan progresses, the project establishes a landscape with an uncertain future over the next 15 years. People are invited to occupy this landscape and move on once the site is abandoned to the airport. The highlight of this project is the creation of landscapes in a rapid and economical way to meet diferent futures.

4.18 Zhenyi Zhang ‘Habitat-Establishing in Fish Valley’. Rising sea levels and erosion are ongoing processes that are increasing the depth of water in the Venetian Lagoon. This project uses Fish Valley as compensation for the loss of habitat in the Venetian Lagoon, while partially preserving the ancient aquaculture practice Fish Valley represents. The design focuses on linear pathways constructed from ridges in the Fish Valley. These routes could serve multiple functions, including cycle lanes, boardwalks, bird hides and rest areas.

4.19–4.20 Zhiyu Lin ‘The Resilient Olive Orchard’. Located in Arquà Petrarca, where olive-oil production has a long history, this project addresses the projected intensiﬁcation of dry climate conditions and soil loss, which threaten the olive orchards. The project helps the steep olive orchards to better adapt to potential ecological changes and improve productivity. It proposes using retaining walls, channels, artiﬁcial ponds and strategic planting to reduce erosion and to collect and reclaim water, ultimately creating a resilient system for sustainable development.

4.11

Wild Isles –Archipelagos in Flux

Laurence Blackwell-Thale, Pete Davies

Design Studio 5

This year Design Studio 5 sets sail for new ground, leaving our cities, striking out as islanders and exploring the diverse ecologies, challenging futures and exciting potentials of isolated landscape conditions.

Islands are test beds, proving grounds and sites for experimentation. They are places we imagine, dream about and are fascinated by. For landscape architects, they are unusual territory, as they allow us to understand them in their totality. The miniature scale suggests a level of control not possible on the mainland, where invisible borders segregate and delineate.

On the islands, the border conditions and environments are elemental, shifting, seasonal and visceral. To know these landscapes is to experience them, and to understand their climates alongside their traditions, their issues and their luxuries. Islands are places of deep heritage and future potential. We have explored and expanded on these tensions, combining a sensitive approach to context with bold proposals for enhanced landscape conditions that have the community at their foundation.

In Term 1, we began by conducting micro and macro transects (i.e. cross-sectional studies) through island conditions, moving from beach to brow, across tidal ranges and through various ecologies. These transects allowed us to identify and explore themes of island life, which we then challenged and expanded on through propositional and experiential design proposals.

In Term 2, we ventured to Cornwall and the subtropical Isles of Scilly, the warmest place in the British Isles due to the efects of the Gulf Stream. We hopped between islands, exploring, observing, surveying, recording and engaging with the unique habitats, environments and local communities of the archipelago and beyond. We spent time understanding the historical rural vernacular before speculating on how design proposals can work with local communities to inform new techniques for preservation and development on the islands in the face of increasing pressures from tourism and a changing climate. Projects have identifed moments where strategic landscape intervention can foster community resilience, suggest potential future systems and respond to complex socio-geographical issues through sensitive and context-driven design.

Students

MLA Year 1

Chuan (Vincent) Chen, Gee Gin (Zachary) Elliott, Nazal (Mohamed) Nazim, Yaqi Wang, Zihui Zeng

MLA Year 2

Junsong Chen, Elizabeth Gorman, Jiaxin Guan, Aditi Nair, Wang Xiang, Tong Zhang, Yixia Zhao, Leqi Zhong, Ruiyi Zhu

Lenny Rajmont

Practice Tutor

Natalie Thao

5.1, 5.19 Aditi Nair ‘Tides of Heritage’. The Isles of Scilly, just 28 miles from the mainland, have a rich maritime heritage shaped by resilient coastal communities. The project honours Scilly’s shipbuilding traditions, while addressing modern environmental challenges, like rising sea levels. By integrating historical narratives, ecological resilience and coastal adaptation, the project fosters a deep appreciation for Scilly’s natural beauty and culture, preserving its legacy for future generations.

5.2–5.4 Gee Gin (Zachary) Elliott ‘Embracing the Ruin’. The project explores how we can ride with the messy ambiguity of decaying landscapes, celebrate the unique ecologies of post-industrial places, and tell heritage stories through sensitive landscape interventions. Based at the Geevor and Levant mines in Cornwall, this project invites visitors to imagine, reﬂect on and learn about the history, present state and future of this tin-mining landscape. The ruin moves between being a vehicle for the imagination and, through speciﬁc readings and/ or inhabitations of the landscape, ofering a way to understand its place.

5.5 Chuan (Vincent) Chen ‘The Beeodiversity’. The project proposes a bumblebee habitat on St Mary’s to enhance the island’s long-term biodiversity. The design uses Cornwall’s typical stone walls and hedgerows as the main element in establishing a conservation garden to provide a nearby source of nutrients for the bumblebees. Genetically diverse planting will further promote species and ecosystem diversity.

5.6 Nazal (Mohamed) Nazim ‘Hugh Town Terraces’. The project preserves St Mary’s habitats by transforming them into smaller, interactive terraces within the Porthcressa play area. These curated spaces engage children and adults in nature-based activities, fostering conservation awareness. By integrating wind-shelter belts, ﬂood-resilient structures and native planting, the project enhances accessibility, recreational opportunities and ecological strength along Hugh Town’s southern coast, setting a precedent for sustainable development and ecological stewardship that simultaneously enriches local play amenities.

5.7 Yaqi Wang ‘Extended Farm’. This project reduces the separation between St Mary’s farming and tourist areas through topographical and botanical designs, connecting farmland to coastal wilderness and wetlands. It promotes the integration of tourism and agriculture while supporting economic production.

5.8 Zihui Zeng ‘Tresco Island Dew Harvest Initiative’. Tresco in the Isles of Scilly is facing rising sea levels and freshwater shortages, threatening the Great Pool freshwater lake, a crucial resource for residents and wildlife. With increased demand during tourist season, dew harvesting could become essential. This project combines dew harvesting and the topography of the dyke to protect the island, collect water for irrigation, and improve crop growth and the island’s potential for tourism.

5.9 Leqi Zhong ‘From Protected to Reciprocal’. The project aims to make red squirrel conservation on Tresco more sustainable while enhancing the landscape, ecology, economy and cultural heritage of the island. It combines ecological management strategies with experiential design. A century-long experimental plan is proposed, consisting of three phases, from highly managed to low-disturbance interventions.

5.10 Ruiyi Zhu ‘Scillonian Hedges – Restoring Wetlands and Connectivity on the Isles of Scilly’. Located on St Mary’s, this project creates a larger wetland system by transforming improved grassland into wet grassland. This transformation will address ﬂooding on the island and enhance habitats for migratory birds. Cornish hedges will be used as a multifunctional tool to protect

habitats, reduce freshwater loss due to wind evaporation, promote rainwater harvesting, increase wetland storage capacity, stabilise soil, ﬁlter water, and form dykes to shield freshwater wetlands from coastal ﬂooding.

5.11, 5.21 Lenny Rajmont ‘Trans(plant): Herbal Pathways to Transgender Wellbeing’. NHS waiting times for trans people to access gender identity clinics now exceed ﬁve years, leading to higher rates of self-harm, suicide and worsening gender dysphoria. Trans(plant) imagines an alternative future landscape for trans people that ofers site-grown herbal remedies as a holistic alternative to HRT, allowing them to craf personalised mixes that reﬂect their gender expression and culture and promote wellbeing.

5.12, 5.20 Tong Zhang ‘A New Kelp-Scape’. The project is sited on Toll’s Island, St Mary’s. Through the 18th century, the inhabitants were deeply connected to their marine environment, harvesting seaweed to produce soda ash, essential for glass- and soap-manufacturing. However, the decline of the kelp industry in the early 19th century led to the abandonment of the kelp pits. The project revitalises the island’s cultural landscape by adopting a sustainable and culturally adaptive approach that honours this rich heritage while creating an engaging environment for education and community.

5.13–5.14 Elizabeth Gorman ‘Lost Gardens of Hackney Wick’. The project is concerned with the wastescape condition of ‘trafc islands’ in Hackney Wick and the intersection between urban nature, infrastructure and ideas of value. The project takes a ‘material culture’ approach to wastescapes to understand the site as an entanglement of materials that can globally reach across boundaries and can represent locally and spatially the relationship between humans and nature.

5.15 Yixia Zhao ‘The Nursery Line’. The Garrison Walls on St Mary’s has stood as a resilient monument for centuries. However, parts of the walls have sufered from neglect, degradation and coastal erosion. The project revives the historic site while also invigorating the island’s nursery and ﬂower industry. The project critically examines contemporary practices in ﬂower consumption, which ofen prioritise expediency over sustainability.

5.16 Junsong Chen ‘Defending Landscape’. The project is based along the Garrison Walls of St Mary’s, which is at threat from coastal erosion and rising sea levels. The proposal reuses material from the eroded walls to form a new landscape that aims to retain its historic essence, but transformed into a refuge for native and potentially non-native plant species, expanding the role of the plant nurseries on the islands from being a purely commercial enterprise.

5.17–5.18 Wang Xiang ‘The Orchard by the Quarry’. The project is sited by Wheal Martyn Clay Works, Cornwall, and proposes an orchard that promotes the potential of by-products of clay extraction. The project repurposes waste slurry from clay extraction processes as a sustainable, non-toxic insecticide, known as kaolin, for Cornwall’s apple orchards.

A pilot scheme for agricultural tourism, the project also ofers recreational spaces, including fruit-picking and picnicking near the quarry.

5.22 Jiaxin Guan ‘Castle Down’s Revival Journey’. While tourism in Tresco boosts the economy, it can endanger natural and cultural heritage. This project creates a new form of heritage in Castle Down by using local construction methods to showcase how the old castle has developed since the English Civil War. It also restores the heathland ecosystem while supporting a butterﬂy reserve. Visitors can explore the castle’s construction history, geological remains and butterﬂy habitats.

5.2 5.3

5.4

In the ‘Foreseeable Future’ Nature Reassembles

Christina Leigh Geros, Günther Galligioni

Design Studio 7

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has recently expressed serious concern about the city’s prospects of regularly enduring 45°C temperatures for multiple days at a time in the ‘foreseeable future’, sharing this growing concern with the mayors of several cities worldwide. The summer heatwave of 2022 was a startling experience for Londoners, as wildfres raged inside the M25. Beyond the urban context, the accumulation of fre-fuel and the expansion of conditions conducive to rapid fre spread across grasslands and forests have highlighted that wildfres are an emergent risk for which the British landscape is largely unprepared.

Inspired by observations from a study trip to the burnt Tatoi Forest near Athens, students selected sites in forested areas in the UK representative of the country’s ecology that have recently experienced wildfres of varying magnitudes. These included the lowland heaths of southern England’s New Forest, the upland moors of Saddleworth Moor in northern England, and the grasslands and forests of Swinley Forest in the Midlands. The projects demonstrate how landscape architecture can contribute to new ecological forms, management strategies and aesthetic values that prepare and reshape the British landscape without erasing its deep traditions and histories. Through research and interventive design, students worked on creating more robust microclimates, supporting existing ecologies, and focusing on single- or multi-species interactions, soil and air quality, and inter-species relations. They proposed new forms of co-management of natural areas to prepare and protect natural resources, aiming to create landscapes that are more resilient to the increasing threats posed by climate change.

Students

MLA Year 1

Zhe Fang, Chao Lin, Erica Molina Mcleod-Brittain, Yuqian Tang, Cheuk Lam

(Kristy) Tsang, Rongke Zhou

MLA Year 2

Aneena Jose, Radhika Maheshwari, Meliana Santi, Mingyang Zhou

Ha Lam, Azra Choi

Ching Lee

Practice Tutor

Vladimir Guculak

7.1–7.3 Meliana Santi ‘Whispers of Resilience’. The project addresses the growing threat of wildfires due to climate change in the eastern New Forest. It enhances fire resilience in coniferous areas while protecting the crossbill, a species of bird that plays a vital role in the dispersal of conifer seeds and supporting forest regeneration. As the forest transitions from predominantly coniferous to mixed woodland, the project aims to balance fire-resistant conifers with broad-leaved species, ensuring the crossbill’s habitat is preserved. By enhancing forest health and biodiversity, resilience to both wildfires and climate change will be improved. The project also features trail improvements and educational programmes for locals.

7.4 Erica Molina Mcleod-Brittain ‘Terracing Heathlands’. Focused on the heathlands of the New Forest, the project proposes the creation of terraces along valley mires, a wet heath habitat, in order to retain moisture in the soil and create a microclimate to ﬁght against rising temperatures. Terracing Heathlands centres on the Dartford warbler, a ground-nesting bird and indicator species for heathlands in the area. Gorse and dense heather are important for their nesting, making that a critical part of the design. The gorse also acts as a barrier to humans, allowing the plants and animals residing there to remain undisturbed.

7.5–7.6 Ha Lam ‘Living With Heat – Water and Fire Territory’. Saddleworth Moor, an ancient peatland, was severely afected by a 2018 wildfire, with similar events expected in the future. The restoration project aims to restore this damage, reintroduce humans and wildlife, provide educational programmes for visitors, and build resilience against future crises. The strategy revolves around the concept of boundaries: following the wildfire boundaries to identify areas of vulnerability and expanding water surface boundaries to counter wildfire, using hydraulic structures to trap water. The project can thus rewet the peatland, create fire breaks and provide an environment for many species to grow, bringing new ideas and perspectives for peatland restoration to the long-term local peatland management scheme.

7.7–7.9 Azra Choi Ching Lee ‘Mosaic of Resilience at Saddleworth Moor’. The project proposes subtle interventions along a redesigned route as bufers for the moorland carbon sink against disturbance, global warming and wildfires. The hiking route starts in native forest and an old limestone quarry, before pushing through heather, willow and birch scrub where diverse birds shelter. It passes prescribed burning patches, with their managed gorse boundaries and reprofiled runof trenches to control grazing and thin the heather to reduce wildfires. Next, one can meditate on top of a monument or one is at clay pigeon shooting in the winter, embedding the clay with seeds to revegetate the eroded peat. Finally, at the hilltop water source, one can jump between log barriers in the fog of moisture that feeds cut and filled ponds, before walking back down on recovered tram tracks.

7.10–7.12 Aneena Jose ‘The Wild Garden’. Inspired by William Robinson’s book The Wild Garden (1870), this project reimagines a firebreak in Swinley Forest, a pine plantation increasingly at risk of wildfires due to climate change. Instead of creating separation, the design envisions an ecological firebreak that unites and connects diferent parts of the forest, allowing it to grow together. By integrating bufers of rhododendron gardens, broad-leaved woodlands, meadowlands and wetlands, based on their ecological and aesthetic values, the firebreak becomes a vibrant tapestry of colours, humidity and diversity. This enriched ecosystem controls wind, retains moisture, manages the spread of bracken, and becomes a haven for birds, mammals and other pollinators.

7.13–7.14 Cheuk Lam (Kristy) Tsang ‘A Linear Urban Park along Hadrian Aqueduct, Athens’. Understanding that there are serious urban heat issues within the signiﬁcantly rich historical city of Athens and focusing on the parks that hold the remains of the aqueduct, the project strengthens the memorable cultural heritage and local history of the site, while proposing design strategies to improve the environmental situation, including planting, material paving and water features. The project’s design concept includes reducing the number of highway lanes to allow more space to expand green areas, forming a linear journey to connect the two aqueduct parks, promoting cultural programming and reducing the overall temperature in Athens.

7.15–7.16 Yuqian Tang ‘Oasis by Doorstep: Resilient Urban Green Strategy to Fight against Extreme Heat’. The project focuses on the urban greening system in the outskirts of Athens, and creates a more resilient neighbourhood with a pleasant climate to ﬁght the increasing frequency of extreme weather. By means of building through the reactivation of the forgotten ancient feat of hydraulic engineering – the Hadrian Aqueduct – and proper street design with urban storm-water management, paving the ground surface for thermal comfort – taking inspiration from the pattern of the Pikionis Pathway – the project brings vibrancy back to the city, with its glorious ancient culture, making it a more liveable and accessible place for its inhabitants.

7.17–7.19 Mingyang Zhou ‘From Flames to Future’. Swinley Forest, south-west of Windsor Great Park, covers more than 1,000 hectares and is managed by the Crown Estate. In 2011, it experienced the largest wildfire in the region, severely impacting the environment. Post-disaster restoration eforts, such as planting broad-leaved trees and constructing wetland habitats, failed due to inadequate maintenance. To prevent future wildfires, a new project proposes developing a fire-resilient landscape, transforming Swinley Forest into an educational woodland focused on wildfire prevention, particularly for children. The story of the forest’s various fire-resilient habitats and their adaptations will be narrated by Hettie (a characterisation of common heather) to make the concept accessible.

7.20–7.21 Radhika Maheshwari ‘Treading Waters’. The project is set in the New Forest National Park, southern England, where agricultural drainage and climate change have degraded vital wetlands, threatening biodiversity. Breeding waders like lapwings and curlews have been particularly afected, with declining populations due to habitat loss and disturbances from recreational activities. There are two key objectives: restoring wetlands and creating disturbance-resilient habitats. Restoration eforts aim to enhance water retention in mires and bogs, supporting wetland survival and reducing wildﬁre risks. The project also proposes ‘bog islands’, specialised habitats that balance wildlife needs with controlled human access, ensuring that wader populations can thrive. Overall, the project revitalises wetland ecosystems and protects breeding birds, contributing to the long-term resilience of the New Forest.

7.3

7.2

Locally Remote

Tom Budd, Hannah Corlett, Lyn Poon

It is taken for granted that time moves forward in a linear fashion, minutes tick by as populations rise and cities expand at an everincreasing rate. This sense of a fast, linear time stands in contrast with the more cyclical behaviours found within natural environments, and therefore a disconnect between people and place can begin to appear. Shifting our view to the more remote communities across the world reveals a diferent relationship. With increased isolation, a stronger bond seems to form between inhabitants and their surrounding landscapes. This connection, rooted in tradition, rituals and seasonality, has allowed communities to withstand and thrive within isolated and harsh environmental conditions for decades.

Through this lens, Design Studio 8 has been investigating what can be learned from remoteness within landscape. How can embracing a more cyclical way of thinking inspire new solutions that refect rapid global shifts?

During the year, the studio investigated diferent proximities and scales of remoteness. This began by situating ourselves on the disconnected islands, eyots and aits of London, a city that is subject to continual development and growth. To contrast these, the studio then ventured out to the remote archipelago of Lofoten located in the north of Norway. We explored what can be learned from these isolated communities and what future climatic and human shifts could hold in store for these environments. In places with a strong connection to their natural landscapes, what benefts can a sense of slow, circular time provide, and how can a reconnection with this cyclical way of thinking provide new insights for our future?

In Design Studio 8 we encourage an environment of collaboration while fostering a strong sense of individuality in each student’s approach. We believe in a studio culture where students learn from each other and are encouraged actively to engage outside the boundaries of traditional landscape practice. We seek to challenge conventions of drawing, making and designing, fostering innovation through exploratory approaches that refect and challenge the complexity of our industry. As a studio we understand the importance of the unexpected, embracing accidents and designing through a process-driven approach.

Design Studio 8

Students

MLA Year 1

Siyuan Liu, Nana Mikami, Vaibhavi Pujari, Sunny Yi Sun, Sheng-Jung Tsai, Xining Zhang

MLA Year 2

Alice Carrington-Windo, Yifei Dong, Sandra Gans, Yin Yau Lai, Gislane Maldonado, Zoya Mohsin, Ruining Mu, Baihai Wei, Yuqing Zhang

Practice Tutor

Marco Cerati

8.1 Sandra Gans ‘Gateway to Remoteness’. Seeking to redeﬁne Fort William’s status by transforming the area around the town’s train and bus stations into landscapes that evoke the sensory experiences of remoteness, these experiences are inspired by what one might hear, see, feel and smell in an isolated setting. They emulate natural surroundings and processes from around Fort William, while creating spaces that encourage play, learning and reﬂection, as if one were in a secluded location.

8.2–8.4 Alice Carrington-Windo ‘Shalescapes of West Lothian: Exposing an Industrial Past’. The project focuses on the village of Winchburgh, which is undergoing signiﬁcant expansion. The design aims to challenge the proposed masterplan by foregrounding West Lothian’s rich natural and cultural heritage. The shale deposits (‘bings’) are retained as a refuge from encroaching development, while simultaneously making them – and the unique material they consist of – an integral part of an expanding Winchburgh.

8.5, 8.8 Zoya Mohsin ‘Re-crafing Bow Creek: Alternative Rewilding of Industrial Landscapes’. The project speculates about the realisation of an alternative space born out of experimental and intuitive performances in Bow Creek Ecology Park, one of twin peninsulas. In conversation with William Morris, the project rejects forms of fast production and ‘typical’ commercial approaches to landscaping in favour of an architectural approach that is slow and more suited to these conditions.

8.6 Sheng-Jung Tsai ‘A Tale of Pufns: Strategies for Conservation and Coexistence’. This project reintroduces pufns to the main island of Lofoten, Norway, particularly in Nusford village, using landscape design strategies to revitalise the pufn population while separating its habitat from intense tourism. The proposal is to use a ‘hostile landscape’ towards humans to reclaim this land for pufn habitation, rewilding and repopulating with pufns while still allowing guided public access.

8.7 Vaibhavi Pujari ‘Archipelagic Adaptations: Ecological Justice and Sustainable Tourism, Lofoten’. The project looks at the existing frameworks of the National Scenic Route, running along the only highway (E10) in Lofoten, and designs interventions to Reinebringen, one of the most popular destinations. Three forms of intervention, ‘Respect’, ‘Repair’ and ‘Recreate’, are made to the site. Each of these aspects categorises the issues and opportunities on the site, helping to respond to them efectively.

8.9 Yin Yau Lai ‘Everything and Nothing Has Changed’. The design challenges the disconnect between people and the environmental consequences of their actions by embracing brick-making techniques and paper-making craf smanship in Cornwall’s China clay landscape to transform waste into sustainable construction materials. The approach integrates the material life cycle into the design of community spaces, transforming waste into assets while fostering a deeper understanding of recycling and material use.

8.10–8.11 Nana Mikami ‘Phenomenological Landscapes: Regenerative Material Circulation in Sørvågen’. Prior to its emergence as a tourist destination, the Lofoten region’s natural resource cycle was sustained by mountain snowmelt that formed rivers ﬂowing into the sea, supporting a lifestyle centred on ﬁshing and farming. In light of this historical context, the project proposes to revitalise the material cycle in the Lofoten area by employing local vernacular design methods and utilising natural materials.

8.12 Xining Zhang ‘Revitalising Å: A Sustainable Fishing Tourism Community’. The ﬁshing industry culture in the Lofoten islands is experiencing a decline, while the tourism industry is thriving. To adapt to these conditions, the design aims to establish a unique and sustainable

ﬁshing tourism community in Å. By preserving the traditional charm of the ﬁshing village, the project seeks to enhance local cultural identity and promote tourism.

8.13 Gislane Maldonado ‘Connecting the Everglades Watershed and Miami’s Diaspora against Crises’. Centring on ‘climate gentriﬁcation’, this project challenges current resilient infrastructure eforts with a sensitive and inclusive adaptation strategy. In response to the continued displacement of Miami’s diaspora due to climate change, it proposes a regional plan that reintroduces the Florida Everglades natural watershed into Miami-Dade County, bridging nature and the communities afected by climate change.

8.14 Sunny Yi Sun ‘Reconciliation Wilderness: Humanising the Lofoten Archipelago’. Situated in the town of Å in Lofoten, the project strengthens the connection between the natural environment, occupants and visitors. The ﬁrst installation is a means to ‘delay’, providing a respite so that people can appreciate the beauty of the landscape. The second is built to ‘expand’: cantilevered paths extend beyond the edge of the clif to bring people closer to the sea, fostering more direct connection with the water.

The third installation is a ‘marker’.

8.15 Ruining Mu ‘Reine: A Tale of Winter and Summer Journeys’. This project incorporates a temporary landscape as part of the design strategy, developing two distinct day-trip experiences – one for summer and one for winter – each ofering unique routes through diferent spaces. These experiences integrate sitespeciﬁc seasonal activities, providing visitors with places to explore and an opportunity to appreciate the site’s beauty across diferent seasons. The design of the new routes not only enhances the site’s infrastructure but also helps to distribute visitors more evenly, alleviating the seasonal tourist burden and improving the overall visitor experience.

8.16–8.17 Baihai Wei ‘Symbiotic Ballstad: Tapestry of Land, Life and Leisure’. This project explores the future of tourism in Lofoten in the context of global warming and how tourism can be developed together with agriculture. It is an attempt to turn the threat of global warming into an opportunity to diversify the local economy. It focuses on how the features of polar day and night can be applied to agriculture, utilising sun studies and topographical changes on the site to understand the best species and the most advantageous locations for crops.

8.18–8.19 Yuqing Zhang ‘What I Talk about When I Talk about Outdoor Hiking’. This project explores the role of light and shadow in the lives and landscapes of Norwegian tourists. It attempts to subvert the traditional ‘static’ landscape by creating spaces corresponding to diferent moments and time periods. In order to adapt to the local light and shadow changes, the concept of ﬂow/ change will be reﬂected in the detachability of the construction, and the change of seasons and function.

8.20 Siyuan Liu ‘Let the Lake Live in the Sea’. This project explores the synergies between human-made and natural forms of coastal resilience, by introducing oyster-reef ecosystems to restore coastlines. Oyster reefs, along with their associated rich marine ecosystems, mitigate ﬂood risks to eroded coastlines and provide opportunities for revitalising traditional aquaculture, providing cultural and entrepreneurial opportunities.

8.21 Yifei Dong ‘Decommissioning Strategy in the Wind’. The project begins in 2050, when Dungeness Nuclear Power Plant starts its decommissioning, gradually dismantling the fabric of the nuclear power plant and opening itself up to the public. Shelters are built using recycled materials from the power plant to protect from the extreme wind, and native plant seeds are scattered by the same wind, creating a seasonal garden.

8.2

8.5 8.4

8.16

8.15

Environment & Technology

Coordinators: Blanche Cameron, Vladimir Guculak

Environmental Design and Technology teaching equips students with the knowledge, skills and approaches to be able to analyse, preserve, design, construct and maintain landscapes into the future. Two lecture series by practitioners and professional consultants, along with site visits, workshops and seminar discussions, introduce students to the professional world of landscape architecture, as well as to the challenges facing our environment and the creativity and critical analysis required to imagine and propose a better world. Subjects such as natural systems, climate change mitigation and resilience, biodiversity loss and nature recovery, planting and structural habitat, urban design, planning and construction techniques are taught through the year, alongside design studio modules. The coursework includes case-study analysis and a detailed Technical Report. Year 1 gives students an overview of the key principles of landscape architecture, which Year 2 and Masters’ students develop in more detail through the coursework.

Landscape, Inhabitation and Environmental Systems

This module explores the relationship of landscape architecture to planetary systems – the biosphere, ecology, climate, geology and hydrology – and anthropogenic impacts. Through lectures, feld visits and workshops, key questions are explored such as how to select appropriate soils and substrates, biodiverse planting and vegetation, material use/reuse and construction. Life-cycle analysis and carbon, water and waste reduction are also introduced. Students develop their understanding of the importance of environmental systems to landscape architecture, their benefts to urban environments, people and nature, and how to propose integrated designs, construction and maintenance to continue to provide those benefts into the future.

Landscape, Ecology and Urban Environments

This module focuses on the topics of climate-change adaptation, environmental sustainability, resource crises, environmental assessment and new technologies in landscape architecture. There is a particular focus on the diferent models of design processes that span from initial idea to construction. Lectures are supported by extensive seminars, site visits and cross-reviews. Modules are enriched by the extensive support of practice tutors, who bring professionalism and a critical view on the functions and buildability of design proposals.

