2014 yearbook by School of APL, Newcastle University

2014

School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Newcastle University

Contents

Welcome 3 BA 4 Stage 1 Stage 2 Charrette Stage 3 BA Dissertation A Long View at High Speed - Andrew Ballantyne

MArch 48 Stage 5 Tech Week Linked Research MArch Travel Diaries MArch Dissertation Eight months in Ethiopia - Peter Kellet Stage 6

Research 110 Taught Masters Programmes PhD / PhD by Creative Practice Devising the Communication in Displacement - Tijana StevanoviÄ&#x2021; Architecture Research Collaborative Everest Death Zone - STASUS

110

Welcome Graham Farmer - Director of Architecture

Welcome to this Yearbook which is a wonderful record of the achievements of staff and students within the School. This year has certainly been busy and challenging, but it has also been exciting and rewarding. Over the course of the past 12 months we have welcomed new full and part-time colleagues, successfully launched new programmes, introduced numerous new teaching and research initiatives and events, and integrated a wide range of new design projects and studios, each of which have delivered some excellent work at both Undergraduate and Postgraduate level. I hope that you will find that the following pages convey the diversity, sense of invention, energy, enthusiasm and relevance that continue to characterise and define the design programmes and our staff and students. A notable achievement this year has been the introduction of a new cross-disciplinary Undergraduate degree programme in Architecture and Urban Planning which has proven to be a very popular alternative to the mainstream Architecture and Planning courses. At Postgraduate level we have introduced a new Masters Programme in Architectural Theory and Criticism under the Directorship of Katie Lloyd Thomas. This course further extends the School’s International reputation for teaching and research through the exploration of humanities-based, speculative and critical agendas. Another innovation is the production of this Yearbook itself, which has now been integrated into the taught curriculum and we thank Matt Ozga-Lawn and James Craig together with their MArch student team; Simon Bumstead, Thomas Kendall and Richard Taylor, for all their hard work in developing and delivering such a high quality publication. This year has also seen the continued development of live build projects as a mode of pedagogy within the School. In the Autumn, students under the supervision of Daniel Mallo and Armelle Tardiveau completed the self-build Pallet Pavilion as part of the British Science Festival and we have worked with several external organisations, including the Vamos Festival on design and construction projects. We have also seen the completion of the School’s first permanent design-build project, which has been designed and constructed by a group of MArch students in the small village of Stonehaugh, near Kielder. This kind of community engagement work is indicative of our strong commitment to being a civic school with a design ethos that is outward facing and we continue to seek to utilise the significant knowledge and skills base within the School to make an impact and difference locally, regionally and nationally. The work of our students also continues to recognised in numerous competitions and particular mention this year goes to Ruta Austrina for her commendation in the RIBA Hadrian Medals. Our success in design competitions has also been mirrored by the Newcastle University Architecture Society (NUAS) with Jake Richardson being recognised in the Student’s Union’s ‘Society Officer of the Year’ awards. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Jake and all of the NUAS team, who continue to make an invaluable contribution to the wider life of the School and who are so important in helping to build the sense of identity and community that characterises our School. Architecture at Newcastle has a long and distinguished history and it continues to hold a strong reputation for its teaching and research. We remain as one of the most popular and highly rated destinations for the study of Architecture in the UK. However, whilst we are rightly proud of our traditions we also recognise the importance of offering new opportunities and challenges for our students. As this academic year closes, we can begin to turn our attention to the next phases of in our development. We are about to appoint two new Professors in Architecture who will help to develop and extend our teaching and research into new directions. In addition, we are also about to embark on a major redevelopment of our estate with the addition of a significant new workshop and studio building. As we reflect on another good year, we are already looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead.

Stage 1 Stage 1 is a varied introduction to architecture, characterised by numerous workshops, visits and hands-on activities. Starting this year, Stage 1 architecture students share their modules with students who are on the BA in Architecture and Urban Planning. Beyond The Frame explores the domestic interiors of Pieter de Hooch primarily through model making. Their initial design project, A Place of Refuge, proposes a small shelter in Kielder Forest, Northumberland, where scale, function, materiality and the construction of space are developed. Additional hands-on projects develop structural understanding and measured drawing skills, making use of buildings â&#x20AC;&#x201C; historic and contemporary - in Newcastle and its surroundings, with a visit to Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. Semester two project Urban Delights involves designing a cookery school; demanding more complex three dimensional manipulation and emphasising the experience and qualities of space. Artist-led workshops allow the testing of alternative ways of exploring form, drawing, photography, model making and space. A final semester two project focuses on unbuilt and lost architecture and asks students to convey architectural ideas through the use of digital tools, before students bring together the great range of work they have undertaken for the portfolio.

Year Coordinator Martin Beattie

Project Leaders

Armelle Tardiveau Carlos Calderon Kati Blom

Contributors

Astrid Lund Bill Tavernor Cath Keay Charlotte Powell Chris Elias Damien Wootten Dhruv Sookhoo Di Leach George Musson Henna Asikainen Irina Korneychuck James Longfield James Morton Jennie Webb Joanna Hinchcliffe Keri Townsend Kieran Connolly Lee Whitelock Matt Charlton Michael Simpson Neveen Hamza Nick Bastow Nikoletta Karastashi Peter Drysdale Peter Kellet Peter St Julien Richard McDonald Rumen Dimov Smajo Beso Sneha Solanski Sophia Banou Steve Tomlinson Suzanne Croft Tara Stewart Tijana Stevanowic Tony Watson Tracey Tofield Ugnus Katinas Vitalija Salygina Yasser Megahed

Students

Adam Najia Adnan Ahmed Issa Qatan Alex Jusupov Alexander Borrell Alexander Ferguson Alice Chilman Alicia Beaumont Amy Callaghan Anna Chai Anthony Metelerkamp Antonis Kypridemos Antonus Tanady Arthur Bayele Arthur Cherngchia Ashleigh Usher Ashok Mathur Becky Somerville Benjamin Martin Benjamin Simpson Bethan Thomas Bethany Elmer Bradley Davidson Caitlin Latimer-Jones Charlotte Cook Cheuk Yan Debby Chung Chloe Weston Christopher Gabe Clement Ting Yiung Tang Darren Hodgson David Winter Declan Wagstaff Demi Mullen Ekrem Sungur Eleanor Brent Ellen Peirson Emily Hinchliffe Erica Caballero Eula Garrido Finian Orme Finlay McGregor Frances Grace-Fen-Yilai Frederick Armitage Frederick Lewis Gaurav Kapoor George Entwistle George Marr George Parfitt Georgina McEwan Hayley Graham Hiu Yan Lau Hoi Chau Holly Tisson Hsin-Wei Lin Ioi Tsang Iona Haig Isabel Hunter Ivan Petrov Ivo Pery Jack Glasspool

Jack Lewandowski Jack Ryan Jaimie Claydon James Clark Jenna Sheehy Jennifer MacFadyen Jessica Wheeler Jiali Yao Jordi Ryano Josephine Foster Julian Besems Justin Yan Yui Chung Justyna Jaroszewicz Ka Tong Kiran Milton Laura Kelly Lauren Ly Loretta Ming Wai So Lucy Hartley Luke Dunlop Luke Rossi Lydia Hyde Marios Kypridemos Matthew Smith Megan Pearce Melissa Wear Meshal Hasan Michael Bautista-Trimming Michael Wilkinson Minfeng Zhou Monika Hristova Naomi Howell Sivosh Natasha Heyes Nicholas Green Nicholas Harmer Oliver Crossley Rita Mbabazi Rui Huang Samuel Fox Sara Kelly Scott Doherty Sihyun Kim Simon Quinton Sin Yi Wong Sun Yen Yee Tanatswa Borerwe Thomas Ardron Thomas Badger Thomas Reeves Thomas Williamson Tooka Taheri Tulsi Phadke Wei Zhang Xavier Smales Yiwenfu Tsz Waifung Yuet So Yuk Lun Chong Zhi Seah Zhuoran Li

Urban Planning Students Adem Mehmet Altunkaya Aldrich Jun Lin Choy Alice Farmer Anna Denker Chao-Ju Shih Charlie Fretwell Charlotte Harrison Dominic Hii Jii Yii Fedelis Tosandi Habiba Halilu Hasanain Ali Al-Jawad Hind Sharbash Jack Cross Jack Burnett James Maloney Jessica Poyner Kai Mo Kimberly Baker Liam Riley Mahnoor Ali Khan Man Chun Ip Martin Kruczyk Patrick King Po-Yen Chang Pui Ying Chu Quan Zhou Rebecca Alexander Richard Keeling Rutheep Prabhakaran Ryan Conlon Safeer Shersad Shu Ting Tang Thomas Wessely Veenay Patel Zheng Leong Zineb Khadri

Opposite - Sun Yen Yee A Place of Refuge

Stage 2 The Stage 2 design studio focuses on design theory and techniques. At the outset of projects students are encouraged to test different ways of researching and identifying design potential - ways of ‘reading’ contexts, project briefs and precedents, followed by ways of ‘writing’ responses in the form of design intentions – often utilising diagrams and other graphic devices. As the projects develop, they explore different ways of elaborating their designs, testing and evaluating them against their original intentions. They then explore different ways of declaring and explaining their designs, both to themselves and others. The non-design modules support the design projects closely with a focus on the domestic scale, home and the private realm in Semester 1 and on the medium scale, civic and public realm in Semester 2. Throughout the year students keep a Learning Journal, and are asked to record their learning, thinking and decision making, and to speculate about their next steps and needs to become reflective practitioners.

Year Coordinator Simon Hacker

Contributors

Ashley Mason Assia Stefanova Astrid Lund Dan Kerr Di Leitch Gregory Murrell James Longfield Jamie Anderson Jennie Webb Jessica Davidson Kate Wilson Kati Blom Kieran Connolly Michal Kubis Paul Grindley Philip Morris Richard Taylor Simon Bumstead Simon Hacker Tony Watson

Students

Aashiv Shah Abdul Rahim Adam Binns Adam Todhunter Adel Kamashki Adomas Novogrodskis Agnieszka Flis Aleksandra Murzina Alexander Minney Alice Ravenhill Anastasiya Kozina Anchal Shamanur Ariana Monioudis Babatunde Ibrahim Benjamin Risby Bernita Zhen Bonan Xu Bryony Simcox Carina Costina Chong Hui Ciaran Costello Clare Bond Connor Kendrick Cristina Diaz Damian English Darragh O’ Keeffe David Laidler Demetris Socratous Dominic Davies Edgar Sin Edward Newcome Eleanor Gair Elizabeth Holroyd Elliot James Hawrot Elliot Shaw Emily Blane Emily Ingleson Emma Gibson Florence Graham Fook Chin Francesca Barbour Gavin Strickland Hannah Auty Hannah Green Harry Thompson He Xu Hera Saqib Isobel Eaton Jade Moore Jake Richardson James Hunt Jasmine Tan Jessica Barton Jessica Goodwin Joanna Lindley John Harvey Joseph English Joshua Higginbottom Larika Desai Laura Sumardi

Lauren Pearl Markham Lewis Darnton Linda Velika Lorna Clements Lorna Gallagher Louisa Treadwell Luana Kwok Lydia Mills Matthew Plant Matthew Turnbull Maximilian Taylor Navneet Sihra Ole Steen Oliver Wolf Olivia Ebune Oluwatofunmi Onaeko Philippa Skingsley Ping Ju Preena Mistry Quan Yuan Randi Karangizi Raymond Boedi Richard Dunn Robert Cropper Robert Douglas Ruta Bertauskyte Sally William Sarah Hollywell Sarah Topley Shannon Maclaughlan Sharifah AlBarakbah Shauna Mcdonald Shiyun Chen Simona Kuneva Sophie Baldwin Su Denktas Vincent Haw Ping Hii Vishal Mandaliya Wan Chong Wongani Mwanza Xiaoli Tian Xiaoxu Ban Yan Ming Yasmin Kelly Yee Chew Yejing Fan Yu Qiao Yung Leung Zewei Wu Zhangxiufu Wu

Opposite - Bernita Teo Wan Zhen Placed_Displaced

Top - Yee Ching Chew Civic Centred

Middle - Raymond Boedi Civic Centred

Bottom - John Harvey Living On The Edge

Top, middle - Yee Ching Chew Crossover Velocity

Bottom - Yejing Fan Crossover Velocity

Raymond Boedi Civic Centred

John Harvey Civic Centred

Charette For the past few years the School of Architecture has been exploring different tactics for kick starting the academic year. 2012-2013 was the first year the school experimented with a week-long whole school event. Such was the success last year that this has now become a fixture in the academic year. With the benefit of the second year students and upwards having experienced the Charrette the year before, this year the bar was raised even higher. The week has a number of core objectives – to introduce first year and fifth year to the school, to re-engage returning students into academic life, to encourage cross year interaction, and most importantly to reinforce the pedagogy of peer learning. Simultaneously the week offers an opportunity to strengthen links with previous graduates and practitioners – both local and national. All the Charrettes were run by staff external to the school, but many of whom have either studied at the school or contribute regularly. There is now a waiting list of professionals wanting to run a Charrette, and it is gratifying to see the enthusiasm past graduates have to continue their involvement with the School. The brief to the Charrette leaders is comparatively simple – they only have 5 days – from Monday to Friday inclusive, there needs to be a tangible output, it needs to challenge all abilities and stages, and should be hands-on. The themes are generally left to the Charrette leaders, but quite often there are synergies, and rivalries. Charrettes this year covered subjects as diverse as urban foraging, post apocalyptic fashion, edible structures and pop up performance spaces. There was also a second outing for the now legendary (infamous) rube Goldberg Charrette. Last year 50 students and one large room, this year 100 students and the school’s circulation spaces. Next year – who knows . . . Learning outcomes are many and varied, from time management, to people management to expectation management. Communication skills, thinking on your feet, procurement and the importance of health and safety were also very much at the fore.

Charette 1: Ganghuts Colin Ross Charette 2: Wild Graeme Little, Stephen Whitehead, Miroslav Bernard Charette 3: One Week One Seat Shevaughn, Libby Charette 4: Apocalypse Now Tom Randle, Matthew Charlton Charette 5: Long Noise, Thin Image Tim Bailey Charette 6: Charette Condenser Ed Wainwright Charette 7: Food For Thought Cara Lund, Michael Simpson Charette 8: Animate Space Dan Kerr, Matt Lawes Charette 9: Vamos Ed Bennett, Andy Thomas, Alex Gordon, Nik Barrera Charette 10: Simulacrum Hanna Benihoud, Amy Linford

Stage 3 Following the fast paced, high-energy, design charrette across all years and design programs at APL, Stage 3 students went on a field trip to Barcelona to engage with an abandoned textile estate located in the rapidly changing neighbourhood of Poble Nou. This derelict industrial estate provided the focus for an urban proposal at the scale of the block as well as the addition to one of the buildings addressing reuse and refurbishment at the micro scale. The addition was to house an offshoot of the worldwide renowned theatrical company La Machine, which produce larger than life unusual objects and props that would parade through the Catalan capital. These objects created the opportunity to read the city as a stage and develop a building addition that would stretch the existing volumes to the full. Students could also explore areas of personal interest through a dissertation on a research topic of their own choice, whilst the design module culminated with a choice of six studios offering a wide variety of themes such as the curation of a collection of their particular interest (show and store), extremely dense urban conditions (thin spaces), the pursuit of pleasure in architecture (pleasure beach), light as a material for photographic and architectural expression (lightness), the contemporary debate of heritage and preservation (building on what is already built) or the enquiry around social and ecological sustainability in the context of a collaborative master plan (re: constitute).

