Architecture, Building Materials, and Environmental Justice. Mapping Cases of Extraction, Production, and Construction/Demolition

Modern building materials are integral to society and culture, yet their extraction and production, design and construction cause environmental and social harm, disproportionately affecting the Global South. This research methods workshop explored architecture's ecological impact and environmental justice using the EJ Atlas as a tool, documenting cases of global (in)justice through conflict and protest.

Students
Zahra Alsharfa, Karthik Raagav Arulselvam, Lia Bavaresco, Deng Chongbo, Giovanni Dalle Molle, Yuxin Deng, Luke Fiorini, Enrico Giacobazzi, Junyi He, Riza Ibrahim, Muskaan Kohli, Alessia Licitra, Zihao Lin, Tommaso Lionello, Pranali Pawar, Kyriaki Piera, Jack Elliott Porteous, Taisiia-Lukiia Sakhuriia, Xiyu Wang, Jemy Xavier.

Tracing Multiplicity on Oxford Road

Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), this course was conceived as an exploration of the spatial practices of campus life. Through ethnographic research methods, students investigated how architecture matters to processes of teaching, learning and research. Beyond a ‘view from nowhere’, practices of knowledge creation and dissemination were shown to be deeply social, political, and spatial.

Students
Catriona Dodd, Jovan Jankovic, Wei Feng, Zhi Jing Tan, Fangge Fan, Mingrui Li, Osian Rhys Roberts, Alima Inès Villafranca, Thomas Palmer, James David Wilde, Constantin-Alexandru Visan, Tara Sutton, Alina Iskrytska, Lin Jinyao, Zhang Yunhong, Zhang Zeshan, Chen Yingchun, Li Zihan, He Danning, James Keogh.

Methodologies for Architectural History

In this workshop, we looked at the different sources that constitute the body of knowledge addressed by architects and historians. By doing so, we questioned how the inherent logic, rules, and context of production of these sources attest to specific discursive practices and conventions within architectural practice.

Watery Methods

This research methods workshop draws on the framework of oceanic humanities, to ask how centring seas, oceans, estuaries, and rivers, might open up new approaches, questions and perspectives on how we understand and represent built environments. Students engage with bodies of water through critical, narrative and interdisciplinary mapping methods.

Students
Oliver Toussaint, Sarah Nawaz, Julia Hill, Joseph Michael Langford Holmes, Tze Chean Chong, Leo Mathew Johnson, Xilong Shi, Li Zheng, Kirandeep Johal, Siddharth Kallupadam Manoj, Aran Kamil-Thomas, Oliver Sharp, Yi Fu, Yihan Su, Neeladit Nandi, Hiba Alhayik, Neha Susan, Chic So, Andreea Moanta.

Archives, Architecture, Empire: British Architects and Builders in West Africa

This course invites students to interrogate the role that archives play in fashioning and enframing the entwinned disciplines of architecture and architectural history, through an analysis of the work of British architects working in West Africa during the period of political decolonisation in the 1950s and 1960s.

Students
Isaac Jemitola, Luke White, Yinka Malik Fashola, Atikatu Yaya Abubakar, Militsa Clerides, Yifan Yang, Abhishek Sureshkumar Patel, Binal Gautam Panchal, Manya Dosaj, Yung Yu Wu, Min Jing Toh, Boyu Qu, Rebecca Williams, Olayinka Olayele Thomas-Orogan, Lanshan Ye, Parth Solanki, Kyle Longley, Zihan Zhang, David Nabil.

Housing

Housing is the most personal, ubiquitous form of architecture. Housing lends itself to specific methods of research and intersects with race, class, and gender. This workshop discusses the ethics and sensitivities specific to housing, examining the ethical, historical and spatial specificities of researching housing.

Students
Samantha Cutler, Maisie Mullins, Pak Ling Woo, Akhshay George Ninan, Sanah Murtaza, Hongxi Yu, Oliver Lambert, Hayley Kirui, Yi Ping Kam, Amira Al-Najjar, Kane Cummins, Danni Yan, Zhaoyilin Zhang, Oliver Carter, Yuji Hirota, Megan Hague, Diana Cernooka, Yan Wan, Nafiseh Rahimy Hamidabad, Ding Lu.