Lecturers

Aitor Arconada (Foster + Partners), Blanche Cameron (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Marco Cerati (HTA Design), Michael Cowdy (McGregor Coxall), Andrea Dates (Townshend Landscape Architects), Neil Davidson (J&L Gibbons), James Fox (Fox Fernley Landscape O fce), Gary Grant (Green Infrastructure Consultancy), Vladimir Guculak (studio gb), Cannon Ivers (LDA Design), Fred Labbé (Expedition Engineering, The Bartlett School of Architecture), John Little (Hilldrop and Grass Roof Company), Donncha O’Shea (Gustafson, Porter + Bowman), Claudia Pandasi (Uncommon Land), Duncan Paybody (Studio Egret West), Alexandra Steed (URBAN), Mima Taylor (London School of Horticulture)

Practice Tutors

Design Studio 1

Claudia Pandasi (Uncommon Land)

Design Studio 2

Paul Bourel (studio gb)

Design Studio 3

Aitor Arconada (Foster + Partners)

Design Studio 4

Samantha Paul (Arup)

Design Studio 5

Natalie Thao (Gillespies)

Design Studio 7

Vladimir Guculak (studio gb)

Design Studio 8

Marco Cerati (HTA Design)

Image: A Lifeline of Ice: Revealing Ice as a Critical Agent of the Finnish Landscape, 2024. Juan Elton Deves, Design Studio 3

History & Theory

Coordinators:

Danielle Hewitt, Tom Ó Caollaí, Tim Waterman

The history and theory strand of the Landscape Architecture programme provides a robust foundation, tying together the ideas behind the built landscape and the resulting forms across time, from the scale of the garden to that of the continent. Building on this foundation, students explore philosophy alongside patterns and methods of historical and contemporary practice. They develop their critical and research skills across the programme, in coordination with their studio work.

In the frst year of the MLA, students undertake a comprehensive survey of landscape history. This is taught as a history of ideas that is both chronological and thematic. In the frst year of the MA – the second year of the MLA – students develop essays from research seminars conducted in small groups led by specialist scholars. This year, topics have included concepts of wildness and wastelands, creative and critical topographic practices, extractivism and climate justice, and ruins and ruination.

This study of history and theory culminates in the creation of the landscape thesis, completed with the guidance of dedicated supervisors. In this, students research a specifc individual area of interest that informs and supports their design research.

In professional landscape architectural practice, much emphasis is placed on communicating sophisticated understandings and complex strategies through documents that thoughtfully combine text and image. The thesis supports such integrative and synthetic work, and is itself a work of design, engaging students in the creation of a thesis book. The thesis supports the development of individual ideas and philosophies within the larger framework of landscape architecture history; current practice, politics and dwelling; and speculative features, near and far.

This year, the range of thesis topics was broad and fascinating, and many were complementary to the topics addressed in a diverse set of research studios. Representative excerpts of exceptional theses have been provided here. All these theses, as with so many others submitted, are rich both visually and textually, and designed with verve.

Seminar Tutors

Eric Guibert, Danielle Hewitt, William Jennings, Tom Ó Caollaí, Diana Salazar

Thesis Supervisors

Aude Azzi, Kirsty Badenoch, Loretta Bosence, Blanche Cameron, Emma Colthurst, Paul Dobraszczyk, Kirti Durelle, Tom Dyckhof, Karen Fitzsimon, Eric Guibert, Maddy Gunn, Danielle Hewitt, Will Jennings, Xiuzheng Li, Guy Mannes-Abbott, Adam Walls, Tim Waterman

Water Bodies: Reading Landscape through Swimming

Alice Carrington-Windo

Thesis supervisor: Eric Guibert

Seminar leader: Eric Guibert

The popularity of wild swimming in lakes, rivers and seas has surged in recent years, with over four million wild swimmers across the UK,1 representing a signiﬁcant shif in how people engage with waterbodies. This thesis examines how this (re)emerging practice shapes, and is shaped by, urban and semiurban landscapes, hypothesising that –rather than simply being passive observers –swimmers become uniquely entangled with the more-than-human denizens of aquatic worlds.

Swimming is proposed and employed as a novel mode of landscape architectural research, using Jean-Yves Petiteau’s journey method of accompanying a person in their territory to act as a ‘territorial decoder’. 2 Through the lens of new materialism, 3 swimming emerges as a ‘natureculture’, 4 giving rise to a more urgent need to challenge the power and ownership structures that govern access to water through both literal and conceptual submersion in the ‘vibrant matter’ of water. 5

By engaging with the embodied experiences, socio-political actions and space-making capacities of wild swimmers, the thesis contributes a new angle of research to the human–water relationship, whose deciphering is becoming increasingly crucial in the context of environmental crises. Swimming enables ‘tentacular thinking’,

which emphasises interconnectedness between all forms of life; and it provides a way of ‘staying with the trouble’ – facing and engaging with the complexities of these entangled worlds. 6 Viewing land from within water materialises the view that landscapes, like water, are ‘in ﬂux, changeable, processual and in constant state of becoming’.7 Moreover, the production of swimming spaces illustrates that landscapes are not just shaped by disparate socio-ecological processes: they are actively co-produced through human and more-than-human agencies in ways that fundamentally alter the political ecologies of waterscapes.

The ﬁndings of the thesis add weight to calls from swimmers to make watery spaces more inhabitable for all life-forms. And they call for landscape architects, too, to play their part in enabling new swimming spaces to emerge; to help preserve the spirit of existing spaces; and to develop new ways of coﬁguring landscapes through more-thanhuman entanglements.

1. Swim England (2019), ‘Key Swimming Statistics and Findings’, www.swimming.org/ swimengland/key-swimming-statistics, accessed 13 March 2024.

2. Maïlys Toussaint (2014), ‘Jean-Yves Petiteau et l’expérience des itinéraires de dockers à Nantes, entre récits personnels et ambiance partagée’, Sciences de l’Homme et Société, Vol. 1.

3. Bruno Latour (1993), We Have Never Been Modern Translated by C. Porter, Harvard University Press; Donna J. Haraway (2016), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Cthulucene, Duke University Press.

4. Donna J. Haraway (2008), When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press.

5. Jane Bennett (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press.

6. Donna J. Haraway (2016), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Cthulucene, Duke University Press.

7. Jon Anderson and Kimberley Peters (2014), Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean, Taylor and Francis, pp4–5. Image: Accompanying territorial decoders in Hinksey Lake, Oxford. Image by the author

Imperial Shadow: Addressing Indigenous Exclusion in London’s Memoryscape

Sandra Gans

Thesis supervisor: Adam Walls

Seminar leader: Diana Salazar

This research critically examines London’s memoryscape, dominated by grand architecture and monuments that celebrate the lasting impact of the British Empire and imperial and settler colonial narratives. The research particularly focuses on how Canada is memorialised through a gloriﬁed colonial lens, overlooking the complex and diverse palimpsest of Canadian history. This perspective overshadows the experiences of marginalised groups, including Canada’s Indigenous peoples, whose wealth and resources contributed to London’s grandeur, yet whose histories and whose experiences of the genocide they sufered under British colonialism are largely absent from London’s memorial practices.

Despite some progress in diversifying London’s memoryscape following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 –such as increased dialogue about inclusive memorialisation and the addition of diverse statues like the Windrush memorial –London’s public memory remains dominated by statues of colonial ﬁgures like Queen Victoria and Robert Clive.1 These monuments reinforce a one-sided historical narrative and marginalise Indigenous histories, which are scarcely represented within London’s cityscape. 2 While calls for the removal or recontextualisation of certain imperial

statues, like those of Robert Milligan and Thomas Guy, have seen some success, substantive changes reﬂecting diverse historical experiences remain limited.

The thesis argues for improved Indigenous memorialisation in London to decolonise its commemorative practices, aligning with Bhambra’s vision for a more inclusive future. 3

This involves questioning the purpose and goals of Indigenous commemoration and analysing diferent commemorative practices used for genocides, particularly those of the Nazi Holocaust, highlighting the lack of memorialisation for the genocide against Canada’s Indigenous peoples. The research explores truth-telling monuments, like the Berlin memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, as Dakota author Waziyatawin emphasises the need for colonisers to confront their pasts for meaningful reconciliation, 4 as well as counter-monuments like Hamburg’s Monument Against Fascism and participatory projects like ‘Ofcial Denial’, which might foster dialogue and understanding, challenging entrenched imperial ideologies and promoting reconciliation.

By adopting these diverse memorial practices, London could reshape its memoryscape to create a more equitable representation of its history. This approach would not only transform London’s public memory but also ofer a model for other metropolises facing similar challenges, promoting inclusivity and justice in public commemoration.

1. Olive Vassell (2021), ‘Black London’, in Mapping Black Europe: Monuments, Markers, Memories, ed. by Jonathan D. M. Smith and Sarah E. Wright, transcript Verlag, pp47–60, doi.org/10.14361/9783839454138-004.

2. Cole P. Thrush (2016), Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire, Yale University Press.

3. Gurminder K. Bhambra (2022), ‘A Decolonial Project for Europe’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 60/2, pp229–44, doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13310.

4. Waziyatawin (2008), What Does Justice Look Like?: The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland, Living Justice Press.

Image: Canada’s Palimpsest, 2024. Layering Canada’s Indigenous and colonial histories to showcase the lack of accurate representation of Canadian history in the memorialisation of Canada within London’s memoryscape. Image by the author

On Haunted Landscapes: Uncovering

Mombasa’s Coastal Phantasmagorias

Zoya Mohsin

Thesis supervisor: Aude Azzi

Seminar leader: Danielle Hewitt

The experience of place is the experience of people, and for us, nothing could be more holy.1

The thesis showcases the haunted landscape of Mombasa, an island city on the east coast of Kenya, and through this it contributes to the body of landscape architecture interested in alternative modes of understanding and relating to landscapes, speciﬁcally the application of ghosts as modalities of landscape investigation.

Investigating landscapes as a place where memories and people are cradled throughout time prompts the negotiations between space and time. In Mombasa, the layered traces of the city’s past are threaded throughout the urban fabric, seen in key moments and landscapes within the city.

The relationship between time and space in a ‘post’-colonial context is not a new subject of interest – it has been written about by many scholars throughout the years.

However, this thesis is speciﬁcally concerned with its connection to the physical and metaphysical production of landscapes in Mombasa. The proposed methodology of investigating space is based on writings by Jacques Derrida in his seminal work, Spectres of Marx from 1993. 2 Using Derrida’s foundational work and other works within the study of haunted landscapes and spatial phenomenology, the paper is concerned with how the clandestine nature and ghostliness of a landscape allow for a plethora of study into the presence of a spatialised haunting on Mombasa’s coast. Moreover, the investigation relies on experimental research methods, such as the creation of phantasmagorical images and mudlarking, to see the ghosts that move between the past and present as ﬁgures of landscape production and engender an alternative reading of Mombasa’s coastline.

Perhaps, more broadly, the spectrality of landscapes speaks to the importance of traces and remembering: honouring what haunts us, understanding where the ghosts are coming from and where they are going. Ofen the unseen is where most of life is lived, and, therefore, where most of the haunting occurs.

1. Michael Mayerfeld Bell (1997), ‘The Ghosts of Place’, Theory and Society, Vol. 26, No. 3, 813–39.

2. Jacques Derrida (2012), Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, Routledge.

Image: Typical Streetscape of Old Town Either in 1910 or 2020 – you get to decide what time this space is, 2024. Image by the author

Archiving the Intangible: Discussing the Possibilities and Implications of Recording Soil as a Cultural Artefact

Frankie Smith-Morris

Thesis supervisor: Danielle Hewitt

Seminar leader: Danielle Hewitt

This thesis assesses the proposition that soils are cultural artefacts. The following argument engages with a broader critique of archival practices concerning intangible forms of community and individual identity, which are commonly underrepresented in traditional archival practice. Critical archival studies and art theory are applied to a case study examining the individual plot soils of Spring Hill Allotments, Hackney, London, allowing the subjectivity of place-associated value to be embraced. This case study allowed for methods of archiving to be tested for recording and expressing the ephemeral relationships of ownership and identity between a plot holder and their land. The results of this are a collection of images that are intentionally subjective in their meaning and interpretation, allowing for reinterpretation and perpetuated relevancy as an archive of individual and communal identity.

Image: Plot 4, 2024. Image by the author

More than the Master’s Tools: No/All Tools for Decolonisation in the Landscape Architectural Discourse

Ying Monica Chong

Thesis supervisor: Aude Azzi

Seminar leader: Tom Keeley

This thesis builds on Audre Lorde’s inﬂuential statement – “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” – to discuss epistemic decolonisation in landscape architecture.1 Bendix, Müller and Ziai suggest that a decolonising approach to research involves two essential aspects: dismantling existing methodologies rooted in and perpetuating coloniality, and (re)constructing research practices. 2 Borrowing their approach, the essay begins by deconstructing modern science, a structure of knowledge and method ofen employed in landscape architecture. Referencing ecofeminist and decolonial feminist writings, it argues that science is produced by and reproduces colonial and imperial domination through elimination and exploitation.

It then constructs decolonial spatial practices by interpreting Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s concept of ‘potential history’ 3 and drawing parallels between this and Jane Rendell’s notion of ‘site writing’.4 The thesis posits that integrating the principles and goals of both methodologies can be a tool for unlearning imperialist assumptions and creating more inclusive, equitable landscape architectural narratives. The author experiments with these methods by interspersing self-reﬂexive, personal narratives about foraging in London, collaging not just the spatial qualities of the city but also larger questions such as land rights, migrant identity and heritage.

The thesis concludes by discussing utilising ‘the master’s tools’. While doing so may reinforce the pedestal on which they have been placed, they may be a ‘necessary evil’ in some cases. Rather, the writer emphasises that decolonisation begins with the self and requires a critical self-awareness to dismantle the entrenched colonial ideologies within us. There is not one single tool that addresses all challenges; instead, we must use all tools with a reﬂexive awareness of their limitations and potential.

1. Audre Lorde (2018), The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, Penguin Classics.

2. Daniel Bendix, Franziska Müller and Aram Ziai (2020), Beyond the Master’s Tools?: Decolonizing Knowledge Orders, Research Methods and Teaching, Rowman & Littleﬁeld.

3. Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (2019), Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (1st edition), Verso.

4. Jane Rendell (2010), Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism (1st edition), I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd.

Image: A collage of herbs and fruits foraged in various locations in London, 2024. Image by the author

Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch students visiting the KTH Reactor Hall in Stockholm, a former nuclear research reactor now used as a subterranean event and performance space, 2024. Photo: Luke Pearson

Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch

Programme Directors: Penelope Haralambidou, Luke Pearson

Rapid advancements in digital technologies have brought the previously discrete felds of architecture, flm and videogames closer than ever before. By employing innovative architectural design methods, the Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch programme, the frst of its kind in the UK, critically situates students’ work in relation to new developments in time-based digital technologies and the way these are shaping our culture, identity and politics.

Architecture has a long history of acting as an underlying structuring device for both flm and videogames. From the building of flm sets to developments in flm-compositing techniques and innovations in computer graphics, the depiction of space has been a key challenge defning our contemporary media landscape. In turn, the narrative and storytelling powers of time-based and interactive media are reshaping not only how architecture is constructed and represented, but also how it is conceived and experienced.

Located at a dedicated studio in Marshgate, the new UCL East campus, Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch provides access to advanced software and equipment, a spatial computing lab and the UCL East cinema. Supported by a world-leading team of tutors and visiting industry fgures, the programme prepares students for the emerging futures of architectural design while developing skills that are also applicable to the flm and game industries and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) environments.

In our very frst year, we became architectural storytellers and world-builders who engaged with the key issues facing our increasingly hybrid physical/digital world through the theme of ‘Inhabiting Identity’. We saw architecture as a mirror and a mould for identity, taking place across divergent platforms and media, refecting and shaping the cultural, historical and social facets of individuals and communities. Combining architectural design with the cutting-edge media of cinema, videogames and immersive environments, we explored a hybrid realm of spatial identity, creating narratives and ideas that connect people with their past, present and future.

For our feld trip, we visited Stockholm, experiencing the city’s unique architecture and geography while also engaging with its world-leading digital entertainment industry. Visits included the subterranean performance space at the KTH Reactor Hall and a special tour of Mojang Studios, the developers of Minecraft, giving students insight into a world-leading gaming and media studio.

Students honed their creative practice through skilling exercises, complex design projects and theoretical writing, culminating in the production of a dissertation and a fnal project demonstrating their unique research methods through a flm, game or interactive installation.

Design Tutors

John Cruwys, Camille Dunlop, Penelope Haralambidou, Luke Pearson, Sandra Youkhana

History & Theory Module

Coordinator

Claude Dutson

Skills Module Coordinator

Haden Charbel

Admissions Tutor

Déborah López Lobato

Senior Programme Administrator

Dawn Mitchell

Postgraduate Teaching

Assistant Ewan Sleath

Critics

Haden Charbel (Pareid), Tamar Clarke-Brown (Serpentine Galleries), Claude Dutson (RCA, Digital Direction), Gregorios Kythreotis (Shedworks), Déborah López Lobato (Pareid), Leah Lovett (UCL, CASA), Keiichi Matsuda (Liquid City), Nick Murray (Now Play This), Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás (UCL, BA Media), Ollie Palmer (Squint/Opera), Jose Sanchez (Plethora Project), Sebastian Tiew (Cream Projects)

Workshops and Lectures

Joël Älveroth (Mojang Studios), Miriam Bellard (Rockstar Games), Tamar Clarke-Brown (Serpentine Galleries), Leif Handberg (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Dhruv Jani (Studio Oleomingus), Joel McKim (Birkbeck, MA Digital Media), Magnus Puig De La Bellacasa Cristiansson (Mojang Studios), Tobias Revell (Arup), Jamie Rhodes (UCL, BA Media), Paula Strunden (Virtual reality researcher and artist), Chi Wong (Mojang Studios)

Students

Zechen Huang, Bora Imirgi, Brockton James, Emily Jerjian, Xiaojun (Katrina) Lin, Jonah Ling, Yijin Luo, Laura Obando Giraldo, Ishan Vilas Patil, Jelena Rajovic, Nikie Rosa Siabi Shahrivar, Arina Viazenkina, Jue (Jocelyn) Wang, Zheyan Wang, Jiaming (Lisa) Xiao, Jingyao Xu, Shuoyu Zhan, Yu (Cleo) Zhang, Yunli Zhang, Ziyan Zhao

CVA.1 Arina Viazenkina ‘Virtia: The Perfect World’. In this project, digital hair has become the main currency. It critiques the social media economy through an allegory exposing how platforms commodify interactions, attention and data. By portraying users as both consumers and products, the ﬁlm highlights the transactional nature of online relationships and urges reﬂection on our role in the digital landscape and its impact on societal and individual identity.

CVA.2 Jonah Ling ‘Spacious: UI with Room to Breathe’. The project challenges traditional 2D sof ware by taking computer user interfaces (UI) to the third dimension. The platform is designed around a series of systems, including a spatial programming language called .rhythm, allowing users to design and encode complex logic directly into their virtual environments. The project is both a playable virtual-reality (VR) app and a ﬁlm charting a ﬁctional YouTuber’s travels deep into the system.

CVA.3–CVA.5 Yunli Zhang ‘Welcome to Your Ideal Village’. The narrative unfolds in a Chinese village on the brink of demolition in the face of new urban development. The erasure of the old to create a modern city raises concerns that residents will be unable to adapt to the drastic changes. The player journeys back in time to alter the course of events, hoping to shape a future where the new city better aligns with the needs of its inhabitants.

CVA.6 Jiaming (Lisa) Xiao, Yu (Cleo) Zhang ‘A Perfect Day’. One house; two minds; four artefacts; six rooms. Somewhere 50 years in the future, in a self-sustained smart home afer artiﬁcial intelligence has changed the domestic sphere beyond recognition, a perfect day awaits. This project uses extended reality as a theatrical and philosophical tool to address the growing tension between human and machine agency in a futuristic home environment. When you are entangled in a data-driven grid, what does it even mean to be alive?

CVA.7–CVA.9 Emily Jerjian ‘Echoes of Home’. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch’s theory of ‘postmemory’, the game introduces new methods of storytelling in response to uncovering Armenian cultural assimilation. Inspired by a family collection of historical photographs depicting Ottoman life in Eastern Anatolia in the early 1900s, the virtual realm commemorates the truth of the past and advocates a third space, a virtual homeland for the Armenian diaspora, reimagined through player agency.

CVA.10 Jelena Rajovic ‘Invisible Cities, Visible Memories’. The project envisions a reimagined Venice through the lens of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, a book where memory and imagination intertwine. Exploring the interplay between bodies and spaces, the ﬁlm creates an immersive urban experience that evokes a sense of déjà vu. It features a traveller in a living, growing costume who dances with the city, performing the ﬂuid link between memory, place and identity.

CVA.11–CVA.13 Xiaojun (Katrina) Lin ‘Symbiocene: To Grieve with the Dead’. This experimental eco-game presents an ideal vision where extinct species are digitally revived. Players unconsciously repeat the same destructive patterns of human activity, which serves as a satirical commemoration of the Anthropocene. The game evokes emotional connections between humans and non-humans through its unsettling aesthetic, worldbuilding and dynamic scene feedback.

CVA.14 Yijin Luo ‘Welcome to the Gig Arcade’. This satirical VR game reflects on the practice of ‘gamification’ in the gig economy and highlights its overlooked addictive nature. It speculates on a future when digital freelancing platforms evolve into fully gamified, Japanese arcadelike working environments, blurring the boundary between work and play. The game pays tribute to the power of mascots and extends their ‘inflatable’ language from mere characters into whole spaces.

CVA.15–CVA.18 Ishan Vilas Patil ‘Horizon’. The ﬁlm questions the origin of India’s history, altered for political reasons and ofen mythologised as an ancient civilisation possessing advanced knowledge and technology beyond modern understanding. It reimagines the Sri Yantra within a futuristic version of the mythological city Shambala, linking sacred geometry, vibrations, time cycles and mythic narratives to speculate on lost knowledge.

CVA.19 Laura Obando Giraldo ‘Lost Kingdoms’. Inspired by contemporary critiques seeking to move the museum towards decolonisation and cultural accessibility, the game reimagines history and heritage. Instead of focusing on untouchable objects behind glass cases, the virtual museum brings myths and collective imagination to life, speciﬁcally exploring the mythical kingdom of El Dorado. Its purpose is to transform the museological experience into an exciting interactive journey.

CVA.20–CVA.21 Zheyan Wang, Shuoyu Zhan ‘Dreamvision’. In this third-person mirror-space puzzle game, set in a former mining town in Svalbard, the player must uncover the mine’s past. ‘Dreamvision’ screens reveal the miners’ memories and fantasies, warping between two distinct yet interconnected worlds. Through puzzles involving spatial manipulation and mirror rotation, players gradually uncover and experience the full scope of this satirical story.

CVA.22–CVA.25 Jue (Jocelyn) Wang, Ziyan Zhao ‘Babypunk’. This game and ﬁlm imagine the new urban development Babypunk, centred on childbirth and women’s care. In Babypunk: 2121, players discover deeper complexities of freedom, identity and reproductive rights, exposing a dystopian reality masked by utopian promises, where pseudo-feminism and a pro-natalist agenda prevail. In the short ﬁlm Babypunk: Hong Kong, told by Babypunk mascots, what is initially framed as an advertisement gradually fades to reveal the darker side of this idealised society with its hidden agenda that perpetuates an endless cycle of childbirth.

CVA.26–CVA.28 Bora Imigri ‘City of Resistance: Revolt and Reclaim’. In this ﬁrst-person, tile-based procedural game, the players navigate a dynamic, antagonistic urban environment to reach and save the last remaining public green spaces. The game acts as a socio-political commentary on top-down, authoritarian urban planning. Using real-time engine technology, architecture is employed both as the main narrative tool and as the core generative game mechanic.

CVA.29 Nikie Rosa Siabi Shahrivar ‘AI-lien’. Aliens once fascinated audiences, reﬂecting our fears and desires, but now feel outdated. This project reimagines the alien by learning from the evolution of AI and the tropes of social media, evolving from sudden emergence to viral dominance. It captures the era’s ethos: attention as currency, constant transformation, and the drive to captivate, redeﬁne and commercialise everything.

CVA.30–CVA.34 Zechen Huang ‘Last Monster in the 21st Century’. This project is about ﬂeeting youthfulness. A 13-year-old boy stumbles on a gun and, with reckless innocence, pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. Years later, when he is 30, a whisper of wind brushes his ear on a quiet street. He turns, and the long-forgotten bullet ﬁnds its mark, echoing the past into the present.

CVA.35 Jingyao Xu ‘Plan-L’. The film follows the arrival of the Leech, a fictional creature with the ability to destroy electronics and reshape nature. The project critiques our dependency on technology and its environmental impact, discussing our potential future role in a post-human era. The Leech is a metaphor for adaptation within ecosystems, inspiring reflection and fostering a deeper understanding of the interplay between human action and the natural world.

CVA.4

CVA.3

CVA.7

CVA.8

CVA.12

CVA.11

CVA.15

CVA.16

CVA.17

CVA.20

CVA.25

CVA.22

CVA.23

CVA.24

CVA.26

CVA.27

CVA.28

CVA.31

CVA.30

CVA.33

CVA.32

CVA.34

Skills

Module Coordinator: Haden Charbel

Cinematic & Videogame Architecture Skills provide students with the computational and media expertise required to create complex architectural design projects using cinematic and videogame technologies. It is divided into two modules across the frst two terms, progressing from a broader set of core skills towards a personalised area of specialisation.

Skills 1 guides students from foundational to advanced techniques for both digital and analogue mediums through a combination of weekly lectures and exercises. Students learn principles of 3D modelling, texturing, lighting, camerawork, animation, compositing, post-processing, game logics, interactivity, and augmented and virtual reality. These skills are taught to build up incrementally towards general interoperability across industry standards.

Skills 2 builds on these taught foundations and moves towards individual areas of expertise. Students identify a particular skill of interest and develop this throughout the module. Precedent studies serve as the starting point, whereby students present a skill-related topic by researching and examining the current state of the art, as well as any historical and contemporary contextualisation relevant to the skill. This process catalyses potential directions for developing both the techniques and the relevance of their chosen skill in relation to their design work and the feld in general.

Examples of these specialised skills include procedurally generated urban space confgurators and their potential in encoding context-specifc qualities; advanced particle simulations for enhancing atmospheric environments towards the ‘sublime’; linking physical objects with virtual environments to create ‘phygital’ interactivity, testing both the limitations and possibilities of what a metaverse can be; and advanced compositing techniques for seamlessly blending digital content into real footage, exploring the means and ends of disinformation within social media.

Both modules directly support student design projects, fostering a dialogue between ideas and tools that recognises their inherently complementary nature in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Practice Tutors John Cruwys, Robert Fraser

Image: An ‘alien waste mound’ made and composited using a combination of Blender, Touch Designer and Afer Efects, 2024. Nikie Rosa Siabi Shahrivar

History & Theory

Module Coordinator: Claude Dutson

The history and theory component of the Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch programme provides a contextual and critical framework to appraise emerging practices, technologies and media ecologies associated with these converging disciplines.

Our analysis of cinema, games and media is grounded in an architectural and spatial sensibility. This includes critical scrutiny of tools developed outside the discipline, such as generative artifcal intelligence (AI), virtual reality and game engines, which are now merging into architectural work fows.

Through seminars, workshops and lectures, we introduce new ways of thinking and researching to interrogate archetypes, tropes, memes, operative images, and ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ media. We invite key writers and thinkers at the intersections of flm and architecture, architecture and games, as well as media and architecture. Students then situate their interests within the entangled histories of flm, videogames, digital representation, immersive media and critical theory.

In Term 1, students took a close look at a medium, method, tool or technology by analysing a case study of their choice. These studies staked out a broad and diverse landscape of interests, from the addictive mechanics of gacha games to extracting Andrei Tarkovsky’s concepts of suspense for deployment in videogames. Other topics ranged from examining the authenticity of cultural representation in the architecture of Assassin’s Creed to the action-performances of immersive theatre and mixed-reality experiences.

From Term 2 onwards, the connection of theory to practice was a central part of our approach. We encouraged students to develop their unique voice and positionality on emerging technologies, tools and processes through an illustrated dissertation. We deeply value the visual articulation of ideas and foster experimentation with written forms and novel narrative techniques.

In the programme’s frst year, the dissertations showcased diverse approaches and practices. Many shared a common trait: they were timely and important voices in an emerging discipline, tackling the enmeshment of architecture with the complex realms of serious games and gamifed labour, demographic changes and automation, social media excesses and the attention economy, uncanny plateaus and the hallucinations of exponentially ‘intelligent’ artifcial agents.