Stage Coordinator Daniel Mallo

Project Leaders

Armelle Tardiveau Daniel Mallo David McKenna James Craig Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes Katerina Antonopolou Kati Blom Matt Ozga-Lawn Ray Verrall Sam Clark Sarah Stead Tijana Stevanović

Contributors

Aldric R. Iborra Ciara McDermott Di Leitch Dimitra Ntzani Ed Wainwright Graham Farmer James Longfield Johanna Vakkari Kenn Taylor Kieran Connolly Laura Harty Marc Turnier Martin Beattie Mel Whewell Melanie Woods Montse Ferres Nick Szczepaniak Paul Grindlley Paul Kapp Plácido González Martínez Rachel Cruise Sam Austin Simon Hacker Stuart Dickson Tim Bailey Tony Watson Usue Ruiz

Students

Abigail Jones Alexandra McCluskey Alexandra Mente Alina Pavlova Alina Tamciuc Andrew Nelson Annabel Hosking Annabel MacLeod Autumn Colledge Azam Haron Barnaby Gush Bethany HewittWilliams Carl Reid Chin Chng Chong Chuah Cleo Kyriacou Cynthia Wong Daniel Bainbridge Daniel Sprawson Deimante Bazyte Dominic Barham Eleanor Gibson Emilia Kalyvides Emily Waters Evie Moxon Frederick Hill Gabriel Niculcea Gemma Thompson George Sutherland Georgia Christodoulou Haichao Wang Hans Andreas Harriet Hughes-Onslow Harry Checkland Hei Lau Hiu Kwan Ilinca Georgescu James Street James Whitfield Jennifer Green Jenny Whitehead Jessica Raine Wilkie Jevgenij Rodionov Jin Lee Jodi Hampton Joe Hills Joseph Dent Ka Shui Lau Karl Mok Katharine Ridgway Katherine Mitchelmore Kathleen Jenkins Kathryn Fisher Katie Hanton Katie-Rose Hay Katy Lodge Liam Tilbrook Luke Torr

Marc David Mariya Lapteva Martin Healy Martin Pitt Matthew Nicholl Matthew Sharman-Hayles Matthew Wreglesworth Mengqi Song Michael Southern Miranda Coates Mohd Lizam Nikolas Ward Ningxin Ye Noor Jan-Mohamed Orestis Liaskos-Antoniou Rachel Leatherbarrow Ragini Chopra Raphael Selby Rebecca Lewis Rebecca Norfield Rebecca Wise Rhys Ansah Richard Morrison Rose O’Halloran Rufina Mukhametzyanova Ruth Pearn Samuel Halliday Sasha Ruiten Sebastian Bowler Shanshan Xiao Shaobo Wu Shiu Ho Szi Sia Theodore Coles Thomas Cowman Thomas Kendrew Thomas Saxton Tristan Francis Ulrich Chia Vasiliki Papagiannopoulou Vera Tolstova Vili-Valtteri Welroos Wang Wu Wanli Guo William Mackey William Purcell William Whiteaway Xinying Ji Yang Xiao Yik Cheng Yixuan Wu Zuhura Zuhair

Opposite - Jevgenij Rodionov The Monster of Blackpool Tower

Can Ricart, Barcelona This Can Ricart project asks the year group to work at a wide range of scales in Barcelona, from a site-wide strategy, to a building design, to individual details developed in conjunction with the Architectural Technology module.

Chong Yan Chuah

Top - Rachel Leatherbarrow

Middle - Matthew Wreglesworth

Bottom - Azam Malak Wan Haron

Top left - Rhys Ansah

Top right - Rebecca Lewis

Bottom - Matthew Wreglesworth

Top - Jevgenij Rodionov

Bottom left - Karl Mok

Bottom right- Mariya Lapteva

Studio 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Light-ness

Daniel Mallo and Armelle Tardiveau This studio focused on light and the narratives of lightness as architectural and photographic exploration. Through photography and the careful observation of the ethereal and dynamic nature of light, this brief revolved around light as material for architectural expression.

Top - Alina Tamciuc Light Institute

Bottom - Michael Southern The Light Institute

Left to right, from top - Deimante Bazyte, Hui Ki Kwan, James Street, Alina Tamciuc, Katie Hanton, Annabel MacLeod, Carl Reid, Deimante Bazyte

Top - Raphael Selby Newcastle Light Institute

Bottom - Deimante Bazyte The Pink Factory

Top - Thomas Cowman Light Institute

Middle - Katie Hanton The Lightness Studio

Bottom - Carl Reid Photography Centre

Studio 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Pleasure Beach

Matt Ozga-Lawn and James Craig This is a project about pleasure. The studio explored the relationship between architecture and this pursuit.We travelled to the iconic seaside resort town of Blackpool, a societal edge condition that enabled students to develop architectures devoted to pleasure. These designs were developed through souvenir objects and collages that allowed the projects to establish their own contexts and narratives in relation to a particular pleasurable pursuit. In doing so, students developed projects that use pleasure as a context, and allow us to see the everyday in a new light.

Azam Malak Wan Haron Holy Mountain

Left - Bethany Williams The Tower Block

Right - Azam Malak Wan Haron Holy Mountain

Left to right, from top - Matthew Wreglesworth, Matthew Wreglesworth, Azam Malak Wan Haron, Sasha van Ruiten, Rhys Ansah, Chong Yan Chuah, Jevgenij Rodionov, Thomas Kendrew, Will Mackey

Chong Yan Chuah Beauty in Grotesque

Studio 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Show/Store Kati Blom

The Show/Store project asked students to choose a collection, and develop an architecture through it. As a first task, students were asked to choose an object or objects from the collection and develop a kiosk or small scale structure to hold and locate it in Newcastle. Following this, students developed buildings that housed the whole collection in a new and exciting way, so that it could reach new audiences and provoke discussion on the consensual usage and possession of compendiums. The studio began with a trip to the John Soane museum in London.

Studio visit to John Soane Museum

Top - Miranda Coates Morbid Curiosity

Middle - Cleo Kyriacou Violin Collection

Bottom - Kathleen Jenkins The Land of Misfit Toys

Top, middle - Kathleen Jenkins The Land of Misfit Toys

Bottom - Liam Tilbrook Mining Maps Collection

Richard Morrison Newcastle Projector Archive

Studio 4 – Thin Spaces

Katerina Antonopoulou and Tijana Stevanović The aim of this studio was to push the morphology of the ‘chares’ in Newcastle to the extreme and to develop architectural proposals that deal with the tight urban conditions of the contemporary city. The studio was organised in three stages: the Cinematic Construct asked students to make a 3-5min film/video that explored density in the city. The students then produced a Notational Drawing that graphically spatialised, in a single drawing, the film. The two exercises became the framework for the development of the architectural proposals.

Top - Cynthia Wong Filled Up

Bottom - Katie-Rose Hay Fluctuations of Density in Relation to Time

Top - Chia Ulrich Urban Zen Garden

Bottom - Cynthia Wong Filled Up

Top - Sebastien Bowler Fighting Pressure

Middle, bottom - Frederick Hill Youth Centre

Top, middle - Gabriel Niculcea Urban Studies Laboratory

Bottom - Sebastien Bowler Fighting Pressure

Studio 5 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Building on what is already built Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes and Sam Clark

The studio challenged students to design a major addition to an existing heritage building - The Literary & Philosophical Society in Newcastle - grounding on the idea that any architecture work can be placed within a cultural continuum and is the outcome of a complex cultural, social and political struggle. This is an understanding of both architecture and heritage as a process rather than as a revered object to be preserved. It requires understanding the existing building in all ways; its architecture and materials express the values it sought to represent and serve at the time, and in the ways that this meanings might or might not be extended, enriched or transformed and reshaped by the new addition.

Top - Emilia Kalyvides The Lit & Phil

Bottom - Lit & Phil Typologies

Top - Emilia Kalyvides The Lit & Phil

Bottom - Lit & Phil Typologies

Top left - Dominic Barham The Lit & Phil

Top right- William Whiteaway The Lit & Phil

Bottom - Mariya Lapteva The Lit & Phil

Top left - Shiu Tung Wallace Ho The Lit & Phil

Top right, bottom - William Whiteaway The Lit & Phil

Studio 6 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Re:Constitute Sarah Stead and Ray Verrall

This studio sought to engage with contemporary architectural concerns and agendas, notably social and ecological sustainability, material awareness and collaborative processes. It explored a theme of constitution, as relating to issues of materiality and community, treating both as different scales of the same theme. Students were asked to develop a community masterplan, developing from the stalled regeneration efforts at Middlehaven, Middlesbrough. Studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s individual proposals were asked to respond to their neighbours dynamically and collaboratively through the shared public realm and potentially linked programmes.

Group masterplanning and final Middlehaven masterplan

Theodore Coles Marine Research Centre

Annelise Brown Cancer Prevention, Detection, Treatment and After-care Centre

Top - Rebecca Wise Group Site Plan

Middle, bottom - Rachel Leatherbarrow Reach Point Crematorium

BA Dissertation

A Long View at High Speed Andrew Ballantyne

Newcastle is one of a very few schools of architecture in Britain to include the writing of a dissertation in its BA programme, and our students’ work is consistently praised by our external examiners. Staff introduce their research interests in semester two of Stage 2, and students select a supervisor who works with them through to January of the Stage 3 year to develop their individual topics. Subjects range from archival work on historic houses to technological, speculative and drawn investigations to contemporary phenomena such as urban exploration, and in many cases inform their graduation project designs.

Extract from “A Long View at High Speed”, by Andrew Ballantyne, chapter four of Emergent Urbanism, edited by Tigran Haas (Ashgate, 2014).

The rate of change has changed. For hundreds of thousands of years so far as we can tell people managed to survive and maybe inventively outwitted the competition, but left no record of changing culture. Then decorative beads appear, and thousands of years later the sculpture of a lion-person and paintings in caves. 20,000 years after that there are the first signs of agriculture and the conditions were put in place for settlements in which there could be specialization. In the 10,000 years that have passed since then have seen the living conditions of many humans change astonishingly. Once the idea had been had, people noticed that there was something good about living in settlements--at least that is what the people who settled noticed. Others remained nomadic and developed in a different way, but anyone who is reading this book is likely to have a home to go to. Settlements were not invented so as to make possible the division of labour and technological progress, but these things were among the consequences of settlement. The number and the size of settlements grew. The number of people grew more rapidly after settlement, because more children could be supported. Scavengers would have had to carry their infants.1

“The Local” Richard Morrison The relationship we have with supermarkets is changing. In the 1980s they were large out of town warehouses. Now the same highly branded stores can be closer to us than neighbours’ houses. To achieve this proximity supermarket chains often re-use existing buildings. I examine the architectural and cultural implications of building a ‘local’ supermarket inside the shell of a ‘local’ pub through close analysis of the building in relation to documentary evidence, historical accounts, and architectural and cultural theories. This Dissertation is original in three ways. It examines the ‘local’ supermarket, a relatively new type of supermarket design. Second, it looks at the effect of combining this building type with pub architecture; up until now a rare transformation of use, but one that is likely to become more common. Thirdly it looks past the surface of the visible architecture, at a more symbolic meaning, bound up in rituals and habits, often overlooked in accounts of commercial architecture.

We continue to head for the cities, even if we are not born there as most people now are. We are drawn there with the hope of prosperity or status, and because the number of machines now operating in the countryside has diminished the number of agricultural workers that is needed. The dwellings in the European countryside are often occupied by people who work in a city, and therefore functionally these dwellings are part of the city.2 It is in the city above all that we encounter and learn respectfully to deal with people who are unlike ourselves and our immediate family. In the distant past these encounters may have been rare, but such skills and the values that they reflect are important now and will be important in the future.3 Where once the drift into agriculture was relatively slow, the current adoption of new ways of life is rapid. Until relatively recently it was a normal pattern of events for children to grow up in the same place as their parents and to follow the same or a similar trade. The industrial revolution changed things, especially the pace of things. Instead of working at the rate that was comfortable for a person to work, the machines could run much faster and could continue night and day. The water and then steamdriven machines of the nineteenth century were large and had moving parts that seemed powerful and expressive. The advanced machines of today and tomorrow are too small for us to see and do not have evocative form, but they bring us into new relations and bring about shifts in sensibility and our sense of boundaries of all sorts -- physical and psychological.

Geometric Genius Jodi Hampton The dome we see today at St. Paul’s has graced the skyline of London for over 300 years and evolved into its current form, thanks to the formula devised by Dr Robert Hooke in 1671. In an appendix to Helioscopes Hooke wrote, in anagram form, that he had found ‘a true mathematical and mechanical form of all manner of Arches for Building’. Two years after his death, the executor of his will revealed the meaning of the anagram: ‘Ut pendet continuum flexile, sic stabit contiguum rigidum inuersum’, ‘as hangs the flexible line, so but inverted will stand the rigid arch’. Hooke’s contribution in the design of St. Paul’s is poorly acknowledged.

The city is a machine that brings people into contact and helps them to generate new ideas and ways of life. It will continue to do that, but we are forcing the pace. Once upon a time we might have imagined that the world might continue harmoniously unchanging forever. Later we might have imagined that, having learnt a profession, we could practice it through the duration of a career. Now we have “lifelong learning”, and “continuing professional development”, if not mid-career changes of direction. Now we look for trends, and rather than being content to know what is happening, we try to see where it will all end and to get there before our competitors. Change is not only recognized, but institutionalized. In some places transactions may still be made after days of travel and a bartering of produce that the participants in the exchange have actually grown or made. But deals can now be made in commodities far more abstract than straightforward “money”, and they be instigated by machines and repeated thousands or even tens of thousands of times in a second. In this world of machines and exchanges that remain beneath the threshold of human sensory apparatus, the means by which things are achieved become undetectable and ceases to have symbolic value in art and culture. What remains is a more or less flexible network of communications and interactions, which join up to make society’s mind, which may not know what it is thinking because the consciousness remains in the individuals.

Despite references surrounding Wren and Hooke’s discussions on the subject of the ideal shapes for arches and domes in the Royal Society in 1670, in addition to the numerous entries in Hooke’s diary detailing discussions on the rebuilding on St. Paul’s. In 1675, Hooke reported that he showed his conclusions to Wren and ‘he altered his designs by it’.

