APL

NCL ARC Design Yearbook 2011-12

ARC
NCL
We are a community of students, scholars and practitioners who are committed to architecture and
urban design as diverse and wide-ranging fields of investigation and practice. At Newcastle Uni-
versity we understand design to be a collective cultural endeavour that involves the acquisition and
exercise of complex knowledge and skills. These we believe are best realised through a dynamic
approach to education, which sees it not as the transmission of a set of truths but as an on-going

DESIGN YEARBOOK
process of inquiry in which staff and students are both participants. Our efforts are always directed
toward fostering an academic environment that values this openness, while encouraging the
pursuit of design, in all its aspects, at the highest level. This Design Yearbook provides a glimpse
of this ethos and outlook.

Featuring
Graham Farmer
Prof Andrew Ballantyne
Rose Gilroy
Dr Hentie Louw
Dr Zeynep Kezer
Armelle Tardiveau
Daniel Mallo
Prof Adam Sharr
Prof Mark Dorrian
Matt Ozga-Lawn

Cover image
Lam Nguyen

School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

The Quadrangle
Newcastle University
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
NE1 7RU

www.apl.ncl.ac.uk

www.nclarchitecture.org.uk

ISBN - 978-0-7017-0244-1

SOUTH WEST ELEVATION

11
2011 - 2012
12
NCL
ARC
2012
 Student Work
contents

008 BA Hons Architectural Studies

016 Stage 01

034 Stage 02

064 Stage 03

146 MArch Architecture

158 Stage 05

192 Linked Research

208 Stage 06

266 MA Urban Design

284 MAAPS - D

294 MSc Digital Architecture

308 Postgraduate Research

320 PhD Creative Practice

 Essays

004 Graham Farmer

032 Andrew Ballantyne

058 Rose Gilroy

072 Hentie Louw

134 Hugh Craft

138 Rachel McDonagh

144 Annabel Ward

160 Zeynep Kezer

186 Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo

200 Jeremy Trotter

204 Paul Maguire

248 James Longfield

252 Joanna Doherty

262 Adam Sharr

304 Mark Dorrian

314 Matt Ozga-Lawn and James Craig

 head of school

Introduction

John Pendlebury

2
Welcome to this yearbook, a splendid record of
the achievement of our architecture and urban
design students. This year has been dominated
by accreditation processes and I am pleased
to tell you that the RIBA Visiting Board has
recommended continued validation of all our
programmes without conditions. We have also
successfully negotiated the Universitys Internal
Subject Review. At the time of writing we await
the final verdict from ARB but are optimistic that
our prescription will be renewed. Not surprisingly
this has been a huge effort for all involved and
my thanks go to all the colleagues who have
been involved in the School, with special mention
to Lucy Speak our wonderful Deputy School
Manager.

I am also pleased to tell you the University

has been continuing to invest in our buildings.
This summer will see a major investment in
our Building Science building, to make a
new studio for the design-based graduate and
postgraduate students in the School. We are
undertaking the design work in-house through
our Design Office consultancy. Design Office, led
by Professor Adam Sharr, are also working with
University Estates to improve the design quality
of their capital spend one fruit of this is the new
foyer to another school building, the Claremont
Tower.

Looking ahead I am pleased to tell you that we

have a new portfolio of Masters programmes in
architecture and landscape commencing this
autumn, which will give us a true design graduate
school for the first time. These are the MA
Architectural Design Research, MSc Sustainable
Buildings and Environments, MA Future
Landscape Imaginaries and MA Architectural
Theory and Criticism.

But most of all, this handbook is about

celebrating student achievement. Whilst it is
perhaps invidious to single out individuals
given the quantity of fantastic work we have
seen over the last 12 months, two particular
highlights are worthy of mention. The first of
these is not a design piece of work, but the
commendation in the RIBA Presidents Medals
for Joanna Dohertys dissertation. The second is
the publication of Pamphlet Architecture 32 by
our doctoral student Matt Ozga-Lawn, entitled
Resilience, in conjunction with his colleague
James Craig.

3
 architecture
director
of

In Praise of Young Talent

Graham Farmer

4
During February the School
once again hosted the RIBA
Presidents Medals exhibition.
This year the context of the
exhibition was different, mainly
because of the controversy
that accompanied its arrival in
Newcastle. The February edition
of the Architectural Review
included a provocative article
by Patrik Schumacher entitled
A waste of young talent. His
polemical piece pilloried the
Presidents Medals for rewarding
work founded on other worldly
and dystopian narratives and for
an overwhelming emphasis on
evocative imagery at the expense
of engaged architectures
capable of framing contemporary
social life.
Predictably, the subsequent
issues of the AR and other
architectural periodicals
contained a string of responses
that reignited a longstanding
debate about the role and
function of architectural
education that always seems
to surface in uncertain times.
Typically, the views were
polarised. On the one hand were
those who saw Schumachers
article as a long overdue
recognition that education had
lost touch and connection with
the real world and was turning
out graduates ill-prepared for
the day-to-day demands of
architectural practice. On the
other hand, were those who
suggested that the Presidents
Medals work demonstrated an
imagination and new skills base
that could potentially reinvigorate
a profession in urgent need
of change. The RIBAs own
Director of Education, David
Gloster defended the awards by
arguing that the ability of the best
work in the Medals to create its
own world was indicative of a
pronounced political edge and
demonstrated that architecture
students have not given up
on the ability of architecture to
change society. Whatever your
particular view, there is no doubt
that Schumachers provocation
invigorated the exhibition and
overheard student conversations
appeared to extend beyond
the usual guess the schools
or guess the tools discussions
to revolve around whether the
agendas pursued were really
relevant or indeed whether
some of the work constituted
architecture at all how
refreshing!
However, the reality beyond
the headline-grabbing articles
is that forming a view of
architectural education based
on the Presidents Medals is
mistaken. The type of work
currently valued by the awards
is certainly not representative
of all of architectural education
and the fact remains that all
courses have to correspond to
a curriculum that is validated by
the profession. Even the most
other worldly of project author
will have had to engage with the
often all too-worldly aspects of
the prescribed curriculum.
Although particular types of
work tend to surface through
the Presidents Medals it is
also important to note that the
RIBA also acknowledges and
rewards other types of work
and our students performed
exceptionally well in a number
of awards. Joanna Dohertys
commendation in the RIBA
Dissertation Prize 2011
represents a major achievement
and demonstrates the Schools
continuing commitment to a
rounded education where the
development of analytical and
critical writing skills are highly
valued. Hugh Craft and James
Longfield also won the regional
RIBA Hadrian Medals 2011 at
both Parts 1 and 2 respectively
and it should be highlighted that
as part of the judging process
the students had to verbally
present their design declarations
to a panel of practitioners, to
engage them in discussion and
to articulate and argue for their
position. I am not surprised that
our students perform so well in
these forums. All three pieces
of prize-winning work feature in
this yearbook and each in their
own way demonstrates a real
engagement with, and concern
for, important social and political
issues.
This brings me back to
Schumachers article. Whilst the
first part grabbed attention, the
second part actually contained
a much more important
provocation and challenge
for architectural education.
In it he put forward a vision
of architectural education
founded on speculative
design experimentation and
underpinned by systematic
design research that is both
optimistic and forward-looking
whilst not shying away from
pressing contemporary social
issues. From this viewpoint, a
critical or politically motivated
design approach does not need
to operate at a comfortable
distance from current realities
or a grounding in practical or
pragmatic concerns. In other
words there is no reason why
commitment, imagination and
innovation has to be detached
from an engagement with the
real world.
I believe that this is closer
to our Schools vision of
architectural education as an
inclusive environment capable
of encompassing a wide range
5
 of work whilst also engaging
in a productive dialogue
with our societal context on
a local, regional and global
basis. A substantial amount
of the work in this Yearbook
continues to demonstrate the
Schools commitment to trying
to make a difference through
engagement with communities,
groups and individuals either
directly or indirectly through live
projects and design briefs. Our
aim is to be relevant and this
pedagogical vision is supported
by research informed teaching
and research-based design
that seeks to contribute to a
deeper understanding of specific
aspects of the built environment.
This view also acknowledges that
even in its most modest form the
act of designing and constructing
architecture is essentially
political and continuously raises
questions about resource use
and allocation - questions of why,
what, where, and how we build.
Seen in this way architecture
becomes a space in which
competing concerns are both
asserted and reconciled in a
creative act of mediation and
6
as a school we will continue to architectural practice to also
seek opportunities for, and work include questions as to whether
towards fostering a creative practice is ready for them.
and positive interface between
academia, practice and society
at large.
I will be entirely supportive of
the RIBA if it genuinely seeks
to promote, support and
reward socially and politically
motivated work, but I doubt
that the Presidents Medals,
at least in their current form
are the appropriate vehicle to
achieve this. As things stand,
they will continue to serve a
useful purpose as long as they
continue to challenge and to
stimulate discussion and debate.
The Medals work forms the tip
of an iceberg, a highly visible
but not complete picture of the
work produced and valued within
architectural education and it
remains essential to continue
to recognise and to praise
young talent in all its wonderful
diversity. Perhaps we might
reframe and add to the questions
that surfaced in the recent
debates from those asking
whether students are ready for
7
 BA
degree
Simon Hacker
This year has seen a number of
changes to the design projects
within each of the three BA
stages and whilst these have
helped to refresh and enliven the
individual design modules, they
represent a precursor to a more
fundamental review of the entire
degree structure which is now
underway and which will run for
the next six months or so.
The prospect of possible root
and branch changes to what
is recognised as a mature and
well regarded course - the fruits
of which are evident on the fol-
lowing pages - is not without an
element of risk. In many senses,
the experience is analogous to
that of architectural design. Staff
routinely invest a lot of time and
effort in persuading students to
think deeply about their design
projects, to challenge precon-
ceptions, to test a wide range of
ideas and possible solutions and
ultimately to be inquisitive and
questioning in all that they do.
8
At the heart of Newcastle studio
design teaching there exists an
on-going challenge to our stu-
dents, namely, not to be overly
precious about their current
design proposals, good as they
may be, lest in doing so they
miss an opportunity to make their
designs the best they could be.
As we review the degree course
and speculate about where we
go from here, we are simply
putting into practice what we
preach in our studios. Whilst the
prospect of change undoubt-
edly brings a certain amount of
anxiety and trepidation for all
concerned, we dont wish to be
too precious about the course as
it currently stands, good though
it undoubtedly is. The anxiety is
therefore mixed with excitement
and anticipation as we seek to
make the undergraduate archi-
tecture course here at Newcastle
the best it can possibly be.
The Hepworth, Wakefield

9
 BA
charette
Simon Hacker and Colin Ross

Charette = an Anglicised French
term, in this context describing a
group of designers working col-
laboratively and frantically right
up to the last minute to solve a
problem.
Setting aside the first week of the
academic year to run the project,
the majority of lectures were
simply cancelled at the last min-
ute and far less time than was
sensible was given over to plan-
ning the event. In true Charette
fashion, the briefing for the pro-
ject was still being prepared as
the first of the 300 students were
assembling for the introductory
session on the Monday.
game were again very straight-
forward: to use any means to
maximise the potential of sheets
of A4 paper in order to produce
work that was well made, beauti-
ful and specific to its site.
In the event, the teams folded,
wove, stapled, cast, glued and
taped a wide variety of forms and
structures across the campus.
Fittingly, for a project focused on
fragile sheets of paper, the instal-
lations were exhibited for just a
few hours, transforming areas of
the campus in much the same
way an unseasonal fall of snow
might do, and then disappearing
just as quickly.
The obvious outputs and results
from the project can be seen on
the following pages; however,
the less tangible outcomes were
perhaps the most surprising and
gratifying. Amongst these, teams
of nurses brought several pa-
tients down from the near-by RVI
Hospital to see the installations
and we received a number of
emails from staff in other depart-
ments expressing their surprise
and pleasure at the unexpected,
albeit fleeting, transformation of
their campus.

Students were divided into Refreshments were laid on for

groups, with each group having
representatives from each of the
three stages, and set a decep-
tively simple problem - to design,
make and install a temporary
paper intervention on the Univer-
sity campus, and to complete it
within 75 hours. The rules of the
the unveiling of the installa-
tions on the Friday afternoon,
and it was exhilarating to see
over 300 students together with
staff gathering to celebrate the
successful conclusion of a frantic
weeks work.

10
Ba Charette

11
12
13
14
15
 stage 1
Katie Lloyd Thomas and Martin Beattie
Stage one is a varied introduction
to architecture, characterised by
numerous workshops, visits and
hands-on activities and students
respond to it with great energy.
Students began by building 1:1
paper constructions and install-
ing them around the campus
with students from other years.
Their first designs were for small
spaces of refuge and shelter
in rural settings, where scale,
function, materiality and the con-
struction of space were explored
primarily through model making.
Additional hands-on projects
developed structural understand-
ing and measured drawing skills
and made use of buildings
historic and contemporary - in
Newcastle and its surroundings,
with visits to Warkworth, Escomb
and Durham. Theory, history and
technology are taught through
lectures, seminars and group
work and are also integrated into
the design teaching.
16
In semester two students move
to the city to embark upon
a longer design project that
demands more complex three
dimensional manipulation and
emphasises the experience and
qualities of space. Artist-led
workshops allow the testing of
alternative ways of exploring
form, drawing and space - and
introduce a process-driven ap-
proach to design. A final semes-
ter two project explores urban
activities and concentrates on
analysing public space in the city
and proposing an intervention,
before students bring together
the great range of work they have
undertaken for the portfolio.
Feasting Space for Wraps

17
 As part of induction week new students
accompanied by artists and design tutors
visit parts of the city with their sketchbooks
to experiment with the use of various drawing
media including pencils, pastels, charcoal and
graphite.

After wandering and drawing in different

locations, students finally find a destination
in town -churches, markets, galleries, old city
walls- and start to draw using A1 paper and a
drawing board. The idea is to get a taste of the
way architects look at the environment, but also
to get students to do something they have never
done before; use A1 paper on a drawing board
and sketch with charcoal or graphite. It is meant
to be a pleasant and memorable occasion and
gives them opportunity to familiarise themselves
with the city and each other, as well as the way
the first year is run in collaboration with artists.

This city sketching exercise is part of a

professional studies module, which introduces
them to different visual media.
exercise
drawing
city

Kati Blom

18
 Sam Halliday

Tristan Francis

19
 The first project is a simple one-roomed single-
storey beach hut. This is a place to make day
visits to the beach, a room of ones own with a
view of the sea. Students were asked to pose
creative and conceptual ways of living, which
were reflected in their beach hut designs. The
beach hut is a place for daydreams and this
project hopefully captures some of the dreams
that first year students may have had about
architecture.

The site is on the North East coast of England,

next to a long strip of golden sand that runs
North-South. The huts internal dimensions
are 2.5 x 3 metres, and it forms part of a row.
daydreams Naturally, it will have a floor, walls, and roof to
give shelter from the elements, a door to get into
the hut, and openings in the walls and/or roof, to
let light in and to see out. Students were asked
to develop their schemes largely in model form.
The final review was student led, with students
choosing the best schemes for a final selected
exhibition.
shelter
for

project 01

Martin Beattie
Re

20
 Final Exibition

Chong Yan Chuah

Rebecca Wise Mariya Lapteva

21
 The second project is a small summer cabin
plus artists studio of 40m. It is a place for one
person to stay for short intervals throughout
the year. Basic provision is made for sleeping,
cooking, relaxing, studying, and creating art.
There is no electricity and vehicular access to
the building is not possible. The experience is
one of living simply in nature and in isolation and
it might be a chance to question conventional
modes of living.

The site is located on the Southern edge of a

promontory of land, forested with Scots Pine,
called the Belling, in Kielder Forest. It is a
site where the sound of wind in the trees and
water lapping on the beach are prominent.
Sunlight, wind, proximity to shelter, trees, ground
conditions, topography, paths, aspect, outlook
and surveillance were crucial aspects that
students were asked to consider. However we
were also looking for a more conceptual and
poetic response to both site and programme.
Students were asked to develop their schemes
through sketchbooks, models and weekly theory
readings.
refuge
place
for

project 02

Martin Beattie

22
Matthew Wreglesworth

23
 Azam Haron

Jessica Wilkie

24
 Ningxin Ye

Shaobo Wu

25
 For their major design project of the year stage
one students were asked to design a cookery
school at the historic site of Fish Quay looking
out across the River Tyne as it opens on to the
sea. The school comprises two key spaces an
area for teaching students to cook a particular
cuisine, and a space where guests join students
to socialise and eat what they have cooked.
The emphasis was on creating practical and
magical places for these activities and rich
spatial relationships between them.
Students worked particularly through model
and section, exploring material qualities, light
and inhabitation and through a series of hands
on workshops led by local artists. They built
1:1 spaces in the studio to eat tapas, pastries,
sushi, noodles, street wraps, grills and curries
for a feast in week one. They made exquisite
casts of foods and food containers in plaster
and concrete, and experimented with drawing
material qualities, light and stairs. They worked
with great energy and imagination, producing an
extraordinary range of highly individual schemes
that celebrated aspects of their
<No cuisines link>
intersecting
wrapping, layers, colours, fire - as well as the
cooking

multitude of ways, formal and informal, that we

cook and share food together.
whats

project 03

Katie Lloyd Thomas

26
 James Street

Dominic Barham
Barham.jpg

Jodi Hampton

27
 Casting Workshop

Casting Workshop

28
Pippa Oakes

Nick Ward

29
 The project was based on a set of readings
including Soft City by Jonathan Raban (1974).
Firstly, the students were asked to write a short
report on a significant (to them) urban place and
to consider the following questions:
- What happens when people gather?
- What is the difference between a crowd and an
aggregation of individuals?
- What kind of places support or undermine the
feeling of being part of a thriving community of
citizens?
The research work was followed by design
work based on two sites in Newcastle and this
was carried out on a group basis. The project
work made use of the earlier research work
on crowds, urban space and ideas for the
reinventing
future city. The brief was for radical, alternative,
experimental proposals.

The students were encouraged to link the

readings and the discussions of significant
places in Newcastle to their work. These
discussions had mostly hinged on the way
that these significant places work for both
individuals and crowds. There are other bits
of Newcastle that absolutely dont work in this
way. We set the students the task of speculating
about the future of two of these dramatic but
dysfunctional sites. The requirement was
to consider future activities/combinations of
activities that might act as a catalyst for a good
individual/crowd relationship.

Group Project by: Theodore Coles, Sophia

Durham, Abigail Jones, Gabriel Niculcea,
Philippa Oakes,William Whiteaway, Benjamin Yip
city
the

project 04

Bill Tavernor

30
31
 Charles Dickenss name is everywhere this year.
He was born 200 years ago in 1812 -- the year
that France (then led by Napoleon) attacked
Moscow. Some things have changed since
then, but our relationships with the rooms we
live in continue to be important to us in similar
ways. Little Dorrit was published between 1855
and 1857, and has a good deal of satire in it.
At least two generations before Kafka, Dickens
was drawing attention to bureaucratic futility
in the (fictional) Circumlocution Office, which
a by-product
consigns Mr Dorrit to prison for a minor debt
with no apparent possibility of ever serving his
undefined sentence. The characters who are
not in prison travel about internationally a good
deal, and anyone who associates Dickens with
Christmas and London fogs will be arrested
by the opening of Little Dorrit: an extended
description of blazing heat in Marseilles. Here,
though, I just want to pick out two descriptions
of contrasting interiors. the first is the room
in which Arthur Clennam finds himself when
he returns home to London after 20 years in
China. It is not homely:
life:
of

Two Rooms in Little Dorrit

Andrew Ballantyne

32

They mounted up and up, through the
musty smell of an old close house,
little used, to a large garret bed-room.
Meagre and spare, like all the other
rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer
than the rest, by being the place of
banishment for the worn-out furniture.
Its movables were ugly old chairs
with worn-out seats, and ugly old
chairs without any seats; a threadbare
patternless carpet, a maimed table,
a crippled wardrobe, a lean set of
fire-irons like the skeleton of a set
deceased, a washing-stand that looked
as if it had stood for ages in a hail of
dirty soapsuds, and a bedstead with four
bare atomies of posts, each terminating
in a spike, as if for the dismal
accommodation of lodgers who might
prefer to impale themselves. Arthur
opened the long low window, and looked
out upon the old blasted and blackened
forest of chimneys, and the old red
glare in the sky, which had seemed
to him once upon a time but a nightly
reflection of the fiery environment that
was presented to his childish fancy in all
directions, let it look where it would.
The description of the room
tells us how miserable Arthurs
home life has been. It is his
family home, but it has none
of the comforts that might be
anticipated. He is an adult, he
went to China with his father and
his father has just died, but this
is the room to which his mother
consigns him. The room signals
all that is wrong with the family.
He is not welcomed back to the
house, but is received coolly.
Dickenss description of the
room is careful and considered,
and the effect is theatrical, but
the room itself is supposed to be
the product of neglect. Nothing in
it is well-judged or loved. Things
have ended up here when they
should have been thrown away.
Everything is undernourished if
not injured or tortured, and we
infer that this is Arthurs habitual
condition in his relations with his
mother. It is a low-status room in
a house that does have better,
but where everything is sombre
and mean.
This dismal room contrasts
with the Meagless cottage,
which was just large enough,
and no more; was as pretty
within as it was without, and
was perfectly well-arranged and
comfortable. It is furnished with
an accumulation of souvenirs of
the Meagless travels:
There were antiquities from Central Italy,
made by the best modern houses in that
department of industry; bits of mummy
from Egypt (and perhaps Birmingham);
model gondolas from Venice; model
villages from Switzerland; morsels of
tessellated pavement from Herculaneum
and Pompeii, like petrified minced veal;
ashes out of tombs, and lava out of
Vesuvius; Spanish fans, Spezzian straw
hats, Moorish slippers, Tuscan hairpins,
Carrara sculpture, Trastaverini scarves,
Genoese velvets and filigree, Neapolitan
coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jewellery,
Arab lanterns, rosaries blest all round by
the Pope himself, and an infinite variety
of lumber.
The objects around the house
do not have the high intrinsic
value that comparable items in
an aristocratic house would have
had. The antiquities from Italy
are not genuine, but modern
copies. Most of the things are
fakes, and the genuine things
are unremarkable except for
their provenance: fans, straw
hats, ashes, lava. The fragments
of mosaic are too small for
their artistic design to register.
To say that they are morsels
makes them into food, but then
if they are like petrified minced
veal they are unattractive for
the eye and unnourishing for
the digestion. So the house
is not exactly presented as
an ideal. The tone of the
description is facetious. The
long list of souvenirs builds up
an impression of undiscerning
enthusiasm for travel and
asquisition. The itinerary is
something like that of a Grand
Tour, but the sensibility is
commonplace and mercantile.
Nevertheless the Meagleses
do not lack human warmth.
There is a sense of sentimental
attachment to these objects.
The principle that holds them all
together as a group is that they
have come from foreign places.
The images of saints here are
not presented as devotional,
but as tokens of having visited
Catholic countries. The objects
have some hit-and-miss
aesthetic value as decoration,
but they are not fine works of
art. Their principal cultural value
lies in their bearing witness
to the Meagleses high-status
experience as travellers.
The reason that these imaginary
rooms are interesting is because
of what they tell us about the
imaginary lives of the people
who produced them. The
rooms were not imagined as
if they were designed set-
pieces, but as places that took
shape gradually. Their details
accumulated because of the life
that was being lived in them and
around them. What matters is
not so much the objects, but the
habitual behaviour that brought
the objects together. We see the
objects and value them as clues
about the life.
This is an extract from Andrew
Ballantyne, The Emergent Quality of
Personal Space: Character and Destiny
in the Australian Architectural Theory
Review (Emergence special issue 2012).
33
 stage 2

Simon Hacker and Bill Tavernor

Taking on the role of Stage 2 and drive, culminating in some

coordinator this year has brought spectacular work and ideas and
a number of personal challenges demonstrating once again to the
and I am indebted to Bill Tavernor tutors just how fortunate we are
for his very practical help and to have the students we have in
encouragement throughout, as the School.
well as to the rest of the Stage 2
tutoring team. I would also like to
express my particular thanks to
the Stage 2 students, who have
unwittingly test-driven a range
of new and amended design
projects - not without some
success it must be said.

Alongside the challenges,

the experience has been an
overwhelmingly positive one. The
cohort is unashamedly keen and
competitive, and whilst I might
have liked them to relax a little
more at times, it doesnt seem
to have prevented the majority
of them from enjoying the ride.
This was typified in the final
project of the year, Section-Alley.
Envisaged as a fun group project
to end the year with, the cohort
responded with typical energy

34
Tynemouth Pier and Lighthouse

35
 This was a preliminary design exercise that was
intended to build towards the next project - a
relatively complex residential scheme with a
strong social agenda.

The Space to Live project was about the spatial

planning/design of small row (terrace) houses.
The idea was to generate and test the range of
possible alternatives in a fixed volume.

The objectives were to be systematic in

generating alternative designs and to be
accurate in putting them down. The focus
was on an understanding of the principles of
ergonomics. The overall aim was to investigate
the possibility of creating good liveable homes
within relatively modest means.
The building footprint was 31m2 and 2
storey development was possible. The brief
deliberately sought to counter the common
design short-cut that many students employ
that of simply making it a bit bigger.
space
live
to

project 01

Bill Tavernor

36
 Daniel Celaya

Daniel Celaya Agata Murasco

37
 Nguyen Xuan Man

Matthew Pratt

38
Ruta Austrina

39
 The project asked the students to resolve
the programmatic and contextual challenges
involved in designing a small housing scheme in
the heart of Newcastle.