Seminar Tutors

James Delaney, Claude Dutson, Joel McKim (Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology, Birkbeck, University of London), Nestor Pestana (RCA), Tobias Revell (Design Futures, Arup)

Thesis Supervisors

James Delaney, Claude Dutson, Nestor Pestana (RCA)

Digital Diaspora: Redeﬁning Armenian

Diasporic Identity through Visual Storytelling within the Videogame Medium

Emily Jerjian

Dissertation supervisor: Claude Dutson

This dissertation introduces new methods of storytelling between the personal, collective and cultural trauma of Armenians who survived the 1915 Genocide and the ‘generations afer’.1 To this day, the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians, carried out by the Ottoman Empire, lack international recognition and remain a wound within the community. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch’s theories of ‘postmemory’, and in response to uncovering Armenian cultural assimilation, the dissertation, alongside its design project counterpart, Echoes of Home, begins by examining how Armenian diasporic identity has been shaped through collective memory of the Armenian Genocide and modern-day Artsakh War. 2 It analyses representations of Armenian identity in ﬁlms, such as Atom Egoyan’s Ararat and Terry George’s The Promise, arguing that, while both ﬁlms raise awareness through exploring historical trauma, memory and diaspora identity using distinctive cinematographic approaches, they fuel perceptions of Armenia being perpetually tied to its profound tragedies.

Armenian diaspora youth face the dilemma of ‘moving on’, whereby a path of healing and de-prioritising the traumatic narrative that has been so foundational to their identity raises concerns of a loss

of cultural heritage and sense of unity. With the accompanying design project, the dissertation explores the possibility of videogames as a medium through which to celebrate Armenian heritage. Echoes of Home is a videogame engaging with a ‘lost world’, inspired by a historical and familial collection of photographs depicting Ottoman life in Eastern Anatolia in the early 1900s. In the dissertation the world-building process is explained, focusing primarily on the perspectival and digital semiotic translation of modelling and representing our history within the videogame medium. 3 The dissertation emphasises how bridging the physical and virtual worlds through a third space, a virtual ancestral homeland that preserves the truths of the past, can give players agency and allow for Armenian diasporic identity to be reimagined.

1. Marianne Hirsch (2012), The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture afer the Holocaust, Columbia University Press.

2. Dmitry Chernobrov and Leila Wilmers (2020), ‘Diaspora Identity and a New Generation: Armenian Diaspora Youth on the Genocide and the Karabakh War’, Nationalities Papers, Vol. 48, Issue 5, 915–30.

3. Vincenzo Idone Cassone and Mattia Thibault (2016), ‘The HGR Framework: A Semiotic Approach to the Representation of History in Digital Games’, Gamevironments, Issue 5, 156–204. Image: Echoes of Home, 2024. Videogame still by the author

The Internet and Other Multistorey Car Parks

Jonah Ling

Dissertation supervisor: Claude Dutson

This dissertation ofers a satirical critique of digital technology by drawing an analogy between the internet and a multistorey car park. Adding to the ideas presented by designer Thomas Heatherwick in his book Humanise, it argues that modern sof ware interfaces are as boring as the concrete, steel and glass structures that dominate the modern city.1 But could architecture itself provide the remedy to this ‘blandemic’?

Below is an excerpt from the dissertation: Inching towards the barriers, harsh concrete walls rolled into focus – mottled grey adorned with dark smears where the previous decades had lef their mark. Inside, a ﬂickering tube attempted to illuminate the forest of pillars holding up the countless storeys of this colossal beast.

Lowering the window revealed a simple terminal – a plastic surface unbroken save for a single silver button and small LED screen displaying the message ‘PRESS FOR TICKET’ and, to the terminal’s side, a rusting yellow sign: This car park uses cookies to enhance surveillance

Once inside, an occasional advert seen through the passenger window provided a depressing source of visual amusement, its only competition being the enthusiastic signs promoting the neighbouring shopping centre.

Later – an exhausted Alice slid back into the driver’s seat, staring at the ticket in her hand, mocked by the 4 hours and 18 minutes stamped on it by the machine.

“A smart little trick,” she muttered. “Make you lose track of time until you’re spending a small fortune on parking.”

1. Thomas Heatherwick (2023), Humanise: A Maker’s Guide to Building Our World, Penguin Books Image: Wayﬁnding, 2024. Image by the author

Constructing Ustopian Worlds: A Comprehensive Analysis of Human Odyssey in Fictional World-Building

Ziyan Zhao

Dissertation supervisor: Nestor Pestana

World-building is a powerful tool for exploring and critiquing societal norms and aspirations by constructing immersive ﬁctional landscapes that reﬂect and refract elements of our world. Envisioning alternative realities – utopian, dystopian or ustopian – allows storytellers to magnify underlying tensions, illuminate ethical dilemmas and propose innovative yet unattainable solutions to real-world issues.

The dissertation explores world-building as a creative exercise to dramatise historical and controversial issues, prompting audiences to consider the consequences of current policy and envision alternative paths. World-building ofers both a mirror to our present realities and a window into potential futures shaped by the choices and ideologies embedded within these imagined worlds. The dissertation delves into the intricate process of crafing ﬁctional worlds within critical social contexts through the genres

of utopia, dystopia and ustopia, and their connection to literary forms such as satire, punk and cyberpunk.

Starting with the emergence of the utopian genre, with Thomas More’s seminal work Utopia, and moving into the dystopian world of the videogame Cyberpunk 2077, the dissertation focuses on their world-building techniques and use of real and fictional elements. The dissertation includes a reflection on the design process of the ustopian world of Babypunk (with Jue Wang) – a third-person adventure game set in a fictional world inspired by the implications of China’s one-child policy. The project scrutinises and applies the elements encompassing historical context, social structures, laws, regulations and built environments, examining how they are conceived, enacted and implemented in compelling yet contentious ways.

The dissertation provides insights into the complex interplay between policymaking, built environments and societal critique involved in establishing a sophisticated ustopian society. It seeks to provoke discussions on world-building as a method for critiquing contemporary societal issues.

Image: Babypunk Central Station, 2024. Image by the author

The B-Pro Show 2023. Photo: Richard Stonehouse

Architectural Design MArch

Programme Director: Tyson Hosmer

Architectural Design is invested in the frontiers of advanced architecture and design, and their convergence with science and technology. With its international staf 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, with the aim of building their computational and technological fuency. Simultaneously, they are taught about the theoretical frameworks that underpin their enquiries. Students are part of a vibrant urban and professional community, enriching the process of learning and providing 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 artifcial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, 3D printing, supercomputing, simulation, generative design, interactivity and extensive material prototyping, as well as 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 efectiveness 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

Postgraduate Teaching Assistants

Tung Ying (Crystal) Chow, Tom Mole

Mark Garcia, Mengdi Mao, Dingyi Wei, Rana Zein

Image: ‘PNEUMA’, Anqi Cheng, Wen Jun Tan, Yuning Pan, Research Cluster 2

RC1 Monumental Wastelands / Into the Field

Déborah López Lobato, Haden Charbel

Research Cluster 1 explores the imminent nature of the Anthropocene. Using climate fction (cli-f) as a vehicle, we research, experiment with and project imminent realities.

Two strands of research form the foundation of the cluster’s interests: (1) cli-migration – the forced relocation of people due to changing climatic conditions and; (2) autonomous ecologies –the automation, rights and participation of nature in discourse.

Projects emerge as highly contextualised, and emphasise a profound understanding of subjects through narrative and world building. We utilise flm and videogame engines as tools for speculation and feedback.

Through interactive, game-like experiences, the cluster negotiates complex issues in both aesthetic and practical terms, engaging with ideas of decentralisation, simulation and automation across a network of human, non-human and other behaviours.

The cluster employs two key interrelated methodologies, addressing both conceptual and technical approaches.

Conceptually, we devise strategies for preservation through adaptation. This approach embraces imminent realities rather than seeking a nostalgic return, recognising that, while some things will inevitably be lost, others can and should be preserved through practical yet sensitively tuned strategies. Technically, this is translated through decoding and recoding, understanding that the means by which preservation takes place is through the identifcation of the peculiarities and localities of certain conditions based on the analysis of data such as behaviours, materials and resources. These can be preserved through archiving, augmentation, reinterpretation, translation and convolutional processes.

In previous years, we explored radical methods for communities and ecologies, devising techniques and scenarios to respond to the particularities of various threats in their respective contexts. This year, the research cluster moved from a lab-like environment into the feld, testing the impact of our interactive game scenarios and experiments on a range of participants.

Students

Amazon – Edge

Kaiyuan Ding, Pu Yan, Weijie Zheng

Australia – Sabotage

Xinyi Chen, Feng Gu, I-Hsiu Shen

Chile – Flow Fables

Xuechen Huang, Yi Qiu, Chenyue Zhou

Iceland – Half Dead

Mingze Ma, Qisen Wang, Yuqi Yang

Theory Tutor

Albert Brenchat-Aguilar

Skills Tutors

Robert Fraser, Zehao Qin

Consultants and Critics

Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa, Marina Otero Verzier, Tim Waterman

1.1, 1.3-1.7 Chile – Flow Fable This project gamifies the environmental crisis caused by the mining industry in Chile’s Atacama Desert. It tells the story of Puri, a traveller guided by a mystical companion, Khuru, who explores and solves various remediation tasks in the desert. Throughout the game, players gain knowledge about remediation techniques for air, water and soil in the unforgiving climate: gathering water using fog-catchers, using dust-suppression cannons to bring airborne pollution to the ground, and growing and planting specific plants that serve as bio-remediation for the soil and the purification of water. The game aims to enhance knowledge of the Atacama’s current state through the use of a fable, asking players to solve the ecological puzzle in order to progress.

1.2, 1.11–1.13 Iceland – Half Dead Iceland is increasingly caught in an environmental and economic conundrum: its dependency on tourism, resource development and glacier protection seems irreconcilable. This project confronts these contradictions by proposing a strategy that involves sacriﬁcing part of the fragile glaciers to develop their geothermal and wind energy potential, while gaining the economic resources to preserve the more robust glaciers, all the while maintaining tourist interest in landscapes that see infrastructure blur into land art. The game thus sees players take on the role of a young scientist whose task is to balance resource consumption, energy production and economic gain as a means to calculate glacial preservation. Operating as a real-time simulation (RTS), players can install infrastructure such as geothermal plants and wind turbines on the dying half, while measuring albedo and snow farming on the other half. Extra ‘tourism points’ are awarded when patterns are recognised in the infrastructural layout, blurring the boundaries of infrastructure and land art.

1.8–1.10 Amazon – Edge The Amazon rainforest has been severely deforested by the BR-163 highway in Brazil, where the felling of trees has led to an ecologically destructive boundary condition known as the ‘edge efect’. This project is a game where players take on the role of an Indigenous naturalist, exploring the ecology of the rainforest and collecting materials to build animal attraction towers that recruit relevant species and test self-sustaining reforestation strategies. The objective is to re-sow the forest by growing the boundary line against the wasteland. Players are ﬁrst introduced to the deep forest and guided to the deforested areas. Along the way, they acquire both materials and knowledge to provide the foundation for Indigenous ecological thinking. The game takes place over four phases, toggling between human, non-human and omniscient perspectives.

1.14–1.17 Australia – Sabotage Mining plays a crucial role in Australia’s economy. However, most mining industries operate on Indigenous lands, especially in the Northern Territory, causing ecological damage and conﬂicts that infringe on Indigenous rights. Kakadu National Park, the largest natural park in Australia, is simultaneously home to six distinct landscapes and one of the world’s largest uranium mines: Ranger Uranium Mine. Though the mine is currently inactive, a nearby mine remains in operation, as do the ambitions of the mining company to reopen the now-closed Ranger Mine. This project proposes that the mine be assimilated and protected as part of the park by occupying the land and returning ecological stewardship to the Indigenous people through landscape migration. The protagonist in the game operates as a double agent: an Indigenous person who periodically inﬁltrates the active mine, and whose objective is to gather materials to aid in landscape migration while slowing down mining productivity and stimulating a self-sustaining ecology.

RC2 Sof Robotic Architecture

Valentina Soana

Designers have long envisioned building systems that adapt to human, environmental and structural conditions. Recent advancements in computational tools and robotics enable us to reconsider these visions. Traditionally, when designing adaptive systems, the selection of materials and actuation strategies relies on rigid body systems made up of multiple parts. However, elastic materials are inherently adaptive, as they can undergo signifcant deformations under varying conditions.

Research Cluster 2 investigates how to leverage these behaviours to create intelligent, lightweight structures that adapt to changing conditions with minimal material and energy consumption. By integrating robotic solutions into lightweight material systems, the cluster creates innovative structures capable of self-formation, reconfguration and achieving multiple states of equilibrium. Students examine how these shape-morphing systems can evolve into building systems that generate adaptive environments, responding to changing functions and environmental conditions, and fostering a new type of interactive relationship with humans.

This year, the cluster focused on developing novel material–machine–kinetic systems and designing their behaviour to create new architectural visions. The development included custom control strategies, embedding robotic operations within materials and controlling them in real time via a cyber–physical network. Behaviours emerged through dynamic interactions between humans, designers, materials and machines, resulting in interactive, intelligent environments. This vision transformed our surroundings into intelligent entities, transcending their traditional static roles and ofering new immersive and continuously evolving sensory experiences.

Students FLEXI

Kuan He, Seowoo Lee, Sihao Zhen

PNEUMA

Anqi Cheng, Yuning Pan, Wen Jun Tan

Theory Tutor

Panagiota (Yota)

Adilenidou

Skills Tutors

Aya Meskawi, Shahram Minooee Sabery

2.1–2.7 PNEUMA 2.1 ‘Elastic Robotic Structure’. This project is an elastic robotic structure with bending-active tensile hybrid systems. It is actuated by mechanised spooling mechanisms that adjust the tension of cables in response to human movements. The feedback-based control system detects motion and triggers changes in the structure’s shape and appearance, creating an interactive, shape-morphing space that responds to human presence. 2.2 ‘Shape-Morphing Pneumatic Hybrid Systems’. The images here show physical prototypes of shape-morphing pneumatic hybrid systems that change state through pneumatic inflation. The strategic design of the pneumatic cushion, combined with layers of bending/constraining elements, makes achieving diferent states possible. 2.3–2.4 ‘PNEUMA in Urban Environments’. The images show digital renders of the structure occupying urban spaces. These visuals envision larger systems of adaptive structures designed for public spaces, where they can dynamically interact with human activities. The flexible and responsive nature of the system allows these structures to transform and adapt to varying environmental conditions, creating immersive, interactive environments. In urban settings, these adaptive systems could serve multiple purposes, from interactive installations to functional public spaces that respond to the presence and movement of people, enhancing the social and sensory experience of the cityscape. 2.5–2.7 ‘Elastic Robotic Structure’. These three images showcase both the detailed components and the global design of the robotic demonstrator. This system is composed of an actuated bending-active tensile hybrid skeleton, where adaptive tensile elements have been integrated to enhance its responsiveness. The hybrid structure combines the flexibility of bending-active components with the precise control of tensile systems, allowing for a wide range of dynamic responses. These adaptive tensile elements enable the system to adjust in real time, responding to external stimuli such as human interaction or environmental changes. By integrating these two systems – bending-active structures and adaptive tensile elements – the demonstrator achieves both global and local adaptation capabilities. This unique combination creates multiple opportunities for generating complex shapes, facilitating human interaction and delivering immersive experiences. The system’s ability to morph and reconfigure itself in response to external forces not only ofers aesthetic possibilities but also introduces new functional interactions in architectural and urban contexts. This opens up a wide range of opportunities for creating engaging, responsive environments that react to human presence and movement, fostering a more interactive experience.

2.8–2.9 FLEXI This project is designed as a soundresponsive structure whose bending-active grid shell reacts to auditory stimuli by adjusting its shape through robotic joints. These joints change the angles of anchor points in real time, allowing the structure to morph in response to varying sound frequencies and intensities. The ability of the structure to adapt to diferent sonic inputs can make it ideal for performance spaces or sound installations, where the structure itself becomes a part of the auditory experience. The prototype’s efcient energy use, combined with its sensitivity to sound, envisions a future where architecture not only responds to human presence but also becomes an integral part of the sensory landscape, ofering new possibilities for public spaces, concerts and interactive exhibitions. 2.8 ‘FLEXI in Urban Environments’. This image shows a digital render of the structure functioning as a music pavilion in urban spaces. These visuals imagine larger adaptive systems speciﬁcally designed for public

performance areas, where they can dynamically interact with music and human activity. The ﬂexible and responsive nature of structures allows the pavilion to transform and adapt to diferent acoustical and environmental conditions, creating unique and immersive performances. In these urban settings, the adaptive systems could serve as both functional public spaces and interactive installations, responding to the presence, movement and sounds produced by musicians and audiences alike. This transforms the traditional experience of music in public spaces, ofering a dynamic, sensory environment where the architecture itself reacts to the rhythm and energy of the performance, enhancing both the acoustic quality and the audience’s emotional experience. 2.9 ‘Elastic Robotic Structure’. The images show the robotic prototype in four diferent states, demonstrating its ability to respond to sound as a dynamic, adaptive system. Minimal adjustments at the robotic anchors result in signiﬁcant deformations, creating a wide range of forms with minimal energy. This sound-responsive behaviour transforms the shell into a living, interactive structure that reacts to its sonic environment. As music, or sound waves, interacts with the system, the structure reshapes itself, providing a constantly evolving, immersive experience.

RC3 Living Architecture Lab: AI and Autonomous Architecture

Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu, Philipp Siedler

Research Cluster 3 explores the concept of ‘living architecture’ as a coupling of living systems with the continuous (re)assembly and (re)formation of architecture. We holistically reappraise linear building life cycles, learning from living systems’ extraordinary scalable efciencies in adaptive construction using simple, fexible parts. Our research focuses on developing autonomously reconfgurable buildings with situated and embodied agency, facilitated variation and artifcial intelligence (AI). We create experimental design models capable of self-organisation, self-assessment and self-improvement, using deep reinforcement learning to train assembly systems to better negotiate shifting architectural objectives. In parallel, we develop architectural robotics and intelligent simulation models in a tightly coupled feedback loop, aiming for an architecture that is self-aware.

Our work embeds local adaptability into the design process by training models to learn, adjust and reconfgure in response to unforeseen and changing socio-economic needs and environmental conditions. One research thread focuses on physical reconfguration through autonomous robotic assembly systems that are tuned and trained in digital simulation environments. Real-time control and sensory feedback of physical robotics are managed within bespoke digital twin simulation environments developed in Unity (a popular game engine and development platform). Another thread explores generative design models that apply AI to spatial planning and the organisation of reconfgurable parts, generating solutions that negotiate multi-objective architectural challenges.

This year, Research Cluster 3 rethought the notions of ‘home’, ‘work’ and ‘factory’ as integrated rather than separate building typologies. Our research primarily revolved around collective robotic construction systems as ecologies of varied modular robots working collaboratively. Building on previous research, projects focused on scaling up the modular robotics and developing sustainable robotic multi-material systems with novel reversible tectonics. The work spanned various scales and topologies, from small-scale collaborative robotics for assembly to adaptive hybrid material systems and largerscale robotic spatial (re)assembly. State-of-the-art architectural robotics and artifcially intelligent design algorithms have the potential not only to transform how we design and build architecture, but also to alter fundamentally our relationship with and perception of the built environment. The research further examines how living with bespoke industrial robots or within robotic environments might change our patterns and ways of life.

Students Anima

Nujud Alangari, Selen Bektaş, Priscilla Maura, Konstantinos Smigadis Co-Nest

Congying Luo, Yujing Wang, Silu Yu Mo2Bot

Jiafei Liu, Xinyang Wan, Chenlu Yang

Transpace

Zhengshen Wang, Ji Wu, Bingjie Zhang

Theory Tutor

Jordi Vivaldi Piera

Skills Tutors

Barı ş Erdinçer, Ziming He, Sergio Eduardo Mutis

Consultants and Critics

Sebastian Andia, Tiziano Derme, Benjamin Dillenburger, Moritz Dörstelmann, Winka Dubbeldam, Marcelyn Gow, Sung Ho Kim, Lydia Kallipoliti, Jakub Klaska, Melodie Leung, Mathias Maierhofer, Mathilde Marengo, Areti Markopoulou, AnnaMaria Meister, Nancy Morgado Diniz, Campbell Orme, Sille Pihlak, Yael Reisner, Gili Ron, Theo Sarantoglou Lalis, Roland Snooks, Aldo Sollazzo, Kathy Velikov, Molly Wright Steenson, Martin Zangerl

3.1, 3.4, 3.18–3.26 Anima This project is a platform for cooperative housing communities, employing reconfigurable modular blocks and panels with construction robots inspired by natural builders to adapt their collaborative formations for complex tasks. Through the modular robotic system and adaptive spatial planning algorithms, living spaces are adapted to residents’ needs and environmental changes. The project uses hybrid carbon-negative materials (mass timber and hempcrete), enabling a lightweight and durable circular economy where materials can be disassembled and recycled multiple times through their life-cycle. A multi-agent simulation and control system were developed and trained with reinforcement learning for adaptive construction. Operating across multiple timescales, the project’s adaptive life-cycle facilitates real-time spatial adaptation. 3.1, 3.18–3.20 Adaptive architecture visualisation of distributed robotic material system. 3.21–3.22 Distributed robotic material system prototyping. An iterative series of robotic material system prototypes were tested considering a bidirectional synergy between a locking and unlocking system of the reversible architectural elements and degrees of freedom of the assembly robots. 3.23 Adaptive architecture visualisation of distributed robotic material system, view from interior space. 3.24 The system was developed to adapt to dynamic constraints and reconfigure itself. Various configurations responding to the constraints are shown. 3.25–3.26 A custom material system was developed using multiple materials. A joint system is embedded in each component to enable the robots to pick up and place the components. 3.2, 3.14–3.17 Mo2Bot The title of this project stands for ‘modular × mobile’. It is an autonomously adaptive robotic material system composed of active and passive components that are capable of being connected with or disconnected from each other on the fly by means of reversible joints in diferent combinations forming a multi-functional robotic swarm. This enables the system to adapt collectively by combining or breaking apart in diferent combined body plans and hybrid morphologies, which exhibit a variety of adaptive construction behaviours while communicating with a generative platform where users can develop reconfigurable construction models. The project is developed as a multi-scalar system in which diferent combinations of small, medium and large passive and active robotic modules adapt architectural structures for large-scale construction. 3.2 Modular robots. One type of modular robot was developed – a simple robot that rotates around its centre – to combine with others to form an arm-like robot. Together they collaborate for efcient and complex reconfiguration sequences of reversible blocks. 3.14 Modular robot prototype. The simple robot is the base of the robotic system and can operate as an individual, in a chain configuration or as part of more complex body plans. 3.15 Multiple materials were considered for the materials system, aiming to find a balance between lightness and robustness. 3.16 Robots collaborating to move one block in space. 3.17 An adaptive architectural visualisation of the distributed robotic material system deployed on site. 3.3, 3.11–3.13 Co-Nest This project is an autonomous robotic system for modular bamboo construction. It investigates a range of individual and collaborative behaviours between autonomous distributed robots for modular bamboo assembly, disassembly and reconfiguration. Bamboo ofers a lightweight, strong and highly sustainable construction material, yet – due to the variability of the material’s size and shape – it remains overreliant on skilled labour and is not scalable. The project introduces a system of reversible joints to

standardise structural bundles of bamboo for modular construction, co-designed with distributed robots capable of assembling bamboo structures while navigating and climbing over them. The research includes developing diferent configurations of mechanical grippers, various forms/configurations of robotic arms, and the co-design of the material system while developing algorithmic growth logics and systems for generating modifiable forms of architecture for local communities where bamboo is abundant. 3.3 Robotic system for picking up and placing bamboo-stick composites. 3.11 Architectural visualisations of various phases of assembly and adaptation over time by large-scale autonomous robots. 3.12 Scaled robotic prototypes were developed with custom end efectors and degrees of freedom for reversible assembly of prefabricated bamboo-stick composites. 3.13 Robotic system prototyping. The robots collaborate to pick up and place the bamboo material system.

3.5–3.10 Transpace The project responds to problems that arise in traditional building systems including wasted resources, environmental pollution, and high costs and large amount of time required when a change of use, regeneration or renovation is required. It integrates an environmentally adaptable tectonic system, collaborative multi-agent intelligence and a generative spatial algorithmic system. The adaptable tectonic system is developed as a collaborative multi-robot ecology with four types of distributed construction robots and a series of reversible building parts, proposed as a new building typology to realise the efcient transformation across diferent building types through the continuous reconﬁguration and adaptation of space. Distributed construction robots include arm-like, wheel-based and cable-based robots with a variety of robot cooperation modes to improve adaptiveness, efciency and energy use. 3.5–3.7 Modular collaborative robotic prototyping. Three types of simple modular robotics were developed with the ability to connect, disconnect and collaborate as individuals or larger, more complex body plans for reversible assembly tasks. Robots and the material system were co-designed in relation to each other for complex assembly and reconﬁguration: a crane robot is used for lifing actions; an arm robot is used for pick and place actions; and a wheel robot is used for moving both materials and other robot parts. 3.8 Generative design algorithm. A voxel-based generative algorithm was developed for continuously adaptive space planning.

3.9 Robots in action using blocks of various materials to assemble large spaces and reconﬁgure them as required. 3.10 Adaptive architecture visualisation of distributed robotic material system deployed on site.

3.2 3.3

RC5 Product Architecture

Stefan Bassing, Marios Tsiliakos

This year Research Cluster 5 explored the theme of ‘Product Architecture’, which examines the relationship between digital and physical products in architectural and spatial applications.

The Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry operates on a model of non-repeatable processes, where each building is conceived as a prototype within a distinct context. Built artefacts are typically constructed on a project-by-project basis, positioning architectural design within the service economy.

The goal of Research Cluster 5 is to transition the predominantly service-driven architectural design industry into one that develops its own product applications, focusing on automation, hypercustomisation and scalability.

We integrate tangible or intangible technological capabilities into physical items, or conceive new physical–digital products that enhance or replace traditional design experiences. Product Architecture broadens the reach of design beyond what can be physically constructed. Our objective is to enrich the design cycle with novel solutions derived from diverse industries beyond AEC, such as industrial design, software development and systems design. To achieve this, we adopt an array of computational design techniques that, when linked together, can create independent design systems.

We frst employ user-centric design strategies to identify a unique design or spatial problem while observing current applications that merge design, fabrication, technological innovation and socioeconomic trends. Through iterative design stages, we develop multi-layered solutions that combine technology and architecture to address these challenges. Our tech stack ranges from parametric modelling confgurators, for geometric generation and interactive content creation with game engines, to leveraging machine learning for design recommendations. We use Large Language Models and Retrieval Augmented Generation to tackle tedious spatial bottlenecks, replacing traditional confguration systems with user-friendly recommender systems. We also apply multi-objective optimisations to create efcient automated design and planning tools. On the fabrication side, we focus on 3D printing for adaptable production, promoting material circularity.

This year we investigated a variety of architectural products, from automating the generation of 3D-printed façades for adaptive, carbon-reducing retroftting, to designing highly fexible co-working spaces catering to current start-up trends. Finally, we’ve reimagined traditional trade-fair design and logistics by providing exhibitors with a modular kit for designing, optimising and hyper-customising their booths without the need for Computer Aided Design packages.