Analysising The Sketch Mariya Lapteva This dissertation provides a theoretical framework aiming at unravelling the importance of architectural sketching outside of its visual meaning, centering on the two types of context it happens – a personal dialectic and a group based conversation aiming at discussion and presentation. The research begins connecting the personal imagination, its importance for the first steps of the design process and how information can be abstracted from its input. An interpretation of the notion of indexical relationships is presented in the context of conceptual drawing and the relationship it sets out to create. The dissertation then continues by introducing the nature of architectural problems and a proposition on a way of approaching their solutions referred to as a ‘play’ ideas. By introducing the concept of Creative Learning Conversations and presenting an interpretation of the ‘play’ – the ‘performance’, the issue of group based design practice is addressed. The importance of standardization becomes apparent since when the architects refer to sketches, a need for commonly understood measure is established. The last chapter looks at sketches as architectural signs, and presents them as a way for the architect to explain ideas and he becomes related to as a ‘tutor’. The dissertation argues that even though hand drawn measured drawings are under threat due to the rapid computerisation, the centre of the architectural knowledge and practice still resides in the sketch and its role in the design process is to, in a way, declare the architect as a dynamic and irreplaceable entity.

1. 2.

3. 4.

J.R. McNeill and Willism H. McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History (New York: Norton, 2003) pp. 27-8. Andrew Ballantyne and Gill Ince, “Rural and Urban Milieux”, in Rural and Urban: Architecture Between Two Cultures, edited by Andrew Ballantyne (London: Routledge, 2010) pp.1-27. Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2008). Richard Sennett, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life (New York: Knopf, 1970).

In The Uses of Disorder, Richard Sennett stigmatized the impulse to zone cities, which has often been felt by urban designers, as “adolescent”.4 Looking at human development at high speed, I would now want to call it Neanderthal. The Neanderthals had tidy minds, and lived tidily zoned lives, but the drawbacks are all-too-evident to us. We will continue to need secure and information-rich vantage points from which to make connections across the rest of our world, but not all our instincts will serve us well. Whatever it is that impels us to compete, acquire and build, does not seem to have an upper limit to the amount of competition, acquisition and building that seems necessary. Just a little bit more, we feel, will make us contented -- and we assemble global corporations that push their machinery to its limits and they turn out to have appetites that are absolutely insatiable. Humans are now moving minerals about the Earth’s surface at a greater rate than the glaciers did during the Ice Age, and it is proposed that we should call the dawning geological age the Anthropocene. Geologists themselves however resist the idea, because the Holocene has only just begun. In geological time the global warming that melted the glaciers is such a recent phenomenon, is so close to the rise in human culture that one would intuitively see them as cause and effect. Our instincts belong to a time long before our current patterns of life were established. At times we need to allow our reason to overrule our instincts, in the interests of the rest of society; but our instincts must be accommodated. Our buildings and cities must remain vital, and must help us to manage our instincts, as we get to understand them better. They can be dangerous and untidy, but must promote social interaction and experiment if we are to find out what is now possible.

Stage 5 Stage 5 is a year for serious experimentation: for exploring architecture in complex cultural, social, political, material and historical contexts, for testing out new approaches to design and representation. The briefs emphasize critical thinking, framing design as a rigorous as well as imaginative process, and developing design-research interests that might continue into stage 6 thesis projects and dissertations. The year begins with a week-long trip to a major international city – this year to Berlin – with an intensive programme of architectural tours, group urban analysis and social events. The year is set up as a critical re-imagination of the city, with two semester-long projects that challenge students to work at two radically different scales: first urban, then detail. In semester 1, Plan Berlin asked students to engage with the urban fabric of the city and its complex, interwoven historical layers. The project was taught as three distinct studios that each took on a different urban area and issue. Common themes include how ideology is manifested in architecture, questions of memory and memorialisation, and the role of infrastructure as a connector in a city once ruthlessly separated. The project is paired with the Tools for Thinking about Architecture module, which introduces a range of critical approaches through lectures, workshops, seminars and film screenings. Semester 2’s Unbuilt Berlin switched focus to material and technical imagination, taking on detail as an opportunity for creative and critical exploration and as something eloquent of the ideas driving a project. The brief asked students to take on an unbuilt project in Berlin – either never built or demolished – and to reimagine it on its original site. A detail and environment lecture series, supported by expert consultancies, encouraged students to take on a technical specialism that embodies the critical intentions of the project.

Year Coordinator Sam Austin

Project Leaders Ed Wainwright James Craig Sam Austin

Guest Reviewers

Adam Nathaniel Furman Amy Linford Daniel Reiser Dominic Weil Geoff Shearcroft Jessica Reynolds Matthew Jones Michael Tawa Patrick Devlin Sophia Psarra Steve Coombs Tilo Amhoff Tim Pitman Tom Brigden

Students

Addison Yick Alicea Berkin Andrew Wilson Angela Crosby Assia Stefanova Callum Brown Carol Meteyard Ceri Turner Emma Kirk Gregory Murrell Inga Laseviciute Jamie Anderson Jenny Greveson Jessica Davidson Jonathan Jones Michael Boalch Michal Kubis Olumayowa Onabanjo Philip Morris Philippa Wray Rhys Dunn Richard Taylor Robert Arthur Sabrina Lee Simon Brooke Simon Bumstead Thomas Kendall Thomas Lobb Will Whiter William Slack

Erasmus Students

Alban Mallet Annika Reddemann Gilles Mustar Holly Lim Jessica Tang Kathleen Ireland Paddy Williams Paul Bechara O’Hare Stefanie Ossenkamp Thomas Vanier

Opposite - Stefanie Ossenkamp Superstage

Terminal City Sam Austin

How can a former airport be reimagined, especially one resonant with associations of freedom and oppression? This studio took on Tempelhof â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 10,000 rooms, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s histories as Nazi air stadium and concentration camp, American military base, centre of the Berlin airlift, and commercial airport to propose alternative futures for this long-isolated city within a city. Students worked in groups of three to develop strategies, and then took on part of this individually.

Top - Inga Laseviciute Repository of Memories

Bottom - Alicea Berkin Re-writing Tempelhof

Top - Alicea Berkin Re-writing Tempelhof

Middle - Andrew Wilson The Tempelhof Forum

Bottom - Thomas Kendall Tempelhof the Border

Housing the Hauptstadt Ed Wainwright

How do you live in the city through ideologies? Through a close reading of Berlinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s key periods of ideological transformations, students were asked to produce a typology of housing in the city and, through an iterative design process of cut and paste, edit and remix, suggest spatial manifestations of future ideological forms on two sites in Berlin.

Group Nikolaiviertel Masterplan

Left to right, from top - Group Remixed City Model, Michael Boalch, Gregory Murrell, Carol Meteyard, Thomas Lobb, Michael Boalch

Wall 2.0

James Craig WALL 2.0 asked students to create a new infrastructure for Berlin by analysing and transforming the complexities of the original wall territory to create an innovative and multi-layered proposal. Students worked on their specific sections of wall through the preliminary stages of the project and in the final weeks connected their proposals together.

Jamie Anderson Battery Farm for Artists

Left to right, from top - Addison Yick, Jonathan Jones, Gilles Mustar, Callum Brown, Olumayowa Onabanjo, Stefanie Ossenkamp, Phillip Morris, Assia Stefanova, Jamie Anderson, Angela Brown, Richard Taylor, Alban Mallet

Tech-Week Tech-Week proposed a very plural position on the possible practices of a material culture. One week of material investigations for MArch students, saw a number of materially minded practitioners deliver talks on their interests and holding practically orientated workshops. Ranging from artists to architects; engineers to theorists and the pragmatic to the improbable, students and staff were offered exposure to, amongst others: the sculptural work of Newcastle’s Wolfgang Weileder; the neoplasmatic investigations of Marcos Cruz, former director of the Bartlett school of architecture; artist Holly Hendry’s world of smoke and rubber; Rachel Cruise’s Sheffield based researches into latent knowledge, engineering and inflatable steel; and Newcastle graduate and current MUF architecture/art member Amy Linford’s explorations into materially-led, process based urban projects. The week also asked students to take an area of their ongoing thesis projects and manifest an investigation into some element of the material of their proposals. Exhibited in a school-wide show to close the week’s work, material manifestations rendered the sterile air-curtain of a surgical facility in smoke; suggested a sugary solution to façade engineering; tested to destruction structural systems; analyzed the immateriality of light; took shadows as an architectonic strategy; modified milk to become a building material; and made molecular constructions to form unique bio-plastic components. The range of material explorations started to push the boundaries of how we commonly understand the idea of tech within the architect’s vocabulary.

Visiting Practitioners Amy Linford Cath Keay Colin Rose David Lawrence Effie Burns Henry Amos Holly Hendry Kwanphil Cho Liam Ross Marcos Cruz Rachel Cruise Richard Weston Wolfgang Weileder

[W]HOLE Sam Austin

Berlin’s Stadtschloss, historic centre of Prussian power, was heavily bombed in the Second World War and detonated by the DDR. Its replacement, the Palast der Republik – People’s Palace – was controversially demolished following reunification. A replica of the original – part shopping mall, part museum – is soon to be built. Students took inspiration from Joseph Beuys to make a material interpretation of one of the site’s many ghosts and a critical architectural response to this hole in the city and the competing desires for wholeness bound up with it. In the process, milk and sugar become plausible building materials, while concrete and earth are reimagined through unconventional processes of formation.

Top, middle - Jamie Anderson The Bitcoin Mining Rig

Bottom - Simon Bumstead Replacing Palaces

Left to right, from top - Simon Bumstead, Annika Reddemann, Gregory Murrell, Richard Taylor, Carol Meteyard, Philip Morris

Express

Ed Wainwright The underlying social, cultural and technological imperatives of Expressionism formed the basis for the Express studio. Through exploring the historical contexts of 12 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;ghostâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; buildings from the period, students proposed complex material, technical and spatial re-readings of these no-longer, or never-to-be extant, structures.

Assia Stefanova City Crown Revisited

Left to right, from top - Thomas Kendall, Angela Crobsy, Angela Crosby, Ceri Turner

75 ARC8054 / 5.2 BUILDING FABRIC . UNBUILT BERLIN . BERLIN RECONSTITUTED

Berlin Reconstituted James Craig

Berlin Reconstituted asked students to reinterpret 12 significant unbuilt projects in central Berlin. Students developed the context for their unbuilt precedents by analysing the psyche of the projects original architect. Through the analysis of the architect, students made key decisions on the structural, material and environmental qualities of their proposals.

SITE PLAN

Cupola Greenhouse not to scale Unbuilt Berlin: BERLIN RECONSTITUTED

[The Verdict: Grand Unveiling]

Alicea Berkin Victim 66

Left to right, from top - Jessica Davidson, Robert Arthur, Rhys Dunn, Philippa Wray, Michael Boalch, Will Slack

Stonehaugh Stargazing Pavilion Graham Farmer and Peter Sharpe

Students: Jonathan Beeby, Katie Begley, Katie Burgess, Caroline Brayson, Jennifer Calvert, Sophie Connor, Christian Dobjanschi, Olga Gogoleva, Irina Korneychuk, Marina Osmjana, Gabriella Smith, Ngoc Nguyen Tran, Gavin Welch, Joseph Worrall, Yang Zou Over the course of the past year a group of 15 MArch Linked Research students have designed and constructed the Schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first permanent live build project, situated in the small village of Stonehaugh, near Kielder. Developed in partnership with Kielder Art and Architecture and the local community the Stonehaugh Stargazing Pavilion is set to become a focal point in the village, attracting amateur astronomers, hosting events and encouraging more tourism to the area. It celebrates the Gold Tier Dark Sky award which was given to Northumberland National Park and Kielder Water and Forest Park earlier this year. Ideas for the structure were generated through a series of community consultation events and the local community have been actively involved in the process of constructing the project. The form of the pavilion is based on a spiral and it provides a sheltered belvedere for nature watching as well as a circular open courtyard with seating where groups can gather to view and discuss the night sky. The pavilion, which is set in a wildflower meadow has been partly constructed of locally sourced, reused or recycled materials and it will be planted with a sedum roof to increase biodiversity. It has already been booked for several stargazing events during the autumn of 2014.

The Building Regulations 2013: Developed Standardisation Adam Sharr

Students: Hugh Craft, Sarah Harrison, Louise Vitty There is a resounding perception within the construction industry, that building regulations hold a disproportionate amount of power over building design. We aim to investigate this claim through a number of explorations into the media, the regulations themselves and the opinion of those within the industry. Following these investigations, if we find the statement to be correct, we propose to highlight this issue, not only to those within the industry, by showing the effects of the regulations when applied to iconic buildings of the 21st century. Ultimately with the aim of potentially suggesting a reworking of what the Building Regulations control.

MArch Travel Diaries Three awards are offered each year to help Stage 6 MArch students visit sites overseas that are key to their thesis projects. With a high number of strong submissions this year, awards went to proposals that promised original itineraries and unusual ways of seeing or recording cities and landscapes.

Masculinity in Architecture: Napoleonic France Marc Turnier I applied for the APL Thesis Travel Grant to support my research into ‘Masculinity in Architecture’. My thesis investigates masculinity by extracting the iconographic meaning of Napoleon’s portraiture and monuments through their idealistic and realistic representation. To investigate and improve my thesis, I needed to gain first hand experience of visiting Paris’ Napoleonic monuments and portraits to best understand the effect on the public and the wider scale of the city. To strengthen my application, I decided I would drive from Newcastle to Paris (via Belgium) by motorcycle. Using the money given by the University, and my chosen method of transport, I was able to afford to drive the whole distance (2370km), pay for all my accommodation and purchase travel insurance for 8 days. I set off from Newcastle on 17th December, drove to London and then Folkstone to get the Eurostar straight to Calais. From Calais, I drove North and stopped off for the night in Dunkirk. On the second day, I drove into Belgium to visit the site of the famous Battle of Waterloo. This was Napoleon’s final battle, in 1815, shortly before his reign ended. He was then exiled (for the second time) to St Helena, where he died 6 years later, in 1821. Finally, I arrived in Paris (2 days later), having passed numerous small, beautiful villages and vineyards in Northern France. In Paris, I started to collaborate my research by initially visiting Napoleon’s monuments. I began to record the changes in perception and site lines throughout the City on my motorcycle by recording everything on a Go-Pro camera which was attached to the front of my bike. This gave me a constant reference of the scale of each of the monuments, alongside my own sketches and interpretations. The second part of my research was to visit the museums displaying portraiture of Napoleon to further my knowledge of the artists, the representations and styles of each of my 5 chosen portraits, each of which represent a key event in Napoleon’s empirical reign and demise.