The project was all about the delicate boundary

between community and privacy and the
creation of effective thresholds that allow us to
have some choice and control of our personal
environment. The brief was for a foyer scheme
that would support eight young adults who had
been disadvantaged in some way and to help
them develop skills in woodworking and to find
employment. In building terms, there was a
strong emphasis on ideas of sustainability and
the exploration of simple forms of construction.
simplicity
economy
home

project 02

Bill Tavernor

40
Rumen Dimov

Shuo Yang

41
 Matthew Pratt

Ruta Austrina

42
Agata Murasko

43
 In this project students move from the scale
of the house and home to design their first
medium-scale public building. Whilst the
emphasis changes from that of the private
and the personal, to that of the public and the
collective, students inevitably encounter many
of the same themes introduced in the first
Semester projects.

The settlement of Tynemouth, characterised by

its wide and largely intact medieval Front Street,
provides the location for the project. Students
choose one of three building typologies - a Moot
(small Town) Hall, an Outward Bound Centre or
a Literary Co-op - and mix and match these with
three suggested sites.

At the heart of the project, students are

challenged to consider the needs of a diverse
and general public and to ensure that their
building designs possess an appropriate
scale, variety and presence. This necessitates
them deciding if their building should be, in
Aaltos words, a visual and symbolic crown
or whether, in the context of Tynemouth with
its already existing castle, priory, breakwater
centred

and other large-scale monuments, something

more human in scale might provide a more
appropriate response as a new addition to the
public realm.
civic

project 03

Simon Hacker

44
Nedelina Atanasova

Shuo Yang

45
 Rumen Dimov

Tom Day

46
Vilmante Daulenskyte

Rania Francis Long

47
 Matthew Pratt

Matthew Pratt

Vilmante Daulenskyte David Boyd

48
 Shuo Yang

Greta Varpucianskyte

49
 There is temptation for many students and,
indeed, practitioners of architecture to feel that
the single most important aspect of design is the
resolution of plans. This seems to have become
communicated to many non-architects, hence the
all-too-common client request - Can you draw
me some plans?

The Section-Alley project has been formulated

in an attempt to discover just how important
plan drawings are to the way we think and
communicate. It asks students, working in
section-alley
small groups, to study and represent a complex
sectional context, and to then design a small
timber music performance venue and represent
this using only sectional drawings and models.
The Newcastle quayside Chares, or alleys,
provide the physical context for the project with
each group first choosing and then surveying a
Chare. Employing lightweight and demountable
timber construction techniques, they were then
asked to design one or more performance
venues within their chosen Chare, to help
facilitate a hypothetical annual
<Nobusking festival.
intersecting link>
Finally, each group was tasked with publicising
and promoting their Chares and venues prior to a
final exhibition of the project work.

project 04

Simon Hacker

50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
 fo eltit
elcitra
north build
the great

eltitbus

gRose
nidaGilroy
ehbus

58
Social Renewal
2012 sees the last of the Vice
Chancellors Societal Challenges
-Social Renewal- galvanise
Newcastle University to consider
how societies and communities
(local, regional, national and
international) might thrive when
faced with rapid, transformational
change?
Social change has, of course,
always been present and has
often been radical. But the need
for societies to renew themselves
arising from the sheer pace
and globally interdependent
nature of change has, in recent
times, reached a new peak.
Increasingly, social change
has differential consequences
for individuals, organizations
and communities, increasing
inequalities in income, health,
education and opportunity. Here
in the Northeast, some of the
communities that are hardest
hit are those that were just
emerging from the decline in our
traditional industries. In our own
city we see the conspicuously
wealthy and the increasingly
marginalised leading parallel
lives in very separate spaces.
What can a university do in the
face of these big issues? We
are not frontline actors, so what
can we bring that is of value?
Roles that the university can play
are to act as thought leaders in
generating new ideas; through
disseminating our own research
so that new evidence comes
into the debates and finally
through specific projects that
may capture the attention and
imagination of city, national or
international actors.
The Role of Place
In the School of Architecture,
Planning and Landscape we
recognise the centrality of
community, identity and place to
meeting the societal challenge
of how to adapt and thrive in a
rapidly changing world. In the
places where people live or
work, a key question is how can
they join together to imagine
their future collectively and to
pursue a shared vision? How
might place-based identities and
ideas of community and heritage
be enlisted to form a basis
for inclusive action engaging
with the future? How can links
with the past help individuals
and communities adapt to
change and thrive in the future?
There is growing evidence that
community, identity and place
are powerful resources in the
collective mobilisation of people
to shape their futures. Moreover,
people are increasingly likely
to identify with place, whether
places they have always lived
and belonged or places to
which they choose to move
and elect to belong. The
meanings and future trajectories
of such places are likely to be
contested and co-produced
through complex, power-infused
processes, characterised
as much by conflict as by
consensus. These ideas are
well known to academics and
professionals but how do we
bring in more voices?
The Great North Build
Through the creativity of the
events team led by Jenny
Allinson, the University took the
bold step of holding an event
to explore the good city. What
spaces would it have what
functions would it need to fulfil-
how might it contribute to a
good quality of life for children,
older people and everyone
in between? We could have
had debates and architectural
competitions but these would
have drawn in the professionals,
59
 the academics and the policy
makers. How could we connect
with the people of Newcastle and
get them thinking about place?
We promote inclusivity best
when we celebrate creativity. So
armed with 110,000 Lego pieces
(including Duplo for those with
smaller fingers) a base plate
of a city was created. Thanks
to recent graduates signed
up to the ArchiGrad scheme
with Northern Architecture, a
small city was born with an
infrastructure of hospitals,
housing and civic buildings
including a castle complete
with camera to capture time
lapse footage of the 4 weeks of
building and demolition that was
to follow. The doors opened on
March 12th and by the close of
the event on April 14th thousands
of people had streamed through
the doors-increasingly in booked
time slots to ensure everyone
had a chance to build and leave
comments. Every day the public
was faced by a new challenge:
- Department of Health research
has revealed that our city has a
high incidence of heart disease,
how can we get people taking
more exercise? What role does
place play in promoting good
health?
- A major employer needs to
expand but that means building
on green field sites how do
we balance our need for jobs
and our need to protect the
environment?
- There is a continued decline
in the physical and social
conditions of social housing to
the South of the city. In spite of
decades of investment, most
of the housing is either empty
or in disrepair. However the
site provides a prime location
for new, private residential
development. Do we renovate or
demolish and sell the land?
60
Our `city developers and
planners` were bold and
ruthless. Buildings that were
judged not to work or to be
poorly located were demolished;
new shopping areas sprang
up; ministries (including MI6)
were relocated from London
to generate employment; a
wave of crime was met by the
development of a high security
prison; an airport was built and
then expanded to increase the
impact of our city for business
and tourism. Being Newcastle
citizens, a football ground
was built in the heart of the
city and the river spanned by
several iconic bridges. Public
monuments sprang off the board
and regardless of the weather;
open air swimming pools
brought exercise opportunities.
It was fun but was that all it
was? We hope to edit the film
footage to create short films
to demonstrate our schools
creative ways of engaging the
public; and for use in teaching
to explore how people reacted
to different scenarios. The many
hundreds of comments that
were pinned to the wall will be
analysed and may form the
core of academic publications.
ArchiGrads gained invaluable
confidence building from
interacting with older people,
families and school groups
from across Tyneside. Most
importantly people had an
opportunity to come to the
University and to learn something
of the tough decisions that
underpin trying to create a good
place to live.
61
 stage 3

Daniel Mallo

The year started with a one week oscillations between past and
long vertical project for stages present, and fields, rooms and
1, 2 and 3 during which they interstices in a dense urban
designed and made a temporary environment.
intervention out of paper situated
inside or outside the school of
architecture. This introductory
exercise demonstrated the
impact of real size installations
and opened up a discussion
about matter, assemblage and
context. In addition, students
developed a number of key
themes including aspects
of permanence and working
with the existing, in relation to
buildings and also with regard to
components and materials.

Students also had the

opportunity to explore areas
of personal interest including
a dissertation on a research
topic of their own choice, whilst
the design module culminated
with a choice of graduation
projects offering a wide variety of
themes such as cultural agency,
alternative learning environments,

62
63
 The project proposes a new shop window for
the Northern Region Film and Television Archive
(NRFTA), located in Middlesbrough, as well
as an engaging and inspiring front door. In
middlesbrough order to both showcase existing collections and
provide a repository for an ever growing number
of unofficial histories, the project asks students

space
to consider how architecture might engage with
the public and also questions how personal
histories might be collected and displayed.

The site, adjacent to Middlesbrough station,

is simultaneously hidden and exposed,

to
sandwiched between the infrastructure
corridors of the A66 trunk road to the South
and the railway to the North. It is located in an
apparent no-mans land between the historic
Middlesbrough centre and the brave new world
of Alsops Middlehaven, and yet, by virtue of its
location, sits on what might be imagined to be a

live
new cultural axis connecting the two.

Three principal themes ran through the project

- communication, context and constraint.
Project presentation and communication skills
were developed, with students constrained
archive
to use a limited palette and colour selection.
The diversity of structural and architectural
language surrounding the site necessitates
students making a careful reading of the context
project 01 and then quickly deciding upon a personal
response. Finally, the students were challenged
to consider their attitude to working with existing
bill tavernor structures and features within the constraints of
a challenging context.

This was a preliminary design exercise that was storey development was possible. The brief
film

intended to build towards the next project - a deliberately sought to counter the common
relatively complex residential scheme with a design short-cut that many students employ
strong social agenda. that of simply making it a bit bigger.

The Space to Live project was about the spatial

planning/design of small row (terrace) houses.
The idea was to generate and test the range of
possible alternatives in a fixed volume.

The objectives were to be systematic in

generating alternative designs and to be
accurate in putting them down. The focus
was on an understanding of the principles of
ergonomics. The overall aim was to investigate
the possibility of creating good liveable homes
within
Simonrelatively
Hacker andmodest means.
Matthew Margetts
The building footprint was 31m2 and 2

64
Chistopher Jackson

Lam Nguyen

65
 Neringa Stonyte

Frederick Jackson Neringa Stonyte M

66
e Frederick Jackson

Christopher Jackson Adam Fryett

e Matthew Hudspith Caitlin Simcock

67
 Justin Moorton <No intersecting link>

Matthew Hudspith L

68
 Jack Lines

Lam Nguyen Lam Nguyen

69
 Richard Breen

Christopher Jackson

70
 Jamie Anderson

Jamie Anderson

Lam Nguyen Fredderick Jackson

71
 fo eltit
elcitra
and now
then

eAltPersonal
itbus view of Four Decades in the Life of the School

gHentie
nidaehLouw
bus

72
We first came to Newcastle
University in September 1972.
We knew nothing about the town
or the region then, and the im-
pression we got from the English
(Southerners mostly) whom we
met over several months of trav-
elling in Europe had been almost
invariably negative. The Newcas-
tle we found was topographically
impressive, with a good historic
fabric, though run-down, still
substantially intact, but culturally
the place was rather sedate.
There was a well-established
professional architectural com-
munity, but the Eldon Square
Shopping Centre and the Byker
council housing scheme, both
still under construction, provided
conflicting benchmarks for the
future of architectural develop-
ment in the area. The campus,
in the decade since its split from
Durham University, had acquired
many new buildings of decent
quality in the then fashionable
brick and concrete campus style
grafted on to its late-Victorian/
Edwardian redbrick core. The
tranquillity of the central Quad
Lutyenesque in character - where
the Departments of Architecture
and Fine Art occupied prime
positions, and background music
from the Music Department on
the opposite side frequently drifts
by - made the biggest impres-
sion on me; it fitted my image
of what an English university
campus should be like, and, it
felt like a place of arrival.
I had enrolled for a masters de-
gree in architectural history, and
one of the requirements of the
two-year course was that we took
a selection of the undergraduate
subjects in the humanities; I at-
tended all the history and theory
classes on offer. This gave me
an insight into the department at
a deeper level than I otherwise
would have had. By good fortune
I was also introduced to Ralph
Erskines Byker Office, and the
experience of working on this
innovative project during vaca-
tions changed my perspective on
what architecture was about. This
chance encounter, the depart-
ments ethos which emphasized
cultured professionalism com-
bined with creative individualism,
plus the friendly atmosphere that
we found in both the town and
on campus, made Newcastle
seem a good place to be. When
the opportunity for a permanent
teaching post arrived a few years
later the decision was, therefore,
simple.
The department I came back to
in 1976 had a reputation as one
of the better university schools of
architecture in the country, with a
well-defined academic frame-
work supporting its two-tiered
professional degree system.
Despite nominal academic
entry requirements (2xE-grade)
Newcastle attracted high calibre
students and produced capable,
well-educated professional
architects. Considerable effort
went into maintaining a balance
between the practice skills
demanded by the RIBA, and the
academic criteria of a traditional
university. On the studio side
the department could draw on a
strong and varied local profes-
sional base, public as well as pri-
vate for part-time tuition, and at
second-degree level, participa-
tion in a live-project office based
on the second floor formed an
integral part of the syllabus.
Academically there was a spirit of
competition at the time between
the scientists and the artists countries (CARDO, established
for the soul of the school. Archi-
tecture education in Newcastle
was traditionally linked with Fine
Art, back to its 19th century
roots, but the national move of
architecture into the universities
in 1958 brought a new emphasis
on scientific research. Newcastle
had become one of the research
leaders in the field of Building
Science, with substantial external
funds and postgraduate grants.
The building science team were
also committed teachers, pre-
senting a challenge to the former
hegemony of the arts within the
undergraduate curriculum. Tech-
nology was clearly one of the
strengths of the department.
By comparison the humanities,
though fairly represented lacked
resources and was largely reli-
ant on the efforts of individual
scholars and enthusiasts to
deliver lectures, do research,
and maintain a presence in the
studio. Scholarship however was
valued and in the dissertation
the humanities had an important
vehicle for promoting the pursuit
of cultural (primarily historical)
topics amongst students. In the
first or Architectural Studies
degree, excellence in research
and writing was given parity to
excellence in design in determin-
ing degree classification. The
dissertation remained a key com-
ponent of the second, profes-
sional, degree as well, gaining
Newcastle a national reputation
for high academic standards.
However, the lack of a post-
graduate dimension to histori-
cal and theoretical studies was
acknowledged as a weakness in
the departments make-up even
then, and this proved to be an in-
tractable problem, given the twin
obstacles of funding and recruit-
ment. The parallel growth of a
postgraduate centre for the study
of housing issues in developing
in 1970), whilst not compensat-
ing for this, did bring a constant
stream of people from far-off
places to Newcastle, which
raised the international profile of
the department, enriched the cul-
ture and established a foothold
for the social sciences.
73
 Institutionally Architecture was
somewhat awkwardly positioned.
From common roots Fine Art,
Planning and Architecture had
grown into three distinct entities,
or, departments within the new
university structure. Each thought
of itself as a school, with design
as a common factor but, despite
working relations being eased
by being grouped together in a
sub-faculty within the larger Arts
Faculty, they continued to drift
further apart.
The department seemed well-
appointed physically, with a
new building science annex,
linked to a refurbished historic
main building which included an
80-seater lecture theatre, a library
and a workshop. Each student
had their own studio space with
drawing board. This fostered a
studio culture, which provided
the platform for design teaching.
The approach was essentially
pragmatic, low-key modernist,
with an emphasis on personal
development. With an annual in-
take of c.40 at BA-level, and c.25
at BArch-level - a staff student
ratio of 1:10 - Newcastle had the
profile of a typical English school
of architecture, and an intimate,
family-like atmosphere. I rather
liked that.
When I started teaching, several
of the staff responsible for the
regeneration of the Newcastle
School after WWII were still
around. The increased tempo
in the turnover of staff that fol-
lowed became a tendency that
lasted to this day and remained a
constant stimulant for growth and
change. Change was in the air
and increasingly external factors
would drive events, challenging
the belief structures upon which
architectural education in the UK
was founded. Never a trendsetter
in a stylistic sense, Newcastle
was not immune to the fashions
and as community architecture
74
made way for PoMo, late-
Modernism etc, we did our best
to keep up - staff and students
alike in our individualistic way,
without any particular stylistic
movement ever becoming
dominant. The real challenges
lay elsewhere.
The School prided itself on
the quality of its teaching. We
regarded ourselves as teach-
ers first and a specialists after
all historians, for example,
were qualified architects as
well as having further academic
qualifications (interestingly, the
same was not demanded of the
scientists and engineers on the
staff!), and expected to teach in
the studios. The Vitruvian image
of the architect as an omnipotent
professional and leader of the
building team, adopted as the
ideal with the foundation of the
RIBA, still prevailed as a model
for the educational programme
which centred on design.
Although increasingly challenged
in practice this idealistic concept
did give structure, purpose and
focus to our teaching pro-
grammes.
Special care was taken in the
development of the curriculum
to integrate different specialist
subjects with the design projects
sequentially so that the learning
process became organic a
holistic experience that produced
a well-rounded, knowledgeable
and skilled architect at the end.
The process was regularly moni-
tored and refined over time. We
taught in teams, experimented
constantly with project format
and content as well as curriculum
structures. We shared experi-
ences with other architecture
schools in the UK and the rest of
Europe at educational confer-
ences and projected exchange
programmes. Newcastle was
not alone in this enthusiasm for
teaching. Architectural education
had, in all but name over the
period of a decade or so - be-
come a vocation in its own right,
with international dimensions.
Not surprising for it is, pedagogi-
cally speaking, one of the richest
and most seductive of all subject
areas to engage with (as Donald
Schn has demonstrated in his
book, The Design Studio (1985)).
The movement had the full sup-
port of the RIBA who, through its
national quinquennial inspection
system was influenced by the
emphasis placed on pedagogy
in the then polytechnic sector;
the science-based university
ethos that held at Newcastle, and
which emphasised disciplinary
autonomy was less sympathetic
to what was considered, in es-
sence, as a craft-like, inward-
looking hierarchical approach.
Architecture as a discipline and
as profession was not well-
placed to face the political, eco-
nomic and social turmoil of the
Thatcher-era (c.1980- c.2010).
Several factors combined to
make our life as teachers of
architecture difficult during this
period. We were not alone in
this: the entire higher education
sector in the country was being
transformed by the drive towards
privatisation and globalisation
under successive governments.
But Architecture always seemed
at a special disadvantage in
this environment due to the
perceived need for nurturing the
slow-maturing interactive skills
of design within a studio culture.
The rapidly increasing student
numbers, modularisation, the
RAE exercise all these seemed
to affect Architecture dispropor-
tionately because of the iterative
developmental nature of the
creative discipline at its core.
Had we been able to adopt a
more incremental educational
structure that encouraged and
rewarded specialisation we too
might have flourished sooner
under the research culture that
came to dominate from the
1990s onwards, as Planning did.
It became increasingly difficult
for architectural staff to maintain
a balance between teaching,
research and practice, and have
career prospects in academia.
Architecture had also become
perilously isolated within the
university, at one point risking
a Bristol-style amputation (In
1982-4 Bristol University closed
its thriving School of Architec-
ture as a cost-cutting exercise).
Architecture was regarded as
a resourcehungry department
with little to offer others in return.
In reality there were few opportu-
nities for the department to link in
with the university framework; the
highly successful architectural
history course offered to the Fac-
ulty of Arts, Combined Studies
degree programme (1978-2006)
was a rare exception. And, we
were not productive in research
either. In the end astute manage-
ment saved the day and with the
subsequent merger of Archi-
tecture, Planning & Landscape
Design as a unified School in
1999 that spectre finally seems
to have been laid to rest.
I am not entirely sure, despite
continuous attempts at closer in-
tegration within the School since
then, that this move has created
the optimum framework for Archi-
tecture to prosper at Newcastle.
One obstacle to closer collabora-
tion amongst the three subject
areas within this framework is the
lack of a common language.
Design could be that, as it once
was in Newcastle and still is in
most of Europe, but that would
require adjustments on the part
of Planning and Landscape, and,
might bring back some of the
risks associated with isolation
outlined above.
In the final analysis the char-
acter of the department owes
a lot to its physical resource
base: its location, its staff, and
its students. The cumulative
effort of many individuals over
time had been something that
sustained us through turbulent
times with record levels of staff
turnover, because it was rooted
in the place. It will do so again in
future and is arguably our most
secure investment. Newcastle
offers students a rich and varied
laboratory for developing archi-
tectural skills in an urban context;
it is a valuable local resource that
continues to influence the nature
of our design curriculum not
much has changed there, but the
perspectives are altered. When I
joined the department I was the
only foreigner on the staff; now
British-born staff are outnum-
bered 3:2. This has given a
different complexion to the place.
Like-wise the student body: nev-
er primarily recruited locally, our
current student mix is noticeably
more international in origin than it
has ever been before. Academi-
cally the staff are better qualified
than previously; so, on paper,
are the students that we recruit.
The humanities now provide the
most vibrant research culture
with an international outlook, but
our links with practice, with the
locality, have weakened.
Undoubtedly this new situation
encourages experiment, debate
and individual enterprise, which
puts us in a position to respond
flexibly and imaginatively to the
demands of globalisation and its
facilitator, digitisation. The chal-
Final Year 1977: Staff and Students
75
 lenge is to maintain conditions
in which the skills and value-
systems needed to counter the
negative aspects of this revolu-
tion can be nurtured that too is
our role as educators. Such an
educational framework requires,
I believe, a degree of social
cohesion, a sense of place and a
sense of purpose. Not everything
will change. Architecture is, in
essence, a social art, with con-
genial, uplifting human habitation
as its highest purpose; many of
the new trends undermine these
objectives.
When, reflecting on the negative
impact of the prevailing, media-
induced, feeling of constant
dissatisfaction with what you
have, where you are (the best
things always seem to happen
elsewhere, to someone else), I
am often reminded of an incident
during one of the many RIBA
Visiting Boards that I experienced
over my career: A well-known
architect and teacher, a member
of the board, accused Newcastle
of being provincial, of achieving
a high level of ordinariness in
our work which primarily ad-
dressed local issues, but nothing
of national /international interest
- in contradistinction to his own
School, which was regional, and
could, therefore, compete with
the best in the world. This was
meant as a put-down, and he
may have had a point regarding
the quality of the work. The issue
for me is the underlying assump-
tion that the one condition is, by
definition, worthy and the other
not. What does it actually mean
to be provincial? For, provincial-
ism is a state of mind as much
as it is a geographical identity;
some of the most provincial
people I know are Londoners!
It is not the place in itself that
makes one parochial, it is how
you deal with its limitations. I
guess the message that I wish
76
to convey to current colleagues Recently this Quad was altered
and students (as talented and to provide disability access
varied a bunch of individuals as I and to facilitate greater cross
ever had the pleasure of working circulation. In fact it has become
with) is: wherever you come from essentially a thoroughfare for
stay long enough to make a the university serving a student
difference at Newcastle (though, population three times the
perhaps not 36 years!) number it was in the 1970s, when
Moreover, what is wrong with I came. Whilst well-intended, and
valuing the ordinary, the local? It carefully executed with good
could be argued that a funda- materials, the emphasis of the
mental defect of modernism as build was on efficiency, clarity, le-
an architectural ideology has gality and comfort. In the process
been its inability to generate something special was lost the
good vernaculars. Architectural charm of the nuanced specificity
education tends to strive towards of the old. Change does that, it
individual artistic brilliance; destroys priceless things. The
puts internationally regarded only consolation is that the new
masterpieces on a pedestal. will bring its own beauties, but
High ambition in itself is not a only if quality is resolutely and
problem; it is when it blinds you wisely pursued.
to the quality of the things around
you that it becomes corrosive. I
suggest that an even bigger (and
socially more responsive) chal-
lenge for teaching today might
be the development of architects
capable of creating good quality
(sustaining & sustainable) ordi-
nary fabric buildings appropri-
ate to specific localities. The
irony is that the former could be
un-teachable, whereas the latter
is eminently so. Be that as it may,
every generation has the right to
create its own ethos and make
its own mistakes; just as long as
it is remembered that architec-
tural culture does not emerge
from nothing. It requires a group
of dedicated people working
systematically towards shared
goals to create the conditions in
which excellence can thrive. And
when it does, its site acquires its
own magnetism, and becomes
a destination in itself - the centre
of the world is where you make it,
provincial or not.
This brings me back to the loca-
tion of the School of Architecture
- to the central Quad in which it is
situated, and the first impression
I had of it as a point of arrival.
77
 Project Brief

A bespoke 200- pupil primary school

(Montessori Elementary), plus training facility on
a site in Whickham, Gateshead. This exercise
was projected as a joint venture between
Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council and
Montessori Centre International to create a
catchment primary school for all the Montessori
Houses in the Northeast of England.