Students Inno-Nest

Jiawei Chen, Zinuo Chen, Daiyan Gu, Yiduo Wang

ReFront

Viraj Gavhane, Edmundo Bautista Gonzalez, Aamlan Saswat Mishra, Ziyu Wei

Uni-Fair

Junyan Han, Fengming Li, Xiaojing Lin, Jianing Shi

Theory Tutor Daria Ricchi

Skills Tutors

Calin Craiu, JJ Lee, Alvaro Lopez, Zehao Qin

Consultants and Critics

Paul-Andrei Burghelea, Fab.Pub, JJ Lee, Pablo Zamorano

Partner BaseKX at UCL Innovation & Enterprise

5.1–5.6 ReFront This project ofers a fully integrated platform for the automated generation of a multifunctional 3D-printed building façade system. From the user-captured façade and location data, processed through Deep Learning workﬂows, to automated building analysis and fast and easy-to-assemble on-site systems, it improves building energy performance and ecological diversity. 5.1 ‘Component Variations on Building Façades’. The arrangement of diverse and uniquely varying modules assembled on external building walls is derived from the combination of building performance analysis and user preferences. 5.2 ‘Image to Image Translation’. A visual representation of the Conditional Generative Adversarial Network, trained on over 400 façade images, which is used by the platform’s automated process to analyse and understand the elements of a building from a user-uploaded camera capture. 5.3 ‘Façade Follows Analysis’. Illustration of a façade system generation using the platform’s iPad application, which combines radiation, sunlight, wind velocity and wind pressure analyses to automate the design of building envelopes. 5.4 ‘Form, Usage and Material Experimentations’. Case studies of the project’s components on designing, varying and manufacturing systems for hosting vegetation and growing moss, aiming to explore the beneﬁts of diferent material systems across a variety of climatic zones worldwide. 5.5

‘Back-end Analysis and Multi-layered Global Parameters Generation System’. The platform’s custom algorithm employs a computational design system to reconstruct buildings, conduct automated context analyses, and generate unique, multi-functional façades from simple input data. 5.6 ‘Deployed Façade Systems’. Explorations of façade systems deployed on real London buildings demonstrate the versatility of the project’s automatically generated building envelopes, which adapt to various building proﬁles, balcony types, planting species and seasonal changes.

5.7–5.13 Uni-Fair The project is a smart design system ofering an end-to-end integrated platform that reduces design lead times and waste in traditional trade fairs by leveraging a genetic optimisation-based automation back-end to provide rapid, efcient and data-driven planning through predefined layouts and modular construction. It uses aluminium and plastic modules with 3D-printed finishes, and an AI recommendation system that enables natural language mapping between large language models (LLMs) and CAD elements for advanced booth customisation, going beyond traditional configurators. 5.7 ‘Hyper Customisation: Back-end’. The platform ofers a recommender system that allows exhibitors to obtain booth design schemes through natural language input, eliminating the need for traditional slider-controlled configurators. 5.8 ‘Layout Planning Optimisation’. The layout planning system analyses four diferent performance criteria and utilises a genetic algorithm to create multiple design iterations, ultimately generating many optimised planning solutions for specific trade-fair requirements. 5.9 ‘Catalogue of User Interfaces’. The platform ofers two dedicated portals – one for exhibitors and one for organisers –to facilitate collaboration between stakeholders and make phasing more efcient. 5.10 ‘Visualisation of a Customised Booth’. According to the natural language interaction of the exhibitors with the recommender system, and the more detailed customisation follow-up, users can get a real-time preview of the booth design via a web app interface built in Unity and WebGL. 5.11 ‘Booth Design Presets’. The recommender system can provide exhibitors with a choice of more than 20 presets of booth designs, according to the size, flow of visitors and the specific customisation demands of exhibitors.

5.12 ‘Multi-Storey Uni-Fair Designs’. The generated ground-ﬂoor level is used for individual booth sections, while the ﬁrst and second are used as public spaces, including staircases, pubs, cofee shops and meeting spaces. 5.13 ‘Public Centre Design within a Trade Fair Generated by Uni-Fair’. The modular system not only specialises in the customisation process of individual booths, but also at creating complex geometrical articulations of public spaces, used as staircases, food and beverage retail spaces, and meeting areas, enhancing the trade-fair experience.

5.14–5.20 Inno-Nest The project provides startups with a flexible, technology-driven platform featuring customisable, modular furniture and an automated, data-driven system that enables dynamic spaceplanning and rapid ofce reconfigurations. It utilises 3D-printed, recyclable and interchangeable equipment, ensuring startups can efciently adapt and scale to meet their evolving needs. 5.14 ‘Employee Movement Simulation’. The system simulates the activities of employees during the day, cross-validating the spaceplanning of the generated ofce, observing the way the space is used and predicting any potential for congestion. 5.15 ‘Existing O fce Analysis’. The physical environment of the ofce directly afects employee comfort. Using the platform, candidate ofces are analysed in terms of daylight, airflow, noise levels, spatial connectivity and viewing potential, with the analyses then used to classify how functional those spaces are. 5.16 ‘The Inno-Nest Desk System’. The desk system features working, meeting and common desks with trapezoidal and hexagonal shapes based on a grid design, customisable with add-ons like sockets and lighting. 5.17 ‘Modular Seating Layouts’. To accommodate the varying needs of group discussions and chats, the modular seating options can be freely arranged and combined, allowing their scale to be adjusted as needed. 5.18 ‘The Inno-Nest Wheels’. For ease of assembly, the working desk is made of three parts – tabletop, body wall and base – and features wheels on a 3D-printed base for mobility. 5.19 ‘Inno-Nest in Education Company’. The platform can create diverse layout configurations for various functions, including, as illustrated here, a design tailored to educational institutions. This design optimises space to enhance functionality and meet specific needs. 5.20 ‘Overview of the Inno-Nest O fce’. As a case study, the platform has successfully conceptualised an innovative approach for a typical London space, by integrating dynamic, reconfigurable layouts and smart furniture to optimise functionality and space utilisation, adapted to the requirements of diferent teams.

Hacking by Design

Guan Lee, Christopher Fischlein, Daniel Widrig

Research Cluster 6 advocates for the use of materials and the examination of design processes that go beyond mere practicality. This year, we turned to traditional craftsmanship for design ideas and production inspiration. How can architecture, based on production techniques, play a role in design experiments?

The technological advancements of the 19th and 20th centuries allowed artisans to explore new material systems and construction methods. How can craft evolve from personal skill to a collective and spatial construct? Is this merely a shift in scale, both physical and conceptual?

Making is a vital part of the design and architectural world, enabling architects to realise ambitious and complex projects that push the boundaries of architecture. By hacking into existing know-how, we question not only what we build, but also how we build.

Students

Gridlock

Yijing Cui, Chi-Zu Lee, Yuhang Zhou

Hemplock

Shubham Khanvilkar, Yang Ye, Yujie Zhang Tied

Zixiao Ma, Shang Shi, Luocheng Wan

Tsunagi

Yu-shan Huang, Christopher Sidestam, Yuchi Zhang, Yina Zou

Theory Tutor Ruby Law

Skills Tutors B-made

6.1–6.5 Gridlock This project explores traditional Chinese mortise and tenon structures, drawing inspiration from the Luban Lock, a complex wooden puzzle attributed to master carpenter Luban over 2,000 years ago. Originally a toy, the Luban Lock is an intricate design where wooden blocks intersect at a single node with concealed cut surfaces, unlocked by identifying and rotating the key block. The project combines digital and manual fabrication to transform Luban Locks, reimagined as a nodal element within a grid structure, into modular components for architectural use. This project merges the rich heritage of traditional joinery with modern technology, creating a distinctive design aesthetic and spatial language that resonate across various scales and contexts.

6.6–6.11 Tied Since ancient times, ropes have been essential tools for connecting materials. Their ﬂexibility and versatility make them invaluable in architecture, furniture and the maritime industries. This project explores the creative potential of ropes, reimagining them in innovative designs that blend function and aesthetics. The research was initiated through a study of traditional lashing and weaving techniques, before innovating by combining ropes with CNC-milled wooden blocks and 3D-printed components. This system integrates various reclaimed materials to promote sustainable and circular architectural practice with a focus on reuse, while enhancing design aesthetics and contributing to structural stability.

6.12–6.17 Hemplock The project advances the use of hempcrete in architecture by developing a new design approach that combines hempcrete with concrete through an interlocking system. This innovative method utilises hempcrete pouches both as flexible stacking units and as formwork for concrete casting. By integrating these pouches, the design enhances the fusion of hempcrete and concrete, overcoming hempcrete’s limitations in flexural strength. This approach improves structural performance, introduces new design possibilities and reduces the carbon footprint of construction. Altogether, the system promotes sustainable building practices while ofering greater flexibility in architectural design.

6.18–6.22 Tsunagi In the context of the rapidly urbanising design landscape, this project investigates the preservation of traditional practices while examining the role and cultural signiﬁcance of craf smanship. The project, Tsunagi, meaning ‘to connect’ in Japanese, delves into the connections between materials, landscapes and human experience through the artistry of joinery. It revives traditional Japanese wood-joinery techniques, moving beyond nails and screws to create seamless and dynamic structures using concrete, steel and timber. The project integrates these materials at various scales, from intricate details to expansive architectural frameworks. By blending heritage craf smanship with contemporary design, Tsunagi ofers a versatile and sustainable approach to construction, emphasising adaptability and the lasting relevance of traditional techniques.

6.18

Unruly Tectonics

Richard Beckett, Chris Whiteside

Operating at the intersection of bio-digital design and architecture, Research Cluster 7 continues its exploration of integrating living biological systems and materials into architecture. This year, a specifc focus on biologically active materials, incorporated into design using environmentally driven machine learning (ML) models, informs the conception of new building paradigms and the development of novel bio-fabrication techniques.

Considering the contemporary understanding of humans as ‘holobionts’ (i.e. organisms consisting of a host and its associated microorganisms), along with shifting modes of bio-politics, students developed innovative biologically driven material systems to provide for multiple living agencies across various building typologies. Projects explored these living material systems and building typologies for urban living, alongside radical solutions addressing issues such as urban growth in the Anthropocene and the need to rewild urban environments with micro-biodiversity. This year’s topics include material responsiveness explored through architectural concepts of ageing, permanence and decay.

‘Dirty ELMs’ explored the development of novel ‘engineered living materials’ for architecture that exhibit animate material properties of self-healing and environmental responsiveness. Challenging ingrained architectural preferences for permanent and inert materials, the research integrated bacterial cellulose into biocompatible pulps, which were then biologically activated in response to environmental exposures once on the building. The research explored a ‘Dirty ELM’ approach where biomaterials are produced at large scale using robotic work fows, in ways that are not dependent on costly and limiting sterile laboratory methodologies – a signifcant step towards material change in architecture.

‘Bio-Corbel’ explored biological assemblies of unruly materials and spatial ecologies, curating architectural tectonics that constantly shift through notions of growth, decay and permanence. Challenging the fxed-time defnition of architectural layers, as an element of building decay, new parts are grown by occupants and replaced according to the requirements of a shifting building programme. The project developed a design methodology using ML models trained on environmental data sets to inform multiple taxonomies of biological corbels. Through the layering of simple components with multiple material mixes, we achieved intricate geometries and material gradients, controlling the lifespan and the adaptation of each layer to the surrounding environment.

Students Bio-Corbel

Peiyao Feng, Kexin Li, Siheng Li, Yixiu Shang, Yueyue Zhu

Cellubuild

Aurea Dcruz, Li Jiang, Camila Varela Alencar Ponte, Haoyue Zhao, Fang Zheng

Theory Tutor Yota Adilenidou

Skills Tutors

Juan Cantu, Christoph Geiger, Aileen Hoenerloh, Hangchuan Wei

7.1, 7.4–7.10 Bio-Corbel This project explores biological assemblies of unruly materials and spatial ecologies, curating architectural tectonics that are constantly shifing through notions of growth, decay and permanence. Challenging the ﬁxed-time deﬁnition of architectural layers, as an element of the building decay, new parts are grown by occupants and replaced according to the requirements of a shifing building programme. The project develops a design methodology using machine-learning models trained on environmental datasets to inform multiple taxonomies of biological corbels. Through the layering of simple components with multiple material mixes, we achieve intricate geometries and material gradients, controlling the lifespan and adaptation of each layer to the surrounding environment. 7.2 Students in a laboratory workshop growing bacterial cellulose for engineered living materials. 7.3 Student output from computational workshops developing ‘unruly assemblies’.

7.11–7.18 Cellubuild The project explores the development of novel ‘engineered living materials’ for architecture that exhibit animate material properties of self-healing and environmental responsiveness. Challenging ingrained architectural preferences for permanent and inert materials, the research integrates bacterial cellulose into biocompatible pulps, which are then biologically activated in response to environmental exposures once on the building. The research explores a ‘dirty ELM’ approach where biomaterials are produced at large scale, using robotic workﬂows, in ways that are not dependent on sterile laboratory methodologies, which are costly and limit eforts towards signiﬁcant material changes in architecture.

7.2

7.8

7.7

7.9

7.11

7.12

7.16

7.15

7.17

RC8 Augmented Multi-Materialities

Kostas Grigoriadis, Alvaro Lopez

Research Cluster 8 explores new methods of designing and building with material gradients that redefne component-based assembly and the standard practice of 20th-century mechanical connectivity.

In previous years, we investigated the use of robotic fabrication to 3D-print building envelopes and the fusion of materials to create component-less structures. This year, we expanded upon this research to combine augmented reality (AR) technology with 3D-printing methods, creating hybrid systems that optimise production and material use.

The frst of our two projects focused on the efcient use of concrete, achieved through topology optimisation. Specifcally, this was targeted at the design of columns and slabs that were placed under various loads and constraints to minimise their mass, with the aim of combining efcient material use with an improved aesthetic language. The process included analysing stress fow, optimising form, and testing and evaluating feedback loops between structural integrity and material porosity. On the fabrication end, traditional formwork and casting techniques were rethought to minimise waste and reduce carbon footprint. To accomplish this, AR guidance enabled the assembly of metal cages that served as both formwork and reinforcement elements.

The second project aimed to create structural skins that seamlessly integrated recyclable plastics and wood by-products, such as sawdust. The corresponding computational and material design approach focused on the distribution of wood and PLA (polylactic acid) gradients to achieve custom confgurations of colour, density, transparency and porosity. Various analyses, such as structural stress, acoustic, light and privacy-level evaluations, and assessment of thermal comfort under varying environmental conditions, informed this process. The resulting multi-material skin corrugations and delaminations allowed the integration of mechanical and electrical services while achieving occupational comfort. The structures can be recycled at the end of their lives and converted back into prime material that can be printed again in new multi-material spatial confgurations.

Students Metaskin

Shraddha Biyani, Angeliki Ragava, Bryan Ruiz

Morales, Jiaran Tang

Topoconcrete

Lingjie Feng, Cheng-Wei Lee, Yanxin Li, Ruitong Xu

Theory Tutor

Ilaria Di Carlo

Skills Tutors

Samuel Esses, Hanjun Kim, Alvaro Lopez

8.1, 8.4–8.9 Metaskin 8.1 ‘Metaskin Close-Up Detail’. The design objective of this project is to create a functionally graded building envelope that merges building services, structure and skin into a materially variable topology. Corrugations and 2.5D patterning increase structural strength, delaminations allow for ventilation voids and air gaps for insulation, and sub-materials are arranged in diferent configurations to control light and privacy. 8.4 ‘Multi-Material 3D Printing Studies’. The project is composed of waste materials from the construction industry. One such abundant and underutilised waste product is sawdust, which is primarily a by-product of wood-processing industries, such as sawmills, woodworking factories and paper mills. It is produced during the cutting, shaping and milling of wood logs into lumber, boards and other products, and by logging operations, tree pruning and wood construction activities. Sawdust cannot be directly used as filament due to its lack of cohesion and inability to hold its shape, but combining it with another biodegradable material such as PLA (polylactic acid) results in a composite that can be extruded into 3D geometries. Structural testing of pure PLA and PLA/sawdust samples showed that arranging the two materials vertically results in increased tensile strength, while arranging them horizontally results in better compressive properties. Here, pure PLA and sawdust/PLA are distributed across the prints to test these principles in larger geometries. 8.5 ‘Transparent/ Translucent PLA Multi-Material Robotic Extrusion’. Large-scale prototype fabrication with transparent and translucent PLA: an ABB IRB 1600 robot was used to layer diferent PLA materials with varying transparencies accurately to fabricate segments of the metaskin. The triangular infill geometry held the outer and inner skin layers together, while integrating the structural timber elements that reinforced the entire skin system. 8.6–8.7 ‘Multi-Material Skin Studies’. These multi-material volume studies look at the use of pure and sawdust-infused PLA to create translucent areas for solar shading, coloured regions for marking the position of the structural timber elements within the skin, transparent sections with ventilation openings for allowing sunlight and airflow through the interior, and bump textures for the acoustic treatment of the interior spaces. 8.8–8.9 ‘Urban Context Metaskin Configurations’. A sphere-packing methodology was used to generate the organisation of spaces within the project’s topology. These initial spatial configurations were then analysed in terms of structural stress, curvature and solar exposure. The analyses informed the distribution of lattices that were embedded in the skin for structural stifness, openings for ventilation, timber elements for structural stability, and pure and sawdustinfused PLA for light and privacy control. The resulting designs have a formal language that is very distinct from their urban context.

8.2–8.3 Topoconcrete 8.2 ‘Topology Optimisation Studies – Beam, Floor and Structural Frame’. The project concerns the design of materially efcient concrete buildings through the use of topology optimisation (TO). TO ﬁnds the most favourable material distribution in a preset design space. Material is removed or rearranged during the optimisation loops, and the resulting structure is utilised as fully as possible under a given load. Here, this technique is applied to the design of a series of structural typological elements with reduced mass. The colours represent diferent degrees of curvature of each element’s polysurface faces. 8.3 ‘ Topology Optimisation Studies – Structural Building Frames and Façade Systems’. Various optimisation studies are shown, with diferent support points and loads. The objectives were to generate efcient structural concrete frame arrangements between two existing buildings and

materially efcient load-bearing façade systems, and to assess the impact of support-point distribution on the thickness of the resulting optimised structures.

RC10 AI Tectonics

Federico Borello, Cesar Fragachan

Research Cluster 10 is dedicated to investigating and advancing cutting-edge design and tech-enabled processes in the feld of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC).

By harnessing the power of cognitive algorithms and artifcial intelligence (AI), we push the boundaries of innovation in the industry. Our focus is to explore tectonic languages, self-organising strategies and participatory design using game technologies, digital fabrication and the latest AI and machine-learning frameworks.

Research Cluster 10 endeavours to foster enhanced community interactions and overall wellbeing both by designing spaces that facilitate social connections and promote a sense of community and contributing to the broader societal need for sustainable and harmonious urban environments.

This year, we gathered data on the requirements of end users through various platforms that drew inspiration from the gaming, automobile and aerospace industries. This data-driven approach ensured that the resulting spatial arrangements are precisely tailored to meet the needs and preferences of future occupants and are informed by the physical and material constraints of the fabrication process. Furthermore, we explored the synergies between Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) practices and Industrialised Construction technologies. By integrating these two methodologies, we developed parametric architectural components that took into account both structure and production. Assemblies of components were developed and deployed into prototypical scenarios through agent-based simulations and/or multiplayer game platforms, aiming to create sustainable mixed developments.

Students FlexFold

Yequan Hu, Sulei Huang, Yuejun Zhang, Zekai Zhong

Horizon

Jiajun Li, Jianfeng (William) Liu, Hanqing Xue, Qian Zhang

InterX

Suzan Amato Faith, Sophia Baez Mahfoud, Vinay Kothari, Zijian Zhou

Theory Tutor

Alejandro Veliz Reyes

Skills Tutors

Jennifer Durand, Christoph Geiger

Consultants and Critics

Jianfei Chu, Jakub Klaska, Anna-Maria Meister, Sille Pihlak, Chirag Rangholia, Gili Ron, Theo Sarantoglou Lalis, Aldo Sollazzo

10.1, 10.3–10.9 Horizon This project is designed to infuse flexibility, feasibility and sustainability into architectural practices. It seeks to respond adaptively to the ever-changing needs of users, and to foster the democratisation and decentralisation of architectural work. Our approach incorporates advanced digital technologies with novel manufacturing and construction systems, including artificial intelligence and modular prefabrication systems, which support assembly and disassembly to facilitate the creation of a circular economy. The project develops an architectural system that is no longer constrained or destined to follow a single path: at its highest ambition, the system is an incubator for new, unexpected and colourful forms of domestic life. 10.1 Indoor courtyard view showcasing communal areas for inhabitants to interact and socialise, creating a sense of community and belonging. 10.3–10.4 The architectural proposal blends residential and communal spaces with green areas and open-air terraces. The proposal is composed of a modular kit of parts, constructed through a system of layered timber elements. People can walk, socialise and relax across the various interconnected terraces and pathways, while pergolas or shaded seating enhance the outdoor living experience. The design proposal emphasises sustainability and community by mixing residences with co-living spaces in a contemporary urban neighbourhood. 10.5 A floorplan dataset created to train a Difuser model. The latter learns correlations between diferent spaces, functions and dimensions to serve, once trained, as a creative tool to interrogate and explore novel architectural configurations. 10.6 A graph-based approach is used to score the Difuser outputs – based on architectural criteria such as room size, circulation, proximity of functions and so on – and inform the subsequent model-training cycle. The aim is to increase accuracy and the spatial understanding of the AI model to produce better outputs. 10.7 Exploded view of the tectonic details, showcasing the layered mass timber structure connected by means of dowels and notches, reinterpreting the traditional Chinese and Japanese craf of wood carpentry. 10.8 Section view of the structural system showcasing layered glue-laminated timber beams and cross-laminated timber slabs and stairs. The system is designed to allow rapid assembly and disassembly of a prefabricated kit of parts. 10.9 Interior view of one unit living-room area. Furniture is treated as integral to the design proposal and derived from the same system that is applied to the structural elements, creating a unified language between exterior and interior.

10.2, 10.10–10.15 InterX This project is an initiative set to revolutionise the power dynamics inherent to the architectural process, prioritising the user’s choices. Amid burgeoning urban landscapes teeming with ever-changing demands, the norm of building for permanence persists. At its core lies the challenge of constructing buildings tailored for singular functions, thereby limiting adaptability when societal needs evolve. This prompts the question of how a user-focused system could be established in a world of perpetual change. The mission of this project is to integrate gamer theory and game play in the architectural process as a way of integrating collective intelligence. In doing so, the project empowers users by amplifying their control of and inﬂuence over architectural spaces. 10.2 Close-up interior view of the timber structure made of stacked elements, showing how the various lengths of timber in a grid-like pattern combine both a space-making and a structural function. Art is exhibited in an open-air gallerylike space that has been integrated within the proposal. 10.10 Taxonomy of structural components highlighting the capacity of the system to adapt to accommodate

diferent spatial conditions. 10.11 The architectural proposal consists of a mix of co-working and communal spaces with green areas and open-air terraces, enabling them to be multi-functional and adaptable. The proposal is composed of a system of stacked timber elements, which revisits traditional Chinese and Japanese wood-joinery and dry-assembly techniques. The timber structure creates a dynamic interplay of ever-changing spaces that reﬂect the needs of the inhabitants.

10.12–10.13 The of-site digital manufacturing setup, consisting of an automated pipeline of six-axis robotic arms, responsible for both fabrication operations and the assembly of components prior to delivery to the site. The entire chain is designed to be automated within a factory environment to ensure fast, precise and safe production of structural components. 10.14 User selection and customisation of the available spaces through the platform. User choices have an impact on the overall context and surroundings, potentially necessitating negotiations with other users. The negotiation of space is enabled by the gamiﬁed platform, which acts as a design assistance tool. 10.15 Ground-level view, showcasing the activation of the public realm through a porous design process, enabling the creation of new dynamic communities within the neighbourhood.

10.16–10.20 FlexFold This modular system redefines the creative community model by providing a sustainably transformative alternative to the design and construction of creative spaces, addressing the scarcity of afordable studio space for artists and makers, especially in London. The project explores new strategies and tools in the architecture industry, including curved crease-folding methods, as well as modular prefabrication systems that ofer rapid transport and assembly. These features ensure efcient, adaptable and afordable maker spaces that can evolve with the needs of users. Ultimately, the project contributes to the sustainability and growth of the UK’s creative construction industry by ofering a novel, flexible and adaptive model for creative spaces. 10.16–10.17 The architectural proposal consists of a field of interconnected multi-layered spaces defining a new form of working environment. The structure is designed to be a modular, prefabricated kit of parts, produced from flat metal sheets that are folded into efcient lightweight structural components. These are designed to be efciently assembled, disassembled and reused in diferent contexts and configurations, responding to the increasing demand for flexibility and circularity in the building industry. 10.18 Plasma-cut unrolled metal sheet, featuring scoring patterns in correspondence with folding curves and boundary tabs as connectors. 10.19 Paper prototype model of a three-part column component at 1:5 scale. 10.20 Prototype of a thin metal shell at 1:5 scale, featuring multiple parts joined by metal rivets.

10.3

10.8

10.5

10.6

10.7

Architectural Design Thesis

Module

Coordinator: Mollie Claypool

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 frst term, which are then taken forward during the rest of the academic year. These concepts are varied but specifc 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.

Metabolic Rif: Scams in Carbon Sequestration and Ofsetting Practices

Kaiyuan Ding

Thesis tutor: Albert Brenchat-Aguilar

Global warming constitutes a grave threat to human survival, with anthropogenic carbon emissions as the culprit. Among the measures taken in response are carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon ofsetting.

The thesis asks if these measures are efective in combating global warming, with a speciﬁc focus on those implemented by major oil companies, and looks to shed light on associated scams. It investigates these practices from the perspective of the concept of the metabolic rif proposed by Marx to uncover an unethical practice seen in capitalism: exploiting natural environmental resources without making sincere eforts with regard to emission reduction.

The thesis uses CCS projects by Shell and Chevron as case studies, revealing how, instead of fulﬁlling their promise to cut emissions, they make things worse. Additionally, it examines the carbon ofset

market. Referring to case studies of refrigerant factories in India and China that exploit the system by producing and destroying greenhouse gases to generate carbon credits, it illustrates how mechanisms like carbon credits are frequently manipulated, driven by proﬁt rather than a desire to cut emissions.

Ultimately, the thesis argues that, instead of functioning as real solutions, these practices only work to shif ecological problems, bearing a certain resemblance to the historical disruption of nutrient cycles in agriculture. Proﬁt-seeking capitalist economic growth patterns exhibit complete inconsistency with sustainable development as they continue to trigger issues like ecological rifs. In response, the thesis proposes that natural solutions, such as living architecture and the Baubotanik method, be adopted to repair ecological rifs and eforts be made to shake of the reliance on proﬁt-driven market mechanisms. These approaches help mitigate carbon emissions and restore ecological equilibrium in a more sustainable and balanced manner.

Image: Restoring the edge of the Amazon rainforest. Image by Research Cluster 1, Architectural Design MArch, Group 2: Edge, 2024

Sof Robotic Parasites: Living Intermediary Architecture in the

Wen Jun Tan

Age of Hyperobjects

Thesis tutor: Yota Adilenidou

To expand on the blurred intermediary boundaries between human bodies and the environment, we can draw parallels to Edward Hall’s 1963 study of proxemics. Proxemics originally focused on the physical distances maintained between people in various contexts and how these distances afect behaviour, communication and relationships. By various anthropometric dimensions, proxemics also suggests the structure of spaces from intimate to public.

However, in the contemporary age of the digital realm and hyperobjects, the concept of proxemics is evolving to encompass a ﬁeld of relational space that extends beyond traditional physical realms, incorporating human and non-human entities. Timothy Morton coined the term ‘hyperobjects’ to describe vast entities with extensive distribution across time and space that are ofen beyond human perception. Hyperobjects challenge conventional

understandings of proxemics and space by building on the multi-layered and interconnected nature of objects. Entities such as climate change, radiation, carbon footprints, fossil fuels and microplastics are difcult to fully comprehend but are inherent to our daily lives. They afect the environments we inhabit and are intimately entwined with our bodies.

Design practitioners and academics alike have been studying and incorporating these invisible phenomena in their work. Richard Weller explains that visualising environmental processes and relationships, which are mostly imperceptible to the naked eye, requires an understanding of hyperobjects. These immense entities are known for their signiﬁcant impact, yet they can only be observed through fragmented evidence, making direct engagement difcult. They are seen or mapped through ‘disembodied machinic eyes’, such as satellites or digital simulations created from sensor data. As such, to intervene efectively in an age dominated by hyperobjects, designers must continually connect the macro-scale of hyperobjects with the micro-scale of daily life.