Venice Sophie Connor

Making Byker James Longfield Student: Daniel Dyer The central focus of my research in Byker is into the hobby rooms and the more general topic of hobbies, however this linked research project has also engaged with the broader subject which James has been pursuing. The subjects he has been studying has situated our joint work, and also influenced our approach. The nature of the resident architect is an important backdrop to this linked research project. James has sought to understand the implications of such a position throughout his doctorate. From the beginning of James’s research he has lived in Byker, his approach deliberately reflects the practice of Ralph Erskine. Erskine had a desire to be amongst those he built for as he sought to understand the needs of local residents. James’s research is hinged on this same idea; he also set up an on-site office in the same way Erskine did. This approach affected the way we researched. Rather than researching through the mass collection and analysis of data, we engaged in a personal way, working through friendships. Sometimes a conversation with a friend in the estate or a link to a new acquaintance developed new lines of enquiry.

I had been to Venice before, but only during the summer; when the streets are packed with tourists jostling to cross bridges; Piazza San Marco is full of stalls selling trinkets and entry queues start straight after breakfast. Travelling to the city in January allowed me to see a different side of Venice, the misty mornings and quiet streets that inspired Nicholas Roeg to create a horror cult classic with ‘Don’t Look Now’. Admittedly, when thinking of film locations, Venice may not be the first place that springs to mind, but my thesis studies had lead me to investigate how the city is perceived and manipulated to suit a view or viewer. My trip to Venice consisted of two main activities, visiting my site and visiting the film locations I had identified through watching films set in the city. I visited each of the locations in turn and noted where there were anomalies in the scenes (compared with the real locations) and where the cameras must have been positioned to achieve the views. The selection and editing of the views used to describe a city stems from a selection of what is popular, but what is popular develops from the views that are selected. Historically, the less accurate image has often been seen as the more authentic – Piranesi’s 18th Century etchings of Rome for example. Copied and sent home, these became the views that travellers undertaking the Grand Tour wished to see. Piranesi’s works are described in Lasansky’s ‘Architecture and Tourism’ as “part documentary and part collage...the view is not just an optimization but also an invention.” An understanding of how and why the views used in the film scenes had been selected and manipulated, helped me to develop a series of ‘rules’ that I could apply to my programme and design to convey the research undertaken and ensure that my thesis embodied these concepts.

Shadow Cities: The Do Not Travel Guide Matthew Ruddy When disparate sources of fiction converge, agreeing on a theme with which the city is presented, to what extent are these themes used as a reaction to, and social commentary of, the realities of the city? While not intending to explain the forces behind the phenomenon of shadow cities (quasi-fictional urban constructs), my ambition was to highlight its increasingly powerful impact on the public perception of cities. To explore these questions I catalogued a case study shadow city and visited it to compare the fictional construction and the reality. Copenhagen has been extensively covered in the Nordic Noir genre and the two differing accounts of Copenhagen provide a light and dark juxtaposition of the city. Most importantly, I have no prior experience of the city other than through secondary sources, allowing me to compare the shadow city against the actuality. I collated the images and quotes from the fiction into a ‘travel guide’, which records the shadow city of Copenhagen as constructed in the fiction of Nordic Noir. Maps in fiction have helped the reader fully immerse themselves within scenes by providing a geographic framework. This has been a useful vehicle with which to plot Copenhagen using the Nordic Noir producing a shadow city map. The intention of not providing points of geographical reference in the Guide emulates the construction of the shadow city in denying the viewer an accurate and objective account of the city. Key points I collected from the fieldwork included the use of sites within the city as stage sets, highlighting where aspects have been omitted or introduced. Shadow cities are powerful entities with the power to alter our perceptions of distant urban topographies. As such they must be “continuously re-examined: they are, to be sure, artificial and diverse: but through them we interpret the past, test our sense of reality, and structure the future. And the city – for better or worse – is our future”. Its representation and this manipulation is therefore important to highlight and examine.

MArch Dissertation The 10,000 word MArch dissertation offers students the opportunity to undertake a sustained enquiry into a topic of particular interest to them and to develop their own modes of writing and presentation. Where appropriate the timing of the dissertation allows for topics explored to inform their final thesis design project, demonstrated here in particular in the work of Omer Alp, Ronnie Allen and Adam Smith. In 2013 we introduced for the first time a series of introductory seminars where students worked together as a group to develop their topics and a written proposals before starting supervisions with individual specialist tutors. The research has a growing profile in the School, with two public presentations taking place in October and February, and the dissertation is now a feature of the Degree shows in Newcastle and London.

Shadow Cities: The Reality of Fictional Copenhagen Matthew Ruddy

Gathering the [un]seen Site: The Potential of the Fictive Perspectival Site Adam Smith

There are cities I grew up in and know only through memory. There are cities I live in, are part of my present of which I am forming a crisp and evolving interpretation. And there are cities I have never visited but have consumed images and stories of. These I have the most expansive and engaging affair with, unbridled by the city’s overwhelming reality. These shadow cities - quasi-fictional urban realms - offer the most fascinating insights into our urban identity.

This writing investigates imagery as a tool for architecture to collect hidden yet meaningful information within an image, referred to here as the ‘image-site’, under the constraints that both site and image have bounding edges that constitute the limits of the viewer’s gaze. A traditional architectural site is all that lies within the lines drawn on a plan, while the ‘image-site’ is all that lies within the limitations of the appropriated media. The ‘architectural-site’ is here a reference to a projected fictive space beyond the image-site that contains implied spatial qualities.

This study has its roots in two of my areas of interest. The first is my fascination with the Nordic Countries. This I attribute to growing up in Newcastle Upon Tyne, a post-industrial city in the North-East of England. Links between Newcastle and the Nordic countries crop up in place names; Malmo Quay, Denmark Street, architecture; Swedish architect Ralph Erskine’s Byker Wall and in one peculiar tradition of receiving a Norwegian spruce every Christmas from the king of Norway. Across these shared seas I have looked upon my perceived view of Nordic exceptionalism as a vision of what Newcastle could be. The second inspiration is my love of crime fiction, notably those set in the Nordic cities and landscapes; Danish t.v. drama The Killing, The Bridge and Stieg Larrson’s Millenium series. It is the juxtaposition of dark narratives within these perceived economically stable and morally harmonious societies that intrigue me, prompting this research.

Hamilton’s collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? works as an imagesite with imminent architectural implications, for it holds a suggestive spatial quality that exists within the image-site and the architectural-site beyond. It is often Hamilton’s choice not to construct the image-site as true perspectival assemblage. This false construct of perspectival space is a consequence of the method of construction. Considering it as a result of its limitations allows the required empathy to project the space beyond the image-site without full understanding of the spatial implications. If we project the gatherings of the image-site into the architectural-site it is possible that the spatial implications of the image-site are architectural. Once spatialised, they have a new set of relationships and implications, and provide a notional experience of the image-site. It now occupies a space of representation rather than presentation; acting only as a description or collage for the space beyond.

Phanstasmagorias: A Journey Through Dubai’s Urban Fictions Dana Mudawi

The Aspiration Arena Paul Hegarty

This dissertation argues that Dubai’s essence hinges on the notion of the phantasmagoric. It is a place made up of a series of images and illusions, most prominent of which tells the tale of a tranquil Bedouin city whose booming skyline rose from the desert overnight. This seemingly rash construction has been widely met with criticism and ridicule; Dubai’s emergence as a global city has been accompanied with pictures and statistics that shock and impress but do little to enhance understanding.

This dissertation is a critical summary of the transformation of spiritual homes of football, typified and defined by the people within them, to grand modern architectures, such as the new Wembley Stadium, that continue to represent an ethereal set of values. Despite being focused on accommodating numbers, traditional stadiums are now intrinsically linked with the nostalgic ‘golden age’ of football with many clubs registering record attendances that still stand to this day. Even the word ‘Arena’ insinuates a broader entertainment industry, one so saturated with commerce that it has lost all sense of the very purity and ethics that had made it so successful in the first place.

Primarily, the dissertation draws upon three myths which are widely associated with Dubai: firstly the myth of the ‘instant’ city. Secondly, that the city was created by just one hand, its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. Thirdly, that this was all made possible due to the city’s blank slate, its tabula rasa that has provided the ideal landscape for the city’s architectures to take shape. These myths are later unravelled in an accompanying set of counter-myths in a double-theoretic framework borrowed from the writings of Roland Barthes. This constant process of myth, countermyth is repeated throughout the text in my choice of case studies. These case studies take two of Dubai’s most widely referenced architectural objects: the Burj Khalifa and the Palm Jumeirah. I inhabit the various myths and fantasies associated with these objects, taking on the voice of a first person narrator in a series of narratives that are written in a style inspired by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino.

Consuming Heritage: The Faux-Historic Architecture of Poundbury, the Packaging of Duchy Originals and the Political Rhetoric of Late Capitalism Ronnie Allen Like the majority of Faux-Historic architecture, the buildings at Poundbury are not constructed with pre-modern techniques and technologies. Instead, the structure and interior of these buildings use modern materials, construction methods and building technologies. The application of historic stylistic elements are limited to the facade, a thin veneer on top of familiar concrete blockwork units. However, there are examples where the materiality of the applied veneer remains unconvincing following completion. Another of Prince Charles’ projects aimed at conserving British heritage and maintaining harmony with nature, his Duchy Originals food brand, has also received media criticism, with reports that some items contain more fat than foods of comparable size from the fast food chain McDonalds. What is evident here is that when a certain set of values are taken and applied to consumer products in the consumer-driven society of late capitalism, the realities of production tend to cause an incongruity to appear between the presentation and the body of the product. The values become applied as a thin veneer but do not penetrate deeper into the functional make-up of the product. Where the Prince has been most successful in bringing a genuine change to the methods of production can be seen in the sustainable farming techniques behind Duchy Originals as well as the pedestrian-centred urban planning and mixed land use at Poundbury. However, much evidence remains to suggest that the building blocks of both the architecture and food differ little to that found elsewhere.This leaves the Prince’s societal concerns to be distorted and applied merely as facades on the face of these products.

Stadiums changed forever on one sunny spring afternoon in 1989. Twenty-five-thousand Liverpool fans had made the short trip to Sheffield to watch the FA Cup semi-final, but following a chaotic crush ninety-six of them never came home. Post-Hillsborough stadiums have produced safe and comfortable environments for watching an increasingly commercial and corporate sport. But they are in danger of becoming symbolic of an ageing notion of architecture as icon. No words encapsulate the human response to such a catastrophe like this than title Liverpool’s timeless club anthem. Words that define the ‘brotherhood’ atmosphere that produces the most distinct stadium architecture. Words that are the antithesis of self-indulgent and status-seeking buildings. Words that will invariably evoke memories of that sunny spring afternoon that changed sport forever: You’ll Never Walk Alone.

Treating the Symptoms: A critical investigation of the spatial shifts caused by transforming the healthcare from a right to a commodity and from national to global, through the example of Acibadem Maslak Hospital Ömer Faruk Alp Acibadem Maslak Hospital, Istanbul accepted its first patient in 2009. In terms of its patient-centred healthcare delivery, this hospital created a significant shift in the public perception of hospitals especially in comparison to existing state hospitals. Due to its spatial and technological innovations it is one of the few hospitals in Turkey to be covered in well-known architecture websites. The interior design of the hospital was inspired by the microscopic view of the epithelium tissue in human body as to provide patients with an indirect lighting. Contrary to its coverage in professional literature and Turkish media, however, what made this hospital unique was its conception and development in becoming a landmark building from the point of view of both political and professional organisations. For AKP, President Erdogan’s governing party, it was considered a success because they managed to realize this hospital where other governments had failed. More importantly, Acibadem Maslak represented a major shift in terms of how a healthcare facility delivers services and to whom it delivers them. It is a preferred destination of the Istanbul’s elite and also serves a local population with government-provided health insurance. This dissertation critically investigates the profound changes in the Turkish healthcare system in the last decade. The focus is on examining how this hospital represents the shifts from a healthcare seen as a right to a healthcare as a commodity and from a healthcare in the national scale to a healthcare in the global scale.

Eight months in Ethiopia: working at Addis Ababa University Peter Kellet

In Newcastle I can cycle leisurely to the university in 10 minutes- and even less if I’m running late. Last year I swopped universities and it regularly took me over 90 minutes of walking and travelling on overcrowded mini buses to cross the city of Addis Ababa to get to work. Fortunately it was usually a little quicker getting back – except in the summer months when the almost daily torrential rains brought the city to a standstill. The trick was to read the storm clouds to work out when the rains might arrive from across the mountains. That was a skill I didn’t master during my time there. What was I doing in Addis Ababa? I went to Ethiopia as a volunteer with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), an international charity which supports development initiatives addressing poverty and underdevelopment. Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa (c 90 million) and one of the poorest in the world with growing problems of inadequate housing and urban expansion, but a critical shortage of professionals. My work was part of the Engineering Capacity Building Programme of the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia which aims to introduce best practice and achieve international standards in teaching, research and technology transfer in the rapidly expanding universities. This includes recruiting experienced senior academics. As Visiting Professor of Housing at Addis Ababa University based in the Ethiopian Institute for Architecture Building Construction and City Development, my core work was to support my new Ethiopian colleagues, and contribute my experience as part of a team. I joined a small group of academics who teach and research housing and who welcomed me enthusiastically. I’ve been working in the field of housing most of my life, and my day-to-day work in Addis involved helping to raise teaching standards and working with postgraduate students to develop practical, sharplyfocused research. The overall aim is to increase the number of well-qualified professionals who will be able to contribute to improving housing standards and help reduce the housing deficit. They run a Masters programme in Housing and Sustainable Development and I was able to contribute in various ways. In addition to giving lectures I proposed the introduction of group seminars to share experience and knowledge. It was encouraging that the students and staff were so enthusiastic about how effective (and enjoyable) small group working can be. My long experience as a PhD supervisor also proved very relevant when I was asked to join a small team developing a new PhD programme in Housing and Urban Development. The aim is that future doctoral graduates will take up leadership roles in the expanding universities as well as contribute to research, policy and practice in housing. I also mentored four junior lecturers delivering a module to undergraduate planners developing alternative approaches to inner city housing in Addis. We spent time in the crowded low-income settlements just outside the campus which are earmarked for demolition and redevelopment 1960s style. The students are often passive in class so we experimented with a range of active learning approaches to encourage greater participation and engagement of students in class activities. Another of my roles was to support an experimental sustainable housing project building full-size prototypes with local communities to improve traditional rural housing. Improved living conditions are important in addressing a growing concern over increasing migration to the cities. There are also parallel efforts to develop projects for urban communities. I wrote a joint conference paper on climate change and rural housing with my counterpart, Dr Elias Yitbarek, and I’m continuing to work with him and the team on a publication about the rural housing project. Researching and writing together is an effective way to build up writing and publishing skills as well as making the work available to wider audiences. As a volunteer my role was to work alongside and support local colleagues through sharing skills and experience in a two way learning process. The Ethiopians were keen to learn, and genuinely interested in my international experiences, and of course I learnt a great deal from them. The experience of living and working in an African city is also very helpful in informing my teaching and research now I’m back in Newcastle. But this is more than an individual initiative as it offers institutional opportunities. We are planning to build a long term relationship through a formal academic link to facilitate academic exchanges and research collaborations between the two institutions. This continuing work in Ethiopia will fulfil several of Newcastle University’s key priorities of increasing engagement, internationalisation and social renewal. It also offers significant opportunities for the University to raise its profile in that part of the world and demonstrate solidarity and commitment as a civic university with a strong and active social profile. Living in Ethiopia was stimulating but not always easy. At the university we worked in English, but the Amharic language was a real challenge, although gradually I managed to make some sense of the wonderfully graphic script. Perhaps the biggest frustration was the painfully slow and unreliable internet even in the best university in the country. We take such things too easily for granted here. It was fascinating to live in such an exciting, vibrant and chaotic city. There was so much happening, especially on the streets – which are so colourful and full of life and energy - but also with many beggars, countless shoeshine boys and people sleeping rough. The city is changing rapidly with construction everywhere, and also demolition to make way for the new Light Railway system being built by the Chinese. So there was even more dust, mud, noise, chaos and traffic jams than usual. In many ways I was lucky as my daily journeys across the city provided a wonderful opportunity to experience, observe and record these activities and changes. So now I’m back in Newcastle my daily 10 minute cycle ride seems rather too short and remarkably uneventful in comparison. I miss the energy and excitement of Addis – but I did manage to bring some things back with me. With an award from the Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice I am currently planning a contemporary art exhibition/installation using these everyday objects and images from Ethiopia to inform, inspire and provoke. So watch this space!

