Architectural Design / Architectural & Urban History & Theory students

Discover the MPhil/PhD students in our department.

Ollie Palmer project 2013

Architectural Design and Architectural & Urban History & Theory are aimed at designers, historians and theorists of architecture. In practice, there is considerable overlap and engagement between the two programmes, both of which consist of a dynamic group of around 90 innovative doctoral students. 

These programmes have a diverse body of students, half of which are international. Many are funded by their home governments or by UCL, one of the UK research councils, or another funding body such as the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Current students 

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

 

 
 
Image: The disorder of order - Omar Abolnaga (2022)

Omar Abolnaga

Demystifying ʿAshwaʾiyyat: A Critique of the Discourse around Cairene Urban Informality

 
Moscow skyline © Victor Chekmenev / Lori Photobank

 

Alena Agafonova

Post-soviet housing design in Russia: The conception of home defined by norms and regulations

 
image: Sarah Akigbogun

 

Sarah Akigbogun

Beyond Urban Tragedy: Exploring Race, Gender and the City. Using storytelling in film and performance to illuminate experiences of spaces of Oppression and Liberation in Architecture

 
Her Post Card Illustration by Fawzeyah Alsabah


Fawzeyah Alsabah

Her West End: The Experience of Women in London’s West End Department Stores, 1900 to 1980

 
Image: ‘A Night at the Cotton Club’, diagrams by Vasilis Aronidis, 2017 


Vasilis Aronidis

Musical Event as ‘Synecdoche’ of Interrelated Sound and Spatial Parameters: Composing Sound and Space in Harlem in the 1920s-1930s

B

  

 
Petri dish with coloured sand


Richard Beckett

Bioaugmented Design: Designing the Indoor Environment

 
“Purépecha altar for the Saint of the Miracles, Parícutin volcano, Mexico, 2018”.

 

Olivier Bellflamme

An Architect in the Footsteps of Ethnographer Carl Lumholtz

 
Image: Laurence Blackwell-Thale


Laurence Blackwell-Thale

Beyond Relief: Creating a New Datum for Inhabiting the Contemporary Mountain

 
Marie-Gabriel Veugny, 1849, A.S.M.J.R.A. l’Empereur d’Autriche. Cité ouvrière d’un arrondissement de Paris. Plans, coupes, élévations et détails, ‘Vue d’ensemble de la cité d’un des Arrondissements de Paris’. Paris, Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs


Oliver Brax

Housing Savages. Moral Reform in French Workers’ Housing, 1848-1889

 
MRI Study 1/5, Pinnacle Imaging Centre, Andheri East, CritiCare Asia, Mumbai.


Jessie Buckle

Epilepsy, Climate and the Built Environment

C

 

 
 
DIY skate spot, Jamaica Plains, Boston. Credit: Thom Callan-Riley


Thom Callan-Riley

“How beautiful it can be”: Exploring Collective Memory and Collective Imagination in Skateboarding

 
Image: Paola Camasso


Paola Camasso

Everyday architectural logics: Female Brutalist architects and the project of logical architecture, 1953 – 1986. 

 
William Victor Camilleri, Object VI: The Gardener’s War and the Seed’s Renunciation of Nature. (Photograph by Frederik Petersen)

 

William Victor Camilleri

The Struggle for Existence

 
Niccolo Casas - Digital Decadence – The aesthetics of Ugliness in the age of digital architecture


Niccolò Casas

Digital Decadence - The aesthetics of Ugliness in the age of digital architecture

 
Image: Chishan Sluice completed in 1936 in Jurong County, Jiangsu Province (photo by Yichuan Chen)


Yichuan Chen

Constructing Chinese Modernity: Concrete in China, 1880-1990

D

  
 
imbunching 01 – Isabelle Donetch


Isabelle Donetch

The Voices of the River. Fluvial Imaginaries of the Mapocho River as Elements of Urban Identity

 
_

 

Olivia Duncan

An Indigenous Model? Inclusive and Culturally Sensitive Participatory Practices in Urban Development in UAE

 
Image: Kirti Durelle, based on Michel Raunet, Le milieu physique et les sols de l’île de La Réunion (1991).


Kirti Durelle

Landscape and relations of production in La Réunion (1663-1863)

E

  

F

  
 
Central Hill Development, Norwood, Architect’s model of the proposed development of the Central Hill area of Upper Norwood into high density housing, photograph by Eric de Mare, Ref. SP19/184/Cen.1, Date: c. 1970, Lambeth Archives: borough photographs.


Christiane Felber

Modern Arts and Crafts. Council Housing in Lambeth 1965-1980

 
‘CLOTHO’ box with backstrap loom (wood and cotton, 2019). Designed and Photographed by: Fernando P. Ferreira

Fernando P. Ferreira
Factory of Stories: Weaving counter-narratives for Vale do Ave.