New Towns and Nature-like Open Spaces: a History of Ecological Urban Landscape Design

In the face of today’s growing housing and environmental crises, we must understand the ideological legacy of previous landscape architectural approaches. With a focus on Oakwood, Warrington, the workshop supports an understanding of how perceptions of ecological landscape design have changed and how new town designed landscapes have evolved.

Students
Shreya Satheesh, Jireh Dagdag, Eve Davies, Hayley Rowell, Niloufer Yusuf Shahapur, Rucha Nalawade, Shreya Omprakash Divate, Clare Eaden, Lei Yang, Xiaotong Wang, Zhuoran Lu, Het Rajeshbhai Shah, Hailan Fu, Wenqian Yang, Shraddha Sanjay Jadhav, Mohsen Ashouri Taziani, Jingsi Li.

Design Research Methods in the Digital and Tectonic

This workshop employed digital tools, techniques and technologies in contemporary architectural design and realisation, locating their role and value within theories of a persistent design paradigm. Participants considered definitions of an architectural style for the climate crisis epoch, characterised by instrumental and effective performance rather than morphological or methodological bias.

Students
Yanxi Lin, Matthew Hutchinson, Isha Torne, Oleh Ivashko, Ryan Dinsdale-Round, Alisha Menezes, Maiwenn Le Berre, Irina-Elena Popescu, Andrei Grigore Wei Jie Ooi, Brian Ling Fung Chang, Yiduo Wang, Winston Yee Hong Leung, Jason Yeung, Gwyneth Chan, Yaqi Guo, Rajan Anilkumar Rane, Yunshen Zhang, Prisha Shinde, Jake Vizard Owen.

Deep Mapping of Oxford Road, Manchester

This research method workshop focussed on Oxford Road, Manchester aimed to capture its vibrancy and importance for the city through various deep mapping techniques using literary methods as tools to test and broaden the boundaries of architectural representation and understanding of urban environment.

Students
Andreea Rusu, Keng Chi Mak, Luke Singleton, Nisha Malhi, Lucy Haggis, Rodrigo Urquiza Garcia, Esraa Rehan, Zhengping Xia, Samuel Jones, Thomas Walker, Quan Wei Yap, Yuxin Ma, Cai Xingyu, Pilar Kobenhavn, Wu Tong, Fan Wei, Erica Lau, Jack Scott, Xin Liang.

Opportunity You Missed: From the White Heat of the Technological Revolution to High Performing Heritage

This research-through-model-making workshop explored specific details of potentially lost or obsolete buildings from the UMIST campus. The students studied the character and use of the materials. They considered the relationship between building and the fabric, they investigated the junctions, juxtapositions, and joints, and they then represented this research through carefully-constructed high-quality models.

Students
Mi Zhou Zhou, Wenjingyu Zhang, Shuyan Zhang, Yan Gao, Yixuan Yang, Keming Zhang, Fariba Sadeghi Far, Nupoor Attarde, Ya Han Chang, Mahdiar Nezam, Yuchen Gu, Quanze Ma, Xianglinzi Shan, Kyungho Oh, Dakun Wang, Sourabh Sahasrabudhe, Rifah Tasfia, Sherifa Khawaji, Shreya Reddy Kothinti, Patricia Mock, Rachel Elizabeth Thomas, Wenjie Zeng, Jing Yang.

Cities from the Ground

Witnessing how people navigate urban spaces, utilise public facilities, and interact with each other informs design choices profoundly. Along with a hands-on fieldwork, this workshop studies diverse perspectives of the urban through readings from a range of disciplines including urban studies, and social sciences covering urban political ecologies, and feminist approaches.

Students
Emma Davies, Siheng Lyu, Mariam Pinto-Rodriguez, Lydia Edwards, Varshasri Umamageshwari Karthikeyan, Andreea Antoche, Amber Roxburgh, Jing Yi Pang, Jinke Yang, Hana Ahmad Baihaki, Fatin Najihah Binti Misban, Jiajing Yu, Ro Yee Lee, Shahd Alansari, Max Kemplen, Gehao Ye, Wil Garrard, Tran Binh Nguyen Nguyen, Bin Li, Pengiran Nur Diyanah Atiqah Pengiran Anak Haji Damit Baharuddin.