Stage 6 Sixth year is taught through themed studios run by a combination of academics and local practitioners, full and part time staff. Students undertake a year long thesis with a self generated brief, however this brief is informed by, and related to, thematic frameworks established by the individual studio. All studios undertook a five week long ‘primer’ exercise at the start of semester 1. The primer output was not expected to be a ‘building’ but in all cases had an architectural relevance. The studios were designed to offer the students a wide range of themes to consider, in all cases the studios explored issues that also have a wider contemporary social, economic and cultural relevance. Prevalent themes explored this year have been honesty/integrity, aging populations, temporary occupation, and urban manufacture. Also, introduced in 2012 / 2013 was the requirement for a ‘Technical Specialism’ as an integral part of the thesis project, and the ‘Academic Portfolio’. Students were encouraged to explore from the outset a specific line of technical enquiry that could inform the architectural development of their project. Supported by leading regional and national engineers the technical development of the project is recorded in a ‘Technical Report’. 2013 / 2014 saw the introduction of the ‘Tech-Fest’ week - shared between Stage 5 and Stage 6 Students - to further the integration of technology and material explorations into the thesis.

Year Coordinator Matthew Margetts

Studio Leaders

Adam Sharr Colin Ross Ed Bennett James Craig Martyn Dade-Robertson Matt Ozga-Lawn Matthew Margetts

Contributors

Alistair Robinson Andrew Carr Andrew Perez Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa Chay Fitzpatrick Graham Farmer Jason Lynn Jason Nelson Jo McCafferty Josep Fuses Kevin Gray Kieran Connolly Laura Harty Marc Horn Matt Lawes Matthew Flintham Meng Zhang Mike Harrison Montse Ferres Pierre D’Avoine Sarah Jane Stewart Stewart Hallett Tim Pitman Tom Schofield

Students

Adam Smith Alec Backhouse Annie Hart Benjamin Graham Caroline Brayson Cristian Dobjanschi Dana Mudawi Daniel Dyer Gabriel Li Gabriella Smith Gavin Welch Grant Cameron Hugh Craft Irina Korneychuk Jennifer Calvert Jonathan Beeby Joseph Charman Joseph Worrall Katherine Begley Katie Burgess Louise Vitty Marc Turnier Marina Osmjana Matthew Ruddy Michael Chapman Nathalie Gilbert-Gray Ngoc Lam Nguyen Tran Olga Gogoleva Ömer Faruk Alp Paul Hegarty Peter Drysdale Richard Hodgkinson Robert Moxon Ronald Allen Sarah Harrison Sophie Connor Ugnius Katinas Vitalija Salygina Yang Zou

Opposite - Adam Smith The Trial

Studio 1 – Quotidian Contraptions #2 Matthew Margetts and Ed Bennett

Students were asked to explore architectural and urban problems through ‘contraptions,’ effectively analogue computers, highlighting and articulating problems usually taken for granted and providing opportunities for primitive parametric explorations. The studio focus was the coast, with students exploring sites in 4 locations – Bridlington, Scarborough, Hull and Grimsby. All places share similar issues of simultaneously declining industry and tourism, and also wider environmental concerns. The year started with the ‘primer’ project, where students were asked to find a real client, and make a ‘contraption’ to highlight (and add joy to) an everyday aspect or ritual of their working day. Common to all contraptions is the need for human interaction, a revealing of process and sometimes unpredictable consequences. As all the studio locations are undergoing significant change, this process was continued into devices for modelling, mapping and responding to variable site forces.

Joseph Charman The Silt Exchange

Hugh Craft Edgelands

Top - Richard Hodgkinson Temporal Legacies

Bottom - Matthew Ruddy The Anti-Social Club

Top - Annie Hart Spaces of Lonliness

Bottom - Louise Vitty The Social Knitwork

Top - Michael Chapman Queue The Conversation

Bottom - Peter Drysdale The Infothermal Spa

Vitaliya Salygina Doomsday

Sarah Harrison The Theatre of Politics

Studio 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ArchaID Martyn Dade Robertson

What is the role of the designer in creating architectural objects through processes which substantially not under their control? What are the tectonic possibilities of constructing a world in this way? What sort of analytical possibilities come from seeing the world in this way? These were the questions the ArchaID studio asked this year. The studies began with a collaboration with a molecular biology lab at Northumbria University which investigated the patterning of bacteria colonies and a parametric design process along with an intensive course on software programming. From here the students developed Thesis projects on 3D printing at architectural scales, bioplastics and contamination.

Gabriella Smith E | X | I | T

Jonathan Beeby Silt Screed Printing

Ă&#x2013;mer Faruk Alp Cosmetic Clinic in Istanbul

Studio 3 – Strange Places Adam Sharr

This studio is about strange, unique places – places that have distinctive cultural, social and/or material qualities - which are so particular that the architecture made there will be like architecture made nowhere else. Students have each selected their own places to work with, ranging geographically from Singapore and Ghana to Dover, Oxford and Newcastle’s Central Motorway.

Joseph Worrall Inverse Oxford

Daniel Dyer The Characterful City of Tomorrow

Irina Korneychuk Learning From Metrocentre

Nathalie Gilbert-Gray Testing Ground

92 Top - Marina Osmjana Manufactured Blaenau Ffestiniog

Middle - Dana Mudawi Hypothesising the [Dis]juction

Bottom - Paul Hegarty The Aspiration Arena

Ronald Allen Institute for Consumer Responsibility

Robert Moxton Factory Settings

Top - Sophie Connor Through a Lens

Bottom - Jennifer Calvert Different Dovers

Studio 4 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Parallel Military Geographies Matt Ozga-Lawn and James Craig

Parallel Military Geographies drew on the wealth of reseach into militarism at Newcastle University and asked students to explore alternative modes of representing and thinking about space that are generally considered to belong to the military realm. These modes were used to inform projects on a wide-range of themes, from a housing estate defined by visual algorithms, to a study of masculinity in the portraiture and monuments of Napoleon in Paris that developed into a Museum of Heroic Victory on the Seine.

Cristian Dobjanscki APL Newcastle 2050

Ugnius Katinas Waterloo Gardens

Lam Nguyen Occupy Manhattan - A Protest Blueprint

Adam Smith The Trial

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Marc Turnier The Museum of Heroic Victory

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Studio 5 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Under the Skin Colin Ross

A study of people and place, the studio explored the fascinating setting of Girona in North East Spain. The group worked with the simple proposition of seeking to get beyond the obvious surface charms of this beautiful Medieval city, exploring and unearthing issues, problems and particular circumstances of both existing population and physical environment. A rich diversity of subjects emerged from this context to frame individual thesis interests, inform group debate and fuel design proposals throughout the year. The studio aimed to harness the potential of architecture to support, enrich and enliven the human condition. It responded to uncomfortable subjects and unusual propositions whilst resulting in proposals that have some meaning, spaces and places that are needed and suitably resolved to be believable.

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Benjamin Graham Photos

Benjamin Graham Elefante Verde

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Gavin Welch Parliament Popular

Alec Backhouse An Active Redemption

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Gabriel Li Beyond the Viaduct

Katie Burgess Girona City Wall

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Top - Yang Zou Perception Clinic

Middle - Grant Cameron Manors Car park

Bottom - Katie Begley A Material Reaction

Olga Gogoleva Domestic Violence Support Centre

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Research at APL Architectural research at Newcastle is thriving and we are one of the ten subject areas to be prioritised by the university in its most recent strategy. While we have long had an impressive track record of publication by individual staff, this year has seen some important developments for the strength of our research community. ARC – the Architecture Research Collaborative – launched in March this year under the co-directorship of Katie Lloyd Thomas and Martyn Dade-Robertson, with the aim to disseminate the work of colleagues and research students and to foster new collaborations between us around a dynamic and evolving matrix of themes that cut across our disciplinary approaches. For example, the network Architecture’s Unconscious (Kati Blom, Andrew Ballantyne and others) held its second annual symposium at the Maison de Verre in Paris and EViz, the £1.5 million ESPRC funded project exploring energy visualisation in carbon reduction completed its second year (Neveen Hamza with Bath, Birmingham and Plymouth Universities). With the self-build Pallet Pavilion for the British Science Festival 2013, Newcastle was shortlisted for the RIBA small projects awards (Armelle Tardiveau, Daniel Mallo and students). Under the managing editorship of Adam Sharr, we are now the home of Architectural Research Quarterly (arq) published by Cambridge University Press, and share the journal’s commitment to multidisciplinary architectural research including practice, design and pedagogy as well as history, theory and technology. Our raft of post graduate taught courses continue to expand. These draw on staff expertise across humanities, design and technology and include programmes in sustainability and the built environment, design emergence, landscape and urban design. We have a taught postgraduate community of about 120 students and our programmes also provide opportunities for existing MArch and PhD students to explore research specialisms with the school. PhD research within architecture is flourishing and we have an unprecedented number of postgraduate research students in architecture working on topics as diverse as synthetic biology, architectural criticism and history, ventilation and energy, participatory practice and speculative design. The PhD by creative practice is one of our fastest growing areas supported in particular by our in-house design research consultancy Design Office. Our PhD students have presented work in at national and international conferences in Cambridge Ontario, Montreal, Dublin, Turin, Gothenburg, Oxford, Paris, Edinburgh and Helsinki amongst others.

Cultures and Transition Andrew Ballantyne Ian Thompson Martin Beattie Peter Kellett Sam Austin Zeynep Keyzer

Futures, Values and Imaginaries Adam Sharr Andrew Ballantyne Graham Farmer Ian Thompson Kati Blom Matt Ozga-Lawn Nathaniel Coleman Neveen Hamza Steven Dudek

Mediated Environments Carlos Calderon John Kamara Katie Lloyd Thomas Martyn Dade-Robertson Neveen Hamza Sam Austin Steven Dudek

Research by Design

Adam Sharr Armelle Tardiveau Daniel Mallo Graham Farmer Martyn Dade-Robertson Matt Ozga-Lawn Matthew Margetts

Social Justice, Well-being and Renewal Armelle Tardiveau Carlos Calderon Daniel Mallo Kati Blom Nathaniel Coleman Peter Kellett

Specifications, Prescriptions and Translations John Kamara Katie Lloyd Thomas Matthew Margetts Simon Hacker Zeynep Kezer

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Visiting Professors, PhD examiners and contributors: Professor Paul Emmons Professor Katja Grillner Professor Michael Tawa Professor Paul Carter Professor Robert Tavernor Professor Mark Dorrian Dr Gill Ince Dr Meng Zhang Dr Steve Parnell Dr Maria Theodorou Helen Stratford Mary Vaughan Johnson

PhD students

Abdelatif El-Allous Ashley Mason Catalina Mejia-Moreno Dhruv Sookhoo James Longfield Jose-Luis Hernandez-Hernandez Keiji Makino Khalid Setaih Kieran Connolly Mabrouk Alsheliby Macarena Beltan Rodriguez Matt Ozga-Lawn Mohamed Mahgoub Elnabawi Mohammed Mohammed Najla Mansour Oluwatoyin Akim Paola Carolina Ramirez Figueroa Rand Agha Salem Tarhuni Sam Clark Sha Miao Tijana Stevanović Ulviye Nergis Kalli Yasser Megahed Yun Dai

MPhil/MA/MSc Students Anh Nguyen Vuong Duy Ayesha Ali Chen Deng Chen Huang Chen Wang Chukai Chen Eamon Cassidy Fuyao Wang Guang Zhang Hao Qi Yao Haozhou Zhou

Hung Do James Samuel Bush Jiahan Wang Laura Harty Long Wo Lu Xu Maria Carmen Carballeira Mingke Jiang Mo Zhou Muyan Liu Nasim Nejabat Haghighi Nikoletta Karastathi Quansong Li Rabiya Imtiaz Rohit Shirish Dasnurkar Ruiyi Murong Samer Wanan Sebastian Ignacio Sio Long Ao Ieong Su Dol Choi Tunc Karkutoglu Wooyong Jang Xiang Wu Xiangchao Zheng Xiao Han Xiaoyu He Yang Xu Yichao Chen Yifei Qiu Yixiang Ma Zehao Hu

MA in Design and Emergence (MA_DE) Martyn Dade-Robertson

Contributors: Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Meng Zhang, Tom Schofield, Ed Wainwright MA_DE is a new program this year which looks at the role of dynamic and emergent processes in design. The program is developed to appeal to a wide range of designers – from architects to product and interior designers, and is built around core modules in programming, research through design and interaction design. The course foregrounds the role of new computational tools in the context of digital design and through its core modules develops students’ design skills in three key areas: the use of parametric techniques to create dynamic material systems; software design and implementation using languages created specifically for visual designers; and human interaction with computational systems which are designed to be embedded into physical environments. Throughout the programme the emphasis is on making physical sketches and prototypes and of mixing the digital and physical through tangible and dynamic material systems and structures. Students look at areas as diverse as the role of locative media in archiving the city through to using the growth of bacteria as a method of parametric design. This year, students worked with the process of Diffusion Limited Aggregation (DLA) which is a simulation of a process seen in a range of natural systems. The project involved learning how to write software code in processing and also collaborating with a molecular biologist (Dr Meng Zhang) to build ‘bacteria scaffolds’ to influence the process of patterning in nature.