Image: PNEUMA – a lightweight, shape-morphing structure designed to deliver immersive sensory experiences in response to human movements and heart rate. Image by the author

Extrapolation, Speculation, Fabulation: On Architectural Narratives and Artiﬁcial Intelligence in Light of Steven Shaviro’s Cinema Theory

Jiafei Liu

Thesis tutor: Jordi Vivaldi

The thesis explores how science-fiction films influence the narratives through which artificial intelligence (AI) processes are implemented in the design of robotic architectures. It provides a general framework for considering the interaction between fiction and architecture, emphasising that science-fiction films not only dispense visual and conceptual inspiration for robotic architectures, but also challenge and expand the possibilities of architectural design through their unique narrative strategies, ofering us instruments for thinking about and intervening in the world.

The thesis therefore hypothesises that science-fiction films can provide architecture’s instrumentalisation of AI not only with visual imagination, but also with narrative strategies. More specifically, it proposes that Steven Shaviro’s theories of extrapolation (extending current trends into the future), speculation (predicting future possibilities beyond existing realities or technological limits) and

fabulation (representing future possibilities through storytelling and narrative construction) might help us to understand and rearticulate the narrative methods that inform the ways in which AI participates in the design of robotic architectures.

In terms of extrapolation, science-fiction films show the potential and applications of robotic construction in future architecture. In terms of speculation, science-fiction films propose adaptive architectural models by considering future societal needs. Finally, in terms of fabulation, science-fiction films ofer vivid future smart-building scenarios and user experiences that enable architects to more intuitively understand and validate design concepts.

Methodologically, the thesis develops this discussion through a case study, ‘Mo2Bot’, a project designed by the author and fellow students in Research Cluster 3, and inquires into how its adaptive spaces and robotic construction mobilise certain narrative visions akin to those at work in science-fiction films, making architecture more flexible to adapt to future changes. Although the architectural visions in films are imaginary, they ofer insights into how fiction, architecture and society together contribute to shaping our collective action in the emerging future.

Image: ‘Mo² Bot’, render of the robotic construction of the project. Image by the author and fellow students in Research Cluster 3

A Cure for Placelessness: Style Transfer through Façade Redesign in Contemporary Indian Architecture

Aamlan Mishra

Thesis

tutor: Daria Ricchi

There is huge potential to change architectural languages to create a new blend of modern Kalinga architecture. This potential exists within all the elements of cultural design and identity, but the most potent is the architectural design of residential buildings.

Looking at Eastern architectural practices, particularly the Kalinga architectural style, there has been a rule of creating stylistic prototypes around the main temple to design and conﬁrm the ﬁnal version of the temple’s architecture. These can ofen be seen as smaller temples dedicated to minor gods and entities from the lore associated with the god of the primary temple. These serve as a valuable checkpoint for understanding the evolution of Kalinga architecture’s ‘classical’ style. The ‘classical’ style of Kalinga architecture may not have been documented, but, by studying all substyles, a fair reconstruction of the ‘classical’ style can be achieved.

Similar instances can be found in the International Style of architecture, where the foundations are diferent from most of the architectural inserts designed in the said style in the past century. However, in this case, documentation of the concepts and their evolution makes it easier to understand the pure ‘classical’ form of the style.

Here there is an opportunity to understand what the author calls the ‘true’ style of architecture, which is not exactly the ‘classical’ style nor any of the substyles implemented in practice. This hypothetical ‘true’ style needs to be free from any human bias and close to the deﬁnition of architectural style by Gottfried Semper in the form of a function. Certain architectural styles like the Kalinga style have religious signiﬁcance. Hence, statistical and machine-learning (ML) techniques are the best available methods to understand the ‘true’ version of any architectural style without the bias of humans and their sentiments. Reconstruction of the original ‘true’ style of any architectural style can be deduced through agnostic data-driven methods like ML and deep learning.

Image: A thematic representation of element identiﬁcation and the transfer of styles from contemporary to Kalinga architecture through the use of Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks and Genetic Algorithms. Image by the author

Visualising Materials: Approaches to Visualising Functionally Graded Materials

Cheng-Wei Lee

Thesis tutor: Ilaria Di Carlo

This thesis focuses on exploring the generation of medical and biological images, with a speciﬁc emphasis on studying their possible application in the visualisation of design sof ware for Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) models. Throughout history, our understanding of materials has been limited by the methods of observation and visualisation available to us. With advancements in medical imaging technologies, as well as the evolution of historical perspectives, our comprehension of the internal composition of materials has also evolved. From initial observations based on physical cutting and destruction to the contemporary use of radiographic imaging techniques, we have re-evaluated the composition and structure of materials. By understanding the processes involved in generating these images, we can reassess the composition of various materials. This investigation attempts to apply the principles of medical image visualisation, like MRI and CT scanning, to architectural domains, enabling designers to delve deeper into exploring and conﬁguring variations in FGM. Hence, this study investigates the visualisation of FGM from a medical imaging and technological point of view. By observing the use of advanced medical equipment in capturing tissue changes within the human body, the aim is to reveal how these

observations afect the perception of the material. The thesis further compares the evolution of diferent types of medical imaging to understand how these processes afect the visualisation of architecture and materials, and how such techniques could efectively complement existing computer-aided design tools in visualising internal structures. In conclusion, this study envisions the evolution of visualisation that seamlessly integrates material insights into the design process. Such evolution is anticipated to streamline the incorporation of material information, allowing designers to navigate complex design environments more efciently. Emphasising the visualisation process has become a key strategy to provide designers with a deeper understanding of the fragmented design process and to address manufacturing challenges, thereby bridging the gap between medical imaging and architectural visualisation. This interdisciplinary convergence holds the potential to fundamentally transform how designers conceive and realise their architectural visions.

Image: Studies on density material gradients procedurally transform the structure of Functionally Graded Materials into a voxel density 0.001 model. This close-up view of the upper section of the model clearly shows that the transparent areas also have structural support and variations in transparency, 2024. Image by the author

Urban Design MArch, Research Cluster 16, The B-Pro Show 2023. Photo: Richard Stonehouse

Urban Design MArch

Programme Director:

Roberto Bottazzi

Urban Design is a Master’s degree dedicated to the analysis 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 introduction of artifcial intelligence, the climate emergency, the confation of digital and physical domains as well as natural and artifcial environments, 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 investigate a particular set of urban concerns and the theoretical ideas underpinning them. They are then 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 that consider new ways of inhabiting and experiencing urban environments.

The range of topics covered by the diferent clusters includes biocomputing, planetary urbanisation, speculations on what virtual cities may look like, and the impact of big-data and machine-learning algorithms on design. Within each cluster a lively and creative conversation is promoted through tutorials, workshops, lectures and exchanges, exposing each student to new ideas and methodologies that they can expand on in their fnal 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, workshops on digital technologies and dedicated theory modules all support students in their research.

We would like to thank particularly Andy Bow and Laura Narvaez Zertuche of Foster + Partners for sharing with the students their experience in delivering complex urban projects. We also thank Ben Ratlif for his lecture on how to cultivate curiosity in the age of algorithmic platforms and recommendation systems.

Finally, we would also like to honour the late Colin Fournier, Emeritus Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, whose vision was instrumental in shaping the Urban Design MArch and establishing an inspiring model for creativity and experimentation that still resonates with staf and students.

Programme Administrators

Tung Ying (Crystal) Chow, Tom Mole

Image: ‘Re-coding Heritage’, Chengyu Cao, Haoze Feng, XinZhu Hu, Research Cluster 15

RC11 Casts

Julian Besems, Andrew Porter

In the art of casting, that which becomes form is fuid and given shape by its solid context. The mould, a hollow container, is constructed initially to facilitate the casting of a liquid. The mould has its own signifcance: it can be singular and disposable after it has fulflled its purpose, or be built up from a variety of materials and pieces to give shape to a single negative space. A transformation occurs between context and subject, bridging diferent domains that are geometrically related yet distinct in material, properties and spatial defnition. When considering this transformation between domains in the context of the digital, how might one go about constructing a contextual mould that gives shape to a fuid cast?

Research Cluster 11 approaches the art of casting as a conceptual framework for digital exploration. The city is treated as a mould of culture, its complexity celebrated through the abundance of the digital – a seemingly infnite stream of elements. This is integrated throughout the project by using a blog format as the primary platform for documenting the design process, searching through the amassed explorations to formulate the design method within a broad context of materials.

This digital richness ofers an opportunity to understand and relate to the city from diverse perspectives, much like the casting of a mould on to diferent domains. Our objective is not optimisation but an exploration of the boundless possibilities embedded in these projections. We embrace the notion that we are generalists and utilise computational methods to enable us to navigate knowledge of a wide range of diferent felds and integrate this within the design proposals.

The site for our projects was Madrid, its large diversity of architectural styles and historic developments forming the context for our proposals. Its cultural richness – museums housing some of the most iconic art pieces in Europe, flms by renowned directors such as Pedro Almodóvar, as well as less tangible aspects (e.g. Madrid produces the largest number of web pages of all Spanish-speaking cities worldwide) – is studied as a source of material from which the designs are projected.

Students

A Samizdat Atlas of ‘La Pepa’

Abdulaziz Khayat, Yi Lu, Jiaqi Xu

Dionysus Dwelling on Twitter

Hanyu (Sherry) Ai Echoes of Absence

Fei Jian, Jiaxin Wu, Taiyi Wu

Projective Experience

Jinwei Zhang, Xu Zhang, Zexu Zhang

Pseudo-Academy

Zhenyi Chen, Yanfei Jing, Lan Zhuo

Trans-Temporal Dialogues

Yeqin (Evan) Huang, Yingting Qu

Theory Tutor

Philippe Morel

Skills Tutors

Julian Besems, Ceel Pierik, Joris Putteneers

Consultants and Critics

Adil Bokhari, Alexander Borrell, Roberto Bottazzi, Vera Bühlmann, Dongchen Du, Tom Holberton, Ludger Hovestadt, Verônica Gomes

Natividade, Aveline Thomas, Riccardo M. Villa

11.1–11.4

A Samizdat Atlas of ‘La Pepa’ Urban space reflects society and culture: it is cast from the movement of the general public. The complexity of human society leads to the complexity of the urban environment, which should not be simplified by the rule of authority and the pursuits of the times. This project reintegrates the complexity of society and gives a more comprehensive and resilient understanding of the urban environment. It reveals the legacy of the digital age – appreciating fast-evolving digital technology and emphasising how individual experience shapes broader participation in the urban environment. Legal texts and historical narratives are not merely mapped on to urban spaces, but demonstrate how architecture can be a living, breathing representation of those texts and narratives. The urban fabric becomes a dynamic canvas that reflects and embodies the ideas that define it.

11.5–11.9 Projective Experience We are constantly engaged in a dynamic interaction between humans and the world, where our feelings and emotions serve as direct reflections of our experiences. These internal and ofen invisible aspects become visible through facial expressions, posture and speech. To bring these profound experiences back into the world, we utilise emojis –modern symbols of emotional expression. This project leverages this concept by creating an emoji-based search engine that allows designers to transform human experiences into visual design languages. This system provides designers with a new way to think about design. The findings were applied to Feria del Campo in Madrid, a site rich in historical significance, and once the location for vibrant agricultural fairs and the filming of spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars. The venue now stands deserted, with its pavilions and architectural replicas that represent Spain’s provinces lef empty. Digital experiences were gathered by connecting the search engine to social media expressions from various Spanish provinces, which will be projected on to Feria del Campo, revitalising this historic venue.

11.10–11.15 Pseudo-Academy When we review the history of certain kinds of knowledge, we realise that many truths now considered immutable gained legitimacy at a particular point in human history. New knowledge needs to acquire legitimacy from power, to be recognised by the mainstream and disseminated by authoritative institutions. Through the interaction of knowledge and power, such knowledge becomes increasingly unassailable. This project explores the theme of ‘knowledge and power’ by creating an open-text transformation system using machine learning. It can convert any new input into ofcial knowledge, replicating the dynamic mechanisms of knowledge and power. When anyone can produce knowledge that aligns with authoritative discourse, authority is dissolved. The project also proposes a pseudo-academy based in Madrid, translating the physical city into a textual world, thereby reimagining the knowledge spaces within the city. This new pseudo-academy will be open to all, fostering the dissemination of ‘unofcial’ knowledge input by users and becoming a fertile ground for equal recognition and free transmission of individual knowledge – a ‘paradise’ for curious minds.

11.16–11.19 Trans-Temporal Dialogues Using Spain’s ﬁrst play in the grotesque style, Luces de Bohemia (1920), this project designs a unique theatrical cityscape in Madrid, where virtual and real characters collaboratively comment on the city’s social life. Using machine learning, the project generates theatrical spaces from various perspectives, creating a distinctive urban design strategy. To capture the essence of Madrid across eras, while reﬂecting the contrasts of grotesque theatre, the project establishes a cross-temporal platform for dialogue,

drawing on news, museum paintings, works by Golden Age writers and 300 classic Spanish plays. In addition, actors from diferent eras and cultural backgrounds, sourced from a global X (formerly Twitter) database and the NTL theatre database, will comment on Madrid’s social issues. Tools like ML, self-organising maps, RealityCapture and Houdini will then be used to craf atmospheric spaces for these interactions, resulting in a unique Madrid urban drama.

11.20–11.25 Echoes of Absence This project, inspired by the theories of Aldo Rossi, Maurice Halbwachs and others, restores the missing dimensions of collective memory at the Palacio de Buenavista in Madrid. Because this site has been occupied by the aristocracy for a long time, it lacks the collective memory of Madrid’s citizens, despite its location in one of the city’s most memory-rich areas. To address this, a collective memory database for the city was ﬁrst built, focusing on three characteristics: genre, density and narrative. These guided the creation of three databases: literature, photographs and ﬁlms, all of which were vectorised for interconversion. The Museo del Prado was used as a medium, inputting the meanings of works in each room of the museum as activation texts to generate a narrative sequence for the Palacio de Buenavista, as well as obtaining the other two kinds of data through data interconversion. These data sets shaped the layout, form and spatial sequence of the site, ultimately helping to reconstruct the Palacio’s missing collective memory.

11.26–11.27 Dionysus Dwelling on Twitter From ancient Greece all the way up to the advent of the internet, conversation has mostly been limited to small circles. Elites controlled major media outlets like newspapers. However, with the rise of the internet, the power to express oneself became much more democratised – suddenly, anyone could become a ‘15-minute celebrity’ online, using their voice to influence others. This has led us into an era defined by group dynamics, where like-minded individuals gather in groups, large and small, on platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter). We’ve even seen how X can influence real-world politics. This project explores how group dynamics can be projected on to architectural spaces. This was approached in two ways: first, by using theatre as a metaphor, reflecting group dynamics through the features of theatrical spaces; second, by building on the symbolic potential of graphics and AI’s ability to interpret them to project group dynamics on to the physical structure of spaces. The final outcome is a synthesis of these two methods.

RC14 Sensoria Urbanism

Roberto Bottazzi, Tasos Varoudis

The introduction of machine learning (ML) models in creative disciplines such as urban design represents more than a mere technological or functional improvement of current design tools. By projecting and correlating data on to each other, ML models provide new representations of cities, make ephemeral phenomena amenable to analysis, and widen the range and scope of design proposals.

This new condition cannot be grasped by the technical literature alone, as it gives rise to profound questions regarding the methods and aims of design. First, ML models bring the role of the urban designer closer to that of a curator – or, rather, a data curator. Moreover, design expands its range of operations as it acquires instruments to engage and manipulate qualitative aspects of urban environments.

Research Cluster 14 considered this condition as a new ‘Sensorium’ (i.e. the totality of one’s sensory apparatus) or, better, in its plural form, as new ‘Sensoria’ consisting of multiple channels through which to map urbanism using form, sound, colour, perception, health and so on. Mediated by algorithms, this new sensorial approach allowed students to imagine new spatial, cultural and social forms of organisation for urban design.

The cluster explored the implications of ML for urbanism by engaging the ephemeral, abstract aspects of data to conjure up new forms of organisation and experience of London. Projects such as ‘Playbourhood’ and ‘Minimind Metropolis’ utilised ML models to centre design on children’s experience. In these projects, the public domain was understood as a pedagogical space straddling play and learning activities. ‘Foggy Dragon City’ also speculated on a change of perspective; however, rather than a specifc demographic, the project reimagined London through the lenses of Chinese culture mediated by dif usion models. ‘Sensory Balance’ focused on mental health issues by analysing data about spatial perception involving colour as well as artifcial and natural light. Finally, ‘Ebb and Evolve’ and ‘Verdacity’ used ML to rethink the relation between nature and cities by, respectively, proposing a light urbanism based on infatables for food-prone landscapes and developing an urban strategy for planting three million trees in London as an opportunity to generate new public spaces.

Students

Ebb and Evolve

Sharima Achmad, Ananya Pandey, Shiyun Yang

Foggy Dragon City

Jin (Jennie) Yan, Jianxing Yu, Kexin Zhu

Minimind Metropolis

Abdullah Hababi, Praphulla Thaliyakkattil

Playbourhood

Lina Wu, Yaohui Zhang

Sensory Balance

Jie Liu, Yuan Ping, Huiye Wang, Yu Wu

Verdecity

Nagarjun Chakkaravarthi

Theory Tutor Elly Selby

Skills Tutors

Margarita Chaskopoulou, Vassilis Papalexopoulos

Consultants and Critics

Dana Behrman, Adil Bokhari, Andy Bow, Vera Bühlmann, Silvio Carta, Tom Holberton, Aalok Joshi, Fiona MacDonald, Frédéric Migayrou, Verônica Gomes

Natividade, Peter Neckelmann, George Pope, Matthew Springett, Laura Narvaez Zertuche

14.1–14.4 Sensory Balance The project investigates the unequal intensity or frequency of sensory inputs, causing individuals to experience difculties processing environmental information. Modern cities are full of elements that cause sensory imbalance: skyscrapers, dazzling lights and noisy trafc provide high levels of stimulation, which can exacerbate stress, anxiety and fatigue among urban residents. Conversely, cities’ underdeveloped areas may leave people bored due to a lack of such stimulation. The imbalance significantly afects people’s mental health, which this project seeks to alleviate by designing sensory (visual, olfactory and auditory) experiences in urban environments. Rather than wilfully generating new forms, machine-learning (ML) models and data spatial analytics are deployed to survey and support the design of ephemeral qualities to determine the spatial mood of an area. For instance, ML models are trained on film images to provide a palette of colours, spatial arrangements and materials to induce particular emotions, such as calmness or feeling energised. The outputs of the ML models assist the design of specific areas in order to improve the overall environment. Canary Wharf was identified as the testing ground for this research: its ofen-criticised lack of spatial diversity and stimuli ofered an ideal context for the design. The project provides a new public zone, connecting the neighbourhood to the River Thames and providing diferent spatial situations there. 14.5–14.8 Ebb and Evolve This project envisions a flood within the River Lea area of London, addressing the critical need to prepare for and adapt to the challenges of rising water levels. The project begins with meticulous site selection, choosing an area that emphasises the strategic importance of the Lea as a microcosm of current challenges to urban resilience. Through comprehensive site analysis by both supervised and unsupervised machine-learning algorithms, we identify suitable locations for interventions aimed at enhancing city resilience, including urban farming, cultural industry development, biodiversity restoration, and improving accessibility and circulation with public plazas. These are informed by a diverse range of data sets, encompassing population and building density, biodiversity scores and integration values, to ensure their efectiveness. Design strategies are then proposed that centre on the use of light, flexible, inflatable and floatable structures. These innovative design solutions ofer adaptability and responsiveness to changing environmental conditions, while minimising environmental impact, to create a resilient urban environment that not only withstands the challenges of flooding but also fosters vibrant, sustainable and inclusive communities. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and forward-thinking design approaches, the project envisions a more resilient and adaptive urban future in the face of the climate emergency and environmental uncertainty.

14.9–14.15 Playbourhood While 25% of London’s population is under the age of 18, children and adolescents are ofen overlooked in urban developments. Play is vital for children’s physical, social and creative development, and this project seeks to transform the public space of a London neighbourhood into a playful learning environment, revisiting the modernist idea of the open-air school in the light of machine learning (ML). Through data analysis, the project identiﬁes schools in economically disadvantaged areas of London that would beneﬁt from rethinking traditional educational spaces: eventually we concentrated on north-west London. The design used pix2pix models to guide the distribution of physical and programmatic features, from learning activities to material and colours. By incorporating art, learning, adventure, a forest school and camp-like experiences,

the proposed new environments enhance children’s engagement with their surroundings. We employ behavioural simulations, spatial analysis and ML models to ensure that the spatial experience is engaging, accessible and tailored to children’s needs. The outcome is a network of interconnected public spaces that combine play areas, educational features and natural landscapes, seamlessly integrating learning, exploration and social interaction. By extending the use of ML models beyond the search for new forms, the project is able to better deploy environmental, cognitive and programmatic aspects of urban design.

14.16–14.17, 14.19–14.20 Miniminds Metropolis Urban environments ofen cater primarily to adults, with limited space designed speciﬁcally for children. Additionally, traditional educational institutions such as schools, while important, may not fully support the holistic development of children. This project concentrates on the Borough of Brent to propose public spaces that promote holistic development. The idea is to concentrate on the trajectory between the house and the school in order to charge the short journey with opportunities for physical, emotional, social and cognitive growth that go beyond academic learning. In this dynamic approach, the project gamiﬁes children’s spatial experience to encourage community involvement and help of set factors inhibiting children’s educational development. By applying spatial analytics based on data and machine-learning models, we aim to remove factors inhibiting children’s development, while innovatively addressing their urgent social, accessibility, educational and health-related needs. The project rethinks the school–home journey as facilitating holistic development in children by promoting equity with adults, fostering self-directed exploration and providing rich experiential learning.

14.18 Verdecity Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, recently launched an initiative to plant a large number of trees to improve tree-canopy cover in the city. Any addition of such large number of elements (the project hypothesises that one million trees will be planted) can be understood as an urban fact that is amenable to computational treatment. Where botanists can respond to the initiative from a scientiﬁc perspective, can urban designers add to the conversation by looking at tree-planting from a city point of view? This project employs machine-learning methods on such a large population of trees both to distribute them and to conceptualise their integration into the cityscape, in the same way that buildings are placed and designed.

14.21–14.24 Foggy Dragon City The project explores how Chinese cultural elements could ﬁt into London’s diverse cityscape and, by weaving together diferent symbols, produce a cultural collision. Drawing inspiration from cyberpunk, as both a literary genre and a visual language from videogames, we focus on the visual and experiential contrasts between old and new. At the centre of Elephant and Castle in the Borough of Lambeth, the project uses machine-learning methods to generate a series of formal and programmatic hybrids combining Chinese and Western architectural references. These new spaces are woven into the existing urban fabric as topographically adapted and embedded iconic and historic buildings that form a marketplace, a space that fosters spontaneous, community-driven interactions. This bringing together of old British architecture and futuristic Chinese-inspired features will reﬂect a culturally chaotic yet harmonious co-existence, remodelling the urban space into a vibrant, inclusive environment where power structures are challenged and cultural boundaries blurred.

14.18

14.19

Pervasive Urbanism: Scenarios of Spatial Resistance

Vincent Nowak, Annarita Papeschi

Institutional wrongdoing has historically contributed to perpetuating the current tiered system of access to resources, budgets and political power within British society. These inequalities remain starkly visible in the UK’s built environment, particularly in London. Here, severe gentrifcation and displacement continue to afect the most fragile and depleted communities, generating pockets of contested space where the physical manifestation of injustice is evident.

Recent advances in artifcial intelligence (AI) technologies have made machine learning (ML) methods of analysis more accessible, while low-tech solutions enable in-situ data-gathering. This convergence presents a unique opportunity to design research methods with unprecedented potential to uncover the intricacies of spatial injustice. Research Cluster 15 examines the qualitative and experiential components that shape the identity of the urban fabric, exploring an immersive and afective reading of the city. This approach is defned by the intersection of post-humanist aesthetics and the theory and methods of automated cognition.

This year, Central London once again constituted the terrain for our research. Students began by identifying vulnerable communities afected by signifcant power imbalances. The project investigated the challenges facing these groups, considering not only their physical presence in the city but also how gentrifcation, displacement and poor resource management afect their cultural and emotional wellbeing. Research methods included situated sensing, participatory interventions, behavioural modelling and ML-based analysis of social media imagery. These approaches culminated in the creation of emotional cartographies, ofering a sectional overview of the experiential collective knowledge at play.

The resulting designs compose a formal archive that, when customised through AI image-to-image dif usion methods, is redeployed in situ to propose reprogrammable infrastructural schemes. By exploring collaborative protocols of information exchange, automated decision-making and adaptability, these designs are developed as interconnected proposals. They establish deep local connections with their context, metabolising fragments of the collective site imaginary and local spatial intelligence.

Students Echo Ensemble

Victor Meng, Yuqing Zhang

Escaping the Non-Place Shibei Li, Wenyue Liang, Yue Pan, Manxi Wang

Platform Anarchy: The Dignity Project

Ziyang Zhu

Platform Anarchy: The Rider’s Hub Ziqin Liu, Shuyi Zhu

Re-Coding Heritage

Chengyu Cao, Haoze Feng, Xin Zhu Hu

Ubiquitous Grafti

Jiahui Shen, Xintian Zhao, Ran Zhu

Theory Tutor

Ilaria Di Carlo

Skills Tutor

Vincent Nowak

Consultants and Critics

Yota Adilenidou, Roberto Bottazzi, Angela Crowther, Marcella del Signor, Peter Neckelmann, Laura Narvaez Zertuche

15.1–15.4

Re-Coding Heritage The project explores the preservation of the cultural heritage and local identity of Brixton’s Black immigrant community. It investigates strategies to revitalise and modernise this historically signiﬁcant and culturally diverse area, with the aim of strengthening community identity and fostering social cohesion. Equipped with sensing devices, volunteers recorded their emotional responses to various scents and visual stimuli during guided walks. These sensory data, combined with personal memories shared along the way, were processed using machine-learning methods to produce 3D reconstructions of these experiences. 15.1 The aerial view illustrates the reimagined extension of Brixton Market, conceived as a collection of the generated memory monomers. 15.2 Some of the views surrounding Brixton Market, as reimagined through text-based AI, with input from the volunteers who participated in data collection. 15.3–15.4 Design iterations exploring the composition of the proposed structural frame, including a bird’s-eye view of the proposed extension to Brixton Market. 15.5–15.8 Ubiquitous Grafti The project investigates the complex interplay between grafti, urban spaces and emotional responses, focusing on the Shoreditch area of London. Using a mix-method approach, the evolving perceptions, distribution and impact of grafti, and the emotional responses, of grafti artists and their audiences are investigated. The ﬁndings emphasise the importance of sightlines and spatial proportions in shaping the emotional experience in urban environments. The design proposal advocates legitimising grafti through designated spaces, a strategy that fosters creativity and inclusivity, embracing diverse modes of urban expression to promote dialogue, engagement and a vibrant urban culture. 15.5 The diagram explores the relationship between grafti type and typologies of outdoor public spaces. 15.6 Design iterations exploring the textures, patterns and materiality of the proposed artefacts. 15.7–15.8 Exploration of the sectional architectural capacities of the proposed spatial layout, with an overall view of the proposed intervention in Shoreditch.

15.9–15.13 Echo Ensemble The project arises from a recognition of the liveliness as well as the vulnerability of Black Caribbean identity and culture in the UK. Taking musical expression as a key cultural trait, the research examined the wide range of activities and events linked to Caribbean music in London, before settling on the area of Brixton for a participatory investigation of the perception of the urban environment as inﬂuenced by the experience of music. 15.9 Organised as an archipelago of lightweight structures for the temporary occupation of urban space, the resulting proposal redeﬁnes the soundscape of Brixton by introducing a collection of performative spaces, designed to optimise the experience of live music while mitigating urban noise. Analysis of galvanic skin response (GSR) information was collected during participatory walks. 15.10 The multi-layered structure of the performative spaces.

15.11–15.13 Interior design explorations using textbased AI and depth maps, and an exploded view of the proposed intervention in Brixton.

