“Up and Away”

Urban verticality was the theme adopted for the UCL Geography MSc Urban Studies course during 2018/19. This offered a focus for exploring cross-disciplinary themes in teaching and research, as well as a topic of considerable policy and practitioner interest.

Tara Tank and her MSc course colleagues helped organise an end-of-year event in the Bartlett School of Architecture, during which the group shared its work on London verticality with UCL staff, alumni and external practitioners, and also celebrated finishing the course.

There were two short presentations. The first was by Dr Michal Murawski (UCL SSEES), on the importance of verticality in his work on post-Socialist urbanism (and the dangers of the horizontal tendencies of Jacob Rees Mog).

There was also a creative performance from MSc student Sam Ford, as Micheál Ó’Mólacháin, Professor of Underground Places at UCL, who spoke eloquently and passionately on ‘No Holes without Moles’: a brief history of the mole people and their contribution to London’s built environment’.

Catering was provided by KERB food and the event was organised with assistance from UCL Urban Lab.