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Tunc Karkutoglu Diffision Limited Aggregation Experiments

Jonathan Beeby, Gabriella Smith + Omar Faruk Alp Bacteria Patterning

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MA in Future Landscape Imaginaries Ian Thompson

Contributors: Katerina Antonopolou, Andy Slater, Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Matt Ozga-Lawn, Nathaniel Coleman, Venda Pollock The Master of Arts in Future Landscape Imaginaries is an innovative one-year taught masters-level programme that focuses on the relations between landscape, culture and society, and on the various ways that landscape is practised, represented and imagined. Within the context of a single interdisciplinary programme, it brings together various aspects of landscape studies that are normally isolated from one another, involving its students in both critical analyses of historical and contemporary landscape discourses and substantial research through creative practice. The programme focuses in particular on the various ways that future landscape conditions are being imagined and projected in the present, ranging from responses to anticipated climate change and mounting global urbanization to current geopolitical imaginaries of the newly securitized nation state. Students are given the opportunity to act not only as analysts and critics, but also through the articulation of landscape propositions in their own creative practice â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as cultural producers.

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Top - Jiahan Wang Framing Landscape

Bottom - Quansong Li Resin Preservations

Laura Harty River Tyne Drawing Device

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MA in Urban Design Georgia Giannopoulou

Contributors: Suzanne Speak, Daniel Mallo, Armelle Tardiveau, Ali Madanipour, Rose Gilroy, Nathaniel Coleman, Mark Siddall, John Devlin, Richard Smith, Aidan Oswell, Dhruv Sookhoo, Jo Gooding, Roger Higgins, John Sparks, Vickie Smith, Montse Ferres Newcastle Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s well established MA in Urban Design is a truly multidisciplinary programme drawing on expertise from the three disciplines represented in the School; Architecture, Planning and Landscape. This also reflects the educational backgrounds of our student cohorts. The course aims to strike an important balance between skills and techniques in contextual design drawing upon an in depth understanding of the built environment as well as theories and methods in social sciences. This approach gives the urban design programme at the University a unique character among similar programmes in the UK. The course is also characterised by strong links to both public and private sector agencies in the North East region and student involvement in live projects including varied participatory activities is strongly fostered. The programme is taught through a series of projects developing skills, methods and techniques in urban design. Design modules involve and make links between social theory and practice. Lecture and seminar modules also support these projects with core knowledge on classic and contemporary urban design issues. The course bolsters a strong studio environment and skills sharing through group work. It also prides itself on significant exposure and inputs from a number of professionals from a variety of relevant disciplines. www.nclurbandesign.org

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South Shields Urban Regeneration Project

Top - Eamon Cassidy, Sudol Choi Hexham Warehouse Masterplan

Middle, bottom - Anh Duy, Xiao Han, Mingke Jiang, Frederisberg Greenway, Copenhagen

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MSc in Sustainable Buildings and Environments Neveen Hamza

Contributors: Ian Gray, Peter Kempsey, Sonia Kempsey, Walter Story, Wael Nabih, Sam Austin, Daniel Kerr Students in SBE use building performance simulation tools and a deeper understanding of building physics to underpin their design approaches. They work with two challenging live projects as part of their course. Alston is the highest town market in England, with a derelict town centre that boasts an old Mill (the High Mill) housing a historic water wheel built by Smeaton. A place of rich history from silver, lead mining to a community that hosted Italian prisoners of war, to a modern day isolated centre with ceramic and pottery artisans and an aging community. We were approached by the local residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; representative to take on the challenge of proposing ideas to reinvigorate the town centre that would promote sustainability (socially, economically and in energy consumption). The High Mill building itself experienced many alterations and was extended into a steel precision works factory over the 1980, presenting us with a complex layered building of various materials and bridges linking between them. Community engagement with various inputs from design and structural tutors led to interesting proposals that are now being curated for a full exhibition for a wider community audience. The Sunderland Royal hospital is the second live project working closely with the estate department to improve the 1960s building to ameliorate overheating and natural ventilation in the rooms year round. Students also expanded their explorations to look at climate change scenarios and environmental architectural concepts can prevent the need for cooling.

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Top - Sunderland Royal Hospital

Bottom - Alston High Mill

Alston High Mill

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MA in Architectural Design Research Katerina Antonopolou

Contributors: Ed Wainwright, James Craig, Sam Austin, Kostas Avramidis, Sophia Banou, Dimitra Ntzani The MA in Architectural Design Research is a design-based international Masters programme that focuses on the relations between architecture and today’s complex urban conditions. The programme allows the development, through a series of interlinked project stages, of major design projects that engage the full range of architectural scales, from the urban/territorial strategy to the detail, along with their theoretical extensions, which critically reflect upon these projects and situate them in relation to positions in contemporary architectural discourse. This year the programme run under the theme of ‘Berlin: Imagined Memories’, borrowing its title from Andreas Huyssen’s book ‘Present Pasts’, in which he comments on the mass-marketing and mass-consumption of memory in the contemporary city. The project called students to reflect on the role of memory in constructing the present and imagining the future, focusing on a city that has given space to some of the most important historical events of the twenty-first century: war and destruction, democracy, fascism, Stalinism, and the Cold War have all been played out here. The aim was to study the act of remembering, and its realisation through urban design and architecture, as part of the present. The field trip in Berlin, organised in collaboration with the stage 5 MArch programme, focused on the ways in which the city commemorates its intense past, not only through the construction of memorials and museums, but also through urban strategies of preservation and redevelopment, and the lived experience of this complex urban fabric.

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Sebastian Ignacio Lift and Pull Public Library

Sebastian Ignacio Push and Hold Theatrical Workshop

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MA in Architecture, Planning and Landscape - Design Nathaniel Coleman

Contributors: Astrid Lund, Edward Wainwright, Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes, Ludovica Niero, Samuel Austin, Thomas Kern, Tony Watson This programme aims to give students a critical understanding of key aspects of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, and the relationship between these disciplines. It offers a particularly wide range of choice for specialisation and combines design studio sessions, lectures and individual research projects. The Programme is ideal for students from Architecture, Urban Design, Planning or Landscape backgrounds. It is especially valuable for international students seeking a UK qualification as it offers a range of modules which set UK approaches to the three disciplines in a global context, allowing students to make their learning relevant to their own country. It provides an especially useful grounding for students considering progressing to PhD, or for those who wish to add a range of skills to an existing professional qualification in another discipline. The approach to this programme is characterised by a high degree of interaction with your tutor and the other students. The precise style of teaching depends upon the modules selected, but as with other taught programmes you will be exposed to design studio teaching, lectures, tutorials, workshops, seminars and project work

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Murong Ruiyi Chinese Culture Centre

Top - Samar Wanan Community Art Centre

Middle - Zhou Haozhou Chinese Culture Centre

Bottom - Wooyong Yang Chinese Culture Centre

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PhD and PhD by Creative Practice Students The Contemporary Role and Transformation of Civic Public Architecture: The Case of Tripoli’s Central Municipal Building, Libya Abdelatif El-Allous abdelatif.el-allous@newcastle.ac.uk

Comprehensive Intelligence in Sustainable Courtyard House Architecture Rand Agha r.h.m.agha@ncl.ac.uk Impact of Community Participation on Peri-Urban Development Projects in Akure, Nigeria Oluwatoyin Akim o.t.akin@ncl.ac.uk

Space thickening and the digital ethereal —Production of architecture in the digital age Jose-Luis Hernandez-Hernandez j.l.hernandez-hernandez@newcastle.ac.uk www.digitalethereal.com

Crisis of traditional identity in built environment of the Saudi cities. a case study: The old city of Tabuk Mabrouk Alsheliby m.alsheliby@ncl.ac.uk

Digital Ethereal came about as a design discourse on digital technologies, and the invisible infrastructure underpinning it. I believe our interaction with this landscape of electromagnetic signals, described by Antony Dunne as Hertzian Space, can be characterised in the same terms as that with ghosts and spectra. They both are paradoxical entities, whose untypical substance allows them to be an invisible presence. In the same way, they undergo a process of gradual substantiation to become temporarily available to perception. Finally, they both haunt us. Ghosts, as Derrida would have it, with the secrets of past generations. Hertzian space, with the frustration of interference and slowness.

Modelling the effects of household practices on heating energy consumption in social housing. A case study in Newcastle upon Tyne Macarena Beltan Rodriguez m.rodriguez@newcastle.ac.uk Towards a synthetic morphogenesis for architecture Paola Carolina Ramirez Figueroa p.c.ramirez-figueroa@newcastle.ac.uk www.syntheticmorphologies.com

But it is these same traits of Hertzian Space that affords the potential for a spatially rich interaction with information systems, one that more closely resemble the interaction with real architecture. The challenge however lies in how to design with systems that are fundamentally invisible. They can be ‘translated”—changing their modality into one which is tangible. This modality change is however always laced with cultural charges, which changes the nature of Hertzian Space.

Synthetic Morphologies is a design exploration project that emerges from a growing design discourse on the possibilities afforded by Synthetic Biology. The 21st century is poised to be the era of biology, very much like the 20th has been the age of digital information. The notion comes from recent advances from Synthetic Biology in manipulating and creating new living organisms that exhibit unprecedented traits in nature. Design, as many other fields, has felt the influence of such a paradigmatic shift. In architecture, for instance, a growing body of speculative work imagines a future material reality enacted by hybrids of machine and living organisms, whereby building are grown rather than constructed.

In order to take advantage of hertzian space, I advocate for a creative practice aimed at creating new objects, indexed to hertzian space, but which also captures the cultural and social complexity imbued in the use of such technologies. I call this new series of objects the digital ethereal. The design work created throughout this project blends together disciplines and techniques such as performance, photography, design, programming and electronics. Making Byker: The Situated Practices of the Citizen Architect James Longfield j.d.longfield@newcastle.ac.uk

Yet, Synthetic Morphologies poises the possibility that, in fact, Synthetic Biology presents design with a more profound challenge—one that stirs the restating of the discipline of design itself. To think, for instance, of building which are grown out of pre-programmed living organisms is, in effect, to continue the classic paradigm of design wherein the designer is an almighty giver of form. I propose an alternative approach—an organicist-inspired material practice for synthetic biology. I believe the intersection of design and synthetic biology invites to think of design as a negotiation between different actors, some of which include the chemical environment, mechanical conditions, designers and living organisms themselves. Throughout my doctoral research I’ve engaged in different projects which characterise and trace the evolution of the speculative discourse initiated by synthetic biology, and which eventually leads to the notion of a biologically-oriented material practice: a technique to engage with the processes of designing through and with living organisms.

Natural Ventilation: An Evaluation of Strategies for Improving Indoor Air Quality in Hospitals of Semi-Arid Climates Mohamed Mahgoub Elnabawi m.elnabawi-mahgoub@newcastle.ac.uk An Ecology of Land Use Keiji Makino k.makino@newcastle.ac.uk Learning from Vernacular Natural Ventilated Residential houses in Mediterranean climate zone of Lebanon; and developing its application methods in designing contemporary housing in Beirut Najla Mansour n.mansour@newcastle.ac.uk

Grid and Plenum: Universality, Ubiquity & Uniqueness in Contemporary Architecture Kieran Connolly k.i.connolly@newcastle.ac.uk Rem Koolhaas’s polemical essay “Junkspace”, written at the turn of the millennium, recalls a contemporary landscape of generic sameness, latent with subliminal and ideological messages. The text rejects traditional ideas of architectural space, dissolving ideas of order, type and hierarchy into a chaotic amalgam that is apparently ordered and bound together by its globalised ubiquity. Junkspace, as Koolhaas describes it, is the space of material human waste that has become a measure of modernity. Fourteen years after the publication of this seminal essay, the first year of this research has examined a Junkspace par excellence – the suspended ceiling. Organised on a standard grid of 600mm x 600mm, set-out using aluminium sections, supporting lightweight tiles, it repeats, room after room in what can be seen as an almost limitless horizontal expansion. The suspended ceiling has become a seemingly ubiquitous feature in twenty-first century architecture, as recently demonstrated by Koolhaas himself at this year’s Venice Biennale.

A Coincidental Plot, For Architecture Ashley Mason ashley.mason@newcastle.ac.uk Practiceopolis: The City of Architectural Practice Yasser Megahed yasser.megahed@newcastle.ac.uk This Research sets out to interrogate a dominant stance towards technology that prioritises a narrow approach to architectural production, which I have identified as Techno‐rational practice. The imaginary city of Practiceopolis is introduced as a site for the critical reading of diverse contemporary architectural practices. This reading draws from the philosopher Andrew Feenberg’s classification of varying stances towards technology.

Using Koolhaas’s observations as a starting point, the research has focused on the relationship between the repetitive organisational qualities of the aforementioned grid and the void spaces it conceals above – known as the Plenum. These spaces not only deal with ventilation, but also hold an ever-increasing network of services that give comfort and “power” to the inhabited spaces below.

Practiceopolis is a city built on diagrammatic relations between nine theoretical modes of practice covering a wide spectrum of the contemporary architectural world. Its morphology is set out according to the influence of technology and technical knowledge in shaping different modes of architectural practice. It highlights tensions between what might Feenberg called Determinist/ Instrumentalist approaches on the one hand, and Critical Theory/Substantivist approaches on the other. Practiceopolis has two dimensions; the first sets out a parallel world created as a tool for mapping the multiplicity of modes of architectural practice, of which Techno‐rational approach is only one. The second maps architectural practices critically from a dedicated map library in the city of Practiceopolis, located at an intermediate place between the Instrumentalist and CriticalTheory stances of technology.

Through a series of investigations, often recalling the evocative imagery and representation techniques of the radical Italian design collective Superstudio, this relationship has been explored in order to expose our growing reliance on “serviced” space. As such, the thesis examines these forgotten, hidden but vitally important environments of Junkspace, in order to explore a much broader question – how reliant are we becoming on these concealed service spaces? And what impact does this have on the field of architecture?

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Top, middle - Paola Carolina Ramirez Figueroa

Bottom - Kieran Connolly

Top, middle - Jose-Luis Hernandez-Hernandez

Bottom - Yasser Megahed

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Looking Towards Retirement: Alternative Design Approaches to Third-Ager Housing Sam Clark s.clark4@newcastle.ac.uk

On Repetition: Photograhpy in/as architectural criticism - Working through the archives of Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich’s German Pavilion and the North American concrete grain elevators Catalina Mejia-Moreno c.mejia-moreno@newcastle.ac.uk www.travesiafoundation.org

UK society was first categorised ‘aged’ during the 1970s, and is currently heading towards ‘superaged’ status, whereby 20 per cent of the population will be aged sixty five and over by the year 2025. Indeed scientific evidence indicates linear increases in life expectancy since 1840, such that UK population ‘pyramids’ are now looking more like ‘columns’, with fewer younger people at the base and increasing numbers and proportions of older people at the top. There are 10,000 centenarians living in the UK today, with demographers anticipating a five-fold increase by 2030. Half of all babies born this year can expect to live one hundred years.