Preamble

From an architectural perspective a Montessori

School offered students a unique challenge,
an opportunity to engage with a precise and
systematic pedagogical system that seeks to
find the optimum physical environment to foster
the development of an individual child through
purposive free choice of activity. It is a difficult
task but architectural students can find much
that is familiar and congenial in the Montessori
horizons

approach to learning:

The value placed on sensory

development through contact with
physical material, space and natural
forces
The belief in the humanizing
potential of a well-structured learning
environment
The quest for beauty and order
The optimistic faith in the power of
human imagination aimed at problem
solving activity
The cultivation of intrinsic motivation
new

individuality with social responsibility

The search for a dynamic whole,
pursued through active experience
The emphasis on variety and
spontaneous activity in the
curriculum.

Other synergies emerged as the project

Montessori School for the Northeast
Dr Hentie Louw and Thomas Kern
developed and each student started to develop
a personal design approach to the set task.
The project served as a learning experience for
staff and students alike. Although some had
prior experience of Montessori, for most it was
a new discovery one which was enhanced by
adopting working practices that resonate with
those of the Montessorians. For example, we
sought to create a non-competitive learning
environment in which individuals felt free to

78
pursue their personal interest/talents, but in
the spirit of sharing and working towards a
common goal. In this way a variety of design
paths arose naturally from seemingly restrictive
circumstances. The Montessorian desire
for purposeful engagement with the natural
environment is another case in point: it offered
an opportunity for a serious commitment to
sustainable design a very topical issue.

In the same vein the brief was not seen as

a definitive statement, but as an invitation to
join in an experiment imaginative ideas are
catching, and children above all are attracted
to something done with creative flair. The very
essence of Montessori teaching lies in the
belief that individual creativity and development
flourishes best within a specific, but nonetheless
open-ended and stimulating environment.
Architecture, as Herman Herzberger has shown
to such good effect, is eminently capable of
providing such a positive framework for growth,
and we expected no less from our students!

Project Structure

The project began by exploring the general

context from different perspectives. Working in
groups students prepared a Design Primer that
established the parameters for the exercise in
a physical as well as socio-cultural and poetic
sense. Running parallel with, and feeding into
the development of their individual schemes
over the semester, were three sequential minor
studies designed to act as creative stimulants
and opportunities for exploring related, but
different design issues: Capriccio (A brief
moment of Creative Dreaming); Montessori
Avatar (Plotting the Future); Montessori
Sensorial Materials (Exploring the architectural
potential of Montessori teaching materials).
Apart from the usual specialist input there
were opportunities for observing Montessori
classroom practice and engagement with
educational experts.

79
 Lindsay Iles

Lindsay Iles Lindsay Iles

80
 Adam Fryett

Adam Fryett

s Adam Fryett

81
 <No
Ruth
intersecting
Dickie link>

<No
Ruth
intersecting
Dickie link>

<No
Jill intersecting
Sullivan link> <No intersecting link> <

82
 <No intersecting
Lydia Forster
link>

<No intersecting
Lydia Forster
link>

> <No intersecting link>

83
 Yuliya Tsoy

Chloe Waldron

84
Chloe Waldron

85
 <No
Nasim
intersecting
Nejabat link>

<No
Nasim
intersecting
Nejabat link>

<No
Daniel
intersecting
Croslandlink>

86
<No intersecting
Philippa Wray
link>

<No intersecting link>

Philippa Wray

<NoDaniel
intersecting
Crosland
link>

87
 <No
Pipintersecting
Burns link>

<No
Pipintersecting
Burns link>

<No
Michael
intersecting
Smith link>

88
<No
Rosemary
intersecting
Miller
link>

<No
Rosemary
intersecting
Miller
link>

<No intersecting
Michael Smith
link>

89
 Jaewon Kang

<No
Jaewon
intersecting
Kang link>

<No
Chris
intersecting
Bulmer link>

<No
Chris
intersecting
Bulmer link>

90
 Xiang Gao

<No intersecting
Xiang Gaolink>

<No intersecting
Joshua Dentlink>

<No intersecting
Joshua Dentlink>

91
 Haybie Yau

<No
Haybie
intersecting
Yau link>

<No
Mary
intersecting
Howell link> A

<No
Mary
intersecting
Howell link>

92
 <No Kah
intersecting
Kiat Sham
link>

Aristomenis Theodoridis <No Kah

intersecting link>
Kiat Sham

Aristomenis
<No intersecting
Theodoridis
link>

93
 This project is based on a hypothetical move of
The Finnish Institute in London to Newcastle.
The mission of the Institute is to act as a catalyst
to promote collaboration between cultural
agents in Finland and their counterparts in
UK or Ireland. Students were initially asked to
familiarise themselves with a local practitioner
who could work with the Institute to inform what
a permanent base for the organisation might be.

The Institute was curious to see how the

projects developed as they are considering

in newcastle
announcing a competition for a new building to
match their changing aspirations. They intend
to award the student with the most convincing
design with the prize of a visit to Helsinki.
the finnish

The Incubator

The starting point was a period of research

into the local cultural climate. Each developed
a small scale proposal for a possible local
collaborator who might give some insight into
the activities of the Institute. Interview techniques
institute

were used in the early stage of project to gain

information and get inspired.

This phase, the Incubator, could be thought of

as a stage set that locates a specific activity of
the agent at a site somewhere in the city centre.
There were no environmental constrains and
ideally the Incubator would augment the existing
fabric of a found site with a strategically placed
intervention without the need for any major
construction.

The incubator became a prototype from which

would develop, firstly, a more detailed brief
in response to the particular interests of the
collaborator and secondly, a focus for the
design by establishing the spatial and tectonic
strategies that would be explored in the
architectural proposal for the institute.

The Institute

In the second phase, each student chose a

site according to their emerging brief. The
choice was between three possible city centre
locations.

The most popular was in Gateshead; the former

Kati Blom and David McKenna Brett Oils Ltd Refinery at Pipewell Gate which
required negotiation between the height of the

94
adjacent High Level Bridge and the horizontal
expanse of the disused refinery and the Tyne.
The Black Gate site tested the students ability to
resolve the programme within a small footprint
and to understand the complex sectional
relationship between the steeply sloping road,
the castle and viaduct whilst the proposals for
the third site at Broadchare replaced a missing
tooth in the urban fabric of the quayside,
connecting the river and street front with the
back courts and historic chares.

The educational emphasis was partly on brief

making as a method to promote abstract
cultural or social aims and in parallel to develop
and refine an architectural language. Most
revisited the incubator to establish clearly
defined areas exploration in the design of the
Institute. During the tutorials, specific emphasis
was afforded to the translation of the individual
briefs into a coherent spatial and diagrammatic
strategy with a focus on model making and
refinement of an architectural proposal.

Generic themes varied between sustainability,

social enterprise, craftsmanship, photography,
music, art, poetry, dance, clubbing, and theatre
and collaborative organisations included
Middle Child, Science City, Culture Lab, Space
Invaders, the Occupy movement and Sentient
Cities.

Nick Bastow

95
 Lee Whitelock

Ceri Turner

96
Ceri Turner

97
 Greg Murrell

Callum Brown C

Corbin Wood

98
Callum Brown Callum Brown

99
 Nick Bastow

Nick Bastow Jack Lines

Jack Lines

100
 Andrew Wilson

James Liu

101
 Octavio Wurmboeck Octavio Wurmboeck

Ruth Sidey

102
k

Neringa Stonyte

Neringa Stonyte

103
 Erika Fagerberg

Erika Fagerberg

Simon Bumstead

104
 Amit Patel

Alex Fortherby

Alex Fortherby

105
 Matas Belevicius Matas Belevicius

William Cooper

William Cooper Shirley Hlaing

106
Christina Galanou

Christina Galanou

Shirley Hlaing

107
 Legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin famously
stated everyone has the right to music. Inspired
by this quote, the Yehudi Menuhin School
started an outreach programme bringing music
to communities by means of concerts and
workshops.

The remit of this music outreach programme

is to promote music as a vehicle for social
action. It aims at bringing together communities,
musicians and composers and encompasses
a mix of programmes for diverse social and
age groups as well as expertises. Students
produced their own brief researching on user
groups, institutions or communities involved in
this music initiative located in Grainger Town
in the historic core of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Grainger Town is characterised for its large and
deep plots whose historic facades hide a dense
maze of inner constructions and courtyards.
The projects here presented seek to articulate
spaces of light and silence within a deep
plot whilst creating a clear delineation of the
outdoor public realm beyond the boundaries of
intervention.
to music
The studio was structured around three phases:
Fields, Rooms and Interstices.

Fields

Students explored the site as a landscape

and considered places to situate a series
of temporary fields, which aim to articulate
the site for a short period of time, increase
the attractiveness and enjoyment of the area
while raising awareness for the right to music
right

initiative. The temporary fields include a stage,

a picnic garden, a music courtyard and an
orchard. The location of the fields derives from
careful consideration of the site conditions
including topography, signs of activity around,
the

adjacent buildings and urban form. In order to

map the area of study, the group of students
produced collectively a 1:100 site model. This
model represented site conditions such as
finished and unfinished materials, light and
darkness or activities and flows.

Rooms

Students were encouraged to think about the

Daniel Mallo and Michael Simpson spaces of the right to music institution as
rooms large rooms and small rooms, empty

108
rooms and rooms full of furniture, rooms with a
view and rooms to retreat. The studio looked at
precedent buildings with large footprint plans
and also at spatial configurations of rooms
connected to each other without corridors. In
parallel, a design strategy of loose spaces in
between programmatically defined rooms was
also considered in various schemes.

Interstices

The discussion around technology for the right

to music studio was two-fold: students explored
the importance of materiality in creating
atmospheres while they considered and detailed
interstices as active elements adding to the
potential of the space (e.g., a floor might contain
storage, a wall might be a very thick element
that houses stairs, storage, a built-in kitchen,
etc).

Alicea Berkin

109
 Frederick Jackson

Caitlin Simcock Caitlin Simcock

110
 Alicea Berkin

k Alicea Berkin

111
 Matthew Clubbs Coldron

Matthew Clubbs Coldron

112
De He

113
 Matthew Hudspith

Matthew Hudspith

114
Justin Moorton

Justin Moorton

115
 Carlotta Jansen J

Carlotta Jansen E

116
Julia Morawska Julia Morawska

Emma Kirk Emma Kirk

117
 This project invited students to produce a
design for a new building on the site of the
recently-demolished Gateshead car-park that
acted as an afterimage of the old structure.
Through studies of the volumetrics and the
morphology of the previous building, and its
architectural relations with the city, proposals
were developed for a new architecture that
worked through a kind of oscillation between
past and present. The task was to design
a cyclists hotel (Cyclotel), potentially
incorporating a vlodrome and associated
facilities on the site, a complex that could
accommodate cycle tourists in the region
or those stopping off en route elsewhere by
train, as well as acting as a point of focus and
service for cyclists based in the city.
afterimage

The project also aimed to encourage

speculation on how a change in the user of
architecture (who is no longer just a person,
but an assemblage of person and bicycle)
could lead to new forms of programmatic
thinking and spatial composition.

The studio began with a short preliminary

project entitled Afterimage: Opening, which
ran for two weeks aiming to explore the
possibilities inherent in the afterimage idea.
The task was to develop an accumulating
sequence of studies, using appropriate
representational forms (drawing, models,
constructions, videos, etc.), which analysed
and recoded the volumes and spaces
of the car-park structure that previously
occupied the site. The students were free
to make choices about what to base the
afterimage on: for some it was the complete
and coherent building, while others became
interested in depictions of the car-parks
demolition. Through this process, they arrived
at an architecturally compelling spatial
arrangement drawn from the architecture of
the pre-existing car-park and bearing its trace,
while at the same time presenting us with
something that was strikingly new: something
that held the strange and the familiar in a
dynamic tension with one another.

Based on these afterimage studies, students

then moved forward into their individual
design projects.

Aikaterini Antonopoulou & Matt Ozga-Lawn Key to the project was an appreciation of the

118
new building as a complex multi-level system.
Students were encouraged to develop their
own schedule of accommodation based
on their individual approach to the site. The
public elements of the project (which could
evolve into a landscaping program, or to the
development of an extensive public square, or
maybe to a city sports centre) and the private
or semi-private hotel were studied in relation
to the broader topography of the city and
its infrastructures, and the building program
was shaped accordingly. The possibility to
incorporate a vlodrome within the building
complex invited the students to work
creatively and provocatively with the spatial
conditions that it sets up, to explore how
it might dynamically interact with the other
parts of the building and the surrounding
urban area, and to investigate how far the
vlodrome concept can be altered without
a fundamental shift in type (for example,
reinterpreted as a bmx race track).

Most generally the project can be considered

as an architectural probe that examined
the immanent architectural conditions of
the site, and established a new and critical
architectural imaginary for it.

Jack Allen

119
 Christopher Bentley

Christopher Bentley Jack Allen

120
 Addison Yick

n Jack Allen

121
 Jamie Anderson

Jamie Anderson

122
Jonathan Jones

Jonathan Jones

123
 Mike Gyi M

James McPherson Young J

124
Mike Gyi

Joseph Goodwin Joseph Goodwin

125
 Lam Nguyen Tran <No intersecting link>

James Dunn

126
Matthew Rhodes

127
 Inga Laseviciute M

Inga Laseviciute

Robert Paton R

128
Mayowa Onabanjo

Robert Paton Mayowa Onabanjo

129
 Matthew Hawley

130
Richard Breen

131
 Simon Baker

Christopher Jackson

132
 Greg Walton

Michael Kattirtzis

Emma Chong

133
 Winning the Hadrian Award 2011 for my third year
graduate design project was an honour and
a great way to conclude the Undergraduate
Architectural Studies course at Newcastle
University.

To me, the Hadrian medal presented a challenge

hadrian award
along with the prospect of gaining great
recognition for the work I had completed during
the year. In addition, the medal had meaning
beyond the realm in which I had been working.
The award gave me an initial taste of what it
might be like to go for competition work which
is very common in the architectural profession.
Presenting work in front of highly regarded
professionals was a daunting prospect, yet it
played a key part in my growing confidence and
professional ability. The recognition awarded to
me, and the association it holds in practice, was
a fantastic attribute to my CV and was also a key
talking point in interviews for my placement year.

The Hadrian award has become quite

prestigious among third year undergraduates
within the department. The stature of the award,
the opportunity to be shortlisted, and in doing so
have the chance to present work to a board of
professionals and experts in the field, provided
a motivational incentive to achieve a high quality
and consistent standard of work, generating an
element of friendly competition within the group.

The selection process was principally arranged

part I

by Newcastle University along with the RIBA

North East. Six Part 1s from Newcastle
University were shortlisted for the award and we
were required to outline the separate graduate
design projects we had undertaken, present
our own individual projects, and subsequently
answer questions from the panel in the form
of a reflective discussion. The whole process
conveyed a realistic approach to architectural
design and was a highlight to the end of the
module.

The Copper Kitchen

Hugh Craft

134
135
 The final undergraduate design
project, best known, and most
commonly referred to in the
studios as the Grad Project,
was split into three. Each student
had the choice from these three
of which project they would like
to undertake. I chose the project
entitled mind the gap which
sought to understand gaps
within communities, looking at
how architecture could be used
to bridge these gaps and create
new social, leisure, education
and employment opportunities.
The principle design brief of the
project was to create a research
centre within Gateshead. Our
choice of what this research
centre should be and where
it should be was not defined,
creating a fantastic opportunity
to spend time understanding
the area in which we were
aiming to design. In turn this
enabled the chance for group
work analysing Gateshead as a
whole, and generated debate,
critical thinking and a wholesome
understanding of the area that
we were in. Parallel to gaining a
critical understanding of place
the project also encouraged
an understanding of people,
regarding who will use the
building, who needs the building,
and what the building will provide
to the community.
It was great to be part of a
project that does not restrict you
in terms of design, but instead
gets you to think far beyond just
generating a building.
After a considerable amount
of thought and discussion,
deciphering all the acquired
information, we then as
individuals had to produce our
proposal and brief, stating the
type of research centre we were
proposing and how it could
bridge a gap in the community.
136
The great thing here was that
no project was the same; each
individual had recognised
something different, taking it their
own way and applying their own
knowledge. This individualism
made every project unique, and
as a consequence the studios
were an exciting, eventful,
interactive and progressive place
during this time.
I settled quite early on the topic
of food, focusing on nutritional
research. Food is something we
as humans all have in common,
we all eat, and therefore I was
certain this research centre
could have a great reach within
the community. The centre
would provide opportunities
to understand and educate
nutritional effects of diet and
eating habits, gain / increase
cooking skills through interactive
learning and also provide retail
spaces stocking local produce.
The design concept itself was
built upon the idea of slicing
food and concentrating on the
manipulation of layers, how these
layers impact on space, and
how space can change between
layers.
The scope of this project
allowed us to choose our own
site. In turn, this made us think
about the area in which we
were working and encouraged
us to focus on generating
new opportunities. I chose a
site surrounded by elevated
railway lines at the historic
industrial end of Gateshead
High Street. The industrial
history of this area was very
appealing to me as it provided
the foundation for growth, a
principle which also influenced
my design process. With strong
links directly to Gateshead
and Newcastle, and being in
a key visual and populated
area, the site was identified as
a strategic generation zone
aiming to provide new social and
educational links.
In all I was passionate about the
work I achieved, I felt it could
become established in the area
which we were designing, and
most of all I enjoyed working on
every aspect of this project.
On reflection, the Hadrian Award
has broadened my confidence in
my abilities and my professional
approach and has encouraged
me to be ambitious in stepping
forward into an architectural
placement, applying to many
well-respected practices in the
UK. Likewise the award has
generated greater excitement
to continue my career in
architecture, and as a result I
look forward to what the future
has to offer.
It has been a privilege to receive
this award from the RIBA, and
it was a fantastic opportunity
for Newcastle University to
have the RIBA involved with the
high calibre of work across the
year group. I feel the award is
a wonderful reflection on the
work that Newcastle University
students consistently produce,
and I would like to take this
opportunity to recognise the
success of the 2011 year
group as a whole in the work it
achieved and the fun we had
together in doing so.
137
 Architecture has become too important to be
left to architects.
Giancarlo De Carlo

I always look forward to going up to the session

as its a creative, fun and friendly atmosphere.
Stacey Space Invaders participant

Space Invaders is a Gateshead-based youth

participation project which seeks to develop
the creative potential in underused buildings
and spaces and transform them into vibrant
places. Part of NE-Generation and funded by
Legacy Trust UK, the project was launched in
the summer of 2011 by archiGRAD, a group
of architecture and design graduates who are
passionate about architecture and the urban
environment and want to maintain and enhance
their skills while looking for work.
invaders
space

Rachel McDonagh

138
Through regular workshops led
by the GRADs and other local
practitioners, the project aims to
equip young people aged 13-19
with hands-on experience of the
planning and architecture sector
and a grasp of regeneration
at a local scale, empowering
them to discover their own
voices and how to make them
count. Fuelled by a belief that
one of the greatest barriers to
sustainable regeneration is a
sense of powerlessness amongst
residents, we hope to challenge
these mindsets through a
beacon of young individuals who
demonstrate that communities
can have a significant impact on
their surroundings. This in itself
leaves a legacy of empowerment,
but we anticipate that the
spaces that are transformed
in the process will be enjoyed
for years to come and sow
seeds of inspiration for similar
interventions.
Practically speaking, workshops
have engaged a total of 19
young people from Gateshead
College and Joseph Swan
Academy, and have ranged
widely from the creation of chairs
using recycled materials, to
a photographic treasure hunt
exploring underused sites in the
town, and from hands-on training
sessions with professional graffiti
artist Toby Heaps, to preparing a
creative pitch to potential funders.
With trips to Edinburgh and the
London Festival of Architecture
planned in the coming months,
the young people are now busy
developing ideas for their main
intervention, the transformation of
a derelict police inspectors house
which Gateshead Council have
kindly opened up for the project.
Our intention is that the skills and
confidence developed through
the process will not only lead to
tangible developments in the
built environment, but that they
will also pave a new path to
further employment and training
opportunities for young people
and practitioners alike. In fact,
one of the fundamental questions
which the project seeks to
explore is whether a communitys
involvement in the development of
their built environment can have
as great an impact on its social
advancements as the physical
interventions which result.
For further information and to
follow our progress check out:
www.spaceinvadersgateshead.
org.uk
With special thanks to Gateshead
Council, Northern Architecture,
somewhereto_, Newcastle
University, Northumbria University,
the Sage Gateshead and Kiosk
Architecture for their generous
support of the project.
Space Invaders is part of NE-
Generation and has been funded
by Legacy Trust UK, creating a
lasting impact from the London
2012 Olympic and Paralympic
Games by funding ideas and
local talent to inspire creativity
across the UK.
Space Invaders Venue
139
140
Project Aims:
Overall, the project aims to bring
benefits to a diverse range of
groups and initiatives as outlined
below.
Young people
-Young people offered
opportunities to co-produce in
innovative ways
-Young people begin to take
responsibility as citizens
-Scheme inspires other young
people to engage in the built
environment
-Young peoples aspirations
raised
PEOPLE
-Level of community engagement
in regeneration increases
-Older generations recognise
positive contributions of young
people
PLACE
-Potential of other underused
spaces recognised
-Sustainable, flexible model of
youth-led regeneration emerges
archiGRAD
-Reputation of excellence in
participatory regeneration
develops
opportunities
-Experience gained in project
development, management and
delivery
-Aspirations raised
Regeneration
-Basis of research project into
the role of collaborative design in
sustainable regeneration
-A cultural legacy developed
-Contribution to the cultural
economy

Gateshead -Relationships with partners

develop, bringing future

141
 Project Values

The project is to be co-led by

young people and practitioners,
fostering an attitude of mutual
respect and genuine collabora-
tion, and involving members of
the community for consultation
where appropriate.

The project will be carried out

with a commitment to high
quality. Practitioners and young
people will endeavour to produce
work of the highest standard and
maintain professionalism in inter-
nal and external relationships.

The project will encourage an

outward-looking attitude, shar-
ing knowledge and experience
between other NE-Generation
projects and beyond.

Whilst the project aims to teach

the principles of regeneration in a
fun and engaging way, a reason-
able level of commitment will be
required of the young people
in order for them to benefit fully
from the project.

The project will recognise the

unique abilities of young people
from a variety of backgrounds
and seek ways to develop these
gifts, free from the expectation
that they are to pursue a career
in architecture.

142
143
 The Wider Mbarara Project is an established
programme which, over the past 8 years, has
endeavoured to provide resources previously
unavailable to communities in and around
Mbarara, Uganda.

The Project is organised annually by students

in Architecture Planning and Landscape and
Civil Engineering and Geosciences. Each year
each team of 12 raises 12,000 for materials and
labour costs from events such as sponsored
bike rides. It is excellent way for students to gain
hands on construction skills, working closely with
the local community, and liaising with suppliers.

Since 2009 the Wider Mbarara Project has

been involved in the construction of a refuge
for vulnerable children orphaned by HIV called
the House of Love. The House of Love is in the
mbaraara
village of Kichwamba; a rural area of Uganda
without many resources.

Starting with an empty site,<Nostudents have link>

intersecting
designed a whole complex, centred around
a tree which provides shade and an area for
children to play. Daily activities revolve around
outdoor space so providing verandas around the
project

buildings and flexible space was very important.

The central house was the first phase to be
completed, designed in a flexible way to allow
children to move in before the dormitories and
wider

other buildings were completed. Since then an

eating area, education block and kitchen block
have been completed providing accommodation
for around 40 children who would otherwise have
nowhere to go.

This summer, students are building the first

phase of the dormitory block, allowing the House
of Love to care for more children. They have had
more design input before travelling out and have
produced designs which hope to utilise more
alternative construction methods and rainwater
harvesting.

For details on donating or to volunteer in 2013,

email wmp.annabel@hotmail.co.uk.