15.14–15.19 Platform Anarchy Takeaway services are now essential to the functioning of our cities, but delivery riders face low pay, job insecurity and hazardous working conditions. Taking a rider’s perspective, the project explores the emotional experience of takeaway riders on the streets of London via YouTube video analysis and Google Street View analysis, both driven by machine learning. 15.14 The diagram illustrates alternative methods of sentiment video analysis (via Python SentiBank and TextBlob). 15.15–15.16 ‘The Dignity

Project’: a perspective view of the proposed pop-up facilities. The project proposes an ethical navigational platform that replaces the shorter-path algorithm used by Google Maps with an emotional health algorithm, guiding the riders through the ‘happier route’ to their destination, along with a scheme for providing pop-up on-demand facilities for the delivery drivers. The diagram illustrates the equipment carried by delivery driver vloggers during working hours. 15.17 ‘The Rider’s Hub’, a map of the emotional experience expected in the streets of Walthamstow, as scored via Street View analysis. This part of the project explores further the needs of delivery drivers, taking as a case study the area of lower Walthamstow in London, to design an experience-driven facility ofering to the riders opportunities to rest, resupply and socialise. 15.18–15.19 The layout and materials studies for a kitchen unit, and a perspective view of the proposed project in Walthamstow. 15.20–15.24 Escaping the Non-Place Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of mental-health problems including anxiety has risen globally. To improve people’s experience of living in cities, the project explores the notion of spatial healing, investigating geographical indicators of ﬂuctuating collective emotions through the collection of situated GSR and photographic analysis driven by machine learning. The proposal explores the redesign of the public domain between King’s Cross and St Pancras, investigating design solutions that might mitigate the anxiety that emerges from navigational disorientation. 15.20–15.21 The analysis of GSR information generated via participatory walks, and the semantic segmentation and colour ratio of street-scene imagery collected along the walks. 15.22 Three-dimensional Voronoi pattern design studies. 15.23–15.24 Views of the proposed intervention at King’s Cross.

Urban Morphogenesis Lab Deep Green III

Filippo Nassetti, Claudia Pasquero

Deep Green III investigates the role of intelligence in urban design, from human to non-human and from biological to artifcial. The studio has been articulated in four independent projects.

‘Chinampa Revival’ is an innovative project aimed at revitalising the ancient Aztec chinampa system, a sustainable agricultural practice developed in the 14th century in Mexico City. This system, characterised by waterlogged artifcial islands, was historically used for agriculture, land expansion and transportation. The project responds to the escalating water scarcity crisis in Mexico City by reintroducing this indigenous method to enhance water management, restore biodiversity and improve the quality of life for local communities.

The ‘Mangrove Restoration’ project focuses on the critical restoration of mangrove ecosystems, which are essential for supporting coastal communities and biodiversity. The design incorporates a root-like urban growth system that integrates the characteristics of mangroves with urban planning. The structure is designed to evolve over time, expanding with the recovering ecosystem to create a biomimetic environment that protects saplings, improves soil quality and fosters biodiversity.

‘Parasitic Urban Forest’ uses Trellick Tower in London as a prototype to demonstrate how biological landscape elements combined with biomimetic architectural interventions infuence the thermal performance of buildings.

The ‘Urban Wildlife’ project addresses the needs of urban wildlife through ecological insights derived from Epping Forest’s use of deadwood. By leveraging computational design and artifcial intelligence, this project seeks to enhance urban biodiversity and the food chain, thereby creating post-nature habitats that ofer innovative perspectives on urban ecosystem rewilding.

Students

Chinampa Revival

Beatriz González Aréchiga Martínez, Minxin Guo, Safaa Rachid, Yi-Hui Yeh

Mangrove Restoration

Aarya Jadhav, Zhaoyue Li, Hongsheng Zeng

Parasitic Urban Forest

Yichen Cai, Zhetong Lou, Jingpeng Luo, Wenqi Zhan

Urban Wildlife

Kefan Huang, Xinyu Jian, Yuan Li, Ziyu Lin

Theory Tutor Emmanouil Zaroukas

Skills Tutors

Shen (Simon) Meng, Filippo Nassetti

Partners

Synthetic Landscape Lab (Innsbruck University), ecoLogicStudio, Filippo Nassetti Ltd

16.1–16.6, 16.10–16.11 Urban Wildlife 16.1 ‘New Ecological System’. The rapid expansion of urban areas into global biodiversity hotspots has exacerbated the conflict between urban development and biodiversity conservation. Urban rewilding has emerged as a promising strategy to reconcile this conflict by reestablishing the values and symbiotic relationships of biodiversity within urban spaces. The project addresses the needs of urban wildlife through ecological insights derived from Epping Forest’s use of deadwood. By leveraging computational design and AI, this project restores, protects and enhances urban biodiversity and the food chain, thereby creating post-nature habitats that ofer innovative perspectives on urban ecosystem rewilding. 16.2 ‘Urban Morphology in the Post-Natural Era’. Urban expansion is encroaching on forested areas, diminishing habitats for non-human species. What is the future for these habitats? The project designs a de-anthropocentric city in the post-nature era. The analysis shows that forest green areas are highly connected and support high biodiversity, whereas urban green spaces are fragmented and lack biodiversity. The project selects one of the locations that is facing urban expansion and classifies wild plants and animals based on their living situation. There are 16 target species that have been selected for rehabilitation projects. AI allows the project to design urban morphology, based on the collected data on diferent urban wildlife preferences for diferent green areas. 16.3–16.5 ‘A New Structure from Dead Hedges’. Based on the concept of ‘dead hedges’, the proposed design stabilises and reinforces the food chain from the bottom up throughout its life cycle. The structure is formed from an abundance of tree branches, creating multi-level, multi-scale and multi-functional ecological spaces that accommodate various species during its lifetime. As branches accumulate, a variety of habitats and nutrients are continuously provided for diferent organisms, starting with fungi and insects in the early stages, and eventually supporting birds and other animals. In the structure, the complex space and undulating heights fluctuate to accommodate the habitats of diferent species. When the structure eventually decomposes, it will also contribute nutrients to the soil, further supporting the ecosystem. 16.6 ‘From AI to Project’. The project creates images of the morphology of the post-natural habitats for urban wildlife with the assistance of AI. The model of deadwood decomposition has been trained to create this voiding form of habitat spaces, which is also an inspiration for the new structure. The image explores the hypothesis describing the various species living in this intricate, continuous porous space. The changing morphology, size and density, achieved through parameter transformation of the AI model, shows the inclusiveness of diferent species. Organisms such as lichens and fungi would initially colonise decaying wood, thereby establishing a miniature ecological niche. This process is crucial, as it lays the foundational groundwork for subsequent biological restoration and ecological succession. 16.10–16.11 ‘Physical Model’. This model, measuring 1,210mm x 1,220mm x 1,000mm, is a 1:1 prototype of the digital design. It explores the feasibility of this new structure based on the dead hedges, with each unit composed of three branches. The model features a curved arch shape, with the radius increasing gradually from one end to the other. Slight random variations are incorporated to reflect an organic morphology. During the aggregation process, diferent hollow spaces are created by the unexploded balloons. The model is primarily constructed from larger units, which provide stability during the initial stages of aggregation. Smaller units were woven with each other around the main structure for a fuller shape.

16.7 Parasitic Urban Forest ‘Trellick Tower in Diferent Stages’. The project starts from the urban heat island efect and uses a non-human perspective to reflect on what vertical forests fail to achieve, enrich the ecosystem within the city, and rethink the complex relationship between cities, humans and nature. As a single building application object, the design for the Trellick Tower first proposes diferent states of symbiosis between buildings and plants in a process of natural selection that follows the thermotropism of plants. In the second stage, it becomes a bridge between man and nature. In the third stage, the building will be completely returned to nature and become part of the green ecological form of the city. The same workflow was used to transform multiple Brutalist buildings, creating an urban forest that is, from the perspective of the city, parasitic. This approach enhances the contribution of architecture to the urban ecosystem.

16.8–16.9 Mangrove Restoration 16.8 ‘A New Ecosystem’. This project focuses on the restoration of mangrove ecosystems in rapidly sinking coastal areas like Demak, Indonesia. It proposes a root-inspired urban growth system that integrates mangrove characteristics with urban planning. Using locally sourced oyster shells as concrete materials, the design supports plant growth, enhances soil quality and fosters biodiversity. The evolving structure protects mangrove saplings, aiding the transition between urban and natural spaces. Ultimately, it fully restores the mangrove forest, promoting sustainable development for both humans and wildlife while improving the environmental and social conditions of the coastal area. 16.9 ‘Exploring Growth Patterns’. The project draws inspiration from various parts of mangrove plants, such as roots, leaves and bark, using these natural morphologies to reimagine coastal area formations through AI generation. By mimicking the beneﬁcial functions of these biological structures and analysing urban features, new spatial forms emerge for both human communities and the mangrove forest. The masterplan is translated into a 3D representation by superimposing it on to the site, pixelating the design based on the scale of mangrove plants and local dwellings, and assigning heights according to the greyscale of each pixel.

16.12–16.15 Chinampa Revival 16.12–16.14 ‘Urban Chinampas across Scales’. This project responds to the escalating water scarcity crisis in Mexico City by reintroducing the indigenous ‘chinampa’ to enhance water management, restore biodiversity and improve the quality of life for local communities. The reinterpretation of the chinampa system incorporates modern biomaterials to create a circular system that enhances food production, water management and environmental resilience. These drawings show the intervention across the scales and how the substrate responds to the urban context with a revived water element. It is a project designed as a prototype, with the potential to be adapted to cities facing similar environmental challenges in Mexico and globally. 16.15 ‘Concept Design of Urban Chinampas’. The project applies AI to generate some inspiration for the morphology of a new system based on various patterns of biomaterials. The testing is based on diferent characteristics of the water element of the site, including the main canal, sub-canal and some other organic canals. To develop chinampas into an urban system, this catalogue also uses the urban grid as its input to see the possibilities of an urban chinampas system.

16.10

RC18 Relational Urbanism –From the Molecular to the Planetary

Zachary Fluker, Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Research Cluster 18 investigates planetary urbanisation – a concept exploring how urbanising processes occur on a global scale – to address the geological phenomena of the Anthropocene and devise strategies to combat climate change, biodiversity loss and global waste issues.

We examine the urban paradigm by connecting scales from the molecular to the planetary. Our focus is on material and energy exchanges between urban centres and distant Anthropocene landscapes – areas that supply cities with resources and serve as waste repositories.

This approach has led to new perspectives on urban design, which have guided our objectives over the past four years. We focused initially on Earth’s biochemical cycles, the global trade of raw materials and the geographical dynamics of multinational corporations. This year, our emphasis has shifted to the role of international institutions in tackling cross-border challenges through data sharing, knowledge dissemination and collaborative networks.

Our methodology begins by analysing how geographical phenomena can be translated into data, which then informs urban planning and design. The design projects emphasise data digitalisation and the creation of virtual environments, enabling students to develop and implement innovative solutions for contemporary urban challenges.

Students

A Parliament of Things: Spatialising Danube River Rights

Junjie Huang, Rui Wu, Ziyu Yang, Zemin Zhao

Data-Mining London

Carbon Emissions

Jiayi Li, Xuepu Sun, Rui Wang, Yuqiao Zheng

Digital Cra f along the Great Green Wall

Rishabh Jain, Jiawen Lu, Songyun Pang, Manting Sun

Planetary Intangible

Meta-Archive

Dimple Bhadra, Deepabali Choudhury, Priya Gupta

Theory Tutor

Sheng-Yang Huang

Skills Tutors

Dimitra Bra, Tony Le, Sheng-Yang Huang, Yue Zhou

18.1, 18.6 River Rights – Every Transboundary River Should Own its Rights 18.1 ‘Exploring Transboundary River Rights: A Metaverse Representation of the Danube’. This digital platform showcases a metaverse world where all swimming pools across the River Danube are visualised. It symbolises the concept of rivers owning their rights in a virtual space. 18.6 ‘Comic Animation: Parliament of the Danube – Exploring River Rights and Pollution’. This animation portrays the interactive digital experience visitors will have on entering the Parliament of the Danube. Engaging with data on pollution, they explore discussions surrounding the rights of the transboundary river.

18.2, 18.13–18.14 Eco2NOMIC – An Urban Decarbonisation-Themed Platform 18.2 ‘AI-Driven Public Space Design: Generative Model Training Database Section’. This image highlights a segment of the training database used to develop a generative AI model, aimed at creating innovative public spaces through advanced data-driven architectural design methodologies. 18.13 ‘Gamified Urban Regeneration Solutions and Their Carbon Value Assessment’. This image showcases a gamified approach to architectural solutions for urban regeneration and re-densification, including their assigned carbon values. It is an innovative method for evaluating and optimising environmental impact. 18.14 ‘Vertical Forest Transformation: Gamified EPC Rating Upgrade for Croydon’. This image depicts a vertical forest resulting from a gamified transformation of Croydon. A creative approach to urban renewal and environmental enhancement, it replaces buildings that have lower EPC ratings.

18.3–18.5, 18.17 Experimental MetArchive 18.3 ‘Immersive Metaverse Journey: The Carnival of Imst Animated Experience’. This image showcases an animated character within the metaverse, recreating the vibrant experience of the Carnival of Imst. The digital environment immerses viewers in a virtual celebration of this cultural event. 18.4 ‘Collaborative Digital Space: Co-Designing Face Masks for the Imst Carnival Experience’. This image illustrates a virtual co-creation platform where participants collaboratively design face-mask souvenirs, enhancing the digital experience of the carnival. It bridges between traditional culture and innovative digital interaction. 18.5 ‘Metaverse Archive: Preserving Intangible UNESCO Heritage in a Digital World’. This conceptual image visualises the digital experience of the Metaverse Archive, dedicated to preserving intangible cultural heritage under UNESCO. It spans history and technology, ofering an immersive, interactive cultural archive. 18.17 ‘Physical–Digital Interaction in the Metaverse Intangible Heritage Archive Experience’. This image showcases the integration of physical and digital interactions within the metaverse’s intangible heritage archive, a pioneering approach to preserving and experiencing cultural heritage in a virtual space.

18.7–18.12, 18.15–18.16 Sands of Change – Urban Design Approaches to Transforming Barren Fields into Productive Lands 18.7 ‘Mapping Drought Impact: Satellite Insights into Vegetation and Water Resources’. This publication showcases satellite mapping of severe drought regions (orange), vegetation (green) and water resources (pink). It is a vital tool for understanding environmental impacts and guiding sustainable architectural solutions. 18.8 ‘Innovative Infrastructure for Moisture Capture and Soil Preservation’. Designs for groundbreaking infrastructure aimed at capturing moisture and preventing soil erosion and desertiﬁcation. These projects address crucial environmental challenges with inventive architectural solutions. 18.9 ‘CommunityCustomisable Infrastructure for Local Moisture Capture

Solutions’. This design demonstrates how local communities can adapt and personalise infrastructure for efective moisture capture, ofering a practical approach to enhancing sustainability through community-driven architectural innovation. 18.10 ‘Landscape Design Iteration: Soil and Wind Dynamics Interaction’. This image illustrates an initial landscape design pattern shaped by soil consistency and wind dynamics. It explores the environmental factors informing innovative and adaptive architectural landscapes. 18.11 ‘Second Iteration: Landscape Design Shaped by Soil and Wind’. This image presents the second iteration of a landscape design, reﬁned through interactions between soil consistency and wind dynamics. It exempliﬁes evolving approaches to dynamic environmental challenges. 18.12 ‘Material System Section: Innovative Design for Efcient Moisture Capture’. This image details a section of the proposed material system designed for moisture capture. It highlights advanced architectural solutions for enhancing sustainability and addressing environmental needs.

18.15 ‘Mobile App for Accessing Soil Productivity and Moisture Capture Sites’. This image features a mobile app designed to help local communities access soil-productivity data. It guides users in selecting optimal areas for implementing moisture-capture infrastructure.

18.16 ‘Data Structure for Soil Information Application Supporting Local Communities’. This image illustrates the data structure behind an application that informs local communities about soil characteristics. It supports efective decision-making for soil management and infrastructure planning.

18.15

18.16

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, artifcial intelligence, machinelearning logic, biology, ecology, economic theories and politics, to formulate a novel theoretical argument that afects and is being afected by the design studio.

The thesis is a critical and focused inquiry into a specifc 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 a varied intellectual context created by the overall richness of the Urban Design MArch programme’s structure of research clusters. They are consulted and supervised by History & Theory tutors. The product of the 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 infuence the course of their design work.

The Evolution of AI as Cosmotechnics:

Philosophical Perspectives on Human–AI Co-existence in Urban Design

Yi-Hui Yeh

Thesis tutor: Emmanouil Zaroukas

This thesis explores the ways artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) redeﬁnes human cognition and reshapes our perception of the world through urban materiality. Yuk Hui’s concept of ‘cosmotechnics’ further enriches the discussion. His critique of Western technocentrism and his emphasis on the alignment between technology and diverse cultural value systems resonate with the core idea of this paper: the potential of AI as an alienated subject and its capacity to lead humanity towards a diferent mode of intuitive judgement.

Hui’s perspective on ‘cosmotechnics’ inspires us to investigate how technology can

transcend its role as merely a tool, reﬂecting and enhancing the reality of our experiential world, and seamlessly bridging the gap between humanity and technology. This thesis posits that AI, through its collaborative and interpretive capabilities, transcends the dimensions of our original cognitive framework. By integrating historical layers, cultural narratives and advanced computational techniques, and in conjunction with iterative exchanges, AI presents opportunities for new judgements and insights beyond the constraints of the modern technological imagination. This comprehensive approach opens new avenues for exploring how technology can enhance our understanding and interaction with the built environment, ultimately contributing to the creation of more dynamic, responsive and culturally adaptive urban landscapes.

Image: A photo of a Mexico City wetland with the detachment and layering of aquatic elements, integrated into bionic and cyborg and bio-material morphology, with biomorphic forms, and mycelium-like spaces on lattice-like structures in an urban context, 2024. Image by Midjourney

Emoji as Design Medium: Translating and Projecting Urban Experience

Jinwei Zhang

Thesis tutor: Philippe Morel

The system’s main purpose is to take emoji as input and translate the urban experience represented by emoji into spatial output, such as 3D models, using serial translation of numerous databases. Emoji can be correlated with semantic keywords in social media comments by using SOM, but when compared with more visual 3D models, they are still distant from data types. This necessitates the use of a variety of data formats – for instance, text, images and video.

In addition to the 750,000 social media comments used to train SOM, it is crucial to gather social media comments that genuinely reﬂect the city experience. Based on the design scope, ﬁve cities and regions in Spain were selected and approximately 3,000 comments for each city were crawled on Instagram using the city names as tags. Instagram was chosen for its higher frequency of emoji usage and its lifelike, diverse content, making it ideal for capturing comprehensive urban experiences.1

To capture a comprehensive urban experience, however, it is essential to go beyond merely using social media comments. A robust text library that ampliﬁes text semantics is crucial. While the emoji input through SOM matches the semantic words related to the emoji in social media, a larger general text library is needed to translate these words into coherent paragraphs or even story descriptions through text matching. This approach ensures a more nuanced and complete representation of urban experiences. To this end, 120 adventure novels, totalling 110,000 paragraphs, were collected to serve as a general text library for amplifying key semantic words. Using a large text corpus in this manner has been shown to improve the accuracy and depth of semantic translation in various machine-learning applications. For instance, researchers have demonstrated that using contextually rich, large-scale text corpora can signiﬁcantly enhance the performance of semantic analysis and improve the generation of meaningful text descriptions from key terms. 2

1. S. R. Miller (2018), ‘Urban Data and the Platform City’, in N. Davidson, M. Finck and J. Infranca (eds) Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy, Cambridge University Press.

2. L. Bottou, F. E. Curtis and J. Nocedal (2016), ‘Optimization Methods for Large-Scale Machine Learning’, SIAM Review, Vol. 60, No. 2, 223–311. Image: Clustered emoji of Guadalajara. Image by the author

Digitising Memoryscape Networks: Interplay of Collective Memory and Urban Environment in the Age of New Media

Xin Zhu Hu

Thesis tutor: Ilaria Di Carlo

The rapid development of new media technology is constantly driving new advances in the dissemination and construction of collective memory, enabling individuals to interact with urban memory through new media and thus deepen their ties with the city. The practice of digital memory not only makes memories more readable and pluralistic, but also varies in the social impacts it brings.1 While the digital transformation has brought innovations to the storage and transmission of collective memory, it may also trigger a range of concerning efects. Byung-Chul Han notes that digital aesthetics have strengthened social control through consumer culture, raising concerns about the power of digital memory as a form of collective memory that

can inﬂuence social attitudes and perceptions. 2 Or do we sufer from numerical amnesia as a result of depending too little on our numerical memory? This report critically analyses this in a context where such a collective memory may pose a potential threat to political stability and social ethics. The thesis explores the link between urban space practices and the digital transformation of collective memory. Through the analysis of cases such as the smart city memory interactive case CLIO (Collective City Memory), the Ravenna digital renewal project and Pervasive Eyes Asturias, the report delves into the future direction of digital memory in urban space transformation, exploring how digitisation rebuilds our relationship with cities, while examining the long-term impact of this transformation on personal identity, social consensus and historical legacy. From a macro-perspective, it also critically analyses the impact of the globalisation of digital memory and local collective memory on urban, community and cultural diversity. 3

1. M. A. Peters and T. Besley (2019), Critical Philosophy of the Postdigital, SpringerLink, Volume 1, 29–42.

2. Byung-Chul Han (2018), Saving Beauty. English Edition, Polity Press.

3. Yuk Hui (2020), ‘For a Planetary Thinking’, e-ﬂux Journal, Vol. 114, December. Available at www.e-ﬂux.com

Image: Collective memory becomes consumer-producing. Image by the author

‘A Multi-Axial Stifness Library or Single Variable Fabric Simulation’, 2024. Experimental setup for the comparison of physical and digital fabric behaviours.

Photo: Selen Bas

Architectural Computation MSc/MRes

Architectural Computation

MSc/MRes

Programme Director: 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 utilise 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 artifcial 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 (e.g. augmented reality and virtual reality), cybernetics, physics simulations, AI, automation and robotics manufacturing, including 3D printing. A stream of skills-based modules teaches research skills and programming, guiding students through the multiple possibilities that computation ofers 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 interaction and automated construction; the generation of architectural forms using AI; data visualisation applications for the built environment; and computational work fows for adaptable habitats, among others.

Students

Selen Bas, Maria Chatzitziva, Tian Chen, Vanessa Chew, Jiawei Dou, Pedram Hashemi, Yu-Chiao (Jacky) Huang, Mingrui Jian, Jiayi Li, Weirun Lin, Wo Lin, Luisa Valeria Lopez Poveda, Aulia Nastiti, Eleni Prelorentzou, Arvind Pulavarty, Yash Rathod, Xinyi Shen, Zhan Shi, Wing (Daniel) Tang, Zhenglong Tu, Zihan Wu, Dongming Xu, Yutong Zhao

Staf Vishu Bhooshan, Tommaso Casucci, Adam Davis, Khaled ElAshry, Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Sean Hanna, Tom Holberton, Marcin Kosicki, Petros Koutsolampros, Philippe Morel, Vassilis Papalexopoulos, Stamatios Psarras, Valentina Soana, Sherif Tarabishy, Martin Traunmueller, Martha Tsigkari

Postgraduate Teaching Assistants

Gabriel Brown, Dingyi Wei Programme Administrators

Tung Ying (Crystal) Chow, Tom Mole

Consultants and Critics

Jamil Al Bardawil, Assa Ashuach, Georgios Athanasopoulos, Eleni Chasioti, Alfredo Chavez, Taizhong Chen, Alberto Chiusoli, Jianfei Chu, Alessandro Dell’Endice, Efhymia Doroudi, Heba Eiz, Ali Eslami, Jeroen Janssen, Henry David Louth, Maria Mamoura, Shahram Minooee Sabery, Christian Müller, Roberto Naboni, Angelica Ponzio, Ben Wang, Pablo Zamorano

AC.1 All Students ‘Structure and Fabrication Aware Geometry of Timber Gridshells’. Students vacuumformed plastic panels corresponding to 1:1-scale glass panels, during a two-day workshop, under the direction of Christian Müller, Alessandro Dell’Endice, Tommaso Casucci and Vishu Bhooshan. The workshop investigated the design and optimisation of timber grid shells with curved glass panels. It looked, in particular, at the design of compression shells based on the Thrust Network Analysis method, and the description of timber frames and glass panels based on Spherical Meshes.

AC.2 Yutong Zhao ‘Optimising Form, Brick Pattern and Assembly in Self-Supporting Compression Structures: A Study on Scafolding Minimised Masonry Vaults’. This Built Environment (BE) dissertation investigates the efectiveness of the K-means algorithm in conjunction with breadth-ﬁrst search in generating meaningful brick layouts and erection sequences for masonry vault structures, to minimise scafolding.

AC.3 Zhenglong Tu ‘Nonplanar 3D Printing Path with Bracing Using Heat Geodesic Method and Signed Distance Function’. This BE dissertation explores the integration of non-planar 3D printing paths with bracing structures using Signed Distance Function within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. It addresses the limitations of traditional 3D printing methods, such as additional support for overhang.

AC.4 Luisa Valeria Lopez Poveda ‘Impact of Architectural Geometry on Navigation and Spatial Perception: An Experimental Approach Using Virtual Reality Environments’. This BE dissertation investigates the impact of room geometry on user experience within a VR environment, focusing on navigation patterns, spatial perception and emotional responses. Various room geometries – square, round, curved, sharp – were simulated to analyse their inﬂuence on users’ behaviour.

AC.5 Jiawei Dou ‘Assessing Optimal Urban Networks: A Comparative Analysis of Manhattan and Barcelona Using Space Syntax’. This thesis analyses the spatial structure of Manhattan and Barcelona using Space Syntax to assess whether or not the current urban network is optimal. Assessment is based on urban intelligibility, meaning the ease with which the urban structure can be inferred from local information.

AC.6 Xinyi Shen ‘A Health Path Recommendation Algorithm Based on Multi-Factor Optimisation: Satisfying Diversiﬁed Needs of Diferent Users in Urban Health Activities (Walking/Running)’. Traditional navigation systems typically prioritise the shortest or fastest routes, overlooking critical health-related factors (such as safety or environmental quality). In response, this dissertation presents a multi-factor optimisation-based health-path recommendation algorithm.

AC.7 Vanessa Chew ‘Criminal Agents of Access and Exposure: Investigating the Validity and Application of the Theory of Visual Access and Exposure in Thef Spot Identiﬁcation within London Neighbourhoods Using Multiple Agents’. This dissertation builds on John C. Archea’s theory by exploring its applicability and validity in a customised agent-based model.

AC.8 Maria Chatzitziva, Jiawei Dou, Zhan Shi ‘Modular Housing’. This Term 1 project aims at creating housing units depending on the layout possibilities of particular geometrical attributes. The form-ﬁnding study focuses on developing a workﬂow for graphic statics.

AC.9 Yash Rathod ‘Strategies for 3D-Printed Panels: Enhancing Thermal Performance through Computational Design’. Pursuing a Term 1 design project (with Vanessa Chew and Zhenglong Tu), this dissertation addresses the challenge of enhancing the thermal performance of building façades through the innovative use of 3Dprinted clay panels.

AC.10 Yu-Chiao (Jacky) Huang ‘An Optimised Timber Structure Design Workflow: Using CNN Model in Computer Vision Classification for Predicting the Strengths of Woods, Intertwining with Structural Evaluation and Deriving Preliminary Architectural Design’. This dissertation presents a novel approach for optimising timber structure design workflows using convolutional neural network (CNN) models to predict wood strength, by integrating computer vision classification, structural evaluation methods and non-destructive wood assessment.

AC.11 Wo Lin ‘Reinforcement Learning for Modular Architecture: Developing Intelligent Configurators Using Spatial Kits of Parts’. The dissertation explores the application of reinforcement learning (RL) to develop interactive configurators for modular architecture, by creating a heuristic, agent-based workflow that leverages RL algorithms to combine building modules.

AC.12 Jiayi Li ‘Design of a Humanistic Care Facilitation System for Delivery Drivers Based on K-Means and Genetic Algorithms’. This dissertation explores innovative methods to enhance the work efciency and quality of life of food couriers by optimising the locations of elevators in shopping malls and the layout of rest areas in urban spaces. It combines K-Means clustering algorithms and genetic algorithms with spatial analysis techniques, avoiding the trap of local optima.