My thesis questions photography as the intrinsic media of repetition in architectural criticism. Understanding photographs as commodities and objects of transaction, as well as evidence of the reproduction and displacement of the direct and in these cases impossible experience of the building, this project aims to elucidate relationships between architectural criticism and photographic (ideological) techniques of (re)production in two significant historical moments: at the beginning of the XXc when they initially surfaced in architectural discourse, and in the late 1980’s when Robin Evans and P. Reyner Banham (re)visited and (re)photographed the iconic buildings.

Housing plays a significant role in sustaining a good quality of life, and there is growing opinion that moving to specialist or more age-appropriate housing has a positive impact on the wellbeing of older people, as well as potential benefits to the property market as a whole . Recent design research includes a competition commissioned by McCarthy & Stone to ‘re-imagine ageing’ , and an RIBA report illustrating future scenarios in which ‘Active Third-Agers’ have made a huge impact on UK towns and cities . Both initiatives were predicated on the idea that today’s older population (colloquially known as the ‘baby-boomers’) have alternative and more demanding lifestyle expectations that are likely to drive a step-change in housing choice for older people.

Townscapes in the Chinese Context Sha Miao s.miao@newcastle.ac.uk Natural Ventilation: An Evaluation of Strategies for Improving Indoor Air Quality in Hospitals of Semi-Arid Climates Mohammed Mohammed m.mohammed@newcastle.ac.uk

Sam is working in collaboration with national house builder, Churchill Retirement Living, to further explore the needs and aspirations of those entering retirement. In this instance a PhD by Creative Practice is being used as a vehicle for applied design research that will contribute to contemporary visions for retirement living.

Architecture for all in the megacity: Spatially integrated settlements in Istanbul dominated by desirable affordable housing that values more than the total cost of construction and land values Ulviye Nergis Kalli u.n.kalli@newcastle.ac.uk

A Spatial Carbon Analysis Model for Retrofitting the Guayaquil’s Residential Sector – GURCC as a Case Study Javier Urquizo j.urquizo@newcastle.ac.uk

Cities, People, Nature: an exploration Usue Ruiz Arana u.ruiz-arana@newcastle.ac.uk mynaturehood.tumblr.com

Revealing Design: a dialogic approach Matt Ozga-Lawn matthew.ozga-lawn@newcastle.ac.uk www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/staff/profile/matthew.ozga-lawn

With more than half of the world’s population now living in cities, it is the nature within the city that has the potential to enhance people’s lives on a daily basis. The city-people-nature trinomial raises a number of questions that form the basis of this research. My first installation, to coincide with next year’s ‘Landscape, Wilderness and the Wild’ conference will explore two initial questions:

My research project attempts to reveal hidden or overlooked agencies within the studio space and the representational modes therein, which is normally conceived of as a neutral zone through which designs are simply ‘transmitted’. In my study, the studio is conflated with a rifle range. The studio, in adopting the characteristics and agencies of the military space, opens architectural representation onto codes and phenomena normally considered to be outside its remit. These phenomena are drawn into the project through historical and theoretical links established by the rifle range space.

Is there a boundary between the natural and cultural in the city? The relation between nature and culture is complex. The classical notion of nature is the world devoid of human interaction or activity; and urbanization, the antithesis of nature. At the other end of the spectrum there is the notion of nature as a social constructed phenomenon, and the idea that nature as the untouched doesn’t exist anymore, as human activity has affected the whole world. What is evident is that cities depend on nature to survive and vice versa, and it is therefore difficult to see where one ends and the other starts.

My research blurs the agencies of the military and studio spaces, revealing coded agencies that we as designers often take for granted in how we relate and engage with representational artefacts in the studio. The Conservation of Twentieth Century Architecture in China Yun Dai y.dai@newcastle.ac.uk

Could the expectation of nature in the city be challenged and what could we tolerate within the urban? Within the city we tend to arrest the progression of nature in order to maintain landscapes and spaces looking a certain way, and avoid the chaos or fear that might result from a ‘wild’ nature. ‘Wilderness’ is found on abandoned sites, on former industrial sites, in the cracks of the pavements, in the joints of the walls, reclaimed by nature whilst waiting to be developed or cleared out. Are looks the reason why we arrest nature, and how is nature experienced through the other senses?

Recent Completions

Usage of Thermally Comfortable Outdoor Space through the Lens of Adaptive Microclimate Khalid Setaih k.m.setaih@newcastle.ac.uk

The Protected Vista: An Intellectual and Cultural History, As Seen From Richmond Hill Tom Brigden t.brigden@newcastle.ac.uk Supervisors: Professor Adam Sharr and Dr Andrew Law Examiners: Professor Robert Tavernor and Dr Katie Lloyd Thomas

Becoming Planners and Architects: the Formation of Perspectives on Residential Design Quality Dhruv Sookhoo d.a.sookhoo@newcastle.ac.uk After the Blueprint: Questions around the unfinished in New Belgrade Tijana Stevanović t.stevanovic@newcastle.ac.uk

From Digital Creations of Space to Analogous Experiences of Places: Living in Second Life versus Acting in Flash Mob Kat Antonopoulou a.antonopoulou@newcastle.ac.uk

Quality Control and Quality Assurance in Construction - Case of Tower Buildings in Libya Salem Tarhuni

Supervisors: Professor Mark Dorrian and Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson Examiners: Professor Paul Carter and Professor Peter Wright

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Top, middle - Catalina Mejia-Moreno

Bottom - Usue Ruiz Arana

Top, middle - Matt Ozga-Lawn

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An Outline: Devising the Communication in Displacement Tijana Stevanović

One of the processes regarded the most evident for establishing the semantic relation between the mediums of architectural intervention - the drawing and the building - relies on the contingency of the translation path between the two. Acknowledging their relation traces an intentional partiality of both mediums. Legibility of the construing process can be as dependent on the professional conventions and codes for reading the vocabulary of the image, as on the silent recognition of the drawing medium’s absence of autonomy if the signifying cycle finalises with the construction of the building. Ever since the 1980s’ art schools’ curriculum expansion into the spatial practice and architectural schools’ being taken by environmental concerns - the drawing has been promulgated as a central tool in educating future architects, especially in the Anglo-Saxon speaking world. Exposing the absentee - supposed subject of the drawing - building, Robin Evans proposed in 1986 that to render the art of drawing the central and final aim of architecture would certainly liberate the architecture of some responsibility and pedantry1. But, would it also mean a different political circumference of architectural producers, since reclaiming this territory of the personal work/space rehabilitates the category of the property? The same year Evans wrote of his concerns, the catalogue of the exhibition With Man in Mind displayed at the RIBA, London, revealed a peculiar visual transfer: on one of its pages the presentation of XVI century Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola’s drawing of the perspectival projection juxtaposed with Miloš R. Perović’s and Branislav Stojanović’s proposal for reurbanisation of New Belgrade [figure 1], a city designed and constructed four centuries after da Vignola’s lifetime. One may notice the latter model being another kind of perspectival device for outlining the new in socialist New Belgrade. In the accompanying lecture Perović gave at the RIBA, he assured the audience these proposals were not to be read as finalised or ready-made solutions2. They are rather in line with the author’s ideas earlier explained in the book Lessons of the Past (1985), which traced and criticised New Belgrade as ‘functionalist’ product of Athen’s Charter as much as Brazilia and Chandighar were. Both exhibition and the book showcase the affirmation of the ‘unfinished’3 design for a city via projects framed during one decade in the Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade. Yet, the author debated the official ‘functionalist’ urban planning directions were not more than architectural irrational ‘reverie’ and drew on correcting it by pertaining to building upon its confines: densifying New Belgrade open blocks (1981)[figure 2] and creating new visual focal points across them (1984). What kind of transfer within the professional/everyday subjection had to accompany such an ‘unfinished’ referencing of the past? figure 1

What at first enabled such criticism was a one-dimensional translation of New Belgrade through functionalism as an over-defined finished product immune and non-receptive of common man’s imprints upon its surface. What facilitated it further was verbalising the project through scientific theories of growth, while oddly, returning to the historical precedents of renaissance Rome and introducing ‘humane’ scale and ‘romanticising elements’4 to the generic quality of the new urban ensembles. Inner constriction of this design taking proportions of an outline for the new practice of the whole city proves challenging for the architect to complete. For attending to this scale is conflicting with the aspiration to design each and every individualised building. The aspiration to propose an ever bigger and more impactful project sets the limit in itself by the level of segmentation and the impossibility for each individual translation. By that the project’s ambitions get scaled-down to the apparent measurement of an individual (architect) and his own two hands. Da Vignola’s man is the one that has been given the scientific tool to look with upon the objects, but is eventually transliterated as an object in the drawing by an architect. He is drafted only after the architect could claim the territory of the perspectival projection as his own property of devising. Much like outlining his specialised division when translating the signifying dimension of the drawing as the medium, the proposed ‘unfinished’ state of the New Belgrade urban design, is suggested to be shaped continuously by the citizen’s will, only after architect’s position stays in its secure zone of outlining the ‘atmosphere of poetry’5. The support of the past is not only used when Perović retreats to the use of scientific ratio to claim the city as an objectively defined territory. Re-discovery of architects’ paternal roots is situated much more in contradictory re-charting of the subjective position of the creator extracted from the era when the work of architect was measurable by individual’s time and manual work; albeit excommunicating all the other forms of liability for translation and performance. Excavation of this semantically sanitised drawer of subjective visualisation happens through displacement:

original caption in the catalogue of the exhibition With Man in Mind, 1986, p.57: Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, Le Due Regole della Prospettiva pratica di M. Iacomo Barozzi da Vignola con i Comentarii del R.P.M. Egnatio Danti, Stamparia camerale, Rome, 1583 Proposal for the reconstruction of the centre of New Belgrade and Sava amphitheatre, Focal points and elements lending an atmosphere of poetry

Well, this consolidation through withdrawal is already under way, and the problem is that it has become exactly this: a consolidation, a restoration, a simple relocation of investment within the region staked out long ago as belonging to architecture.6 Besides, by this form of re-interpreting - a new space is being discovered - that of the drawing as an operative side of the architect’s own property. Excavating its one segment, here, architecture’s labour is represented through the impossibility of translating the non-resolution of the project’s end. Speculation on differences embodied by man (in mind) partaking in drafting their private property - literally non-existent in New Belgrade until the 1990s - is a concept transferred from Anglo-Saxon trends. Atomisation of individual positions happens imprecisely, but implicitly through abstract, yet specifically postmodern use of the ‘collapse of the meta-narratives’7 or seemingly objective ‘freedom to choose,’ which presupposes the individual as the basic form of spatial organisation. By this, New Belgrade re-urbanisation projects make an ideological claim precisely by repudiating to openly chart the designer’s interest in the genre of spontaneous and the unfinished. Idealised man on Perović’s mind cannot escape the image of two in one - similar to drawing and building - dependent on each other: individual citizen and individual producer of the city, drawing out a new liability with the latter’s role emergence. With Perović’s sheer introduction of the idea of urban plot, the crucial project here was to introduce (even if not overtly) an entirely different basis of design service allocation, in accordance to the deinstitutionalisation of the land as the private property; drawing - the architect’s. Inevitably it tends towards the more precise outline for a division of labour among architectural professionals. Even if the images aim to speak of the innovation through the medium’s repatriation, the appropriation of the discipline’s proto-territory may be relying too much on the historical recognition of the subject as autonomous, the city as a whole, in a word, modernist. Still, the communication (stairwells) are the elements the most clearly concocted [figure2]. It would be dangerous to naturalise the process of design through the metaphor of the clear-cut land separation. Since, the device to capture the postmodern ‘real’ may not possess realistic contours, after all.

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2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Evans, Robin, “Translations from Drawing to Building,” in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, ed. by Robin Evans (London: Architectural Association, 1997), pp. 153–193 Perović, Miloš, With Man in Mind (London, UK: RIBA Audio Collection, 7th October 1986) Perović, R. Miloš, Iskustva Prošlosti [trans. Lessons of the Past] (Beograd: Zavod za planiranje razvoja grada Beograda, 1986) ibid. “With Man in Mind” (RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London: Kulturni Centar Beograda, 1986) Evans, Op. cit., p. 157 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge [1979], ed. by Geoff Bennington, Brian Massumi, and Fredric Jameson (Manchester University Press, 1984)

figure 2 original caption in the catalogue of the exhibition With Man in Mind, 1986, p.40-41: Miloš R. Perović, Research into alternative urban models, Model C Proposal for a new urban system 1981

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ARC - Architecture Research Collaborative The Architecture Research Collaborative (ARC) comprises a diverse group of scholars whose work ranges across the key topics in contemporary international architecture and landscape research. Committed to both rigorous scholarship and the multidisciplinary approach demanded by the complexity of architectural research, ARC is structured through a dynamic and evolving pattern of research themes that cut across the conventional divisions of design, technology, and history and theory research. As a group of researchers with a wide range of backgrounds, we recognize the opportunity that our specialisms can bring to shared problems and questions, and aim to stimulate innovation and foster connectivity between methodologies that are too often isolated from one another. With the publication of Vol 18 in 2014, ARC will also be home to arq: architectural research quarterly. Mirroring ARC’s commitment to multidisciplinary architectural research, arq is unique in its drawing together international peer-reviewed research on architecture from a full range of related disciplines including practice, design, technology, architectural history and theory and aiming to appeal to practice professionals as well as to academics.

Utopias and Architecture Nathaniel Coleman Futures, Values and Imaginaries Utopian thought, though commonly characterized as projecting a future without a past, depends on golden models for re-invention of what is. This general theme encompasses a range of projects examining the social and formal dimensions of architecture through the concept of utopia and integrating architectural thinking into Utopian Studies. The projects and outputs range from the interdisciplinary Utopography workshop to a special issue of Utopian Studies as well as a the forthcoming Lefebvre for Architects to be published by Routledge, and papers for journals including the Journal of Architectural Education, Architectural Research Quarterly, and the Journal or Architecture.

The collaborative is organized to respond to and support research across a number of common themes, that can change as our collective concerns shift. The themes currently running are: ‘Cultures and Transition’, ‘Futures, Values and Imaginaries’, ‘Mediated Environments’, ‘Research by Design’, ‘Social Justice’, ‘Wellbeing and Renewal’, ‘Specifications, Prescriptions and Translation’. These themes are also shaped in relation to the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape’s collective priorities. Project research collaborations and co-supervision are common between members of ARC and the School’s other research centre GURU - the Global Urban Research Unit.

Coleman N. Architecture and Dissidence: Utopia as Method. Architecture and Culture 2014, 2(1), pp. 45-60.

Rethinking Heritage Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes Cultures and Transition

Energy, Society and Cities Carlos Calderon Mediated Environments

This project examines the modern conceptualization of heritage and its associated preservation and conservation techniques and policies. The research takes an interdisciplinary approach and includes anthropologists, geographers, political scientists and scholars in tourism. It deals with both theory and particular case studies, and is currently funded through several competitive grants in Spain and Chile, with collaborators in the US, UK, Italy, Chile and Spain. The project relates research to professional practice and teaching -like the international workshop “Valuable-RESIDE”, funded by the EU.

