The Bartlett Review is a digital magazine from The Bartlett, UCL's Faculty of the Built Environment, exploring the latest ideas, research and perspectives from our expert thinkers on cities, human spaces and resources worldwide.
Conversions of UK commercial buildings into housing through permitted development may have significant health and social impacts - what are the potential effects?
The 2022 edition of our global review explores pressing questions for cities and communities worldwide, and reimagines how our spaces and structures can help all living beings to thrive in a shared world.
This edition of The Bartlett Review looks at our work in 2021 through the lens of four different key themes: climate crisis, resilience and the city, equitable spaces and redesigning education.
A study by Professor Hedley Smyth and colleagues finds UK construction firms employing health and safety practices that are sometimes too procedural, prescriptive and inconsistently implemented.
The private sector will invest its money where it sees future growth and opportunity. The MOIIS Commission's report recommends how the UK government should direct that investment.
Professor Philip Steadman on modelling every domestic and non-domestic building in London and its use of energy for the Greater London Authority (GLA).
Nici Zimmerman and a team led by Professor Mike Davies are working with six partner cities to guide development that is not only sustainable but delivers positive urban health outcomes.
Professor Matthew Beaumont wants to start a social movement to encourage pedestrians to reclaim their attention from their phones as they walk the city streets.
Can Kenya lead the way to a new kind of prosperity in Africa? And can Maasai warriors teach western tycoons leadership the world needs for the 21st century? Jacqueline McGlade thinks so.
Plastic waste is so pervasive that there'll never be only one solution to the problem, which is why a multidisciplinary team from across The Bartlett and UCL are trying to tackle it from all angles.
Insect-borne diseases like malaria, dengue and zika account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases worldwide. What if we could prevent this by changing the way we build?
Colouring London, an open knowledge exchange platform that collates, collects, generates and visualises statistical data, aims to be the first place people go to for data on the capital's buildings.
The Energy Institute’s Island Laboratory is helping island nations worldwide chart possible sustainable futures as they're confronted by the challenges of climate change and resource shortages.
From a groundbreaking experiment to teach visually impaired students to initiatives to widen participation, The Bartlett wants to open up built-environment education to a more diverse cohort.
The Bartlett is home to some of the most talented staff, students and alumni in the world, tackling some of the most urgent problems facing our planet, says Dean Christoph Lindner.
Industrial strategy and new forms of patient finance, such as mission-oriented national investment banks, must work together to solve 21st-century challenges.
As global investors look for long-term income streams, their interests will become increasingly aligned with community interests and environmental pressures.
Academic international partnerships can play a role in responding to power imbalances among higher-education institutions, while addressing the challenges of sustainable development.
Dr Michael Walls, Senior Lecturer at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, talks about the election monitoring mission he co-ordinated in Somaliland in November 2017.
Dr Zhifu Mi, Research Fellow at The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, says cities are a trade-off between economic development and climate change mitigation.
Professor Andrew Burns’ EPSRC-funded project to create a digital archive of traditional play culture aims to use the past to invent the future of urban play spaces.
You might not think skateboarding would be the subject of scholarly study, but a growing number of academics believe it has a lot to teach about how to make cities better for citizens
Completed just months before the Carillion collapse, Castles in the Air?, Professor Hedley Smyth’s analysis of British main contractors, reads like a premonition.
The race is on to decarbonise the international shipping industry and the UCL Energy Institute's scenario-based modelling is giving policy-makers the data they need to put the pressure on.
The UK is on the verge of a major expansion in housebuilding, yet new research by the Place Alliance has revealed a chronic lack of urban design expertise in local authorities.
Professor Alan Penn, in his last letter as Dean of The Bartlett, says that the built environment professions’ primary responsibility must be to the public at large and to future generations.
Since its inception in 2005, the UCL Urban Lab's transdisciplinary approach has challenged the discourse on how we think about and intervene in the city.
A little over a year ago, The Bartlett announced its arrival in east London with a new building and four pioneering architecture courses. we paid a visit to see how students and staff are settling in.
The Bartlett’s growth story is about bringing together people, technology and disciplines, creating the conditions for students to imagine the radically different futures society will need to solve the challenges of this century.
PhDs supported by the service sector are opportunities to drive research and development in built environment organisations operating outside the physical sciences.
Creating the space for tomorrow's professionals means tearing down the barriers between disciplines and opening dialogue on the beliefs that guide our design processes.