Thank you also to those who have given money

already, including the school which has donated
generously enabling the project to happen.
Annabel Ward

144
145
 MArch
Zeynep Kezer
In our newly launched Master
of Architecture Programme
we aim to provide students
a supportive environment to
pursue self-initiated research
and design agendas by
combining a broad latitude for
exploration with opportunities
for frequent and personalized
feedback. In the first year design
studios, students are asked
to propose their own project
briefs within a well-defined
thematic framework. The first
semester emphasizes the urban
fabric and students investigate
the socio-spatial dynamics of
cities, the relationships between
buildings and the spaces
between them, and urban
transformation processes (such
as gentrification, ghettoization,
regeneration etc). The second
semester zooms down to the
scale of the individual building,
with a sharp focus on the
significance of detail design,
appreciation of technology and
understanding of the spatial
146
narratives embedded in every
structure. Both of these are
integrated studios in which
thematic explorationsof
the urban environment and
technological questions
respectivelyare supported by
a range of lectures, study visits,
readings, specially designed
exercises, presentations,
exhibitions, and symposia.
We believe that the first year
studios, which are run much
like mini-thesis exercises,
nudge students out of their
comfort zones, providing
them a useful groundwork for
the upcoming thesis year. In
addition, during their first three
semesters students opt for
elective modules, which allow
them to develop their own
specialisms, working individually,
as part of small research group,
or obtaining credits toward a
second MA in an allied field
such as town planning, digital
architecture or urban design.
147
 postgraduate
charrette
ArmelleTardiveau and Daniel Mallo
Byker: Trust and Future
This charrette edition was an
opportunity to continue the
relationship between Byker
and the School of Architecture,
Planning and Landscape and
to engage with Byker at the very
particular moment when the
people of Byker were given the
opportunity to have their say in
the future of their Estate through
the newly formed BykerTrust
(http://www.backingbyker.org/).
The response to our speculative
projects from residents and
associations affiliated with Byker
was outstanding; the enthusiasm
they communicated when
talking to us and guiding us
was reflected in the projects the
Newcastle University students
developed. It is a privilege that
Byker is so close to us there is
so much that we can learn from
it, and we hope the community
of Byker can also benefit from
the students reflections this
148
has always been the priority for
John Pendlebury: people from
Byker give their time to us, and
consequently we want to give
something back to them.
Charrette projects connect
students in different ways across
the years and programmes; for
the first time this year, MAUD
students participated which
demonstrates how the charrette
has gathered momentum in the
school.
Students are mutually exposed
to different drawing and
communication abilities and
new techniques of engaging
with projects. There is so much
to learn from each other in
witnessing other approaches.
The students continue to
express their appreciation for
the freshness that comes from
the involvement of outside
practitioners: they widen the
students horizons and expose
them to new forms of practice
as they share their experiences
of working internationally. This is
also an opportunity for students
to engage with the internal staff
research agenda.
Four projects were offered this
year, two run by international
architects, Manuel Tardits
and David Franco and two
run by staff from the School,
Adam Sharr and Martyn
Dade-Robertson: all different
projects in methodologies but
overlapping in content. Two
students documented the week:
http://charrette2011.blogspot.
co.uk
149
 Students are to hack or penetrate the area of
Byker in order to understand and record a list
of issues. Then, using a clear set of tools, they
were to propose customised solutions for all the
issues that have been listed.

hackers
byker

group 01

Manuel Tardits

150
151
 Reality is the most exciting material for
imagination. Students were to reflect on
specific themes: programme, built environment,
socioeconomic issues and public space before
presenting at least four feasible strategies, all
different in scale, cost and ambition, for the
improvement of the Byker Estate.
the game
byker
of

group 02

David Franco and Daniel Mallo

152
153
 Through studying Byker, students were asked to
identify a problem or problems which stripyness
can help to solve, and to propose stripy
solutions.

stripes
byker

gruop 03

Adam Sharr

154
155
 Bykers new future opens up to the potential
for the design of a new type of political space,
which is both physical and virtual. Using the
foundation of the new Byker Trust as a starting
point students first investigated the current state
of situated political discourse in Byker mapping
the existing political senses and, ultimately
designing for a new political nervous system.

sensorium
political
the

group 04

Martyn Dade-Robertson

156
157
 stage 5
Zeynep Kezer
Stage 5 comprises two
complementary studios
conceived as mini-thesis
exercises that introduce students
to research, brief development,
and design within a well-defined
intellectual framework supported
by frequent seminars, lectures,
weekly tutorials and various
types of presentations.
In the first semester, The Urban
Fabric project focuses on the
socio-spatial dynamics of
cities, the relationship between
buildings and the spaces
between them, and urban
transformation processes
(gentrification, ghettoization,
regeneration etc). By delving
into the broader social, cultural,
historical and political context
within which architecture is
practiced, this studio also
responds to ARB/RIBA
requirements about Cultural
Context.
158
In the second semester, Detail,
Narrative, Memory encourages
students to examine the
significance of detail design,
technology and spatial narratives
embedded in a building
of their choice. This studio
also integrates ARB/RIBAs
construction and technology
criteria into the design project
and is complemented by lectures
in construction, sustainability
and energy and consultancies
in structures and construction.
The project focuses on detail not
just in terms of competence, but
also considering how detail is
informed by the ideas driving the
project as a whole.
We believe that the range of
scales covered from the urban
fabric and the built fabric in the
two semesters provides students
a good grounding for their thesis
year.
159
 For the inaugural semester of the newly
formulated Urban Fabric Studio we wanted
to work on a city that encapsulated a number
of overarching urban themes that would tie
the studio together providing shared research
questions. At the same time we wanted that
city to afford the possibility of exploring diverse
urban problems at sites with radically different
characteristics and in which very different
kinds of social and spatial scenarios could be
developed.

In the end we chose Berlin, because it is an

endlessly fascinating and surprising city. Berlin
today is a city with a young population bursting
with creative energy and industry, home to many
vibrant sub-cultures and counter-cultures - but
it also has a rich, contentious and, at times,
tragically violent history, which has endowed it
with a distinctive spirit and curious urban fabric.
Moreover, Berlin has been a preferred subject
of scholarly research and an expansive body
of literary, artistic, cinematic works, making
it possible for us to immerse ourselves in it
through multiple media, including novels, poetry,
paintings, sculptures, photography, and films
through the duration of the semester. Finally, our
staff had contacts with academics, planners and
architects working in or on Berlin, which allowed
us to visit places and see presentations that
would otherwise not have been possible.
berlin
study
trip

October 17-21, 2011

Zeynep Kezer

160
History is always and
unavoidably in attendance
wherever one is in Berlin and
its traces are still visible in the
landscape. In the late eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, Berlin
was the cradle of the European
Enlightenment; seen, for
example, in the fine neo-classical
architecture of Karl Friedrich
Schinkel and his contemporaries.
[Figure 1] By the turn of the
twentieth century, it had become
capital of the newly united
Germany and the cradle of
European civilisation. Following
the bankruptcy of Germany
after the First World War, Berlin
became the epicentre of the
Weimar republic, characterised
by simultaneous political
stalemate and cultural invention,
attested by the architecture of
Erich Mendelsohn and latterly
the arrival of the Bauhaus from
Dessau. The Nazis, famously,
envisaged the citys reinvention
as Germania, the centre of a
Thousand Year Reich made
architectural in the granite
edifices of Albert Speer, while
simultaneously sending the citys
million Jews to their deaths or
into exile. By 1945, 80% of the
city centre had been destroyed
and many of its outlying districts
were in ruins. Post-war Berlin,
its skyline punctured by three
new hills made from the rubble
of its destruction, was no
less troubled. As the wartime
allies fell-out, it was divided
into administrative sectors
(following the somewhat arbitrary
boundaries of postal districts)
and relations between the
powers became increasingly
tense.
Blockaded by the Soviets, the
American, French and British
sectors were supplied solely by
air in the remarkable Berlin Air
Lift (Luftbrcke) of the winter
of 1947 which required the
hurried construction of two new
airports. On 15 August 1961,
residents awoke to find the city
partitioned into East and West by
the infamous Berlin Wall (Berliner
Mauer) [Figure 2], into two
competing cities: the East (part
of the GDR, German Democratic
Republic) characterised by
Soviet-style reconstruction;
the West (part of the FRG,
Federal Republic of Germany)
characterised by huge US
Marshall Plan investment and
the symbols of big corporations.
As a symbol of the end of the
Cold War, the walls fall (die
Mauerfall) in 1989 was equally
symbolic, pictures of parties at
the Brandenburg Gate beamed
to television sets worldwide.
A rushed reunification (seen
by many East Germans as
a western takeover) was
accompanied by the instigation
of huge infrastructure projects
of both practical and symbolic
value which almost bankrupted
the new state, many of which
have only recently been finished.
The process has also been
accompanied by curiously
traditional urban fabric and the
gradual erasure of East German
architecture. The citys cheap
rents and vibrant culture now
attract a huge diversity of people,
Europes fashionable young
creatives rubbing shoulders
with guest worker communities
(predominantly Turkish in origin)
and Cold War veterans.
Fig. 01 - Altesmuseum by Schinkel
161
 Contemporary Berlin exactly
fifty years after the construction
of the wall bears conspicuously
the traces of this uniquely
troubled past. The new Berlin
may be the centre of the state
which has become Europes
economic powerhouse but it is
a curiously understated, self-
conscious and informal capital.
The legacies of its post-89
squat-culture remain as strong
as those of its Enlightenment
heritage and prominent
memorials to Nazi crimes.
Questions of what Germany was,
is, and will be (mirroring similar
questions about Europe itself)
are played-out in the buildings
and spaces of the city, where
the politics of memory who
remembers what, when, where,
how and for whom are made
manifest. Any new architecture
inevitably implicates the past
when anticipating the future,
but in Berlin the issues are
particularly acute. [Figure 3]
With these considerations
in mind, the Berlin trip was
scheduled between Monday
October 17 to Friday October
21, giving students the option
of adding the weekends before
or after to get a better sense
of the site of their semesters
work. Preparations for the visit
started in the second week,
almost as soon as the charrettes
were completed. In addition
to introductory lectures about
the citys history, geography,
political and urban culture,
Katie Lloyd Thomas, the leader
of ARC8051 Tools for Thinking
about Architecture, ran a series
of exercises that were designed
to both develop students critical
reading and writing skills and
also introduce them to a range
of academic, artistic, and literary
sources on the city.
162
Armed with a trip guide prepared
by our recent graduate Joanna
Doherty, most students had
already left for Berlin on the
morning of October 15. The
trip itself was designed to be
a series of self-paced tours,
which students could edit at will
depending on their interests,
punctuated by a few general
meetings, which were dedicated
to specially arranged lectures,
presentations, or exclusive visits.
Day One: Berlin A-Z
The first day a self-guided
tour starting at the World
Clock at Alexander Platz,
meandering through the citys
most remarkable districts
and landmarks--including,
among others, Karl Marx Allee,
Berliner Dom, Schlotzplatz,
Altes Museum, Neues Museum
at the MuseumsInsel, Book
Burning Memorial, Embassies
and the newly arranged
Brandenburg Gate, Akademie
der Knste, Reichstag, the
Federal Chancellery, Holocaust
Memorial, Potsdamer Platz,
Wissenschafszentrum (Social
Science Centre), Bauhaus
Archive, Nordic Embassies,
and ending at the Zoo. Many
students, who had decided to
spend a few extra days in the
city, chose to divide this tour into
installments, spending more time
at their preferred locations.
Day Two: Site Visits
Day two started with visits to
all three sites proposed for the
project, the Museumsinsel,
Kreuzberg and Ostkreuz and
Westkreuz stations. After
spending a few hours at each
site, students and staff met at
the Berlin Senate planning office.
The planning office holds various
comprehensive models of the
city, which provided us with a
sense of the whole of the city,
birds eye views to its physical
structure and changes in its
fabric over time. The information
kiosk at the office was also well-
stocked with various kinds of free
bi-lingual documentation (maps,
booklets, reports etc) about the
citys current and future plans,
a perk much appreciated by all
those present. [Figure 4]
Day Three: Berlin N-S
The day started at the Technical
University with a lecture by
Prof Cordelia Polinna, who
provided an overview of Berlins
urban development since the
consolidation of the German
state in the middle of the 19th
century. We then went to the
Jewish Museum, where students
also gave the tutors a list of their
project site preferences. The
North-South tour outlined for
the day included among other
things, GSW Headquarters,
Checkpoint Charlie Housing,
Friedrichstrasse, Kunthaus
Tacheles, and the abandoned
subway station at Nordbahnhof.
At the end of the walk, past the
Berlin Wall Memorial, we arrived
at the Chapel of Reconciliation,
designed by Reitermann &
Sassenroth Architekten. This final
destination turned out to be a
real treat as both the designer
of the chapel and the priest
were there to walk us through
the building, explain its history,
and describe the character of
this very unusual parish and
the profound thoughts and
discussions that informed the
architectural decisions that
shaped the building. [Figures
5-6]
Day Four: Kulturforum and Site
explorations
A late night was followed by a
very early morning, BUT for a
very good reason: at 8 oclock
in the morning we met at Hans
 Fig. 02 - Remnants of the wall 0now
2R
- eman
iinn
i gppark
orto
i nsoth
fememorial
wanlown
iaparkusedasamemora
i .ljpg

Fig. 03 - Eisenmans monument to the murdered jews of Europe with Fosters Reichstag
P0e
-E
3etsirenmain
mn
s' onu
the
mhe
tom
entud
rbackground
ee
rjdw
E
osufo
rpw
eN
htiom
r aF
nosR
e
st'recihsatD
gom
oleomh
n
tib
e
gackgo
rundpj.g

163
 Fig. 4 - inside the planning office model rooms with various models of the city

Fig. 05 - the priest explains the relationship between ritual, community and architecture

164
Fig. 06 -The Chapel
06-Thechapel
of of
Reconciliation
reconciliationatnighta,luminousbeacon.jpg

165
 Scharouns Library building
to get an exclusive tour of the
building, including the amazing
mechanized delivery systems
that facilitated the conveying of
books for re-shelving, before
thousands of users rushed to fill
the building at 9 am! [Figure 7]
In the afternoon, the different
groups met with their tutors at
the project sites to walk around
and familiarize themselves further
with the potential problems/
questions they would be
exploring.
Day Five:
Designated as a free day of
in-depth explorations, recording
the distinctive urban and
architectural characteristics of
the three sites, this was a long
day for various groups who tried
to collect as much information
about the urban districts on
which they would be working
throughout the rest of the
semester.
with little time to make sense of
the situation and regularly in
places where they dont have
access to the language and
this presents particular problems
and opportunities. The problems,
particularly, are to do with how
to make a fine-grained social
analysis, appreciating who the
residents are and getting to
grips with their hopes, fears,
ideas and aspirations. The
opportunities, however, consist in
the fresh insights that an outsider
can bring. When working from
outside, looking in, we have to
become especially attuned to
the clues offered by the situation:
the insights revealed by close
observation, what can we
deduce about the place and the
people from the clues to hand.
It is up to you to negotiate these
problems and opportunities. In
each of the three projects, we
will ask you to reflect on them
explicitly.

After returning from Berlin, the

students were divided into three
project groups, conducting
intensive research in their
respective areas of the city.
They have examined the history,
physical characteristics (from the
configuration of the streetscape
to the particulars of its urban
infrastructure), social fabric,
landuse patterns of each of
these very divergent places, and
organized a one-day symposium
in early November with guest
lectures by Patrick Devlin (Pollard
Edwards Architects) and Andrew
Webber (Cambridge University).
The latter half of the semester
was dedicated to working on
individual projects images from
which are included in this book.

All photos by Zeynep Kezer,

except figures 4 and 6 by Ed
Walker.

Architects often work in places

that are unfamiliar to them,
166
Fig. 7 - Stage 5 inside Hans
0S7
-a
tge
5
su
tdenp
Scharouns
sthoo
tgraphnin
g
isd
ie
HanS
sharolibrary
ub
n
ilsr'ae
ryan
h
tiyrle
mornnig
beo
freadera
svriep
j.g

167
 The first semester design studio in the
Newcastle MArch programme is about the
urban fabric. This year, we chose to focus on
Berlin, with three different sites and projects to
choose from:

Cultural Encounters / Spatial Fluidities:

Kreuzberg
Tutor: Dr Zeynep Kezer

Crossings : Ostkreuz / Westkreuz

Tutor: Dr Ed Wainwright

Curating Museum Island

Tutor: Prof Adam Sharr

Although very different in scale and character,

all three project choices required students to
consider very carefully questions of memory/
history, urban transformation (especially
the urban
ghettoization and gentrification), urban
infrastructure, rights to the city, public good and
public space, land use and rents. These issues
were continually discussed throughout the
semester, during both the stages of investigation
and of proposal development.

After a week of intensive preparatory readings

and lectures by Adam Sharr, Tilo Amhoff (UCL/
berlin:

University of Brighton), Katie Lloyd Thomas, we

embarked on our trip to Berlin (October 17-21).
fabric

The first half of the semester was dedicated

to intense research on each one of the sites,
followed, on November 8, by a symposium
in which students focusing on the three sites
made multi-media presentations featuring
their findings and outlining their proposals for
intervention. The symposium also featured guest
lectures by Patrick Devlin (Pollard Edwards
Architects) and Andrew Webber (Cambridge
University), both of whom served as panelists
during student presentations.

project 01

Zeynep Kezer
Mi

168
In addition, Katie Lloyd Thomas organized a series
of movie nights over several weeks with films
shot in Berlin revealing facets of experiences and
memories pertaining to the variegated populations
that inhabit the city. The selection, which included,
among others Goodbye Lenin, Run Lola Run, Lola
and Bilidikit, and Wings of Desire, also opened up
opportunities for extended conversations, since, in
many cases, the project sites were featured in the
films shown.

Students proposed an astounding variety of

interventions in response to the issues they
identified in each site, which made for very
interesting discussions. Guest reviewers at the final
review (December 15-16) included Prof William
Firebrace (Westminster University), Dr Didem
Ekinci (Nottingham University) and Patrick Devlin
(Pollard Edwards Architects).

Michael Coersmeier Ashley Mason

169
 John Beattie

Alex McClellan

170
April Murray

Hazel Cowie

171
 Rachel Bennett

Adam Hewgill

Stuart Taylor

172
Victoria Brown

Myles Walker

173
 Cassie Burgess-Rose ...CURATION AND
REPRESENTATION...

' A book, I think, is very like

A little golden door
That takes me into places
Where I have never been before.

It leads me into fairyland

Or countries strange and far.
And, best of all, the golden door
Always stands ajar. ' _ Adelaide Love, ''A Book''
in story tellying and other
poems, (1949)

Enlarged Image of room interior - Looking down stair onto toilet

Enlarged Image of room interior -
Sand 

 surface

T7 T8

T2

A.R
T4
!"#$%

T1 T6 IS
T5
Views from this area are frami
framing the other 'red door rooms' throughout the island T10

T3

Stretch Route Plan S8

T9

T11

Michelle Martin
Scale of Metres
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- 1:150 Enlarged images

0 5 10
- 1:300 Stretch Route Plan

Jane Usher

174
 Robert Moxon

Edward Walker

Matt Lippiatt

175
 This project is about detail; specifically, how an
architectural detail can embody the story which
informs the design as a whole what Marco
Frascari calls the tell-the-tale detail. Studio
participants chose an existing building to work
with, drew that building to encapsulate their
interpretation of it, proposed a programme to
extend it, designed that extension and drew a
detail encapsulating the story of the project. The
resulting proposals were diverse, thoughtful and
enjoyable.
narrative
memory
detail

project 02

Adam Sharr
La

176
Charoula Lambrou Edward Walker

177
 Kieran Connolly

Corrinne Fong Rachel Bennett

Imogen Lees A

178
 Alice Gunter

Ashley Mason Jane Usher

179
 Chris Day

Luke Rigg Ale

180
 Stuart Taylor

Alex Lyon Michael Coersmeier

181
 Hazel Cowie

Davoud Moradpour

Matt Lippiatt Annabel Ward

182
ie John Beattie

Suzanne Croft

d Cassie Burgess-Rose

183
 Laura Harrison Michelle Martin

184
 Victoria Brown

Robyn Chee

tin April Murray

185
 This paper introduces an on-going research
project focusing on the role of temporary
spatial practice in the context of Asset-Based
Community Development. It started as a one-

spatial practice
week intensive project in October 2010 with
postgraduate students in architecture and urban
design of Newcastle University (UK) and aimed
at finding out whether residents of three social
housing blocks would consider coming down to
enjoy their apparently unused outdoor space.
The positive response that emerged from this
first action led us to engage in a longer research
project in which we would: investigate why
the residents do not use this outdoor space;
challenge the meaning of spatial quality and its
relation to the use and appropriation of space;
consider ways to activate the space together with
the residents.
temporary

The project is sited on the edge of central

Gateshead (UK), where three social housing
blocks (8 storeys high with approximately 180
residents) are strangled between an elevated
bypass and the back of the high street. The
neighbourhood is ranked by the UK National
Statistics Governmental Office as most
deprived: income and education levels are low
whilst the crime level is high.

Asset Based Community Development

Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo

186
Positive gaze and co-
construction
Our role in this context is that
of initiators and facilitators of
a social and spatial process
whereby, together with residents,
we aim to unveil new meanings
and new uses for their outdoor
space. Social and spatial
engagement arises from a
tactical approach without
a predefined and tangible
outcome. This tactical approach
operates in isolated actions,
blow by blow (de Certeau,
1984). Within the context of the
first tea party we organised,
long-term residents recalled
playing Bingo on Tuesdays with
their neighbours. This led us to
revive a Bingo session, which in
turn, led to a further discovery of
past uses of the grassed area,
for instance residents would take
out chairs for a conversation on
sunny days.
Kretzmann and McKnight
(1993) articulate community
development based on a clear
commitment to discovering a
communitys capacities and
assets. Asset-Based Community
Development (ABCD) focuses
on unveiling and celebrating
the assets of individuals as well
as identifying and mapping
formal and informal associations
amongst the residents in order
to build upon them. ABCD relies
on a continuous process of
building relationships with and
within communities as well as
engaging residents in their own
visions and action plans (Nola
Kunnen, 2010). The recurring
question that is addressed
throughout the process concerns
how to energise the residents
without dominating them.
Actions and props as means for
unstructured conversations
The first action we organised
made us become aware of the
importance of getting to know
the residents through simple
moments, such as sharing a
cup of tea. Over a period of 18
months, 11 actions have taken
place either indoor or outdoor;
these include tea parties, bingo
sessions or meetings during
which we would revive and
talk through shared moments
and imagine new ones. The
actions capacity is to build trust,
generate familiarity, to create
temporary networks as well as
gather a positive momentum.
In order to frame actions, a series
of object or props articulated the
space and created temporary
environments. Props, such as
tea sets, a bingo set, parasols,
framed photographs and a
temporary pavilion, are not
neutral: they generate excitement
and curiosity. They open up to
a multitude of interpretations,
which prompts a personal
reading as well as create a
starting point for conversations.
They enable continuity with the
residents: the video recordings
of each action, in which the
participating residents featured,
also became a prop; residents
not only expected to see footage
of past actions but openly asked
for it on every occasion. The
videos were conveying a positive
image of each individual, which
benefitted the collective.
The siting of each action was
187
 defined by trial and error. A
variety of locations, whether
at the heart or the edge of the
grassed area, were tested in
order to measure the impact on
the perception of the space and
its use. With the first action, The
Garden of Urban Delights, we
found out that most people had
never walked on the grassed
area and felt they were venturing
in an unknown territory. We also
discovered, contrary to our belief,
that the noise pollution created
by the elevated bypass, built six
meters away from the housing
blocks, does not significantly
affect the residents lives. Spring
into Action was full of promises,
but turned out to be the least
successful action: a powerful
wind, channelled by the 8 storey
blocks and the bypass, drove all
keen participants away despite
the glorious sunshine.
The temporary pavilion intends
to enhance the outdoor space
and widens the potential for
outdoor activities. This pavilion
was designed so that it can
be transported, deployed,
experienced and packed
away within a day. Additional
parameters for the design
include the creation of an
unthreatening space, sheltered
from the blowing wind and rain
as well as easily accessible and
open to the grassed area. To
ensure translucency, we chose
to wrap the structure with a
plastic skin that would be inflated
and which acts as an acoustic
barrier as well as provides a
woven-like tunnel structure.
Akin to the commitment and
engagement with the residents,
the design, the making and
the delivery of the pavilion on
site was a result of an intensive
collaborative effort. Students had
to elaborate this structure within
the funding provided by the
188
Engagement Fund of the School
of Architecture, Planning and
Landscape. Confronted to a real
budget and a defined space with
real users, provided them with
the opportunity to stretch their
skills exponentially: the sourcing
capacity for materials they had
already developed in previous
actions became particularly
precise as the pavilion was to
be built with materials that can
be carried by a maximum of two
people, delivered on time and
built within the resources and
expertise available at Newcastle
University.
With Back in Action, we could
test the capacity of the pavilion
as a wind shelter and the
intimate and inviting environment
it generates, as it drew most
participants in.
Shifts
This 18 month process provoked
shifts at unexpected moments,
which eventually led to articulate
the premise of a brief that is
beginning to exist in everyones
imaginary.
The residents engaging with the
fun and the informality of the
actions started to understand
that our role was only to initiate
the process. As we were
screening The Garden of Urban
Delights, a resident started
addressing all the people present
We are going to start thinking of
what we can do in the grassed
area, so that later we do that on
our own. This was a significant
shift as residents started to use
we (i.e. all actors involved)
instead of you (i.e. Action
Team).
Initially, the small-scale actions
were carried out independently
from the housing company
until the action planned for
the deployment of the larger
prop: the pavilion. As we
needed electricity to inflate
the plastic tube skin with a
fan, the caretakers, who had
been supportive and helpful
throughout the process, stated
that access to power could not
be granted without authorisation.
When the pavilion was disclosed
to the housing company, it
ended the vacuum in which
this engagement had taken
place and opened up a route of
collaboration and consensus.
After a series of structural and
Health and Safety tests, the
housing company involved the
necessary staff and not only
supported the action with the
pavilion but also participated
in it. All parties gathered on the
grassed area, including local
politicians and media, and
started to discuss and envisage
how a space for the residents
could be created, where would
the money come from, who
would be in charge and who
would use this communal space.
The experience of such projects
can transform the lives of the
actors involved. Pedagogically,
they offer the potential to
develop students citizenship
skills and values and represent
the opportunity to deepen their
understanding of the world
(Reardon K, 2006, p96). From
our perspective, the intention
is to generate mutual benefit
- with all parties learning from
each other through sharing
knowledge, expertise and skills
(see APL engagement webpage:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/
engagement/).
189
190
de Certeau, M. (1984), The Practice of Everyday
Life, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of
California Press

Hutchinson, J. and Loukaitou-Sideris A. (2001),

Choosing confrontation or consensus in the
inner city: lessons from a community-university
partnership. Planning Theory and Practice,
2(3): 293-310

Innes, J. (1996), Planning through consensus

building: a new view of the comprehensive
planning ideal. Journal of the American
Planning Association, 62(4), 460-472

Kunnen, N. (2010), Research Strategies for

Asset and Strengths Based Development
Community. In MacCallum D., Mehmood A.,
Moulaert F., Hamdouch A. (Ed.), Katarsis:
Social Innovation: collective action, social
learning and transdisciplinary research

Kretzmann J. & McKnight J. (1993), Building

Communities from Inside Out, Illinois, ACTA
publications

Mathie, A. & Cunningham, G. (2002), From

Clients to Citizens: Asset-Based Community
Development as a strategy for community-
driven development. Occasional Paper Series,
N4

Reardon, K. M. (2006), Promoting Reciprocity

within Community/University Development
Partnerships: lessons from the field. Planning
Practice and Research, 21(1): 95-107

191
 Urban transformations are not only achieved
through official agencies, but also through
small, temporary and informal initiatives ()
that can contribute to a positive dynamic (City
Mined www.citymined.org). Action Research
aspires to carry out, promote and reflect upon
such design practice.