These projects involve understanding, modelling and designing for new energy futures. Themes include the effects of household practices on heating energy consumption, smart energy technologies, decentralised energy, energy systems to reduce fuel poverty and developing new ways of planning for spatial energy infrastructure in cities. This work is supported by contributions from Your Homes Newcastle, Newcastle City Council and Newcastle Science City and involves collaborations across fields of architecture, engineering and planning.

http://valuablereside.upc.edu/

Collaborators: Newcastle City Council, Your Homes Newcastle, Newcastle Science City, Cambridge Architectural Research

Collaborators: School of Architecture of Barcelona-Valles, UPC-BarcelonaTECH (Spain); Universidad de Concepción (Chile); Politecnico di Torino (Italy); West Chester University of Pennsylvania (US). FIC Barcelona Architects.

Problems of Translation Martin Beattie Cultures and Transition

Byker Hobby Rooms James Longfield, Adam Sharr Research by Design

This research aims to understand the processes by which different cultures meet in the context of avant-garde architecture, art and literature. In particular the project maps and compares the linkages and spread of modernism between European and Indian avant-gardes, through its art and architecture of the 1920s. Specific case studies include analysis of the Bengali artist Gaganendranath Tagore along with the Bauhaus painter Lyonel Feininger and the collaboration between Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet, novelist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature and Sir Patrick Geddes, the Scottish town planner at Santiniketan.

This project was investigated as part of Linked Research with Stage 5 and 6 students on the MArch degree program. The project investigated the unique phenomena of the hobby rooms in the Byker redevelopment which are currently under-occupied. By investigating their intentions and mapping the spaces of current hobby activity the project developed speculative proposals for alternative hobby spaces that offered greater flexibility and specificity. The project concluded with the construction of key items of furniture which imagined the hobby rooms as specific mobile spaces, able to support a process of redevelopment.

‘Problems of Translation: Lyonel Feininger and Gaganendranath Tagore’ at the Fourteenth Annual Indian Society of Oriental Art Exhibition, Kolkata, India

http://makingbyker.wordpress.com

Collaborators: Association of Art Historians

Architecture’s Unconscious Kati Blom, Nathaniel Coleman, Andrew Ballantyne, Katie Lloyd Thomas, Sam Austin Social Justice, Wellbeing and Renewal This project is built around a series of informal meetings including architects, artists, philosophers and scholars of cognitive science and psychoanalysis. The project aims to uncover the processes of environmental perception – with particular emphasis stories of unexpected, non-verbal encounters which are born of and a pre-linguistic sensation of space. These incidental sensuous encounters with place -whether labelled as unconscious or not - are vital when discovering the qualities of spaces. Collaborators: Isis Brook (Writtle University), Lorens Holm (University of Dundee), Wolfram Bergande (Bauhaus- University Weimar)

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Collaborators: The Byker Lives Project

Bacilla Vitruvius Martyn Dade-Robertson, Carolina Figueroa Research by Design Vitruvius suggested in his texts On Architecture that ‘architecture is an imitation of nature’ (Vitruvius, 2009) but what happens when architecture becomes nature and we begin, through the design of biological systems, to become architects of nature? This project explores the relationship between architecture and the emerging field of Synthetic Biology. The project explores both the applications of Synthetic Biology for new types of building material and the implications of architectural design practice on the development of Synthetic Biology. Collaborators: Northumbria University, The Centre for Synthetic Biology and Bioexploitation

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Industries of Architecture Katie Lloyd Thomas, Adam Sharr Specifications, Prescriptions and Translations

Visualising Energy Neveen Hamza Mediated Environments

Developing out of research and an earlier symposium on architecture’s technical literatures ‘Further Reading Required’ (The Bartlett, 2011) this international conference takes place at Newcastle in November 2014. IOA invites architectural theorists, historians, designers and others to explore the industrial, technical and socio-economic contexts in which building is constituted that are all too often sidelined within the architectural humanities. IOA will also host a number of open-structured debate-oriented workshops with the aim of bringing into the discussion those working in building, technology, law, practice management, construction or in industry together with researchers in the architectural humanities.

This project is based on the EPSRC funded Eviz (Energy Visualisation for Carbon Reduction) project. The project brings together an interdisciplinary team of engineers and designers to develop applications which close the gap between abstract, invisible energy flows and people’s desire to understand their energy use and become more energy efficient. The key idea is to increase understanding of energy dynamics as a function of occupant behaviour and building characteristics and to allow experts to make better predictions of energy efficiency and design buildings around human behaviour.

Collaborators: Tilo Amhoff, University of Brighton Nicholas Beech, Oxford Brookes University ProBE, University of Westminster John Gelder, NBS Sofie Pelsmakers, UCL Energy Institute Rob Imrie, Sociology, Goldsmiths Emma Street, Real Estate &Planning, University of Reading Liam Ross, ESALA

http://www.eviz.org.uk/ Collaborators: Plymouth University, University of Birmingham, University of Bath

Re-interpreting Sustainable Architecture Graham Farmer Futures, Values and Imaginaries

CURE: Creative Upcycled Resource Graham Farmer Research by Design

This research aims to bring together recent debates in philosophy and social / cultural theory to the study and practice of sustainable architecture and urbanism. In adopting a critical, comparative and interdisciplinary perspective and by theorising sustainability, my aim is to bring the discussion of a sustainable built environment centrally into the social sciences and humanities.

This cross-disciplinary research project brings together architecture, engineering, social sciences, and business. It explores the technical, social, economic and design related barriers to material upcycling, and seeks to propose solutions to enable widespread, creative re-use of designed products and packaging.

G. Farmer (2013) Re-contextualising Design: Three ways of Practicing Sustainable Architecture. Architectural Research Quarterly, 17(2), G. Farmer & S. Guy (2010) Making Morality: Sustainable Architecture and the Pragmatic Imagination. Building Research and Information, 38(4), 368-378. S.Guy & G.Farmer (2001), ‘Re-interpreting Sustainable Architecture: The place of Technology.’ Journal of Architectural Education, 54(3) Feb. pp140-148

U-TEC Cafe

Demolishing Whitehall Adam Sharr Futures, Values and Imaginaries

Design Pedagogy as Material Practice Graham Farmer Research by Design

In 1965, the architect Leslie Martin submitted to Harold Wilson’s Labour government a plan to rebuild London’s government district, Whitehall. Presented to an administration which had been elected on the promise of remaking Britain in the ‘white heat’ of technology, the plan’s architecture embodied the 1960s idea of an imminent jet age that seemed not just possible but imminent. Our co-written book, Demolishing Whitehall, tells the story of the Whitehall plan and investigates its inherent tensions between ideas of technology and history, science and art, socialism and elitism.

This research explores the role of material practice as a means to connect design, pedagogy, research and social engagement. This work provides the opportunity for ‘live’ experimentation with materials, performance and varying modes of design practice.

Collaborators: Stephen Thornton, Politics, Cardiff University

Collaborators: CeG - Newcastle University, Newcastle Business School

Stonehaugh Stargazing Pavilion G. Farmer (2013) Re-contextualising Design: Three ways of Practicing Sustainable Architecture. Architectural Research Quarterly, 17(2), G. Farmer & M. Stacey (2012) In the Making: Pedagogies from MARS. Architectural Research Quarterly, 16(4), 301-312

Replicas Adam Sharr, Zeynep Kezer Futures, Values and Imaginaries

Tuning in to T Dan Smith Martyn Dade-Robertson Mediated Enviroments

Replica architectures employ selective ideas of the past to construct the image of states, cultures, organizations or powerful individuals in the present, often operating in service of radically conservative ideologies. Promoted through the rhetoric of reconstruction, replica projects are seldom ‘literal’ reconstructions. Rather, they involve the tendentious reclamation of historic architectural or urban forms to reinforce particular national or cultural identity narratives, however counterfactual their historical veracity. The idea of Replicas will be the subject of a session at the SAH conference in Chicago in 2015 and then an edited book.

This project is funded through the AHRC Creative Exchange research hub and involved a short collaboration between arts and humanities scholars, technology researchers and the creative industries. The project specifically examines the archive of T Dan Smith, a controversial local council leader in Newcastle through the 1960s and 70s and looks at new ways of unlocking the archive through the use of mobile technologies and media.

Collaborators: Society of Architectural Historians Conference, Chicago, 2015

Collaborators: The Amber Collective, Amblr, Culture Lab - AHRC CX Hub

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http://thecreativeexchange.org/

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Everest Death Zone

STASUS - James Craig & Matt Ozga-Lawn Extract from “Everest Death Zone”, by STASUS, featured in Paper for Emerging Architecture Research vol. 1 iss. 5, edited by Matthew Butcher et al. (2014)

‘1. Death is a type of space, which we intend to map, enter, colonise and, eventually, inhabit.’ 1 So reads the first declaration of the International Necronautical Society’s manifesto, published as an advertisement in The Times on December 14th, 1999. The manifesto goes on to outline the task the INS is engaged with: ‘to bring death out into the world… to chart all its forms and media: in literature and art, where it is most apparent; also in science and culture, where it lurks submerged but no less potent for the obfuscation.’ 2 Our interest in this project is in describing death as a landscape through its close examination and mapping. We seek to draw the experience of death, to reveal it, to draw it out. We seek to make it visible not through depictions of the body, or commonly used memento mori, but through a description of the myriad disparate elements of particular deaths. These elements form a field in which previously insignificant or everyday objects, actions or words take on new meanings, heightened by the death that they surround and are encapsulated by. We can describe this field as a type of space - a landscape in which death is located as an unseen, unifying condition: a context that binds previously distinct fragments into a coherent whole, and allows us to situate and immerse ourselves within it. The INS describe this milieu, surrounding death, as a ‘phenomenological event-field’3. In 2001 they held a residency at Amsterdam’s DasArts foundation, in which the events surrounding a Mafia street shootout (which resulted in a death) were reconstructed using dancers, choreographers and data-technicians. Individual moments and even gestures from the shootout were isolated and meticulously reconstructed and repeated, first in front of cameras, and later within a wind tunnel. This fixation with the wider view, the context and connotations rather than the death itself, underlines the INS’s position: that death is a continuous presence, drifting alongside us and within us throughout our lives, made visible and navigable in its totality through an act of dying and its detailed study. The landscape that situates our study is the vast, unknowable expanse of Mount Everest. The landscape that we are studying, however, is the imploded geography of the deaths on the mountain: each one an event-field of objects, aspirations, events and decisions, a swirling blizzard of things tethered eternally to the frozen body which, in binding itself to the mountain, anchors death for us, and allows us to navigate its unknown world.

“I’m rather inclined to think personally that maybe it is quite important, the getting down...”

“I’m an American. I’m an American.”

“Your responsibility is to save yourself - not to try to save anybody else.”

“Her body was frozen in a sitting position, leaning against her pack with her eyes open and her hair blowing in the wind.”

Everest itself is of so great a scale - physically and conceptually - that it defies any description as a landscape. Its vastness is well-suited to an attempt to explore the equally colossal subject of death, to conflate the seemingly indescribable. Our studies of the Everest Death Zone make use of the identities of the mountain’s dead, representing them as a series of four heavily coded and precisely calibrated drawings that together describe as a sequence the landscape as constituted from death. These bodies are our craft, each death preserved like a forensic scene in oblivion, and from which we are able to explore and represent the two unknowable landscapes in a new way. The Everest Death Zone exists on the inclines of the great mountain from 8000 metres above sea-level to its summit, the highest point on earth, at 8848 metres. This near-kilometre of vertical landscape is so named because of the inhospitable conditions found within it: a typical, un-acclimated individual suddenly transported into this realm would likely lose consciousness within two to three minutes, exhausted by the very effort of breathing4. Accordingly, over 200 people have died attempting to climb Everest since summit attempts started in the 1920s5. Around three-quarters of these bodies have never been recovered. In the permanently frozen terrain of the Death Zone, around the carefully regulated ascent routes that can herd more than 200 people a day to the summit in peak season, exists a kind of purgatory for those who didn’t make it: who fell, lost and blinded, whose bodies gave out to the stresses upon them, who were covered forever by an avalanche. Their souls may have attempted the final ascent but their bodies tie them to the hard, cold surface of the world, and they are condemned to persist, untouched but often seen, for decades and more. These bodies, each held in the moment of dying, might remind us of the plaster-casts of Pompeii. In the Death Zone, however, we are dealing with the originals: the bodies are the physical remains of the living, and not voids used to generate reproductions. Each of these bodies exists on the surface of the vast expanse of the mountain. In this whiteness, the landscape, not the body, is the void, and the frozen, human forms are all that remains of highly specific moments in time and space. Their specificity is born from their preservation of the act of dying. The bodies take on new roles as landmarks in this emptiness – navigational aids for the living. Individually, they tell us a story of their death, and collectively, in their persistence, they map a landscape of a unique mode of dying. For some, horrific, desperate and lonely, for others, euphoric: all contained within the landscape of the Death Zone. Each of the four drawings focusses on an individual. These individuals are united by their fate on the mountain, and so the drawings share a common language. However, in each case, there are a number of significant actions and moments that generate the event-field of the death. The event-field depicted in each drawing harbours the passage that lead to each death, and the drawings can be read in this way. Additionally, the event-field transcribes the meanings attached to the bodies after they die, with the new role their body takes on the landscape. These meanings may have wider cultural significance, deeply intertwined with the personal nature of the death. Accordingly, each drawing is a meditation on a theme, with elements of each carefully chosen to describe the death through this lens.

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2. 3. 4.

Tom McCarthy, Simon Critchley, et al. (eds.), The Mattering of Matter: Documents from the Archive of the International Necronautical Society (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012) p.53 Ibid. From an interview with Tom McCarthy Roads Less Travelled on http://www.necronauts.org/ press_ft.htm accessed 03/08/13 Michael P. W. Grocott, et al., Arterial Blood Gases and Oxygen Content in Climbers on Mount Everest in The New England Journal of Medicine 360 (2), (Massachusetts: 2009) p.146 From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Mount_Everest#Statistics accessed 03/08/13

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Upcoming Conferences

11th

industries of architecture relations - PROCESS - PRODUCTION

AHRA international conference

IOA KEYNOTES adrian forty (UK) - peggy deamer (USA) - aggregate (USA) GAIL DAY (uk) - sergio ferro (france/brazil)

workshops BIM goes the architect - working with regulation retrofit in practice - on site - risk and reflexivity new glass performances

13-15 november 2014 newcastle university school of architecture planning and landscape

www.industriesofarchitecture.org

Editorial Team James Craig Matt Ozga-Lawn Richard Taylor Simon Bumstead Thomas Kendall

Printing Statex Colour Print www.statex.co.uk Typography Adobe Garamond Pro Paper GF Smith Colourplan, Pale Grey, 350gsm

Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne. NE1 7RU United Kingdom w: www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/ t: +44 (0) 191 222 5831 e: leona.waggott@ncl.ac.uk

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£6