Prof Jonathan Michael Hill

Research summary

My research has helped to pioneer investigation of the relations between the design and experience of architecture. In The Illegal Architect (1998) and Actions of Architecture (2003) I state that architecture is an experience as well as an object or a space. Consequently, I conclude that architecture is made by use as well as by design and argue that user creativity should be a central concern of architects, In Immaterial Architecture (2006) I focus on the perceived absence of matter more than the actual absence of matter, in order to devise further means to explore the interdependent creativity of the designer and the user. At a time when environmental awareness is of increasing relevance, Weather Architecture (2012) considers the history of architecture as a history of weather. For centuries, environmental awareness has been central to the architectural imagination. But, in contrast, current attitudes to climate change often reduce nature-culture relations to a merely technical concern. Questioning the narrowly technocratic conception of the architect as problem solver and moderator of climatic performance, Weather Architecture furthers my investigation of authorship by identifying the weather as a creative architectural force alongside the designer and user. Associating the changing natural world with journeys in self-understanding, and the design process with a visual and spatial autobiography, A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction (2016) describes journeys between London and the North Sea in successive centuries, analysing an enduring and evolving environmental tradition from the picturesque and romanticism to modernism. The Architecture of Ruins (2019) identifies an alternative history of architecture, from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first, in which a building is designed, occupied, and imagined as a ruin. This design practice conceives a monument and a ruin as creative, interdependent, and simultaneous themes within a single building dialectic, addressing temporal and environmental questions in poetic, psychological and practical terms, and stimulating questions of personal and national identity, nature and culture, weather and climate, permanence and impermanence, and life and death. 

Teaching summary

At The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, I have previously led the Part 1 and Part 2 programmes and been acting Head of School and acting Director of Design. Currently, I run MArch Unit 12 with Elizabeth Dow. Recent awards to Unit 12 students include First Prize, RIBA Journal Award for 'Drawing in the 21st Century' (2013), RIBA President's Silver Medal Commendations (2014, 2018), RIBA President's Serjeant Medal for Excellence in Drawing (2015), RIBA SOM Foundation Fellowship (2015), and First Prize, RIBA Eyeline Drawing Competition (2020). I am also Director of the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design programme, which was the first to be established in the UK and is internationally recognised as one of the most influential doctoral programmes dedicated to architectural design. The programme draws on the strengths of design teaching and doctoral research at the Bartlett, encouraging the development of architectural research through the interaction of designing and writing. An architectural design doctoral thesis has two inter-related elements of equal importance—a project and a text—that share a research theme and a productive relationship. The project may be drawn, filmed, built, or use whatever media is appropriate. PhD students I supervised have won First Prize in the RIBA President's Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis (2007) and been shortlisted (2006, 2009, 2010, 2012), and also shortlisted for the RIBA President's Award for Research (2018). PhD students on the programme I direct have won First Prize in the RIBA President's Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis (2014) and been shortlisted (2009), and also won First Prize in the RIBA President's Award of Research (2020) and been shortlisted (2017, 2020). I have supervised 39 PhD students to completion and examined 36 PhD students, including at Aalto University, Aarhus School of Architecture, Architectural Association School of Architecture, Birkbeck College University of London, Cardiff University, University of East London, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, University of Melbourne, RMIT University Melbourne, Middlesex University, University of Plymouth, University of Queensland, Royal College of Art, and UCL.

Education

University of London

Doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy | 2000

University College London

Other higher degree, Master of Science | 1990

Architectural Association School of Architecture

Other Postgraduate qualification (including professional), Architectural Association Diploma | 1983

Publications

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