Action Research is a project that focused on an

unused grassed area in between three social
housing blocks in Gateshead (North East of
England). Carried out by four post-graduate
students in architecture (Mark Greenhalgh,
Amy Linford, Cara Lund and Michael Simpson)
within the frame of a Linked Research module,
the project supports the research of their tutors
Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo; it was
funded by SPINDUS (a research project aiming
at the development of practical and pedagogical
planning and design methodologies to assess,
evaluate and implement spatial quality www.
spindus.org) and the Engagement Fund in the
research

School of Architecture Planning and Landscape.

The project sought to engage the community of

residents in answering the question of whose
outdoor space is it and in unearthing new
meanings and uses. Articulated through asset-
based community development methodologies,
the project led to the temporary transformation
action

of the space in order to heighten, emphasise

and highlight its quality. The Action Research
team spent over 18 months engaging with a
group of residents from the housing blocks
sharing activities, such as tea parties and bingo
sessions, in order to build trust, mobilise the
community, stir dialogue through a collective
experience and, ultimately, change the users
perception and relationship with the space.

These events were supported by props

Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo
ranging in scale, from a tray containing a tea
set and bingo prizes to a temporary pavilion
that provided a clear delineation of space for
activities on the grassed area. This light-weight
structure built with 30x30mm rolled steel hollow
sections, ratchet straps and LDPE plastic
tubing was designed and built by the Action
Research Team at the Architecture and Fine Arts
workshops at Newcastle University following
a process of material research and budget
compliance. The pavilion underwent a process
of structural testing and health & safety checks

192
from both Newcastle University
and The Gateshead Housing
Company before housing a
culminating event on the grass
area on a glorious morning
of November (2011). See
Gateshead Action November
2011

http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ukCvnVlK1jw

193
194
195
 The theme for the ArchaID Linked Research
option was based on the emerging relationship
between architecture and the new field of
Interaction Design. Many of the technologies
that emerged from science labs in the 1980s
and 90s have transformed the relations between
the human, natural and artificial environments:

Consequently, we must adjust to and take

advantage of humanitys new material condition,
dominated by human-machine interfaces and
which we do not yet have full control, and
to which we have only partial and temporal
access. (Milan Jaros 2008)

In response to this challenge, the module is

set beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries
to focus on methodologies of practice and the
core themes of:
Design In the broadest sense, i.e. making
creative interventions to transform an existing
situation into a more desirable one.
The Human Environment in terms of the
constructed environments where physical and
ArchaID

virtual spaces meet.

The students were set the challenge of

immersing themselves in this new design
domain and building project ideas with clearly
defined research questions and methodologies
which involved design and in the wild research
practices. In all four students took part over
two semesters and produced projects ranging
from a telepresent coffee table built by Paul
King, which using a combination of camera
and projector was capable of creating windows
between studios in the architecture school to
enable ambient communication; a prototype
shop window built by Hanna Benihoud which
took the idea of the recommender system a
step further by asking the computer agent to
decide whether the consumer was the right
sort of person to enter the store. We also
saw investigations in place and mobility and
the relationship between locative media and
connection with place through the study of
Free Running by Jenny Webb and Michael
Smith who created Spatial Probes as a way
of understanding how academics use both
physical and virtual research objects and
spaces.

Martyn Dade-Robertson

196
Paul King

197
 Hanna Benihoud

198
 Jennie Webb

Jennie Webb Michael Smith

199
 military ruins
in northern
france

Student Travel Scholarship Essay

Jeremy Trotter

200
An exploration into the remnants
of conflict
Along the coast of Europe from
the border of Spain to the north-
ern reaches of Norway lie tens
of thousands of ruined military
fortifications. They once formed
the Atlantic Wall, a linear defence
network built during the Second
World War to prevent an Allied
invasion of German-occupied
Europe. The network consisted
of many types of defensive struc-
ture, which ranged in complexity
from simple ditches to long-
range artillery batteries. Many
of these fortifications still exist,
but remain only as ruins being
slowly consumed by the natural
environment.
The coastline of Northern France
was the most heavily fortified
section of the Atlantic Wall,
for at the Dover Straits only 21
miles separate England from the
European mainland. The fortifica-
tions that remain along the coast
of the English Channel around
Calais were visited as part of the
research field trip, which aimed
to explore the current relationship
of the ruins to their immedi-
ate landscape and the erosive
processes that continue to affect
them.
The fortifications were situ-
ated strategically across a
diverse range of contexts, from
the beaches of Normandy to
the centre of Calais. Yet each
individual bunker is similar to an-
other in that comparable natural
processes have weathered and
eroded them. These processes
include erosion caused by wind
and rain, freeze-thaw action,
leaching and destructive vegeta-
tion growth. Due to the use of
in-situ concrete as the primary
construction material, the forti-
fications have resisted erosion
remarkably well and some have
survived relatively intact to the
present day. In these instances,
erosive processes have therefore
manifested themselves in more
subtle ways. For example, the
concrete may have merely been
stained by lime leached from the
cement, or a thin patina of lichen
may have grown over its surface.
In other instances however, the
effects of nature are altogether
more violent and entire multi-
storey structures have been
reduced to mere fragments.
This has happened at the most
exposed locations, usually on the
beach where the power of the
sea and wind is strongest. What
all these natural processes have
in common is that they operate at
the micro-scale on a network of
fortifications that was continental
in its physical size.
The terrain surrounding the
bunkers was carefully considered
when the fortifications were ini-
tially constructed, for the ground
could offer not only protection
but also provide elevation for
tactical observation. After the
end of the war, natural processes
sculpted and eroded the bunkers
to such an extent that they now
resemble the landscape itself.
This is particularly evident with
ruins situated on the beach,
where sand has submerged the
concrete monoliths and now
disguises their true size. South of
Calais on the beach at Wissant,
several coastal batteries have
been affected by the power of
the sea. Waves have undercut
their foundations, so they have
sunk into the ground and they
now lie at unnatural angles that
signify them as alien to their
context. Yet on the small scale,
water pools have formed around
them which now provide a rich
habitat for marine creatures.
It can be seen therefore that
despite appearing incongruous
to their context, the bunkers are
now delicately integrated with
the natural ecosystem of the
area. Indeed the bunker is often
surrounded by a field of debris
that consists of concrete frag-
ments, steel reinforcement and
rusty nails, which resembles the
strewn cargo of a grounded ship.
The symbiosis between the
built form and the natural world
is evident further inland at the
Todt Battery, where four cross-
Channel artillery guns were
positioned. One of the batteries
was destroyed by Canadian
forces, which resulted in an
entangled mass of broken steel
and concrete. The wrecked
battery, which once reached
20 metres high, is a humbling
sight now that vegetation has
colonised in and around the ruin
which highlights the transience of
apparently formidable structures.
A second battery nearby was
merely abandoned by fleeing
German forces, so is in a rela-
tively good condition. Both these
structures though have been
overtaken by the growth of the
surrounding forest. The roots and
tendrils of plants grow within the
slightest crack in the concrete,
and there is extensive ivy growth
that is slowly but inexorably
consuming the surface. Forest
undergrowth at the base of the
structure makes it difficult to
identify where the concrete stops
and the ground begins. The tree
canopy provides some degree of
concealment, but it is not enough
to completely hide the mono-
lithic form of the batteries. When
approaching from a distance,
they initially become identifiable
through the perception of an
unnatural straight line that even
plant growth cannot obscure.
The straight line of a concrete
wall, a railway track or an I-beam
201
 mality of the undergrowth or the
sinuous edge of a sand dune.

A ruin often originates through

the absence of either people or
the lack of an ostensible func-
tion. The natural world fills this
absence, which by its very pres-
ence indicates the failure of man
to control natural processes. The
Atlantic Wall though has become
ruined for a different reason. The
victory of Western democracy
over National Socialism caused
the abandonment of these
structures. Therefore, the ruins
in France might be celebrated.
Yet to do so seems troubling, as
they caused great devastation
and are symbolic of one of the
darkest periods in recent history,
and whilst the bunkers gun may
be silenced, the dark maw of its
aperture still remains menacing. Observation bunker at Liffrinkouche
Like sentinels, the ruined bunkers
continue to quietly gaze at the
ferries plying between Dover
and Calais. Whatever response
one has to them, the bunkers
remain intimidating structures
even though defunct. Whilst most
of the built form in the world is
designed to contribute to society
positively, these bunkers were
explicitly designed to cause
destruction. The challenge
remains as to how to engage
with these structures in a manner
that utilises them for productive
purposes, and acknowledges
the reason for their construction,
if indeed the ruins should be
acknowledged at all.

Derelict fire-control tower

202
he Temporarily submerged by tide

er Coastal gun at Wissant

203
 the architecture
of archaeology

Student Travel Scholarship Essay

Paul Maguire

204
Architecture and Conflict
My thesis looks at the role
architecture plays in conflict in
the Middle East. A great deal of
my research led me to studying
the relationship between spatial
conflict and how architecture isnt
just an inert object providing a
stage for this struggle, but an
actor which plays an active role
in shaping the ownership of the
region. Through a process of
refining my research, I was able
to focus my thesis on the use of
archaeology as a tool to define
spatial control throughout the
region.
As I had never previously been to
the region, I felt it was important
to experience the unique spatial
conditions created by the conflict,
first hand. The study visit gave
me the opportunity to undertake
primary research and to search
for potential sites for my thesis.
The entire study visit provided
me with invaluable experiences,
however I have chosen three
days, which greatly influenced the
direction my thesis took.
Architecture of Archaeology
During my time in Jerusalem, I
focused on exploring the Old
City, allowing myself to get lost
amongst the alleys and bazaars.
This was an attempt to see the
real city as well as the urban
developments of the last 50
years, which had an architectural
style which was fairly monotone in
its use of materials (in particular
the use of limestone cladding);
a result of laws which aimed
to protect the Old Citys visual
appeal by attempting to create
one unified architectural style.
However one of the most
fascinating aspects of the city,
which broke up the mass of
limestone, were the extraordinary
number of temporary structures
forming the citys urban fabric -
ramps, pathways, even buildings
- which, if removed, would
instantly have rendered the whole
city almost unrecognizable. These
structures were clustered around
archaeological sites throughout
the city, providing visual markers
of contested spaces.
Archaeology and Urbanism
A couple of days were spent
in Silwan, which is an Arabic
neighbourhood in East Jerusalem,
south of the Old City. I found it
to be the perfect example of
archaeology and architecture
clashing, creating an unusual
urban fabric.
Upon entering Silwan I
encountered a huge excavation
called Givati. Formerly a car park,
this area had been subjected to
trial excavations ahead of planned
development in 2003, which had
revealed the remains of buildings.
The site was managed by an
NGO called Elad which quickly
removed entire archaeological
layers, allowing for huge pile
foundations to be built; leading
many to wonder whether a large
politically-motivated construction
project was imminent, given the
context of the area.
Passing the Givati site, I entered
the City of David visitors
centre, the access point for the
Jerusalem Walls National Park.
This is only national park in Israel
Wadi Qelt
205
 Jerusalem

Silwan

206
which isnt managed by the
national park authorities, but by
the NGO Elad whose ideology
involves the settlement of Israelis
in East Jerusalem.
Tickets were available for
purchase at the visitors centre,
allowing access to certain parts
of the park/village. However I was
able to continue through what
was a strange mix of excavations,
walkways, settlers houses and
Palestinian houses, which were
surprisingly hidden amongst this
new tourist infrastructure. The
only way I was generally able to
distinguish between the original
houses and the settlers was the
use of stone cladding to mask
the concrete. Throughout my walk
through the area, I was unsure if I
was in the park or the village, with
the former gradually taking over
the latter. Excavations underneath
some of the original homes in
Silwan had left the whole hillside
perforated, making a complex
tangle of spatial ownership. This
ownership was sometimes only
clear when someone asked me
for a ticket, to what looked like an
original Silwan street.
Visiting Silwan was a highlight of
my trip, in that it was one of the
most interesting and at the same
time disturbing experiences.
Seeing first-hand the annexation
of peoples homes which up
to then I had only read about,
brought a number of thoughts Id
had about my thesis into sharp
focus.
Archaeological Infrastructure
Towards the end of the visit, I
hiked through the Wadi Qelt,
which is formed by a series of
springs that start in the upper hills
of the Judean Mountains and flow
down into the River Jordan. The
canyon is rich in archaeological
history, having served as a route to. The landscape was stunning
between the ancient cities of and it was a fitting way to end an
Jerusalem and Jericho. Because experience like no other.
of this rich biblical narrative I
had identified this canyon as a
potential site for my thesis.
The hike itself was fairly
challenging and involved a bit
of climbing. We slowly made
our way to an area called Red
Rocks. The canyon was by now
very steep and sedimentary
layering of the rocks which
formed ledges allowed us to
pass tricky parts of the river.
These sedimentary layers were
occasionally interrupted by caves,
which have housed hermits for
thousands of years. This added
an extra layer of archaeological
interest to the canyon walls.
Human intervention in the
canyon took the form of three
aqueducts. The first was built by
the Maccabees out of limestone
U sections. The next was laid
directly on top of the original, in
the form of clay pipes which was
an Herodian structure, brought
water down to his winter palace in
the desert. And the final, slightly
more modern, aqueduct was
built by the British in the early
twentieth century. However none
of structures were complete,
with some sections completely
missing.
It was hard to tell at this point
that above the canyon walls it
was rocky desert. The Wadi Qelt
has its own microclimate, which
creates an oasis type environment
at the bottom of the canyon.
However it did also mean that the
place was prone to flash floods.
To finish the hike we scrambled
up the canyon walls to overlook
St Georges Monastery. This gave
me a view of the surrounding
desert, which in the bottom of the
canyon I was completely oblivious
207
 stage 6

Armelle Tardiveau

The era of the BArch at while for others, it provided

Newcastle University is drawing the opportunity to develop a
to a close. This is the opportunity particular strand of the line of
to thank all the people who have enquiry that they had considered
supported this postgraduate prior to starting the year.
course in its last 2 years of
existence: these include Hentie
Louw, Peter Buchanan, Chi Won
Park, Dermot Foley, Christine
Fontaine, Pierre dAvoine, William
Firebrace; the engineers Phil
Oliver, Marc Horn and the team
at BuroHappold Leeds; amongst
local practitioners Tim Bailey,
Tim Mosedale, Peter Mouncey,
Ian Whittle and more recently
Thomas Kern and Colin Ross. To
be thanked too, are the students
for their outstanding human
qualities and abilities as well
as their capacity to engage in
complex and more than often
topical research.

This year, each studio introduced

a theme, which was the focus
of a six week exercise. This
introductory project inspired a
thesis topic for some students,

208
209
 From the pragmatic to the poetic and back
again: creating a new materiality
The antagonism between new and old
materials, or between high and low technologies
of production, may be dispelled through
strategies that deliberately misuse materials as
a form of political action in architecture. Sheila
Kennedy (KVA) in Material presence: The return
of the real

Studio in Action proposed a research focusing

on establishing conceptual parameters that
define materiality and creating materials that
would underpin both a thesis in its overall
approach as well as its finer definition in detail.

A strong emphasis was given to a pragmatic

approach:

Misuse the material: taking it out of

context and using it in an alternative
way.
Transform the material: exploring material
manipulation (cutting, sewing, extruding,
chipping, etc).
Assemble the material(s) in unexpected
ways: proposing and questioning the
process of assemblage.

Emerging from the thesis intentions, students

studio
action

developed concepts addressing the agency

of materials including: growing to achieve an
ever changing environment (1), engaging with
light-weight materials for mobile elements as
a counter point to the solid built environment
(2), using deliberately reclaimed materials (3),
recycling as a socially engaged opportunity (4),
highlighting the friction or dialogue between two
materials and two temporalities (5), creating
space out of a monolithic element (6) and
disturbing familiar environments with temporary
installations (7).
in

While some students cooked in their kitchen,

mixed matter in the workshop or assembled
materials in the studio, questions emerged:
how does it feel, how does it look, what does
it enable, what environmental conditions are
created, what scale is considered? These first
studio 01 experiences were up-scaled for the production
of prototypes at 1:1 and 1:2. Drawings defining
both atmosphere and construction were
Armelle Tardiveau produced. Characteristics of the material
created were established and specifications

210
were envisaged.

Once this exercise was concluded with the

exhibition of all studios, students returned to
their thesis, seemingly leaving behind what
they had engaged with. However, when their
project started to take form, the process they
had pursued returned and was revisited through
the sharp lens of reality: the precise moment
when the poetic outcome meets the pragmatic.
Engaging students in abstract thinking while
dealing with matter and producing prototypes
enables the widening of both conceptual and
material approach.

Robert Sakula, Daniel Mallo and Peter Mouncey

also supported this exercise. Their input was an
invaluable source of inspiration to the students.

211
 Andrew Morrison

Andrew Morrison Andrew Morrison

212
 Beatrice Chan

n Beatrice Chan

213
 Henry Poon

214
 Wai Lok Chan

Wai Lok Chan Wai Lok Chan

215
 Eleni Spanoude

Eleni Spanoude Eleni Spanoude

216
e Michael Simpson

e Michael Simpson

217
 ArchaID started last year this year with the
provocation that Architecture is profoundly
important type of information visualisation.
Buildings represent patters which we create
in the physical world to make sense of our
social and conceptual worlds. Yet, increasingly,
through new technologies, those social and
conceptual worlds are invisible, volatile and
unimaginably complex. Can architecture keep
up? Should it even try?

The focus of the ArchaID Primer for the first few

weeks of the studio was to open the black box.
We make use of software tools in architectural
design and are increasingly designing places
which are shaped by software as well as their
physical and social contexts. Yet we rarely
glimpse inside the black boxes which these
software systems create. In architecture schools
we teach structural engineering but not software
engineering. We teach that architecture is the
spatial manifestation of often abstract notions
of institution, politics and social life without
reference to the abstractions of digital data.
ArchaID

The primer was run around a series of

workshops introducing the core concepts of
software development through the programming
language Processing. Through this hands-on
experience the students were asked to grasp
the formal syntax and logic of programming as
well as the notion of software representation
and software as world creation. In addition
texts were set which looked at the philosophy
of software from the perspectives of design, art
and human geography.

The presented at the end of the Primer

represented the first faltering steps into the
software and the worlds they represents. Each
project takes a data source and manipulate it
through a software programme and outputting
though a form of visualisation printed,
interactive, modelled or projected. The data
sources range from a modified script from an
episode of the Twilight Zone, tweets from the
protesters in the City of London and weather
data for Newcastle. Each data set has to be
scraped, processed and then presented often
turning qualitative information into quantitative
studio 02 data involving leaps of conceptual and practical
thinking.

Martyn Dade-Robertson From these beginnings the students developed

their own thesis projects which picked up, to

218
varying levels, on the themes initiated in the
Primer. To this end you will see thesis projects
which question the relationship of self, image
and memory in a clinic for those with conditions
affecting memory; an alternative storehouse of
knowledge and ideas in a post library world; a
new type of industrial complex in the heart of
the Canary Warf; a physical repository for digital
programming languages and a physical and
conceptual bridge for the study and research of
porcelain. Each building constituted a physical
manifestation of a partly virtual or ephemeral
context.

Paul King

219
 Paul King

Paul King

Paul King

220
Michael Smith

Michael Smith

Michael Smith

221
 Ka Chan

Ka Chan

Ka Chan

222
 Raichel Warren

Raichel Warren Raichel Warren

223
 Mark Greenhalgh

Mark Greenhalgh

Mark
<No Greenhalgh
intersecting link> Mark Greenhalgh

224
225
 Taking inspiration from the childrens graphic
story The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan the primer
has challenged the students to find, measure
and activate their own lost thing. As with much
of Tans work, the film explores themes of loss,
alienation, perspective and innocence. The
students were asked initially to think about what
it means to be lost, to lose something, to be
found and to find something. They were then
asked to make a contraption something that
could be titled an -o-scope that could be
used to explore somewhere (Middlehaven) from
a particular or restricted or controlled viewpoint.
It was important that the contraption required a
direct and physical engagement. The intention
was that whilst looking in a heightened (and in
some cases embarrassed) state the students
might accidentally find something. The found
lost objects ranged from a fragment of a record
to a wall.

The students were then asked to build a second

contraption an -o-meter - to measure
or engage with an aspect of their lost thing.
The final challenge was to construct either
a narrative or a final contraption that might
re-activate the lost object. The students were
asked to present both their process and the
emerging narrative of the lost thing through their
own short film or animation.

Through the process of designing, making

and testing contraptions the students were
forced to engage intimately with small areas
of a site. Whilst arguably (and excusably in
the short time frame) the contraptions lacked
precision the process of positive action and
lost

direct engagement brought about an insight into

the wider aspects of the site, which surprisingly,
cumulatively generated a tantalisingly three
dimensional (if incomplete) rendering of the
wider site.

studio 03

Matthew Margetts

226
Cara Lund

227
 Alastair Whiting K

228
 Kyle Cowper

Kyle Cowper Kyle Cowper

229
 Lauren Wedderburn <No intersecting link>

Victoria Telford

230
Cara Lund

Cara Lund

231
 Anthony Vickery

Anthony Vickery

232
Hanna Benihoud

Hanna Benihoud

233
 Louise Daly

Louise Daly

234
Nick Backhouse

Nick Backhouse

235
 Studio 4 seeks to build on the strength of the
studio format by working collectively to generate
an informed discourse on contemporary
architecture whilst valuing and supporting
the diversity of invention of each student. The
studio pedagogy is founded on a pragmatic
philosophical approach and encourages
students to evolve a critical design position
through a combination of direct experience
and inquisitive intuition; through a material
imagination and tactile experimentation. Studio
4 aims to encourage the establishment of an
architectural position through an interrogation
of the relationship between theory and practice,
abstraction and situation, technique and tactility,
and the analogue and the digital.

The studio commenced with an exploration of

North east brutalism and a visit to Peterlee and
the Apollo Pavilion (1970) by Victor Pasmore
challenged the students to engage with a critical
social and political commentary, revealing the
troubled social history of a northern working
class community. The story of the pavilion
thinking

mirrors a wider narrative of regional industrial

decline and social change. The Brutalist
making
concrete forms of the pavilion and their shifting
social relevance established a reactive material
foundation for subsequent studies. These
issues were further explored through four
building visits each providing the opportunity
for a combination of careful tectonic recording
and deeper architectural critique together with
a questioning of alternative approaches to the
regeneration of post-industrial contexts. A studio
primer encouraged students to embody their
responses and architectural position within
and

interpretive made pieces. These were presented

as a primer exhibition and formed the basis of
subsequent thesis research. A range of thesis
themes and topics emerged from the studio,
each demonstrating a thoughtful and distinct
response to the challenges established by the
studio primer. A concern for boom and bust
economics, the related social changes and the
transitional spatial and material conditions that
accompany them all became key issues and
sustainability in its varied forms surfaced as a
key driver in much of the work.
studio 04
Jennie Webb and Alistair Wilkinson each
explored the transformative potential of material
Graham Farmer practices and materiality as a means of
engaging disenfranchised social groups. Amy

236
Linford researched the transitional tectonics that
exist between matter and form through material
experiments in the fabric casting of concrete
whilst Paul Maguire explored the politicization
of material culture and the role of archaeology
in territorial claims-making in Isreal. George
Musson and Keir McNeil shared a concern for
post-industrial landscapes, their physical and
social rehabilitation and their sustainable future
uses and worked with sites in Newcastle and
Carrara respectively. Pratik Jain and Catherine
Amos were both interested in the digitisation
of everyday activities and developed thesis
proposals founded around the celebration
and preservation of cultural identity through
language and memorialisation. Jeremy Trotters
thesis engages with the ruined military bunkers
of the Atlantic Wall and explores their conversion
from a symbol of national division to a support
infrastructure for transnational ecologies. Nick
Kemp researched the potential of passive
atmospheric water generation technologies as a
means of relieving water stress in the UK.