AC.13 Jiayi Li, Wo Lin, Yutong Zhao ‘FabricationAware Subdivision Column and Slab’. This Term 1 design project invents a fabrication-aware platform that integrates shape design algorithms, a form-ﬁnding strategy for architectural components, and a physical and digital assessment method, by using a signed distance function.

AC.14 Selen Bas, Yu-Chiao (Jacky) Huang, Eleni Prelorentzou ‘Chair Maker: Part to Whole Topology’. This Term 2 design project explores the relationship between local sets of rules and global forms through the development of voxel topologies, creating chair designs. The team investigated three approaches: user-interactive tools, Cellular Automata, and module aggregation.

AC.15 Weirun Lin, Xinyi Shen, Dongming Xu ‘Building Design Generation Based on Agent-Based Simulation’. This Term 1 project delves into the potential of agentbased modelling for architectural design generation, focusing on two primary areas: building volume generation and internal spatial layout.

AC.16 Aulia Nastiti, Arvind Pulavarty ‘Navigating Trade-O f in Building Envelope Performance Simulation: Machine Learning and Genetic Algorithms’. This Term 2 project develops an efcient hybrid method for real-time multi-objective optimisation.

AC.17 Tian Chen ‘See the Unseen’. This dissertation presents a novel methodology for generating point clouds as a 3D representation of architecture heritage that no longer exists by using a combination of machine learning methods, such as Point Transformer-based feature extraction and a difusion model for noise reduction and point cloud reﬁnement.

AC.18 Selen Bas ‘A Multi-Axial Stifness Library or Single Variable Fabric Simulation’. The dissertation explores the simulation of fabric drapes by using a mass-spring model in which stifness values are set manually and, thanks to photo-imaging from diferent angles, iteratively adjusted to closely match the behaviour of physical folding.

AC.19 Zihan Wu ‘A Robotic Bending-Active Structure –EmoShed: A Shelter that Responds to People’s Emotions and Environment’. Equipped with sensors that monitor brightness and how users are feeling, this project is a self-changing shelter that combines sof robotics with adaptive architecture to create an environment that responds to emotional and environmental conditions.

AC.6

AC.5

AC.4

AC.10

AC.9

AC.8

AC.11

AC.15

AC.16

AC.13

AC.14

AC.17

Garden Anthromes at Barking Riverside, 2023. Studio Biocene in collaboration with the Bio-Integrated Design MArch/MSc and B-Made. Sponsors: UCL Grand Challenges, AHRC ImpactAccelerator Award, WCMT Activate Award

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 radically new 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 our two diferent Masters’ programmes, we bring together a multidisciplinary community of students, including architects, product and fashion designers, artists, landscape architects, and urban planners studying the MArch, as well as bioscientists, engineers and those with a technical background studying the MSc. Working in tandem, both cohorts engage with laboratory research, design explorations and advanced manufacturing.

The programmes are hands-on, combining design and scientifc 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.

In Year 1, initial projects are developed as individual exercises that are accompanied by a breadth of interdisciplinary topics. This leads to a main collaborative project that is explored in tandem with a thesis report where individual students develop in-depth scientifc, computational or manufacturing research. Additional workshops and seminars are ofered by academic experts and practitioners to accompany design explorations, fabrication in the workshop and careful growth protocols developed in the laboratory. In Year 2, the focus shifts to a long-term collaborative project where students apply their individual specialisations while developing a substantial written and illustrated document – a Bio-ID almanac. Proposals this year entailed the creation of new biologically induced composites, the circular economy of materials and components, vegetative growth in buildings, environmentally led design and aesthetics of time-based transformations, among other topics.

Tutors Year 1

Javier Ruiz, Andreas Körner, Pradeep Devadass, Ian Robinson, Ella Hetherington, Shneel Malik

Tutors Year 2

Javier Ruiz, Alexandra Lăcătușu, Andreas Körner, Anete Krista Salmane, Tony Le

Design and Science Tutors

Marcos Cruz, Pradeep Devadass, Nina Jotanovic, Andreas Körner, Alexandra Lăcătușu, Tony Le, Shneel Malik, Brenda Parker, Javier Ruiz, Anete Krista Salmane, Harry Watkins

Postgraduate Teaching Assistants

Marie Dorn, William Gordon-Petrovskii, Ella Hetherington, Alexandra Lăcătușu, Ian Robinson

Laboratory Coordinator

Anete Krista Salmane Programme Administrators

Zoe Lau, Dawn Mitchell

Critics

Julia Backhaus, Bastian Beyer, Mario Carpo, Nat Chard, Michael Hoare, Andrei Martin, Michael Pelken, Helene Steiner, Margarita Urueta, Ludovica Vaiarelli, Keith Watson, Ioannis Zampetakis

Partners

UCL Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, St Andrews Botanic Garden, Barking Riverside

Students

Year 1 Roba Alfraih, Nevres Arin Aydogdu, Parisa Azizi Shamami, Jana Bakr, Suchi Chai, Juhi Dhanesha, Xiaomeng Fang, Sarvin Farhangi, Basil Frost, Humberto (David) Gil Garzon, Robin Kwon, Zengjie (James) Lang, Yi Ning Loh, Aaushi Mehta, Muze (Chris) Ouyang, Kayan Patel, Yu (Grace) Shen, Ping-Chun Shih, Xiyao (Miranda) Shou, Yingying Yan, Xinning Yu

Year 2 Xinrui (Angel) Cai, Rashneet Chhabra, Maria Creuheras Gonzalez, Hannah Hunt, Gayatri Jain, Edward Khoury, Sophie Kirkpatrick, Chao-Chun Kung, Fang-Yu (Fran) Liu, Rida Mughal, Nathanael Myers, Isik Ogutcu, Andrita Orbandi, Keren Permutti, Farida Radwan, Daisy Rani Xavier, Natalie Rizk, Penn Ryan, Sophia Saleki, Sahda Salsabila, Choi Wing (Wendy) Tse, Yumeng Wei

BID.1, BID.54 Nevres Arin Aydogdu, Parisa Azizi Shamami, Kayan Patel, Y1 ‘N-Swaddle’. The project is a multidimensional hanging garden that incubates plants using microorganisms within its living fabric structure, exploring primary succession in the urban artificiality of Gasholder Park in King’s Cross, London. Microorganisms, such as rhizobacteria, phototrophic cyanobacteria and microalgae, are keystone groups for improving nitrogenand carbon-nutrient availability in the soil and for binding the soil together, nurturing larger flora. The hanging garden ofers an alternative plant ecosystem that contrasts with the poor bioreceptivity of surrounding structures, increasing biodiversity and green space by inviting new species into its enveloping fabric form. The formwork, which is filled with soil and manipulated using tension and compression, repurposes waste fabric, while the textile wicking system distributes water, nitrogen-fixing bacteria and carbon-fixing microalgae through the structure. The fabric is designed to then degrade in situ.

BID.2–BID.7 Maria Creuheras Gonzalez, Nathanael Myers, Farida Radwan, Y2 ‘Fertile Fluxes’. The project explores bio-geochemical nutrient cycles activated by weathering processes in urban environments as a way to enhance the aesthetic appeal of ageing buildings through intentionally graded bio-receptivity. Functional ornamentation derived from proﬁles of classical architecture integrates a designed system for advanced weathering that embeds the relational agencies of synthetic lichen, biomaterials, lithic plants and water.

BID.8–BID.11 Isik Ogutcu, Yumeng Wei, Y2 ‘REM • TAO’. Located on the eastern coast of Scotland, the project investigates a new living sand–mycelium composite that is used as a building block for a bathhouse inserted in the existing rocky landscape. The material has dynamic qualities, as the mycelium works as an initial binder that gradually erodes away, revealing the texture of the inert material. The project works as a living system, examining the interplay between stability and emergence, and reﬂecting the perpetual cycle of growth, decay and rebirth. It explores how biological growth, alongside water, could be integrated into an architectural programme with scientiﬁc precision.

BID.12–BID.14 Rashneet Chhabra, Keren Permutti, Penn Ryan, Y2 ‘MycoAir’. The project investigates the use of mycelium panels in the London Underground to tackle the network’s long-lasting air pollution. Iron oxide particles from the Tube pose serious health risks. The proposed panels use the mycelium’s ﬁbrous structure, which is grown on recycled newspaper, to trap the particles. The panel’s fabrication maximises air contact for efective particle collection.

BID.15–BID.16 Daisy Rani Xavier, Y2 ‘Desert Gardens’. The project explores the use of straw waste to improve the thermal conditions in buildings in arid environments. Gradients of straw composites with sand and clay are used as insulating construction materials to create a cubical modular self-shading geometry, which is materially and computationally tested to reduce temperature by an average of 5ºC compared with the surroundings. The porosity of the straw composites allows the modules to retain water, which means they can work as cultivation substrates for the tropical ﬂora that develop in such hot climates.

BID.17–BID.18 Sophie Kirkpatrick, Y2 ‘Syn-therment’. The project explores the relationship established between our industrial and natural worlds by investigating fermentation, a dynamic metabolic process with inherent transformative properties, as a means of forging a circular system that challenges the notions of waste and value. The purpose is to reimagine conventional applications of both fermentation and architectural design to improve energy efciency in our global

production system. Through a deep understanding of cellular processes, such as nutrient cycles and protein mechanics, as well as agriculture and ecology, a new generation of bioreactors is envisioned, where nothing is lost or gained, only changed. A circular process is designed that uses chemical or heat energy from each step that would otherwise be wasted, leading to both cost savings and reductions in pollution.

BID.19–BID.20 Gayatri Jain, Y2 ‘Travelling Oasis’. Global warming has led to an increase in the frequency and severity of heatwaves in India, resulting in a signiﬁcant number of fatalities and posing a severe threat to plant survival, especially through water scarcity. This project creates a semi-sheltered, oasis-like space in a town in the Thar Desert region of India. Terracotta, known for its porosity and thermal insulation properties, is employed as the construction material for planters to reduce their ambient temperature. The design focuses on optimising plant growth and human interactions by evaluating plant requirements and the shading efects of various geometric conﬁgurations. Additionally, an irrigation pipeline system using greywater has been designed for efcient water distribution.

BID.21–BID.23 Xinrui (Angel) Cai, Sahda Salsabila, Y2 ‘Nutri-Nexus’. The proposal presents an innovative acoustic treetop journey in London’s Hyde Park, where the fusion of ecology and architecture enhances soil health and provides an immersive sensory experience. At the heart of the project is a series of cork-composite ‘petals’, embedded with nitrogen-ﬁxing Nostoc cyanobacteria. These petals are designed to degrade naturally, releasing biomass and bio-available nitrogen, enriching the soil and promoting plant growth.

BID.24–BID.27 Chao-Chun Kung, Andrita Orbandi, Choi Wing (Wendy) Tse, Y2 ‘Atmorpholith’. By 2050, urban heat islands and climate change will present significant challenges. The project enhances urban greenery and creates biodiversity-rich spaces through an innovative urban intervention in Taipei, Taiwan. The research was conducted across three scales: micro (material), meso (morphological/building) and macro (urban/ecological). On a small scale, through a lab-based approach, a novel marine-based biocomposite was created that solidifies local sandstone for a new construction material. At the intermediate scale, designs were driven by wind and solar simulations to define an optimal orientation to promote local plant growth. On a large scale, environmental studies informed the distribution of multiple islands and two emerging towers.

BID.28–BID.30 Hannah Hunt, Fang-Yu (Fran) Liu, Sophia Saleki, Y2 ‘Growth X Decay’. Reﬂecting current timber construction industry and woodland veteranisation research, the project developed a tectonic workﬂow using the full tree cycle, including growth and decay. Scanning and making use of felled irregular branches in the fabrication protocol enables them to be stitched into a tree-grafing scafold, as well as facilitating the establishment of woodland fungal communities.

BID.31–BID.33 Edward Khoury, Rida Mughal, Natalie Rizk, Y2 ‘Retidal’. The project focuses on regenerating tidal pools in a set of ornamental structures located on the disused Old Ramsgate Hovercraf Port in Pegwell Bay. It focuses on bioreceptive materials that are manufactured using complex three-dimensional moulds, while developing responsive bioplastic screens that enable the public to engage with coastal habitat loss in this newly designed landscape. The sof robotic components monitor the environmental health of species, providing data for the community, alongside scientiﬁc and conservation groups, to use to improve coastal environments.

BID.34–BID.36 Juhi Dhanesha, Humberto (David) Gil Garzon, Muze (Chris) Ouyang, Y1 ‘Layered Ephemerality’. Amphibians are losing ephemeral pools that are critical for breeding as climate change shif s rain cycles and urban development extends into overlooked habitats. Where permanent water bodies like ponds and streams may be preserved, puddles are lef out of consideration by designers because they are impermanent, yet they are essential for wildlife. In response, this project introduces a landscape of puddles in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The design creates stacked pools in a structure of foams that retain water and degrade at diferent rates, changing the shape of each pool over time. The stacked morphology channels water and creates canopies and pockets where the creatures can ﬁnd refuge and spaces to lay their eggs. Mycelium acts as a catalyst between the design and the environment to help generate a lasting ecosystem to which the amphibians can return, season afer season.

BID.37–BID.38, BID.42–BID.43 Zengjie (James) Lang, Xiyao (Miranda) Shou, Xinning Yu, Y1 ‘Hydro-Plantéa Atrium’. The project focuses on creating hydroponic plant-based biophotovoltaic (HBPV) cells to monitor environmental conditions like heatwaves and biodiversity. Using parametric design to ﬁt cells on a roo fop system across an abandoned shipyard building in London, this project revitalises an abandoned site as a communal space for the local community. During the day, visitors experience various lighting efects imitating the shade of trees in nature as they work or attend activities under the roof.

BID.39–BID.41 Jana Bakr, Aaushi Mehta, Ping-Chun Shih, Y1 ‘Tidal Blooms’. The project is an urban landscape project designed to revitalise Brighton’s beach by enhancing its biodiversity and fostering a seamless integration between the built environment and natural ecosystems. Focused on historic Madeira Drive, the proposal addresses local challenges to marine habitats, including ocean acidiﬁcation and rising water temperatures, as identiﬁed in Brighton and Hove City Council’s Climate Risk & Vulnerability Assessment & Adaptation Action Plan. Tidal Blooms focuses on the development of bioreceptive bioshell material, rich in calcium carbonate, which acts as a substrate to absorb nutrients and create micro-environments where marine life can thrive. The project is structured into three distinct zones, each ofering unique interactions with the coastal environment.

BID.44–BID.46 Suchi Chai, Basil Frost, Robin Kwon, Y1 ‘Bemingle’. The project explores the potential of animal remains as a transformative medium, bridging the gap between decay and regeneration. As global phosphorus reserves dwindle, the need for locally sourced alternatives becomes urgent. Bemingle addresses this by repurposing animal bones, ofering an innovative solution that reduces dependency on ﬁnite global resources and supports regenerative agricultural practices. The project seeks to develop a novel material, utilising these phosphorus-rich bones to transform decay into growth through phosphate-solubilising microorganisms. Advanced heat dissipation studies on geometries and the development of hydrogels embedded in these microorganisms enhance the project’s forward-thinking approach.

BID.47–BID.48, BID.52–BID.53 Roba Alfraih, Xiaomeng Fang, Sarvin Farhangi, Y1 ‘Sculpting the Invisible’. The project explores the concept of designing a bridge on the Regent’s Canal in London, where living systems are seamlessly integrated into the built environment. The research starts with a comprehensive mapping of the area’s diverse ecologies, which leads to material research investigating an engineered living material

with optical gradient properties, such as variable reﬂectivity and translucency. This responsive material is speciﬁcally designed to host and embed species of cyanobacteria, facilitating the creation of diverse micro-environments conducive to their photosynthetic processes. Moreover, the material showcases the vibrant, gradient colour properties of these living organisms, transforming the bridge into a living, evolving entity.

BID.49–BID.51 Yu (Grace) Shen, Yingying Yan, Yi Ning Loh, Y1 ‘MycoTerra’. The project redeﬁnes conventional architecture by shifing its focus from providing shelter and comfort to embracing the life cycles of materials and structures. By integrating techniques from mycelium fabrication and earth construction, MycoTerra encourages a circular approach in buildings. The project responds to site-speciﬁc environmental conditions, creating optimal micro-environments to promote mycelium growth in a robotically extruded soil composite. This innovative method fosters a symbiotic relationship between the built environment and its surrounding natural processes, taking into consideration life cycles, decay and potential for reuse.

BID.3

BID.4

BID.2

BID.5

BID.6

BID.9

BID.8

BID.12

BID.13

BID.17

BID.19

BID.15

BID.20

BID.18

BID.16

BID.21

BID.22

BID.25

BID.24

BID.26

BID.28

BID.30

BID.31

BID.35

BID.34

BID.36

BID.37

BID.38

BID.39

BID.42

BID.41

BID.40

BID.43

BID.44

BID.45

BID.46

BID.48

BID.52

BID.49

BID.53

BID.50

BID.51

Thesis Report

Module Coordinator: Nina Jotanovic

Running in parallel with the design module, the thesis report is a research project undertaken by individual group members. While following an independent experimental investigation, the output contributes to an evidence-based design approach for the conjoint work. The aim is that original fndings, coupled with analysis and critical contextual thinking, inform design decisions and materialisation of the group project.

By posing their own research question, students take a step into the unknown. Under the guidance of supervisors chosen from the breadth of expertise available at UCL, as well as practitioners and academics from London and beyond, students devise a series of experiments to address unresolved aspects or test new theories. The research questions themselves are diverse and thrilling, resulting in a vibrant constellation of tutors spanning domains from horticulture to machine learning and from synthetic biology to structural engineering. Explorations may relate to the cornerstones of the biointegrated design methodology – biology, computation, materiality or fabrication – and even a mixture of these. Biotechnology projects this year dealt with aspects of characterising biological phenomena or growth under designed conditions. Within the computational domain, students probed with scripts to generate form and understand the interface and infuence of geometry to create specifc environmental conditions. Delving into the realm of fabrication, they investigated the intersection of complex bio-materiality and manufacturing through iterative testing.

The thesis report equips students with a high-level specialisation within the interdisciplinary feld of bio-integrated design. A sense of vitality within this module is sustained by continually introducing new methods to established felds, yielding novelty and innovation. Forays into uncharted territory are only possible with the mentorship of thesis tutors, who generously share their expertise and contribute valuable knowledge. To attain a level of rigour, students become familiar with the grounding literature, as well as the tools and techniques needed for experimental work. By the end, each individual has honed their own critical appreciation for the state of the art within their chosen area. When applied within the conjoint project, these skills represent the development of a connective tissue that forms the body of bio-integrated design.

Thesis Tutors 2023/24

Carlos Bausá Martínez, Paolo Bombelli, Samuel Esses, Ayelen (Achu) Franceschini, Sean Hanna, Sally Hughes, Raphaella Hull, Lydia Johnson, Hannah LaeverenzSchlögelhofer, Ben Lee, Vasiliki Panagiotidou, Annarita Papeschi, Alex van der Steen, Maria Eugenia Villafañe, Bogdan Zaha

Seminar Speakers

Brenda Parker (UCL Department of Biochemical Engineering) and Marcos Cruz (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Heather Ring (Wayward), Déborah López Lobato and Haden Charbel (Pareid), Natalija (Nada) Subotincic (Ceci n’est pas un musée), Hannes Mayer (ETH Zürich), Andreas Körner (UCL and Innsbruck University), Mark West (Surviving Logic), Javier Ruiz (The Bartlett School of Architecture), John Harding (University of Reading), Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė (digital artist and architect), Émile de Visscher (ENS Paris-Saclay), Jamie Davies (University of Edinburgh), Jon Yoder (Kent State University), Bastian Beyer (Humboldt University), Seda Zirek (London South Bank University)

Field Trips

Cornwall, UK (2024), Florence, Siena and Larderello, Italy (2023), Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews, UK (2022), Paris, France, and Barcelona, Spain (2019)

Hidden Life of Soil: An Investigation of Bioremediation Using Rhizobia Inoculated Fabric as Geotextile to Visually Assess Growth of Grass Species

Parisa Azizi Shamami

Supervisor: Sally Hughes

Humans have long tried to overcome the nitrogen limitations of certain soils via diferent strategies: from traditional agricultural cropping systems to the application of inorganic fertiliser.

Rhizobacteria are nitrogen-ﬁxing microbes that enhance plant growth by forming symbiotic associations with plant roots, thus supporting plants in harsh environments such as polluted soils. Because of their key role in the nutrient cycle, rhizobacteria are hypothesised to initiate community succession underpinning biodiversity. This thesis seeks to understand how biological nitrogen ﬁxation using rhizobacteria can be

visualised as a part of soil bioremediation. Geotextiles are commonly employed as architectural and construction tools to mitigate erosion. Therefore, in incorporating fabric as both a geotextile and bioremediation intervention tool in this experiment, we considered whether this could be applied efectively to rehabilitate soil. Three fabric types, plant-based, animal-based and synthetic, were chosen as the media, along with soil sampled from Barking Riverside as a representative brownﬁeld site. A ryegrass and wild grass seed mixture was used to demonstrate the efect of nitrogen addition, and clover facilitated the rhizobia symbiotic growing conditions. The results showed that rhizobia had an efect on the germination, root system, coverage and growth rate of plants, especially on acrylic and cotton. This, combined with fabric properties to retain water and host roots, can enhance the use of fabric for soil bioremediation purposes.

Image: Plant growth of indicator species on wool fabric over a period of 32 days as part of a study on Rhizobacteria supplementation. Image by the author

Enhancing Phosphorus Availability for Urban Agriculture Using PhosphateSolubilising Bacteria and Bone Meal: A Sustainable Approach

Robin Kwon

Supervisor: Sally Hughes

Food security is crucial for human health, yet meeting the nutritional needs of a growing global population remains challenging. Due to the limited bio-availability of phosphorus (P), a vital nutrient essential for plant growth, farmers resort to chemical fertilisers to enhance crop yields. However, conventional sources like natural phosphate rock are ﬁnite and environmentally detrimental. Bone meal, derived from slaughterhouse waste, provides a renewable alternative rich in nitrogen and P when compared with traditional fertilisers. Phosphate-solubilising microorganisms, whether bacteria or fungi, are recognised

for their ability to render insoluble phosphorus in soil accessible to plants. With an aim of developing a biomaterial incorporating phosphate-solubilising bacteria (PSBs) and bone meal to enhance P availability for urban agriculture, this study isolated and characterised PSB from rhizospheric soil in Hackney, London. The influence of four variables (temperature, incubation time, pH and nutrient media) on the phosphate solubility of diferent bacterial strains was investigated using a supervised regression model. Seven PSBs were isolated in Pikovskaya’s agar containing insoluble tricalcium phosphate, with CA1, WH and OR identified as efective phosphate solubilisers. Material samples were inoculated with OR. A regression model confirmed a negative correlation between pH and phosphate solubilisation, providing a basis for predicting phosphate availability in the biomaterial.

Image: Correlation between pH and phosphate solubilisation. (a) Plot of pH values and P sol. for various media. (b) Scatter plot (bars show the density of data). (c) Violin plot showing variation in P solubilisation for speciﬁc pH values. (d) Box plot showing variation in P solubilisation for speciﬁc pH values. (e) Line plot. (f) Regression plot (pink zones represent the error limits). Image by the author

Marine Aggregate-Based Materials: Fostering

Bioﬁlm Growth for Coastal Protection and Habitat Enhancement

Aaushi Mehta

Supervisor: Lydia Johnson

In addition to being an important part of nutrient cycling, bioremediation and ecosystem resilience, biofilms serve as shelters for microorganisms. Their widespread presence in marine environments highlights how vital it can be to understand how they interact with coastal substrates. The thesis evaluates the material’s compatibility with the coastal environment and finds those that promote biofilm growth. The interdependent connection between aggregate-based materials and biofilms is demonstrated through material testing and computational design. Laboratory studies highlight the dynamics of biofilm growth on marine-based materials, including seashells, sea salts and seaweeds. Subsequently, the mutualistic bond between aggregate-based materials and biofilms is explored, shedding light on innovative avenues for environmental sustainability and coastal ecosystem management. The thesis concludes with a detailed understanding of aggregatebased materials as frameworks for coastal biofilm production.

Chromobiome: A Study on the Performance of In-Situ and Extracted Photosynthetic Pigments as Light Filters in a Translucent Matrix

Jana Bakr

Supervisor: Paolo Bombelli

The ‘bacterial turn’ in architectural design has mobilised researchers and makers to explore methodologies in which living colour can be incorporated into the built environment. This thesis aims to contribute to this movement through two objectives: first by studying ‘in-situ’ pigments and second by refining a low-tech strategy for extracting and purifying photosynthetic pigments from fresh and dried biomass (Porphyridium puerpuerum) and dried biomass (Spirulina spp). Spectrometry was used to ascertain the visible absorption and transmission spectra of both in-situ and extracted pigments phycoerythrin, PE, pink, phycocyanin, and phycocyanin PC, blue, immobilised in a translucent host matrix. Light-filtering potential was highly variable, but overall more prominent for Spirulina spp. in the pigment category and more prominent for PC in the extracted pigment category.

Microscopy

Image: Visible absorption spectra of Spirulina spp. in in-situ pigments with respect to chromatic gradients (LS, MS, HS) over time (number of days: D). Image by the author

Image:

of developing algae community on marine aggregate-based materials. Image by the author

Phosphate-Solubilising Gel Bio-fertiliser:

An Adaptive Method for Agricultural PSM Application

Basil Frost

Supervisor: Vasiliki Panagiotidou

Reliance on fertilisers for food production is resulting in superﬂuous use of chemical phosphate fertilisers. As natural phosphate rock reserves are depleted and leaching from excess fertiliser application results in environmental contamination, researchers are seeking alternatives to traditional fertilisers. Phosphorus solubilising microorganisms (PSMs) are a promising option for lowering the use of chemical fertilisers. Current methods of applying PSM bio-fertilisers struggle to improve the efcacy of PSMs and leave the microbes susceptible to abiotic stresses in the soil. Developing hydrogel carriers for PSM could be an efective strategy in administering PSM within agriculture. This thesis investigates the potential of biodegradable hydrogels derived from sodium alginate and methyl cellulose to function in phosphate-solubilising gel bio-fertilisers. Through a series of recipe, rehydration and biocompatibility tests, the study investigates the longevity of biopolymerbased hydrogels, their water solubility, and their ability to support and encourage PSM growth and solubilisation.

Multi-Foam: How Foams with Diferent Porosity and Longevity can be Controlled to Form Unique Erosion Patterns

Juhi Dhanesha Supervisor: Ben Lee

Foams are solid, liquid and gas all at once. Their temporality is the key fourth state of matter. In a spatial context, foam is elegant and playful due to its lightness and filigree form. Whereas most materials gain filigree and porosity through subtraction, a foam is porous through the addition of material. It is defined by its negative space. This thesis looks further into the porosity and permanence of a liquid-based foam by experimenting with the same ingredients to create three foams with diferent porosity and longevity. Created to be used for ephemeral amphibian environments, the foams are analysed in wet conditions. These foams are tested individually and stacked on each other to compare aeration, longevity, water retention and resistance to water erosion.

Image: Dehydration tests of hydrogel carriers. Image by the author

Image: SEM (scanning electron microscopy) image of foam sample. Courtesy of Xiyao (Miranda) Shou

Urban Morphogenesis Lab and ecoLogicStudio, 2023. Photo: Henry Woide

B-Pro Labs

The B-Pro labs represent cutting-edge research at the intersection of architecture, technology and sustainability. Each lab brings a unique perspective to architectural innovation, from automation and digital fabrication to biocomputation and ecological design. They exemplify The Bartlett’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of architectural practice and research in response to contemporary challenges.

Automated Architecture Labs

Lab Directors: Mollie Claypool, Manuel Jiménez García, Gilles Retsin

Automated Architecture Labs operates at the intersection of architecture, automation and platforms. They utilise the concept of the discrete, treating elements as computable data, to create an architectural framework designed for automation. Their focus is on revolutionising housing production through a regenerative, circular and localised approach. The labs conduct live design research projects across the UK and have been recognised for their work, including the Architects’ Journal Social Sustainability Prize in 2021.

