The Bartlett Research Conversations

Felix Graf

Supervisor: Bob Sheil and Nat Chard

Exploring the interrelationship of manufacture and design, Felix's research aims to investigate how to establish a methodology that promotes and facilitates an exchange of knowledge amongst designers and makers.  

The theoretical framework uses the notion of architectural phenomenology in order to define terms around architectural manufacture, with a particular focus on joinery and carpentry. As Christian Norberg-Schulz used the concept of architectural phenomenology to formulate the importance of the place, this research tries to emulate this approach for manufacture. Therefore, materiality, tools and techniques are to be investigated in a way that they can be incorporated in the conception and strategies of architectural designs. 

Through a series of small-scale experiments, within the field of joinery and carpentry, the project aims to formulate, accentuate and give evidence to these theories. Using digital, as well as analogue methods of production, and techniques from other realms of craftsmanship, the aspects of materiality, tools and techniques will be woven into the general aesthetic of sculpture-like objects and furniture pieces. With a special focus on connection details, these pieces will become examples, in which the aforementioned theory is showcased.

About The Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Research Conversations seminars comprise work-in-progress and upgrade presentations by students undertaking the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design and MPhil/PhD Architectural and Urban History and Theory. All current UCL staff and students are welcome to attend.

Held regularly throughout the academic year, the seminars are attended by the programme directors, Professor Jonathan Hill and Professor Ben Campkin, PhD Coordinators, Dr. Nina Vollenbröker and Dr Sophie Read, and other PhD supervisors.

Image: “Plum tree log experimentation”. (Photo taken by Felix Graf).