237
 George Musson

George Musson

238
Jennie Webb

Jennie Webb

Jennie Webb

239
 Jeremy Trotter

Jeremy Trotter

240
 Alistair Wilkinson

Alistair Wilkinson

Alistair Wilkinson

241
 Keir McNeil <No intersecting link>

<No intersecting link>

242
Amy Linford

243
 Catherine Amos

Catherine Amos

Catherine Amos

244
Paul Maguire

Paul Maguire

245
 Pratik Jain

Pratik Jain

246
Nicholas Kemp

Nicholas Kemp

247
 In 1960 T. Dan Smith was elected as leader of the
Labour Council in Newcastle upon Tyne, he had
a vision of Newcastle as a Brasilia of the North.
Smith had big plans for this Northern renaissance
declaring that In
Newcastle I wanted to see the creation of a 20th
Century equivalent of Dobsons masterpiece,
hadrian award
and its integration into the historic framework of
the city.

Smith had rather contradictory views on

conservation; his efforts ensured the retention
of a key building on Grey Street as well as the
preservation of the Holy Jesus Hospital during
the development of Swan
House at the same time he oversaw the
rebuilding of the Royal Arcade as a pastiche
underneath Swan House.

For the new development however he

commissioned Modernist architects who posed
a series of towers connected by raised decks
for pedestrians to move around the city. The
whole masterplan was never realized, however
a number of buildings were, in a style emerging
at that moment in time, a style that has since
become incredibly contentious in the minds of
architects and the public alike, though opinion is
rarely shared, that is Brutalism.

The style drew from Le Corbusiers Unit

part II

dHabitation in Marseille and its name was

derived from the
French Beton Brut, or raw concrete, it was
characterized by its rough exposed concrete
finishes and its strong forms. It was Peter and
Alison Smithson, who both studied architecture
at Newcastle University, then Kings College
Durham, that first coined the phrase Brutalism
in their manifesto of 1954. Today Brutalism
regularly receives bad press; take for example
the Smithsons work at Robin Hood Gardens in
London which is in a battle over demolition.

In Newcastle our brutalist heritage has already

The Ruins of the Bank of England
taken significant damage, Sir Basil Spences
Central Library has been demolished as has
Owen Luders Trinity Car Park in Gateshead,
Westgate House is another and today the
Dunston Rocket is being pulled down.

Sitting in the centre of Smiths masterplan the

regional Bank of England is another brutalist
James Longfield
landmark that has been facing demolition, ready

248
249
 to be replaced by a swathe of
regeneration that is corporate
retail and offices. The Bank has
proved more obdurate however
and in August 2010 developers
were forced to halt demolition
plans due to the unforeseen costs
associated with the removal of its
two story underground vaults.
My thesis drew from this
stalemate to speculate on how the
redevelopment of the Bank could
serve to preserve the brutalist
heritage in a way that would alter
negative perceptions of the style.
Situated as it is on Swan House
roundabout, a very unwelcoming
area for pedestrians, the building
also presented the opportunity
to resolve some of the issues of
connecting the city centre to the
River Tyne by strengthening Terry
Farrells Geordie Ramblas route.
Bernard Tschumi argues that
Architecture and its spaces
do not change society, but
through architecture and the
understanding of its effect, we
can accelerate processes of
change underway. (Similarly,
architecture can always slow
down these processes of change
by implementing passist forms
of building and of use.). I like to
think that the recent critique of
the banking system is a pointer
towards an alternative direction,
the start of a process of change.
Proposals for the replacement
of the Bank of England and
surrounding buildings focus on
glass and steel offices and shops,
I would question whether this
is the architecture Tschumi was
referring to when he pointed out
architecture that could slow down
processes of change by holding
onto a past way of doing things.
With this in mind the programme
for the reoccupation and
extension of the building
connected to the social agenda,
250
that Reyner Banham argued
was key to the development
of brutalism, by means of a
social centre for charity work in
the heart of the city which was
interwoven with a monastic
retreat for bankers looking to
atone for their wrongdoing by
way of giving something back to
society. Inspired by J.M. Gandys
painting The Ruins of the Bank
of England, a fantasy of John
Soanes Bank of England in ruins,
the Bank building above ground
was deliberately developed
into a ruinous state in order to
stand as a marker of the failure
of capitalism, this then became
a garden retreat for bankers
resident in the monastery.
The vaults, once completely
closed off, are opened up to the
public as a huge multi-purpose
hall serving the many charities
that use the building, and open
onto a new public square.
Contained within the basement
are workshops and studios which
host a whole range of social
enterprises serving the worst off
in our city. On the ground floor
a restaurant operates as a soup
kitchen during the day whilst
serving expensive meals to the
upper classes at night.
John Dobson was commissioned
to design a prison on the site
in 1827, a replacement of the
original house of correction
situated there. His designs
drew from Jeremy Benthams
design of a panopticon, a
device for observing inmates.
Of the panopticon Bentham
declared Morals reformed, health
preserved, industry invigorated,
instruction diffused, public
burdens lightened, economy
seated, as it were, upon a
rock... all by a simple idea in
Architecture!.
Michel Foucault used the concept
of a panopticon as a metaphor
for the emergence of societies
that discipline through a process
of observation. This potential for
control through observation is
explored throughout the project
by way of the public route that
cuts through the building looking
in on the bankers living quarters,
the aim being a very literal
translation of public transparency
and accountability; it is used as
well to blur the boundaries of
philanthropy and living.
The building design and
materiality reflects the social
duality through the use of
minimalism, both expensive and
austere minimalism has a foot in
both social camps and is utilised
in the building to provide spaces
that will host the varying users
in an appropriate way. Exposed
concrete draws from the brutalist
heritage of the existing building
but is employed in a highly
controlled way as a contrast to
the roughness of the original.
The building plays host to
Corporate Responsibility
Programmes run by many large
corporations today as a part
of their social commitments.
Bankers come and stay for
one week to a month, funded
by their company. Much like
in a monastery their time is
split between social service,
contributing their skills, such as
teaching English, helping with
accounts and serving food, to
charity bodies resident within the
building, and time for personal
reflection and rest within their
cells.
The final production of the project
was made through a copy of
the Financial Times newspaper
designed to reflect many of the
themes of the scheme.
251
 BArch 2011 Dissertation Extract

Commendation in the RIBA Dissertation Prize

2011

Walking from the city centre in Derry, Northern

Ireland, passing through the gate in Figure
1, one is forced to make a choice left or
right. The chosen path will lead into one of two
parallel housing areas and outwardly align the
participant with the sympathies of one of these
communities. Put bluntly, the decision on which
constructing
side to walk identifies one as either Protestant or
Catholic. At the same time, the choice people
from one side make repeatedly marks this route
as part of their territory so the decision and its
consequences become mutually reinforcing,
inscribing an invisible sectarian boundary in the
urban landscape. To the uninitiated visitor, the
implication of this selection may well be unknown
but it has a profound effect on the lives of the
inhabitants and is evidence of the simmering
conflict still being enacted through the built
environment of the region.

Despite political advances since the 1990s and

the general perception that peace has arrived
in Northern Ireland, conflict in the region is still
ongoing and it is being enacted through the
built environment. Rather than merely providing
other

the setting for everyday actions, space plays a

fundamental role in generating sectarianism and
violence. Its unquestioned character enables
it to be used as a tool for asserting difference
and deepening divisions. The implicit nature of
this spatial manipulation also ensures that the
violence it engenders remains overlooked, as an
ingrained and repetitive performance of conflict
that continues in everyday life across Northern
the

Ireland behind a faade of peace.

Such spatial practices are typified in an area

of residential segregation in Derry. The study
area centres on Bishops Gate, shown in Figure
1, one of the original gates of the walled city of
Derry. The gate sits on the cusp of the city centre
and on the fault line between two segregated

The role of space in continuing conflict in Northern Ireland

Joanna Doherty

252
housing communities. The
entrance on the left leads to the
unionist Fountain estate and
straight ahead lies the nationalist
Bishop Street area, adjoining
the nationalist Bogside, as
shown in Figure 2. The two
neighbourhoods are separated
by an interface wall that runs
perpendicular to Bishops Gate.
Not marked on the map but
perceptible to all local inhabitants
are the remaining boundaries
that divide them. This unspoken
understanding of territory and
its implications of control,
dominance and discrimination
make the area highly appropriate
for examining how a concealed
violence is practised through
the manipulation of the built
environment, bringing into sharp
focus a custom that is repeated in
multiple locations across Northern
Ireland.
The different spatial practices
employed in appropriating
territory and asserting difference
are explored in each chapter
of the dissertation. Following
is an extract from chapter two
examining the invisible walls that
define the boundaries of the area.
These markers form one of many
layers of spatial subversion that
consistently reinforce ideas of
difference, fear and prejudice and
ingrain their system of sectarian
territorialisation in the minds of the
inhabitants.
Reading the Signs
Depending on ones ethno-
political background, the space
depicted in Figure 3, one of the
gateways into the Fountain estate,
can be read as either an entrance
or a barrier. This difference
in the interpretation of signs,
of which the outsider remains
unaware, marks a shift away from
the interface wall as a visible
divider to more imperceptible
boundaries. It demonstrates
how the divisive interventions
imposed on the communities in
a top-down approach, examined
in the previous chapter, are being
actively maintained at a local level
beyond the reaches of the wall to
continually produce sectarianised
space. Demarcated through
flags, painted kerbstones and
murals, these thresholds rely
on an understanding of their
symbolism to generate meaning
and therefore have a very specific
target audience; the barrier
exists for certain people. These
invisible walls demonstrate most
clearly the implicit nature of the
spatial manipulation involved in
continuing conflict. They play on
the depth of knowledge of the
situation and the layers of legibility
that those involved possess to
communicate rules of admittance
and control that segregate along
ethno-religious lines.
Boundary maintenance
The threshold shown in Figure 3
signifies the end of the seemingly
neutral realm of the city centre
and the beginning of politicised
territory. The colours of the British
flag used on the kerbstones
convey the message that this
zone belongs to those who
consider themselves British.
Together with the raised Union
Jack and Ulster flags they assert
a permanent and visible, political
and cultural dominance over
the area and serve to alienate
those who do not share this
Fig. 01 - Bishops Gate
253
 Fig.
02 -02
Map
- Map
of Derry.jpg
of Derry

03-Boundarymarki
Fig.
ngatthe03
entrance
- Boundary
intotheFountain.JPG
marking the entrance to the Fountain Fig. 04 - Fountain Mural

254
 allegiance. They act as a warning
for anyone wishing to enter and
effectively communicate, keep
out if one does not adhere to
these political ideals. The mural
in the background reinforces
this message (Figure 4). The
language of under siege and
no surrender draws on events
from the Siege of Derry in 1688
when Protestant settlers defended
the city from invading Catholic
forces. It remains an important
cornerstone of the unionist
tradition in Northern Ireland today.
However from a nationalist point
of view, no surrender can be
interpreted as an aggressive
taunt, communicating a veiled
threat of the consequences of
encroaching on this territory.
These markers allow the area to
be read as either a space of fear
or a space of safety depending on
ones perception and community
background. They contribute to
two very different narratives of the
same space. Like the interface
wall, they help to enforce ideas of
us versus them and contribute
to an understanding of place
divided into distinct ethno-political
enclaves.
Crucially, these constructs do
not remain as passive symbols
but actively help to produce
space along sectarian lines. The
map in Figure 5 highlights the
quickest route for a resident of
Abercorn Road to take in order
to reach a shop in the city centre
on Pump Street. However this
journey involves walking through
the Fountain estate and crossing
the boundary at the bottom
of Wapping Lane, which is
marked with painted kerbstones
and lampposts. Instead, the
interviewee chooses each time
to take the longer route along
Carlisle Road in order to reach her
destination (Figure 6). The route
ral through the Fountain is not even
considered as an option:
I wouldnt know how to get
through the Fountain, Ive never
been that way. With all that red,
white and blue they make it clear
that its not an area for Catholics.
The area is left out of her mental
map due to the overwhelming
deterrent effect of the territorial
markers. This reordering
of daily routine and travel
patterns becomes the physical
response to intimidation and
fear. Through these enacted
practices two separate existences
are continually produced and
reinforced, underlining the effects
of the boundary markers in aiding
the continuation of conflict.
The interviewees subconscious
decision not to cross the border
into the Fountain is also evidence
of her self-controlling mechanism
at work; she is monitoring her
own behaviour. By delineating
such a clear dividing line (evident
to those involved), territorial
markers heighten the experience
of overstepping that threshold.
Avoiding crossing the boundary
signals an internalisation of the
feelings of being watched and
being marked. One is scared to
be identified as from the other
side once in that area and also
afraid of being seen traversing the
divide by people from both sides.
As one resident of the Bishop
Street area described,
They would know I was a
Catholic if I came walking from
over here and then it feels like
theyre out to get you.
Teenagers from the Fountain
have spoken of their fear of being
marked out as they enter the city
centre from the estate:
They [Catholic teenagers] know
to look at us they say, go back
into your cage.
In everyday life, the self becomes
constrained.
Internalisation
Without ever being spoken, the
boundary rules are absorbed and
internalised by residents of both
sides of the divide. Getting to
know this system is a spatialised
process of learning. The
geographers Lysaght and Basten,
studying the spatial practices of
fear in Belfast, have highlighted
how children mimic their
parents behaviour and adapted
movement patterns. Knowing
which are the safe routes to take
to go to school or to the shops is
knowledge gained as an enacted
practice. Children therefore learn
to reproduce the mental maps
of their parents, replicating the
divisions each time they choose
to only walk along certain paths.
This is shown in Figure 7, which
compares the mental maps of a
mother and her thirteen year old
son from the Bishop Street area.
Both maps emphasise the same
routes and exclude the area of
the Fountain estate, revealing
the subconscious transmission
of boundary knowledge from
parent to child. The childs
map communicates a similar
understanding to his mother of
the places of safety and those
of fear.
This intuitive behaviour, knowing
where one will be accepted and
safe, is a defence mechanism
that residents employ and
also affects how they position
themselves in other situations.
Part of this coping strategy
involves watching yourself, a
commonly used phrase meaning
to look after oneself but that also
implies being aware of how one is
viewed by others.
255
05Q
- uci kesrotutefromreFig.
sd
i entsho05
metoth-eshQuickest
opw
, akln
i gtm
i e7mn
i uroute,
tes.p
j g walking time 7 minutes Fig. 06 - Chosen route,06
C
-walking
hosenroutefromrestime
d
i entshom
9etothminutes
eshopw
, akln
i gtm
i e9mn
i utes.p
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07
C
- omparsioFig.
noam
f othe07
(arbove-a)nComparison
dhesrons(beo
l wm
) apsothfeareof
a.p
j gmother(above) and son(below) maps Fig. 08 - Inward looking arrangement
08In-ward-o
l okn
i garangemof
enotdfw
dwellings
en
il gss,hownipa
l nandsecto
i n.p
jg

256
 Getting the bus through town I
would know whether someone
was Catholic or Protestant
depending on which stop they
use. For the same reason Id
be careful about where I get
off. Theres another stop at the
bottom of Abercorn Road but
thats used by people who live in
the Fountain.
The above quotation suggests
an internalised sense of carrying
around a badge of identity
that one must be careful not
to reveal. It is evidence of
how the production of space
negotiated around the boundary
markers of the interface area
impacts on ones reading
of other environments and
relationships. This subconscious
safety mechanism continues to
reproduce divisions.
kn
es
i gtm
i e9mn
i utes.p
jg
Horizontal social control
The same spatial tactics that
are used to target an external
audience are also employed
to exert control internally, as a
means of maintaining the divide
to ensure territorial security.
The sociologist Nils Zurawski
has written of a culture of
surveillance in present day
Northern Ireland produced from
the culture of conflict. As a
result of being under observation,
people assimilate the systems of
surveillance so that the monitoring
of entrances, watching peoples
actions and being alert becomes
ingrained behaviour. Thus, the
sense of fear and intimidation felt
by inhabitants is engendered by
forces not just from the other
side but from within each area
as well:
I wouldnt go near the Fountain
because I wouldnt want anyone
from here to see me coming
np
gs
a
l nandsecto
i n.p
jg out of there and think I had any
business on that side.
This surveillance at ground
level can be seen to originate
in the vertical control exerted
by the authorities during the
Troubles. The reorganisation of
the area and the construction
of the interface wall that were
designed to help the police and
British army take command of the
area also facilitate the watching
of each other and guarding of
territory amongst the inhabitants.
Figure 8 highlights this inward-
looking layout. The perceived
need to protect the community
and defend against the other
translates into a neighbourhood
vigilance that involves observing
all activity in the area to ensure
there is no threat coming from
outside, or within. Reading
symbols for clues as to peoples
allegiances becomes an
everyday, defensive activity:
You couldnt wear a
[remembrance] poppy around
here. Its like wearing a big
sign saying I am British, which
wouldnt be advisable in this area.
If I saw someone else wearing
one, I would assume they were
Protestant.
Whilst this vigilance outwardly
gives the impression that
everyone in that area is staunchly
republican or loyalist, the
intimidation also extends within
the neighbourhoods. Murals
and flags act as a warning and
a reminder of the dominant,
controlling view. The defiant,
powerful position these spatial
tactics convey can leave one
fearful to speak out in opposition,
resulting in a silent compliance:
The murals can make me a feel
a bit afraid. They seem to shout
about what your political beliefs
should be, I read them as being
very hardline. Its hard to know
who fully supports them and who
would repeat any criticisms I
might express, so I think its best
not to say anything.
A fundamental aspect of this
manipulation is the use of the
murals to imbue places with
ideological significance. The
example shown earlier in
Figure 4 and that in Figure
9 draw considerably on the
Siege of Derry. By associating
the Fountain with this event
deemed so important for the
unionist tradition and the right of
Protestants to inhabit and defend
the city, the acts of preserving
the estate as unionist territory are
granted a sense of legitimacy and
dignity. In the Bogside, Free Derry
Corner stands as a monument
to the nationalist populations
resistance against the police and
British armed forces in 1969 at
the outbreak of the Troubles and
during Bloody Sunday (Figure
10). Memorialising these events
helps to keep the past alive and
also the tensions they produced.
These murals illustrate how
memory adjusts recollections of
the past to serve current needs;
it is a version of history that
is selectively invoked. As de
Certeau explains, there are many
different histories and spirits of a
place that we can choose to call
upon or not. These particular
events are used to strengthen the
political stance of more hardline
groups in each area by seeking
to reinforce tensions between
the two communities. In each
instance, one biased history is
told at the exclusion of any that
include the other community.
These narratives also act as
a reminder of the hardships
endured by each population.
Invoking feelings of besiegement,
they create a perception of being
the underdog, the one that is
suffering instead of the other.
In this respect, they form an
257
 integral part of constituting the
other. Immersed in the narrative,
one starts to believe this version
of history, which consequently
deepens the perceived
differences and divisions between
nationalists and unionists. The
cultural geographers Shirlow and
Murtagh have highlighted how
presenting the other community
as formidable has been used
as a tactic to homogenise
communities and strengthen
spatial enclosure, just as de
Certeau has emphasised the
role of stories in determining
boundaries. It is the translation
of these narratives via the spatial
devices of murals and flags that
contributes to the persistence
of conflict, enabling an invisible
reading of space as either safe
or threatening that continues to
divide along sectarian lines.
Legitimisation
In spite of, or perhaps because
of, their divisive symbolism and
potent use as boundary markers,
flags and murals are legitimised
as expressions of identity. The
history of flag flying in Northern
Fig. 09 - Fountain mural
258
Ireland can be traced back to
the nineteenth century, whilst
murals were first introduced in
the early part of the twentieth
century, beginning in the unionist
community. This tradition lends a
sense of acceptability to displays
today.
However, the years since the
Good Friday Agreement in 1998
have witnessed an increase in
the number of flags displayed,
underlining their function as
more than just expressions of
identity. Their use in the Fountain
has been altered from primarily
seasonal celebratory displays
to near permanent fixtures,
particularly along the edges of the
estate (Figure 11). This change
from ephemeral to permanent
territoriality suggests feelings of
insecurity, with the flags perceived
as protective barriers. They are
used to demonstrate defiance
in the face of an apparent threat
and to resist infiltration of the
other. The demographic decline
in the Fountain estate highlighted
in chapter one provides the
impetus for strengthening these
defensive boundaries whilst
the nature of the edges also
dictates the perceived need for
reinforcement; unlike the wall,
these boundaries are porous and
therefore more susceptible to
transgression. There is a great
fear of territorial loss when power,
and correspondingly, cultural
ascendancy is expressed in the
monopolisation of space.
Since the development of the
peace process in the 1990s,
mural paintings have also been
granted a sense of legitimacy
as they come to be viewed
increasingly as artworks and
less as political propaganda,
masking the continued animosity
between the communities. In
the Fountain estate a new mural
has recently been completed in
recognition of the work of local
muralist Bobby Jackson during
10
F-reeDeryCFig
ornew
r
the 1920s, depicting him painting
an image commemorating
Protestant victory over Catholics
in the 1600s (Figure 12). In the
nearby nationalist Bogside area, a
group of muralists have become
known as the Bogside Artists with
their own studio, merchandise
and exhibitions of their work
13Bogsi
- deArt
Fig
istsp
10
F-reeDeryCFig.
ornew
r he10
nfrisptan
i -ted(a
Free
bovea)nda
Derry
stitandstodayCorner
(beo
l w).p
j g Then (above) and today (below) Fig. 11 - Union Jack Flag displayed along
11U
- no
i nJacthe
kfa
l gdsipa
linterface,
yedao
l ngthen
i terfacew2010
an
iSl eptembe2r010.JPG

13Bogsi
- deArt
Fig.
istsphot
13
ographed
- Bogside
infrontofoneofthArtists
eimural
r s.jpginfront of their work Fig. 14 - More explicitly paramilitary mural
14-Moreexpl
inicBogside,
itlyparamilitarymural
1986
intheBogside,1986.jpg

259
 around the world (Figure 13).
These latest murals are more
elaborate, professional and
mediated than those produced
during the Troubles where explicit
references to paramilitarism were
not uncommon (Figure 14). They
now self-consciously also target
a third, external audience. Yet
the Bogside murals run along a
stretch of road that directly faces
the city walls and the location of
a British army surveillance tower
until it was dismantled in 2006
(Figures 15 and 16). This spatial
relationship reveals the defiant
and cautionary message of the
murals, acting as a continual
reminder of which community
controls this area. Meanwhile,
the Derry Mural Routes has
become a popular tourist trail
for visitors to the city eager to
experience an authentic but safe
sample of the local culture. This
sanitisation of conflict overlooks
the fact that the imagery and
ideas the murals convey are still
easily recognisable as coming
from a particular community and
are intimidating if one does not
identify with them. At a local
level they continue to impart the
message that if you do not relate
to this image this is not an area
for you, persistently reinforcing
sectarian divisions.
Fig. 16 - The city walls overlooking
16-Thecithe
tywallsBogside
overlookingtheBogsi
260
Conclusion
Reflecting on the spatial practices
outlined here, it is evident that
the reality of everyday life in the
Fountain, Bishop Street and
Bogside areas stands in marked
contrast to official claims that
Northern Ireland has reached
an era of peace. Beneath the
surface of political agreements,
divisions between unionists
and nationalists run deep and
it is through the manipulation of
the built environment that these
tensions are invoked. Space
not only provides the arena for
the performance of conflict but
is used to actively support the
generation of violence and to
sustain difference.
This potency is enhanced by the
ubiquitous yet often seemingly
invisible role of space. Within
the study area it is very difficult
to complete any journey without
encountering murals, flags,
painted kerbstones or the
interface wall. One is continually
negotiating boundaries,
watching yourself and others.
The result is that one lives in
a heightened state of tension,
which is absorbed and to which
one adapts, but that profoundly
shapes ideas of exclusion,
fear and the other. Together
these spatial tactics persistently
reinforce divisions and embed
anddeand
thethemural
murals
s.jpg
their system of ethno-sectarian
territoriality in the everyday lives
of the residents. To move beyond
this situation of ongoing conflict,
the role of the built environment
needs to be fundamentally
addressed. We need to be clear
about how these spatial practices
operate rather than masking
their aggression behind an air of
legitimacy.
Whilst here I have focused on
specific examples of the role of
space in contributing to conflict
in Derry, the themes discussed
have wider implications. These
spatial tactics are applied not just
in Northern Ireland but in many
other conflict zones throughout
the world. Moreover, constructing
the other is a practice utilised
in many apparently non-political
situations, such as the prevalence
of gated communities and the
exclusion of non-consumers
from private developments that
are presented as seemingly
public space. In each of these
situations, spatial segregation
gives rise to the dehumanisation
of the other. A faade of
acceptability hides an agenda
of control. Meanwhile, as peace
in Northern Ireland becomes a
political assumption, life in the
Fountain and Bishop Street area
continues with a daily negotiation
of boundaries between oneself
and the other in an ongoing
enactment of conflict.
 Fig. 15 - View of the bogside murals
15-View
from
oftheBogsi
thedecity
muralwalls
sfromthecitywalls.JPG

The area of the Fountain and Bishop Street

neighbourhoods covers approximately
150,000m.
Neil Jarman, Painting Landscapes; the place of
murals in the symbolic construction of urban
space, in Symbols in Northern Ireland, ed. by
Anthony Buckley (Belfast: Institute of Irish
Studies, Queens University, 1998), <http://cain.
ulst.ac.uk/bibdbs/murals/jarman.htm> [last
accessed 10 November 2011] (para.13 of 34).
Nils Zurawski, I Know Where You Live!
Aspects of Watching, Surveillance and Social
Control in a Conflict Zone (Northern Ireland),
Surveillance and Society, 2.4 (2005), 502.
Female Bishop Street area resident (personal
interview, 28 August 2010).
Male Bishop Street area resident (personal
interview, 29 August 2010).
Katerina Gerasimova, Public Privacy in the
Soviet Communal Apartment, in Socialist
Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern
Bloc ed. by David Crowley and Susan E. Reid
(London: Berg Books, 2003), p.216.
Male Bishop Street area resident (personal
interview, 29 August 2010).
Zurawski, p.499.
Female Bishop Street area resident (personal
interview, 1 July 2010).
Female Bishop Street area resident (personal
interview, 28 August 2010).
Daniel J. Walkowitz and Lisa Maya Knauer,
Memory and the impact of political
transformations in public space (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2004), p.8.
Dominic Bryan et al., Public Displays of Flags
and Emblems in Northern Ireland: Survey
2006-2009 (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies,
Queens University, 2010), p.7.
Bryan et al., p.8.
David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion
(London: Routledge, 1995), p.ix.
Bogside Artists, <http://www.bogsideartists.
com> [last accessed 10 December 2010].
Northern Ireland Tourism, <http://www.
discovernorthernireland.com/Mural-Tours-
and-Sightseeing-A2253> [last accessed 10
December 2010].
Sibley, p.xii.

