Student: Zaid Awamleh

Director of Studies: Renee Tobe

Second Supervisor: Alia Fadel

This study draws upon theory and pragmatic research on behavior settings to understand how the refugee spaces shape the behavior and how this could be utilized for a behavior change. The research will use a multi-method analysis of behavior settings within a selected protracted refugee camp located in an urban area in Jordan. The research project will be tracking and documenting the standing patterns of behavior in residential and social spaces and assessing architectural interventions using a pre-post research design. Gender norms are socially constructed behaviors that this research focuses on. The research hypothesizes that redefining the meaning or sense of physical space creates shifts in the dynamics of gender norms and roles. The research outcomes are expected to participate in re-politicizing refuge governance and contributing to the empirical-methodological gap in both fields of behavior settings and psychology of space. The research will participate in connecting the dots between the intersecting discourses, adding and expanding to the theory, and establishing a common ground of practical knowledge of space, behavior, and gender in favor of displacement and forced migration. Moreover, it is expected to present a methodology that will help identify solutions that promote behavioral changes to ameliorate displacement and improve the built environment.

Student: Kirstie Gregory
Director of Studies: Dr. Doreen Bernath
Second Supervisor: Dr. Lisa Stansbie

This project looks at the way contemporary sculptors repurpose the forms and attendant associations of architecture, why and how they do this and to what effect. It focuses on sculptors who have returned to this way of working repeatedly in their practice, adopting and adapting the medium-specificities of architecture for their own purposes. The research will focus on Mike Kelley, Mark Manders, Gregor Schneider and Rachel Whiteread among others. Using a psychoanalytical methodological approach, and examples of gothic or ‘uncanny’ literature, I examine the echoes of narratives which reinforce the viewer’s psychic and sensory experience.

Student: Ian Fletcher (staff)
Director of Studies: Dr. Ash Ahmed
Second Supervisor: Dr. Pauline Fitzgerald

Mycelium Curiosities is a Ph.D. research project which investigates the feasibility of fungal mycelium synthesised materials and the utilisation of nature’s biopolymers obtained from agricultural waste to biologically engineer a sustainable and biodegradable material for use in construction. The aims of the research project are to provide an overview into the production, properties and performance of mycelium-based materials, extract natural cellulose fibres from wheat straw and to determine whether the material can be implemented for structural and/or non-structural applications. Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching thread-like hyphae, which act as a natural binder (matrix) in the mycelium-based composite system. Mycelium is mainly composed of natural polymers, such as chitin, cellulose and proteins and is a natural polymeric composite fibrous material. Mycelium digests nutrients from agricultural waste and in the process bonds to the surface without use of any additional energy input. It also depolymerises and colonise natural cellulose fibres acting as a natural self-assembling glue.

Student: Giorgio Ponzo
Director of Studies: Dr Doreen Bernath
Second Supervisor: Dr Mohamad Hafeda
External Advisor: Dr Teresa Stoppani

The research looks for definitions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘work’ and their relation to life experience through the account of the author’s experience — both as architect (in training, as student, at work, as designer and scholar) and as ordinary man — of a series of architectural works (realized buildings, projects, books, exhibitions, citiescapes, etc.). Using the methodology of an autobiographical narrative, the research aims to challenge the conventional disciplinary boundaries of architectural knowledge construction, looking at architectural history and theory through the lens of life experience, and at cities, buildings, and building typologies as fixed backgrounds for everyday activities. Architecture gives us the possibility to live in someone else’s work, in someone else’s understanding and definition of life and its activities. In the relationship with this constructed nature, we write our own understanding of life: in the space written by another subject, we strive to define our own position against a material artefact that frames our life. The relationship between architecture and (auto)biography questions both the ways in which we construct architectural knowledge and the categories we use to define the work of architecture. Architectural knowledge emerges as a collection of fragments, memories, pieces of knowledge often belonging to different disciplines (literature, photography, cognitive sciences, philosophy, etc.) that the autobiographical account aims at connecting, making sense of an otherwise scattered disciplinary compartmentalization, through life experience.

Student: George Themistokleous
Director of Studies: Dr. Doreen Bernath
Second Supervisor: Dr. Lisa Stansbie
External Advisor: Dr. Teresa Stoppani

Linear perspective presupposes a division between body and space. Other representational devices, such as the stereoscope and the zoetrope, articulate a different body /space relationship. In this research the 'prosthetic' body becomes an intermediate term that is used to redefine the relationship between body and space, haptic and optic, representation and actual vision. The thesis critically re-thinks and re-conceives perspectival space and current forms of representation, i.e. digital media, and constructs custom-made supplementary representational devices. This approach combines an insight into current representational methods and their application in the process of design. In the process both the body and the tools for its conceptualization and represent must be redefined. In this sense if the body is already a place that correlates, via a technological interface, to other bodies, how is this extensity accounted for in visual representations?