G

  
 
Naomi Gibson (2020) Scene of a meeting

 

Naomi Gibson

Speaking to Design: Verbal Interpretations and Architectural Invention

 
Image: Felix Graf

 

Felix Graf

Adaption of specific tree elements for furniture making: The role of embodied knowledge within the processes of design and manufacture

H

  

J

  

K

  
 
Image: Knitted Anamnesis by Nikoletta Karastathi

Nikoletta Karastathi

Sympoietic Eco-Plexis: A Post-digital Approach Towards Ecologically-Crafted Textile Architectures

 
Image: Rían Kearney and Intervention Architecture, The Club’s Conception (or How the Egg Was Cracked). Installation shot at Recent Activity, 2019. Photo: John Fallon

 

Rían Kearney

Queer Space Archive: Tracing Birmingham’s LGBTQ+ Venues from Memory, 1966-1987

 
Image: Tanjina Khan


Tanjina Khan

Sustainable Adaptive Reuse of Urban Residential Built Form: A Study of Contemporary Practices and Potentials in Dhaka  

 
There or Thereabouts, by Paul King


Paul King

Codifying and fabricating an invisible architecture

 
Image: Toy Store Sentience: A metaphorical transposition of a totalitarian state' - Mike Kwok

 

Mike Kwok

Towards a Ludic Interpretation of Cities and Architecture: Transposing Protests into Allegorical Worlds in Video Game

L

 

 
 
Image: Micrograph of photosynthetic gametopgytes, Alexandra Lacatusu

 

Alexandra Lăcătușu

Design with Bryophytes: biotic exchanges and environmental benefits of moss growth on urban bioreceptive surfaces

 
Image: Adarsh Lanka


Adarsh Lanka

Cement in India: A Material(ist) History (Bombay, 1920s – 1990s

 
A collection of wooden chairs and bound planks of wood arranged in a kitchen space in front of a fireplace and table with various food jars.


Xiuzheng Li

Understanding the Communal Kitchen as An Infrastructure of Care

 
Image: The Matchmaking Corner at Shanghai People's Park, 2022, Zijiao Li

 

Zijiao (Luci) Li

Racing Towards Modernity: The Role of Chinese Racecourses in Shaping Urbanism, Culture, and Identity since 1840

 
Image: Yiming Liu


Yiming Liu

Not So Difficult, Not So (De)Colonial: Postcolonial Heritage in Shanghai since 1949

 
“Three Slideshows”, Rebecca Loewen, 2017


Rebecca Loewen

How to Isolate Inframince for Architectural Design

 
Image: Kui Tjuveleljem, the master craftsman, is laying a wall and sensing the levelness. Piuma, Taiwan (2023).


Te-Chen Lu

(Re)Writing Contemporary Indigenous Architectural History Through the Process of Co-Creating: A Paiwan Slate House of Southern Taiwan

 
Attending Spaces, by Elin Eyborg Lund. A person in red construction gear, walking away from the camera, through a construction site.

Elin Eyborg Lund
Attending Spaces: Movement Performances as Activators in the Construction Process

M

  
 
Image: Ishimoto Yasuhiro, Yoyogi Gymnasium by Tange Kenzo Collection of The Museum of Art, Kochi © Kochi Prefecture, Ishimoto Yasuhiro Photo Center


Duy Mac

Writing the Liberal Script, Designing the International Society: Postwar Liberalism and Japanese Architecture, 1949-1995

 
Image: Bespoke Bricks by Mengdi Mao


Mengdi Mao

Limited Bespoke: The Architecture of Freeform Vaults with Interlocking Blocks

 
Image: Ad-herence in-Heritance, by Martin, B. 2021


Bea Martin

Speculative Assemblies – Drawing as a Kit-of-Parts

 
Construction 001 – Sketch for a Spatialised Score, by Emma-Kate Matthews

 

Emma-Kate Matthews

Spatiosonic Constructs: Exploring Reciprocities in Architecture and Music

 
Image: Photo by Ana Mayoral Moratilla

 

Ana Mayoral Moratilla

Power Construction and Architectural Reconstruction. The case of Madrid’s Ciudad Universitaria

N

  

O

  
 
Keeley, T. (2022). Alternative Arrangement #4: Claí na Muice Duibhe, Corr na Péiste, Co. Mhuineacháin (Black Pig’s Dyke, Cornapaste, Co. Monaghan).

 

Tom Ó Caollaí

Alternative Arrangements: A Topography Along and Across the Irish Borderlands

 
Archival photographs of La Vedette: photographs by Jean-Eugène Durand. ©Ministère de la Culture

 

Aisling O'Carroll

Reconstructing Reconstructions: A Stratigraphic Practice of Landscape and Historiography

 
Image: Disobedient Dollhouse No.1, 2023, Photography by Sophie Percival.


