Setting the Table: Conversations Across Architectural History MA Symposium

About the symposium

Setting the Table: Conversations Across Architectural History is the annual end-of-year symposium for 2024-25 Architectural History MA students to present the work of their dissertations. The symposium invites respondents to examine how architecture is shaped by adjacent systems and practices. Rather than treating architecture in isolation, this symposium situates the built environment as a lens through which the variable conditions that produce and historicise space can be interrogated. 

Across four sessions – Situated Agency, Behind the Glass, Edge Habitats, and Next Passages – presentations consider how authority and representation are enacted; how storage, conservation, and data infrastructures sustain public culture; how environmental interfaces host Other-than-human life and measurement; and how urban futures are staged through maintenance, reuse, and phasing. More details of the sessions are provided below in the event schedule. 

The day combines short talks with chaired discussion and audience Q&A, inviting methodological reflection alongside empirically grounded case studies and situated fieldwork.

The symposium will be held in-person at Room 6.02, The Bartlett School of Architecture, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB. The symposium will also be broadcasted via Zoom, with booking details are provided in the 'Book now' link on this page. 

The symposium is organised by Architectural History MA students: Qing Tang and Issy MacGregor. 

The Architectural History MA was established in 1981 and is currently co-directed by Professor Barbara Penner and Dr Robin Wilson.

Schedule

09:55–10:00 Introduction: Setting the Table 

10:00–10:30 Keynote: Ellis Woodman (Director of the Architecture Foundation) 

Session 1 - Situated Agencies (morning):

Architecture as an active agent in shaping and contesting political, cultural, and ideological systems. These papers interrogate how built form and spatial strategies are implicated in colonial governance, postcolonial identity, religious symbolism, and geopolitical surveillance.  

10:30–10:45 Navigating the Territory: The Church and Preventive Health Ship - Anna Garcia Molina 

10:45–11:00 Structurally Difficult Heritage: Eric Gill’s Prospero & Ariel and the Problem with Architectural Integration - Eden Northcott 

11:00–11:15 The Fashion and Textile Museum: A Piece of Mexico in London - Guillermo Gómez Tejera 

11:15–11:45 The Power & The Glory: Nuclear War and the Protestant Ethic at the BT Tower - Joseph Williamson  

11:30–11:45 Between Earth and Ink: Vernacular, Memory, and Utopia in Hassan Fathy’s Architectural Visualisations - Zaina Abou Seif  

11:45–12:00 Response & Panel Discussion: Dr Tania Sengupta, UCL 

Presenters: Anna García Molina, Eden Northcott, Guillermo Gómez Tejera, Joseph Williamson, and Zaina Abouseif.  

Session 2 - Behind the Glass (morning):

Bringing visibility to the concealed spaces, practices, and infrastructures that sustain cultural and architectural systems. From service quarters to museum repositories, and the digital street-level view, these studies examine the overlooked architectures of work, storage, and documentation.  

12:05–12:20 Invisibilized Domesticities: 2 Willow Road and the Embodiment of Housework - Claudia Vargas Franco 

12:20–12:35 Display vs Storage: Visibility, Accessibility and Transparency in Museums with Colonial Inheritances - Helga Beshiri

12:35–12:50 A Table of Intentions: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Exhibition of a Decade ‘54–‘64 - Macarena González Carvajal 

12:50–13:05 Google Street View and the Architectural Image: Rethinking Histories of Urban Representation - Mark Bessoudo  

13:05–13:20 Response & Panel Discussion: Prof Jane Rendell, UCL 

Presenters: Claudia Vargas Franco, Helga Beshiri, Macarena González Carvajal, and Mark Bessoudo.  

13:20–14:00 Lunch Break

Session 3 - Edge Habitats (afternoon):

From post-disaster marine environments to cybernetic habitats and thermodynamic walls, these projects explore the role of architecture in mediating complex human and nonhuman systems. Ecologies are approached here as natural, technological, and hybrid networks, operating across planetary, urban, and domestic scales.  

14:00–14:15 Testing the Waters: On Situated Ecologies and Sensing Radiological Architectures - Issy MacGregor 

14:15–14:30 Architecture of Digital Waste: Hidden networks, materialities, and myths of data destruction - Qing Tang 

14:30–14:45 Eco-Recursivity: Cybernetic Thinking in Eco-Machines of the New Alchemy Institute (1969-1991) - Ertuğ Erpek 

14:45–15:00 Living with the Beast: The Impact of Trombe Wall Technology on Residential Life - Steven Schultz 

15:00–15:15 Response & Panel Discussion: Isabelle Donetch, UCL 

Presenters: Issy MacGregor, Qing Tang, Ertuğ Erpek, and Steven Schultz.  

Session 4 - Next Passages (afternoon):

Urban landscapes are shaped by multiple, overlapping temporalities - from historical infrastructures to speculative futures. This session examines how cities are narrated, reimagined, and transformed through cycles of decay, renewal, and visionary intervention.   

15:20–15:35 When the Cathedrals were Painted: Decorative Mural Polychromy in the French Gothic Revival, 1840–1870 - Audrey Zhang

15:35–15:50 Networks of Time: Pneumatic clocks, standardised time, and underground infrastructure as expressions of modernity in 19th century Paris - Eleanor Moselle 

15:50–16:05 Urban Water Imaginaries: London and its Connection to Waterlogged Realities and the Built Environment - Jazmine Simmons  

16:05–16:20 The Spectacle of Decay: Ruin, Representation, and Renewal at St-Mary-le-Port, 1940–2025 - Kitty Alexander  

16:20–16:35 Crossing Boundaries: Subverting the Catwalk through Maison Martin Margiela (1988–1998) - Lora Lolev 

16:35–16:50 Response & Panel Discussion: Prof Iain Borden, UCL 

Presenters: Audrey Zhang, Eleanor Moselle, Jazmine Simmons, Kitty Alexander, and Lora Lolev.   

16:50–17:00 Closing Remarks 

17:00–18:00 End-of-day / Refreshments

Image: Selected arrangement of research imagery and material produced from the MA Architectural History 2024-25 cohort. Created by Issy MacGregor, Qing Tang, Guillermo Gómez Tejera, Audrey Zhang.