Quoted in Susan McKay, Northern Protestants:
An Unsettled People (Belfast: Blackstaff Press,
2000), pp.306-307.
Karen Lysaght and Anne Basten, Violence,
fear and the everyday: Negotiating spatial
practice in the city of Belfast, in The meanings
of violence, ed. by Elizabeth A. Stanko (London:
Routledge, 2003), p.232.
Female Bishop Street area resident (personal
interview, 1 July 2010).
David Lowenthal quoted in Kenneth E. Foote,
Shadowed Ground: Americas Landscapes of
Violence and Tragedy (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2003, Revised edition), p.5.
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday
Life (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002, New edition), p.108.
Peter Shirlow and Brendan Murtagh, Belfast:
Segregation, Violence and the City (London:
Pluto Press, 2006), p.28.

Zurawski, p.498. de Certeau, p.123.

261
 The most memorable of Italo Calvinos mythical
Invisible Cities is, perhaps, Armilla. Long
abandoned by its residents, the citys buildings
have crumbled away to leave only the plumbing
washbasins, WC pans and bidets, and the pipes
that connect them hanging in mid-air. Armilla is
a potent metaphor for contemporary architecture
at a time when 40-50% of construction budgets
is regularly spent on building services, when
buildings are wired for lighting, power, data, fire
precautions, security and audio and packed with
plant to cool, heat and recycle air. Increasingly,
architecture is understood as a container of
ducts, pipes and cables. This is not just the case
for new buildings. Historic buildings, whether
or not theyve been listed, are increasingly
expected to provide the same services as new
buildings, re-purposed as carriers of cables,
accessorised with plastic trunking, suspended
ceilings and galvanized cable trays. We have
come to expect historic buildings to perform for
us in the same ways that new buildings do. We
want them to behave predictably and reliably,
like more recent architecture, as terminals in our
contemporary network society. Increasingly, we
hexham

expect all buildings to deliver us consistent light

and warmth no matter whether its night or day,
and no matter what the temperature outside. It is
perhaps surprising that these expectations, which
cannot be more than forty years old, rarely give
habits

us pause for thought.

A Design Study in Sustainability and Conservation

Adam Sharr

262

In Spring 2011, a team
from the Design Office at
Newcastle Universitys School
of Architecture, Planning and
Landscape funded by the
Department of the Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs was
asked to study the integration
of sustainable technologies into
the historic fabric of Hexham
Abbey in Northumberland, and to
explore peoples views through
a public consultation exercise.
The Abbey community is keen
to promote sustainability. While
it is a comparatively new idea,
they understand sustainability
in a long tradition of local
leadership and environmental
stewardship. Members of the
community were, in particular,
concerned that the Abbey should
display its ecological credentials
prominently. At our briefing, for
example, photovoltatic cells on
the church roof were imagined as
a possible symbol of action and
commitment, as an opportunity to
set a local example.
Our study yielded intriguing
findings. Despite the communitys
enthusiasm for the symbolic
potential of photovoltaics, only a
Fig. 1
small proportion of the Abbeys
energy use is currently expended
on lighting and power, while
by far the greatest proportion
is expended on heating. The
current aim is to heat the building
to a consistent 17 degrees,
powered by an oil-fired boiler,
to keep the organ in tune. But
the heating system is rather
inefficient. There is presently a
greater surface area of heating
pipe than radiator in the Abbey
church, making the radiators a
secondary heat source in relation
to the pipes that feed them, and
those pipes waste much of their
heat at high level in the triforium
well above where the people are.
Despite the aim of heating to a
consistent temperature, the result
is, nevertheless, rather patchy
because radiators and pipes
are presently located away from
prominent areas of historic fabric.
As well as proposing a more
efficient boiler fed with wood
pellets from a renewable source,
our design proposals focused
on retaining heat and most
importantly on challenging
the expectation of even heating
all-the-time, irrespective of the
conditions. If a new timber case,
insulated and heated, were to
be made for the organ which
occupies only a tiny part of
the churchs volume the
temperature in the rest of the
Abbey church could be allowed
to vary. Heating could then be
provided locally, in the place
and at the time that its needed,
and in a more sensual way.
Kneelers could be heated [1]
and pews could be redesigned
to incorporate heating under
the seats. Chandeliers could be
brought lower to the congregation
and redesigned to incorporate
heating elements [2]. Additionally
or alternatively, the timber dais
on which the Victorian pews sit
could be lifted and replaced with
the addition of underfloor heating.
This variety of heat sources could
be switched on and off when
theyre needed according to the
population in the Abbey and the
calendar of services and events.
We also suggested more
whimsical possibilities for energy
generation including photovoltaic
panes built into leaded windows
[3], water wheels fitted to the
gargoyles [4] and mini wind-
turbines integrated with roof
ridge decoration [5]. These
Fig. 2
263
 technologies arent available
off-the-peg and by no means
could they completely satisfy
the energy needs of the Abbey,
but their technical development
and possible eventual use could
contribute, and could create
publicity and interest which would
help the Abbey fulfil the symbolic
role they seek as a leader in
promoting sustainability.
We enjoyed the ritual element
of these variously practical
and whimsical proposals the
echo of liturgical celebrations
of the passage of time, of the
measuring-out of days, seasons
and years and we tried to
emphasise it. To retain heat at
high level in the church, rather
than apply intrusive secondary
glazing to the historic glass,
we proposed thick, lush,
embroidered curtains [6]. Hung
on arched curtain cranes for
which there is precedent in A.W.N.
Pugins Victorian gothic fancies
the curtains would be opened and
closed manually by the Verger
as part of the daily maintenance
routine at the Abbey.
Inspired similarly by the long
tradition of lush fabrics in
churches, and to help people
adapt to more variable thermal
conditions, we proposed a cloak
named the Hexham Habit [7].
Like the rows of red cassocks
hung in the choir room, brightly
coloured fleecy cloaks could be
hung in the Abbeys entrance
corridor, ready for members of
the congregation and visitors to
borrow. If a prominent symbol
of commitment to sustainability
is felt to be desirable, then this
could be it. Putting-on the cloak,
the visitor has to accept that the
church wont always be heated
consistently. And they may be
encouraged to question whether
this is a reasonable alternative
to the contemporary expectation
264
of perpetually even heating. (As Project Team: Simin Davoudi,
an additional benefit, the cloaks Neveen Hamza, John Pendlebury,
might also offer a merchandising Adam Sharr, Teresa Strachan,
opportunity for the Abbey shop!). Chris Wilkins, Rachel Witham.
We would like to acknowledge
These principles, briefly the Rev. Canon Graham Usher
summarised here, were described and the Abbey Community at
by one sustainability consultant at Hexham.
a recent seminar as our radical
suggestion for turning off the
heating at the Abbey. If our
proposal were implemented, it
would have to be done gradually
over two years to avoid damage
to the stones and timbers which
have now learnt consistent
heating and come to expect
it. And here, in the materials of Fig. 3
the church, there is a metaphor
for the Abbey community and,
more broadly, for the inhabitants
of architecture. What if the best
approach to sustainability
certainly in the context of those
historic buildings which society
deems valuable is not to expect
our surroundings to deliver us
consistent heat and light whatever
the external conditions? If we
were able to accept this, we
would become more ready to
tolerate variation, to expect less
heating, to get into the habit
of wearing extra clothing when
necessary, and to enjoy the
habits of adapting our thermal
environment on a daily and a
seasonal basis. Indeed, these
ritual practices might remind us Fig. 4
of our place in the world more
broadly, encouraging us to think
harder, and more frequently,
about environmental concerns.
Many proponents of sustainability
have chosen to think of
architecture like Armilla, to
imagine buildings as suppliers
of services, as the sum of their
pipes, cables and ducts. This
way of imagining architecture
is bound-up in a worldview
which prioritises consumption,
offering the tantalising possibility Fig. 6
that we can always have what
05 Weather
Fig. 5 Vane.jpg

07 Habit.jpg
Fig. 6

265
 MA
urban
design
Georgia Giannopoulou

The MA in Urban Design is MA in Urban Design enjoy an

a well-established 12-month intensive immersion into this
postgraduate course concerned exciting discipline.
with the art of making places
from both design and social
science perspectives. The
course is suitable for a wide
range of professionals interested
in both the process and product
of this multidisciplinary activity of
shaping and managing our built
environment. The course involves
a number of studio based and
theoretical modules including
seminars and professional and
academic lectures, including a
trip to a European city. Part of
the strength and appeal of the
course is its multi-disciplinarity
and the multicultural and
international nature of its cohort,
but also its links to professional
practice, studying real life-sites
and involving practitioners,
local stakeholders, and local
communities.

In the context of a studio based

atmosphere, students in the

266
Copenhagen Trip

267
 In 1971, a group of people set off to squat
the abandoned military barracks located in
Christianhavn in Copenhagen and established
what is known as the Freetown of Christiania:
a society based on consensus democracy,
financial autonomy and ecological life style.
Postgraduate students in Urban Design and
Architecture went on a study trip to the Freetown
in order to map and learn from Christianias
heritage including self-governance, autonomous
status and social organisation. Prior to the
field trip, a theoretical seminar introduced
the challenges that Christiania is facing at
present concerning the government agenda
to normalise the Freetown. Drawing from the
mapping of the area and the theoretical seminar,
students have developed proposals focusing on
process instead of outcome and reflecting on
the unknown future of Christiania whilst widening
and preserving its socio-cultural heritage.
european

Group 1
Irina Korneychuk, Minh Dung Le and Hisiu-l Lee

Group 2
Lun Gao, Davoud Moradpour Hafshejani,
Jeremy Lee Murray and Xinrui Wang

Group 3
Chen Cheng, Aly Sabaa, Stuart Taylor and
Annabelle Sarah Whiteley-Walker
study

Group 4
Nan Li, Zidan Lin and Matthew Lippiatt
visit

Christiania Copenhagen

Georgia Giannopoulou

268
Group 1

269
 Group 3

Group 2

270
3 Group 3

Group 3

Group 4

271
 This project explores the regeneration of a
transition area in Gateshead bridging the
waterfront and the town centre envisaged
by the city to become Gatesheads Creative
Quarter. The students are called to challenge
and come up with their own vision and
future for this diverse and complex piece of
urban fabric where 60s infrastructure and a
dilapidated building stock are juxtaposed with
emerging artistic activity, in the backdrop of a
conservation area and the dramatic large scale
cultural venues of the waterfront. In this project
the students engaged with the local authority,
community and local artists to produce diverse
and innovative but locally sensitive proposals.

Group 1
James Cogan, Rebecca Frost, Aly Sabaa and
gateshead

Jerzy Smolarek

Group 2
Nan Li, Minh Le, Kamila Bobrza and Lowri Bond

<No intersecting link>

gateway

the creative quarter

Georgia Giannopoulou

272
Group 1

Group 1

Group 2

273
 Group 1

Group 2

274
Group 2

Group 2

275
 This project helps students explore and interpret
best practice principles in neighbourhood
design and sustainable living, in the context
of transitional urban brownfield areas. Against
the backdrop of challenging socioeconomic
times, and alternative ways of living such as
co-housing, the project engages with the
challenges of contemporary housing in order
that it may cater for the needs of the community
and the individual. The project also explores
design coding as a tool for securing quality of
design for large strategic sites, by examining
best practice codes and inviting students to
develop their own design code.
alternatives
Over the past two years we have looked at
a transitional edge of the city centre area
of Gateshead, plagued by fragmentation,
degradation, social deprivation and a poor
image. Through the provision of a new exemplar
quarter students were invited to improve the
residential offer and support the currently
declining town centre services so as to turn
these challenging conditions into opportunities
that would serve to link Gateshead Town centre
housing

to its surrounding residential areas.

Group 1
Aly Sabaa, Mishari Ali

Group 2
Rebecca Frost, Lowri Bond

Gateshead Exemplar Neighbourhood

Georgia Giannopoulou

276
Group 1

Group 1

277
 Group 1

278
Group 2

Group 2

279
 Live music, arts & crafts, performing arts central
to the vision
The Rochdale Arts CO OP vision is a
vibrant, revitalized, reconnected, sustainable
community in the heart of Rochdale town
centre. The mechanism to achieve this is a
new co-operative system, based upon subsidy,
whereby individual people, businesses and
community groups have space to create and
space to trade/ perform, at subsidised rates.
In order to complement this and in order to
create a sustainable community there must
be the services and the residential offer to
complement the holistic regeneration. Therefore,
the residential base shall be enhanced and the
leisure service enhanced. Key to the success of
the vision is the implementation of a mechanism
to ensure that communities are not displaced
and ensure that gentrification does not occur;
therefore, the vision is based upon the creation
of a community land trust and regeneration
agency. This vision comes at a crucial time,
as currently the site is a gap site between two
major commercial developments; therefore if
the area is left to grow organically the area is at
risk of gentrification, which would in turn further
ignore the socioeconomic issues in the area.
The platform for the Rochdale Arts Co-op is the
design

two festivals; the Rochdale Feel Good Festival

and the Rochdale Mega Mela.
thesis

Rochdale Arts CO OP

Aaron Murphy

280
281
 Suzhou with more than 2000 years history is
the representative of the Chinese historical
cities, because of its rich tangible and intangible
cultural heritages. There are a lot of world
cultural heritages in the old city, including the
temples the Grand Canal and Chinese gardens.
At the same time, Suzhou embroidery, Suzhou
green tea, Su cuisines are the intangible
heritages, which hold the profound historical
accumulation. The design sufficiently considers
the local cultural characteristics, the surrounding
historic environment, intangible cultural heritage
conservation, and economic development in the
old city together, to create a charming place and
a harmonious community.
design
thesis

Suzhou Typology Study

Jing Wang

282
283
 MA in
architecture
and planning:
design
Paola Michialino
The Master of Arts in Architecture grounding for those wishing to
and Planning - Design (MAAPS- broaden their interdisciplinary
D) is a postgrad taught masters skills and knowledge, and for
programme with strong design those considering an approach
distinctiveness, offering to the to research.
students a choice of diverse
combinations of topics across
architecture, planning and
landscape.

Drawing from the character

and strengths of the School,
the course allows exploring the
relations across architecture, city
and landscape. It is aimed at stu-
dents with a design background,
and with a particular interest
in an advanced approach to
design.

The course spans over 12

months, and includes a core
architecture design module each
semester, and a design thesis
over the summer. The interdis-
ciplinary character of the course
and the high degree of interac-
tion with the tutors and other
students provide an important

284
Ulviye Nergis Kalli

285
 The central theme of the first semester is an
exploration of the ideas, models, typologies,
cultural approaches, technical and urban issues,
social perceptions, psychological implications
and sustainability issues of urban housing.

The project developed through three phases:

unveiling and understanding Newcastle,
analyzing the questions related to housing and
to its architectural and urban significance, and
designing an urban design framework with a
housing project for the site chosen.
living in
city
the

project 01

Paola Michialino

286
Ulviye Nergis Kalli

Ulviye Nergis Kalli

287
 Choa Ma Xi

Ulviye Nergis Kalli Choa Ma Xi

288
a Xinrui Wang Gaye Bezircioglu

289
 The project explores ideas of meaning and
identity in the urban environment and the
role that public space and buildings can
play in articulating notions of citizenship and
community.

The brief requires an urban venue, including a

public square and a small pavilion. This venue
is to be the location for many events of cultural
exchange about architecture and the city
during the year, and should act as a symbol of
Novocastrian Urbanism.

assembly
of public
a place

project 02

Paola Michialino
Qa

290
 Ou Wen Luo

Qain Wang

291
 Choa Ma

Choa Ma Do

292
 Dobjanschi Cristian

Dobjanschi Cristian

Dobjanschi Cristian Dobjanschi Cristian

293
 MSc
digital
architecture
Carlos Calderon

The course aims to equip

students with the knowledge,
skills and experience required
to apply digital theories and
technologies in their professional
careers and to contribute to
research in the field of digital
architecture.
To this end, three interconnecting
areas of digital architecture are
examined in order to develop
a strong understanding of
the theory base as well as
practical experience and skills
in the use, customisation and
development of Information and
Communication Technologies.

The three areas of study are:

-Digital Design
-Digital Communication
-Digital Materials and
Environments

294
Nikoletta Karastathi

295
 The objective of this module is to provide
students with practical and theoretical

design methods
foundations to explore computational issues
relevant to representation of architectural
forms and design knowledge. Students
learn basic concepts in a computer
programming language and acquire practical
skills to develop their own software tools
for architectural design. In parallel, the
course introduces various theories and
implementations developed for computation
and representation of formal design
knowledge.
The assignments explore the theme of
Material systems and Dynamic Environmental
Feedback. All the presented projects have
developed a unique design methodology
which links the physical with the virtual as to
facilitate design exploration. The physical
environment in the form of, for instance, light,
wind or rain interacts with the digital model, a
emergent

parametric schema, via a series of off-the-

shelf sensors. All projects were implemented
in RhinoTM, GrasshopperTM and ArduinoTM.

Carolina Figueroa and Luis Hernandezs

project focuses on a rain water harvesting
system. A rain water catcher is a deployable
structure to collect rain water. The material
system consists of the structure itself which
digital

can be seen as an actuation subsystem,

an output to the main system, a sensing
sub module for the harvesting system,
and an input sensor to detect changing
environmental conditions.
Phil Morris, influenced by kinetic facade artist
Ned Kahn, explores how wind energy can be
used to create flowing patterns which bring
interest to the building. The system senses
the winds energy, and as the wind speed
reached a certain level, the panels would
close which would result in all panels moving
independently to wherever the wind hit the
faade.
Peng Song developed his project around
the idea of translating nature language into
a Metaphorical Performance System. To
that extent, he investigated the design of a
breathing bridge which seamlessly integrates
project 01 with the surrounding wind energy. As a way
of example, he proposes a speed changing
gear system which collects its energy by a
Carlos Calderon windmill actuated by an iPhone.

296
Phil Morris

297
 Peng Song

298
Carolina Figueroa and Luis Hernandez

299
 Representation lies at the core of the
architectural design process: from initial form-
finding stages to actual construction. Modern
computing technologies are increasing the
possibilities of depicting the world around us
and challenging representation conventions.
This module gives a general introduction
to the world of 3D computer modelling and
visualisation and encourages students to use
3D modelling
an imaginative approach to the medium while
providing you with a basic understanding of

visualisation
the creation of 3D objects and environments.
The assignment exploits the most powerful
advance of digital making over physical
making; its time-based nature. That is, the
ability to experience the space of the model
in time which is essential to the experience
of architecture. In the given examples,
the students combine cinematographic
techniques with digital modelling as to create
their own visual stories of buildings to convey
the experience of architecture to a third party.
<No intersecting link>
John Beattie presents a beautifully crafted
animation as to express the design intent
behind his architectural intervention. His
architectural design looks to address Berlins
underlying pursuit to remove certain aspects
of its East German past and what unified
Germany really means?
Nikoletta Karastathi produces a compelling
video as to portray the experience of
interaction within a space based on two
concepts: VOID and SOUND. VOID as an
architectural element was designed by
Libeskind to express the loss of Jewish
and

people in Germany. SOUND in the space, is a

result of movement of people as they interact
with the installation.
Carolina Figueroa and Luis Hernandezs
video addresses the issue of engaging
occupants of1900s terraced houses with
a retrofitting solid wall programme. They
explore engagement by appealing to lifestyle
improvements derived from insulation.

project 02

Carlos Calderon

300
Carolina Figueroa and Luis Hernandez

301
 John Beattie

302
Nikoletta Karastathi

303
 scriptorium

Mark Dorrian + Metis

304
Scriptorium

Culture Lab OnSite, Newcastle-

upon-Tyne

Culture Labs OnSite gallery

is located in an arch below
the viaduct that extends to
the North of the mainline train
station in Newcastle. In this
commissioned installation, a
pendulum containing a light
source is hung within the space.
A camera watches it, relaying its
oscillations to a projector, which
then amplifies them through
projection onto a circular white
screen that is painted onto the
floor of the gallery. Working with
the precedent of the writing cell,
the installation thus, using light,
inscribes within the space the
vibrations of the railway viaduct
as trains pass overhead. The Plan
installation was open during
twilight hours between 27
October and 1 November 2011.

(Thanks to Matt Ozga-Lawn

and Ko-Le Chen, who assisted
in the set-up and recording of
Scriptorium, and to Bernhard
Garnicnig, the curator of the
OnSite gallery)

Setup

Projector and Image

305
 Light Inscription

306
Pendulum, Camera, Projector and Screen

Camera and Pendulum

307
 Introduction

APL has a vibrant community of post-graduate

research students, who work across a wide
range of topics. In this yearbook we are
highlighting the work of Aikaterini Antonopoulou,
who is due to submit her doctoral dissertation
early in 2013. Aikaterinis PhD is titled From
Digital Creations of Space to Analogous
Experiences of Places: Living in Second Life
postgraduate
and Acting in Flash Mob. Summarising her
research, she writes that it

examines the phemomena of the Flash Mob

and Second Life in order to raise the question
of where in the contemporary environment, to
consider what forms the need for placeness
takes today, and to conceptualise place
within digitisation. Whereas in a Flash Mob,
an email activates a virtual community and
converts it into a physical performance in
the city, Second Life takes the form of a
digitally constructed world that enables users
research

to establish connections not only with each

other, but also, with the [virtual] environment
itself. Together, they question place in its
materiality and its symbolism and they re-define
groundedness within mobility, temporality, and
connectivity. This research regards cyberspace
as a continuation and a reconfiguration of the
physical world, and thus as a testing ground
for the explanation of notions such as space
and place, of connections and attachments to
the environment, and finally of the meaning of
context in the contemporary world.

The following passage is an extract from

Chapter 9 of the thesis.

Mark Dorrian

308
Although new technologies
are not responsible for the
construction of hyperreality,
they are probably behind its
vast expansion beyond the
boundaries of theme parks and
shopping malls, in the streets
and in everyday life experience.
Wireless telecommunication
networks have contributed to
the creation of complex spaces
that mediate between materiality
and information and produce
illusory effects. Moreover the
more digitisation becomes part
of everyday life, the stronger the
interrelation between virtual and
physical spaces becomes: not
only do virtual worlds simulate
the physical environment, but
also the design of the physical
world increasingly draws its
references from cyberspace.
In effect Internet, software, and
social media corporations like
Google Inc. and Facebook Inc.
tend to design their physical
workspaces in novel ways
that refer more to computer
game environments or even
to social media platforms.
These ludic environments,
which resemble playgrounds
or cosy living rooms rather
than offices, intend to radically
change the work experience and
increase productivity in spaces
that encourage collaboration
and interaction. Such design
concepts were initially developed
in Silicon Valley, California, where
the major Internet and software
companies headquarters are
located, in accordance with the
hyperreal Californian styles, but
have recently spread around the
world following the expansion of
their businesses.
Google is probably a pioneer in
this unconventional approach
to the workspace. The colourful
headquarters in California
(called the Googleplex), along
with smaller-scale versions in
New York, London, and Zurich,
attempt to show that working
there is a fun and enjoyable
process. The place looks like a
miniature theme park. Egg-
shaped and spacecraft-like
meeting pods, thematic common
rooms, hallways full with exercise
balls, firemens poles and slides
to allow easy access between
the floors, English country house
styled libraries, workout rooms,
aquarium relaxing rooms, and
games rooms compose this
extraordinary environment. The
old fashioned office cubicles
have been totally replaced by
shared worktables and special
attention is given to meeting
places and common rooms:
whiteboards are everywhere,
allowing ideas to be written down
wherever they are thought up
and there is a heavy emphasis
on the idea that work and play
can co-exist. The employees
are encouraged to find a balance
of work and pleasure, from
which they could profit in new
ideas and collaborations. They
are free to occupy any space
available for their tasks, to take
a break and challenge someone
to a billiard game, get some
rest lying on a hammock, or
enjoy a coffee and a snack all
provided by the company. In
effect, photo-coverage of these
spaces through magazine and
blog articles displays them doing
all these things. By default, the
20% of engineers time is to be
devoted in research to other
than their key objectives, so
that they might come up with
something new. If employees
have children, they do not need
to worry about them or feel
separated from them as a
nursery inside the building is in
operation at any time. The idea
of a fun office becomes for
Google a symbol of the flat and
open working structure of the
company and represents the free
flow of information throughout.
Nelson Mattas, vice-president of
engineering suggests: The lava
lamps, free food and games are
all part of the Google culture. It is
informal and a structure that isnt
dictated from the top. The pure,
clean, simple, and fun attitude
promoted though Googles
multiple applications is here
transformed into real space that
reinforces the companys initial
ideals.
If Google offices look like a
playground, Facebook offices
in Palo Alto, California resemble
more of a reality show stage
set. The architects here claim
to have worked in collaboration
with the employees in order to
create the desirable workspace.
The Facebook platform itself was
used to organise polls within
the company on the design
decisions, to post photos of
the construction progress, and
keep everyone informed of the
developments. An advisory
board made out of employees
from all departments contributed
at all the different stages of the
project, from the design process
to advising on the finishes. The
former industrial aesthetic of the
building has been maintained
so that the high ceiling and the
skylights, along with the open
plan layout, give out a sense of
transparency and publicness.
This open plan dynamic gives
space to areas of worktables,
a large meeting area that can
transform into an impromptu
auditorium, more private meeting
rooms, relaxation spaces and
common rooms that look like
private living rooms without
partitions around them, placed
in the middle of nowhere.
Recreational opportunities
involve an outdoor basketball
court and indoor table-tennis
309
 Google Offices, Zurich, source: Stephen Searer, 2008.