Student: Braden Engel
Director of Studies: Dr. Doreen Bernath
Second Supervisor: Prof. Ian Strange
External Advisor: Dr. Teresa Stoppani

Colin Rowe (1920-1999) is recognized as one of the most influential architecture teachers of the twentieth century, but which methods made him so influential, and what can his strategies tell us about the pedagogy of uncovering meaning in the built environment? Braden’s dissertation argues that Rowe was a successful teacher because he understood the value of engaging students with modernism’s gift of free invention. Rowe paralleled the promises of modern architecture to faith in Christian salvation, leading his students into the temptations of modernism through historical analyses in order to test their convictions in architecture through design. Rowe’s use of the Bible is thus a key that unlocks both the value of his teaching and our interpretation of his historiography. Braden’s dissertation identifies a different postmodern device deployed by Rowe for each chapter, beginning with irony and paradox, and ending with ambiguity and refutations. The aims of these devices were to produce curious and critical students. These are qualities of relative scarcity today, and Braden hopes his doctoral work enables a more balanced appreciation of Colin Rowe while also serving to rethink attitudes to design education at large.

Student: Simon Warren (staff)
Director of Studies (Second Supervisor): Dr. Liz Stirling
Second Supervisor: Dr. Lisa Stansbie

The research explores the ‘live project’ – a real life architectural design project which involves meaningful collaboration between students and a constituency outside the academic institution – as an essential pedagogical instrument in architecture, and proposes its necessary role in a pluralist architectural education. Climate change and energy depletion, computer advances in design and making, and more volatile economic conditions all contribute to the architect facing increasingly dilemmas of how to practice. Live projects give students the possibility to encounter these realities in a direct way. Rather than being educated solely within the confines of the institution and the orthodoxy of pedagogy that might prevail there, the live project has been identified by many educators as an influential experience in raising and confronting these issues. The live project programme, at this institution, is the vehicle for a practice-based PhD, enquiring into alternative models of architectural education and best practice in the field.

Student: Craig Stott (staff)
Director of Studies: Dr. Quintin Bradley
Second Supervisor: Dr. Lisa Stansbie

The PhD aims to determine what learning outcomes are facilitated by Situated Learning Environments for Stakeholders engaged with Architectural Live Projects, and the influence and impact this experience has. The PhD aims to answer the following research questions;
What are the aims and context of Co-Design within Architectural Live Projects?
What is the Client Learning?
What influence / impact / relevance does this Learning have?
The intention is to gain an understanding of what the client groups engaged with Project Office learned through participating in the programme, and what have they used that learning to implement. This area of research is currently untouched relating to Architectural Live Projects, and thus provides a genuine creation of new knowledge.

Student: Jennifer Chalkley (staff)
Director of Studies: Dr. Carla Molinari
Second Supervisor: Dr. Doreen Bernath

The significance of play in childhood development is well-researched and valued as a tool for learning, however exploration of play in adulthood, especially in higher education design pedagogy, is currently overlooked. The research aims to address the current gap in knowledge relating to the concept of ‘play’ being used as an educational tool within the context of design studio courses at higher education. It will explore how the act of play through developing a construction toy impacts students’ design process, using Leeds School of Architecture as a primary research source. It will achieve this by attempting to answer the following research questions: ‘What is a construction toy?’; ‘How can a construction toy be used a pedagogical tool in the design process?’; and ‘How does the development of a construction toy impact students’ design process?’ As a pedagogic tool construction toys explore the possibility of enhancing students visuo-spatial abilities, rather than the process solely residing with an individual’s imaginative capacity. A hypothesis of the research is that by introducing acts of play in the design process, students may stimulate analogical thinking which has not been nurtured. In this context, play will be facilitated by the designing and making of construction toys, which can be built, taken apart again and rebuilt as something different (Kudrowitz & Wallace, 2010). Whilst existing construction toys allow for freedom of form creation, and application of meaning, they still embody qualities of the material and form which is prescribed. To avoid repetition of past forms it is important in the design process for students to develop their own toy.

Student: Petros Tsitnidis
Director of Studies: Prof. David Johnston
Second Supervisor: Dr. David Glew
External Advisor: Dr. Claire Hannibal

Obtaining feedback on building design is currently highly ignored, even if its value has been recognised since the middle of the 20th century. Starting from the early methods that Sim van der Ryn and Peter Manning published during the 1960s, to the Probe project and the contemporary Soft Landings method by Bill Bordass and Adrian Leamann, the research aims to investigate the purposes and usefulness of existing Post-Occupancy Evaluation methods. In addition to that, the research aims to create an understanding of the information Social Housing providers need to make better decisions regarding refurbishment and new-built developments. Utilising mainly qualtitative research methods and focusing on the human factor, this research aims to draw meaningful conclusions about the viability of a Post-Occupancy Evaluation method fit for the practices of the Social Housing sector. Taking into consideration the technical, social and political issues the Social Housing sector is currently facing, this research will have significant impact in making the practices of Social Housing providers more efficient and their relationship with social tenants more productive.