Over the next 4 years, Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality aims to deliver transformative research & capacity for innovation in policy & planning in 12 cities across Latin America, Asia and Africa.
The UK has a critical skills shortage in the construction industry, one that poses a significant risk to the delivery of planned major projects. Will Brexit push it over the edge?
The Bartlett’s sell-out 2016 conference, ‘Drawing Futures’, proved that obituaries for the role of hand-drawing in architecture practice have been premature.
Today’s food system is depleting groundwater reserves faster than they can be replenished. What happens next could determine the future of global food security.
Urbanisation, globalisation, automation, social and environmental disruption. All of these affect the way the built environment is created – and all set challenges The Bartlett needs to solve.
Today’s real estate model is increasingly limited in its scope and lopsided. A new Bartlett institute aims to create a concept for the sector that’s fit for the 21st-century city.
The Bartlett’s 22 Gordon Street has attracted plenty of industry attention. But how is the building standing up to its first year of occupancy? We find out what users think.
From broadband to genetic sequencing and solar panels, the public sector has always been a nurturer of innovation. It’s time the state’s role as innovator is recognised.
A new cutting-edge space in east London and two new institutes with bold cross-disciplinary mandates underline The Bartlett's goal: to be the world’s number-one faculty of the built environment.
The challenge of mass displacement requires a new vision of prosperity. To develop such a vision and deliver positive results, universities must work with a range of groups in the countries affected. By Hannah Sender and Nikolay Mintchev
Educational environments are integral to effective learning and safe, healthy, and sustainable cities. So why has the science of designing them been overlooked for so long? By Clare Melhuish and Alexi Marmot
It is unfortunate that Eritrea is more likely to evoke images of migrant crises than outstanding architectural heritage. Asmara’s listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site could change that perception. By Edward Denison
A new manifesto for data and co-creation in the digital city wants to put social value at the centre of today’s smart-city rhetoric. By Claire McAndrew
Research by UCL Urban Laboratory has found that the number of LGBTQ+ venues in London has more than halved in the past decade, eroding a crucial social infrastructure. By Ben Campkin and Laura Marshall
Policymakers, listen up! Recognising the contribution that heritage makes to the wider UK economy starts with semantics: we’re talking about a heritage “industry”. By May Cassar
The UK’s Clean Growth Strategy shows that the government is starting to understand that energy efficiency is compelling when climate and competitiveness drivers reinforce each other. By Peter Mallaburn
Changing the ways in which we frame and intervene in the built environment requires a critical engagement with the political nature of the production of space. By Catalina Ortiz
Modern business requirements change more quickly than the physical workspace can keep up with, but does a new collaboration between Google and AHMM point towards a workable future?
‘Losing Myself’ at the 2016 Venice Biennale explored a research collaboration between two Bartlett architecture lecturers and a group of UCL dementia specialists.
Making urban policy-making work for those that need it most in the Global South means elevating the voice of the urban poor. The DPU is showing how it can be done.
Too often, the response to climate-related disasters is to relocate local inhabitants. The answer instead lies in managing urban growth, new research suggests.
How the School of Planning picked up where the Farrell Review left off, helping to create and nurture the Place Alliance into a leading voice on best practice in urban design.
The newly formed UCL Institute for Digital Innovation in the Built Environment operates at the interface of digital engineering, computer science and human experience.
Over the past 15 years, Sonja Curtis has helped take CASA from a two-man team to a leading force in the science of smart cities. She shares her advice for new institutes and research labs.
Climate change isn’t just a scientific problem or a political challenge – it’s also a management issue. And there’s a lot project management can do to address the threats it poses.
A paper published in Nature Climate Change in 2016, reveals cost-effective ways to reduce emissions from passenger aircraft to 2050 – and the aviation industry is listening.
In the year it reopens its flagship building – 22 Gordon Street, Rebecca Spaven looks back at how The Bartlett’s own architecture has influenced the relationship between the faculty and its students.
With the unveiling of 22 Gordon Street – formerly Wates House – in 2016, we look at the philosophy behind the redesign and ask how The Bartlett School of Architecture’s new home will shape the future student/teacher experience.
London’s Here East isn’t your typical university real estate. By putting creative design and advanced technologies in the same space, The Bartlett is taking a bold step into a future that will strengthen its interdisciplinary research and teaching.
New space, new programmes, and more new students than ever – it all points to The Bartlett’s intention to become the world’s number one faculty of the built environment.
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