310
Facebook Offices, Palo Alto, source: Basulto, 2009.

311
 tables. Many walls and spaces
are left unfinished to be
appropriated by the employees,
who are free to write on the
walls, add their personal artwork
and rearrange the furniture
according to their needs to
create a continuously evolving
environment. The design takes
its inspiration from the patchwork
nature of Facebook users and
employees, bringing together
seemingly disparate elements
to form a cohesive pattern and
using colour and interior spacing
to create neighbourhoods
within the open plan space.
The companys executives sit in
central areas, accessible to all
employees. Large lounges and
open spaces provide venues
for the community to come
together. A kitchen and caf
continue Facebooks tradition
of providing gourmet meals to
staff at all hours, while drinks
and snacks are available at
micro-kitchens throughout the
headquarters. Somehow the
principles that rule Facebook
are all readable here. Within this
vast, continuous funspace that
has been created by individuals
contribution, everything
appears visible, accessible,
and traceable. Employees are
encouraged to create their own
neighbourhoods networks to its clients. Thus space is
of collaboration according to
their common interests. And the
combination of the high ceilings
with the few, low partitions give
the impression that everything
is being recorded, as if taking
place within a television show
stage set.
Comparing even to the most
comfortable and enjoyable
workspace that most people
have seen or experienced, the
workspaces described above
appear like fantastic spaces and
products of the imagination.
312
However, within the context with integral nurseries so that
of virtualisation, these scenes employees do not need to worry
look like normal environments about their children or leave the
of everyday life. Clearly, office. Is this the transition from
through their workspaces, both all work to all play that Donna
companies aim at displaying Haraway described, or rather
nothing less than what their is it the complete absorption
digital presence suggests. On of play, and indeed the totality
the one hand, Googles office of life (the nurseries, etc.),
design gives out this pure, fun, by work a work that, in its
and playful aspect of a company complete identification with
that creates applications the life of the employee, never
that make life easier. On the ceases? Similarly to Baudrillards
other, Facebook illustrates this thinking on Disneyland, Google
transparent, open world made and Facebook offices do not
out of networked people and constitute the realisation of the
their personal contribution to a imaginary and the [computer-
collective construction. In reality generated] virtual in real space,
these workspaces constitute but instead a mask that aims at
physical manifestations of the restoring the myth of the reality,
digital image that the companies in this case not only at the
attempt to communicate. And outside [physical world], but the
although spatial, they simply inside as well, in cyberspace.
constitute intermediate stages
of images that transform into
other images. In effect, in both
cases, a webpage [image]
becomes an office [space], only
to be photographed [converted
to image again] in order to
illustrate a blog post [image]
that will reinforce the image of
the webpage. And it is through
this sequence of images that the
company that here identifies
with the webpage-image
appears more real and honest
only a medium in the creation
of a more convincing image. In
the world of hyperreality, large
scale companies comprising
of thousands of employees that
work in large building complexes
are reduced to images of
webpages and blog posts in
order to become more powerful.
The workspace, following the
example of Disneyland, creates
atemporal, utopic spaces,
with ample common rooms
destined not for recreation
but for collaborations that
might produce new ideas, and
Biography

Aikatarini Antonopoulou is an
architect who is enrolled on the
PhD programme at Newcastle
University. She holds a Diploma
in Architecture from the School
of Architecture of the National
Technical University of Athens,
and an MSc in Advanced
Architectural Design from the
University of Edinburgh. She
undertook her initial year of
PhD study at the University
of Edinburgh, where she was
awarded the annual prize for
excellence in first year PhD work.
Currently she is co-leading the
Afterimage Stage 3 graduation
project.

Basulto, David. 2009. Facebook Offices / O+A

Studio. ArchDaily. http://www.archdaily.
com/34602/facebook-offices-oa-studio/,
accessed 31/01/2012.

Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and

Simulation. University of Michigan Press.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 1991. Simians,

Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of
Nature. Free Association Books: 161.

Wakefield, Jane. 2008. Google your way to

a wacky office. BBC News website. http://
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7290322.stm, accessed
31/01/2012.

313
 Introduction

Mark Dorrian

In November 2010, Matt Ozga-Lawn and James

Craig won the prestigious international Pamphlet
Architecture competition for work that they did
in a Master of Architecture studio based on
Warsaw, which was led by Mark Dorrian between
2007 and 2009. Their project for an institute
of experimental film has now been published,
under their practice name Stasus, by Princeton
Architectural Press as Pamphlet Architecture 32:
Resilience. Dr Ella Chmielewska, senior lecturer
architecture
in cultural and visual studies at the University of
Edinburgh, was closely involved in the Warsaw
programme. Here we print a version of her essay
from the Pamphlet publication together with
documentation of the project.

Stillness
pamphlet

Ella Chmielewska

Matter never makes jokes: it is always full of

the tragically serious....But the resemblance, the
pretence, the name reassures us and stops from
asking.... For Bruno Schulz, whose haunting
stories, like afterimages, persist etched in the
memory of his readers, the matter already carries
its concerns, its own stories and accounts;
in its depths, tensions build up, attempts at
form appear. Schulzs writinginfused with
architectonic sensibility and material imaginary
summons places and objects that are vulnerable,
porous, furnished with memory, open to
emotional stirrings. His streets are shadowed by
anxieties, houses shudder with premonitions,
the floor counts its parquet tiles, and chairs
frown and wink meaningfully. His surfaces are
weary, bored with the incessant changes in all
the cadenzas of rhythm susceptible to distant,
dangerous dreams; they witness the chatter of
domestic objects, anticipate reticent meetings
of things, command new tales where [t]he
essence of furniture is unstable...and receptive to
abnormal temptations.

Matt Ozga-Lawn and James Craig

314
Stasuss attention to materialities and the dynamic
properties of found objects and inscriptive surfaces
persisted since the Architectural Forensics project
from where ideas emerged that were carried over
to Warsaw. For Ozga-Lawn, objects of furniture, in
their imagined nocturnal movements, both animated
and accounted for traces on the floor in the
Edinburgh studio, and through those traces, spatial
and material memories were apprehended in time-
based investigations (Fig.1). In Craigs Reliquary,
material reflection on modalities of representation,
in-scribing and de-scribing, and the physical
states of drawing out and drawing in, of collecting
and holding the documentary remains, remained
paramount (Fig. 2). Together, choreographic
objects, cartographic surfaces, and scenographic
imageries were considered through the measure
of movement and repose, rhythms of stillness and
containment, calibrations of attention to material
remembering, imagining, and comprehending.
These explorations anticipated Warsaws fragile
materialities, which the students first encountered in
an artists studio on Smolna Street. (Fig.3) There,
the citys postwar memories and (pre)histories could
be seen in particularly sharp relief. They surfaced
in adjacencies, in proximities and co-locations with
personal stories and encounters materialized in art
making, writing, and positioning of texts and things.

The site selected for the project in the district of

Warsaw known as Wola was a found site, a place
that was stumbled upon, that resisted instant
apprehension and raised as yet unarticulated
questions. In its felt qualities, the site suggested
properties of persisting that developed in the way
Stasus came to conceptualize resilience: finding
and holding of a clearing, simultaneously an
opening in understanding, an aperture in ways
of considering the properties of the site, and a
potentiality for beholding. This site was not a mere
physical gap in urban landscape, but a material
condition of gapness, where the impending damage
to the surface was as critical to consider as the
capacity inherent in the sites endurance, in survival
in damage. For Stasus, resilience is about the
significance of things, holding on to properties that
matter on and for the site; it is about mattering of
things, about things standing in the way, materially
objecting the loss of meaning, persistent in their
resisting.

When one encounters it, the projects site in Wola is

striking in its weighty stillness. The force of the city
pressing upon it is palpable. But there is another
source of the eerie calm there; the site is a border- Fig.01M
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- haA
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315
 zone of trauma. In its stillness,
the desolate landscape gapes
in incomprehension. It had seen
the unimaginable and had frozen
in horror. The Wola massacre,
perpetrated in August of 1944 by
SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger,
has been measured in the
weight of human ashes. The
memory of the events endures
through material absence: looted
and burned down tenements,
missing walls and courtyards
that witnessed the killings. No
representation is adequate. Only
found objects are able to speak,
potentially animating memories
of the site, affording possibilities
of thinking and of making. On
the edge of the trauma, between
the absent tenements and
the remaining train tracks that
directed the forced movement of
people and things out of the city
toward death or displacement,
is the site of still felt absence,
persisting disquiet. It is a site
of in-between, a gap between
the inquiry and the impossibility
of representation, between
landscape and objects, fragility
and endurance. This condition
of indeterminacy, of in-between,
speaks to the vulnerability of
Warsaws surfaces and its sites,
the constant of the material loss,
the chronic premonition of forced
displacement, continuing threat of
erasure and relocation.
Philosopher Michel Serres pins
down the location of self in the
embodied realization of being
in between. The selfs sensible
thinking is contingent on its
position in relation to objects
present around it: Knowing
things requires one first of all to
place oneself between them
in the midst of their mixture, on
the paths that unite them. This
knowing demands an intimate,
close contact with the surfaces
of things, surface on surface,
a kind of positional thinking
316
that is situated in between. For
Serres, material surface is alert,
perceptive in its contingency; it
is the place where exchanges
are made, the body traces the
knotted, bound, folded, complex
path, between the things to
be known. The contingent
inquiry in the midst of which
Stasus is situated is a mixture,
where things, traces, surfaces,
and thoughts mingle with one
another. It is a coming together,
unfolding: a condition of meeting
in common contingency that
reveals positions, proximities,
adjacencies of types and forms
of inquiring mingled bodies and
objects. In this revealing, thinking
(and making) surfaces.
Inside the studio on Smolna
Street, a plaster cast, a giant
mask of a childs face, rests
on the seat of a bentwood
chair. (Fig.4) Poised on the
patterned stone floor, with other
objects of the studio in the
background, the chair is part
of an ephemeral grouping in a
composed interior. The space
of the photograph registers
quietude, stillness, a sense
of composure. Nothing in the
frame, in this interior, or among
these objects, suggests anxiety,
distress, or trauma. Events,
tensions and intentions are
disclosed within the larger frame,
in adjacencies, contingencies,
and movements. The floor tiles
are unlikely migrants, but they are
survivors of past expropriations
and demolitions, relocated, like
furnishings (meble), from the
previous studio demolished to
make way for the communist
parade grounds. The stone floor
remembers its prewar location,
and Warsaws first postwar
gallery, Salon Nike visited by
Picasso in 1948. Moved from
an intact building that survived
in the wrong place, the floor
had been saved by relocating
into a ruin on the site of (still)
impending development. The
chairs history is unknown. An
ordinary, portable object, it could
have come from a bistro caf
nearby. It could have been found
in the ruins, in Warsaws wartime
wonderland of destruction,
among scattered fragments of
private lives: womens clothes,
picture frames, chairs, medicine
bottles, a hairbrush, all blown
out of windows and knocked
away from near brick or stone on
contact with the ground. The
cast gazes upward where the
skylight indexes the missing floors
above. Created in the studio for
the sculpture on Marszakowska
Street, it is the least travelled
object from the group. Its
itineraries are local, though in
its continuous repositioning
within the studio, it is relentlessly
02-JamesCrai
Fig
gA,
referencing both the city outside
and the archives contained in this
fractured building.
Indexing the citys public and
private histories and geographies,
touching the surfaces that matter,
the objects gathered in the studio,
like those developed for the site
in Wola, persist in their material
knowingeach charged with
memory that endures, that stills,
each insisting on making things
matter. The stillness in the studio,
and in the methodology proposed
by Stasus, is not about silence
or absence of motion, but about
the condition of resilience, of
persistence in (fragile) materiality,
in making, and in the still-ness of
things.
0T4-chorek-Benta
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02-JamesCrai
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317
06S
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Biographies
Ella Chmielewska teaches
cultural and visual studies at The
University of Edinburgh School
of Architecture. Her research
centres on visuality, urban culture
and the materiality of writing.
She has designed and curated
exhibitions and interdisciplinary
events and has written on
graffiti, signscapes, place,
memory and photography. Her
publications include: Vecteurs
du regard: Rflections sur les
relevs ariens de Varsovie par la
Luftwaffe, 1944, in M. Dorrian et
F. Pousin, (Eds) Vues ariennes.
Seize tudes pour une histoire
culturelle. (Genve: Metispresses,
2012); Material errata: Warsaw
neons and socialist modernity
in The Journal of Architecture,
2010 15 1; Semiosis Takes Place
or the Radical Uses of Quaint
Theories in Jaworski and Thurlow
(Eds) Semiotic Landscapes:
Language, Image, Space
318
(London: Continuum, 2010); recently published in Pamphlet
Framing Temporality: Montral Architecture 32: Resilience, the
Graffiti in Photography in Grin latest in the long running and
and McLean (Eds) Public Art in influential series. His work has
Canada: Critical Perspectives. been exhibited nationally and
(University of Toronto Press, internationally, most recently
2009). Ella is currently working at the Royal Academy of Arts
on a project on writing and Summer Show in 2011. He
photography in academic texts has taught and reviewed at the
and critical pedagogy, and a University of Edinburgh and is
book on Warsaws surfaces and an undergraduate studio tutor at
memory. Newcastle University.
Matt Ozga-Lawn is a Ph.D.
candidate at Newcastle University
enrolled in the newly established
Ph.D. by Creative Practice at the
School of Architecture, Planning
and Landscape. His research is
titled Sight/Site Constructions and
explores the installation space
as a framework and facilitator of
the design process and a means
by which it can be revealed and
explored. Along with James A.
Craig, he runs the experimental
design practice Stasus, who were
Fig. 08-09 - Stasus, Warsaw Institute for Experimental Film, Animation
0S
9-tasuStudio
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Architectural Forensics was a preparatory
project that ran before the group travelled to
Warsaw. In it, students undertook micrological
field-work in the space of the studio that they
would occupy during the MArch programme.
Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles, trans.
Celina Wieniewska (New York: Walker and
Company, 1963), 64-65. Schulz was a Polish
writer and artist, killed in his hometown of
Drohobycz by a Gestapo officer in 1942. His
writing has influenced the work of numerous
visual artists, including the Brothers Quay.
Karol Tchoreks documentation of the
commemorative sites of wartime executions
in Warsaw, Tchorek-Bentall Foundation.
On Tchoreks commemorative tablets see
Ella Chmielewska and Sebastian Schmidt-
Tomczak, The Critical Where of the Field,
in Architecture and Field/Work, ed. Suzanne
Ewing et al (London: Routledge, 2010), 101-9,
103.
The landscape of ruins and the Wola massacre
described in Ian MacMillan, Warsaw, Poland.
Early October, 1944 The City of Stories
Chicago Review 37, no. 2/3 (1991), 78. In The
Captive Mind, Czesaw Miosz also recalls the
exposed household objects and furniture in the
ruined city preserving the memory of love and
hatred. Czesaw Miosz, Zniewolony umys.
[The Captive Mind] (Paris: Instytut Literacki,
1953), 38.
Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy
of Mingled Bodies, trans. Margaret Sankey and
Peter Cowley (London: Continuum, 2008),
19, 23.

Katy Bentalls studio was the first space explored

in Warsaw. Created in the atelier built by her
late father-in-law, sculptor Karol Tchorek within
a ruin, the space is simultaneously Bentalls
studio, a listed place of cultural heritage, and
an archive. See Ella Chmielewska et al, A
Warsaw Address: A Dossier on Smolna Street,
The Journal of Architecture 15, no. 1 (February
2010), 79.

319
 Introduction

Since its launch last year, APLs new PhD

in Creative Practice has quickly grown and
currently has four full-time students enrolled in
it. This route allows students to develop and
pursue an intensive programme of design-led
research, culminating in a major submission
that brings their creative work together with a
sophisticated critical reflection upon it. The
following pages show some of the early work of
Sophia-Konstantina Banou, who is currently in
her first year of study.

Sophia-Konstantina Banou

SophiaKonstantina Banou studied architecture

at the National Technical University of Athens,
School of Architecture (Diploma in Architectural
Engineering, 2008) and the University of
Edinburgh (MSc in Advanced Architectural
Design, 2009). She is a member of the TEE/
Technical Chambers of Greece, and between
2008 and 2011 practiced in Athens and Corfu. In
practice
September 2011 she began a PhD by Creative
creative

Practice in architecture at Newcastle University,

holding a scholarship from the Bodossaki
Foundation. Her research interests focus on
issues of architectural representation and the
concept of space as a temporal and ephemeral
condition. Her work has been presented in
group exhibitions and can also be found in the
permanent collection of the Benaki Museum
in Athens. She has taught as a studio tutor in
Stage 1 Architecture at Newcastle University.
PhD

Mark Dorrian

320
Fishmonger Sequence

321
 The Kinematography of a City

Kinematography is a composite
term consisting of two parts.
The first part derives from the
notion of kinesis (from Greek,
: 1. movement, motion. 2.
stir, fluctuation) and implies the
action(s) of an object in relation
to time and space or to a fixed
counterpart. From this idea also
derives the concept of a kinetic
city, that is, a city in constant flux,
which is the result of an action-
reaction relationship between the
city and its inhabitants.

The second part describes

a graphy (from Greek,
), the meaning of which
is similar to that of writing.
Nevertheless, it implies a series
of further meanings that include
inscription, drawing or script.
As a script, among others, the
kinematography in the title of
this research aims to not only
engage with the question of the
representation of the complex
negotiations and interactions that
occur between the fixed part
of the city and its users, but it
further seeks to form a narrative,
a sequence of actions, episodes
or processes that will draw an
itinerary from real space to the
space of the architects and
back.

As the qualities of the kinetic

exceed the conventions of
architectural drawing, the
comprehension of this aspect
of the city appears to stumble
on representation. Unable to
account for the illegibility
of the city, architectural
representation proposes the
manageable convention of the
static city, disregarding the web
of dynamic relations that frame
everyday life. This project will
Waste Geography attempt to develop new ways
of transversally representing

322
the complex interactions
of movement that form the
contemporary city. This will be
done by means of text-based
research on the history of urban
and motion representation,
but also by design, drawing
precedents from arts such
as film, photography, and
choreography.
In the beginning of the 20th
century, the rapid development
of technology led to a new
paradigm in the perception
of space that opposed the
illusionistic three-dimensional
space of the Renaissance.
Modernist space was perceived
as an interweaving of parts
anchored in invisible but
clearly traceable relations in
a fluctuating play of forces.
The representation and the very
nature of motion became one
of the main preoccupations of
modernism. Through the visual
arts, modernity engaged with
vision in motion, gradually
composing an image of the city
beyond the capabilities of the
architectural drawing. This thesis
is concerned with addressing
the new challenges that form
the contemporary counterpart of
these experimentations.
Through the kinetic theme
the user arises in the urban
ensemble as a factor of
indeterminacy in relation to a set
of non-human counterparts and
within the order that architecture
appears to impose. Latour finds
the real image of the city in its
infrastructural oligopticons, but
also in the various urban artifacts
that allow it to be experienced
and comprehended. It is this
mediating micro-infrastructure
and its direct interactions with the
human body that constitute the
essence of the kinetic.
Seeking new ways of
representing these micro
and macro-connections, this
study attempts to bring out
the importance of the daily
interactions between humans
and non-humans, revealing
them as a potential source of
knowledge for architectural
design. In order to follow this
unfolding of the city as a series
of interactions, the study will deal
with issues of materiality, scale
and notation.
Room-sized squares, as part of
an urban archaeological grid,
will comprise the sites for a
series of transversal explorations
of the city. Unlike a dig, these
sections will survey the various
types of movements that occur
from ground to air. Considering
a set of characters human
and non-human that act within
these rooms, this investigation
into representation will attempt
to bring out the interconnections
that exist across graphic and
technological scales.
As Hana Wirth Nesher writes,
when the city is rendered
illegible, inaccessibility is
compensated by an imaginative
mapping, a narrative
cartography. From matter to
experience and perception,
the city is not then reduced
but constantly reconstructed
through sensory processes of
comprehension. It is perhaps
then not a reduction we should
be looking for in understanding
it, but rather operative
323
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Paths Plan

324
representations that will not
merely complete the itinerary
from the real (matter) to sign
(articulation), but will further
create the possibility of new
realities.
At this stage, the drawing itself
will form the site of this study.
Notational and representational
techniques will be questioned
with reference with the selected
locations. A glossary of motion
representation will develop
through the testing of techniques.
Qualities of lines, signs, and
tools such as time-lapse
photography and video will be
tested in this part of the research.
In the operative drawing there
is no privileging of the static or
the physical, no privileging of a
certain scale or matter. It is a
drawing open to all the qualities
of the spatial experience, hence
accumulating at once all the
parts of the process, from matter
to articulation, and consequently
back to matter again.
Allen, S. (2000) On Notation: Mapping
the Unmappable, in Practice: Architecture,
techniques and representation. London:
Routledge.
Hill, J. (2003) Actions of Architecture:
Architects and Creative Users, London:
Routledge
Kepes, G. (1965) The Nature and Art of
Motion. London: Studio Vista.
Latour, B. and Hermant, E. (2006) Paris:
Invisible City, in Paris: La Decouverte - Les
Empecheurs de penser en rond
Moholy-Nagy, L. (1947) Vision in motion.
Chicago: Paul Theobald and Company.
Tschumi, B. (2001) Operative drawing in de
Zegher, C. and Wigley, M. (eds.) The Activist
Drawing: Retracing Situationist Architectures
from Constants New Babylon to Beyond.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London:
MIT Press.
Wirth-Neser, H. (2001) Impartial Maps:
Reading and Writing Cities, in Padisson,
R.(ed), Handbook of Urban Studies. London:
Sage, pp.52-66.
325
team
Editor:
Graham Farmer

Project Coordinator:
Paul Wood

Design Coordinator:
Myles Walker

Design Technician:
Stuart Taylor

Additonal Photos:
Graham Farmer, Simon Hacker, James Longfield, Stuart Taylor,
Myles Walker and Jennie Webb

Our heartfelt thanks to all the students and staff contributing to

the material of this yearbook.

This yearbook was published by Newcastle University School of

Architecture Planning and Landscape on the occasion of their
degree show during the summer of 2012.

Copyright the editors, students, authors, photographers and The

School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle
University.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise,
without first seeking the written permission of the copyright
owners and of the publishers.

ISBN - 978-0-7017-0244-1
The Quadrangle
Newcastle University
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
NE1 7RU

www.apl.ncl.ac.uk
www.nclarchitecture.org.uk
 APL
NCL ARC Design Yearbook 2011-12

ARC
NCL
We are a community of students, scholars and practitioners who are committed to architecture and
urban design as diverse and wide-ranging fields of investigation and practice. At Newcastle Uni-
versity we understand design to be a collective cultural endeavour that involves the acquisition and
exercise of complex knowledge and skills. These we believe are best realised through a dynamic
approach to education, which sees it not as the transmission of a set of truths but as an on-going

DESIGN YEARBOOK
process of inquiry in which staff and students are both participants. Our efforts are always directed
toward fostering an academic environment that values this openness, while encouraging the
pursuit of design, in all its aspects, at the highest level. This Design Yearbook provides a glimpse
of this ethos and outlook.

Featuring
Graham Farmer
Prof Andrew Ballantyne
Rose Gilroy
Dr Hentie Louw
Dr Zeynep Kezer
Armelle Tardiveau
Daniel Mallo
Prof Adam Sharr
Prof Mark Dorrian
Matt Ozga-Lawn

Cover image
Lam Nguyen

School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

The Quadrangle
Newcastle University
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
NE1 7RU

www.apl.ncl.ac.uk

www.nclarchitecture.org.uk

ISBN - 978-0-7017-0244-1

SOUTH WEST ELEVATION

11
2011 - 2012
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