Daniel Ovalle Costal

A Canon of Queer Domesticity: Design Fabulations

P

 

 
 
The HeartBit Walks, Flow Architecture, 2018


Annarita Papeschi

Transindividual Urbanism: Novel Territories of Participatory Practices

 
Image: 1:6 Spatial Play Experiment 02B, by Matthew Poon


Matthew Poon

Spatial Design and Creative Toy Play in Experimental Spaces 

 
Image: Kanikkarans moving across 25 odd kilometres of steep hills, dense rain forest and wild elephant territory, lugging produce on their heads from their forest villages to sell it at a local market. 


Divya Priyesh Shah

Ecological and Place-Sensibilities in the Forest Villages of a Monsoon Biome, The Western Ghats Mountains, India

Q

  
 
‘Testing a Lock’, Zoë Quick

 

Zoë Quick

Gwlana | WWoolgathering: Gathering ‘Residual Culture’ in Debate Over Welsh Upland Land-use

R

  
 
Image: Public domain / Brazilian National Archives Collection

 

Patricia Rodrigues Ferreira da Silva
After the Future: Architecture and the Military Regime in Brazil

S

  
 
Institutional and international delegation walking on the new bed of the Arroyo Bruno, diverted by Cerrejón 2019. Photo by Diana Salazar.

 

Diana Paola Salazar Morales

Co-producing an environmental history of La Guajira: Building solidarity through decolonising narratives

 
Larkin Administration Building

Petra Seitz

Where Do You Cry in an Open Plan Office? Labour Process Theory and Commercial Office Interiors

 
Image: Unsurfacing the Strata of Ikeda (detail), Sayan Skandarajah


Sayan Skandarajah

Parallel Projection and the Political Gaze in Early Modern Kyoto

 
Image: Elin Söderberg, 2022


Elin Söderberg

A Tree is Not a Forest - A Proposal for a Reforestation of the Contemporary Architectural Imagination

 
Image: Ben Spong


Ben Spong

Oscillations of the Real: Fabrication(s) as a Mediator across Architectural Production

T

  
 
James Tait

James Tait

De-industrialising Architectural Practice: The work of architecture in the age of its (digital) reproducibility

 
Image: A diagram of University Disciplines Influencing Environmental Design Studies, c.1970s. Photo Credit: The University of Liverpool Special Collections & Archives.


Xinyue Tian

A Study on Architecture Interdisciplinary Education in the UK Post-War Era

 
Image courtesy of Claire Tunnacliffe.


Claire Malaika Tunnacliffe

Queer Practices of Place Making: Exploring how LGBTQI+ activists in London make place 

 
Image: ‘Earth Skin’ in situ during field recording experiments - Ontario, Canada, 2023 (Photo: Jonathan Tyrrell)


Jonathan Tyrrell

Architecture’s Acoustic Shadow: Unsettling the Sound/Space Relationship

V

  

W

  
 
Image: Gaussian Splatting Reality (2022-2023) – Hangchuan Wei


Hangchuan Wei

MIBE: Microbiome Informatics of Built Environment

 
Image by Anna Wild


Anna Wild

The Way of All Built Flesh: Translations on a Workspace

 
Image: The Portal World-Builder: In memory of Professor Jonathan Hill, 1958-2022, “to all the doors and opportunities Jonathan has opened to us all in his orbit”, 2022 (drawing by author)


Eric Wong

The Building of Imaginary Worlds in Environments of the Virtual: Architect as World-Builder

Z

  
 
Image: Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany: Elevation (1977-1984), James Stirling/Michael Wilford fonds, Canadian Centre for Architecture

 

Katerina Zacharopoulou

Designing for Amusement: From the Intention to the Interpretation of Architectural Humour in Post-Modern Britain

 
Image: Thales Alenia Space


Nona Zakoyan

Advancing Multiplanetary/Space Architecture - Space-Time Variable

Past students

  • Popi Iacovou

    On Movement as a Principle for Spatial Construction
  • Ersi Ioannidou

    The (Existenz-) Minimum Dwelling 

  • Adam Walls
    Twilight Spaces: topographic literary analyses of the London lightscape, 1880s–1930's
  • Cindy Walters
    Rethinking the Pavilion
  • Victoria Watson

    The Atmospheric Signifier: Miesian Form-Giving, Lefebvrian Space and Cotton Grid
  • Neil Wenman
    A Space to House Nothing: Examining the Adoption of Architectural Terminology and Forms of Representation in Conceptual Art 
  • Freya Wigzell
    The Conduits of Transgression: A study of shells in Architecture
  • Michael Wihart
  • Danielle Willkens
    Thomas Jefferson, Sir John Soane, and Maria Cosway: the transatlantic design network, 1768-1838
  • Daniel Wilkinson
    After Michelangelo, A Contemporary Baroque
  • Stefan White