Material Architecture Lab

Lab Directors: Guan Lee, Daniel Widrig

Afliated with Architectural Design MArch Research Cluster 6

The Material Architecture Lab explores the potential of materials and digital fabrication technologies in architecture. They encourage a hybrid approach to fabrication, combining digitally controlled machining with semi-automated methods. The lab promotes experimentation and challenges established production modes, emphasising the importance of materials in driving innovation. Recently, the lab has been exploring traditional craft practices for design inspiration, questioning how craft can evolve from individual skill to a collective and spatial construct.

Urban Morphogenesis Lab

Lab Director: Claudia Pasquero

Afliated with Urban Design MArch Research Cluster 16

The Urban Morphogenesis Lab focuses on applying biocomputation to design contemporary ecological cities. They collaborate with The Synthetic Landscape Lab at Innsbruck University and ecoLogicStudio in London, specialising in photosynthetic architecture. Recent projects include the ‘Otrivin Air Lab’, a public laboratory and algae garden demonstrating circular city principles, and ‘Habitat One’, which explored carbon-neutral city models. The lab’s publications include Biodesign in the Age of Artifcial Intelligence: Deep Green (Routledge, 2023), which investigates the potential of nature-based technology to shape architecture and design amid climate change. Image: Material Architecture Lab, 2024

Our Programmes

The Bartlett School of Architecture currently teaches undergraduate and graduate students across 25 programmes of study and one professional course.

You will ﬁnd below a list of our current programmes, their duration when taken full time and the directors. More information, including details on open days, is available on our website.

Undergraduate

Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Three-year programme, directed by Farlie Reynolds

Architecture MSci (ARB Part 1 & 2)

Five-year programme with a year placement in practice, directed by Prof Murray Fraser

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Three or four-year programme, directed by Dr Sophie Read

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

Four-year programme, directed by Luke Olsen

Postgraduate

Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Two-year programme, directed by Dr Kostas Grigoriadis and Matthew Butcher

Architectural Computation MSc/MRes

12-month programmes, directed by Philippe Morel

Architectural Design MArch

12-month programme, directed by Tyson Hosmer

Architectural History MA

One-year programme, directed by Prof Barbara Penner and Dr Robin Wilson

Architecture & Historic Urban Environments MA

One-year programme, directed by Prof Edward Denison and Jane Wong (acting)

Bio-Integrated Design MSc/MArch

Two-year programmes, directed by Prof Marcos Cruz and Dr Brenda Parker

Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch

12-month programme directed by Prof Penelope Haralambidou and Dr Luke Pearson

Design for Manufacture MArch

15-month programme, directed by Prof Peter Scully

Design for Performance & Interaction MArch

15-month programme, directed by Dr Fiona Zisch

Landscape Architecture MA/MLA

One-year (MA) and two-year (MLA) programmes, directed by Prof Laura Allen and Prof Mark Smout

Situated Practice MA

15-month programme, directed by Dr James O’Leary and Dr Polly Gould

Space Syntax: Architecture & Cities

MSc/MRes

One-year programmes, directed by Prof Kayvan Karimi

Urban Design MArch

12-month programme, directed by Roberto Bottazzi

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Dr Nina Vollenbröker

Architectural & Urban History & Theory

MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Prof Sophia Psarra

Architectural Space & Computation

MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Prof Ava Fatah gen. Schieck

Architecture & Digital Theory MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Prof Mario Carpo

Architectural Practice MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Prof Murray Fraser

Professional Studies

Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 3)

10- to 23-month programme, directed by María Páez González

Short Courses

This year The Bartlett has expanded its short courses programme to ofer a range of exciting new formats that stimulate diverse approaches to architecture, inviting participation from diferent levels.

For those considering a future career in architecture, going on to further study or adding to an existing professional skill set, our short courses cater to individuals from diferent backgrounds and ages who are seeking to learn more about the research, design and practice of architecture in ﬂexible and creative ways. Our short courses utilise UCL’s state-of-the-art facilities and are led by international experts and members of The Bartlett’s community who are leaders in their respective ﬁelds, supporting participants to undertake both specialised and broader forms of learning.

The Bartlett Summer Schools: July–August 2024

Taking place across July and August, our on-campus summer schools ofer secondary school students an immersive and hands-on learning experience, particularly for those looking to understand more about architecture within The Bartlett’s campus environment.

Through 2-day, 5-day and 15-day formats, our summer schools provide students who are 18 and under the chance to understand more about architecture within a worldleading institution, with diferent options for 14–16-year-olds and 16–18-year-olds. These courses are designed speciﬁcally for students who are thinking about studying architecture and are looking for an introduction to The Bartlett, with important information about this route to assist with their GCSE, A-level decisions and university applications. Through creative exercises, we aim to promote architecture as a fundamentally collaborative practice, introducing students to the wider societal forces that afect our built environment.

In collaboration with the Access and Widening Participation Team at UCL, we also ofer an architecture course within the Sutton Trust Summer School, supporting young people from less advantaged backgrounds to access leading universities and careers.

Creative Terrain Short Course:

22–26

July 2024

Our brand new Landscape Architecture Short Course – Creative Terrain – provides an introduction to the practice of landscape architecture, and our commitment to an agenda of climate-focused landscape design. The course will act as a gateway into the Landscape Architecture MLA/MA programme at The Bartlett, providing key insight into our curriculum and approach, led by design studio tutors on the Landscape Architecture MLA/MA course.

Guided by a bespoke brief titled Creative Terrain, students will collaborate over an intensive ﬁve-day period to develop a large-scale collaborative landscape model, based within the richly layered terrains of Lee Valley Regional Park. Studio-based learning will be complemented by on-site visits and mapping studies, using creative methods to trace the layers of history and development across these sites and speculate on what potential forms its future may hold. This course is taught at an intermediate level, open to participants over 18.

UCL East Saturday Club – Art and Design

This is a free weekly art and design workshop for Years 9, 10 and 11 from East London.

Visit our website to ﬁnd out more about our range of short courses.

Contact bartlett.shortcourses@ucl.ac.uk

Public Lectures

The Bartlett Public Event Series: CRUNCH CRUNCH is a new ﬂagship seminar series launched this academic year. It features panel discussions that apply critical thought to contemporary projects and urgent ecological, social, political and economic concerns in architecture. This year’s theme was ‘Resource’. All events in this series are open to the public and free to attend. Seminars this year featured:

A Concrete Crisis Dr Catherine Crof (Twentieth Century Society), Prof Adrian Forty (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Dr Ruth Lang (RCA), Elaine Toogood (Concrete Centre), chaired by Prof Eva Branscome (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— Platformers – Enabling Contemporary Thought and Practice Kwame Dawes (poet), Prof Matthew Shenoda (Brown University), Nadine Monem (UAL), chaired by Prof Amy Kulper (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— The Source of the Everyday Jayden Ali (JA Projects), Dr Aleema Gray (Museum of London), Manijeh Verghese (Architectural Association), Chee-Kit Lai (The Bartlett School of Architecture), chaired by Neba Sere (The Bartlett School of Architecture) Postdigital Resources Dr Toshiki Hirano (University of Tokyo), Toshikatsu Kiuchi (Toshikatsu Kiuchi Architect Ofce), Gonzalo Vaillo (MORPHtopia), Nikoletta Karastathi (The Bartlett School of Architecture), chaired by Prof Marjan Colletti (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— Transscalar Architecture Andrés Jaque (Ofce for Political Innovation) and Guang Yu Ren (The Bartlett School of Architecture), chaired by Prof Amy Kulper (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Agents for Participation Carles Baiges Camprubí (Lacol) and Jan Kattein (Jan Kattein Architects), chaired by Dr Claire McAndrew (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Resourcing Anatomies Igor Bragado and Miles Gertler (Common Accounts), Dream Chittmittrapap (Xcessive Aesthetics),

Parma Ham (Serpentine Galleries), chaired by Daniel Ovalle Costal (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— ‘unknown, unknown’ Prof Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia University) and The Bartlett School of Architecture PhD student respondents Sarah Akigbogun, Kirti Durelle and Feysa Poetry, chaired by Dr Stamatis Zografos (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Liquid Resistance in the Black Atlantic Imani Jacqueline Brown (artist) and Dele Adeyemo (Royal College of Art), chaired by Prof Peg Rawes (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Collective Construction: From Housing to Revolution Prof Silke Kapp (Federal University of Minas Gerais), Prof João Marcos de Almeida Lopes (Federal University of Sao Carlos), Anurag Verma (Rural Urban Synthesis Society), chaired by Dr Megha Chand Inglis (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Healing through Making Rizvi Hassan (Rizvi Hassan Architects) and Prof Jonathan Saha (Durham University), chaired by Prof Claire Melhuish (UCL Urban Laboratory)

The Exhibition as Pedagogical Situation

Kawsi Ohene-Ayeh (KNUST) and Prof Tamar Garb (UCL History of Art), chaired by Albert Brenchat Aguilar (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— From the City of Plans Ruth-Anne Richardson (African Futures Institute) and Prof Julio D. Dávila (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit), chaired by Issi Nanabeyin (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Inaugural Lectures

Professor Kerstin Sailer, 7 March 2024

In her inaugural professorial lecture, Prof Kerstin Sailer turned the spotlight of architecture away from aesthetics or critiques of form and towards an emphasis on architectures of care, focusing on the lived experiences of people within certain spatial structures. Hosted by Prof Christoph Lindner, Dean of The Bartlett.

Professor Sean Hanna, 14 March 2024

In his inaugural professorial lecture, Prof Sean Hanna explored the interrelationships between artiﬁcial intelligence and design and asks whether creative thinking is a uniquely human phenomenon. Hosted by Prof Christoph Lindner, Dean of The Bartlett.

Prospectives

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

Dr Claudia Pasquero (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Marco Poletto (ecoLogicStudio), Prof Ludger Hovestadt (ETH Zurich), Dr Kostas Grigoriadis and Dr Guan Lee (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Landscapes in Dialogue

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

Dr Jefrey Nesbit (Temple University) and Prof Charles Waldheim (Harvard), Toby Laurent Belson (multidisciplinary artist), José Alfredo Ramírez Galindo (Architectural Association), Tatiana von Preussen (vPPR), Dr Anna Boldina (R H Partnership Architects) and Dr Jake Robinson (Flinders University)

Situating Architecture

Situating Architecture is an architectural history lecture series afliated with The Bartlett’s renowned Architectural History MA. It is open to both current students and members of the public alike showcasing the latest research of leading architectural scholars with a particular focus on applying new and diverse methodologies and critical theories to architecture and cities. Speakers included:

Dr Jingru (Cyan) Cheng (Royal College of Art), Dr David Serlin (UC San Diego), Andrew Todd (Studio Andrew Todd), Prof Ron Henderson (IIT College of Architecture), Marion Waller (Pavillon de l’Arsenal), Prof Charles Rice (University of Technology Sydney), Dr Kuba Szreder (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw), Dr Iulia Statica (University of Shefeld) and Prof Elke Krasny (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett Research Conversations series featured research presentations from students undertaking the Architectural Design or Architectural and Urban History and 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:

Feysa Poetry, Daniel Ovalle Costal, Guy Mannes-Abbott, Isabelle Donetch, Oliver Brax, Mengdi Mao, Eric Wong, Jingwen Chen and Giles Nartey

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. Guests to the series included:

Dr Sheep Dalton (Northumbria University), Prof Akkelies van Nes (University College Bergen), Besnik Murati (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Prof Alain Chiaradia (University of Hong Kong), Dr Stephen Law (UCL), Dicuonzo (University of Porto), Liam Thomas Bolton (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Dr Vinicius Netto (University of Porto), Dr Davide Schaumann (Israel Institute of Technology), Ruth Nelson (TU Delf), Dr Chrystala Psathiti (Neapolis University Pafos), Dr Tamir El-Khouly (The American University in Cairo), Dr Dounia Laouar, Prof Anjali Sadanand (MEASI Academy of Architecture) and Prof John Peponis (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Exhibitions & Events

The Bartlett hosts a variety of events ranging from conferences and book launches to workshops and international symposia. A vibrant programme of exhibitions also runs throughout the year. These events ofer a diverse exploration of innovative ideas and current issues with inspiring speakers from across the globe.

The Architectural History MA student-led symposium, Unsorted: Redeﬁning the Canon of Architectural History, 4 November 2023, reﬂected on transdisciplinary methodologies and perspectives within the practice of architectural history. This year’s graduating cohort also presented a temporary exhibition titled Beyond the PDF: Transdisciplinary Artefacts of Architectural History Research

A series of in-person events took place around this year’s Fifeen show. The Design for Manufacture Conference, 7–8 December 2023 saw students present research projects regarding the practice of ‘re-manufacturing’. Situated Practice Live, 9 December 2023 saw students question where architecture ends and art practice begins through boundary-pushing ﬁlms and discussion. The Design for Performance and Interaction Project Fair, 15 December 2023 showcased groundbreaking design and research work from the graduating cohort.

The 18th annual PhD Research Projects Exhibition, 20 February–5 March 2024 showcased the work of doctoral research in developing or concluding phases from across the faculty. The accompanying conference featured presentations by doctoral students and panel discussions.

The Architecture & Historic Urban Environments MA organised Close Readings: Reﬂections on Spatial Practice in the Age of War, 21 February 2024, screening a documentary about a Ukrainian subway station turned bomb shelter, and followed by a panel discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning Ukrainian journalist Vasilisa Stepanenko, English journalist Anna Reid and Ukrainian

architectural and urban historian Ievgeniia ‘Jenia’ Gubkina.

A Festival of Feminist Architectural Writing | Re:arrangements and a Revisitation, 1 May 2024 was hosted by the Situated Practice MA and organised by The Bartlett’s Jane Rendell, Polly Gould and Sarah Butler with Emma Cheatle and Hélène Frichot. It was a celebration of feminist architectural writing with a festival of readings and discussions.

Book Launches

Geofrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives, 16 October 2023

Published by Lars Müller Publishers with the Geofrey Bawa Trust, the UK launch was chaired by Tariq Jazeel and featured a talk by the volume’s editor, Shayari de Silva, and responses from Albert Brenchat Aguilar and Pushpa Arabindoo.

Urban Surfaces, Grafti and the Right to the City, 29 January 2024 Architectural historian Sabina Andron launched Urban Surfaces (Routledge), which explores the importance of grafti and public signage in thinking about cities. Chaired by Prof Iain Borden, respondents included Dr Susan Hansen, Dr Rebecca Ross and Dr Rafael Schacter.

Parliament Buildings: The Architecture of Politics in Europe, 5 March 2024

Published by UCL Press, editors Prof Sophia Psarra, Dr Uta Staiger and Dr Claudia Sternberg discussed Parliament Buildings and its exploration of the nexus between architecture and politics. Respondents included Dr Mari Takayanagi, Prof Níall McLaughlin and Lord Anderson of Ipswich KBE KC.

Where is Africa: Volume 1, 11 March 2024

Author and architect Emanuel Admassu launched Where is Africa (Centre for Art, Research, and Alliances). He and Prof Amy Kulper discussed the mispositioning of African art and the imperialist foundations of Western cultural institutions’ fascination with African objects, people and places.

Bartlett Shows Website

In September 2020, the school launched its bespoke digital exhibition environment, presenting The Summer Show 2020. Since then, 20 further student shows have been shared digitally, including The Summer Show 2024. Each digital exhibition has attracted thousands of online visitors from across the globe, with the Summer Show 2023 content viewed over 250,000 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. In line with our commitment to inclusivity, we have recently implemented a fully accessible route to all project pages in accordance with the internationally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

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. In 2022, the website picked up two additional awards, a Silver Lovie and the People’s Lovie in the Schools & Education category. The Lovie Awards, named afer Ada Lovelace, recognise European internet excellence in the ﬁelds of culture, technology and business.

www.bartlettarchucl.com

Alumni

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

This year we were delighted to welcome back a number of alumni to present at this year’s cross-unit event for Architecture MArch, ‘Diverse Architectures’. Each unit invited a former student from the past decade to present their ﬁfh-year project from The Bartlett and to share their current or future work in practice. The inspiring speakers included Rahaf Abdoun-Machaal, Nabila

Aﬁf, Anthony Awanis, Alex Cotterill, Finbar Charleson, Jennifer Dyne, Ruby Law, Mathew Leung, Matthew Simpson, Paula Strunden, Joshua Thomas and Joanna van Son.

We also invite alumni to join us at The Bartlett Summer Show for an exclusive late opening of the exhibition. The Alumni Late drinks reception gives former students the opportunity to network with friends and colleagues, as well as meet prize winners from this year’s cohort.

Alumni interested in running events should email architecture.comms@ucl.ac.uk to discuss how we can help support you.

All Bartlett School of Architecture alumni are invited to join UCL Alumni, a global community of more than 430,000 former students, 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 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 board for the exclusive alumni community

Lifelong learning options including professional development opportunities

aoc.ucl.ac.uk/alumni

Summer Show Alumni Late, 2023

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 Sub-Saharan Africa master’s students. 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.

Sara Shaﬁei, Vice-Dean of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at The Bartlett says:

The award is a promise from The Bartlett faculty to future generations of scholars of the built environment – that we are wholeheartedly committed to taking bold and innovative steps in addressing underrepresentation of students from diverse backgrounds within built environment higher education and industry.

We are delighted that The Bartlett Promise continues to grow and play a signiﬁcant role in attracting the very best students, who continue to enrich our community in extraordinary ways.

To be eligible for a scholarship, candidates must have an ofer 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

Staf, Visitors & Consultants

Thomas Abbs

Ana Abram

Vasilija Abramovic

George Adamopoulos

Panagiota Adilenidou

Ava Aghakouchak

Roslyn Aish

Alejandra Albuerne

Rodriguez

Wardah Ali

Laura Allen

Carlos Alvarez Doran

Sabina Andron

Simone Antoniazzi

Dimitris Argyros

Azadeh Asgharzadeh Zaferani

Abigail Ashton

Felicity Atekpe

Edwina Attlee

Annecy Attlee

Joseph Augustin

Julia Backhaus

Kirsty Badenoch

Matthew Barnett Howland

Bethany Barnett-Sanders

Sarah Barry

Carolina Bartram

Stefan Bassing

Paul Bavister

Simon Beames

Richard Beckett

Bedir Bekar

Jhono Bennett

Ruth Bernatek

Julian Besems

Vishu Bhooshan

Peter Bishop

Laurence Blackwell-Thale

Isaie Bloch

Eleanor Boiling

Paolo Bombelli

Iain Borden

Federico Borello

Alex Borrell

Roberto Bottazzi

Visiting Prof Andy Bow

Matthew Bowles

Eva Branscome

Albert Brenchat Aguilar

Alastair Browning

Thomas Budd

Rosalind Burkett-Wenham

Christopher Burman

Mark Burrows

Matthew Butcher

Blanche Cameron

William Victor Camilleri

Alberto Campagnoli

Barbara Campbell-Lange

Ben Campkin

Brent Carnell

Mario Carpo

Dan Carter

Martyn Carter

Luciano Caruggi de Faria

Ricardo Carvalho

De Ostos

Tommaso Casucci

Bhaskar Cephas

Tsz Long Chan

Megha Chand Inglis

Haden Charbel

Nat Chard

Finn Charleson

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno

Tung Ying Chow

Krina Christopoulou

Sandra Ciampone

Mollie Claypool

Freya Cobbin

Marjan Colletti

Michael Collins

Emma Colthurst

Emeritus Prof Peter Cook

Hannah Corlett

Samuel Coulton

John Cruwys

Marcos Cruz

Rut Cuenca Candel

Nichola Czyz

DChristina Dahdaleh

Amica Dall

Van Anh Dang

Satyajit Das

Daniel Da Silva

James Day

Louise Davies

Peter Davies

Tom Davies

Denis Delaney

James Delaney

Klaas De Rycke

Edward Denison

Pradeep Devadass

Max Dewdney

Ilaria Di Carlo

David Di Duca

Aikaterini Dionysopoulou

Paul Dobraszczyk

Patrick Dobson-Perez

Oliver Domeisen

Elizabeth Dow

Sarah Dowding

Daniel Dream

Camille Dunlop

Shyamala Duraisingam

Claudia Dutson

Tom Dyckhof

Kimberley Eade

David Edwards

Samuel Esses

Michael Evans

Ruth Evison

Ava Fatah

Donat Fatet

Mark Cortes Favis

Laura Fawcett-Gaskell

Timothy Fielder

Christopher Fischlein

Zachary Fluker

Emeritus Prof Adrian Forty

Emeritus Prof Colin Fournier

Alice Foxen

Cesar Fragachan Pinzani

Kenneth Fraser

Murray Fraser

Synnøve Fredericks

Daisy Froud

Maria Fulford

Emeritus Prof Stephen Gage

Gunther Galligioni

Christophe Gerard

Egmontas Geras

Christina Geros

Octavian Gheorghiu

Stylianos Giamarelos

Pedro Gil

Hannah Gill

Agnieszka Glowacka

Ruairi Glynn

Vaishnavi Gondane

Alicia González-Laﬁta

Polly Gould

Niamh Grace

Kevin Gray

Kevin Green

Emmy Green

James Green

Sienna Grifn-Shaw

Sam Grifths

Kostas Grigoriadis

Samuel Grinsell

Eric Guibert

Srijana Gurung

Seth Guy

Tamsin Hanke

Sean Hanna

Penelope Haralambidou

Alice Hardy

Jack Hardy

Ben Hayes

Thea Heintz

Colin Herperger

Lucy Hetherington

Danielle Hewitt

Visiting Prof Neil Heyde

Parker Heyl

Jonathan Hill

Ashley Hinchclife

Bill Hodgson

Aileen Hoenerloh

Tom Holberton

Seyedeh Tahmineh

Hooshyar Emami

Tyson Hosmer

Delwar Hossain

Oliver Houchell

Sheng-Yang Huang

Johan Hybschmann

Jessica In

Charles Inge

Desart Ismaili

Bruce Ivers J

Clara Jaschke

William Jennings

Nicholas Jewell

Tobias Jewson

Manuel Jiménez Garcia

Steven Johnson

Helen Jones

Thomas Jones

Nina Jotanovic

Aurore Julien

Nikoletta Karastathi

Kayvan Karimi

Jan Kattein

Tom Keeley

Tom Kendall

Jonathan Kendall

Wilton Kemyst

Yana Kitova

Jakub Klaska

Fergus Knox

Andreas Korner

Margit Kraf

Kimon Krenz

Dirk Krolikowski

Dragana Krsic

Amy Kulper

Max Kynman

Chee-Kit Lai

Mani Lall

Katya Larina

Zoe Lau

Wai Law

Tony Le

Kwang Lee

Benjamin Lee

Stefan Lengen

Christopher Leung

Tairan Li

Iﬁgeneia Liangi

Chwen Lim

Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Visiting Prof Lesley Lokko

Alvaro Lopez

Déborah López Lobato

Luke Lowings

Tim Lucas

Matt Lucraf Abi Luter

David Maciver

Jörg Majer

Alexandru Malaescu

Shneel Malik

Gurdav Mankoo

Emily Mann

Georgia Manolopoulou

Ana Monrabal-Cook

Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk

Sara Martínez Zamora

Patrick Massey

Robin Mather

Emma-Kate Matthews

Vasileios Mavropoulos

Claire McAndrew

Donald McCrory

David McEwen

Joe McGrath

Niall McLaughlin

Jingyuan Meng

Adam Meyrick

Jose Mias Gifre

Frédéric Migayrou

Doug Miller

Dawn Mitchell

Matei-Alexandru Mitrache

Tom Mole

Ana Monrabal-Cook

Cristina Morbi

Philippe Morel

Bongani Muchemwa

Shaun Murray

Maxwell Mutanda

Tetsuro Nagata

Giles Nartey

Filippo Nassetti

Olivia Neves Marra

Tsing Yin Ng

Vincent Nowak

Aisling O’Carroll

Toby O’Connor

Yossie Olaleye

James O’Leary

Visiting Prof Femi Oresanya

Honorary Prof Raf Orlowski

Luke Olsen

Daniel Ovalle Costal

Yael Padan

Maria Paez

James Palmer

Igor Pantic

Annarita Papeschi

Thomas Parker

Claudia Pasquero

Jane Paterson

Luke Pearson

Visiting Prof P. Michael Pelken

Alan Penn

Barbara Penner

Emma Perry

Guillem Perutxet Olesti

Drew Pessoa

Frosso Pimenides

Honorary Prof Neil Pinder

Alicia Pivaro

Maj Plemenitas

Lyn Poon

Tsz Hin Matthew Poon

Andrew Porter

Rebecca Preston

Emily Priest

Arthur Prior

Lakshmi Priya Rajendran

Sophia Psarra

Danielle Purkiss

Sascha Rashof

Margaret Rawes

Sophie Read

Aileen Reid

Guang Yu Ren

Jane Rendell

Gilles Retsin

Charlotte Reynolds

Daria Ricchi

Julie Richardson

David Roberts

Felix Roberts

Gavin Robotham

Daniel Rodriguez Garcia

Javier Ruiz Rodriguez

Kevin Saey

Kerstin Sailer

Andrew Saint

Diana Salazar Morales

Joel Saldeck

Shahed Saleem

Anete Krista Salmane

Mbango Same Essaka

Eleanor Sampson

Edward Tristram Scott

Peter Scully

Khaled Sedki

Tania Sengupta

Neba Sere

Sara Shaﬁei

David Shanks

Bob Sheil

Naz Siddique

Philipp Siedler

Gareth Simons

Isaac Simpson

Yip Siu

Colin Smith

Helen Smith

Paul Smoothy

Mark Smout

Valentina Soana

Joana Carla Soares Goncalves

Jasminder Sohi

Amy Spencer

Ben Spong

Matthew Springett

Michael Stacey

Brian Stater

Tijana Stevanovic

Rachel Stevenson

Sabine Storp

Greg Storrar

David Storring

Ignacy Styszko

Michiko Sumi

Harry Sumner

Imogen Terrar

Emmy Thittanond

Andrew Thom

Kathryn Timmins

Michael Tite

Claudia Toma

Emeritus Prof Victor Torrance

Alessandro Toti

Martha Tsigkari

Marios Tsiliakos

Samuel Tuppen

Samuel Turner-Baldwin

Jonathan Tyrrell

Sumayya Vally

Melis Van Den Berg

Kelly Van Hecke

Kim van Poeteren

Nasios Varnavas

Tasos Varoudis

Laura Vaughan

Alejandro Veliz Reyes

Hamish Veitch

Maria Venegas Raba

Emmanuel Vercruysse

Viktoria Viktorija

Amelia Vilaplana

De Miguel

Jordi Vivaldi Piera

Nina Vollenbroker

Doron Von Beider W

Michael Wagner

Andrew Walker

Adam Walls

Emeritus Prof Susan Ware

Gabriel Warshafsky

Tim Waterman

James Watkins

Emeritus Prof

Patrick Weber

Rosamund West

Paul Weston

Alice Whewell

Christopher Whiteside

Andrew Whiting

Alexander Whitley

Rae Whittow-Williams

Daniel Widrig

James Wilkie

Henrietta Williams

Gen Williams

Graeme Williamson

James Williamson

Robin Wilson

Sarah Wilson

Oliver Wilton

Cheuk Wong

X Zoe Xing

Sandra Youkhana

Barbara Zandavali

Emmanouil Zaroukas

Sepehr Zhand

Dominik Zisch

Fiona Zisch

Stamatios Zografos

ucl.ac.uk/architecture bartlettarchucl.com

Find

us on

Publisher

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Editor

Mark Cortes Favis

Copyeditors and Proofreaders

Simon Coppock

Karen Francis

Graphic Design

Patrick Morrissey, Unlimited weareunlimited.co.uk

Executive Editor

Amy Kulper

Bartlett life photography taken Richard Stonehouse, Bartlett tutors and students.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

We endeavour to ensure all information contained in this publication is accurate at the time of printing.

ISBN 978-1-7392670-6-3

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB

+44 (0)20 3108 9646 architecture@ucl.ac.uk

The Autumn Show 2024 catalogue is dedicated to the memory of Professor Colin Fournier, founder of Urban Design MArch.

ucl.ac.uk/architecture

bartlettarchucl.com