Shapes and the City Symposium

Introduction

Presentation 1: Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo, The Bartlett School of Architecture 

Based on the known narrative, either the bazaar or the street can function as a centre of commercial and retail activities and as an arbiter of cultural taste in the city. They could not deliver this aim together. However, this view can be refined by reflecting on the development of Tehran in pre-modern and early modern times. Tehran expanded its urban network in two distinct phases, each with a different approach to implementing the street network (new lines). To understand this urbanisation, the research employs syntactical analysis to compare the spatial organisation of Tehran between the mid-19th and 20th centuries.

Presentation 2: Hanxi Wang, UCL Geography 

The beautiful modern city is envisioned in the logical geometrical order of grids, symmetries, and harmonies. Clean straight lines and circular curvatures create a landscape that is undeniably manmade: quantifiable, controllable, and replicable (universal). In my research, I study the ecological and agricultural growths that emerge in the gaps and glitches between the abstract straight lines of architecture and urban planning, and the complex and unruly realities of landscapes and people. I’d like to present several site-specific spatial-temporal vignettes from my research that trace how the construction of this abstract geometry facilitates the very feral growths threatens the perfect sterility of the modern urban order.

Presentation 3: Maria Ilia Kastrouni, The Bartlett School of Planning 

This paper critically evaluates the post-pandemic design-led regeneration projects emerging in Athens, Greece. It is focusing on the areas around the 'commercial triangle' and the Municipality’s most socioeconomically marginalised communities, and interrogates how urban development initiatives intersect with issues of race, gender, class, and urban citizenship. Methodologically, it draws on a triangulation of document analysis, official spatial data, 62 in-depth semi-structured interviews, and critical discourse analysis of media and political speeches. Key findings expose the processes of displacement and dispossession that accompany many regeneration projects, rendering visible the lived experiences of communities frequently excluded from the sanitized discourses surrounding urban renewal. 

Presentation 4: Sidra Ahmed, UCL Geography 

Considering how shapes are utilised in urban branding and visual identity, this presentation discusses the relationship between imageability and urban branding. Using The Shard and its pyramidal spire-like shape as a starting point, this presentation reflects on recent PhD research on the imaging of London skyscrapers in renderings and logos as well as the connection between shapes and skyscraper toponyms. It also draws on wider research on urban imageability (e.g. Lynch, 1960; Harland, 2015) and mental mapping methods of iconic architecture (e.g. Kaika, 2010) to consider the role of shapes in forming a mental image of the city.

Presentation 5: Kwang Lin Wong (and Lily Flashman), UCL Urban Lab

Interspersed along the M1 motorway are a series of distribution centres with identical gradients of blue cladding that crudely camouflage them against the sky. The centres are ‘the size of a small town’, operated by international mega-corporations. Our film takes a close-up view of these complexes and reflects on their place in the suburban landscape and less visible networks of materials, labour and capital. The deliberate disappearance of the warehouses blending into the sky is interpreted as an ideological choice to conceal the conditions of labour and (over)production within. A film camera is used in the analogue process of ‘staying with’ the warehouses that disrupts what appears as too monotonous to register.

Presentation 1: Michal Iliev, UCL Geography 

In recent years, the hexagonal grid has become a standard in geospatial analysis and cartography. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, the hexagon offers some unique properties and symmetries that have persuaded many mapmakers to adopt them over traditional square grids. I first ‘discovered’ hexagons during my undergraduate studies and quickly became a fan, incorporating them into most of my maps. This led to a small obsession with the shape—I began noticing and photographing hexagonal patterns throughout the urban environment, from pavements to advertisements, and found myself delving into historical research, for example, learning that hexagonal urban planning was a “leading theoretical alternative to the rectangular grid” in the 1930s. In this brief presentation, I will share excerpts from both my formal and informal research, highlighting examples of how hexagons have influenced not only the representation of cities (through maps and diagrams) but also their physical structures.

Presentation 2: Sophie Chauhan, SELCS-CMII / Sarah Parker Remond Centre

This presentation details an ethnographic encounter with the urban geography of Lower Manhattan. During fieldwork in NYC with Asian anti-racist activists, I found myself frequently disoriented in Manhattan’s Chinatown. I get lost, run late, even trip up. The neighbourhood, also known as ‘Five Points,’ breaks with the city’s cadastral convention for a reason: it was built over a landfilled pond. Unearthing the layered foundations of contemporary Chinatown reveals how settler colonial dispossession, racial slavery, capital speculation, carceral containment, industrial exploitation and gentrification articulate together. The infrastructures of racial-colonial capitalism, afflicted by rising damp, also make fertile ground for anti-racist resistance.

Presentation 3: Said Mahathir, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit

My presentation examines the spatial distribution and territorial dynamics of religious communities in London through geometric analogies – points (representing religious spaces), lines (symbolising infrastructure), and planes (indicating territories). By employing spatial ethnography (geometric analysis), this study reveals patterns of religious affiliation across five concentric zones (R1–R5) extending from central London. The results indicate a higher religious diversity in the outer zones and a more pronounced non-religious presence in the central areas. The analysis underscores the role of religious infrastructure in linking dispersed communities and establishing territories, particularly among Muslim groups. This framework aids in understanding how both informal and formal networks shape religious experiences, influence urban conflicts, and enhance religious visibility and coexistence in multicultural London.

Presentation 4: Tom Western, UCL Geography 

Presentation 5: Hanadi Samhan, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit

My research rethinks Palestinian refugee camps—like Beddawi—as voluminous territory, where verticality as relational topologies (height, stairwells, rooftops, voids) and voluminous flows (barriers,grids, enclaves) materialize contested sovereignties. Through participatory "deep cuts"—ethno-architectural sections—I dissect how height, depth, and density become sites of negotiation: geopolitical influence and territorial politics collide with factional territories, while voids and stairwells forge insurgent connections. These deep cuts are both diagnostic (revealing opaque spatial logics) and transformative, rendering the camp’s voluminous opacity as a dynamic and thick web of relations and flows. I propose a visual presentation of Beddawi’s vertical morphogenesis, using drawing as analytical praxis to interrogate how shapes encode power, politics, and resistance.

Presentation 6: Young Hyun Lee, UCL History of Art

Douglas MacPherson's interwar cutaway of Leicester Square station and other cutaway works featuring the London Underground are called 'stomach diagrams’, reflecting the intestinal shape they 'shape' the tunnels into. The intestinal shape in these illustrations reflect the unique complexity born from the construction context of the London Underground and address the spatial disorientation of modern underground travel. In the process, the Underground system is reinterpreted as a bodily function, in which the flow of people is critical to London’s ‘life’. Creating and looking at a stomach diagram then becomes a clinical act of ‘x-raying’ the city-body, indicating a desire to comprehend the internal workings beneath the skin of the city.