Ms Sabina Andron

Teaching Fellow

The Bartlett School of Architecture

Faculty of the Built Environment

Joined UCL: 28th Sep 2015

Research summary

My research focuses on graffiti, street art and urban surfaces, and my interest is to understand the dynamic between surfaces and inscriptions, their spatial politics and their impact on ruban cultures.

I research graffiti and street art in relation to neoliberal urban governance agendas, between criminalisation, eradication, and commodification as part of the creative cities paradigm.

More importantly, I am interested in issues related to urban spatial production and the right to the city, and I am working on developing a theoretical framework to understand the right to the city by analysing surface inscriptions and regulatory frameworks: the right to the city is the right to the surface.

I have developed a method of reading urban surfaces which I call surface semiotics (or wall interviewing). This is an original method to interpret inscriptions in-situ, which I use as a form of analytical visual method throughout my work. Approaches from art sociology, visual culture and legal geography also inform my work on the image of the city, urban property regimes, and issues of access and control of urban spaces.

I am interested in urban surfaces as spaces of collective political production and agency, and as key sites for the exploration of urgent notions such as the right to the city and the urban commons.

Teaching summary

My teaching work has been in architectural history and urban culture, and I currently hold a teaching fellowship at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and a lectureship at the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering at the University of East London.

More specifically, I have taught courses in the history of London architecture, architectural texts, cities and film, and the history of interior design and domesticity, across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules.

Additionally, I have been doing work with outreach programmes at UCL to teach young people about architecture, cities and public creativity.

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Education

Manchester Metropolitan University: MA, Visual Communication | 2011
Universitatea Babes - Bolyai, Cluj - Napoca: MA, Theatre studies | 2010
Universitatea Babes - Bolyai, Cluj - Napoca: BA, Comparative Literature | 2008

Biography

I am a teaching fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and a lecturer at the University of East London. As of May 2018, I am doing the final edits on a PhD which focuses on the semiotic, material and legal dimensions of city surfaces, as well as inscriptions like graffiti and street art.

I have taught architectural history and theory at a number of universities across London, including the history of London architecture (QMUL), the history of the home and interior design (UEL), and outreach modules on graffiti, spatial justice and the image of the city (UCL, UAL).

I hold a BA in comparative literature and an MA in visual culture. I was a UCL Grand Challenges grantee and organiser of the international Graffiti Sessions conference in 2014, and a British Council fellow at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016.

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